Really. After almost 15 and a half hours of the 21st century, I'm rather tired of it. I want to go back to the 80's, when life was good, and I was a toddler. No responsibilities. No privileges, but still no responsibilities. I don't need a girlfriend, I can make do with a wax replica of Maggie. They are both equally cold and inactive.

Tell me about it. My girlfriend just told me that I might be unfit to raise children because I was insufficiently enthusiastic about painting the walls of my duplex.

Not to be rude or "my-life-is-suckier-than-yours", but at least your girlfriend talks to you. After the party at Doug's house, we waited outside for my parents to pick us up. We exchanged a few words about how the lighting looked from outside, then she walked off and sat on Doug's porch. Leaving me standing in Douglas Calhoun's front yard, alone, at 12:43, January 1, 2000. Happy Freakin' New Year, Maggie.

<sarcasm> You weren't gung-ho about painting? Oh no, better call Benjamin Spock! Oh, wait, he's dead! Then get one of his kids! We have a major potential parenting crisis on our hands! </sarcasm>

But....but...it's not the millenium yet....

Maybe so, but Maggie is still acting weird.

people in rural arkansas are acting weird. a friend sent me this email about his trip to visit his family over christmas: arkansas story number one: i think i mentioned the couple friends of mine that were putting the moves on to do something as a threesome last time i was there. this time i was at their place watching a movie (actually, their place means his parents basement). she goes to bed and he comes back and says that although she has started her period we can go in there and fool around if i want. i pour a fucking huge glass of whiskey and ten minutes after drinking it tell him i'm about to pass out so he'd better take me home. arkansas story number two: over at a friend of my brothers drinking piss beer. he has been getting phone calls from this psycho chick all day. her story...something like got divorced some months ago, then had a new boyfriend afterward...well, one night they're sitting around getting drunk when he pulls out his 30-30 and blows his brains out in front of her. she has been fucked up ever since. so we go to her place. she is passed out naked and he says i should take pictures of her since i have my camera. wasn't able to do that, she woke up. she sees that i have a camera and grabs her camera. i take it away and shot pictures of her as she puts latex paint all over her face. i took her roll of film. haven't gotten developed yet. apparently the thing to do these days in the town is to shoot up crystal. i think the last thing one would want to do is be wired and awake for a few days with absolutely nothing to do ('cept maybe shoot some guns).

Yeah thet crystal meth is fine shit man, as enny fool kin plainly see. Yo' kin sno't, smoke it, rub it on yer gums like skoal ah reckon. Th' bess thin' though is ta git yerself a syringe, pop a vein an' shoot thet shit. Thet's when th' real fun begins, stayin' up fo' days on ind jackin' up da Camaro, fuckin' yer galfriend, her friends, yer sister, a couple a times yer brother, th' houn'dogs, yer neighbo''s houn'dogs. Then pickin' yer hide t'git at them bugs unnerneath. Take a razo' an' carve right fine designs in yer hide. Then git pareenoid, cuss it all t' tarnation. Load an' reload th' guns.

And beat up your mother,dump your son,and shit on everyone.

hey ya'll pokin fun at me ?

hey. I wrote that long, stupid, boring story with the pictures. warning: the links include pop-up ads. new year's eve 1999 he finally called. I knew he'd been blowing me off, but this was the test. if he didn't call me on new year's eve, then that was it. I'd talked to a friend in seattle earlier in the day. it was her test too. and her man failed. so she was going to get some x and go dancing with friends. I wished I had plans. when he called, he told me he'd be at the 1201 at 10 p.m. I asked if he wanted me to go there and he said yes. I believed him. but I wanted to see other friends first. just in case the world ended. I got dressed up in a tiny little outfit that a ukrainian woman had made for me in kiev. it was made of black french silk embroidered with silver and white. I had gotten too little fabric for her to make me a dress, so it was a small sleeveless top and an even smaller skirt. and I loved it. I had bought new black underwear at post-christmas sales, and the bitch boots were finally broken in so I could wander downtown without hurting. I wondered what to put in my purse. a miniature mag-light flashlight. a miniature bottle of smirnoff's. smints. fancy petroleum-free lip balm. eyeliner, lipstick. wallet. a disposable camera. contact lens case filled with solution, just in case I ended up spending the night somewhere other than my friend karen's house, where I planned to leave a whole change of clothes. matches. around 7 p.m. I realized I had very little time to go all the places I wanted to go and get to 1201 before they closed their doors at 11. so I left for my friend shannon's house and on the way realized that I'd forgotten exactly where she lived. I remembered that she lived in the shadow of mt. tabor because I told her that her house would be the first to go if it ever blew. I'm always expecting rioting, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. but I had a flashlight; I was ready. so I stopped at my friend andrew's house to call her and get her address. as usual, he was cranky when he opened the door. "haven't you heard of pay phones?" his supposed girlfriend supposedly was upstairs, supposedly taking a nap. I'd never seen her before, but there was a black purse on the dining room table. I hoped to have time to meet up with them downtown later. (I didn't.) shannon's boyfriend was making lemon drops when I arrived. her two-year-old son was running around, occasionally trying to sneak crackers from the platters on the coffee table when he thought no one was looking. shannon was vamped out in a black outfit and silver wig; her boyfriend was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I took the first photos with the disposable camera shannon had given me as a christmas present earlier that day. her boyfriend, who is a cook, gave me a lemon drop, served in a chilled martini glass rimmed with sugar. lovely. I had two then got cut off. shannon put on a cd of hits from 1979, and I danced with her son to "heart of glass." she laughed at me. "you never, ever used to dance." now I love to dance. I love to take off my clothes and dance for people. lately I've been told I should be a stripper. "you would make so much money," he said. if I weren't so terribly flawed, maybe I would. I opened the door to their bedroom and danced in there in front of the full-length mirror. the lemon drops helped me enjoy what I was seeing. you look good, I told myself as I put on a little show. "get out of there," shannon called. I came out. "what's she doing in there?" her boyfriend asked. "it's the only place in the house with a full-length mirror," she told him, looking at me. shannon, my oldest friend, is always discouraging me from admiring myself. we're jealous of each other. I think she's settled and content, and she thinks I'm wild and carefree. of my two mom friends, she's the one who never wants to hear about my pathetic exploits. the other wants to live vicariously through me. so I left their house to go visit my other mom friend. I picked up karen, my companion for the evening, on the way. I knocked, saw her through the window in the door, and let myself in. she was in the bathroom, curling her hair. she was wearing a satin shirt and velvet pants she had made herself. I'd never seen her wear makeup before. my other mom friend, katrina, wasn't dressed up at all. she had decided a few weeks earlier that she would stay home on new year's. we all had black butte porters, and I went into the living room to say hi to her usually sullen husband. "it's not the new millennium, you know," he said. "yes, but it is the new year." I can't think in terms of millennia anyway. it's the end of the '90s. those were the years of my young adulthood. it's the end of the 1900s. this was the century when things started changing quickly. was there anesthesia 100 years ago? antibiotics? I know there weren't any freeways. television. man-made satellites. computers. space travel. cloning. atomic bombs. we went back to karen's house, which is on one of the bus lines that was scheduled to run all night for free, and smoked a bunch of pot. when we went off to the bus stop, I realized how out of practice I was. some grownups who looked like they did not normally take the bus were trying to figure out if they had enough change to get on the bus. I told my friend that those people didn't know the bus was free. so she went up and told them it was free. "how can she just go up and talk to people?" I wondered. "they must know we're stoned." we got on the bus and a young guy went up to the front of the bus and asked us all to smile while he took our picture. after he sat back down, I copied his idea but just got the backs of everyone's heads. I was hoping to have to walk a while to get to the first bar, but the bus dropped us off a block away. all the close-in downtown bars were charging covers, and I was supposed to try to get us in free because the bouncer had once chatted me up, bought me a shoeshine and given me his email address. I had written to him a few days earlier to ask if the bar was going to be open. he said yes, with a $10 cover, and asked me who I was. I told him, then asked if he remembered me, and he said, "OH BOY DO I? You're the woman who's been haunting my haikus." well, that's encouraging, I thought. we didn't really want to hang out at that bar, but we really had to go to the bathroom. I didn't want to have to try to be charming with a near-stranger while stoned, but we couldn't waste much more time outside. especially with all those cops around. "they must know we're stoned," I thought. so we went in and I introduced karen to the bouncer, who was very nice but before I even asked (which I wasn't actually going to) said he couldn't get us out of the cover charge. I was very disappointed to find out that haiku muses had to pay $10 to use the toilet. but at least I was already drunk and we hadn't even bought any drinks yet. a bag pipe band was blocking our way to the bathroom, so we sat down and got some water. the bouncer came up and talked to us for a minute but I don't remember what he said. we watched some other people charge through the bagpipe band formation, and I told karen we should follow their lead. there were two other women in the bathroom, one in a stall and one standing by the mirror. I let karen use the other free stall. the woman by the mirror smiled at me. I looked at my reflection and said, "this lighting isn't very flattering, is it?" "that's just what I was thinking," she said, as she fluffed her bangs out over her forehead. she was a little bit pretty, though too old for such long, red, cheerleader hair. her friend, a short woman with a pinched face, came out and hurriedly washed her hands. "at this point, I don't really care what I look like," she said in a tone that was half-joking, half-hostile. I think she meant that to sound like she was too drunk to be bothered, but I doubted that she looked in mirrors very much anymore at all. "how many more new year's eves before that's me?" I wondered. our seats were taken when we returned. but a guy at the bar shooed away a woman who was about to sit down in one of them, and he and his buddy made another man shift one seat down so we would have room to sit by them. we didn't protest their rude maneuvering because we didn't want to have to look for seats. I think we exchanged names. we ordered margaritas, and I took their picture (which didn't turn out). "years from now, your grandchildren are going to ask, 'who the hell are those two guys in this picture?'" the forward one said. I smiled at him and said, "I'll tell them that they're those two really nice guys who bought me and karen drinks on new year's eve 1999." he laughed and told his friend that we had ordered margaritas, asked him if that was ok. I think they may have even checked their wallets. I turned away from them to talk to my friend. the bartender took forever to get us our drinks, and by that time the two guys had left. "those schmucks just totally dissed us," I told karen. I didn't realize it then, but the whole night was turning into a personal morality play, with me playing the part of Bitch. in act one, I'm high and mighty; in act two these random guys let me know I'm nothing special. we left for the 1201 to meet my friend, whom I had been going out with a lot of recently. we messed around a lot but I couldn't take him seriously. he acted like he really, really liked me. he said he missed me a lot when I was in ukraine. he said he wanted me to be his girlfriend. but I said no no no, just friends. when I got drunk I would say really mean things to him, tell him why I could never like him for real, remind him that there were other guys. I told him we could sleep together but he shouldn't kiss me because it was too intimate. most of my friends didn't know him by his name because I always referred to him as "bakery boy." one time he told me he had overheard a conversation by some girls who were discussing the difference between "doable" and "datable." he asked me what the difference was, and I just laughed at him. it was my new year's resolution to give him up altogether. but I was starting to fall for him. as new year's approached, I started wondering if I couldn't just give it another couple weeks. I asked myself what was so wrong with his being a 27-year-old skateboarder/waiter who slept till sunset and spent all his money on pot. after all, he was cute. karen and I left the bar and headed for the 1201 to meet him and his friends. there were zillions of people lined up to get into pioneer courthouse square, where the city's official celebration was being held. on the way we saw one fight and two vomiters. I wanted to take their pictures but some inner sense of courtesy and decorum prevailed. weird. we got there late but my friend still wasn't there. we sat at the bar because karen thought the bartender was cute, and we ordered more margaritas. he told us about his christmas vacation in new jersey and I asked if I could take his picture. he was really nice and seemed flattered that I asked. at this point I become an unreliable narrator because I got really drunk. I'm uncertain about the chronology after this. my friend and his friends showed up; they had a temporary last call from 11:30 to 12:15; I had a long island iced tea; I smoked cigarettes. I asked my friend if he liked my outfit and he said yes. I remember that he pulled my skirt down a little; I had stopped caring that it got hiked up when I sat down. I think it was just before midnight when he told me we couldn't sleep together anymore. alcohol amplifies my mean, happy and sad, and I had had so much to drink that I started crying right there at the bar as they started handing out the champagne. he was supposed to kiss me but didn't. I waited with my eyes closed. still he didn't, not for real. not like that stranger was kissing my friend karen. he said I'd thank him for it later. I didn't understand why he was saying these things, that he really cared about me, that I was too good for him. I was too drunk to recognize these trite and obvious blow-off lines. however, I wasn't so drunk that I didn't see parts of scenes from "gone with the wind" in our interaction. I used to read that book over and over, and I used to classify people I knew as characters. I always knew lots of ashleys and melanies, but there were never many rhetts. [from "gone with the wind" by margaret mitchell: Yes, she would let him kiss her. But he made no move to kiss her. She gave him a sidelong glance from under her lashes and murmured encouragingly. ... 'And I shall kiss you, as you seem to expect it,' and leaning down carelessly, his mustache just grazed her cheek.] I thanked him for the mini-drama. "I don't think this even classifies as a mini-drama. we were never even going out, were we?" "no, but still." it was enough to make me cry again, anyway. I don't remember when exactly we left. karen exchanged phone numbers with a stock broker and danced with a cook, while I smoked and tried not to cry over this drama of lilliputian proportions. I thought of myself as a dictionary illustration for the word "maudlin." karen tried to call a cab inside the hilton, but I think they told us to catch one of the limos waiting outside. I don't remember the rest. just that I felt even worse the next day.

Well I'll be dipped in shit!

Cyst, has anyone ever compared you to Aaron Cometbus?

is that some subgenius thing?

oh. zine guy. no. never heard of him till just now.

If you get a chance, you should read him. He's good. So are you.

you're nice. the next day he told me he'd found a girl who was actually interested in him and wasn't just using him as entertainment. and I lost the opportunity to make a huge mistake.

if I were to write my own version of "life's little instruction book," it would contain something like if anyone ever tells you that you're too good for them, it means they're interested in someone else.

I feel bad for you, Cyst, but he did the right thing. I sympathize with him. Cyst - don't take this the wrong way, but has anyone ever used you before?

C'mon Cyst! Isn't this the same guy you'd posted abt before/whom you told flat-out that it wd never work out btwn the 2 of you? Then when he takes you at yr word & finds someone else/you get miffed? You're way too sophisticated for that. Get up right now/put on yr shortest skirt & yr favorite pr. of fuck-me heels/go out for a drink/& you'll have a new man before I get off work tonite. If you wanna play the femme fatale/you have to accept the fact that every once in a while/the game plays the player. (Besides/you were way too fine for him. The Rules say a woman cannot be more than 50% better looking than the man she's dating. Unless/of course/he's loaded. Which this guy was not.)

yeah, that's the guy, r.c. I am completely aware that I got what I deserved. well, not even. gee, I don't think anyone has ever used me, because I don't ever put myself in that position. I guess I was sort of using him, but I never misled him. I'm not mad at him at all. I spent some time feeling sorry for myself, but that's getting difficult. it needed to end, and he just beat me to the punch. instead of going out tonight I went to the gym to work on the ass. tomorrow I promise to wear my shortest skirt and my new super-tight sweater. I'll be too busy talking to my friends to pick up guys, but I'll try to tell if I get any looks. I know it's wicked to play femme fatale. I should stop. I'm totally ready to have another nice boyfriend.

Don,t waste your time Cyst.

It's not "wicked". It's just abt gamesmanship. Which everyone outgrows sooner or later. Look/it's nice to be the "It Girl" in certain situations. But Cyst/we all know how beautiful you are. (And I'm not being nice here. I saw yr black undies shot/& Christy Turlington & Linda Evangelista ain't got nothing on you, Cyst. Don't even consider stripping! If you're willing to shave a few years off your age/get Patrick to whip you up a portfolio & yrself over to Ford or Elite. I'll bet you a pitcher of 'Ritas that they'll sign you.) My point is that w/great beauty comes great responsibility. You know that a few days of flirting/a little personal attention/from a woman as stunning as you will are have most guys over the moon in no time. Having that kind of power over men is one of the perks of being a beautiful woman. But when you see a guy is abt to fall for you like an avalanche/you have a responsibility to turn down the volume on yr va-va-voom & give him a chance to get away before the hook is set. Otherwise/you're playing with people's emotions. And *that* is wicked. Besides -- why waste yr mojo on schmucks? Save yr powers of persuasion for someone who's really worth yr trouble.

It's not "wicked". It's just abt gamesmanship. Which everyone outgrows sooner or later. Look/it's nice to be the "It Girl" in certain situations. But Cyst/we all know how beautiful you are. (And I'm not being nice here. I saw yr black undies shot/& Christy Turlington & Linda Evangelista ain't got nothing on you, Cyst. Don't even consider strippin! If you're willing to shave a few years off your age/get Patrick to whip you up a portfolio & yrself Ford or Elite. I'll bet you a pitcher of 'Ritas that they'll sign you.) My point is that w/great beauty comes great responsibility. You know that a few days of flirting/a little personal attention/from a woman as stunning as you will are have most guys over the moon in no time. Having that kind of power over men is one of the perks of being a beautiful woman. But when you see a guy is abt to fall for you like an avalanche/you have a responsibility to turn down the volume on yr va-va-voom & give him a chance to get away before the hook is set. Otherwise/you're playing with people's emotions. And *that* is wicked. Besides -- why waste yr mojo on schmucks? Save yr powers of persuasion for someone who's really worth yr trouble.

if anyone ever tells you that you're too good for them, it means they're interested in someone else." Fuck-all if that ain't the truth.