*there is an insufficiency of chairs 2001-12-14 11:09 a.m.*

i had a dream last night that i was at some sort of party (it occurs to me that i may have some sort of general warehouse location where a lot of my dreams happen. usually kidnapping dreams, but yeah... this happened it a warehouse again.) with asia and hilary swank and the braless duchess and jennifer connelly and we were talking about some stuff (i think some other stuff happened before i met up with them, but yeah...), and i don't know exactly how it happened, but braless duchess and i made out. and suddenly we were all together and stuff, but i really felt this need to keep it a secret from james until i was prepared to tell her. and i don't know where the dream changed, but suddenly i was writing my thesis, and in my dream, i wrote 3 pages of it. and then i think i started drifting into consciousness.

last night after my requisite depressing late night journal entry, i curled into bed with up the down staircase, the novel. i'm on a novel kick right now, and i'm just going to go with that for a minute before i buck up and do thesis and isp shit. 4 months is too long to go without fiction, i say. i just finished this book called paper wings which was about this family's disintegration after jfk was shot. i loved all the little details, and a lot of the observations about the reaction of the country, reminded me of recent events, so that was interesting. but yeah, as soon as i finished that, i combed my shelf for a new one.

i found up the down in a used bookshop, shortly after being in the play. it was exciting to find it and i meant to read it, but never got around to it, like so many of my other books. but yes, i curled up in my bed with it, and a flood of memories came back. the first chapter is almost verbatim of the first scene, and every line conjured up images of how it was said at audition, in the play itself, and all kinds of flubs from rehearsals. the backstage drama came back, and of course all the later stuff that happened with mchabe (yay for names of roles! instant journal "code names."). and frances' drama, and the play the year after and the point at which acting class started sucking, and all that stuff.

i want to share it all here, but i'm afraid it will turn into a novel, there's so much, and i'm getting hungry, but...

t (the director) told mchabe that he could change the posters to anything he wanted. any color combinations he wanted and any slogan's he wanted. the colors got weirder and weirder, "mars orange on puce," for example he had a harder time with the slogans, so he asked around for them. one of my favorites was "man cannot live by bread alone. he also needs peanut butter and jelly." and then there was the one i came up with. calvin coolidge was the name of the high school in the play, and suddenly it hit me, "there are two 'i''s in calvin coolidge. and two 'i''s make a 'we.'"

we would sit and talk about how he was finally able to get out of sarasota, which he hated, because his family was moving away to maryland. his foot would tap the floor the whole time, and i would say to him, "that's why they call me thumper, that's why they call me thumper! thumper! thumper!" reciting the scene in which thumper's voice echoes in the log. i'd even go on, "thumper, what did your father tell you this morning. 'bout what? about eathing the thistles and leaving the greens. oh, that. eating greens is a special treat. it makes long ears and great big feet. but it sure is awful stuff to eat. i made that last part up myself." soon he had it memorized, and we'd say it almost as a greeting.

at the time, i had a secret crush on jill, and a less secret crush on mchabe himself, and an even less secret, though finally dying crush on methodist. everyone in the whole world knew about that crush, including him, i later found out. it all revolved around the way he closed his eyes when he sang. like he really meant it.

as my high school career went on, i realized that my crush on jill only ever surfaced when she was on stage. by my senior year, we and some other people at lunch together, and it was gone. but we were in acting together, and whenever she got on stage, i creamed my shorts.

and yeah, the crush on mchabe. i'd make vague hints sometimes, and i also later found out he knew about it. he had a huge crush on the girl that would eventually date methodist, and asked her out at one point. he was always going for the more conventional, and in my opinion shallower girls, but i enjoyed suffering in silence.

my senior year, i fell head over heels for this boy i met online. he was incredible for me, and i still am incredibly grateful to him for the ways in which he helped me grow. i read stranger in a strange land because of him, and it was like some light popped on in my head. the brain stretching of that time in my life, felt like almost a physical thing.

but anyway, mchabe had moved away. we emailed a lot, and talked on icq and aim, and then i had the exciting news to tell him. but it was so sitcom like, or at least in my memory, because it was one of those, "i have something to tell you." "me, too!" "you go first!" "no, you." and my news was that i was in love with this boy, and his news was that he was in love with me.

it was at this point that our relationship started disintegrating. as ridiculous as it may have been, i felt violated. and until we stopped talking, 2 years later, i was incredibly angry at him. we were still best friends, but i just felt really yucky around him, and i'd lash out about things all the time. finally, after two years, when i'd come out as a lesbian and he'd fallen in love with someone else who he had a relationship with and lots of book and music sharing, i couldn't take it anymore, and told him that although i loved him, dearly, we were too young to be able to handle each other, and i had to break off communication. maybe someday in the far future we'd get back in contact, but we were just incompatible as friends. of course he was very angry, and there were many tears on both sides, i think, but by that point, every conversation turned into an argument, and i was crying at the end of them anyway.

i think i did the right thing at that point. i did a lot of wrong things first, which is why it was so necessary. sometimes i do websearches for his name to find out if he's made it big as a graphic novelist yet, and sometimes i think about writing and apologizing for everything and trying to be friends again, but i'm afraid of being rejected, and i'm afraid that we might still not be ready for each other, and the thought of those fights tightens up my chest.

that was one of the stories that came to mind while reading last night. and since i've got weeks to go with a lot of journal writing time, i think i'll leave more stories for later.

(link: i have a weakness for gurl.com's paperdoll psychology. it won't let me link directly to that because of frames, but it's easy to find. gurl.com has gotten a lot more commercial and trendy in recent years, but paperdoll psychology is still a good time, despite the popup ads and all that. it does crack me up though that at the top of the frame it says "looks aren't everything" and it goes on to generalize about your personality by the clothing you picked, but it's usually so wrong, that it proves the point.)

*listening to: *
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