Amtrak Update

The lady that I wanted to punch in the throat.... this professor looking guy just came over to her table and asked her to keep her voice down.

That was hard to watch. She was right in the middle of talking about her divorce. She really did have an annoying voice.

I guess my soul mate, the only other person who was as annoyed as I was, is an old, asshole (probably a failed writer) in a red vest.

Amtrak Sandwich

I'm on the train going to Portland. I have consumed a sandwich. I hate children. Two just ran past. Oh, the sandwich was not delicious. I had low expectations so I was not disappointed.

The train sat in the station for half an hour. It is Spring Break in the NW so there are lots of kids on the train. I like listening to people talk about themselves, except for these two older women who are annoying.

One of them has a voice that keeps cracking. I want to punch her in the throat. Oh, of course they're bringing up Phoenix. Fuckin' Phoenix. The other woman sat down next to the kid traveling alone. She sat across from him (we're sitting in the dining car) and told him how he reminded her of her grandson. And... ? That's not really something you can say anything about. I was waiting for her to say he was dead, but that didn't happen.

My tailbone hurts so bad I basically cannot sit for long periods of time. I have no idea what the fuck is wrong with my butt, but I need to see a doctor. I wish that dumb lady would sit down next to me and fix my ass bone.

Meh

My mother used to sleep in an airplane bathroom.  Her father was a pilot, back when it was ok for pilots to be drunk all the time.  He couldn’t afford a babysitter so he took her with him on flights. After the crew went home they would sleep on the plane.  One time they were so poor, they actually used the seat cushions as sandwiches.  Gross! 

Most pilots make enough money to provide for their families, but not my grandfather.  He even sold coke on the side, but he just couldn’t make ends meet.  When she was 12 my mom moved out of the bathroom.  She got a job as a flight attendant, and she got her own apartment.   She even sold tupperware on the side.  She got knocked up after a tupperware party by a giant bowl. 

I never met my father.  He died in a microwave oven when I was three.  I am so glad I got my mother’s good looks.

I live in a tree. I like to take long golf swings from the top of the tree. I climb up there and I take off like five leaves every time I swing, and then I feel bad so I cook the leaves and eat them. Then I throw my golf club away because I feel like I can’t help myself when it is around.  I always dig the golf club up and swing at the leaves again.  I love doing it, and I wish I didn’t feel so bad about it.

Last week my uncle wrote an article for the New York Times.  He called me on my cell phone, and told me they were hiring in the mail room.  I told him I was in an "I hate men phase,” and didn't want the job.  He laughed because he thought I was stupid.  He’s an asshole with two kids, and two ex-wives.  Who is he to judge me? 

I make my living by pretending to be an activist.  I sit in this tree and every two hours I have to hug it.  This jerk who works as the head activist is always hanging around trying to climb my hair and get into the tree with me.  I haven’t cut my hair in four years.  I am working on a pair of wings, so I can get the fuck out of this tree.  The guy hits me with a sugar cane if I try to leave.  I am addicted to being a slave.  I just love it.

When the guy takes naps I pee in a coffee tin, and dribble it down the tree.  Some of it lands on him, and it makes me laugh.  One time he caught me peeing in the can, and he told me to send it down on the rope-mailbox.  I did, and he poured it all on his head.  He then shit his pants.  He just stood there pinching his face, until he smiled, and then he walked around the tree like four times.  What the fuck is wrong with me, hanging out in a tree, a slave to a guy like this?  I needed better role models as a child.

No Sandwiches Were Injured...

    Last year I beat my brother at ping pong. It was a big deal to me. My brother has always been better than me at all things athletic. He's never been fat. He's never been an emotional eater. He got paid to model jeans in a print ad right after he graduated from college. He has always had everything. When he had a kid. she was ridiculously attractive. He has a house. He has his own business. He owns two cars. He's probably never been tested for an STD.
    When I was a kid everyone used to comment on how handsome my brother was. As an aside, they pinned me into the smart category. Only problem was I wasn't a very good student, and it's entirely possible I wasn't all that smart.
    I skipped the third grade, which was probably one of the reasons they thought I was smart. That year, I was in the same grade as my brother. We were both fourth graders. He was two years older than me. That year I killed the class gerbil. It's not like I murdered the class gerbil. Just so you know.
    I crushed the class gerbil with my fat knee. I was sitting on top of the desk at the alternative school, where they let kids sit on top of desks and get fake married and a guy named Ziggy painted flowers on the high school girls' backs. I was sitting on the desk, and I was reading along with the kid who was reading out loud. I had just gotten shushed by the teacher because I was actually reading out loud too.
    Anyway, the class gerbil was loose and running from desk to desk. If I had to guess, he or she was likely trying to escape to the basement of the building. He darted under me right as I was shifting from leaning on my right leg to leaning on my left leg. I remember seeing a tiny squirt of red spread across the desk. It looked kind of like the sauce they smear across the plates at the last minute on cooking shows.
    I don't really remember too much else about the incident. I suppose the little guy squirmed under my weight for a moment. I remember the teacher telling us he was going to be put to sleep, a term that both confused me and may have contributed to a lifetime of insomnia that spans nearly 40 years.
I can't remember why I went off on that tangent, perhaps to illustrate my lack of physical coordination. I was no slouch in the slouch department.
    My brother and I attended the same school until my eighth grade year. He was always popular, and I was mostly not. Occasionally, a popular girl would briefly befriend me in an effort to get closer to my brother. That move tricked me every single time. Whenever it happened, I'd be like, it must be because I parted my hair on the other side, or because my beauty had finally become accessible to them.
    My brother had sex in high school. My brother had girlfriends. My brother was never alone. My brother didn't mind being alone. My brother wasn't afraid of ghosts, he didn't pull his mattress off his bed and drag it into our mother's bedroom after reading "1984", and he didn't have an eating disorder. He was fine.
    So that's the back story. My brother has always been the thoroughbred and I've always been the mule.
    It's Christmas eve and we are playing ping pong out in my grandparents garage. I'm holding my own with my brother, something I'm trying not to acknowledge. I'm in the zone, I'm hitting zingers off the forehand side when normally the zingers come from the backhand side. I'm flowing across the garage floor, I'm returning every serve, and at some point I hit a volley. That bears repeating, I hit a fucking volley!
    Then it occurs to me, I might actually beat my brother, and my mind starts searching for reasons why. Has he lost his edge, or am I genuinely kicking his ass? I start thinking about what the world will be like if I beat my brother. I run it over and over again in my head, "What if you really are a winner?" It starts to fuck with me, and I start to lose my lead.
    I'm falling back, and my brother starts to taunt me. He's talking shit, and then something primal in me kicks in. Today is the day I put this bullshit to rest. I rally. I'm taking this bitch down. And I do. I beat him. It feels like these caged birds are flying out of my chest. Free! They're free at last. And they're soaring into beautiful blue skies like fucking champions.
    About a week later, we're back out at my grandparents house playing ping pong in the garage again. The old loser mindset is gone. I've taken down a winner, and I no longer need to be defined by my losses. I'm confident. So confident I start talking smack.
    My brother takes it for a while, but he gets annoyed right about the time I told him there was a new sheriff in town. He stops the ball mid-air and switches his ping pong paddle from his left-hand to his right hand. "I was playing left-handed when you beat me last week," he informs me smugly.
    I'm devastated. I actually feel my blood sugar rise and I'm shaking a little bit. I can feel the birds returning, beating their wings against my chest, screaming something like, "You better open this door, Jenny, before I do something we both regret!"
    Needless to say, my brother kicked my ass. He killed me. It was over in less than five minutes. It was like... oh, fuck it, it was like any other day.
    By the way, I repeated the fourth grade the next year because I was, and I quote, "socially inept." Fuck yeah, I was.

Awake?

Why am I awake? I hate being awake this early.

I have decided for my New Year's resolution I am not going to eat French Fries for an entire year. What should I do to prepare for this? Also, if I don't stop drinking, I am never going to lose this weight.

Now a story about a sandwich:

Tuna Melt was very popular in high school. She had sex with three different boys, and one time she kissed a bagel.


Tuna was a cheerleader-- the kind you toss up into the air. One time, she didn't come back for three days. When she landed, she had stories to tell. She spent the next week telling everyone about the sky and the clouds and the gymnasium ceiling. She also discovered a pet mouse, which she kept in her pocket. Her friend, Shrimp Melt, did not have the nerve to tell her the mouse was actually a rat with a long and dirty tail.

One night Tuna Melt stuck her head in the oven and died. She left a note saying, "Read the ceiling," but there was nothing there.

I promise there will be a happy sandwich in 2012.

Horse Meet

I took a writing class in Portland when I first moved back home in 2007. It was a memoir class in a room above a pet grooming place. It smelled like pet shampoo and dust.

There were no men in the class. One woman had self published a book about growing up in Oregon. When she read in class, she seemed to shut down and just list details. It made me want to buy her book and eat the pages.

Another woman was writing a book about her family. I didn't know how it ended, but the sections she would read in class always had this dark undercurrent. I kept waiting to find out her dad molested her and she killed him.

Another woman had a Hitler mustache. She was the funniest lady in class. She wrote about working in a call center.

One woman was my age. She talked about the time Nancy Reagan came to her class and told them to stay off drugs, and how she did drugs later that night.

I wish I could remember this one woman's name. She wrote a lot of stories about her childhood. She often cried in the middle. She had super long hair and she was probably at least 50 years old. I assume she was molested, but she never wrote about it.

This one time she wrote about how she asked her father for a pony, and he sort of tormented her by pretending to get her one. She waited every day in the lane for this pony, and it never came. At the end of it she started crying.

Her tears brought out the worst in me. For some reason, I was really enraged. I think because when someone cries, it pulls you in and makes you feel their pain, and her pain was over a pony she didn't get. I was thinking, yeah, I wanted a lot of things I didn't get, why does this bitch get to corner the market on sadness because she didn't get a pony.

I sort of started obsessing about her pony. I daydreamed about getting her a pony. I would get her a pony and leave it out in the street. I'd go to class and I'd tell her I had a surprise for her. I'd tell her to look out the window, but first I'd position two people on the street below. One person would be in charge of letting the pony go so it could run down the street. The other person, would be sitting in a semi truck, waiting for the signal. Right as she looked out the window, I'd tell the guy to let the pony go. Then, just as he came into view, I'd tell the semi truck driver to drive as fast as he could toward the horse.

I must have thought about that moment twenty times during that class.

I have not had a sandwich yet today.

Bleh

This sandwich sucks. Humus on one side, olive tapenade on the other, turkey, tomato and nothing else. Just horrible. Ugh.

I am so fucking tired. I'm on day six of not drinking. I took a Clonopin last night (spelling) and then I dreamed I rented a warehouse for my head.