High School Reunions

Last night, I worked the registration table for a 20-year high school reunion. It was a time bomb. Mother figures with hot pink bangs. Bangle bracelets. Orange skin. Suited in body glitter like space cadets. One classmate gave us her breast pump for the night.

The men fished out their old wallets with the condom rings. They pulled their wives into domestically violent bear hugs -- those couples aren't ever having more children after the husbands collapsed the fucking birth canals.

The popular crowd crept into the event for free. They duped some clown to steal name tags. ("I only went to this school for eight months," he told me. "I'm just here to check out all the old people smirk.")

I watched the prom queen, at the start of the night, grab her man's collar and drag him away from the registration table. They didn't check in, but I wasn't sure until it was too late. They are the ones who started the whole operation, ushering a total of twenty or so big babies through the back elevator. I'm not starting a confrontation with a 38 year old dressed like a video hoe.

Myself, I was an embarrassment in high school. But I didn't know the extent of my damage then, so I felt all right. For one thing, I was pretentious about my writing. I studied the thesaurus for fun and came into high school puking adjectives down the front of my shirt. "In Lord of the Flies, everything is turned upside-down by the noxious smashed coconuts of sex drives-"

They published my gaudy book reviews in the school newspaper, and I bet my peers cringed. I would believe it if somebody told me my teachers were making fun of me to their friends at the bar and their spouses. I would now if I were them; I would root against myself as the student.

In the ninth grade, there is no benefit to the habitual mispronunciation of words like welkin, facade, cerulean. "Her eyes were orbs, ebony wood." Nor the repetition of "verboten" in a single P.E.A paragraph. I used "sanguine" on a regular basis, and it is a fact that I opened my freshman Lord of the Flies paper with the phrase "their humble tropical abode."

I'm not blaming the teachers. I take responsibility for my shit writing. Why would they want to discourage me? They expected me to get fixed in college.

ATTENTION: LITTLE SHITS

The rose garden is full of knaves and bewitching, gypsies and tramps. Whores in red satin dresses grinding the lattice. Cher plays all day from the mocking birds in my hair. We can't stop grinning, and the evil thoughts begin to chew through our chests.



The miniature house is the color of frosting AND IT'S HAUNTED

Office World

So far, the office world is not becoming of me. The collating machine is named "Hal" after the villainous computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. You have to walk over skulls and crossbones to access the paper tray.
My first week was rocky. On the first day, I made 385 copies of the wrong document. On bright green card stock. The boss lunged at me, arms outstretched, and shrilled out in desperate panic, "WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

I actually had to jump out of her way. Her freakout opened my eyes to my own demons: I'm wholly impulsive, and my emotions carry me away sometimes; they blow me up with colors, I get excited. I walk on clouds and lava, clouds and lava.

It's really fucking annoying to be on the receiving end of a fiery personality like that. I saw the future of my impetuousness in that crazed little woman's eyes.

I gave a couple of the girls in the office this whole speech about standing up for themselves. Who am I to tell them shit, I know. "If you're not respected here, get the fuck out!" I said. "You, you want to paint! Paint! Quit taking their shit."

I can see how that was irritating of me.

Women's Fiction

sigh.