last night i went to leslies for some pool and conversation. relived my elementary school years with ritchie who was there four years earlier. we had an art teacher who taught through a puppet named jenny, and, if you held your scissors incorrectly, made you walk around the room holding them the right way until she told you to stop. only she never told me to stop, and i walked around the room for the whole art class. there was also the the teacher who used to hit kids desks with a rubber mallet, not to mention hitting actual kids. they did eventually fire him, after someone sued. at least three others that made me cry on a daily basis. ah, taylor street elementary school in the 80s, you will never be missed. if these things happened today, you'd be sued within an inch of your life, not to mention losing your accreditation. it's interesting to think about, how much damage a school like that can do to the kids who went there, and how nobody seemed to notice or care that it was going on. we were the kids from the poorer side of town, with the inferior building, the insane teachers, the total lack of quality education. our playground was a patch of asphalt surrounded by a chain link fence, and two basketball hoops. it doubled as the teachers' parking lot. there was a girl in my class who didn't talk from first grade through sixth. they didn't get her help; they gave her good conduct awards and held her up as an example to the rest of us. across town there was a new school building, with grass, and playground equipment, and maybe even slightly better teachers. the inequality never seemed to bother anyone back then. it was just part of a caste system that's as old and deep as this town itself. they've combined the two schools now, one for younger and one for older kids. maybe it's different now. i hope so, for the kids that go there.
spent time talking with leslie about the fact that suddenly we get to an age when we have to either break out and do what we really want to do, or get trapped doing what we're already doing and try to make the best of it. she's trying to figure it out, and i'm taking a giant leap into the abyss in two weeks (the abyss of no health care. the abyss of no steady income, and no real money saved up.) and it scares the hell out of me. but i'm excited. the way i see it, i can keep mouldering away teaching preschool and waiting for my real life to start, or i can close my eyes, take a deep breath, and jump. i might splat; i might fail completely and utterly. but at least i'll fail trying to do something that i really want. then leslie asked me how i knew what i really wanted.
since i was incredibly young, i have wanted to write. maybe not so much that i wanted to write as that it's what i did; writing was like breathing for me. that's how i know what i need to be doing; because i can't picture myself not doing it. there have been questions about whether it was going to work out, there have been questions about whether i was really good enough to make it, but there has never been a question of whether i wanted to be a writer. even when i wasn't able to produce anything, i felt like a writer. it's a way of viewing the world; seeing people as a collection of stories, as their own walking narratives. it's a need to describe things so other people can see them, so you can always see them. it's the way i make sense of the world, putting it all down in black and white.
which i will now proceed to do with my new years eve stories. the party was at leslie's this year, fairly large but in no way comparable to the circus that was last new years eve. lots of interesting people, some that i've known for years and some that i've just met recently. some that i'd never seen before at all. lots of vodka tonics and i was feeling that all was right with the world. everything was funny and everyone was a nice person for new years eve.
my friend tim had just been dumped around christmas, and spent a lot of the evening flirting outrageously with everyone, and a large portion of it with me. if he hadn't gotten too drunk to stand up, i probably would have ended up making out with him in a corner somewhere (it's probably good that didn't happen). as it was, he ran outside and fell down on the lawn, where he promptly passed out. from where i had to retrieve him, in three-inch heels that stuck in the rain-softened ground every few steps. helping tall drunk boys walk while wearing heels=not fun.
lots of conversations with random interesting people (some of whom were very attractive), way too many cigarettes smoked in the freezing cold on the back stoop (the more vodka consumed, the less cold i felt and the more i smoked.), and for some reason, three separate people grabbed my breasts that night. angela did, after an entire bottle of pink champagne. the way tim's eyes nearly popped out of his head was so hilarious that i grabbed hers right back. for some reason we thought it would be funny to let him grab both of us. it's the first time i've ever felt like one of those girls that i call "performing lesbians." like circus poodles or something. it was an odd feeling. a little bit of power, a little bit of embarrassment and "oh god, i'm actually doing this for someone else's benefit." the third was some random girl in the middle of the drunken 80s dance party. actually, she did it twice. i have no idea why any of this happened, nor, really, why i'm telling you about it in the first place.
compared to new years past, this one was very nearly perfect. completely absent of drama, filled with smart weird funny people, and involving 80s dance parties. with new friends, who actually like me and think i'm a pretty cool person. and the best part is that with these people, i'm me, and not someone's less popular sister.
when i got home last night i had to get out my notebook and write, despite the fact that it was 5:30 in the morning by then. it feels like the dam i've had inside me for the last few months is starting to break up. thankfully, dynamite will not be involved this time.
beatpoetgrrl
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