New Domain

Relocation to: www.nocakeforyou.com

 

In Flight

I found a crumpled blurb about my flight to Holland this summer:

“I would love to get you a fan-TaH – but, you see, we have a system here,” he says, gesturing at the aisles behind him. The dim fluorescent lights reflect off his bald head. “It involves passing out as many meals as we can and then serving drinks.”

My head jerks back. My eyes widen. I think, ‘The same system that missed me the last two times?’

“Well,” I sift through diplomatic excuses, “I was going to put my headphones back on, so-”

A wrinkle forms across his scalp.

“So, I – so I wasn’t going to be able to hear you anymore.”

Straightening his back, he poses regally. His eyes become slits. His head becomes shinier.

“And you asked if I could serve you before everyone else out of politeness?” he smirks, spitting the word. “In that case, I would be very happy to get you a fan-TaH. It’ll just be a few minutes!”

Smiling, I say, “Thank you,” as he swivels sharply and returns to passing out meals. The 20-something woman in front of me oozes a combination of German, Dutch, and English words, giggling at his jokes.

Three minutes pass. He is muttering a few French words to another woman.

 

Green Books

“Would you like a new copy of the Testament?” the man in the gray tweed jacket asks me.

I recognize him instantly: this is the man who in my sophomore year of high school chased me down the sidewalk in front of the administration building, waving a small green book. He looks a little more rickety now, momentarily risen from his folding chair.

“No thank you!” I snap, shifting the laptop case on my shoulder.

He is at the bottom of the stairs. At the top, but seconds ago, I was asked the same thing by two men in navy blue suit jackets. Three blocks away, upon leaving the parking lot, I said “nuh uh” to two men with a card table.

I am now at the point of “no’s” and “thank you’s” and shifting shifting shifting.

The socio major in me calls. Question – prod and poke his ideals. Raise his hopes and dash them with the line “Thanks, you just gave me the example of ‘weapons of the weak’ that I’ve been needing.”

But I’ve heard his spiel before, and I have a thesis about Egyptian coffins to write.

 

Disney Sheets

Pouncing on my hair, the cat unleashes a series of pitiful, neglected meows into my left ear.

“Ugh,” I groan, shielding my face with the comforter. I roll onto my side and curl into a protective ball.

“Meow!” she insists, ramming her head against my shoulder and leaving a trail of nose slime down my back.

I mumble a few miscellaneous syllables and drag myself to a sitting position. The cat jumps to the floor, flops down, and promptly begins bathing.

“You know what you need?” I stare at the blurry figure. “You need Mountain Dew. You need glasses. You need some Ghostbuster muzac!” She licks her foot. “I think-” She looks up at me, regal disdain written in her tweaked whiskers. “Fine! I’m taking everything! So there!”

I whip out my right hand, grasp my glasses, and flick them to my face. I whip out my left hand, grasp a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew, twist off the cap, and chug down a couple gulps.

I do this simultaneously. It is a thing of beauty.

“Theme song time, kitty!” I yelp, reaching for the stereo remote.

…

I glare at the empty space on the bed-stand.

The remote is on the other side of the room, resting between a stack of abandoned text books and the pair of black leather hooker boots I picked up in Holland. Futilely, I stretch my arm and attempt to summon it. My hand drops. I blink. I reach again.

Well, alrighty - if that’s how it’s gonna be.

“REMOTE!” I bellow, staggering out of bed and tangled in blankets. “COME TO ME!”

Something yanks me back.

I fall.

Attempting to free myself from the Pocahontas sheet wrapped around my right foot, I kick my feet in the air and wave my arms. My struggles only strengthen the fabric’s stranglehold on my leg. More frantic kicking.

Pause.

Blink.

What am I, a turtle?

Half-heartedly, I flip onto my stomach and try to pull myself out with my arms. When this proves fruitless, I simply flail.

Several seconds pass before I finally collapse, covered in carpet burns and thoroughly thwarted.

“Meow?” The cat lightly bonks her head to mine. “…meow?”

“Yeah,” I mumble into the carpet. “I’m bored too.”

I stand, push the stereo power button, and go brush my teeth.

 

The Lottery

“Is Ralph there?” a man barks.

“Sorry, but you have the wrong number.”

Click.

The man has hung up on me. This used to happen all the time, when I fielded dozens of calls from angry elderly women demanding Jose and screaming in Spanish. They tried to understand me, but naturally gave up after a few minutes. Those calls were entertaining; they still sneak into my daily conversation.

But this man, he’s staged a real “well, fuck you” kind of moment.

When I dial a wrong number, I am gut-wrenchingly sorry. I wasn’t whoever I was supposed to be, and I was probably calling too late at night. So even if the other person hangs up on me, I am apologizing to the dial-tone. It always catches me off-guard when someone doesn’t feel the same compassion.

I decide to amend the conversation:

“I’m terribly sorry, miss,” I say, attempting to sound both gruff and grandfatherly. My girly inflections destroy the imitation. “You must have been sitting down to tea with your girlfriends just now and I was ever so rude to interrupt. Do enjoy your afternoon.”

There, I’ve fixed his karma.

Maybe he’ll win the lottery.

 

Fight Club has it right.

Kicking off my shoes and socks, I look down at my right foot. There are two parallel 1-inch incisions across the top.

“Huh,” I say, reaching down and poking one. “Cool.”

I cannot decipher the origin of the cuts, but that doesn’t really bother me. I just think, ‘That would be a damn nice scar,’ before flopping down on my bed to catch the tail end of a Star Trek Voyager episode.  But my foot is right in front of me; I can’t stop staring at it.

This happens every time I am nicked or bruised.  If my arm brushes against blackberry bush thorns, my hike may be delayed for several minutes: I must pause and blink, holding out my arm and admiring the insult.

But, right now, more important than the wound is the mystery. Did I catch my foot in a chip bag clip? A villain could have sewn razor blades into my shoe. Or, a mystic might have bewitched my shoelaces into whips!

I see conspiracy and political agendas everywhere.

Against my feet.

…

Dude. That’s the best I can come up with?

Having missed Star Trek, I find myself watching Mulan. She reminds me that I’m female and that I don’t “really” want scars, even from battle.

Raising my eyebrows, I telepathically communicate the word “skank” right back. Her song falters. “Bitch,” I send. “And your pores are huge!” This is when she sheers off her hair and starts cross-dressing; I feel guilty.

But her message remains: being female means that my skin is supposed to stay smooth. It’s supposed to stay sensual.

Still staring at my foot, I coo, “I really hope you scar,” and flip the channel.

 

The Consistency of Couch Potatoes

It is 3AM and the pain in my knees is keeping me awake.

I roll over and flail for my glasses, knocking a pen, my alarm clock, and a bottle of body moisturizer off the bed-stand. Cringing as all three crunch into a bag of Salsa Verde Doritos, I barely catch my glasses as they too attempt a suicide dive.

“I can’t afford to replace you!” I remind them, shaking them a little too vigorously.

My vision right now is 20/600. My back-up glasses are 20/400. So if my current pair break, I would be blind for several weeks until a new pair arrived.

I pat my glasses apologetically and put them on. I know who’s boss.

Still half asleep, I stumble through books, piles of paper, and empty Mountain Dew cans. “Frik,” I mumble, tripping over a nest of phone and printer cables. “I’ma light ya on fire some day.”

I stop.

“I’ma light ya on fire some day?”

What the fuck?

I emerge from clutter and chaos five minutes later, rummaging for a hot water bottle in the upstairs bathroom.

Waiting for the tap to run, well, hot water, I slouch to the ground and stare at my knees: swollen and slightly bruised. ‘You aren’t my knees,’ I think. ‘Bad knees, go away.’ They are disinclined to obey.

Having spent the last four months primarily in front of my television and computer, I don’t know what I was expecting. That my legs still had the stamina to stand for that long? Yeah. Probably. I mean, DUDE – four hours. Four.

“This is fucking embarassing,” I say, still staring at my knees.

With the hot water bottle resting on my legs, I do eventually fall back to sleep. I awake some five hours later, pain free.

And there is a spring in my step.

Crap.

 

Slow-Motion

Everything is lagging.

I turn my head. In slow-motion, it blurs across the screen. My cat dashes through the room;

you see: cat, empty space, cat;

you hear: some kind of loud noise, like thundering hooves,

then silence.

This is your brain on

drugs

dial-up.

This is what becomes of the real world when you have been living at a 16,043 latency for hours. Suddenly, you’re dead and wondering if maybe you lag-kited one of those crazy dragons into your living room.

Curled up in an over-sized chair, laptop balanced on my knee, I blink.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s snowing?’” I think, staring at a friend’s message. “Didn’t it just do that? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it just did that.”

I shake my head and return to trying to get across Honor Hold.

“Gryphon master…so…close…” Disconnect. “NOOOO!” I have been attempting this journey for ten minutes.

“I’m just trying to get back to an AH!” I type furiously to another friend. The text doesn’t even appear on my screen before -

Disconnect.

When I log back on, my buddy is still standing by the inn mailbox. He waves at me. I start to type a “c’ya when I have a better connection” -

Disconnect.

DENIED!! You have attempted an unauthorized disconnect! Die, bitch, die!

…

The power goes out.

My mother walks in and says, “It’s snowing.”

 

Aw, fuck it.

I glance at the clock: quarter to nine. Okay.

I pick up my cellphone and turn it on: 8:45.

…

Shit.

The difference between traditional clock hands and the blaring pixeled digitalness is obvious – one seems safe, the other doesn’t. Why? Because I told myself that I would leave at “8:45″. That’s in numbers. I didn’t think, “quarter to nine,” which is how I read clocks. Nope. For six hours of subconscious awareness, “8:45″ was branded into my eyes and ears and thoughts.

I pause to wonder if I can make it to class on time. My cellphone now reads “8:46″. I’m still in my pajamas.

“Aw, fuck it,” I mutter and toss the phone back into my purse.

It isn’t that I’m lazy. Nor is it that I’m unenthusiastic about the subject. It’s because I received an e-mail from the instructor last night:

“Hi Everyone,
The discussion is going very well. Your posts are thoughtful and reflect content from the book and additional sources. “

Eh? …EH??

I log on to the class forum and find a week of work and discussions, as well as a grade scale based on that week. My stomach turns. I have an ‘F’ and no way of making it up.

See, I have been checking the forum off and on for two weeks, making absolutely positive that I wouldn’t be caught off-guard, but I was on the road all Sunday and have been sick since Monday. And in those four days, the entire class has discussed half of the first assigned book. A book I haven’t even been able to purchase yet.

I blink at the screen. My eyes kind of burn.

I stand up and pace back and forth within two square feet. It’s more like just turning in circles. I begin to hyperventilate. “No!” I think, “No no no NO! You can’t have a panic attack! It isn’t that bad, you fucking moron! NO!” I regulate my breathing and sit down again. Phew.

I am afraid of having panic attacks, almost as much as I am afraid during them. Panic attacks are a complete loss of control. For me, everything moves in slow motion because I am moving so fast. My vision becomes blurry, wavy, and walls close in. My body becomes numb and warm and I can’t feel anything I try to grab onto. I can’t breathe; I gasp for breath. I try to talk or call out, but I can’t even feel the words in my chest. One thought cycles through my mind: “I am going to die.”

There is nothing quite like the conflict of believing you are going to die but knowing that you will not. I use the term “believing” instead of “thinking” or “feeling” because it is a belief. There is nothing more true to you at that moment. But, logically, you know that a panic attack will not kill you. This is where the terror sets in. Think of a nightmare in which you fend off invisible monsters. Imagine fighting for your life against air. The struggle is futile: there is nothing to defeat.

Facing ordinary stresses such as 15 minutes to get ready and run across campus, only to enter class (failing or not) late, would be like injecting mercury into my bloodstream. Usually, I force myself to charge head-on, but I don’t plan to stay here anyway, right?

I sit down and play WoW for a few hours.

 

A Cozy Tavern

I am playing World of Warcraft. This means, of course, that I have no idea what is going on around me. Because when I am playing a game there is no “around me.” You could shoot me in the chest and I wouldn’t even flinch.

“It’s stopped popping,” Kalissa’s voice echoes somewhere from the abyss. “We should probably take the bag out now…”

“Uh…uh…huh? Yeah. Okay.” I glance at her without registering the motion.

I’m sitting on the ground, leaning against the mini-fridge. The microwave is right above my head and I am “keeping an eye on it.” You ask, which eye? The one that cares more about popcorn than Warcraft… Hahaha…ha.

Trying to open the bag, Kalissa rips it wide open, spilling burnt popcorn all over the floor.

“Smooooooooth,” I laugh and look back at my game.

…

My head snaps back up. “Is…that…going to set off the smoke detector?” She looks up in horror at the smoke detector three feet above her head. She stumbles away from it.

Phew, I think, we’re-BLEEEPBLEEPBLEEEEEEEEEP!

Not again. Oh God. Not again. PLEASE.

I clutch my hands to my ears. My first thought is, ‘Is my character on Warcraft stopped in a safe place?’ I pause.

I care more about Aoisa’s safety than my own.

My mind returns to the present crisis as I envision the building being evacuated. I envision the irritation, the questions, and the confession. This has to be a felony, this burning of popcorn in a crowded college dorm. My thoughts race.
Others on the third floor are beginning to emerge from their rooms to investigate. There is no evacuation, but they give me a scare. The story travels throughout the entire building in a few minutes. As I run around, trying to find an R.A., strangers laugh with me. “Burn some popcorn?” they joke. “Haha, yeah,” I reply and keep running. The conversations are all the same. And there are half a dozen of them.

I find an R.A., but he tells me that…well, they’re too frikin busy right now and we’re just going to have to wait it out.

Ehem. Okay.

I deliver the bad news to Kalissa and Tony. We hear the sirens coming up the road. We retreat down the hall, away from the noise. The noise stops. We return to the room and hastily clean up the popcorn on the floor, only to discover that much stepping upon has occurred. We’re partially deaf now, but there is a new noise…

“Is that…did I… Ha! I left the sound on,” I laugh as I turn my laptop around and see my character AFK-ing in the middle of a cozy tavern.

Two seconds later, there is a knock on the door. “Fire department,” says a deep, husky voice that knows it’s just popcorn.

The firefighter and a policeman make a quick investigation: they take a few steps, try to open the windows further but fail, and accept our profuse apologies. They leave.
“I was going to abandon you guys,” I tell Kalissa and Tony, “if we evacuated.”

“Yeah, we don’t blame you.”