I CAN'T Forget the Lyrics

This morning I woke up in a mood so fabulous I was like "it must be Friday!" Not exactly, but kind of, because on real-Friday (tomorrow, would be an easier way to say that) I'm driving Baylor and myself up to the 413 for the first time in a YEAR, and I'm kind over the moon about it.

First, of course, I have to make a few stops outside Poughkeepsie and New Britain to take some pictures for work, and I am almost guaranteed to get lost, because at the rental car counter, I'll reason: 'You know what, I am an independent lady with a fresh stack of GoogleMap printouts, so I don't need to rent that GPS for the week'. So, tomorrow, some of you might get call from me-in-tears, reaching out from the wilds of Western Connecticut because I'm lost and I'm hungry and I really have to pee. You'll only have to help me with the first part, but I get really emotional when I have an empty stomach and a full bladder, so you'll hear a lot about those last bits. Get excited!

That probably sounds like a really shitty time, but it won't be, because I will be listening to the radio. I know, who listens to the radio? I do. I fucking love the radio. Hot 97 - or whatever the regional variation on that station is - makes me so happy. I love bad r&b. I love mainstream hip-hop. I love how bad r&b and mainstream hip-hop are actually good sometimes. I love all of it.

But sometimes (often) I get so caught up in the catchiness of a jam, it takes me like, eighty-five listens to realize that it makes absolutely no sense. And then I obsess about how nonsensical it is, and that's really fun for me because I'm a nerd. Usually this happens in my head, or only to the people in my life lucky enough to get one of those 'I am lost in central New York and I just drove to the LITERAL end of a road, like it just ENDED, and I have to pee so much and all I've had to eat today was blueberries and I think I sat on one, so now maybe the back of my dress is stained, oh my god, I can't pee outside, where AM I???" (Pops, I'm kidding. This never happens. Ever.)

Anyway, these three that are so straight-up befuddling, I thought I'd share.

1) Bedrock - Young Money

Yeah, I realize this was on the radio a billion years ago. So I have been pondering the following lyric for approximately a billion years.

Nicki Minaj's verse: "Okay, I guess it's my turn/Time to put this pussy on your sideburns."

I'm sorry, what? I mean, I am open minded as shit, but that particular sex act makes no damn sense. Does she mean like, she's a female MC, so open up your ears as she delivers vaginally-powered rhymes? That's as much as I can do with that one. But even that's unsatisfying, because if that's what she was going for, couldn't she just have rhymed 'year' with 'ear' instead of 'turn' with 'burns'? I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE DOING WITH YOUR VAGINA, NICKI. I mean, not like it's really my business, but you were the one who brought up sideburns time.

2) Five O'Clock In the Morning - T.Pain, Lily Allen, Wiz Khalifa

Okay, this entire SONG makes no sense. WHO IS TALKING TO WHO? I get that they may all be telling a different story, but even the thread linking them together is madness. Like, okay:

"It's 5:00 in the morning, the conversation got boring." Okay, I'm with you.

"You said you'd go into bed soon/So I snuck off to your bedroom" Wait, in the middle of the conversation? In which the intention to go to bed soon was announced? That's abrupt. And wait, whose bedroom? Boring Conversation Guy's? Why don't you just go together? Anyway, that's hardly sneaking, because...wait, where are you having this conversation? Near the bedroom? Are you at a house party or something? Because later Wiz talks about coming home from the club, so...did you abandon the conversation, drive to your man's house, and then like, break in? Whatever's happening, this is the most poorly executed 'sneak off' in history.

"And I thought I'd just wait there/Until I heard you come up the stairs/And I pretended I was sleeping/And I was hoping you would creep in..." WHAT ELSE WOULD HAPPEN? Dude TOLD YOU he was going to bed soon. Also, this is his bedroom. Just get into bed authoritatively, man. LILY'S OBVIOUSLY NOT ASLEEP YET, it's been like, thirty seconds. Unless she just passed the hell out, in which case, there's no need to creep.

T-Pain and Wiz do not go on to shed any light on the matter. I just hope these three never get accused of a crime, because they cannot construct a coherent narrative.

3) I Love My Bitches - Rick Ross

I cannot tell you how much time I've spent thinking about this lyric:

"Am I really just a narcissist/Because I wake up to a bowl of lobster bisque?"

Well, the simple answer is no, man, you're cool. A penchant for cream-based shellfish soups is mentioned nowhere in the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (Actually, I think they might have taken NPD out of the most recent DSM entirely? Doesn't matter. Bisque consumption is not a criteria. )

Now that we've got that cleared up -- what the fuck kind of question is this? Where in the world does lobster bisque come off as a narcissistic thing to eat? The only way this question makes ANY sense is if Rick Ross is entirely confused about the definition of either 'narcissism' or 'lobster bisque'. Or both.

A more appropriate lyric might have been 'Do you think I need a nutritionist/Because I wake up to a bowl of lobster bisque?' Seriously, Rick. Lobster bisque for breakfast? You really want a heavy, cream-based sodium bomb to start the day? Or do you wake up from naps to bisque? Either way. I don't know how you expect to keep running through jungles on that diet.

And I've been operating under the assumption that this bisque is being served to you, but alternately, if you're passing out mid-bowl, you can't just wake up and resume eating the bisque, Rick. You need to refrigerate that shit. Food poisoning is not boss.

Seriously, this is the shit that goes on in my head. So surprising I get lost all the time, right?

Girls, Girls, Girls Pt. 5794

Right before I started second grade, my parents moved us back to Amherst for the second, and final, time. I remember my first day at Wildwood the way I remember the first day of everything: I was really anxious, and really bored.

When you grow up in a college town, there are always new kids in class. In the fall of 1988, this crop included myself, and a French girl whose parents were visiting at Amherst for the semester. They were living on Lincoln Avenue, the gorgeous street downtown where the college keeps some grand old houses for visiting professors and their families.

I don't remember much about her. What I do remember, I don't trust. But my brain says she was petite and blond with skin like milk and a perfect petal mouth and she wore blue dresses every day. So, yeah. If Madeleine and Bridgette Bardot had a baby. Whatever. She wasn't imaginary.

Anyway, I love everything French, and her - let's call her Madeleine Bridgette - eighth birthday party is probably why. Don't even talk shit. I call them frites, bitches.

This party. I want to say it was in November. There was a scavenger hunt where we each had to follow a different colored string that wound through the house. At the stairs - the amazing, sweeping central stairs - a massive tangle derailed the hunt as 15 second-graders extricated their string from the yarny cluster-bang, but no one CARED, because they were the kind of stairs people dance down in musicals. The yarn, when finally untangled, led us all to different - but equally wonderful - prizes, scattered under old oak and maple trees, concealed amongst the rhododendrons, nestled against the mossy side of rocks.

And they fed us radishes. I don't think I'd ever had a radish before (at seven! The shame!) Madeleine-Bridgette's father cut one in half, sprinkled salt on the skin, and handed it to me. I think I ate like, four. Then I demanded my parents buy me radishes to sprinkle salt on and devour. (That's how I know it all happened. Whenever radishes are brought up - which isn't that often, but more often than you might think - my parents remind me of this.) All their soap smelled like lavender. The windows were leaded glass, and there were pillows on the floor of the living room, like you were supposed to sit there.

When my parents came to get me, I was not feeling going back to my American house to watch Back to the Future Part 2 for the eleventy billionth time*.

School let out early the day before Christmas break. We lined up against the door, waiting to be dismissed, or however they did that shit. When we finally were, Madeleine Bridgette broke from the line (I think we lined up by buses? I walked to school - when no one cares when you leave, you stand at the end of the line) and ran back to me. She hugged me hard and kissed the side of my face twice.

"Goodbye, Katie!" she chirped in that ADORABLE accent all foreign children have. "I will never see you again!" Then she kissed me again and ran out the door. I remember leaning back against the wall and thinking "How would she know that?"

Because she just did, I guess? It's been 23 years, and of course she was right. I don't even know what reminded me of this. It's just...how many people do you say goodbye to, totally accepting - expecting - that you'll see them again whenever you'd like? That this is your show, you pick the players? Nah, son. We've got no control over anything.

Also, how fucking cool are French people? Girlfriend was seven years old and dropped some truth that took me TWENTY THREE YEARS to process.

Madeleine Bridgette, I do wonder where you are. I hope everything's turning out wonderfully. Hugs, baby girl.

** That is a straight-up lie. I love BTTFPT . I enjoyed every viewing. On Saturday mornings, before Pops woke up, Beets and I made cushion forts while watching Biff's alternate reality play out. If I remember correctly, we had some pretty advanced conversations about the space-time continuum for people too small to reach the cereal without climbing on a counter.

Global Warning As a Madeleine

It's like, 65 degrees out right now. All the bars along Wisconsin have their storefronts and doors open. That new place, Mason Inn? I guess they have live music sometimes. I usually only see them setting up, but tonight when I was walking Baylor by, someone was seriously getting his trombone on. The door was wide open, and the wind was blowing, and it was warm, and the bouncer smiled at me, and Bay looked back at me like 'yo, this seems cool', and all of a sudden I was 24 years old, walking him down Magazine at midnight, asking the door guy at Balcony to keep an eye on him while I ran in to buy Camel Lights out of the vending machine.

It lasted all of five seconds, but I almost started crying right there on the sidewalk.

Sometimes I can't remember why I'm not back yet.

Stranger In My House

Perhaps you've seen some of the recent press devoted to the epidemic/trend/bias word for 'observation': lots of people live alone these days. More than ever before, I guess. And it's making some people weird.

Like, really weird. I read about one dude who so delighted in the 'freedom' of living alone, he took the damn doors off his bathroom. Dude, I mean...I'm glad you're so comfortable, but this also suggests that you're at a place where you've stopped considering even the possibility of entertaining guests - or, really, any other human beings, ever - and that doesn't seem like a great sign.

I don't know how they do it.

And I'm not even really a 'people' person. In theory, I am full of love for all people and things. In practice, I hate like, 90% of everyone. Hate them a lot. I also really enjoy my own company. (Convenient, no?) Most things that people want company for, I really, really like doing by myself:

- Shopping

With the exception of Miss D, I really hate shopping with anyone. It takes too long. I only really care about what I want to buy. I want to be able to get really neurotic and try one thing on four times without judgement. Sometimes after two minutes in a store, I'm like 'fuck it, I don't want to shop right now, I want to talk a walk by myself and look at buildings' and if you're with somebody, that's hard to explain. It's also crazy selfish and flighty, so why put that on someone else?

- Going to Museums

I LOVE museums, and while I enjoy them with other people, I only truly LOVE them by myself. It's impossible to find someone who dorks out over the exact same shit you dork out over. Sometimes it's cool to have someone nearby, so you can exclaim 'OMG they have four Reginald Marsh's here!!!' except then they're like 'who's Reginald Marsh?' and that's fine, but still, Reginald Marsh! I'm going to check that out...by myself.

- Having any Kind of Spa Treatment

You know what I would LOVE? A hairdresser that did not feel the need to speak to me. I have so much anxiety before every haircut. What am I going to talk to this person about for 45 minutes?!?! It's why I don't think anyone needs to have breakfast with strangers - perform your service, and let's get out of here. We shouldn't have to make up common ground! The only time I've ever had a regular hairdresser was when I lived in the North End. This lady made my hair look fabulous, and was completely indifferent to me and I LOVED her for it. Then she moved and didn't really say goodbye, and oh my god I loved her so much.

But living alone? Uh-uh. I've done it for a month at a time, tops, and it's always awful. I drink so much! I hallucinate faces outside the windows constantly (probably not helped by the drinking, I know) I get glued in one spot. I don't get anything done. I watch entire seasons of America's Next Top Model that I've already seen. It's a total fucking meltdown. And I guess I'm lucky in that I've had pretty excellent random Craigslist experiences. Maybe it's weirdish, but it also seems like a really human thing to do. Like we're all this band of survivors who got out of our mid-20's without our living situations figured out, and now we have this weird little community in the New World. I don't know, it's not that dramatic.

Back in law school, my friend T extolled the virtues of solo living: "You can eat toast in your panties at 2am!" And as cool as that sounds, not once in the seven years since she dropped that on me has 2am rolled around, and I've I been like "I wish you motherfuckers did not live here, SO I COULD JUST SIT HERE IN MY UNDERWEAR AND EAT THIS TOAST IN PEACE." Like, seriously, most living situations I've been in, I'm pretty sure everyone would have been like 'dude, if it means so much to you, knock yourself out."

Certain things just seem unnatural to me. I guess living alone is one of them. Actually, besides living, I think there are only two other things I CANNOT DO by myself:

- Go to the Movies

This is not unnatural to me at all, I just can't do it. I don't know why. It's not like you can talk to someone during the movie anyway? Probably it's the post-movie discussion. If I'm paying $10, I want someone to chatter with afterwards. Also, I need someone to tell me what happened while I was in the bathroom. Oh, I totally get why I don't go alone.

- Attend a Party/Wedding/Function Where I am Expected to Mingle and/or Network

Oh, my goodness, I HATE doing that shit on my own. I tell people this and they're like 'but kk, you love parties, you love talking to people, you love...' Actually? I don't. Actually, I'm cripplingly insecure with a rabid case of social anxiety that I refuse to accept, so I end up drinking, and then I'm really fun and I do love meeting you and talking to you, but also, I'm drunk, and would you rather just go for a walk and look at buildings?

People + Buildings. It just always makes sense, to me.