saint-louise's Diaryland Diary
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I should get myself a label: \"Best if used by this date:\"
It should be noted that girls who dress like they're tough are not necessarily that.
It should also be noted that the correct phrase would be: "Tabasco brand Pepper Sauce." Not "Tabasco hot sauce."
Another thing of note: Any guy who says, "Dude, I love you!" and, "I can't believe I got beat at pool by a girl!" within ten minutes of meeting you is not just "a little drunk." He's what we average citizens call a "wanker." Apply all definitions of the word as liberally as you'd like.
Finally, note this: I'm not certain that all aspects of me going to school at my age are positive ones. Sure, there are the time constraints. And my inability to stay awake while doing homework, much like one's grandfather would not be able to stay awake while watching "Wheel of Fortune." At least I can count my blessings that I don't have half a dozen grandchildren milling about, wondering at the amount of nose hair I have, and musing upon what kinds of things they could do to me during my state of unconsciousness before I woke up and kicked their asses with Operation Bone Breaking With My Motherfucking Cane.
So that's good.
Last night, at school, I had another one of those brilliant flashes of FutureVision (TM pending), wherein I see myself in an advanced rate of aging. It was like those scenes in "The Time Machine" where the H.G. Wells character whips through time, seeing buildings crumbling, mountains rising and falling, and animals dying, with their skeletons rapidly laid bare and then subsequently consumed by the earth.
I was sitting in the cafeteria at school, eating a delightful sammich, and I was suddenly aware of myself, grey-haired, stooped, missing teeth, covered in cobwebs…still mid-bite.
And all because of That Boy.
I first noticed him walk by my table as I paused in my gory evisceration of my sammich to take a ladylike sip of coffee. He was baby-faced, of average height, with a wiry build, and had dark hair in that style that made it look like he'd just rolled out of bed and was jaunty and self-assured enough to think "fuck it." Yeah, that's pretty much all that hairstyle says. Or perhaps it says "hey, I just rolled out of bed…late night, too much weed, early class…that's the extent of my mystery, yo."
Either way, I just…uh…
Nope. Nothing more to say than that.
He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, being subtle in that subtle-as-stomping-on-my-foot kind of way. I raised my eyebrows at him (because I am physically incapable of raising one eyebrow, as much as I'd like to be able to, because it would make me look so very cool and condescending but it would be disguised as a mild questioning glance…and how rrrrawr would that be, huh?), and he promptly looked over at the televisions and walked away.
I shrugged, and commenced with Operation Violent Sammich Death.
When he wandered by my table for the third time, I realized that he had been doing this strange circling of my eating environment for a good fifteen minutes or more. I was instantly overwhelmed with a feeling of Surprise and Embarrassment, and started to check to see if I had food on my face, or if my pants had fallen off, or if a small rodent was gnawing angrily on my leg, and I had missed these things, but this sweet boy was trying to figure out a polite way to let me know.
When I found a lack of food/rodent and a lack of lack of pants, I switched from Surprise and Embarrassment to Yucky Stalking Boy Creepiness.
The next time he passed by, I forced eye contact with him and, for good measure, said through a mouthful of food, "Hey."
He stopped short and put on a guilty expression, like I'd caught him being nasty with a piece of my underclothing. Yucky Stalking Boy Creepiness level rose a few notches. Then he abruptly sat down at my table opposite me and I said, "Hi."
We appraised each other for a few minutes, and then I ventured again, "Hi?"
He sighed, as though I had said something so persuasive that he was convinced – ah! even compelled – to respond. "You were in one of my classes a couple of semesters ago."
I stopped chewing for a second. "Oh? Oh. Oh, right. Sure." Spoken, I would like to point out, with a very credible amount of inflection. Indicating, I would also like to point out, that I had absolutely no fucking clue who he was.
"So, yeah. I remember you were a really good writer, right?"
His sentence rose at the end, like a question, and also very much like how every person of his age speaks, punctuating each statement with pointy up-talk, as though jabbing his listeners to ensure they are paying attention. Given this ambiguity, I couldn't decide if he was expecting an answer, or a remark to continue the small talk. So I tipped my head and muttered decisively, "Ah. Hmm."
He stared at me.
So I added, "Yes. Uh. I sure like jalapenos on my sammich…uh, I mean sandwiches."
"Are you an English major?" he rushed on, blatantly ignoring my jalapeno query. The little bastard. However, feeling a brief, rare moment of benevolence, I let it go, and told him that I was, indeed, majoring in English – the better to have a useless scrap of paper showing my educational tenacity and to forever ensure that everyone will ask me, until my death, whether I was going to teach.
To which the answer is, vehemently, NO.
Useless. Yes. See?
But he didn't take to my meandering bitterness as well as I had hoped, considering his apparent emotional frigidity to jalapeno conversation. Instead, he murmured, "Yes, me too."
Then he leaned in very suddenly. And I instinctively leaned back, protecting what was left of my sammich with my arm. Operation Scavenger Fuckoff.
"So…do you think you'd want to…like, see a movie or something?"
I blinked. It seemed to be the perfect response, since I had no idea what else to do. Then I said, "Uh…I beg your pardon?"
"A movie," he repeated. "You and me. See a movie. Like, together." Sensing my confusion, he turned red and blurted, "Or coffee. Or dinner. Or, like, the library. Since we like books and…"
He trailed off, looking helpless.
I had a sudden burst of insight. Blinding insight. The kind like when someone walks into your dark room at 2 am and turns on the overhead light and you jerk into consciousness and yell, "OW, motherfucker! What the hell and some shit?"
So I said to my Yucky Stalking Boy, "I'm 28."
"What?" And here his face sort of…dissolved into itself. Like a three-cheese grilled tuna melt. Cheese one: confusion. Cheese two: disbelief. Cheese three: Cheddar, with just a touch of disgust.
"I'm 28. Years. Old." I poked at an errant jalapeno on the table in front of me. Paused for emphasis. "Almost 29, actually. You thought I was…what? Twenty?"
He exhaled a little, weakly breathing out the word: "Eighteen…ish." And I suppressed the urge to laugh maniacally.
Instead, I picked up my sammich again, and sort of brandished it at him like a weapon, looking as mild as I possibly could. "I have a full-time job. And a daughter. She's almost eight now." I resisted saying, "Wanna see the stretch marks on my tits?" and continued, "So. What movie do you want to see?"
The next few minutes were a tasteful mélange of young boy backs out and makes a run for his life as old woman kindly allows him to do so without any further torture. I like to think that he spent the rest of the day swathed warmly in a sense of overwhelming, glowing relief, for escaping a date with a psychotic single-parent old woman.
And I was left with my sammich, which I didn't have the heart or stomach to finish. Poor, neglected little sammich.
Here is where the stooping, no-teeth, cobwebs thing comes in.
Operation Bugger All. It works, in a pinch.
2:39 p.m. - 2003-04-01
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