Update on the State of Me

I look like I have a black eye in this photo, hidden by the pillow, 

but in fact I'm just getting old and sometimes I look all puffy.

   1) I am a terrible person who only updates her blog once a week now, and when I do that, often it is just to promote my book (which you should buy) or to cryptically talk about things that cause my mother to send me passive aggressive emails in which she begs me to never drink again, or tells me she will never give me another cent if I get another tattoo. I hope my mother, possibly the only reader of this blog left besides Mark, understands that I do in fact censor myself quite frequently for the sake of her heart. Just recently I even uttered the words "out of respect for my mother" at a party. I hope this gives her solace. I understand that my life at 33 and her life at 33 are now irrevocably different, and she must feel some of that separation, of no longer being able to relate to her eldest daughter's lifestyle from any perch of experience. That pains me too, a little. Part of me very much wishes that at 33 I was married to some community activist, with a pretty little blue eyed baby girl, delivering home births and planting an urban garden. The fact that I now know several very wonderful people who do have this lifestyle is nice, and reassures me I'm not a completely sinful bastard. But alas, Mom, I still can't bring myself to get a dog because it means having to come at certain times, and also limits my moving options. So husband? babies? The last email my mom forwarded to me was some chain letter about the joys of having grandchildren, and she very noticeably mentioned that my SIBLINGS might relate to it, which I think means she is at last giving up hope. This next bullet point should assist with that.

2) I recently found myself in bed with a 32 year old North Carolina boy who is kinda country, has smiling blue eyes, is a non-fiction major who wants to write about race, and who raps. Like, musically. Also in bed with us were two huge bear dogs. Dogs that were actually bears, swear to god, giant huge shaggy bear dogs. He is a very nice man, who I hope I will be friends with for a long time, so his nickname here will be The Columnist. When he confessed that the music link he had sent me which I had not listened to yet (because I intended on sleeping with him, and didn't want to be persuaded otherwise by whatever was behind that link) was him rapping, I laughed. It is to his credit that he understood I was laughing out of the sheer weirdness of the moment, and not directly at him. He handles his ego very well. If I was lying naked in bed with someone and I told them I wrote, and they laughed? I would probably hit them and then start crying. I feel like that has actually happened in the past...
He told me he had a crush on my nose. I'm not in love with him, but I do love that.
I still haven't listened to his rap though.

3) This was not the first moment this week that I had that feeling, like I now lived in an entirely different dimension than the one I came from. The dimension made of wood and ceramic tile, instead of steel rebar and stone. The first was actually last Thursday, when I did two stand up comedy mics - first at Nutt St, which I do every week, and then right after at a gay club called the Toolbox. I had just posted a promotion on facebook, and I had this moment of thinking - here I am, I'm 33, I'm single, I'm childless, I work at a co-op and go to school with 21 year olds, and now I'm standing here drunk on Long Islands on the dance floor at this Southern gay club which is located literally across the street from the port, in a sequin dress, a microphone in my hand, telling jokes about dating, and cats to an audience consisting entirely of old gay guys, and comics. WHAT. At no point ever in my life, not as a little dorky child or a weird freaky high schooler, not even during my Raver Kid days, did I EVER conceptualize this is where I would be at 33.  It's not bad, it's just so weird. Almost like there were no clues this was coming, but I guess anyone looking at my nail polish this past year would know differently. Also, I did already own that sequin dress.

4) School is going really well. I love it passionately. I turned in my first horrible terrible no good paper. Every other paper I've done has been an A. This one, if there is any fairness in the universe, will be a D. I'm not worried about it, I know my grade in the end will be fine, but I'm embarrassed about it, because I just read a short story my teacher sent me, and it was really good, and I want her to think I'm pretty good too because she's my age, and if I wasn't in her class, we would be peers. It's weird being friends with your teachers, because when you turn in dreck like that, it feels like I just let one of my friends down. Like, if Sarah had asked me to bring a birthday cake to a surprise party, and I forgot, and then bought a bunch of Little Debbie snack cakes at the corner store to make up for it. So now I'm working extra hard on this next paper, which is a case study of McSweeney's Publishing. When I read through these websites and journals now, I have this strange sense of this no longer being some inaccessible art form. Like, when I watch television, I don't think to myself - I have to participate in this world.  But now any form of literature I read, I'm thinking exactly that, it's a combination of ambition and guilt which causes me to work it turns out. Maybe this is all happening now because that's how long it took me to build up enough guilt in my life to motivate me. Which, geez, between Mom, the Catholicism, the lying thing and the fat thing, how much fucking guilt do you require as my sacrifice, Universe? I'm just a very large river stone I guess, and I require a flash flood of guilt to budge me from the riverbed, but once I start going, there's no stopping my momentum and there's no predicting the amount of damage I'm going to do once I start hitting the villages.
I have started being worried I am a terrible writer. Also, simultaneously, I am worried I am an amazing writer who will never work hard enough to show anyone that. It's like my ego and my shame are inflating at the same rate, and they are both terrible black cloud bubbles that will rub up against each other until the friction causes them both to pop, and then I'll disintegrate into some clear blue vapor or mist. I keep wearing lots of blues, to make myself more real and valid, but in fact blue is the color of skies and water, things that don't hold a shape.

5) I am coming home for Spring Break. I'm still not sure how I'm getting there, but I'll be going up at Reddstone on 3/4 for Chucklefuck, and then the next night I'll be back on the Awkward Sex Show with Carey, so you can come to those to see me. Expect me to be pretty much exactly the same as you remember me, except way more tired and way more broke and pretty happy.