Sometime between this post and the last, I became an adult. It feels about the way I expected, which is to say that it's even more confusing than I could have ever anticipated.
I still listen to the same music, but now I also listen to people justify poor job performance. I'm still a rabble-rouser, but now I'm a professional rabble-rouser which sullies its purity, and strangers feel justified in calling me a fake even if there's nothing fake about 80/90/100 hours a week. I still am asking the same questions about who I am, but I've also gotten good at answering follow up questions like "When you had that life-changing experience that made you realize all the good and bad in the world, where did you fall between goals and projections? Did you have to develop a team along the way? How many people were involved?" The best writing I do these days can in a couple of minutes secure a candidate a salaried position but then doesn't matter at all.
The last ten months have made me a much better person, or a person I love more with less unconvinced posturing and fewer post-it notes saying "if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?" I've recovered everything I liked about myself before I was paralyzed with fear and anxiety and puberty, but at the cost of having no time to ever divest myself of Boss Cara and be myself. I have a beautiful little apartment in a cheap but swank part of town that I haven't seen in the daylight for three weeks. There's a cat at the foot of my bed that gnaws on my toes each night that doesn't even have a name even though we've swapped his spit for my blood several times. I work with my potential best friends but I don't have enough time to come up for air to even realize that potential until we're sitting together in packed-up bedrooms or crowded bars saying goodbye as they move onto the next young adult adventure, and the cycle continues.
The people on the inside of this crazy mess of political organizing are all exhausted and the people outside of it don't appreciate the time you invest in them. I'm giving you my most precious possession: four hours on a Tuesday night that cuts deep into my sleep and jeopardizes my thin façade of professionalism as I roll into work in the same green jeans Wednesday morning. I'm calling you on my way home from work, squeezing you into my 20 minutes of alone time each day, only to have you respond that you're feeling too lazy for a "long" chat. I desperately need an escape back into the world where people do more than sleep and work, but no person wants to be an escape, and it's too obvious to everyone involved that that's what my friends have become.
Last year I had all the time in the world, and I squandered it on being the lamest, most larval version of myself: rolling over in bed to smoke a mid morning cigarette at 5 pm while Civ 4 loaded; spending 16 hours a day making plans until winter turned into summer - I could count the number of things I remember from that one long day on one hand. After an intense transformation, I've emerged a butterfly only to find out the beautiful summer's only 98 hours long, one hour a day at a time. I've come out of my shell, only to remember all butterflies are destined to ever do is migrate back and forth, inherently unable to enjoy themselves.
5.04.2012
4.29.2011
Unpacking my library
Not everyone seems to have the same relationship with books that I do. After unpacking my library, which has been in storage for four months, I sat in a meditative state surrounded by stacks of my books, my gaze lovingly caressing the exposed spines. There you are, beat up copy of White Oleander from late high school; I haven't even flipped through your pages, Portable Dorothy Parker (I only bought you because I love Penguin Classic Deluxe Editions) but I love you just the same. My body floods with relaxed excitement, potential for both curling up and expanding at the same time, overwhelming and comforting.
I approach the idea of not being able to read every fascinating, well-crafted exploration of the human experience, every clever turn of phrase or twist or piece of witty dialogue, every in-depth analysis of our world, as an anxiety-inducing tragedy. I look up from my trance, panicked, and say to Greg, "What if I don't even finish all of these books?"
This is why I keep neglecting to get a job, lurking LibraryThing instead of LinkedIn. Funny how leaving an institution of higher learning awakens real desire to learn. Four years and thousands of dollars later, where has college left me?
I could have had four years of job experience and 200+ books behind me. Instead, I stare at my library like a lover who's slipped through my fingers, imagining what could have been, what late night conversations and deep connections and afternoons sitting silently in the sun enjoying each other's mere presence we could have had, if only I hadn't spent those four years with a moron who only cared about basketball.
I approach the idea of not being able to read every fascinating, well-crafted exploration of the human experience, every clever turn of phrase or twist or piece of witty dialogue, every in-depth analysis of our world, as an anxiety-inducing tragedy. I look up from my trance, panicked, and say to Greg, "What if I don't even finish all of these books?"
This is why I keep neglecting to get a job, lurking LibraryThing instead of LinkedIn. Funny how leaving an institution of higher learning awakens real desire to learn. Four years and thousands of dollars later, where has college left me?
I could have had four years of job experience and 200+ books behind me. Instead, I stare at my library like a lover who's slipped through my fingers, imagining what could have been, what late night conversations and deep connections and afternoons sitting silently in the sun enjoying each other's mere presence we could have had, if only I hadn't spent those four years with a moron who only cared about basketball.
3.29.2011
I wish to be left alone with my happiness
I wish to be left alone with my happiness. I feel like this is a small request to make, but in the face of a world that trades in breaking people's willpower and telling everyone how they've failed, even if all they've ever done in life is worked and attempted to succeed, asking to be left alone with one's happiness is really the greatest request of all.
I may not have work nearly as hard as some people in certain fields, but in the field of my own, simple happiness, I think I'm reaching mastery. I enjoy reading, cooking and eating delicious things, talking to friends about their lives, speaking precisely, taking notes and making lists, smiling at people walking tiny dogs, and trying not to make the world a worse place for anyone. Simple things.
But nothing is simple, and the world is not concerned with my or anyone's simple happiness. No one looks anyone in the eyes anymore and says "your intentions are earnest and good." When I wake up in the morning I'm most proud of the fact that I took the time the last couple of weeks to make sure that I learned how to treat myself and others with more respect.
But there's no where on a resume to put that, and therefore it is useless.
This is the best way I can think of to describe my unhappiness. Like a calm pond that no one can resist throwing a rock into, I feel their disruption ripple on and on and on.
I may not have work nearly as hard as some people in certain fields, but in the field of my own, simple happiness, I think I'm reaching mastery. I enjoy reading, cooking and eating delicious things, talking to friends about their lives, speaking precisely, taking notes and making lists, smiling at people walking tiny dogs, and trying not to make the world a worse place for anyone. Simple things.
But nothing is simple, and the world is not concerned with my or anyone's simple happiness. No one looks anyone in the eyes anymore and says "your intentions are earnest and good." When I wake up in the morning I'm most proud of the fact that I took the time the last couple of weeks to make sure that I learned how to treat myself and others with more respect.
But there's no where on a resume to put that, and therefore it is useless.
This is the best way I can think of to describe my unhappiness. Like a calm pond that no one can resist throwing a rock into, I feel their disruption ripple on and on and on.
3.21.2011
Knowledge is poptarts
Sometime in the last decade, having three weeks with a library book went from ludicrously long to just enough time. When I was thirteen, I was making weekly trips to the library to check out foot-tall stacks of books. Scratch that first part, actually - when I was thirteen, I was volunteering for the library on a bi-weekly basis helping run their summer reading program. For my girl scout silver award, I spent forty hours scrubbing the sticky residue from years of old due date stickers off the front covers of reinforced hardback children's books. Just me, the Berenstain Bears. and all the tikes at the tiny kids table huffing paint thinner fumes for hours.
The library near where we're living frustrates me with its glamourous high ceilings and self-checkout lanes. The libraries I grew up with in Dallas - underfunded, musty, squat brown buildings from the late sixties, closed Thursdays (the day that every kid is banging out that end-of-week assignment) - were bastions of safety and security for all things old. Old books that no one would ever see stocked on the shelves of the bright, shiny Borders down the street (itself now an antiquated entity on its slow way out, thanks to the even brighter, shinier internet) and old souls. There was a camaraderie amongst the library-dwellers, slow movers in an accelerated world, disinterested in newfangled forms of entertainment and knowledge acquisition, leaving the tiny island of tan, half-decade old computers untouched in favor of getting a sweet spot next to the windows to examine crisp, yellowing pages closer.
The Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library is internet in solid form. At its core are table after table after table of flat screens. Beeps and clicks are more prevalent than the crackle of plastic-encased dust jackets. Bright florescent light bounce off the perfect white walls, creating a mood more like a supermarket than a cavern of centuries of knowledge. Everything is new, fast, instant, all inclusive - everything a book isn't. A monument to modern age intellect and desire - we invented knowledge, you know.
The most telling part is that the old people don't come there. It's all travel coffee muggers in the armchairs. As I confidently navigate the stacks, people are drawn to me to teach them the archaic skill of finding information by hand. I love the internet - I hang out on fucking Reddit and have a unmanageable blog roll - but I respect books. Reading Jezebel might give you a taste of what it's like for victims of sexual assault - it provides the latest talking points, keeps you abreast of legislative developments - but rereading Alice Sebold's Lucky hit me like an earthquake. Food bloggers are hip in their exploration of forgotten foods, but no one tells you the history of your dinner the way M.F.K. Fisher does, beautifully intertwining history and culinary artistry. Books separate the wheat from the chaff, they work harder, they're more passionate, more complete. They've been tested, seen more eyes and more red pen rewrites. The don't win the race, but when has speed ever been the basis of understanding?
There's a scene from The L Word that's always stuck with me, and not because it's the prelude to one of the hottest trysts in the series. Bette, director of a prestigious visual arts center, hires carpenter Candace (who is the first and only person to make overalls sexy) to complete some renovations on the building. They have this exchange about quality right before Candace is hired:
Candace: Have you ever seen this?
[She hands the notebook back to Bette. On a page, she's drawn a triangle. On each side of the triangle, she's written a word: Fast, Good and Cheap.]
Candace: There are three sides to the triangle, see?
[Candace sits down in a chair in front of Bette's desk.]
Bette: Fast, good, cheap.
Candace: Yeah. You can have any two of the three in combination, but you can never have all three together.
Bette: Of course you can. I mean, if you have enough money - (looks at triangle) Oh. Right, then it wouldn't be cheap. Okay.
Candace: You can have fast and good. But that takes a big crew of skilled, highly-paid workers.
Bette: And I can have fast and cheap, but then the end product would probably look like shit.
Candace: You can have cheap and good.
Bette: (smiling) That's the one I want.
Perhaps the top .00001% of written knowledge has been created via the fast, good, expensive route - but this route also requires something even rarer that brings together the primary three qualities: luck. As the media continues to face financial crisis, and as huge hunks of the population (myself included) fancies themselves deserving of being published, having their voice and analysis heard, the world teems with the ability to create fast and cheap. But fast and cheap is only good for profiters - not those who want to consume knowledge. We deserve better than new, fast, cheap. Fast and cheap is pop tarts. You might feel full, but you're really starving.
The library near where we're living frustrates me with its glamourous high ceilings and self-checkout lanes. The libraries I grew up with in Dallas - underfunded, musty, squat brown buildings from the late sixties, closed Thursdays (the day that every kid is banging out that end-of-week assignment) - were bastions of safety and security for all things old. Old books that no one would ever see stocked on the shelves of the bright, shiny Borders down the street (itself now an antiquated entity on its slow way out, thanks to the even brighter, shinier internet) and old souls. There was a camaraderie amongst the library-dwellers, slow movers in an accelerated world, disinterested in newfangled forms of entertainment and knowledge acquisition, leaving the tiny island of tan, half-decade old computers untouched in favor of getting a sweet spot next to the windows to examine crisp, yellowing pages closer.
The Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library is internet in solid form. At its core are table after table after table of flat screens. Beeps and clicks are more prevalent than the crackle of plastic-encased dust jackets. Bright florescent light bounce off the perfect white walls, creating a mood more like a supermarket than a cavern of centuries of knowledge. Everything is new, fast, instant, all inclusive - everything a book isn't. A monument to modern age intellect and desire - we invented knowledge, you know.
The most telling part is that the old people don't come there. It's all travel coffee muggers in the armchairs. As I confidently navigate the stacks, people are drawn to me to teach them the archaic skill of finding information by hand. I love the internet - I hang out on fucking Reddit and have a unmanageable blog roll - but I respect books. Reading Jezebel might give you a taste of what it's like for victims of sexual assault - it provides the latest talking points, keeps you abreast of legislative developments - but rereading Alice Sebold's Lucky hit me like an earthquake. Food bloggers are hip in their exploration of forgotten foods, but no one tells you the history of your dinner the way M.F.K. Fisher does, beautifully intertwining history and culinary artistry. Books separate the wheat from the chaff, they work harder, they're more passionate, more complete. They've been tested, seen more eyes and more red pen rewrites. The don't win the race, but when has speed ever been the basis of understanding?
There's a scene from The L Word that's always stuck with me, and not because it's the prelude to one of the hottest trysts in the series. Bette, director of a prestigious visual arts center, hires carpenter Candace (who is the first and only person to make overalls sexy) to complete some renovations on the building. They have this exchange about quality right before Candace is hired:
Candace: Have you ever seen this?
[She hands the notebook back to Bette. On a page, she's drawn a triangle. On each side of the triangle, she's written a word: Fast, Good and Cheap.]
Candace: There are three sides to the triangle, see?
[Candace sits down in a chair in front of Bette's desk.]
Bette: Fast, good, cheap.
Candace: Yeah. You can have any two of the three in combination, but you can never have all three together.
Bette: Of course you can. I mean, if you have enough money - (looks at triangle) Oh. Right, then it wouldn't be cheap. Okay.
Candace: You can have fast and good. But that takes a big crew of skilled, highly-paid workers.
Bette: And I can have fast and cheap, but then the end product would probably look like shit.
Candace: You can have cheap and good.
Bette: (smiling) That's the one I want.
Perhaps the top .00001% of written knowledge has been created via the fast, good, expensive route - but this route also requires something even rarer that brings together the primary three qualities: luck. As the media continues to face financial crisis, and as huge hunks of the population (myself included) fancies themselves deserving of being published, having their voice and analysis heard, the world teems with the ability to create fast and cheap. But fast and cheap is only good for profiters - not those who want to consume knowledge. We deserve better than new, fast, cheap. Fast and cheap is pop tarts. You might feel full, but you're really starving.
3.14.2011
Dots
I guess I should keep blogging since someone still has my blog at the top of a very short list on the side bar of her's. And I keep reminding myself that I used to be a writer and that Ira Glass said you just have to power through the drudgery of creating a body of work and so it follows that I should just ignore how shitty my writing has gotten lately, maybe.
I guess I'm still an okay writer since I edited that last sentence to have more effective adjectives and nouns, and I've got a twitch in the corners of my mouth about using blog three times in the first sentence.
Blog, blog, blog.
Life's gotten weird the last few months and I've stopped most things I enjoy doing for so long that I've kind of forgotten what those things are, and subsequently who the person was that enjoyed doing those things. According to my new life as a squatter in Alexandria, Virginia, I enjoy playing turn-based strategy games, cooking (the bastion of sanity and identity grounding pre-move me and post-move me), and neurotically documenting hygiene and mood control efforts on a tiny calendar with a code of colored dots.
Did you brush your teeth twice? Dot.
Did you start your period? Dot.
Did you take your (possibly fake helpful, possibly placebo-helpful) homeopathic drugs to keep you (at least thinking you're) sane(ish)? Dot.
Did you take a bath (also mood-altering)? Double dot. (Single dot for shower, less helpful in terms of keeping my muscles from controlling my ability to take criticism).
Things that I supposedly do not like anymore: sunlight, telephonic contact with friends, achievement.
The dots are the only thing telling me anything about myself anymore that I trust. Indisputable, factual records. How can I trust anything else, when I constantly hear conflicting reports about my level of skill, who I truly am, what I can achieve and what I'm worth. My liberal arts degrees have granted me skills and intellectual prowess that are competitive with educations from fancier colleges that cost far more, says my state school, but why do I feel like my brain is at least three years spoiled? What am I really good at? What can I securely put a dot next to to remind myself of what I am and what I've achieved?
I guess I'm still an okay writer since I edited that last sentence to have more effective adjectives and nouns, and I've got a twitch in the corners of my mouth about using blog three times in the first sentence.
Blog, blog, blog.
Life's gotten weird the last few months and I've stopped most things I enjoy doing for so long that I've kind of forgotten what those things are, and subsequently who the person was that enjoyed doing those things. According to my new life as a squatter in Alexandria, Virginia, I enjoy playing turn-based strategy games, cooking (the bastion of sanity and identity grounding pre-move me and post-move me), and neurotically documenting hygiene and mood control efforts on a tiny calendar with a code of colored dots.
Did you brush your teeth twice? Dot.
Did you start your period? Dot.
Did you take your (possibly fake helpful, possibly placebo-helpful) homeopathic drugs to keep you (at least thinking you're) sane(ish)? Dot.
Did you take a bath (also mood-altering)? Double dot. (Single dot for shower, less helpful in terms of keeping my muscles from controlling my ability to take criticism).
Things that I supposedly do not like anymore: sunlight, telephonic contact with friends, achievement.
The dots are the only thing telling me anything about myself anymore that I trust. Indisputable, factual records. How can I trust anything else, when I constantly hear conflicting reports about my level of skill, who I truly am, what I can achieve and what I'm worth. My liberal arts degrees have granted me skills and intellectual prowess that are competitive with educations from fancier colleges that cost far more, says my state school, but why do I feel like my brain is at least three years spoiled? What am I really good at? What can I securely put a dot next to to remind myself of what I am and what I've achieved?
8.31.2010
The Wire
For a party recently, I shoved my digital recorder into my bra and recorded 3 hours of audio.
I always thought my deliberate, slow speech was full of impact; actually, what it is is that
I sound like Drunky McDrunkerson.
But, I'm very polite.
I always thought my deliberate, slow speech was full of impact; actually, what it is is that
I sound like Drunky McDrunkerson.
But, I'm very polite.
8.11.2010
More than one way to skin a cat
So I made an impromptu visit to my parents this weekend strictly because I felt like I shouldn't stay home alone while my boyfriend went to visit friends in Boston. Reasons for this feeling include: still being afraid of being raped in my own bedroom, thanks to an irresponsible jewish landlady; various unfounded anxieties that my boyfriend will die the moment he leaves my sight, be it from an incredibly premature heart attack or a commercial jet crash; and just generally knowing I'd probably just sit at home alone and watch episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix streaming all weekend and wait for Greg to get back so I can switch back to watching episodes of Sailor Moon and 12 oz. Mouse.
All visits to see my parents make me nervous because relations with my mother have been elevated to threat level red ever since she told me she'd not acknowledge any romantic partner of mine who couldn't put a baby in me (eventually).
This was the nine-eleven of our relationship; I will never forget. As such, much like the U.S., I will leave no opportunity to call her out unturned, completely unrelated or not. If she screws up once, I am there with my verbal artillery at the ready. Or, in this case, a pair of wire-cutting scissors.
Over the past year, my mom has been busy working on the house she and my dad are building a lot down from where they are now. To put this in perspective, my mom has made a jump from a lifestyle of jeopardy watching, solitaire playing, and pork chop microwaving to a full time, year-long, heavily-detailed project. She flips through catalogues of door-hinges, for god's sake. For someone who barely seemed to have a hold on the basic functions of family life, this seems pretty ambitious. Unsurprisingly, certain things have fallen into neglect.
So I get home, put my stuff down, and immediately go upstairs to visit my cats, who hang out in an empty bedroom with wood floors so that Alzheimers doesn't strike and they forget that my dad's shirt isn't the catbox and they saturate the whole house with cat pee, I don't know. And I'm petting K.C., my superfriendly maine-coon barn cat, and it feels like his body is riddled with tumors. And I think, well, it took them a long time to tell me that Felicia, my other cat, had a stroke, so I figure they either haven't noticed or just didn't bring it up.
Except, it's not tumors. It's just huge mats of hair all over his body so tightly wound and close to the skin that it just feels like tumors.
Not a relief, though. Tumors on a 15-year-old cat, you can't blame anybody. A cat covered in mats of hair, however, means he hasn't been brushed in weeks, and someone is at fault. I grit my teeth in silent glee as I tally up more grudge points against my mom. But, I stay silent, mostly because I can hear the arguments about being busy already.
The next day, I decide to take things into my own hands and do something I've done several times before: give K.C. a haircut. Snip off a few clumps of hair, brush out the rest, fix him up. I ask my mom where the scissors are and, in usual my mom form, this launches her into a fifteen minute search for the right pair of scissors,
the pair she bought specifically for this occasion,
so as not to have to use the other pairs of scissors she has
in order to keep them in pristine condition
so as to avoid that dreaded occasion where someone comes over to borrow her scissors
and they're dull or dirty
and she tell everyone in the community, "don't borrow that (mom)'s scisssors, she keeps hers in dreadful order."
I get exasperated incredibly quickly because, of course, it's not about the scissors, it's about
me being queer and the cat being covered in mats of hair and that one time where she dropped me off to get my hair cut and then didn't pick me up for an hour and wouldn't answer her phone because she was deeply in discussion about door hinges and that she hates my best friend for also being sexually incomprehensible and afraid of insects.
So finally I have scissors and I go upstairs and get K.C. and, as usual, K.C. is just happy he has something to rub against that isn't stroked-out Felicia or his own loneliness, so he's purring and squinting his eyes and lolling his head around and I'm holding him still pretty well and snipping off clumps of hair. And these clumps are thick, and so I'm separating them out and clipping them up and everyone's having a great time, and then K.C. turns, and I sort of ruffle his hair, and the kinda pull it back,
And there is a gigantic hole in K.C.'s fur.
And my first thought is - oh my god: fuck you, mom, what is this.
It kinda looked like those craters old people get in their skin from like, i don't know, scratching holes into their skin I guess, or not being able to scab anymore and just falling apart like wet tissue paper. It also looked a lot like the cat I dissected senior year of high school. The dead, skinned cat.
I sat there for a second as my stomach turned over, and then started shouting for help.
K.C. is still purring and lolling his head around, and even though purring is a trauma reaction in cats, it seems like he's still having a pretty good time, even if his shoulder looks more like a saran-wrapped chicken leg than a cat's.
And I'm all wide-eyed and keep saying "why didn't he say anything, why didn't he react" as I hold a clump of hair with a tiny little bit of skin and a few dark red capillaries that look like they've been traced on with the point of a needle. My dad takes a look and tells me I've cut through the subcutaneous level, which is his doctorly way of trying to calm me down, but it doesn't help at all because subcutaneous could mean anything as far as I know. I keep picturing K.C. having a gigantic bald spot for the rest of his life that I have to stare at every Christmas and cry onto, and him not understanding my pain or any pain at all, apparently.
This is, of course, when I decide to start flipping out about the real cause of this: my mother.
My dad drives me and K.C. to the pet emergency room and the whole way there I will not shut up about every single bad thing my mom has done in the past decade which has all led up to there being clumps of hair on my cat and how everything, everything, is always all my fault, especially now, now because I accidentally hurt something trying to help, and how this is always what happens. I am crying in the back seat while trying to comfort my cat as best as a person can limited by a plastic cat carrier with barely finger-sized holes. I am oscillating between explosive hysterics and calm, cold, collected criticisms with sharp, cutting accuracy. At this most opportune moment, I announce that, as long as Greg isn't allergic to him, we will be taking K.C. back with us at fall break. Even though I've just sliced my cat open, I decide that the clumps of hair definitively decides the argument I've had with my parents for four years over whether I can care for my cat at college.
The animal emergency room takes K.C. back and we fill out some forms. I have to tell my dad how old he is and what kind of food he eats, even though I haven't fed him since I left for college. While talking to the doctor, he confuses his pronouns, and the conversation carries on with K.C. as a she, even though I keep correcting both of them. My dad is standing and I'm sitting, so the vet only makes eye contact with him. She jokes and says it's an easy thing to do, slice your cat like a deli meat. "I just did it to my dog recently," she says with the pleasant nonchalance usually reserved for switching to a new shampoo or treating yourself to a manicure. I am thin lipped as they joke, even though she started the conversation telling us that they're kinda backed up and it'll be a few hours until K.C. can be stitched up.
She says 8:30. My dad says we'll be around by 9. He's concerned we'll not have enough time to go out to dinner in the interim. This puts me off food entirely, and we end up having takeout personal pizzas from the grill around the corner.
I am silent all evening, until my dad delivers K.C. into my arms while I'm sitting in bed talking to Greg on the phone about the whole ordeal. K.C.'s shoulder is shaved, with purple stitches criss-crossing a two-inch long cut. Where they gave him an IV at his ankle is also shaved, so he has a little poodle-like puff for a left foot. My dad tells me that while he was sedated they combed out the rest of the knots of hair. K.C. snuggles up against me and rubs his head under my chin, and everything seems okay
until my mom swoops in, scoops him up, and tells me he's not allowed to move around much. I'm left alone in bed with just a tiny fuzzy cat hair tumbleweed.
And for me coming to North Carolina, everyone is worse for wear.
All visits to see my parents make me nervous because relations with my mother have been elevated to threat level red ever since she told me she'd not acknowledge any romantic partner of mine who couldn't put a baby in me (eventually).
This was the nine-eleven of our relationship; I will never forget. As such, much like the U.S., I will leave no opportunity to call her out unturned, completely unrelated or not. If she screws up once, I am there with my verbal artillery at the ready. Or, in this case, a pair of wire-cutting scissors.
Over the past year, my mom has been busy working on the house she and my dad are building a lot down from where they are now. To put this in perspective, my mom has made a jump from a lifestyle of jeopardy watching, solitaire playing, and pork chop microwaving to a full time, year-long, heavily-detailed project. She flips through catalogues of door-hinges, for god's sake. For someone who barely seemed to have a hold on the basic functions of family life, this seems pretty ambitious. Unsurprisingly, certain things have fallen into neglect.
So I get home, put my stuff down, and immediately go upstairs to visit my cats, who hang out in an empty bedroom with wood floors so that Alzheimers doesn't strike and they forget that my dad's shirt isn't the catbox and they saturate the whole house with cat pee, I don't know. And I'm petting K.C., my superfriendly maine-coon barn cat, and it feels like his body is riddled with tumors. And I think, well, it took them a long time to tell me that Felicia, my other cat, had a stroke, so I figure they either haven't noticed or just didn't bring it up.
Except, it's not tumors. It's just huge mats of hair all over his body so tightly wound and close to the skin that it just feels like tumors.
Not a relief, though. Tumors on a 15-year-old cat, you can't blame anybody. A cat covered in mats of hair, however, means he hasn't been brushed in weeks, and someone is at fault. I grit my teeth in silent glee as I tally up more grudge points against my mom. But, I stay silent, mostly because I can hear the arguments about being busy already.
The next day, I decide to take things into my own hands and do something I've done several times before: give K.C. a haircut. Snip off a few clumps of hair, brush out the rest, fix him up. I ask my mom where the scissors are and, in usual my mom form, this launches her into a fifteen minute search for the right pair of scissors,
the pair she bought specifically for this occasion,
so as not to have to use the other pairs of scissors she has
in order to keep them in pristine condition
so as to avoid that dreaded occasion where someone comes over to borrow her scissors
and they're dull or dirty
and she tell everyone in the community, "don't borrow that (mom)'s scisssors, she keeps hers in dreadful order."
I get exasperated incredibly quickly because, of course, it's not about the scissors, it's about
me being queer and the cat being covered in mats of hair and that one time where she dropped me off to get my hair cut and then didn't pick me up for an hour and wouldn't answer her phone because she was deeply in discussion about door hinges and that she hates my best friend for also being sexually incomprehensible and afraid of insects.
So finally I have scissors and I go upstairs and get K.C. and, as usual, K.C. is just happy he has something to rub against that isn't stroked-out Felicia or his own loneliness, so he's purring and squinting his eyes and lolling his head around and I'm holding him still pretty well and snipping off clumps of hair. And these clumps are thick, and so I'm separating them out and clipping them up and everyone's having a great time, and then K.C. turns, and I sort of ruffle his hair, and the kinda pull it back,
And there is a gigantic hole in K.C.'s fur.
And my first thought is - oh my god: fuck you, mom, what is this.
It kinda looked like those craters old people get in their skin from like, i don't know, scratching holes into their skin I guess, or not being able to scab anymore and just falling apart like wet tissue paper. It also looked a lot like the cat I dissected senior year of high school. The dead, skinned cat.
I sat there for a second as my stomach turned over, and then started shouting for help.
K.C. is still purring and lolling his head around, and even though purring is a trauma reaction in cats, it seems like he's still having a pretty good time, even if his shoulder looks more like a saran-wrapped chicken leg than a cat's.
And I'm all wide-eyed and keep saying "why didn't he say anything, why didn't he react" as I hold a clump of hair with a tiny little bit of skin and a few dark red capillaries that look like they've been traced on with the point of a needle. My dad takes a look and tells me I've cut through the subcutaneous level, which is his doctorly way of trying to calm me down, but it doesn't help at all because subcutaneous could mean anything as far as I know. I keep picturing K.C. having a gigantic bald spot for the rest of his life that I have to stare at every Christmas and cry onto, and him not understanding my pain or any pain at all, apparently.
This is, of course, when I decide to start flipping out about the real cause of this: my mother.
My dad drives me and K.C. to the pet emergency room and the whole way there I will not shut up about every single bad thing my mom has done in the past decade which has all led up to there being clumps of hair on my cat and how everything, everything, is always all my fault, especially now, now because I accidentally hurt something trying to help, and how this is always what happens. I am crying in the back seat while trying to comfort my cat as best as a person can limited by a plastic cat carrier with barely finger-sized holes. I am oscillating between explosive hysterics and calm, cold, collected criticisms with sharp, cutting accuracy. At this most opportune moment, I announce that, as long as Greg isn't allergic to him, we will be taking K.C. back with us at fall break. Even though I've just sliced my cat open, I decide that the clumps of hair definitively decides the argument I've had with my parents for four years over whether I can care for my cat at college.
The animal emergency room takes K.C. back and we fill out some forms. I have to tell my dad how old he is and what kind of food he eats, even though I haven't fed him since I left for college. While talking to the doctor, he confuses his pronouns, and the conversation carries on with K.C. as a she, even though I keep correcting both of them. My dad is standing and I'm sitting, so the vet only makes eye contact with him. She jokes and says it's an easy thing to do, slice your cat like a deli meat. "I just did it to my dog recently," she says with the pleasant nonchalance usually reserved for switching to a new shampoo or treating yourself to a manicure. I am thin lipped as they joke, even though she started the conversation telling us that they're kinda backed up and it'll be a few hours until K.C. can be stitched up.
She says 8:30. My dad says we'll be around by 9. He's concerned we'll not have enough time to go out to dinner in the interim. This puts me off food entirely, and we end up having takeout personal pizzas from the grill around the corner.
I am silent all evening, until my dad delivers K.C. into my arms while I'm sitting in bed talking to Greg on the phone about the whole ordeal. K.C.'s shoulder is shaved, with purple stitches criss-crossing a two-inch long cut. Where they gave him an IV at his ankle is also shaved, so he has a little poodle-like puff for a left foot. My dad tells me that while he was sedated they combed out the rest of the knots of hair. K.C. snuggles up against me and rubs his head under my chin, and everything seems okay
until my mom swoops in, scoops him up, and tells me he's not allowed to move around much. I'm left alone in bed with just a tiny fuzzy cat hair tumbleweed.
And for me coming to North Carolina, everyone is worse for wear.
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