Back in Halifax

Well, it's nice to be home. Lonely, but nice. Come home, Us!

I managed to forget records, Heath Bars, publicity picture of Marlon Brando, and my razor. Boo hiss. Packing drunk and maudlin at 4 am? Baaaaad idea.

Plus, I had an interesting flight. By interesting, I mean verrrry baaaaad. I went to bed at 4.30ish, woke at 6 with a mean hangover, got on a small scary plane at 9.25 after standing in lots of huge lines. There was a small child sitting behind me who kept kicking my chair and giggling, so after about 20 minutes of this, I turned around and snarled that I would feed it to the wolves unless it could be quiet and wellbehaved for the rest of the flight. It shut up, but its mother glared at me. Oh noeses! I was doin that bitch a favor too. Couldn't parent for shit. And then the beverage cart came around and they had no tonic water and they served Beefeater, which I cannot consume on the rocks because it sucks too hard, so I had vodka and sodas. How the hell do you have soda water but not tonic? In retrospect, I should have had a gin and ginger. Only one, though. Ouch. Then I had a nap on the shoulder of the middle-aged guy next to me, who appeared to be involved (according to the spreadsheets on his computer) with the timber business. I napped on a white-collar lumberjack!

In the Halifax airport, I tripped spectacularly over a bench and was therefore questioned extra-hard by the customs agent who saw it because no sober human can trip over a bench, right? I MUST be on the drugs. But I caught the shuttle and then made J.D. help me drag my bags up the hill.

Oh, and the flight was all along the coast. It was beautiful. I was awake when we flew over New York and now have seen Coney Island for the first time. Admittedly, from like a mile up.

Open Letter

Dear DC,

If one more lobbyist-type pushes past me to get on their train at Metro Center not during rush hour, before I have had my breakfast, I will hunt down and devour him or her. On the Metro, natch. No eating in stations be damned.

I resent the self-important assholes who assume that because I am not dressed in appropraite business attire my life is not worth preserving. That it is ok to jab me with briefcases or totebags containing dress shoes so they can make it on the train quickly enough to colonize an entire seat. Having the whole seat makes it that much easier to contemplate life as a soulless jerk who would kill puppies with cancer to get a photo with Hillary Clinton to put on the desk ("Oh, yeah, Hil's great. I had a chat with her just..."). Lookit, you're probably a mid-level blister plauging the buttock of democratic bureaucracy. I am, admittedly, an unemployed student (not even an intern, horrors!) but I have feelings that say being hit in the gut before noon with a bag and without an apology isn't that cool. Ya ain't that important.

Some cities are rude. But DC is the only place I can think of where having a Brooks Brothers suit or an Ann Taylor dress is enough to make you a higher being excused from having even basic manners.

Love,
Julia

Dummy dummy dummy

How long will it take for me to realize that very few people of gender: male have intentions towards me that aren't kind of skeezy?

Walks in the still summer midnight with a boy you assume isn't "interested" because he wasn't in high school are hazardous to little Julias. And "let's listen to blues and smoke" never, never just means that.



[I think the solution is to become tremendously fat. Like W.C. Fields. Maybe I can get a cigar and a chuckle too.]

Fine, I won't feed the ducks

I can't actually feed the ducks in Central Park because I didn't go to NY. Because the Boy's potential employers totally didn't get him a hotel room. Because they were being hateriuses. And I had no desire to sleep on a stranger's tiny couch with a Boy, even if he is snuggly and fairly compact. And because my coreligionist, Alice, is going to NYU and has promised a proper bed and touristing if I come to visit her. WINS!

So instead I have attempted to find I. (who may be dead) and talked to S. about the beauty of her love for a boy named (no joke) Gustavus. And walked around DC with a cactus planter looking for M., who may never actually be at his workplace.

Also, I have drunk pink sparkling wine with my Dad and talked about Hume. For a long, enjoyable time.

And talked with Mum about how I shouldn't be "having an affair" but that I am old enough to know what's best for me, hopefully. I know that I'm setting myself up for heart-squelching at some point, but it really seems worthwhile. Hopefully.

Plot, chuckle, repeat

So, my best-beloveds, I am going to be back in the Hali later than expected: arriving 1ish on the 24th. Does the house still not have a phone? Cause I want to call you, ADiz, for the plots re: moving and getting all the stuff we no longer have, like couches. And to hear your lovely voice, of course. And we need a night of drinking and ridiculous dances of joy. I'll make a playlist to this effect. You too, please?

And I'm back up to NY, NY [insert dancing sailors] with the Boy, who is being headhunted by a really objectionable publication that might move him there. Boo hiss. So he gets to work and interview and I get to roam an unfamiliar city. But it has a subway system, even though it has confusing numerical stop names (not neighborhood or landmark names like DC) and smells like hobojuice. I want to get eaten by penguins in Central Park! So I get a mini-vacation from being an unemployed roustabout and will actually have to (horrors!) put on pants. Or a skirt or whatever. Just to keep people from seeing my bum.

But, um, plotting: I'm trying to engineer visits from Chaz, my awesome little brobot, the Boy (who, ADiz will be happy to hear, also enjoys rocking out to AC/DC in kitchens. Hot'n'nasty 3-way danceparty?), and maybe, with luck, S., the gorgeousest of my highschool chums. And I am attempting to find a record player online to then ship up to Halifax. Nothing good enough yet, but I'll ask the guy at the Crooked Beat if he has any suggestions.

And I'm reading Tom Jones, after finishing To the Lighthouse and , um other stuff this week. I know I've been reading, but I still feel like bad lit majors.

Ben Jonson! I read like 3 of his plays last week, too. I stopped when one had a character named Haterius. We need a fish or something to name Haterius.

"Man, I know this is boring, but don't be such a Haterius about it."

New favorite

My new favorite excuse for a guy's being unable to fool around:

"I'm sorry. I... just can't kiss you. I'm thinking about Prince."

This beats the hell out of "Well, my life is really complicated" or "I'd hate to lose you as a friend".


Yes, the Boy and I did watch Purple Rain, why do you ask? Amazing. I am totally in love with that falsetto-crooning, lithe-hipped little man. And I'm not talking about the Boy. I would so trade him for Prince.

Guys, we need a Movie Night to End All Movie Nights involving Purple Rain, Thriller, and Stop Making Sense. We could add in an Elvis or Ritchie Valli movie if you think this is too limited by era. Please? We will be the rockingest, in an 80s way. Why hasn't AC/DC made a movie?

Tragedy!

Guys, I think Melvin is dead.

And I don't know if I can get a student loan.

And the NRA woman hasn't called back.

And my hair is Prince-backing-band big.

And Mum isn't coming to Halifax.

And I still haven't found a record player.


And all of my problems are kinda silly.

Missing you

Dear Us+,

I made Thai red curry today with some baby eggplants Mum got for me. It was nice- I had a glass of red wine, almost lost a finger chopping carrots, used a whole block of tofu for the proteins- and then I realized after I made it that no one else in the family likes eggplant. So I need you all to come and eat curry.

I am serious. My whole family dislikes eggplant. So you must come.

Love,
Julia

So, list form makes things interesting, right?

Last week, in cheery list form:

• Thursday: Went to Ben's Chili Bowl with S. Ran into I. en route, dragged him along. Fun and cheese fries had by all! AND lots of girl talk which I., our token boy, started.
  
• Friday: M. from the Bookstore's (he "wants to be like Jenny from the Block") Birthday. I honestly can't remember much of this, except that I liked his friends and their kittens. One person I met there is arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court this month. One is buying real estate in New York- I'm not sure how, exactly. And there were kittens of variety grey and bitey and of variety black and fuzzy. And a cake. And M. was wearing a lovely skirt and blouse combo made all the more lovely by the fact that he is a burly man with a beard.
• Saturday morning: On the Metro, drunk, at 3am, I ran into Nick, with whom I went to high school, where we disliked each other. We walked around Cheverly for hours talking about stuff. I promised to go hiking with him.
• Saturday: Bought an alarm clock. Crashed local party. Got bored, left. Only after drinking other people's drinks though. Like highway robbers but in suburban rec rooms. Nick pretended we hadn't spent the morning from 3-6ish singing the early works of the Jam and smoking my cigarettes.
  
• Sunday: Church. Boy came back, though sickly.
  

That was about it. This week was the normal popsy routine plus being nice to sick Boy in ways that weren't overexciting. And Wednesday, I lost his cousin and her boyfriend. I had been entrusted to take them a-touristing. I left them in a museum at 5 because I needed beer and pool after making sure they knew where the nearest Metro station was and where the Boy lives. They didn't have a phone with them and didn't show up at his place til 11, after we'd spent the last 2 hours calling back and forth, debating whether or not calling the police would be ok. And cousin and boyfriend both are intelligent adults, well older than us. But DC is having a CRIME EMERGENCY!