Lessons From the Kissing Booth

Dear everyone,

I spent a remarkable amount of the first half of March holed up in my apartment with my books, feeling fragile and curmudgeonly and awkward, going whole strings of days speaking only to my coworkers. (Last March was all about the traveling and the startling confessions, and I much prefer that. Where are the startling confessions, folks? The only one who has been drunkenly confessing is me, and that's embarrassing.) Books are better than people anyway, if notably less cuddly, but since my edges have felt particularly sharp lately as well we've made a good match. The rest of the month I spent out in places making new friends and telling bad jokes and coming home too late and drinking and shaking my fist at the opposite sex. Well, shaking my fist in my head, anyway. Boys have been causing trouble for a significant amount of the people I know that take a recreational interest in them lately, including me. What gives, guys?

The month also contained a bunch of excellent and amusing things: Josh finished his PhD, Jessica got into Harvard, Brandon wrote a lovely guest post, and East Coast Paul found an old tape of me wailing along to a bunch of Monster Magnet songs, which include such lyrical gems as, "I squeezed out in hump drive and I'm drowning in love" and "you're looking for the one who fucked your mom; it's not me." Oh, Albertsons brand vodka, we had a lot of fun in high school, didn't we?

Earlier this week, the water in my shower inexplicably turned orange. It's back to normal now, but the bathtub is weirdly stained. There's no story other than that, I just thought you should know. Also, I am cat sitting while Steph and Ryan are out of town doing wedding things, and having something else moving in my apartment is constantly unnerving. I'm very used to being alone in here, and the cat seems not very pleased by all of the absence and all of the movement when I'm here. Singing and dancing and pacing is what I do, kitty.

I've been experiencing things in strange ways, lately, super-saturated and a little buzzy, perhaps weirder than they are. Or maybe everything has actually been strange and colorful and vibrating softly. I can't really say.

And spring is nearly here, bitches, like the half-second before the chorus of a song kicks in and you can feel it welling just behind your ribcage. It'll bring with it skirts and sandals and summer sheets and boys in short sleeves with their tattoos showing that I just want to bite. We're going to get sunburned, you and I, chasing cars and cocktails and cigar store indians and fireflies and unruly genies. Seattle, prepare to have your pants charmed off. I've got tricks still that you've never even thought of.

love,
me