playing hooky.

here is the text to a podcast i created. to listen to it, click here.
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playing hooky.

it's snowing outside today and i've ditched all my classes. in fact, i ditched about 75% of my classes this week. i didn't run off to florida or new orleans for a head start on my spring break or anything like that. no. i'm just sick. plain old sick. this week's been nothing but bathroom visits and apologetic emails to professors. i tried going to school, but i'm sorry, no one wants to be the focus of attention every time she has to fly out of the room for a number two emergency. i like attention, sure, but not of this nature. i don't know what is wrong with me. it started off four days ago with classic stomach flu symptoms, but now i feel fine, aside from the aforementioned number two emergencies. my professors are somewhat understanding, of course, but sickness is NO excuse for late work, and if i live an hour from campus, well, that's not their fault is it? no. and sorry, the english department secretary cannot be trusted to deliver a fax into the right mailbox, so i'll just have to drive that take-home midterm down to milwaukee myself.

speaking of that midterm, i haven't done it yet. i do have to drive it down tomorrow sometime, but i feel like i've got plenty of wiggle room. i'm probably wrong. i could also rewrite my last paper to better my grade. that's due tomorrow, too. i probably won't do it. the sickness threw me off. i wanted to spend the weekend getting this shit done, but instead i ended up on the couch, writhing and whining about the cold. by tuesday i was feeling better -- the chills and body aches were gone, anyway -- but i went to school and work and didn't seem to have time for anything else. god forbid i might dare to sleep a few hours here and there.

i love going to school, but i've been fantasizing about spring break for a couple of weeks now. i'm all about catching up on sleep. of course, i'd rather take a week off work and just go to school instead, but that's not ever an option. i HAVE to work. i wish i could dial back the clock and be nineteen again, go to school, do theatre, go out all the time with friends...but that's all over. i have bills now, more than i should, but unless i quit school, i have no financial room to better my situation. so i'll stay in my parents house and tread water for another two years, maybe four, and any social life i might have will be limited until the day i finally move out. what guy wants to date a girl who's pushing thirty and still lives in a messy basement bedroom that you can barely walk into? i'm experiencing nothing but contradiction. i don't have time for a relationship and i'm not ready for one...physically OR emotionally...but i want touch and smile and closeness...and god help me....i want to have SEX. intellectually, i understand that if i make that my goal, as i have before, the experience will never approach satisfaction. there is always something wrong with it. maybe i need to fall in love first, but i don't want to wait. it's like i'm staring into the face of a totally unknown quantity of time. i don't know how many months or years or decades i'll have to stare down before i'm allowed to get it right. how long do i have to wait to be touched? don't i deserve it yet? am i doomed to live alone forever with only the love of my ten cats to sustain me? please tell me if i'm off the mark here. i don't know how i got on this subject, but i'm telling you, it is never far from the surface of my thoughts. you just have to stir the pool a little, stick your toe in, whatever...and it's there, ugly as a sewer-reflection, green and envious of all the white weddings planned for this spring. i am happy for my friends and by no means do i covet the men they've chosen, but all this planning just seems to accentuate my perpetual solitary nature. a couple of months ago i was invited to a wedding by myself. no plus-one. when challenged, my friend said she'd consulted several etiquette tomes and it was a perfectly acceptable practice. well, all i could think was that her other friends, the ones with boyfriends, they were surely allowed to bring dates. but since i never date, i couldn't possibly come as part of a pair. and sure, i was just gonna bring my brother, but at least i would have had someone to talk to when all the guests collected into their predestined cliques for the night. it wasn't my kind of party, anyway. i decided not to go. so i went from the single girl that my friend and her boyfriend always chose to go out with as a threesome in college, to the single girl that didn't make it to the wedding. it didn't matter enough to her to let me bring a friend, so it didn't matter to me enough to go.

i think it's great that my friends never pressure me about dating or try to fix me up with people, but it bothers me a little bit, too. it's such a normal thing to do...so why don't they? do they think i'm hopeless? that it'll never happen? what? i never brought boys to family gatherings and no one breathed a word. no one asked me embarrassing questions about boys, winked, and nudged me with their elbows (say no more). everyone pretty much left me alone on that subject. why? of course, i didn't want that kind of scrutiny, but why didn't i deserve it? is there something about me that just screams UNLOVABLE? can everyone tell just by looking at me that there's no reason to bother? do they pass judgment in silence or do they simply not care? i've seen all kinds of girls with partners. girls uglier than me, fatter than me, clumsier, meaner, less intelligent, more foolish, less motivated and articulate, less in touch with their souls....what is wrong with ME? in high school, the boy that used to call me "thunder thighs" when i was in seventh grade dated a big girl. i never understood it. either he got over his prejudice or all his cruel taunting a few years before was a sign of affection. i never know how to take it. i've never understood the benefits of calling out cruelties in public to hurt someone you barely know. i don't do it, but i know people who do...and it's been done to me. there's this guy dated briefly, very briefly, that would call a big woman walking down the street a "fat bitch" and i would cringe, thinking, "have you forgotten who's in the passenger seat? have you looked at me lately?" i clung to him a bit longer, even though i knew right away he wasn't anyone i wanted to know. i just liked the fondling that was going on and was hoping we'd have sex. and when we did i was hoping we'd have more. it was always disappointing in one way or another, but it wasn't all bad. and i still talk to the guy. i don't really even esteem him as a human being anymore, but i can't seem to just say "fuck you" and leave it at that. i always have to play nice. supposedly there is so much wrong with me that i need to work on that for a while before i even think about burdening someone else with my intricacies. i don't know. if one more guy looks into my eyes with exaggerated concern and prattles on about how i obviously don't love myself enough and i don't think i'm sexy and how on earth is someone else supposed to find me so if i'm a turn-off even to myself? as if i were the only woman in the world with self-esteem issues. do these guys hand this line to every woman to whom they'd rather not commit, or did they actually see something deficient in me that all other women appear to possess? i suppose something IS wrong with me. i put up with a confused, prejudiced asshole for almost two months just so i could have my breasts fondled. i did whatever i could to placate him just to have sex...and it wasn't even amazing.

so i used him. i really did. sure, i lied to everyone, myself included, and said i really liked this guy, maybe was even falling for him...and of course i liked him for a little while...but i knew it wasn't going to amount to anything. before it was totally evident, though, before it was all played out, i wanted some action. it was okay...even fun...but i have to say i'm glad he doesn't live in my town and i don't ever have to see him again. and saying that, i feel like a cheap, callous whore.

that's the farthest from the truth, of course. i can count my lovers on one hand. it's just that the interest i've received is so rarely bestowed that i feel i need to take whatever i can. if i can have a decent conversation with the man and he doesn't turn me off, well GOOD. and as awful and slutty as that sounds, you can bet, since i said my number was no higher than five, that i haven't had a whole lot of practice in the heartless man-eater department.

if i could just find someone that makes me laugh, understands my weird, intellectual compulsions, even has a few harmless ones of his own....that would be great. it's been about seven years since i've really fallen for someone. the problem is...i've never been able to date anyone i cared for like that. it was mostly tears and rejections, kids...that, or plain silence, occasionally buffeted by a wailing, wrenching love song i managed to coax out of my grief and longing. i've never managed to do it right, and boys aren't suckers to have songs written for them like girls are. boys don't care. boys want the fox in the clingy red sequin halter dress, not the flustered songbird on stage, fumbling with her guitar. am i always going to be the background music while everyone else in the whole goddamn world hooks up? i could starve myself and try to be that red-dress girl, but it would be a lie. inside i'd still be me....still fat, still awkward...just wearing a really good disguise.

i suppose i could give it a go, maybe have a slightly wider selection of rejects to choose from the next time i get desperate. who knows? maybe one of them could actually surprise me. he could turn into someone i could love....or maybe just make me come. that would be a nice change.
anyway, in my current situation, i'm more concerned with keeping food in my body than denying it entrance. i'm still sick, and on the rag, too. so i guess you can chalk this whole rant up to PMS, if you want. i'm surfing the crimson wave...i can't possibly be making any sense. i should be raiding the local candy counters of their chocolate bars, not writing a soliloquy.

at the very least, i should be writing that mid-term. it's due tomorrow, you know. i have to hand it in.