That Which Hope Has?

I heard a rumor that my blog has an insufficient number of posts relating to feathers. Not wanting to disappoint or engage in false advertising, I thought I would try to begin to rectify this situation.

By rights, though, this post ought to be about my very recent decision to quit Latin, or my excursion this afternoon to see Doubt, or perhaps explain why I'm posting about feathers at all... hmm.

Latin is the thing without feathers
that mostly leaves the brain
and sings the song with the incomprehensible grammar,
and then comes 'round again.

Doubt isn't really feathered
but if it were to be
it would be gray and barely formed
and softly curled in me.

A duster is a thing with feathers
which can be used to clean
but when it's bright and pink and soft
it begs a better scene.


Also, I have always liked collecting feathers, and have sometimes considered getting a feather tattoo.

The end of this post about feathers.

An Offer

It's been awhile since I had an interesting game on here...

So, here's the deal. Tell me a secret. Or an intriguing scrap of detail. Or a vivid memory that may or may not relate to anything else. Tell me something you feel like telling me, or something you never tell anyone, or something that you wave around at parties to impress people you don't know. It should be true, but it doesn't have to be real. It doesn't really matter what... you can post it here, or email it to me, or whatever.

What I'm going to do, somehow, is weave them all together, and make a little patchwork quilt of whatever you give me. It might be a story, or a poem, or an essay, or something in between. Your part may be almost exactly as you told me, or rather disguised. If you want me to change any specific identifying details, let me know, and I will do my best to preserve your anonymity.

When I'm done, I'll post the results for your pleasure and engagement. I think it will be fun and perhaps illuminating.

A Prize!

For Rachel and Katie, winners of that long ago contest. Totally unedited, and may not make any sense if you don't know these characters already. Or at least be unsatisfying. But anyway, no more caveats, here it is. Oh, except one, and I will take other precautions re. this... I'm always really paranoid about posting my work online... it's mine, the characters are mine, I made them up and/or have permission to use them, and so keep your hands off, all you random bitches who are coming around to steal my shit. Ahem. Thank you for putting up with my paranoia.

So, this isn’t how I met him, but this is how I knew I was in love. I didn’t know that I knew at the time, but later, I knew that that was when I would have known, if I’d been paying attention and not just fucking around. And do you know? It was before we ever had sex. Which is good, because if we’d just stumbled into sex I’d have been totally blindsided. Every time he gets an award for his work or some kind of honor or whatever I want to stand up and yell, and the best lay on the whole fucking island. I would say planet, but that might embarrass him a little. And overstate my sluttiness, which, while considerable, does not encompass the entire earth.

God, the sex is so good. One time, before the virus obviously, he had just finished some big deal article for one of those journals with the impossibly long names. And we were fooling around on the floor in the kitchen in his tiny apartment. He’d gone in to get some wine glasses and I followed him, and we ended up knocking over one of the glasses—before we started playing, actually, just, you know, normal slippage, and then we got carried away and I ended up with my legs around his waist and my head pressed against the wall, uncomfortably, staring at the oven. But it was incredibly hot, and I was picking bits of glass out of my back for days.

You know, I’ve said I’m a masochist, but that’s not really true. I just like to be taken care of. Swept off my feet. Sometimes I get that mixed up with pain. It’s a little embarrassing, the whole thing. But whatever, my lover reads romance novels, and he’s a fucking Ph.D. So we’re well matched or something. I’m not entirely comfortable with that side of myself. I just pretend to be. You’ll see that in a lot of maricones like me.

Right, but I was talking about being in love. It was… well, here is where I get confused, maybe our third or fourth date. I mean, the first sure wasn’t anything to make you fall in love, unless you get off on car accidents and hysterical boys. Boy, singular, man I guess, but I was hardly ready to think of myself that way. Besides, boys could be a bit more flitting and fey, and men… men were part of that strange class of creatures who could set your throat pulsing when they moved so carelessly from the locker room to their shiny manly cars, hair and skin all damp with sweat. I wanted to be a sponge, to soak it up and remain blameless. But to name myself as one of them would tip the scales, send me tumbling into some other class of being from which I could never return. I remember sobbing in the shower the day I graduated from high school, because everyone kept calling me young man, saying I was growing into a fine young man, things like that. And I wasn’t.

Boys could be fucked, but men did the fucking. Men did the choosing, boys could wait, and dally, and let things happen to them, let everything pass over them like clouds in a blue sky. You would think I’d have done a lot of pot, given my basic desire for a spacey state of mind, but I was afraid of drugs in high school. Reefer madness and all of that. I could see the red animal with small sharp claws under my skin, and I danced attendance on everything that would keep him at bay. I was afraid of everything, really, and the day I graduated from high school I was breathing in the steam and the soap and the tears until my head pounded and my fifteen year-old sister came into the bathroom without knocking and started to put on her makeup, and said, Jesus fuck in the fucking arsehole, David, you’re such a bloody fucking dishrag, why don’t you mop yourself the fuck up? She was going through an extremely profane phase at the time, which seemed to correspond with her extremely cruel phase, and preceded her extremely loud and yet romantic phase, which was a direct segue into her extremely drunk phase… but I digress.

I guess the point is that once I got out in the world, I realized you could stay a boy for as long as you wanted; there were always men ready to fuck you and ask no questions. And a little part of myself kept floating above it all, a balloon on a string, never quite part of the world of the me who went about interacting with things, just tethered a little by the red animal portion of myself.

Of course, I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I figured I was basically happy. I figured that happiness was like that, interspersed with inexplicable nervousness and uncontrollable tears. You just factored those things out.

On our third (or maybe fourth) date, I decided to take Andrew to a bar. Sort of a bar/club/gay dive, basically. We’d done the movies, and a cute little jazz show, but I was nervous because he hadn’t decided to fuck me yet, and I figured I’d get him buzzed and see what happened. That and I liked to dance. I wasn’t completely an insecure asshole. It was quiet there that night, fewer people than usual on the dance floor, and I was a bit uncomfortable with that. Andrew, for his part, was a bit uncomfortable with the whole scene. I mean, he hid it well. But he was quiet. I don’t know how I knew his bad-quiet from his good-quiet even then, but I did. He wasn’t drinking, either, so I followed suit. It felt very awkward. More so than our other dates, even the initial catastrophe.

After awhile Andrew went to the bathroom, and I waited for him so long I began to think he’d definitely scampered out the window, like people you read about or see in sitcoms, trying to escape their Very Bad Dates, and I was starting to get nervous and even a little mad—I didn’t think I’d done anything that horrible. You’ll think this is ridiculous, I guess, but it was at least ten minutes he was gone. And that was after I’d started to check my watch. I suppose I should have gone in and checked on him, but I kept thinking he’d come out any second and I wouldn’t have to make an ass of myself. So, anyway, finally he appeared, and he had this very strange expression on his face.

The thing about Andrew, I guess, is that he has a tendency to look sort of dreamy. I mean, his hair and eyes are rather soft to begin with, and if you’re not really paying attention, I can see how it would be easy to just sort of conclude, absent-minded professor, you know, and move on from there. But if you do happen to pay attention, you realize that the dreaminess actually comes from this focus that’s just utterly formidable. That he’s taking things in and processing them and giving them back at a level that’s probably well beyond you, no offense. It certainly is beyond me. And sometimes the dreamy fog-curtain of his outside thoughts just kind of peels away, and you’re left with his sharp, unvarnished interest. It’s a bit shocking. Like… lemon, or a deep-pore cleanser. Thank God he’s into religion, you know, and not, I don’t know, something black and white. He has a gentleness that he retains, even when he’s just chewed up whatever your argument was and spat out the bones.

Anyway, my point is, that as he came out of the bathroom and rejoined me at the bar, I saw that not-dreamy, not-veiled face of his for the very first time. It was like… well, I don’t know, I don’t want to get too dramatic. But I wasn’t expecting that kind of light in him. It’s like he had some kind of special hidden radiance he had suddenly let out… I don’t think he knew it. I don’t think he saw it. He seemed troubled when he came over to me, upset.

“Hey,” I said. I smiled, all sideways and crooked. I was trying not to run my hand over his arm to see if I could find the bottom of that glow against his skin.

“Hey. Um. Sorry I took so long. That was weird.” He let out a breath, and smiled back at me, looking nervous. “There was a weird guy in there; he sort of hit on me or something, I don’t really…”

I wasn’t sure what to say about that. Some guy in the bathroom hits on him, and he comes back to me all lit up? It looked not so good for me.

“Oh… was he hot?” I laughed. It sounded like my stupid sister’s laugh. Andrew’s eyes focused on me, looking mildly surprised.

“Sure. Yeah, he was.” Apparently this was the last thing that Andrew had considered. Apparently I was a bizarre, idiotic, horny prick.

“Oh.”

“He was… he seemed to have been sweating. He’d taken his t-shirt off and was wiping his face with it when I came in. It was white, the t-shirt, or it had been once. He was rather tanned.”

I bit my lips to keep from giggling inanely. What was this, some kind of porno set up or what? Maybe handsome, studious Andrew was actually a raging kinkster.

“But he was wearing a scarf,” Andrew continued, oblivious to my squirming. “I mean, like a muffler. A big knit one, made of this fuzzy gray yarn. It seemed completely… out of place. And it was torn, on the end. And he didn’t smell good. I sort of hate that, when people don’t smell good, because you know you should just ignore it, but you don’t. I don’t. I have a lot of trouble with that. Well, anyhow, he was obviously sort of agitated, and I didn’t want to stare at him, or whatever, so I just sort of went over to the urinal and tried to mind my own business. And the next thing I know he puts his hand on my back. I mean, actually on my back, not my ass or something, but still, I was very startled and I sort of whipped around, and he said, sorry.

“He had a really interesting voice. Low and a little rough, but not too rough. He swallowed, and he seemed to be hesitating about something. I was… frightened, but less frightened than I figured I ought to be.”

“Jesus,” I said. “He musta been on drugs.”

“Maybe,” Andrew said, slow and considering. He takes so little for granted. He spread his fingers out on the bar, looked at them, drummed them there.

“Well, what happened?” I said at last.

“He said, ‘Did you lose these?’ and he holds out my glasses that I must’ve lost, I don’t know, two months ago, certainly not here, and one of the lenses is broken and the side is bent, but they’re definitely mine…”

“Let me see,” I demanded, as though I had any idea about his missing glasses.

“Well,” he said, looking embarrassed, “I didn’t take them.”

“What?”

“I said they weren’t mine. I was freaked out, you know? Some weird guy handing me my glasses out of the blue sky in the middle of the washroom? I don’t know if he’s a stalker or some weird homeless prophet or what.”

“Oh.” He looked so nervous at this revelation that I touched his hand. “It’s ok, it does sound pretty fucked up. I bet I wouldn’t have talked to him at all. Unless he was really hot.”

Andrew smiled. “Well, so he tucked the glasses back in his pants pocket and watched me wash my hands, and then he was rooting around in his pocket again and I was really scared he was going to pull out my stuffed duck from when I was a kid, or something, and sort of hoping he would, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when he asked if I minded if he smoked… and I said yes. Which I think startled him, because after all you can smoke everywhere in the bar. But I figure, why ask the question if you won’t take yes for an answer, right?”

I laughed. “Gutsy,” I said.

“He took out a cigarette and passed it between his fingers, but didn’t light up. I would’ve thought he was being challenging, or something, but he just seemed curious. Somehow the smell wasn’t so bad now, either. I dried my hands and figured I should leave, but the whole thing seemed unfinished. I turned to leave anyway. After all, this isn’t a fairy tale, right? So I was heading out of there and I felt him touch my elbow again.

“ ‘You dropped this,’ he said ‘Anyway, I don’t like poetry.’” And he gave me this grimy, folded up piece of paper, and I took it, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

I waited expectantly, but Andrew was looking at the bar again. “Geez, what was on it?”

He looked up at me, with that sudden, unexpected clarity. “I don’t know. I wanted you to read it with me.”

“Why?” I said.

“You know, I don’t know,” he answered, and I figured I could trust him, because he wasn’t just being romantic, he was real and strange and talked to strangers and didn’t like cigarettes and saved things just because. “It just seems like it’s your story too.” And he took my hand and we walked out of the bar right then, really, and I couldn’t stop smiling. We read the paper under a street lamp, and this is what it said:

man like a blade of grass in sunlight

boy are looks ever

deceiving, he’s the moon

man.

he’s the moon man,

after all.

I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now, except that it produced such a longing in me, such a stupid longing, maybe it was just waiting to come out, waiting for something incomprehensible it could wrap itself around. And I looked at Andrew and I knew he understood, and we joked about how dumb it was to write incomprehensible poetry. And we made out for awhile and he took me home.

I stayed awake all night, and in the morning I called him and I said I wanted to sleep with him right away. And he didn’t laugh at me, but he made me wait until he went to all three of his graduate seminars.

It was great! Well, probably it was horrible and clumsy, and I thought it was great. But after all, I was in love already.

Questions from Katie

1. You've finally been able to become a full time novelist (or playwright; whatever you wish!). Only one of your novels/plays wins critical and popular acclaim. Would you rather have that one be your first novel/play, or your last? Why?

Hard one! A conflict between my ego and my... non-ego? Or my ego and my ego? *laughs* But I think in the end I would want it to be my last. Although, if it were my first, I could live a more comfortable lifestyle while writing the rest, which is a serious consideration. But, assuming this is not too relevant to my bank account, and I have a decent source of income either way... then my last. I just hope I would have the stamina to keep writing without any acclaim! And hopefully I wouldn't pen my last work and then die immediately, so I'd have some time to enjoy it. I guess the thing is that I would want to see myself as always progressing and improving as a writer, not peaking right away and never doing anything of note again. I guess it's all ego stuff, though. I mean, in theory what should matter is my own work, the work itself and how I feel about it... though it also matters if other people respond and share what I've done. I guess what it boils down to is that I have to find the strength in myself to do my work because I want to do my work, and let everything that comes with it... success, or not, acclaim, or ridicule, be part of the game of living. Easier said than done, and being said, I'll stick with last, so I could feel like I climbed a mountain and made it to the top, instead of slid down a slide. Except that slides are easier. But I like the view from the mountain. Hehe, I'm not gonna win any prizes for these tossed off analogies, am I? Guess I'll get my wish. ;)

2. What do you think your life would be like if your baby brother had lived, by some miracle, with perfect health? How would you be different? What if he had lived, but with serious health problems?

This is a completely fascinating question. I think about it... not necessarily a lot, but frequently enough, given that it happened when I was three and half. I think that growing up... I always imagined him as a protector, I guess an idealized older brother, even though he would have been younger. I wonder a lot about how we would have related. Would we have allied together against (or at least as a buffer to) our parents? I can see that as an option... I can see us being very close, me and Patrick against the world, even if we didn't always get along. In that version of things he's a confidant, this other part of me that is out doing other things, but always close in spirit, I guess. But I can also see us being radically different. The odds are good, given the situation and family dynamics, that one of us would have been a rebel. I want to say probably him, but who knows? When I don't picture him as my symbiotic sibling, I tend to imagine him like another Pat I knew once... sort of lost and probably on lots of drugs and academically unsuccessful, though smart... and sincere, and deserving of better. Which is interesting, because that Pat was in fact the oldest sibling. And I've seen other examples where it's the oldest sibling that flounders (founders?) the most... my mom's family being a good example. So would I, then, have become more rebellious? Or rebellious at all, let's be honest? I think in some ways it would have been good for me, maybe, knocked a little of the terminal uniqueness out of me. So much of my identity, at least my self-concept and self-presentation, is wrapped up in being one, the one, the only, with all the good and bad that that implies. I think shaped the way I relate in many, many ways. I assume I would still centrally be the same, but the trappings might have been very, very different. I feel like we would have tried to create some balance with each other, and a quadrilateral is never really much like a triangle. But maybe I'm overestimating the whole thing, I don't really know. And I'm very curious about how it would have changed things when my parents split up. Would he have gone to live with my father? Would I? Or would my mother's attachment have been as fierce to both of us? Probably the last, I guess. And would we have visited my father together? Would I have attained the same level of (hard-won) honesty in that relationship? Probably it would have been totally different from all of these things, but it sure makes me think about what is constructed in our identities and what is "real." Is anything? Does it matter?

As to what it would have been like if he were seriously ill... I never considered it before now. So I have less speculation. Except that I'm sure that would have changed me substantially... not only would I be the only top priority (and the only one in the pressure cooker), now, by necessity, I would have been not the top priority at all. I don't know how we would have afforded that... clearly I would have lost whatever monetary opportunities I had, probably including SCC and Beginnings and trips and classes and stuff... I bet I would have formed more solid bonds with friends, dating and such from an earlier age... though it's also possible the opposite would have happened, that I would have retreated more solidly within the walls of my family, and taken on a rather absorbing care-taker role. I mean, it's possible that things would have worked out well for all of us, that it would have been expansive, somehow... but given the relationship between my parents, it seems like this would have been a fairly intolerable situation. Or maybe things would have stayed more sane on the surface. Who knows, but the concept is mostly scary.

I had a dream when I was in Kindergarten, about a cartoon (as in drawn, not stereotypical) African-American family, which I was part of. And we had a baby in the family, and it was accidentally put in the washing machine. (I realized later I had been sitting on the washing machine that day, talking to my father about Patrick). The dream stopped right when we opened the washing machine, and were about to look at its horrific contents.

I often think I was introduced to the concept of death with Patrick, that he made death seem more real to me than to some children. Not in a complete way, though. It makes me think of a story my dad tells, where he and I got on the elevator in the hospital to visit my mom, and somebody, seeing that we were going to the maternity floor, asked if I was going to see a baby brother or a baby sister... "Our baby died," I said. Apparently the ride was very quiet after that. It's an awful story, but it's also hilarious. At least to me. Imagining my chirping little child voice piping up with such a terrible sentence, but one that seemed reasonable and informative to me.

I was always fascinated by him. I never saw him. I don't think I was taken to the funeral; they decided I was too young. And there are no pictures. At some point in my childhood, pretty early I would guess, I was looking at a photo album with all my baby pictures. And I pointed to a blank spot and said, "That's for Patrick." My mom explained that there weren't any pictures of Patrick. And I looked at her like she was missing the point and said, "Make a picture with your mind."

I also, once, was in my room alone, much older, and thinking about Patrick. And I imagined that he was with me, and we were dancing together. Waltzing, I think. He was teaching me to dance. I liked that very much.

I guess another question would be, how would my life have been different if he'd never existed at all... because, oddly, that too would have made a difference in my concept of myself and of others.

I guess I just made a picture with my mind.

3. A strange irreversible affliction overcomes you! Would you rather become color-blind, or tone-deaf? Why?

Color-blind, I think, because I could still see beautiful things, I just wouldn't be positive if they were red or green or whatever. Not that such a thing would be irrelevant, or easy, but I love to sing and I am pleased to have a good voice, and those things would be lost to me if I was tone-deaf.

4. You've finally gotten into Narnia. Who do you want to meet first?

I don't know if I covered this in answering Alex's questions, at all... but I'm going to answer without checking. :) Mr. Tumnus, just because he is the first Narnian we ever meet. Or Aslan, because he's Aslan. Or... but if I keep on I will name them all. (Or Lucy or Edmund now I will stop).

5. As you may have noticed, the cow is now stalking you online! How do you get rid of it?

MOO-BE-GONE! (I've sprayed my blog with a liberal amount. If it doesn't work, I'll have to think of a new strategy.)

Yay Big Willy!

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Thank You, BlogThing, I Feel Much Better Now...

Now if I can just finish the goddamn applications...

Should I say goddamn when I'm applying to programs in Religion?

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher. You'd make a talented professor or writer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

Contest Results!

Well, I've clearly become utterly addicted to posting, but I just had a good idea for the contest several entries ago:

Rachel and Katie: since you are the only ones that played, you both win!

But... since neither of you got it 100% correct, you have to share your prize.

So... without talking to the other one, post as a comment or tell me what you want me to write... and I will try my best to come up with something that fits both criteria, without being totally ridiculous!

I think it should be fun.

On Leaving the Nest

Sometimes it catches you off-guard,
on an updraft when your wings are tired,
you remember the feeling of a whole tree to explore.
Hopping from one place to the next felt
like freedom enough.

And it was enough. I was a chestnut
robin with a scarlet front, I was a
red-winged blackbird, they are always
magic. I was a dragon, hot and full of
scales. I was something
else, leaving behind the old skin, the old
memory self.

Weeping and fighting
through the night will express
demons. You can find the
clensing in the cold new light
of dawn, seen with eyes tired and
relieved, in the sudden chirping
surreally floating through the window screen.

There was a hawk we used to see,
circling above the towers and the
wind-snapped flags and the tall
yellow-leaved branches. We did not
know, we did not know, or we pretended
not to know, that we someday would have to be the
hawks, circling solitary on strong broad wings, in the
endless pale blue, looking back down on the towers
and the spirit-laden flags and the tall pencil-thin
branches. Hunting now, for our own meat
with our own claws, and never mind the
stench, the stench was ours.

It is a fearful thing
to hold yourself cheaply,
sitting in a room full of truth, and
yet when she tells me this is what I've done,
I believe her for the fierceness in her tears.
All my perceptions are upside-down, and I do
not know, I do not know, I pretend not to
know, this is because I am now
flying. All the secrets that I tell
or keep cannot change the simple fact
of strong, sore, new, uncertain wings.

I thought the grief was over but perhaps
I am now strong enough to live with it
beside me. What sparrow does not want to
cast itself into the sky, and see that it has always been
an eagle? This one, this one, only you and I
and everyone that breathes. Oh God, how is it
you have made me a pheonix, when all the other girls
are peacocks, pigeons, and nightengales? I want to
be like and with and one of. I want to stay curled
in a little home of sticks and hair and books and
passageways. I want to stop but I am already
in the sky, and I have eaten meat that I
have hunted, from lives which I have gracefully
taken, as I was meant and built
to do.

Thing is, I went to Bryn Mawr
and it hurt me. And it was not
my home. Not
now.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning...

The universe is trying to make it pax. The series of more or less unforntunate events that was my week has suddenly blossomed into a morning of wonder and intrigue.

Well, it started as a morning of really, really not wanting to get out of bed. And then really, really not wanting to leave the house. So I left late. And I couldn't even seem to move more quickly down the street to make up for it.

But then, as I shuffled on down the road, I saw two dollars lying on the ground, so I picked them up. I walked a few more feet, saw a five dollar bill, and picked it up. I walked a few more feet, and saw the back half of a card, and picked that up. The printed part of the card said: We don't need no stinking candy! Happy halloween. The hand-written part of the card said: What these people need is a good photographer, who can capture the faces w/out the beer bottles! Thanks again for everything. Small contribution towards new raincoat included. And it's signed some illegible name that might be Shirley or Ashley somethingorother. I looked and looked, but I could not find the front half of the card nor the envelope.

About a block down the road, I found a small stiff-paper tag, and picked it up. It said: "It's my birthday. Who's buying?" And it had a big beer mug pictured on the front. So, despite it being a different holiday, I kept it because the alcohol reference related to the card. And I went on my merry way.

Then, as I passed some bit of Penn's campus, I glanced at one of the poles they have there, which are basically these largish things tacked all over with announcements of every kind, and I saw something that looked familiar. I got closer and there it was-- the paper said "In Trousers." IT WAS AN AUDITION ANNOUNCEMENT FOR WILLIAM FINN'S IN TROUSERS!!! If anyone is reading this who does not know what that is, it is the first installment of the Marvin musicals, wonderful musicals by the most witty and wonderful and brilliant composer cum lyricist ever, William Finn. (Ok, I don't know if he's really the most brilliant composer ever-- but I love him the most!) And, because I had picked up that tag, I had something on which to write all the information! It turns out it's being done by this group at Penn, Front Seat Productions, and the auditions are tonight and tomorrow, which means I could totally go tomorrow and do some awesome song and impress them with my love for the show and play Trina and be the happiest person in the world! Except... the website says they are a "student-run theater company." Having had some experience with such companies, it seems to me that they usually only include, well, students. Moreover, students of that particular university. And I am neither. Could I pretend to be a Penn student for two months, among a group of people all of whom are actual Penn students??? I know the answer is probably no.... but I am so tempted. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH IN TROUSERS WILLIAM FINN MARVIN I LOVE YOU AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The fact remains, that no matter what, I will get to see this show. I am so happy!

And, the one day I didn't get to stop for breakfast since I started that trend on... well, Tuesday... Donna or someone brought in bagels and cream cheese! And there were onion bagels, which I wanted all week, but they don't have onion bagels at Cosi.

I feel loved!

P.S. If you have any ideas about how I can pretend to be a Penn student for two months amongst real Penn students while holding my job and not get caught... please come forward. I will give a prize to whomever gives me a suggestion that works. A really good prize.

P.P.S. I will also give a prize to anyone who can recognize all of the allusions in this entry. There are four. Two are easy, one is so-so, and one is hard. In fact, the hard one is so hard I will give you a hint. It only counts as an allusion if you read a certain book at a time when you were a young child and did not know any British expressions, and therefore irrevocably associate this phrase with the book. Also, they are all toward the beginning of the entry, and all parts of the entry count. To play, leave a comment indicating what the allusions are and to what they allude. If you're right, I will write something for you. Anything you want. A poem... a story... an erotic spanking story (because there's a rumor I'd be good at that)... even a fanfiction! And I will post this piece of work right here on my journal, or, if you prefer, save it for your eyes only. :-D So, assuming that I have readers, PLAY!