I got a very acute and reasonable critique of my advice column. Mainly, the advice I give is too sound and should be more centered around actually bad ideas.

This puts me at odds with myself on a few levels. On one hand, I thought I was actually giving bad advice, though I was indeed trying to give pretty good ideas to people. On the other hand, I know some of the people who ask me questions and I don't want to straight up give them bad advice on things that are important in their lives. Even if I don't know the person, it seems like a fairly sketchy thing to give purposefully bad advice to people seeking help, going against some moral principle I have tucked away somewhere, I'm sure.

Alternately, if someone is actually asking me for help, then they should know to take whatever I say with a half-grain of salt, thrown over the shoulder. Right?

Hmm...Purplexion.

What Not To Do: Ask Carolyne Mistake

dear ms mistake.



i have this weird crush on my old assistant manager (ass-man), who i don't really find sexually attractive, but it's more that he was in a position of power. he's really sweet in a condescending male type of way, and also a bit of a jerk as far as how he is in relationships (having heard a lot about his last one). i'm pretty sure he'd bone me (in fact from all the sexual harassment i work, i'd say he has a big crush on me), and i'm pretty sure with a few drinks i'd bone him as well, but mostly just for the conquest. ass-man just got dumped by his fiancee so he's broken hearted and looking to score. the thing is that i'm in a relationship, but an open one. and ass-man is totally against open relationships (for himself). so should i go ahead and try and bone him? even if it breaks his heart again? or should i just let this one go? what do you think i should do?



thanks!



-debating assistant manager nookie (damn)




Dear D.A.M.N.,



What?! OK so let me get this straight. This guy was your boss, and he sexually harassed you fairly often when you worked together, and he's ugly as far as your personal aesthetics go. This may sound a bit harsh, but if he was harassing you at work, that's probably a sign that he did not have a "crush" on you but actually saw you as a vision of conquest himself, which was save to pursue under the guise of "I'm engaged and believe in monogamy." His fiance probably left him because he's one of those guys who grabs girls' asses in crowded elevators, goes to strip clubs, and flirts with every female he sees, in front of his wife, and then brushes off her complaints or remarks of hurt with, "What, I'm a man! It's not like I'm cheating on you." Let him live with his broken heart for a while. Let it consume him until he can phoenix, reborn into a hopefully more aware man. Also, "really sweet in a condescending male type of way?" Really? I suppose there's an ass for every seat, as someone told me last week. But seriously, you already have a seat, you don't need to be sticking your own ass in this jerk's face. If you needed to get your socks knocked, then maybe I'd say use him for that. Bus actually, no. No no no.




Dear Carolyne Mistake,



What do you do about stoner roomates who never clean up after themselves?



Sincerely,


Bummed in Brighton




Dear Bummed,



I have lived with stoner roommates and I've lived with cokehead roommates. While cocaine is a much worse drug and typically makes people much more obnoxious, they were much cleaner, staying up all night mopping the floors, getting anal-retentive about the dishes and the organization of the videos, etc. It's a tough call, though. I personally would probably rather live with messy stoner roommates than tweaky cokehead roommates. Especially since the stoner roommates have snacks, and the cokehead roommate just have annoying cokehead friends.



Here are some ways that have at least almost worked in the past, as far as keeping the house clean.



*Chore Charts.*

Yeah they're annoying and make you feel like you're in kindergarten, but if everyone knows they have a task to do and they actually do it, then the house will say clean, and the more people you have living in the house and participating, the easier everyone's job is. I suppose the downfall of this is that people have to "participate" which, for stoner roommates, isn't really an option.



*lessen amount of dishware."

In my house right now, we only have a couple mugs, a few plates, and a pan. Even if we gotta wash someone else's stuff, it's not a huge deal. And washing our own dishes doesn't end up being such a problem either, since there isn't ever a daunting mess in the sink, or an inviting mess that says, "hey I'm already full of stuff, why not a few more dishes? No one will notice."



*Assigned dishes.*

Everyone has a plate, a cup, a set of silverware. And then there is a guest set or two. That is what you are responsible for and that's it. That way you know that at least you will have something to eat off, and also just who is not doing their part. That makes the following step easier:



*The Classic "Dishes in Bed" trick*

This is a real low blow, but occationally needs to be done. I've never done it, but I have friends who have come home to a bed full of their own dirty dishes. Sure they complain to their friends about how awful their roommates are for actually making them wash their sticky stinky plates that have been sitting in the sink for weeks, but at least they wash them. Hopefully. If they don't they will at least leave them in their rooms so the mess is somewhat contained.



*Rotating Sink Duty*

This is the best method I've been a part of so far. It doesn't work in instances where some people are only home a little bit, so they are gone for a couple days, or just a long busy day, and come home and there's a full sink of dishes, and then the major mess maker who sits on the couch all day smoking the Wizard and watching Cartoon Network eats a pb&j and washes his glass of milk and flips the name to the next person in line. But it does work when everyone is home a pretty good amount, or at least relatively the same amount. What you do is, give everyone a card with their name on it. Stack them up on top of each other in front of the sink, so only one name is seen at a time. Whatever name is on top, needs to wash all the dishes currently in the sink. One they do a load, they can flip to the next person. So if someone walks through the kitchen and sees a cup in the sink, they can wash it and then flip it. People will be very hip to the idea of washing dishes immediately, because the longer they wait, the more dishes they will have to do.



*Move Out*

Don't live with stoners? The problem is, your movie selection and junk food supply will both be severely depleated.



You could also switch their Ganja with catnip or sage. Or, just start smoking the Wizard yourself and relax! Or, kill 'em all and let God sort it out.

Waking Up In Brookings

Waking Up In Brookings

When I woke up in the morning, Aaron was gone. I figured he must have been either arrested or eaten by bears. Wilderness is wilderness, after all, and who was I to say bears wouldn't be on the prowl for a dawn breakfast behind the Scrub-a-Dub laundromat 25 miles from the California-Oregon border. And cops are cops, and who was I to say they wouldn't get “ a hunch” from the yuppie German cyclists who locked the laundromat door on us when we tried to go in at closing to sleep, and were now sleeping themselves at the KOA Korporate Kampgrounds across the street. Aaron and I, we didn't need pools, or showers, or electricity, or stoves. We just needed each other, and maybe one more layer each of blankets than we'd thought to bring.

I'd never been to the Pacific Northwest in the summer, and I'd never been camping before. Aaron grew up camping in Eugene and told me it would be warm and dry. Obviously he hadn't been home since before the Greenhouse Affect became apparent. And where the hell was he now, anyway? When is it appropriate for me to start worrying about my dead, detained ex-roommate?

When Aaron and I first met, I liked him instantly because he said he was from Eugene, Oregon.

“Where Anarchists come from!”

“Well maybe. You're actually the first 'anarchist' I've ever met.” Then he used the acronymn “G-T-F-O” (“get the fuck out”) in a real conversation, and I knew he had to move in with me. I wooed him with exotic tales of self-defeat and shared with him my very vegan-tasting wheatgerm chocolate chip cookies, and he blushed and unpacked. Eugene may not be the Cabbage Patch for radical anarchist ELFers as I'd thought, but they sure knew how to raise a nice guy. Even if he wanders off in the bleak bluey dank dawn.

Right about the time I started to dread the bike ride back to Eugene to explain to Aaron's parents that he'd been eaten by a paddy-wagon full of grizzlies and I had to sell his bike to the kids outside the Circle K to buy enough Triscuits to get me back alive, he showed up pink-faced and smiling.

“It was too cold to sleep so I went to the diner across the street and got a cup of hot cocoa and the best pancakes I've ever had in my life!”

“Oh yeah?” I said disinterested, actually very thankful he was alive and even more jealous of the fresh hot chocolate.

“They were blueberry. Three-stack. With bacon.” His eyes rolled back in his head, and the further back they went the bigger his grin got, until he looked like a six-foot-tall, dead, pink Jack-o-lantern.

“Harumph. I'll just go to the Circle K next door, I could use a warm beverage. I knew I was looking forward to another cup of stale black coffee and a single-serving box of dry frosted flakes. Maybe a Clif Bar if I could steal one of convince the clerk to “let me have.” Likely, though, I wasn't going to eat real food for another four hours when we reached the next town and could at least buy some more bread, peanut butter, and raisins.

Back at our nest behind the laundromat — which we'd purposefully set back far enough that I could feign my first real camping experience — I packed the rest of my things to prepare for the road: rolled up the fleece blanket (which just barely covered me), folded the tarp (which was actually a picnic blanket my mom gave me in high school), and took off the sweatshirt and cargo shants I wore to sleep. Sure I was damp and shivering now, but in a few miles the sun would be out, the ocean coast would crystallize against it to reflect all the sunlight onto my increasingly less pasty skin, and mainly I would start overheating and wanting to just ride in my sports bra anyway.

We had conquered our first real obstacle. We found refuge in a town where we knew no one and no one wanted to know us. We survived without making friends. We were not arrested or mauled. And the snooty cycling tourists even waved goodbye as we pedaled into the valley, into the sunshine.

killing trees, bloated with glee

Nobody told me how nice the gym at my school is. Nobody pulled me asside and said, "hey new student who's starting in the middle of the year, in this cold dreary crampy city in the winter. You can beat those winter blues, you can give yourself a reason to get out of bed before 3pm. You can go work out in a luxurious fully-equipped gym! You can swim in an olympic-sized pool! We have saunas and whirlpools for you, and you can use our towels and showers and lockers. And if you are hungry after burning up all those calories, feel free to refuel at our smoothie bar."

No, nobody said that to me at all. But after reading 25 pages about birds in the Apalachians in winter, and after a class about short stories I had no real interest in talking about, I took that new student ID of mine and went to the gym to see just what the inside looked like.

Two hours later, I emerged into the cold snowy Victorian-era campus, elated. I sat elated in the school's cafe and read 50 more pages about birds in the Apalachians in winter. I got a cup of coffee and walked home a mile and a half in a mini skirt and fishnets and leg warmers, in the snow, grinning my little reddened face off. People on the sidewalks even tried to talk to me, saying what I think could have been something like, "Hey Babydoll, you look so happy," and other things that were not quite so positive. But my headphones were turned up high enough that I could just smile and say hello and ignore the rest, I could listen to the Malcolm X soundtrack and breeze down those frosty sidewalks to my new home.

I want to document this now, this feeling of complete joy, so when it comes February and I am again wondering what it feels like to be so merry, I can look back to not a month earlier and see it is possible. It is mid-late January and I am broke, I have not started my new job and they have not yet asked me to. I have too much schoolwork to manage and have not yet remembered how to manage my time efficiently. I am very shaky and slightly skeptical about certain social and personal issues. It's fucking freezing out all the time, and will only get colder. But still, I am walking and it's snowing outside and it's beautiful, it's cold and I'm happy, I'm busy and I'm OK, and I'm walking down the street smiling like an idiot, skipping down the crosswalk, tip-toeing through icy-smooth patches and I'm happy. I'm young and healthy and busy and happy and no matter what I still have those things. Regardless of men or boys, school or work, flat tires or cold legs. I am happy and life is good and things are going to be just fine.

That said...I am keeping my weary eye in the wind, but my soft shoulder is leaning into someone very nice and cute as pie. And I am getting my schoolwork done as dilligently as possible.

Oh, also.

I killed trees on Saturday. I went into Schenley Park with my Craft of Nature and Environmental Writing class, met with some guy I had met a few nights earlier at the Bloomsfield Bridge Tavern, and learned how to affectively kill trees. You take a tool that is sort of like a cheese slicer, and cut two complete circles around the trunk. You take all the bark off in those slices, peeling down to the orange meat of the tree. In the winter the plant is dormant and can't sap over the wound, so it scabs and in the summer when it tries to feed it can't. The roots are cut off from the rest of the plant and it dies in about two years. Sad. But it has to be done for population control. Because Norway Maples are taking over and the native plants can't thrive as they'd like.

Afterwards I went to the Eugenics and Euthanasia exhibit at the Warhol Museum and felt a strange and uncomfortable connection with my actions that morning and the actions of Germans and Americans in the first half of this century. I did not sterilize anything, I did not torture. But I did kill babies. I did kill adults. I did choose those who were not of native blood, who did not have a local geneology stemming back 16 generations. I did play God.

It puts even the ghastliest notions of history into perspective once you take the actions themselves out of context and into theory. Which is a very scary and dangerous thing, but also an interesting and (perhaps overly) open-minded way of looking at the actions of individuals and the movements of peoples.

I have another 25 pages about birds in the Apalachians in winter to read before I can let myself go to bed. So that's all for tonight.

More advice column questions coming soon. Keep 'em coming! email carolyne.mistake@gmail.com for help sorting out your degenerate existence.

What Not To Do: Ask Carolyne Mistake

Dear Carolyne Mistake,


I'm moving and I was wondering how I should go about finding a job fast so I at least have some kind of income before I get a place and a better job?


thanks,


scot




Dear Scot:



Are you currently unemployed and looking for a job to secure you before you move, or are you looking for a job in your new home? If it's the prior, then don't even worry about it. Sometimes when we move, it's not because we want to or even because we think we have to. Sometimes it's because our current situation, our current homeland, says, "Carry on, my wayward son!" and pushes us out of the next and shuts it's little nest doors. It's not malice, don't think yor current home hates you -- it's just the end of an era. So don't push it. When a city says goodbye on it's own city-terms, it has already talked to other cities to arrange for your good treatment. You will find a home because you have to, you will find food because yoyu have to, friends, a sweater that doesn't reak so bad of coffee and cigarettes - they're be yours before you even realize it. It's it's the latter, then keep some of that same peace of mind in your new home and you will find something. Your will glow confidence, a strange air of, "You know I don't even need this job, fate's got my back I just think it'd work out best for both of us if you'd hire me." Before moving, you can check out spots like Monster.com, post resumes, do searches for businesses of your interest that are located in your area-to-be. After the move, get dolled up and walk door-to-door shining those pretty teeth at every retail outlet and restaurant you can find. Then at least you will have a form of income while you continue your search, if you choose to look further.



There is always though, the completely underestimated and therefore underused marketable skill or talent that people are very rarely paid enough for or used up to their full potential. The only one who can do that is you! If you are good at making things, make them! Playing music, do it. Writing - publish yourself or create a market for yourself. Even if you are still broke and dumpster-diving for your meals, at least you'll feel fulfilled at the end of the day, which is more than most people can dream of.






Carolyne Mistake,


Alright, I am tired of working so hard for so little money. I teach 400 kids a week, and that is too much, and yet the money I make constantly leaves me broke. What should I do.


-Maeoju




Maeoju:



At least you have a job! Look at poor Scot! That said, your problem probably comes from two sides. First, sounds like your a slave to the man. You could ask for a raise if you love your job - sometimes it's that simple. Bosses often don't realize just how little that little amount they pay people is, how short a distance it stretches. You could also look for a new job. Better yet, look for a new job but tell your boss you are. First, though, I'd start being a real good teacher, make everyone adore you at work. I'm talking Letters To The President adoration. That'll give your boss someting to chew on while he's trying to justify your 50cent/week salary.



Second, how much money do you spend? And what do you spend on? Do you eat out often? Buy junk food, lots of music? There's a pattern in contemporary American society where the more we work, the more we feel validated to spend superfluous money -- And the more we feel validated by spending. We buy presents to ourselves to justify getting treated so bad. "I have a write to this new outfit, I earned it for that crummy day." Desperation comes from feeling lost, scattered, and unappreciated, ad also various levels of insecurity. And it leads to spending money to regain some control. But if you don't have that money to spend, the cycle turns into a rapidly falling downward spiral. Take some money out of the ATM. Put a little in your pocket and leave the rest, along with your card, at home. It will help you think more about what you choose to spend money on, without losing that sense of control and place. If you still are having money problems, and your job isn't worth sticking with, tell your boss to go suck an egg and get outta there. Now you are free. Now you can go ride the wave of actual brokedom for a whle, and live the easy life of selling plasma and doing sleep studies and the occational Craigslist gig. Or, you can get another job because you are clearly smart enough to teach people and smart enough to stop, and employers like that in a person.





Carolyne Mistake,

Should I shave my hair into a mo-hawk?



,Sincerely


Mildly Overwhelming Haircut Announcing Wild Kitsch




Dear Kitsch:



Cut your hair! Live the chaos! I will say a few things about mohawks though. 1)they only look good if they're over four inches tall. 2) Don't get a mohawk if you're never gonna put it up. And you have to put it up proper, not use that "my hair stands up naturally" excuse. Spike your hair with beer and a glue gun, or glycerin soap and Freeze It (tm) and a hairdryer if your a baby. 3) Mohawks are creepy and weird if you have facial hair. 4) You'll have to dye it.



So if your hair isn't very long, you can still charge it or shave half or 1/3 and charge the rest. This also help balance out stupid moustaches (occationally).



Good luck and send pictures! Oi oi oi! Up the punxs!




Dear Carolyne Mistake,



For the past few months my parents have been fighting and using me and my little brother as a go-between. I really don’t understand what they are so angry about but when ever I am alone in a room with one of my parents they try and get me to say bad things about the other one. My skin is a little tougher than my little brothers so I am able to side step there questions a little more. He has been coming to me asking if mom and dad are going to split up and spends a lot of time crying about it but always puts on a happy face for our parents because he thinks his behavior is causing them to fight. How do I bring this up to my parents or what can I say to my little brother?


-in the middle





Dear In The Middle,



You don't sound "in the middle" at all -- you sound right on top of your shit and like you know what's going on. I no longer live with my family, but I do suffer a similar dynamic even now in my old age. Only with me it is between my older sister and my mom. I startd off being a good listener, would let them vent, and often would validate their feelings against theother people. There came a point, though, where I started saying -- first to myself and then to them -- that it was not my fight and I did not want to be further involved. In my particular situation, repeatedly bringing up the following points helped all three of us:



1) They were unhealthily obsessing over the situation and were going to drive themselves insane.

2) They were not accepting the other people for who she is. They have both been the same when they were younger as they are now, and it's not bad but it cannot be changed either.

3) It was not fair to be putting words in my mouth or thoughts in my head against the other person, or especially to be venting and yelling at me all the time about the person they were each actually mad at.

4) I love both of them very much.



The last one is very important. By telling your mom, "I love Dad," and vice versa, it clearly affirms your place in the situation. That said, make sure you also tell - or show - your parents each how you love them. They may be demonizing each other in order to make themselves out to be "The Good One," as my family endearingly puts it. Both your parents know you are hearing trash from the other parent directed at them, so as long as they can make the other one worse in your mind, they can at least remain at the hull ofthe sinking vessel. Really, though, neither one is being a good parent in this regard.



For your little brother, take him under your wing and realy be a Big Brother to him, no matter how much ne annoys you. Take him out with your friends if you can -- get him out of the house and doing things that are positive and take his mind off Mom and Dad. The only thing you can really tell him is the truth. That you don't knw if they're gonna split, but that they both do love you and him.


It's hard to be open, though -- to be honest in emotionally-charged situations. Do you have an aunt or uncle who is close with you and your family? You could try hinting to them that you're sad and maybe they can talk to your folks.



Good luck! Life is hard, and families are even harder. It sounds like you're a little ahead of the game, though, at least realizing that it's something that's deeply affecting you and your brother and something neither of you can keep living with in a healthy manner.




Dear Carolyne Mistake,

My high school sweet heart and I got married right after graduation because he was leaving fro the Navy. Before we tied the knot everything was wonderful our sex lives were great we communicated and all in all got along. Now that he is away for months at a time everything has changed. When he comes home he never wants to touch me and I feel he doesn’t find me attractive anymore. He won’t talk about it but I can tell he is just as miserable as me, I brought up the subject of divorce because we literally haven’t been intimate in 2 and a half years he never has anything to say to me and spends more time with his video games than ever. He doesn’t believe in divorce but this relationship is ruining both of our lives, I’ve gained an unhealthy amount of weight and have become severely depressed, I just don’t care about anything anymore. In a weird way I still love him. What am I supposed to do?


-lonely and unloved





Lonely and Unloved:


Do you really still love him or do you just miss loving him? Even if you do love him, are you in love? If he is gone for months at a time, then it makes sense that his personality has severely changed. Has he been in any sot of combat situation? Is he emotionally scarred and shut off? Maybe you feel bad for him. But sweetheart you can't save him. You could suggest counceling, both individually for both of you, and as a couple. Even if he does not want to go to counceling, I suggest you seek it for yourself, get in better physical shape for yourself (that is important, because physical excertion releases stress and helps our brains process and remail clear, plus helps our self-images, but is very dangerous to do in an effort to win the attention and affection of someone who is dealing with his own issues). Once you feel in an all over healthier place, try to liven up your sex life, be spontaneous in ways that are comfortable for you.



If there are still issues between you and your husband that are irreconcilable, get a divorce. So what if he "doesn't believe" in divorce. I've had boyfriends who "didn't believe" in condoms. Both are complete bullshit(!!) and show the same amount of disrespect and disregard for someone's well-being. If you are unhappy, you need to take initiative. You are worth it -- if you have enough compassion to even write to a stranger like me for help, then you deserve nothing less than whatever it is you want in a partner. If for some reason you can't complete a legal divorce, you can always just leave, move on, find someone who treats you right. And if you deal with your depression and physical unfitness in healthy ways, you will have the strength to do so! In the mean time, find some trustworthy girlfriends and bitch with them about how foolish your supposed husband is acting. Also, throw out the damn play station!



Dear Carolyne Mistake...


Let's say you live in a big has been punk house, with a million people who have come and gone, loved and lost, drank and puked, the house is like a sinking ship, and the few folks left are drowning rats. Let's say, the shows were great but are no more. The partys were many and the last drunk kid finally went home. So here we are left paying rent on this shit hole, avoiding the land lord/building inspectors/ health inspector/ nosey neighbors/ wierd creeps who think our house has a completely open door policy. And lastly, our two new roomates are junkies. Now don't get me wrong, they are nice kind people who appear to be completely harmless, albiet slightly off and can't really look me in the eye for the most part. So our house is shitty... our roomates are strangers... we have no reason to exist other than to stay "warm" or at least indoors for winter. What can I do to make this better? SEND HELP or at least love. signed needles in the front yard. (for real i found one this morning)




Needles:


Abort! Abort! A living environment is directly reflective of a mental/emotional environment. Right now your soul is being filled to the brim with disrespect, clutter, addicts and addiction, desperation, and insecurity. No one can live like that and survive for long. If there were not the issues of all those people you are avoiding, along with your repeated use of the term "shitty" to describe your house, I would suggest becoming a vigilante, kicking out the junkies, and demanding respect from the weird creeps -- starting with getting a damn lock on your door!



If you are on a lease and are dealing with building inspectors and health inspectors, then you are also dealing with a slum lord and should go on rent strike until everything is up to code. Bus it sounds like a sinking ship where you will just not be able to toss bucketfills of water overboard quick enough to not drown. Move out! What is really keeping you at the house? Leases can be broken if you give a month's notice. Or you could just turn it over to the junkies -- so long as they're doped up they'll likely be happy enough having a roof over their heads. I'm sure your landlord won't mind trading names on the lease in exchange for not reporting her to the housing authorities.



And tell the junkies to pickup their damn needles! Ew! That's atrocious on sooo many leels. What is a stray dog or you stepped on it?! What if housing or health inspectors, or the snooping landlord or neighbors, found it? Ugh. I have very little patience nowadays.




Dear Carolyne Mistake:



***Someone*** sent four or five anonymous text messages to my now ex-boyfriend from a blocked number. They were really creepy, saying things like,


"Do you really think your girlfriend is happy with you?" "You watched her cheat on you once, but she's done it at least three other times behind your back," and other drama- implicating, blatantly cruel falsities. Shortly after we broke up, he received one final text from a different blocked number, since he had gotten his cellular provider to block the first number from sending him messages. It said something to the effect of, "Victory! You are a pawn in the chess game of life." Since the boyfriend did not share with anyone the personal information the texter clearly had knowledge of, that means the culprit is most likely one of my friends. I have two likely suspects in mind. Do I confront them? How do I proceed?




Someone:


Did you break up with your ex as a result of these text messages? If so, then maybe the relationship was not successful enough and strong enough to really continue to pursue. And if not, then what did break you two up? Some of the best advice I've received came from a rummy ex-lover of mine, who'd broke my heart until I had enough. Before we'd broken up but things were still falling apart, I would bring up a topic of discontent and he would reply, "let it go." In the context, it was horrible advice. In the greater scheme of the relationship, it became great and sound advice, and are now words of wisdom I try to carry in my pocket everywhere I go. Now you, too, can enjoy the inadvertent wisdom of Cornelius! Let it go, sister! Hold on to what broke you two up, and let go of the idea that the relationship is what you really want or need in life.



If you insist on finding out, for your own sense of well-being and security in your friendships, then perhaps hang out with the two potential culprits, and bring up the situation, if you had not brought it up before to them. Say something like, "So ___ got some text messages from somebody who I can only assume is a friend of mine. But I'm real glad they did 'cause it ended us a lot sooner than it otherwise would, and we all know that relationship was a dead end anyway. I just wish I knew who it was." And maybe they will say, "It was me!"



However, if you have two friends who you think would have the odacity to betray you like that, are they really your friends anyway? If you could even think they would act like that, do you really want their company and companionship? I say drop all three of them and "let it go." Otherwise, tread carefully because you could end up digging yourself a deep hole full of awkward tension from people you really don't even like too much but can no longer crawl away from.

Dirty Looks

I had made a mistake. I had miscalculated. But that was not the important thing. Well, yes it was, that was why I was in this predicament. But it wasn't the main concern. Not what was keeping me awake at night. No, what was keeping me awake at night was that I was sleeping outside and Chinatown smells like a warm dumpster in the summertime, that all the fish markets dump their melted fishy icewater into the streets and the bacteria films over the streets. It mixes with the coctail puke of young socialites lost on their ways home from Tribeca, it mixes with the empty-bellied wine puke of the homeless veterans. It mixes with everything else New York City discards, everything is overproduces and hides in the sewer systems. But there I was, still, trying to get some rest in that scum, with no success. That damn bus, I kept thinking, That damn Goddamn fucking-ass bus. I was 17, so likely those were my exact thoughts. The “bus” was not a bus but a van. A van I had found and climbed into at 7am the day before, after leaving a note for my parents: “Went to New York, don't worry, haha! Be home soon.” What an ass.

The problem was that I had already paid the driver of the van to take me home, figuring it would assure a ride back to Boston. Instead, when I eventually found my way back to Chinatown, the van's company said they did not sell enough tickets to make it worth their while to take me home just yet. But they would let me know. And no they couldn't give me a refund, and then suddenly they did not speak any English, their window shut, and I was left on that stinky curb with a skateboard, six dollars, and who could say how many hours to kill.

At least I had gotten my interview. And a few free magazines and comic books. And had met my hero, John Holmstrom. I could call him, but it would be weird. He was an older man, I was a younger girl. I was skeptical and naïve, he was...well I didn't know what he was, I had just met him hours before, and he told me all about the punk scene in New York City in the mid '70s and how easy it was to start a magazine. None of that information told me anything about how he would act when a 17-year-old girl calls him from a payphone saying, “I need a place to stay.” There was also Legs McNeil. Legs had told me I could stay with him any time I needed. But that meant I could never call him for a place to stay. So it was either the over-sized factory windowsill, the phone number of some guy given to me by a homeless man named Gerome who cried to me about his mother and how ashamed he was of himself, or wandering the streets. I never trust a man who cries on the first date, and the windowsill smelled the way I imagine human fear must smell to wild animals. So I chose to wander. See the sights. This was my Big Trip to the Big Apple. All by myself.

I made it to Union Square, about 17 blocks, and saw some boys skateboarding so I followed them, chased them, begged them with the sound of my wheels to take me someplace exciting. They led me to a park full of kids I did not know, obviously, and all they had to offer me were dirty looks. So I read my comic books. It was the middle of July and the world was open to me. Which was a good thing, because the rest of the city had it's doors closed to me, with no money in my pockets and no ID saying I was over 21. New York is not a place for strangers with no tour guide, and it is not a place for strangers with no money. It is, however, a place for heightened senses and 24-hour markets.

I skated up to Time Square, Upper East Side, Spanish Harlem. I got more dirty looks and turned around. I had no place to be, especially a place that clearly did not want me around. Back around Washington Square Park I got hungry. I had just skateboarded about two hundred blocks, total. Had wandered through the overstimulating lights, through the gaggles of prostitutes, through the kids from New Jersey trying to seem tough and through the kids from the Lower East Side I tried to seem tough to. I needed sustenance, I needed something warm. I found $2 falafel and 25-cent quarts of iced tea. It was 4am. Even though it was the middle of summer, the pre-dawn chill still sneaks into your skin and is unshakeable. I ate the warm calories and drank the cold calories and sighed for ten more blocks.

It's about this time of night when people don't let you use their bathrooms anymore. You squat in their alleyways instead. I climbed scaffolding in the darker corners of the city and pulled the string on that sandbag of weight I'd been holding in my bladder for two hours, cursing the bistros who were closed and the hotels who shoed you away. I cursed myself for being such a naïve 17-year-old and for being a girl in a dog's world. Mainly, though, I cursed the hotels that shoed me away as I looked down on them, and forgot about the rest as soon as I released my bladder enough to warm my body temperature again. Climbed down, threw my hood over my head, kept moving.

And then daylight broke over me like an egg, oozy, reactivates all the rot in the city, all the people, shoved my eyes back into my head and I smiled because I could go home now. This was the easiest goodbye, like leaving a party I'd crashed. No hands to shake or number to exchange. Just get on the bus and pretend like nothing happened. Goodbye New York, perhaps our paths will cross when I have more money.

Back in Chinatown, a bought a coffee and sat by the van's parking spot to make sure I would not miss my ride. I wrote furiously in my notebook. Gerome found me again. “Still waiting for a ride? That ship ain't coming, baby.” He handed me a flower he'd found in the street, one that had not been stepped on or sucked in by the concrete desperate for some beauty. It was a mark of life and salvation in a city that's eaten itself. He talked to some people at the counters where I was sitting. He traded my ticket with a bus company a block away. I got us each bagels with my last two dollars. I was gone in an hour.

No one on the bus wanted to sit next to me. I thought not too much of it, I was a wacky white punk girl and they were Chinese commuters. In a bathroom at a rest area in Connecticut, I looked in the mirror and saw my own dirty look staring me down. Blackened face, sullen eyes, and a mouth that had forgotten how to smile. I rinsed, scrubbed, shook my face and stared hard back at myself and laughed. Oh you little girl, I thought, You just might live forever.

It Is Here We Are Living

It Is Here We Are Living

I brought him there because he knew the place was holy to me as a poem, the place I went to be born whenever I felt like dying. If I took Elie to the Forts it meant I didn't have to tell him any of the anthems turning feral in my head, we could just sit and watch the waves and think about the end of the world. We sat on opposite benches, not saying a word to each other, not taking out eyes off the ocean. It was the only time I'd visited the Forts during daylight in the year and a half I'd lived back in Massachusetts, possibly since I graduated high school and left home six years ago. White women with perms and pleated shorts, loud children, somebody's grandmother in a windbreaker. Voices polluting the tunnels, overwhelming the graffiti. This is why I only came here at night, and rarely in the summer. That, and it was July, Red Tide, and the harbor smelled like a warm dumpster, or Chinatown in New York City.

But we had gotten there late to watch the sun set — soon we were red-washed, sun bobbing in the water, rays lining us up like a cue stick marking the cut. I felt phoenixed enough to breathe again, or at least speak. There was nothing to say, though; this was a place of no words — just sounds. For me, anyway. And Elie and I shared the same best-friend brain so he said nothing, too. We rolled down the hill instead.

We stopped just short of the crumbling concrete wall and walked inside. The whole embankment seemed to shutter with intrusion, but it was just the echoes of our heartbeats in the increasing dark. In the winter everything turns to ice. Ice foams out of every crack and hole but all it is, is cracks and holes so the whole walls swell and freeze. Our heartbeats were now encased there, and in the winter when I return I can put my head to them like a chest. In the meantime, yellow snarls had permeated the fortress. Stained with ice. Tainted with history. This place is made of echoes.

No matter what time of day, what season of year, everything is pitch black once one takes a single corner. There are hidden passages I discover every time I go, always a surprise, always darkness and secrets waiting. I wanted to take Elie there so we'd have something discovered together. Even only rooms of ghosts and prison cells that never held a captive, even only old graffiti painted poorly in the dark by stoned pre-teens. We flicked our lighters and read. The graffiti was the same as always. The ice in winter pushes oxygen from the cement structures, but not the memories. They swell and freeze like everything else. “Metallica Rulez! 4:20,” our brains said together, “1992 sucks,” “Jenny is a slut,” “for a good time, call TONY'S MOM.” Outside on the northwest platform, there's a giant pentagram every year, and every year it gets washed away by rain or maintenance, but every year it comes back.

Aerially, there is no “Fort Revere.” The top was strategically flattened and grassed for sake of subterfuge, save for the pentagram and a few very deteriorated and narrow staircases. Elie and I laid on our backs in the grass and watched the stars. The forts are a strange scientific anomaly — no matter what season it is, Orion is always hovering above, waiting for the battle that never comes. Through all my years traveling and hopelessly looking for stars to wish on around the world, I'd always felt a peace of mind once my eye could find Orion somewhere. Once I found Orion, I found the Forts beneath him. Light-years away, but still somewhere in my realm, somewhere I could somehow reach, that hadn't disintegrated in my absence. Also, my grandfather.

In the space between where the cliff of the Forts drop and the harbor waters crash hungrily into the rocky earth, there is a graveyard where he's buried. I have never once visited the grave, but I have come to the Forts alone at sunrise to perch myself at the edge of the world and cry. The water at sunrise when you're sad turns pink and mercurial, stops laughing, there is no sound but your own deeps breaths and your grandfather sobbing inside you. This night though was me and Elie, a world falling apart and being lapped up into the sound of the black waves below, Orion still overhead, and my grandfather and all the other ghosts sound, sound asleep.

This Must Be The Place/Polar Bears Must Die

When emailing or talking on the phone with friends back in Boston, I describe Pittsburgh as "all new horizons." Then I usually back that up with, "There's a movie night here every Wednesday, and game night, and brunch on Sundays, and on Thursday there's dollar-beer and then an 80s dance party, and every night the restaurants sell their food half-price after 11pm. I've started volunteering at the local infoshop. Classes are all real fun so far, I'm real into my readings and have been working on my writing a lot." Sounds impressive and full, like I will give birth to the child of Greatness who impregnated me as soon as I moved here.

I could be more narrowly centered in my descriptions of the city. Perhaps focus more on the things I do regularly, or can see myself continuing to do regularly. In which case I would have to knock off dollar-beer night, and going out to eat past 11pm probably as well. And if I'm not going to be getting drunk for real cheap, then the dancing won't be as entertaining. Also, I'm not too into "games." What's left is, I've turned into a real nerd and I'm not sorry. I spend most of my time here reading and writing. I go to the coffee shop down the street from me and drink one large cup of coffee for $1.80 and five hours of writing, reading, editing. At home I research strange pop-culture "movements." They're not actually movements at all, for the most part, but I don't know how to group together the phenomenon of The Talking Heads with, say, wheatpaste used as home decor. I decided I needed a change of scenery, so I came to the school's coffee shop to write instead. It's actually helped me focus a lot. At this point in my life, having lasted at least a solid week and a half, all I want to do with my time is write, and do things that will plant seeds in this little brain of mind. The infoshop is great for "the cause" and all, but really I am going to be surrounded by books and their sounds, the whispers of their pages flipping, the cracking of people's mouths into smiles when they come across something they have always thought but never knew they did, the occasional political-literary name-drop in a properly crowded room. Readings, discussions, book clubs. Information everywhere.

Also, I've decided to go to Trinidad. I will leave in the summer. I will be gone two weeks. It's a school trip, but still a trip. I have settled very deeply into window-seats and comfy cushions in Pittsburgh coffeeshops, but other than that I am restless as ever. I have been wanted to go for a while now, have wanted to leave America and go back to Spain, go to South America, go to Croatia and stay with old ladies who will make me food I don't eat. Etc. etc. I want it all. I want everything else.

It's snowing right now. Finally it is winter, on January 9th. Last night I fell asleep listening to Democracy Now!, which had a segment on global warming. There was a representative from Greenpeace (of course) who stated they finally got the government to list the Polar Bear as an endangered (or "at risk of endangerment") species, through threat of lawsuit or perhaps even follow-through on previous lawsuit. This is the first animal to be on the endangered list who is endangered not because of a direct and easily addressible cause such as careless hunting or overdevelopment. It is a human-societal caused endangerment. Through global warming the icebergs are melting at a more rapid pace than environmentally normal, and therefore there is no place for them to live. It is, outcome-wise, the same as developing on the icebergs and forcing the Polar Bears out, except there is no real (or at least real easy) solution, and definately not one that will instantly solve the problem.

The situation is even trickier because we are entering a stage as a planet where things are supposed to start heating up. There are geisers around the world showing the increased heat and pressure below our feet. Scientifically, the seasons should start shifting slightly. Il Nino is largely the result of natural causes, from what environmental scientists can tell. But where do we draw the line, where do we start accepting blame? And when do we start pointing fingers and demanding changes? Much of the changes needed are so systemic, at least here in the United States, that they are short-term impossible. Harold Ford bought out all the railroads to shut them down and boost the automobile industry, setting up highways for people to drive from state to state, rather than taking the more fuel-efficient train. The Deisel engine was initially invented to be run off cleaner-burning processed vegetable oil but was redesigned by corporate politicians to keep automobiles running on gas and oil. We have become an almost exclusively technological community -- my parents even do all their financing and banking via the internet. I communicate with almost everyone I know through the computer. My parents' neighbor in Boston has her groceries delivered to her by a company she orders from through their website. Another website comes and picks up her laundry for her. Everything is tech-no-logic-kill, to steal the term from some band from probably the '90s. This woman's click-of-a-button lifestyle right now seems outrageous to me and possibly to even more mainstream, moderate fence sitting types, but give us a few years and this will likely just be "the way things are done."

This has been often played off as a more ecologically sound way of doing business. Using computers, the internet, cellular translation of information, etc. But this is only true on a very surface level. When I email someone instead of writing them a letter, I am saving the paper of course. But there have been whole countries blown up for the sake of mining the Coltan mineral, which is found largely in Africa. There have been countless lives lost in civil wars fought over who gets to mine, tribes and communities raped and destroyed by the political corruption stemming from outside, from the US and northern Europe. Canada also has a ready supply of Coltan in their soils, apparently, but try telling the populous that we are now going to tear the Canadian forestry to shreds so we can keep using out cell phones. Nope. Not gonna happen. Additionally, there are extremely dangerous pollutants and toxic emissions from factories of digital mechanisms such as computers. Scary.

And there're really not all that much to be done, on a grand-scale level, to change things. the path has been laid out for the past hundred years, and has only been spreading into more intricate designs that would be next to impossible to backtrack upon and erase like that broom puppy in Alice In Wonderland. Even to spread the word of these things, technology has to be used, the world has to be polluted, the icecaps have to melt, and polar bears must die. Newsletters no longer work in our lifestyles. Radio broadcasts are largely audienced through podcasts nowadays.

I have no answers. I have a cup of miso soup and a head full of words and a bicycle, and that's about it. And really, I suppose that's all we can have. Just a knowledge of the world at large, and a dedication to ourselves to not fuck things up anymore than they're already fucked, so much as we can help it. And to try to be at least moderately good people. Smile at strangers. Tip the kid at the coffee shop. Shop at farmers markets or whatever comes closest in one's community. Take the bus or ride a bike whenever possible. And don't hate yourself at the end of the day for all the things you did and didn't do. That's all I can really expect of myself, anyway.