Bee is for Bitch

When December rolled around and it was clear I wouldn't be returning home anytime soon, my mother replaced me with a dog. It's hardly unusual. For most of my friends, it was returning home after Freshman year and realizing that their childhood bedroom had been converted to a gym, sewing room, midlife meditation oasis, etc. Disturbingly, the rooms never made a complete transition; patchwork quilts coexisted alongside overpriced elliptical machines, peeling Johnny Depp posters alongside 'revamped,' Martha Stewart designer wallpaper. Many a late night bitch-session was devoted to this subject, to the loss of the sense of 'home' that we mistakenly believed to be bound up in the permanent existence of a Shrine to our Personal Shit. Lucky for me, my parents have never been into sewing, nor trendy fitness. They prefer to get their exercise outdoors, bounding through the back hills of Mission Canyon, followed closely behind by the loving, panting presence of Maggie: a rescue mutt who is about two parts adorable companion and two parts bitch from hell.

I understand, I really do. I got the email with Maggie's picture, followed by Mom's enthusiastic report that they were adding a new member to the family!!--and part of me curled into that, in the somewhat deluded idea that my absence had left such a gaping hole in their lives that they needed to fill it by any means possible. Oh God, how can we ever survive without her? Then the emails became more plentiful, the photographs more flattering than any evidence of MY first few years on the planet, and I started to get suspicious. You see, I've observed my mother around animals; maybe it's one of those genes that skips a generation, but place her in front of a prison lineup consisting of humans and cats, and she'll be hard-pressed to tell you which one she gave birth to. She pampers her cats, snuggles them, cradles them, and feeds them to the point of no return. Take one look at Ernest, our tank of a cat who has now reached the point in his obesity where he struggles with bathing, and you'll understand. Anyhow. When I saw the same infatuation creeping up between my mom and the newest creature, I figured it would be like the cats only more: more energy, more responsibility, and more to love. More for her to love, sure, but more for me as well. After all, I had dogs once! I love dogs.

Correction: I love dog. As in, one. And she died when I was thirteen.

Memories of Nellie came flooding back to me, actually, as I approached Maggie for the first time. I'd like to say it wasn't an instantaneous hatred, but I'd be lying: she took one look at me rolling my suitcase into the driveway for the first time in seven months--first time ever, as far as she was concerned--and proceeded to bark within an inch of her life. I looked down at her kindly, thinking perhaps she was just protecting the homestead; and in retrospect, she probably was. But then the mailman arrived the next day, two or three other vehicles pulled in and out of our driveway, all depositing human beings who intruded upon her so-called 'territory'... and she did nothing but cough up a few measly barks as they entered and exited. The average visitor would never know her venomous snarl, nor the fury she is capable of when you meet in a dark room in the middle of the night. No. She saved it all for me.

When it first occurred to me that my parents had adopted a creature with a vendetta against my individual existence, I was saddened. I took it personally; I watched my two-year-old niece throw a chew toy without having her hand bitten off, laughing and playing, and felt like the only kid not picked for kickball. I obeyed when my mother told me to accompany them on walks, to assert my presence in front of Maggie in a way that was non-threatening; I jogged with her around the reservoir, watched as she galloped over bushes and around rocks, and felt a glimmer of hope. But then we'd arrive back home, I'd enter the living room, Maggie would growl, and we'd start all over. Once, I looked over at her and my mom curled up on the couch, and saw the hairs bristle on Maggie's spine. I tried walking closer, and she snarled. My mom threw her on the patio. "It's not right," I told her. "I was here first!" My mom gave a little sniffle at her baby, now quarantined outside in the perfectly tolerable 70 degree Santa Barbara evening. "Yeah," she said. "But to be fair, that is her couch."

I tried a different approach. I'm used to Bali dogs, after all... mangy little assholes that alternate between darting in front of motorbikes, eating trash, and barking furiously at anyone who gets too close to their property. They're more frightening than policemen, and probably do more to deter crime as well. So by the third week of Maggie's dictatorship, I had stopped feeling sad, and started to get angry: she'd stare up at me with glassy, judgmental eyes, and I'd glare right back. She'd snarl at me, and I'd flash her my opposable thumbs, indicating my biological superiority. Maggie may be cuter, but I am smarter. I am the firstborn. It's on, bitch. 

It's difficult to pinpoint why it bothered me so much, or why I should care whether my parents' dog loves me as much as she loves them. I'm here for one more week, and after that, who knows; and if I'm only returning for birthdays and holidays, living out of a toiletry bag, who cares whether I'm subjected to the occasional growl or raised haunches? The only thing I can say is that Maggie's entrance into my life served as a loud, exaggerated reminder of what was already flashing across my brain: you are not welcome here. It's not my family, but the city itself--Santa Barbara, my hometown, the place where I feel at once utterly comfortable and dangerously apathetic. Being here, especially after being away, is like having a pimple on your cheek that keeps cropping up into your peripheral vision: other people don't even notice it, but for you, it is there every time you lower your gaze. I can't quite explain it, but the culture shock after living in Bali for seven months was more than just re-acclimation... I felt positively allergic to things I never even saw before. To make matters worse, about 3 weeks after arriving, I was rushed to the hospital for a severe reaction to bee pollen. One second I was drinking a smoothie, and the next, my face had swelled up to the size of a balloon; I turned an impressive shade of cranberry, broke out in nasty, itchy hives, and spent the next three hours in the ER having a drug cocktail pumped into my arm. Physically, recovery was a breeze: I got off with little more than heightened awareness and an EpiPen to show for the incident. Emotionally, however, I felt damaged. I went home and collapsed into the couch, Maggie's couch, and wondered if it's possible to feel safe in a place that no longer holds you.

Not willing to give up on the dog front, Mom pressed for an intervention. She and my stepdad are leaving for Europe at the end of the summer, and they want me to housesit: an endeavor made slightly more difficult if I'm unable to come and go without a "body blocker." Enter Wency, the Dog Whisperer: "body blocking" is just one of many new terms that she taught us last Saturday, pulling into the driveway amid a cacophony of barks. I watched her approach Maggie, half-expecting the dog to greet her with a lick and a smile; leading the jury to the inevitable conclusion that the problem, in fact, is me, has always been me, and that Maggie is simply doing what no one else in my family is brave enough to do. I sucked down my carrot juice in self-pity and waited. But Wency walked right up to Maggie, backing her into the orange trees--and to my surprise, was met with a throaty growl. Suddenly, I had an ally.

"See that paw?" Wency asked me. "That raised front foot means, don't hurt me. Your dog isn't antisocial, and she isn't shy. She's terrified." This shocked me. Of what? "These old habits are hard to break," she continued. "You have to rewire her. Right now, she thinks everything is a threat, and you're reinforcing that bad behavior by allowing her to get away with it.

"And you," she looked toward my mother, "You gotta take care of your baby bear." I glanced at my mom and giggled. I get the whole dog/human connection, but a bear? Come on. "No," Wency said. Then she gestured toward me. "This is your child. You're the mama bear. And you have to start sticking up for your cub."

That was when she gave us the airhorn. She walked around the driveway with the leash pulled taut, and handed my mother a small, red can. "When Jenna approaches Little Sister and Little Sister growls, you blast this air at the ground." I approached, Maggie bared her teeth, and we waited. My mom, visibly uncomfortable, did as she was told... and we all jumped a few inches when the can let off a ginormous PSSSSSST! at Maggie's feet. All, that is, except Wency. "Good. Now, we work on positive reinforcement. Every time Daughter enters the room, I want some serious treats--I'm talking filet mignon, chicken, fish--to rain from the sky. If Maggie sits for the treats, excellent. If she doesn't, no treats. And no baby talk." She zeroed in on my mom again, who at this point, looked like she'd just been told she would have to spend the rest of her life in a coat made of tarantulas. Wency just smiled and pulled a glob of liver snacks out of her pocket. "When you enter the room, Jenna, come with a treat. From this point on, Little Sister is going to associate your presence with something good. And don't expect the progress to be totally linear, either." She yanked back on the leash as Maggie began to plead sanctuary behind my mother's knees. "It will be one step forward, one step back. Just stick with it."

"It's a process of rewiring. Undoing bad habits so new ones can take their place. It's not an easy task... but it is a possible one."

Other than the obvious creep-factor of calling Maggie my little sister, Wency had some interesting things to say. Did you know, for example, that it is submissive to stroke a dog beneath her chin, because it is typically done to the alpha in a pack? Or that dog owners should always walk through a doorway before their pet in order to assert dominance? I imagined what it must be like to live at Wency's house, where dogs of all shapes and sizes crawl over her body and in and out of her aggressively-planted legs, smelling the day's worth of misbehaving canines and wondering if Wency had given a piece of her heart to any of these new, foreign creatures. I imagine it must be rough on the self-esteem, being the pet of a professional Dog Whisperer; kind of like being Halle Berry's husband, or the girlfriend of one of those really slutty rappers. But Wency seemed like the loyal type, and well-versed on the subject of establishing boundaries. She told my mom that she needed to be more discerning about who touches Maggie on the head, as it could easily interfere with the training. "I don't get why people feel the need to walk up and pet other people's dogs, and why their owners are okay with it. It's like, you wouldn't just walk up and rub someone's kid... so why do it to their dog?" My brain flashed to an image of children gathering around a watering hole, sniffing each other's butts and barking as their parents check them for fleas and ticks. I decided this didn't bode well for my upcoming nannying job, and decided to push it from my head. Humans and dogs are different, after all. Aren't we? I looked down again at my opposable thumbs. Out of the corner of my eye, Maggie lay curled up under the table. The whites of her eyes were shiny with apprehension, and I couldn't help but feel sympathy. We've both been hurt. It's not up to her to explain where or how she developed the fears that keep her from approaching my hand without worry. It's not her fault that she can't tell what may or may not be contained in my palm.

As the week went on, Maggie and I tried our new "treat therapy" with mixed success. For a few days, she willingly obeyed when I commanded her to SIT for a handful of chicken sausage; she liked it even better when she was given treats just for letting me walk through the room. Around Thursday, she grew bored with the prospect of peace and began snarling at me from underneath the table. She gets the airhorn when she does this, which sends my mom into a tailspin of whatifshedoesn'tlovemeanymore... but as Wency pointed out, dogs don't hold grudges, and neither should we. If she's punished, Maggie gets up the next morning and slobbers just as excitedly as she did before she was thrown outside. Her fear issues may linger, but they don't make her any less willing to love.

Something to think about.

~

Last Wednesday, I woke from a dream that my hands and feet had swollen to ten times their normal size. Right before consciousness snapped me out of the panic that I'd never again tie my shoes without assistance, I remember thinking: is this normal? With my bee pollen incident still relatively mysterious, I'm unsure whether it is the pollen itself--or bees in general--that I need to stay away from. Until I know, I am the EpiPen carrier upon which a thousand Pulp Fiction jokes were launched, upon which a thousand more are bound to come when I go to Portland. (Insert boredom here.) All that aside, a swollen feeling haunted me for the rest of that day. My dream-being had run her hands up and down my body, monitoring the inflammation, wondering how much of what was going on could be accounted for in the realm of "normal" allergic reactions. Even while dreaming, I worry about how much I need to worry. If a heart remains broken for months, say, even years after the fact... can that be called normal? Am I whole? Am I allergic?

Thought #1: There's a science to the muscle memory of being hurt. We muscle ourselves into the position, and so we must muscle ourselves out. I sat in the car the other day, listening to an old love play a broken record; and as much as I wanted to help, wanted to be able to speak up in a voice that sounded like my own, my body felt glued to the spot. My mind fell into a groove worn slick from years of overuse. I sat with my gaze fixed forward, listening to the radio as it spat out the soundtrack to a clash of egos, and thought of how many instances in my life I have (re)acted out of fear.

Thought #2: There are two types of change, qualitative and quantitative. In the former, some have gone further than others: perhaps they don't feel the need to sit in cars and reenact scenes from nightmares past. In the latter, however--in the quantitative, the sum, the distance run--we are the same. Some of us have stickers to show for it, and some of us behave the same old way when an unfamiliar hand reaches toward our face: we bolt. It doesn't matter if it has treats in it.

But whether or not we run away, we've still changed. The same amount of days have passed between two people since the last time they met; and in that regard, we're all equal.

So. Sometimes, usually in a fit of caffeine, I believe that I'll move past the history that holds me down. I'm slowly, slowly creeping out from underneath the table where I feel invisible. It would be nice if treats rained down from the sky every time I made progress, rewarding me for sitting in the same space with a new mind; chocolate, ice cream, something to keep my mouth occupied while my brain catches up to the place where my heart is. 'Til then, however, I have a lap full of venison snacks, Maggie's favorite, and I'm about to go walk through the kitchen. We have an infinite capacity for change. I will throw them at her feet, and hope that one day she associates me with something good.

Post-Its from the Edge

Edge of reason, edge of the universe, edge of sanity; poised on the edge of a knife, as it were, as we always are.

It happens so fast. A minute ago, I was living in Bali; hot rains poured down my face and neck, and I held Olivia's hand as we pounded the steaming gravel with our bare feet. Just a second ago, I was on a plane home from Texas, and something called the Grand Canyon yawned across the land below. I pressed my face to the window, despite the hundreds of faces who had probably done it before me; like me, wanting to see if they could muss the un-foggable with their foggy, germ breath. The flight attendant told me to please place my seat in its full upright position, which was weird, because I never put it back in the first place. I adjusted. The plane adjusted. When my ears popped, I could hear my music more clearly. I do this weird thing whenever I wear earphones, which is to periodically take them out of my ears and assess whether the music is audible to the people around me...so there I was, causally pulling in and out of my ears, caring but not caring whether someone will care that I was listening to Anais Mitchell at a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet.

The lady sitting next to me thought I couldn't see her reading over my shoulder, these letters as they spilled from my fingertips, but I did. I wrote a sentence to her, a cryptic message without the bottle, wanting to know if she react. She didn't. She did, however, open her mouth and begin speaking to her husband in Chinese, and I felt like an idiot.

It had been a long day. I woke up in Texas to Thunder and Lightning, petulant twins who wouldn't quit their whining until I peeled my head off the pillowcase, pulled my earplugs out of their sockets, and padded over to the window. The lightning purple and the thunder boom hugged one another, flashing in such short succession that I wondered why they didn't just get it over with and crack into the flowerpot outside my door. That's the funny thing about watching lightning. You know the odds are slim, but secretly, every time it strikes across the sky, you know it has to be hitting somewhere--and part of you marvels at the fact that this time, just this time, it wasn't you. I pulled my things together and drank a VitaMineral smoothie, choking down the graininess in a vain attempt to make my stomach stop its gymnastics. The planes were all delayed. We climbed into the car and waded out into the San Antonio river-roads, the water rushing up to the knees of our jeep, hinting that the day's travels would be interesting if nothing else.

"I can't promise you happiness," my Uncle Andy told her, many moons ago. "But I can promise you excitement."

I don't remember the exact point when I realized that the situation was serious; it was more of a slow burn, an accumulation of vacant traffic lights and abandoned cars. Each time we barely got through a massive puddle, we laughed nervously and presumed it would be the last one of its kind. By that point, the rain was so hard that I could barely make out the cars on the freeway--just a parade of little red ants. Red. They were going nowhere. We revved our way through the largest puddle yet, and I had the distinct sensation of bobbing. Cars aren't supposed to bob. But I thought bob, and then I thought apples, and I allowed my brain to make its little free-association game for the 45 minutes that we sat there, motionless, on the swampy freeway. We were going nowhere. From the soft-rock station, someone asked, "Alfie... what's it all about, Alfie?" and I had the knee-jerk urge to pull headphones out of my ears, something, anything to feel control for a fraction of an inch of a second. My hands made a fingerball in my lap as I prayed, prayed, prayed. A man got out of the car ahead of ours, and went from window to window with a message: we were going to have to back up. Ha! Haha! There was no getting off this freeway except for the way that we came; pause, rewind. So we did. She did, and I did by looking out the window at the cars as they pulled K turns and U turns and all sorts of alphabet turns, all of us searching for the same word: out.

And we found it. When we finally got off the freeway, the butt of the car having pushed its way back through the flood and out into the road and awayawayaway from the deepest, from the worst of it, I realized what had happened. We pulled into to the airport, knowing full well that there'd be no flying for a good, long while--but still, it was somewhere to be. It was a roof and a sound barrier against the smashing rain. My grammy held me and I laugh-cried as residual adrenaline crackled through my body. "There were angel hands on my hands," she told me. Angel hands. I floated out of the car and through security, mistaking each and every person for my long lost love. The woman in front of me dropped her driver's license and we made pointless conversation, and I would have married her if she had asked me. That's how good, how completely reckless it felt to be alive.

Earlier that week, I had watched Moore, Oklahoma collapse from the seat of FOX news, compliments of my Republican grandfather. He sat in his chair for most of the day, a plastic glass of chablis balancing on the seat of his walker. He yells at the television. He's a stereotype in other ways, too, mostly in the fact that he loves me more than most other people on the planet combined. I sat in the leather chair next to his, photo albums splayed in my lap, scrutinizing their pages for any information I might have missed before; names and faces that mean something different each time they see the light of day. Frozen moments: weddings, reunions, graduations. Babies show up and then stop being babies, or they get more hair, and more babies show up and then it all happens again. I lost hours in those pages, only coming up for air when one of the FOX faces said something especially stupid. I walked to the kitchen now and again, pouring myself glass after glass of cold kombucha. Anticipating the question, I answered. "It's fermented Chinese tea, known for its health properties. It has, um, good bacteria in it. B vitamins. Stuff." He took a breath in that stuck, briefly, in the back of his throat. He gave one of his gnarled fingers a good, hearty tap against the clicker and blinked in that perfect way of his. "I have the weirdest granddaughter," he said. And I knew that I'd love him forever.

My life that week became a festival of wondering what I'd do with my future, what I could possibly say to assure the older generation that they hadn't wasted their time in creating me. Meanwhile, the world outside the window continued to fall apart in large, flaky pieces against the sky: I called Phil in Oklahoma, trying (but failing) not to sound broken when he said he'd barely missed the storm. When I finally made it home, Santa Barbara met me at the door with a brush fire and 4.8 earthquake. A thousand Facebook statuses were born, but none bore any of the information I was searching for. What about a family code? Should we have a family code? What if someone calls and says that you've gotten into an accident, mom, and I need to come get you? What about those girls that were kidnapped for so many years? What about the natural gas leak? What about that, mom? What the fuck am I supposed to do? I drove into the visitor's parking at Vista del Monte, a retirement community where my best friend's grandmother spent her final days. For the last week, she woke in a panic, thinking the world was falling apart; in her mind, there were always fires and earthquakes. "Did I die?" she asked. "No, grandma," he told her. "You're in Santa Barbara, at Vista del Monte." Her perfectly-glossed fingers clamped over his like a mousetrap, holding him there even when her gaze could not. I sat there, my hands in my lap, smiling but not wanting her to think I was staring; hoping that, even if she couldn't register my identity, that she knew I would never want to make her unhappy. I am desperate to please: the whole week in Texas, I wanted to please with the promise of a car, the kind they advertise for on national TV, and a job that looks good at the end of a sentence. But then the TV flipped to a disaster scene, and something else overtook me. "Don't ever get to 87," my grandfather said. He meant it as a joke, but I felt my stomach sink. Will I get the option? It feels sometimes like we're dancing on eggshells, overstaying our welcome on a sold-out stage. I keep picturing one of those hooks from a silent film, the kind that appears at the corner of the frame and yanks the human off the stage. Roses at her feet.

According to the photo albums, I have to have one of three things to be real: a wedding, a baby, or a graduation. One out of three ain't so bad, but I want more. We all want more for ourselves. It's the reason we get out of bed in the morning, despite whatever greets us on our homepage. It's the reason I still touch my finger to a hot plate before picking it up with my bare hand. I still picture a world where anything is possible. When an eyelash lodges on my cheek or the clock reaches 11:11, I make a wish. I catch myself feeling selfish when I wish for anything other than the safety of my planet, for the goodness of the whole; how could I possibly think about myself at a time like this? Doesn't the world need every little bit, even my little wishes, to get by? Then again, maybe it needs me just as badly as I need it. Maybe it needs me to hold my breath as I go through a tunnel, wishing for a first kiss, believing that there is still something to believe in.

I felt that in spades at St. Anthony's Cathedral, five rows back, at the Santa Barbara High School A Cappella concert. I remember what it was like to be up there, dripping under your robes, the music making its way through your mouth like breathing. In, out. I was in the audience, but I remembered; each person up there is the king of their own universe, the epicenter of what feels like The Way Things Will Always Be. Then each one will unpack a box or three, or thirty, in a dorm room that looks like everyone else's; each asymmetrical haircut, so deliberate from the perspective of one who looks out at the audience, will blend in with the collective mohawk that is UC Berkeley. I was overwhelmed with compassion for the singers, those seniors in high school, each one more confident than the last. They have no idea what they're in for. I worry sometimes that I hit my stride in high school; I see photos and, instead of marveling at how far I've come, wonder if my eyebrows will ever look as good as they did when I was seventeen. It was a very good year. Yet no matter what, I always return to this; I look down at my finger and the ring that contains Bali, or remember the epic pain that was freshman year at Scripps, and exhale a deep sigh of relief. Even if I could, I wouldn't go back and do it all again. Even if I had all the wishes in my pocket, all the DeLoreans in the world, I'd never choose to be anywhere except right here.

Because right here, in this room, lives the Wisdom of No Escape. On the freeway in Texas, I sought comfort in the idea that I'd soon be out of the extreme weather--I'd get in a plane and fly far far away, to California, where floods and hurricanes never happen. But they do. They burn up mountains and we call them fires, but in the end, they're the same. They're a reminder that we're only ever here, just this: there aren't enough planes in the universe to stay permanently suspended, thousands of feet above the place where all the bad stuff happens. A gigantic fault line runs up my California coast, and each time I enter a new relationship, we make a silent agreement that someone, eventually, is going to hurt. It's what happens when you care. Dying, I hear, is what happens when you live.

In the car on my last night in Texas, on the way to see a stage adaptation of Picnic, my grandfather was regaling me with his opinion of various world religions. My grammy's hands tightened on the wheel. "Not to be a fatalist," she said, "But say this is the last time you're ever going to see your granddaughter. Do you really want the last thing you say to be something to do with your obstinate politics?" "No," he told her, and laughed. "You're right." So we talked about ___________. It doesn't matter, in the end, what it was. It doesn't really matter what we talked about.

I've done, and continue to do, a variety of stupid things. While shopping in Lazy Acres, I tried to fill a bulk bag with chocolate-covered goji berries... and when they dripped out slowly, one at a time, I gave the thing a hearty thwack until SHOOMP--approximately three pounds of candy exploded into the sack. This provided, what ees it you say? A conflict of interest. I was interested in the candy, but not in the $25 price tag I had inadvertently acquired. So... I left it there. My moral alarm clock started clanging away, but I left the bag of candy in the store; accumulating a year's worth of bad karma, perhaps, but making my way into the sunlit parking lot all the same. The residual fire in the air had illuminated the sky in a flush of reds and yellows, poking out from behind the Santa Ynez mountains in what only can be described as glory. Sure, I knew it was bad; but it looked so pretty. There are natural disasters, and there are deaths. There are goodbyes and hellos, neither of which has a guarantee. But there's beauty in everything. There's really and truly, beauty in everything. Jeremy said something to me in the car, and I only half heard.

"Hold on a sec. I'm distracted by the apocalypse."

And distracted I was. And distracted I am.

But it's only for a moment. Tomorrow, I'll be new.

The Californians

Warning: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

“Hmm. Let’s see. What do I want…what do I WANT. Whaaaat doooo eeeyyyyeee waaaaaannt?”
 

If you’ve ever ordered a sandwich, you know it’s not the most complicated process on the planet. At a place like Subway, maybe, with its peetree dishes of greying pickles and wilted lettuce and dozen variations on pepper jack cheese; but at a deli counter containing exactly three options? Thirty seconds. Maximum. However, the woman standing in front of me has been ordering for at least seven minutes, fifteen minutes into the workday lunch rush, her perfect eyebrows quivering at our assortment of sandwiches; none of which have moved, or changed in flavor, over the course of her perusal. I want to laugh, but I can’t. I want to tell her to step out of the way, to shake her spandexed butt over to the beverage display so I can address the rest of the customers in line, but I can’t; her decision-making ability is as drawn out as her speech, her time as fluid as her fair-trade coffee. She’s probably on her way to pilates. She’s a Californian.
 

For the record: I’m a ninth generation Californian. As far as our infant state goes, my family is as old as the tides; my ancestors lived in the Santa Barbara presidio, Henry Tico was a legendary horseman, and my grandma was the student-body secretary at my high school, a fact that still brings her a disproportionate amount of joy. “I had to take notes at the meetings,” she told me. “Where they planned school DANCES!” Still, all this said—and given the fact that I believe California to contain one of the most striking landscapes on the planet—nothing could have diminished my post-Asia culture shock. Not even the dozen people in line at Ngurah Rai Airport who pulled out their iphones at the exact same second, moving like synchronized swimmers in order to send desperate texts to their friends and family in Los Angeles. See, ten minutes before our flight was set to leave Bali, a sweet little voice came on over the intercom and informed us that all outbound flights would be delayed indefinitely due to “personal reasons.” No big deal; a plane had just put down its landing gear a bit earlier than it intended to. Specifically, in the ocean. “Are you kidding me?” the woman in front of me asked, her meaty forearms taking up the entirety of the counter in front of her. “When are our flights going to leave, then?”
 

“I don’t know, ma’am,” the clerk answered, her mouth forming deliberately over each English syllable. “We are still wait to hear that all Lion Air passengers are returned.”
 

“And where are they now?”
 

“In the sea.”
 

Oh boy.

Those of us who had been in Bali for a while promptly left the queue, put down our backpacks, and settled in for the winter. This is an island that closes down intersections to build papier mache bulls during rush hour; there was no way in hell the airport would be reopening on our schedule or anyone else's. Surprisingly enough, though, we were wrong: call it karma or a string of angry Californians, but our plane actually left within the hour, and I found myself on the second leg of my journey home with wasabi almonds and time to spare. Observing the mania of the people around me only made me feel more chilled out, and I spent the next 20 hours watching Judd Apatow movies and counting the things I was most looking forward to about being home. I only cried in the moments right before the plane landed at LAX, the last minute that my adventure would hang suspended in mid-air before bleeding into the next moment and the next and the next.

Why then, after spending seven months on 'Bali time,' did I experience such lack of patience with the woman in line at the deli? She was only operating on the same time frame (as in, none at all) that I had come to expect and embrace during my time overseas. Still, there was something different about the way this woman held herself; something slightly hysterical in her voice that defied whatever nonchalance her posture attempted to portray. I realized the fundamental difference lay in how much this woman was willing to engage with me. Sure, the Balinese disregard most timetables, but they do it with the understanding that life is too important to hurry; they'll take their sweet-ass time bringing food to your table, but would also rarely cut off a conversation. Californians, on the other hand, will gladly ask you how your day is going—and they'll let you cut in front of them in line in the juice bar, no problem—as long as you don't actually tell them how your day is going, and as long as it doesn't make them late for yoga. There's traffic this time of day, after all. What do you expect?

I'm well aware of how good I have it. I slid back into California life and straight into the open arms of my friends and family, all smiles and happy tears and beautiful meals straight from the garden. Still, walking down the street, I couldn't help but notice how up-in-their-own-agenda everyone seems to be...even with the support of my family, my brain felt like mashed potatoes. After living in Keramas, the concept of a doggy play date—or a six dollar coffee—came as a bit of a shock. And that's not the only thing. Ask anyone who has come back to Western food and weather after an extended period in the tropics, and I guarantee some variety on the general theme of Gastrointestinal Gymnastics while Freezing My Ass Off. I slept in wool socks and sweatshirts, tortured my stomach with unfamiliar luxuries like Kettle Chips and frozen yogurt, and woke in the middle of the night—whacked out on jetlag—to watch Glee on my mother's Netflix. Fact: I hate Glee. But after searching for Game of Thrones and finding that it didn't exist, too lazy to leave the 'G' section of Instant Watch and too emotional to do anything but lie on the couch, Glee it was.

It passed, of course. When I did manage to finally leave the house, I was reminded of all the things I did miss about Santa Barbara: cool, sunny walks on the Wilcox, my grandma's sewing room, Isabel's spazzy dachshunds, the Earth Day Festival. On top of that, out of a mixture of exhaustion, rebellion, and the pure desire to honor Bali, I spent my first four days in complete silence; a decision that, if you know me, is about as typical as spending four days imitating Pee Wee Herman. It's hilarious, but it just doesn't make sense. That said, I absolutely loved it...silence gave me the space I needed to adjust, to wander around grocery stores in a combination of horror and awe, and to communicate with the ones I love most without communicating verbally. I was surprised and satisfied at how easy it is to engage without needing to speak; I was reminded that silence is a tool that we always have, and that it can be a wonderful way to whittle down some of the white noise and focus on the heart of things. Plus, my mime skills went through the roof.

Then in the middle of my tiny retreat, I got a temp job at L's Kitchen: a hole-in-the-wall deli in the Funk Zone where I get to serve sandwiches to attractive yuppies driving Priuses. I'm allowed to get cracked out on Mexican hot chocolate and make weird designs on the SPECIALS board. Plus, I get to wash dishes and listen to people speaking a language other than English; which is, in a word, ideal. In another word, familiar. It has eased the transition and given me something to do with my time, other than float around shamelessly comparing everything and everyone to the life I left across the Pacific.

Because yes, friends: I have become THAT PERSON. One of the reasons I wanted to spend a few days in silence was to prolong the inevitability of becoming like someone's grandpa, squeaking in my rocking chair and yammering away about the 'good old days'—in my case, traveling—to anyone who passes by. But no matter how long I put it off, it crept up as I knew it would: Bali has become the bar against which everything else must inevitably fail, and the anecdotes bubble from my mouth before I can muster the courtesy to decide whether or not they will actually contribute to the conversation. It's like a breakup; you can't help but drop that person's name inappropriately, weave them into every interaction like a ghost, playing the "two weeks ago this time, I was ________" game. When my mom took me to Sama Sama, the new Indonesian restaurant on State Street, I was almost unbearable.

"Ohhhh, chicken SATAY! I wonder if they'll do soto ayam? Hi, have you actually ever been to Indonesia? I have. Yes, I know what sambal is. Are you kidding me? Let me tell you a little something about sambal. No, it's pronounced meeeeee goreng. Not myyyyy goreng, meeeeeeeeee."

Then I tucked my knees into my chest and felt my soul split open into a kajillion pieces on the car ride home.

So I've been home for more than two weeks, now, and I guess it's time to unpack my suitcase. It sits crumpled and sad outside the entrance to my room as though it's taking this whole thing terribly personally. I don't know what's keeping me from digging into it; fear of permanence, maybe? If it isn't already obvious, I can't tell yet how I feel about being back in California. I oscillate between despising everyone, lost and alone, and feeling divine compassion for the Santa Ana winds and everyone underneath their perfect, warm breath. I love it, I love it not. Some moments, unhappiness approaches like a tide; I try to outrun it into the next room, into the car or down the street, but it usually manages to snatch me before I reach the end of Sycamore Canyon. What is it, exactly, that causes that pain? When I enter a room full of people, all smiling and friendly enough, can I answer their "how are you?" with the truth—that I cried so hard last night that one eye swelled up like a gummy bear, and I have absolutely no idea what the fuck I'm doing? That I'm scared out of my mind that I'll sink into nothingness, lose my perspective, always be this lonely? No. I'll say "fine," or "you know, okay" or "good, thanks." Because that's what is expected of me, and that's what they've allotted for. That's it. On the phone with my grandfather, he informed me that I "can't keep running away to Exotica"... which I took to be a blanket term for, you know, all of Asia. But rather than get offended, I realized the truth to what he was saying: how, at this stage in my life, without knowing exactly who I am, am I able to learn to be happy where I am?

Can I learn to stay put?

It's an art, you know. Not running. So far, since I've been back, I've been holding onto talismans from my time in Bali—words that fill my whole mouth with their sound, or items that sag heavy in the pockets of my jeans—in order to remember. Like the spinning top in Inception, I hold the specific weight of these items in my hands, run my fingers over their grooves, in order to remind myself that I did, in fact, leave. It's hard to recall, when I look down at the skin on my hands, how it was not to feel cracked and dry; but my dragon ring, the one that hugs my middle finger as it has ever since that one night in Ubud, remains. And it remembers even when I can't.

The other day at L's Kitchen, a woman walked in to buy lunch for her son. While it heated up, she told me that he was heavily involved in the theatre department at SB High and on his way to study in New York; a source of major pride, rightfully so. While ringing up her order, I casually mentioned that I used to be involved in the theatre department as well... grateful that the ding of the cash register would drown out my obvious lack of shame at name-dropping my former accomplishments. "I too was a director of Music of the Night," I told her, counting out her change. When she met my gaze just then, there was a moment—only a sliver of a moment, but there nonetheless—where I saw a look flash across her eyes, loud and clear, that read: Former star of SBHS Theatre Department, bright future, bound for success... serving me sandwiches. And I stared right back at her with, Yes. You are correct. This is your son's future. She trembled a little as I handed over the food, looking for a way to get out of the awkwardness that hadn't even been spoken... but I gave her a Grinchy smile, stamped the freebie card, and she went on her way. It was great. And you know why? Because it reminded me not to take things so seriously. SNL got it right: regardless of how I happen to feel at the moment, regardless of whether they're currently driving me up a wall or reminding me of my roots, Californians are known for taking life with a grain of hyperbole. It's like the worst most unbelievably terrible most dramatic thing EVER. No wonder it takes us so long to pick out a sandwich. Perhaps, then, this is what I can do with my post-Bali blues; relax a little and smile through the shitty stuff. I can use the slow hours at work to make lists, like the one I made today: quite simply, "Things I Can Do to Feel Less Crazy." It's the kind of list that would probably mortify a normal person, were it to slip out of their bag...but luckily, I'm not a normal person. Number two on the list was, "dance around in living room for no particular reason." Number one was, "Write."

Which is why I'm keeping this blog. I'm no longer reporting back from the jungle, or the peak of Gunung Batur, or even the airport in some foreign land—it's just me, here and there, and I have no particular destination in mind. And I'm okay with that. Talking to someone the other day, they casually mentioned that they would never follow a blog that didn't include snazzy photos of food or and/or interesting recipes. "Because I mean, what's the point?" So now, in the spirit of finding The Point—or Ringo Starr, or a reason to keep going, or whichever comes first—I'll do my best to honor the request.

Recipe for Disaster
1/4 cup Wanderlust
2 medium-sized good feelings
3 tablespoons emotional warfare
3/4 cup unstable situation with ex-boyfriend
3/4 cup blind faith

Mix dry ingredients first until all emotions are evenly distributed. Crack good feelings one at a time, carefully separating the yolk from delusion, until the batter has reached the consistency of relative sanity. Pour into a large saucepan and cook at exactly 70 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 months or until top layer is golden brown.

Watch as the bad stuff forms a hard crust on the bottom, settling like sand to the floor of a pool, leaving a marshmallowy interior and nothing but goodness at the top.

Dig in.

So it's this, I guess: I'm back with a vengeance, confused (but who isn't), with a teensy inkling that everything is going to work out as spectacularly as I've always known it was going to—in direct proportion to how often I follow steps one and two on my list of Anti-Crazy. I'm back but not back, here but not really, happy but sad, feeling all there is to feel without worrying too much about what it means in the long term; and I've changed, in that respect. Most of all, I've learned that you can take the girl out of California and take the California out of the girl! At least, the parts she doesn't want to keep. And that's a beautiful thing.

Like...I guess. Or whatever.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I once heard it said that a crazy person is someone who keeps doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results each time. Like Charlie Brown with the football, we see Lucy sitting there, we remember the taste of the grass when she pulls it out from under our feet, and yet we still charge forward with our legs outstretched.

There's something to be said for indulging in 'crazy.' Crazy may be as crazy does, but crazy is also the moment that you decide to be--you catch your reflection in a car window and think oh boy, this is what an insane person looks like. From that point forward, once that thought has nestled into your brain and taken up an extensive knitting project, it is truly difficult to wrench it out. The past few weeks, I experienced what it is like to be a complete slave to my emotions: if in the past I was somewhat of an indentured servant, or even a nice wisecracking butler to them, recent history has made me none other than a slave. When the voice in my head said 'cry,' water fell. When it said 'act completely unreasonable!' I was thrashing and screaming. And most of all, when it said 'push him until he runs away!' I did just that. The voice inside my head, that little friend that Michael Singer calls your Inner Roommate, suddenly adopted a shrill Yonkers accent and a lisp. In other words, the most annoying voice on the planet. And when I couldn't stand listening to it for another minute, I gave my boyfriend the privilege of listening to it instead...and best of all, I acted surprised when it yielded the same results that it always does. I am Charlie Brown. I have missed the football yet again.

I truly believe that one of the most frightening states of a relationship is the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not only are you having an argument, but the person you are speaking to in no way resembles the person you spend your time with--and not in an obvious way, like "this person is no longer wearing a Hawaiian shirt!" but in deeper, subtler, terrifying ways. There is the stomach-pummeling feeling that no matter what you say or do, this person will not understand you. It's like trying to eavesdrop on the Vietnamese nail technicians when you know they are gossiping about your ratty callouses. Suddenly, the light in your person's eyes has been snuffed out--and the worst part is, you don't even feel like the person who did it. Theirs isn't the only body that has been snatched; there is someone in your head, and it's not you. You want the best for your self, but the only thing this person wants is to crush tiny villages like Godzilla on methamphetamines.

And the worst part is, when you've got a case of the body snatchers, the only thing you can do is wait.

So, for three whole days, I waited. And let me tell you, I've given this a lot of thought--and of all the jobs to undertake while going through a massive fight with your boyfriend, some are worse than others. Sticking your head inside the oven to check for gas leaks, for example, might not be the best pastime. Accompanying your friend while he picks out perfume for his perfect girlfriend isn't exactly a hoot. However--and I really mean this--there are few things less appealing than standing outside a popular restaurant and smiling at people for four hours straight; and for those three days, with eyeballs so swollen from crying that I resembled one of those Asian dogs whose features get lost in their own neck fat, I had the distinct displeasure of doing just that. It isn't always bad for business--some German tourists saw my toothy grimace and pained stance and thought, "oh goody! just like home!" Yet the majority of the time, I had the feeling that most people I was able to make eye contact with were able to recognize the tortured milkiness of my gaze, and head for the Indian restaurant next door. If only they were sorry enough that they bought a couple shrimp and calamari appetizers, ah... well, I'd probably make better tips. As it is, I think most people were at a loss for what to do. And they're not the only ones.

The thing about core-shaking arguments, and the ever-lovely silent treatment, is that once you're out of it you miraculously forget how awful it was; or at least, your brain puts a band-aid over the more gooey scabs. When I was waiting to go into dance class, crying my little eyes out, one of my fellow dancers told me about her real crisis--a husband who had lied and left her, and what felt to her like a shattered life. It's been a year, she told me, and it still hurts... but it gets better. And as far as that whole story goes, I'm familiar with the outcome. I've been there. I've never been married, but I've been there. So does the fact that I continue to run into this relationship with arms outstretched--engaging in the same careless behavior, but expecting the other person to have matured for the both of us--make me crazy?

The answer is no. The fact that I keep expecting to hit the football may make me stupid, as anyone who has seen me play team sports would agree, but it doesn't mean I'm crazy. Crazy would be not walking up to Lucy, extending a hand, and at least trying to work things out. Crazy would be the lack of change, not choosing a different path...not making it harder for the body-snatchers to take up real estate.

I'm still having absurd dreams, including a particularly vivid one involving papier mache sharks, but I no longer feel as though someone else is at the helm of my life. I'm at peace now, and so is he. We bid farewell to the demon-seeds that temporarily occupied our psyches, and laughed when we realized it takes approximately ten seconds of hugging for each day that was spent in argument to undo the damage completely. It wasn't the first, nor will it be the last time that a storm hits; however, next time the forecast calls for rough waters, all we can ever do is suck it up and get a bigger boat. We would be crazy not to.

Sex and the Pity Case

In life, everyone makes mistakes. Recently, my former roommate Alycia made the mistake of giving me her password for HBO GO, a little website that specializes in ruining what little chance I had left at a social life. After a brief flirtation with the dozens of critically acclaimed and educational movies available for instant watch, I made the mistake of watching an episode of Sex and the City--not ironically, which makes it even worse--and since then, have spend a significant portion of each week wading in the dark side.

It started innocently enough. Now that I'm no longer in school, I have plenty of time to do the things I love: hiking, going to the Farmer's Market and making fresh food, salsa dancing, and chipping away at my bucket list of novels. What I'm actually doing with that time, however, is watching Carrie Bradshaw smoke Marlboro lights as she contemplates the benefits of wearing a diaphragm. As far as television goes, it's not even that great--the shock factor that 'made' the show in the first place is as outdated as its baby-blue UGG boots. However, not one to pass up a chance to flaunt my addictive personality, I've made a point of watching as many episodes of the damn thing as humanly possible, breaking only to refill my bowl of trail mix and occasionally check the back of my calves for leg sores. (The life of a post-grad... they tell me I'm educated. I don't believe them.)

The problem with watching too much of anything, as I have known for an embarrassingly long time, is that it begins to seep into your consciousness in ways that reveal themselves slowly. It never ceases to amaze me how, knowing this fact, I continue to seek out television shows that I KNOW will make me impossibly annoying--for example, the time I watched 3 seasons of Friends and promptly developed addictions to coffee, sarcasm, and layered hair. (I have since abandoned the latter, but have found the first two to be excellent companions to relative unemployment.) After watching The Hunger Games twice in two weeks, I found myself fantasizing about sleeping in trees, and imagining what available materials I would use to make a fire...you know, in a pinch. During the year that Jeremy and I were obsessed with Six Feet Under, I half-expected every phone call to bear devastating news. When I told Jeremy about my new friend Carrie Bradshaw, however, he gave me such a horrified expression you would have thought I'd informed him of my fun new habit of picking the wings off of flies. I told him that it was perfectly fine--I knew it was silly. "Doesn't matter. It's only a matter of time before it starts to affect you," he said--like it was one of those diseases that incubates in your body for months before you know you have it. Like syphilis. "Miranda has syphilis in Season 4," I told him, but I don't think he was amused.

Still, the question remained: how much does television affect my state of mind? It's not as though I've picked up any of the lovely habits that the characters have, such as smoking a pack a day or having sex in laundromats. Still, like Carrie with the cigarettes, I've been living behind the assumption that my addiction to this show is completely under my control--I can stop anytime I want. It's not affecting my daily life, it's just a way of unwinding after serving pasta to German tourists all day. Still, I found myself fighting the urge to order a Cosmopolitan from a bar that specializes in bottles of Bud, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't wear glitter eyeshadow to work. The way I see it, the invasion hasn't spread to every part of my being yet-- it's not as though I've started belting my overalls. And yet--in typical Carrie Bradshaw voiceover-rhetorical-question fashion--I couldn't help but wonder:

Am I pathetic?

It has only been a month and a half since I graduated college. In that time, I have gotten a summer job, traveled to the East Coast, started an Improv class, read three and a half books, and written a symphony. (Well, not that last one, but you get the point.) Yet somehow, given the choice between doing something creatively productive and eating an entire box of Mac n' Cheese, I choose the Mac n' Cheese. Every time. Is this the lovely part of post-grad life--the time between government-funded excursions to Bora Bora and candlelit guitar sessions in my Soho loft--that no one tells you about? They tried, I suppose. About one month before graduation, those of us lucky enough to have accumulated roughly $20,000 in student loans were shuffled into a depressing office for something called an "Exit Loan Counseling Session," which turned out to be about as fun as a pap smear. Still, now that I am actually home and faced with the looming reality of loans, major life decisions, minimum-wage jobs, and entire grocery store aisles devoted to creams that will make me stay "young forever," it's easy to feel trapped. I don't want to stay young forever. Besides giving one the ability to drink six margaritas and still go on a run the next morning, the twenties seem pretty damn wobbly. And pimply. And that's where, despite all that it does NOT do for women who can't afford to blow $300 on a pair Manolo Blahniks, Sex and the City does seem to get it right: the main characters are in their thirties, looking back on the twenties with a mixture of awe and good riddance. At 35, they may be embittered and completely delusional, but at least they know who they are... and honestly, at this juncture in my life, that's something I still have to look forward to.

On an average day, Carrie Bradshaw smokes approximately nine packs of cigarettes, uses her (ahem) WRITER'S SALARY to buy twice that many pairs of shoes, and wears at least one item of clothing on a body part for which it was not originally intentioned. And that's her prerogative. As for me, I have spent the past 4 hours completing a "Food Handler's Safety Certificate" online (did you know that spitting in the customer's face is considered a potential health hazard? And that one should refrain from smearing feces all over their hands before serving food?), recovering from a night spent at Old King's Road, where the whiskey sours are the size of Slurpees, and reading The Blind Assassin on the porch. HBO-worthy? Hardly. And yet, last night--while in the company of an old love, who spent the evening texting his very new, and very pretty, girlfriend--I began thinking about my particular brand of pathetic. Yes, I'm almost twenty-two, and I still do basic math problems on my fingers. However, I am old enough to have an old love--old enough to know better than I did then, and to forgo most inclinations toward bathroom-crying in favor of having an adult conversation. Pity is what pity does, and I've found--quite recently--that the line between pathetic and angsty, though sometimes translucent, is actually quite firm. Pitying myself at this incredibly fortunate and free time in my life is about as effective as hiding the bag of Cheetos in the back of the cabinet in order to "forget them." (As in... not at all.)

Pathetic would have been spitting my gum in my evil stepmother's hair when I saw her last Friday. Pathetic would have been telling my friend's brother, after he told me I had a "lesbian haircut," that he had Ugly Betty braces. NOT pathetic, however, was leaving last night with nothing but a wink and a smile, marching in my front door, and watching the Season 3 finale. At least I don't watch The Bachelor.


Yet.

On the Benefit of Being a Creep

The other day, over a stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, Jeremy and I had a serious conversation about what it means to be a creep. "It's like those moments when someone holds your gaze just a little too long," he said. "Only instead of one moment, it's forever. All the time." I thought immediately of the trumpet player in our high school band, a staple in the theater orchestra, whose instrument only left his mouth long enough to sigh "wow, BLUEBIRD GIRLS" every time we walked by in our skimpy chorus costumes. I thought more recently of the man who, after subletting a room in our house, made a habit of showing up at odd hours and cooking himself food, all the while using his cell phone to snap pictures of my roommate's butt. "Did you ever think I was creepy?" asked Jeremy, allowing me just enough time to swallow my mouthful of pancake before I answered with the obligatory "no, never!"

But then I thought about it. I remembered the kid who walked around barefoot in the high school halls, dragging a baby palm frond behind him for no particular reason other than he got a gigantic kick out of it, and frequently broke into the theatre to play Beatles songs on the ratty piano. The reason Jeremy and I started dating in the first place was because he snuck into my front yard and left a mix CD on my porch. At the time, of course, I found it overwhelmingly romantic--but truth be told, the very gesture that won my heart is the same that places many a prowler on the neighborhood watch list. Which got me thinking: what exactly makes a creep, if not breaking and entering? It seems that it has to do with intention--a flighty concept in itself, and one that is impossible to pin down without significant evidence. When it comes to creepiness, many of the qualities that I find endearing in one person are the same ones that make me cross the street to get away from another. If it's all right for me to talk to Estiké as though she is a human being capable of rational thought, but not okay for the woman on lower State Street to walk her cat on a leash and talk to the person that lives in her hand, is it simply a matter of confining your creepiness to places where no one can see you? What qualities do a creep make?

Two weeks ago, I began work as a hostess at Aldo's Italian Restaurant. Essentially, this means that I stand in front of the entrance with a stack of menus in my hand, staring at people until my overly-friendly smile frightens them into asking for a table. This level of creepiness on my part has proven to have its benefits--I once convinced a family of seven to eat lunch simply by commenting on the fact that  their identical hue of ginger hair is a dying breed. Day in and day out, I smile at everyone who passes by the restaurant until my cheeks ache and I can no longer genuinely recommend anything on the menu because it all tastes like minimum wage and a wasted liberal arts degree. (Though you have to admit, "would you like an order of garlic bread?" is still a gigantic step up from "would you like fries with that?"). Anyhow, the flip side of staring down everyone that passes by is the fact that it is a two-way street: in my vulnerable position in front of the restaurant, only two doors down from Subway, I am a sitting duck in a highway of creeps. Just the other day, a portly man in a backpack--whose rainforest-themed t-shirt, I'm sorry to say, ended a good four inches above his bellybutton--walked straight up to my face and stared at my left eyebrow. "No one will ever love me," he told me, "so all I can do is drink. Will you help me with that?" I muttered something about it being my first day on the job, which it was, and continued to shuffle the menus. He eventually walked away, but not before leaving me with a knot in my stomach and the distinct feeling that ants were crawling all over my body. That same weekend, I had a Vietnam vet tell me that he "didn't want to hate me," but clearly did; sat a couple who requested a separate seat for their leather-bootie-wearing dog; and served calamari to a man who, sitting alone, declared "we'd like iced tea, thank you very much" and proceeded to sing opera at the top of his lungs.

What accounts for this rise in creepiness? Has it always been there, and I've just been sheltered beneath the Scripps elm trees--where people are more likely to ask you for your preferred-gender-pronoun than your phone number? After I got off work last Saturday, I made my way to a social dance event at SB Dance Center, where--surprise!--the average age was approximately 70 years old. Tessa was already there, dancing with someone who looked like he could be her family's witch doctor, leaving me with a man whose garlic breath was so strong that even our disparate heights--about a head's distance apart, with him being the shorter--couldn't shield me from its potency. Later that night, while we sucked down beers that cost approximately 25 cents per sip, I asked Tessa what she thought about our creepy dance experience. She stared into her cup, and sighed: "Was it bad that I had a moderately good time?"

So I guess this is what is has come to. I consider it a good day at work when I'm not verbally harassed, and our college dance careers have fizzled into West Coast Swing nights that feature Enya on the playlist.

Just as soon as I'd resigned to this thought, however, a perfectly un-creepy-looking man asked if he could join our table. "You look like you're having an interesting conversation," he told us--and I resisted the urge to tell him that, in actuality, we had devoted the last half hour to unpacking the bisexual escapades of one of our college acquaintances. Instead, we said "why yes, we are," and spent the rest of the night talking about everything from David Lynch to Infinite Jest with our new friend Joe. He had seen us across the bar, decided we looked like we were capable of holding a decent conversation, and approached us in a way that wasn't creepy in the slightest.

What was creepy, however, was invading our new friend's place of business on a day that I knew he was scheduled to work. First of all, I knew he'd be there because I asked him for his schedule and, while pretending to record some deep and meaningful thought, wrote it down on my polar bear-themed notepad. Second of all, even after going to all the trouble of driving to the bookstore where he works, I couldn't bring myself to leave the classics section long enough to say hi. And you know what? I don't even like classics. I spent twenty minutes pretending to flip through Frankenstein, a book that I would rather use as litterbox liner than read one more damn time, deciding whether I could safely make a beeline for the exit without bumping into Joe. What actually happened was this: I walked through the section he was organizing, turned beet red, and took up a sudden and all-consuming interest in a workbook on small-business finance. When he asked me if he could help me find anything, you know, the reason people come to bookstores in the first place, I mumbled something about Frankenstein and scuttled toward the check-out line. Whoever put fluorescent lighting in bookstores clearly had no thought in mind for the creeps out there, those of us who would go to such drastic measures to make a new friend that we'd buy a set of greeting cards just to avoid leaving empty handed.

Well, at least I got my thank-you notes done.

When it's said and done, I think we all have a little creep in us--some more than others. And here's the thing: it's not all bad. In fact, sometimes it leads the Joes of the world to take pity on us and buy the first round at Elsie's.

"We'd like an iced tea, thank you very much."

Last Sunday at work, an Irish couple walked into the restaurant and asked to be seated. I immediately knew where they were from, but restrained the creepiness that was dying to burst out of me by engaging in the social rituals that I knew would keep from leaving the restaurant and taking out a restraining order. I asked them how their day was going. "Where are you from? I can't quite place your accent." (Lie.) We're from Ireland. "Oh, really? I couldn't tell!" (Lie. Lie lie lie.) Truth be told, I left their table looking like somewhat less of a creep than I felt like on the inside, but with no less of the benefit of being slightly creepy. In a world where most people would rather let a potential interaction walk by than chase it down the street, it feels good to be one of the chasers. I can't say I've broken into a full-blown jog yet, but who knows--if I ever break down and get a leash for Estiké, there's no telling what side of the street I'll end up on.

Home is a Four Letter Word

Ah, Santa Barbara: land of the free, home of the SUVs that sport "Respect Mother Earth" stickers while driving exactly twenty-five miles per hour in school zones, even on weekends. I've been home for exactly five days, and I already feel the fog (and by 'fog' I mean crystal clear and a perfect 73 degrees) of Santa Barbara creeping in.

Maybe it's the fact that I've spent more than a fair share of the past few days sitting on the couch reading The Hunger Games, but Claremont--and the highly-stimulating workload that I left there--already feels lightyears away. Is it true that, mere weeks ago, I began my mornings by going to the gym and actually reading the BBC homepage that pops up when I open the internet, and didn't just use my computer to constantly update my screensaver with new and exciting photos of cats? For every poetry reading and/or lecture that I regularly attended in Claremont, I have now been to one beach BBQ populated by shirtless Swedish exchange students who manage to drink beer AND slackline at the same time, all without mussing one perfectly coiffed blonde hair out of place. Was Santa Barbara always this way, and I just never realized it, or has it taken it upon itself to use my homecoming as an opportunity to flaunt its most superficial--and naturally, most seductive--qualities?

I think part of the issue is the fact that, after years of relative non-accountability, I have moved back under my mother's roof. Don't get me wrong; it's a great roof. We have matching plates here, and little vases lined up on every surface. Plus, there are cats--and when he is not eyeballing Estiké with a look that says "I could eat you for lunch and still have room for a few gophers," Ernest is actually being pretty tolerant. Still, after one look at our whale of a cat, Estiké ran behind my bed and didn't come out until Friday. I, however, had no such option. I threw myself into the masochistic job of unpacking all of my belongings as quickly as possible, desperately trying to mark my territory in a house and a town that no longer feel like my own. Now I can't remember if they ever did.

No one ever warned me about the fact that it is entirely unnatural to live at home after graduating from college. If they did, it was probably in the context of a Nora Ephron movie in which the heroine--besides being played by someone in their thirties who wakes up looking like sunshine and wearing way too much lip gloss to be having an existential crisis--miraculously has her shit together, so the message is lost. The truth is, there is a window of time between the ages of--oh hell, about 18 and 38--where living at home is depressing as hell, especially if it comes after a period of relative freedom. Even if it is necessary, even if the home conditions are beyond wonderful, it feels like a backslide. The truth is, I love it here--I love my family, and I can practically smell them making an effort to leave me alone--but I've still found myself resorting to bizarre and extreme measures to forge boundaries. For example, I have my scotch tape, not to be confused with the communal scotch tape, which sits approximately ten feet to the left of it. I cleared out a drawer in the fridge so I would have a place to put my groceries, which as of now consists of a wilted bunch of kale and a bottle of cheap wine that I bought because it had a cartoon on the label. Mature? Hardly. But if I don't enter the house from a separate entrance than the one my parents use, if I don't dry my towel on a rack by itself, I'm afraid I'll get lost. I'm terrified that I will get gobbled up by this beautifully cushy place.

Last night, after working for nine hours straight--four hours wrangling kids at the Santa Barbara Dance Institute Show, where of 300 performers, about 299 refused to wear their costumes on their natural waistlines because it "DOESN'T LOOK COOOOL," followed by five hours hostessing at Aldo's--I came home and collapsed. Enough complaints from my shoulders, though, and I decided to do a little bit of yoga before bed--and rather than quarantine myself in my room, decided to stay next to my mom as she sat in the massage chair I brought back from school. As Elena Brower's digital form told me to let three-dimensional breath permeate my being, my mother was emitting a series of sounds that sounded like she was either being fed to a pit of scorpions, starring in a particularly vocal adult film, or both. It was awful, and I had no idea why it bothered me so much. Here she was, just unwinding from a day as stressful as mine was--clearly trying to do something for the knots in her back, just as I was--and it was all I could do to keep from screaming. Each time she moaned and grunted, I felt like an angsty teenager, pissed and hormonal and confused as hell. And why? Why do our parents make us so angry, embarrass us to no end, when the parents of our friends--even the ones who, at graduation, wore matching lime-green tee shirts and used the "official family birdcall" to announce a photo opportunity--are deemed acceptable? I can only hope that I get to embarrass someone like that someday. I hope I get to make my kids angry. I hope I make them furious when I make puns and wear butterfly hair clips (both of which I do now, by the way) so that they--like me--will want to move out and do things with their lives, and go on adventures with their parents without having to share a bathroom with them.

The truth is, Santa Barbara is a lovely place to be; and on the cool parents meter, my parents score high. They always have. The thing is, I'm afraid of getting sucked under, and losing the momentum I've worked so hard to gather. Perhaps the very fact that I'm terrified, though, is what will keep me from losing it. Plus, I've been here a week and haven't yet incorporated the phrase "cool, bro" into my vocabulary...so I suppose there is hope for me yet.

On the phone with my grandfather the other day, I got to thinking about the different expectations for old and young people. Before anything, before I even got a chance to wish him a happy birthday, he said, "Hello! I'm not sick! Still standing, doing well, can't complain!" as though the inquiry was implied by my very presence on the other end of the phone. How different would it be if every time someone congratulated me for graduating, before they even got a chance to ask what I am going to do with my life, I was able to say, "I don't know, probably walk around? I got out of bed this morning, and I'm going to go to the kitchen in a minute. Life is good!!" instead of the more standard post-Scripps response of, "Oh you know, I'm going to start a couple NGOs this summer before taking off for my 25,000 Fulbright grant to Nepal to cure cancer."

We're not that different, you know, twentysomethings and senior citizens. We both want to get up each morning and have someone pour us cereal in our favorite bowl, save us the cartoon section of the newspaper, and treat us like reasonable beings who are worthy of conversation. I think we both just want to find a little peace.