Make Your Dreams Come True

I have strange dreams. Strange enough that my father asked me to stop telling him about them, which seems like a waste of a perfectly good in-house therapist, but I get it. My subconscious can be a rather psychotic place, and it can't be entirely pleasant to know exactly how crazy your daughter is. So now I just write them all down in a notebook I keep next to my bed.

They've been really vivid lately, incredibly real. And very clear when I wake up, which is fairly common when I don't sleep in my own bed, but it's been happening regardless of where I find myself at the end of the night. Like, last night, where I fell asleep in my own bed watching 'Sons of Anarchy', with Baylor tucked into the crook behind my knees (he insists he can fit there). Overnight I dreamt about taking pictures of a multi-colored house in JP (a house that actually exists, albeit with a calmer palette) and coming home to read 'The Bippolo Seed', a collection of lost Dr. Seuss stories (that is real, and that I own). The only part of the book I read in the dream was the dedication, on the back cover page.

It was so real, that when I woke up, I checked the back of the book to see if that was, in fact, the actual dedication. Of course it wasn't, this book isn't dedicated to anyone, it's a posthumous collection of lost stories, silly faces, but I liked it so much, I wrote it in anyways. It went like this:

"This book is for Sandy and Paul, who love each other very much. Or would have, had they ever met. I knew Paul for years and years and years; everytime I saw him, I told him how much I loved how much he loved Sandy. Or would love, were they ever to meet. But then Sandy got sick. So they never met. But this is still for Sandy and Paul. Who love each other very much."

And it made me want to say: for anyone reading, now, or in the future, to anyone reading: I love you very much. If we haven't talked in years, if we talked yesterday, if we haven't met yet, if we'll never meet: I love you very much.

Pay My Automo' Bills?

I talk with my friends about lots of things: love, family, books, other friends, music, food, dumb shit you've done, dive bars, vacations, and of course, money. Inevitably, someone says something like "I might have to dip into my savings," and I'm like "What the hell is that seven dollars going to save you from?" And then it's like, 'Oh, man, I am super fucking poor.'

I mean, no, of course I'm not actually poor, I realize what a great situation I do, in all reality, have, with my job and roof and groceries and health insurance. I also realize I got myself here all on my own: it's my swirly little signature on all those student loan papers, and it was 100% my own decision to walk away from any sort of stable, lucrative career path. So it's more like...luxury poor. Something I should feel bad complaining about.

I've never been good with money. I am an alarmingly impulsive person, which means that everything makes sense in the moment. I figured those two conditions would reverse themselves with time, but that does not appear to be the case. I've also always been of the opinion that faced with a choice between having fun, and not having fun, you should probably go ahead and see what's behind Door Number Fun, because we're not here for that long, man, and you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. You could! People get hit by buses every day. 

A few years ago, I was walking down Newbury Street, talking to my dad on the phone. It was January, and I'd just gotten out of work. It was dark, but warmer than I expected, and the lights along the sidewalks were on, and twinkling, and sometimes Boston at night in the winter is just exactly the way a city is supposed to look. I was on my way to see the Roots (and  ?uestlove DJ set!!!), and everything was perfectly right with my world, if just for that moment. And my dad said:.  "You know, it's something I've always admired about you. No matter what's happening in your life, you always manage to have a good time." Which seemed like an odd thing to say, but I get the juxtaposition now: I couldn't have afforded a meal in of any of those Back Bay restaurants that Tuesday night, because I'd spent all my money on concert tickets and a new dress. And I wasn't concerned in the slightest.

Because really, what should I have done that evening? Sat home and ate soup and watched television until a reasonable bedtime? I will always remember that show, that night, the music, my friends, and yes, the dress I wore. I have scores and scores of these memories: nights when I did not do the responsible thing, and in a thousand tiny ways that have all added up: I am so much better for it.

There's all kinds of odd happiness on this track: I don't get paid much, but my job is relatively easy and rather pleasant and I get to walk around and look at old buildings, which is one of my forms of therapy. I get to write all the time, and no one really cares how late I am in the mornings (a source of not-insignificant strife at my last job). My apartment is hilariously broke-down in a lot of ways, but there's a ton of space and a porch and Baylor likes it, and though I never would have guessed it, I've grown to love my neighborhood a little.

That's not to say there aren't days - LOTS of days - where I'm like 'this paycheck-to-paycheck nonsense needs to STOP, you need to get your shit together and get an adult-paying job and an apartment where the doorknobs aren't constantly falling off and maybe a car. At least a bed frame!' So then I look for jobs, and there either aren't any, or aren't any that pay substantially more. Or, like today, I find one that does pay really well, and I'm probably super qualified, but it's in Alexandria. I GoogledMapped that shit, and the trip takes over an hour and involves a bus AND a train. The tiny, rational adult part of me is like 'Come on, Katie, you could do --' then the part of me that inhabits my actual reality is like 'OH HELL THE FUCK NO' and I close the browser window in disgust.

Then I think 'maybe I should marry a rich old dude, or something, just to have someone take care of me'. And both the rational-adult and actual-reality parts of me take a pause to fully consider this, because I'm lazy and that sounds sort of cool. And maybe it would make my dad worry less. Then actual-reality points out that I'd be really unhappy, dependent on someone else like that. Also, that's gross. Rational-adult part chimes in 'plus, you're like, 31 now, so the dude would probably have to be REALLY OLD.' Double gross.

So I guess...luxury poor it is, for right now. Have as much fun as you can, make the best memories, and appreciate the freedoms you do have, how lucky you actually, truly are. Oh, and look both ways when you cross the street. Those city buses do not play.

ps: That said, anyone who knows a really awesome, non-gross rich old dude....we can talk, is all I'm saying.

Ms. Darling If You're Nasty

Saturday morning, I woke up with two other people in my bed.

No, not like that. Like this: G's housemates were gone for the weekend, the house has mice. She didn't want to stay alone. She came over around 1.30 on Friday, and as we were getting into bed, girl-talking about the night, her phone rang.

"I always get nervous when the phone rings this late," she said. "What if it's an emergency?" (Note: she is a far better friend than me, the girl who routinely turns her phone to 'silent' on weekend nights, lest I be disturbed for a moment once my head hits the pillow.)

She answered. It was H. And it was an emergency, sort of. He'd left his keys in New York, his car at the airport, his credit card at the bar. His roommate was nowhere to be found, and his doorman's keys weren't working. Or something.

So he came over and the three - four, if you count Baylor at the foot of the bed - of us had an impromptu sleepover, complete with the best kind of giggles, the ones that slip out just as everyone's trying their hardest to fall asleep. It was fairly pleasant rest, considering the crowd, considering that I sleep on a queen-sized box-spring-and-mattress-on-the-floor situation. The next morning we woke up around 10, laughed about our nights, looked for socks.  It was pretty lovely. Here's the thing, though: G is 27. H and I are both 31. Baylor, though none of it was his doing, is 60-something, in dog years.

When my parents were 31, I'd already been around for a while. They'd had another kid. They'd bought and sold a house. They owned a car. They knew how to take small children on a vacation. They could balance checkbooks back when that was a thing that people literally did. (Everyone just uses the computer now, right?)

I count myself among the ranks of friends who still aren't sure what they want to do when they grow up. Who thinks about going back to school frequently - which is a perfectly fine endeavor to take on at 31, there's no age limit to learning, but it's perhaps an interesting sideways move for people who have already gone to so much school. I am frequently only able to locate one shoe of the pair. I have nothing saved. I am physically unable to leave the house at the same time every morning, I swear I see a different group of people on the bus every day. My parents still pay my cell phone bill. (Which I appreciate the hell out of, guys.)

I was running through all of this this morning - waiting for the bus, late to work as usual - and thought: what the hell happened? There are so many of us, grown children pretending at adulthood, like if you could see our inner selves we'd all be tousle-haired six-year-olds playing dress-up in our parent's closets, swallowed up in suit jackets, clomping around in Mommy's heels with lipstick drawn outside the corners of our mouths. I certainly have friends with spouses and houses and cars and babies who've arrived, or with storks on the horizon, but I am still solidly attending Camp 'A Positive Would Be A Negative'. At a certain point, it's easy to start feeling...if not 'bad', then 'less than'.

I've commented on it before, this generational dilemma: the path of our myriad opportunities led us right to a post-adolescent inertia. In the face of so much everything, you pick nothing. Or one thing, but only for a minute, because there are so many other things! My parents didn't have the same options: they had to do something, so they just did it. Is there a sort of freedom in that? Or is this just another freedom that I'm not appreciating: this ability to do what I want, when I want, to still have all these options on the table. Is that 'less than' feeling just the product of a little fear, a little nervousness, because there's no real template for this kind of life? What you were 'supposed to do' was, for so long, really what you 'had to do'. So of course that's the Normal. But now...

There don't seem to be immediate answers to a lot of my questions. Which makes me think maybe it's not about answers, maybe it's more about perspectives, and enjoying all the things you do have, and forgetting for a minute about all the things you should have done.

On Sunday morning, G and I were in her kitchen, making egg scrambles and mimosas, dodging new mousetraps, when she said: "I would think some people would actually be jealous of our lives." I popped a piece of avocado in my mouth, she stirred the egg whites. The bird squawked from his perch, Baylor sniffed at my feet for dropped morsels of goat cheese. Outside it was beautiful, blue skies and fall sunlight warming treetops that have just started to turn orange.

"You know?" She asked. "Because this is so much fun?"

And she's right about that much: this has been so much fun.

The Middle

I've told you about the beginning.

Now we're in the middle.

The middle is okay.

The middle is the part where you write new things. You re-write old things. You find new songs. You find new meaning in old songs. You see new people. Otis and Aretha have never been more relevant. You still drink too much and eat too little. You wear old, stolen shirts to walk the dog at 1:00 in the morning, asking him if he has too much energy to sleep. It's all you, though. You know.

The middle is when you have days you wake up smiling, so full of life even when it's raining, especially when it's raining. Your life is full of more love than you ever could have believed.

The middle is when you have days of sadness that knock you out so hard, you can barely leave your room.

The middle is when those sad days have you calling people you love, and they fill you in ways you couldn't have imagined. You call crying, you hang up smiling.

Maybe the middle is what it's all about. I have dozens of unfinished stories: perfect beginnings, heartbreaking endings, but they're empty because I've never figured out the middle.

The middle. The middle is the hardest part.

I Swear, I Read Them For the Articles

Yesterday, one of our board members was in the office, doing what-ever-the-hell-it-is-he-does-when-he's-in-the-office, and, on taking in my outfit, said: "I don't think it's fair I have to wear a suit through this heat, and you get to run around in your fairy clothes." And my boss replied: "You know what's unfair? That women have to wear high heels." And I thought: "You know what's insane*? THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION."

Later, I was reading an article in GQ about a Spanish bullfighter who'd been gored through the eye and returned to bullfighting. Besides being pretty much the most fascinating shit ever, it was brilliantly written. By Karen Russell! Who I love. A few months ago, I read a profile - also in GQ - of James Deen, also fabulously, fabulously written - by Wells Tower, another of my literary super-crushes. Benjamin Percy writes for Esquire.  The list of incredible writers who've published short stories in Playboy - Marquez, Nabokov, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood - is daunting. And then I started to get a little upset.

It's been years since I opened a Cosmo, or any of its ilk, so I can't say for sure, but I do read their covers in the grocery store just like everyone else, and I would be straight-up shocked to find pieces by say, Zadie Smith or Dave Eggers, a new story from Junot Diaz sandwiched between articles about keratin treatments and '85 Terrible Sex Tips We've Published 300 Times, Slightly Reworded'.

There's nothing wrong with articles about fashion and make-up; listen, I personally could talk about eyeliner for a goddamn hour. Probably longer. I also love bracelets and dresses and tips on deep conditioning and looking at pictures of shoes because that shit is awesome. Being a girl is the fucking coolest. But that's why I'm upset. Because pretty stuff is super fun, but we also need content. Real, 'use your brain and dissect this weirdness of the world' content. Which I've found sorely lacking in 'women's magazines'.

And then there's the tone. The men's magazines - which I am literally 'reading for the articles' because sometimes there's like, a four-page spread on tweed jackets and scarf pairings - just don't seem to have the same pall of negativity. Women's magazines are mostly a list of shit you're not doing right because of stuff you don't have. Men's magazines certainly do that, too, but you can skip those parts and get to the...wait for it...content.

I don't know man, people much smarter than me are out there analyzing this shit right now, with results they didn't just completely make up, but I think it has a lot to do with the general culture of sickness and self-hatred that is like, frustratingly pervasive among women. You can't just tell people what's wrong with them and call it a day. You have to feed their brains so they have weird, fascinating things to think and talk about besides purses and mascara (which are FINE to talk about sometimes, I actually want to talk about my new mascara a lot). And skip the parts that tell you how you have to be. I don't know about that whole suit thing - that seems to be some cultural craziness that everyone's signed up for, but sweethearts, you don't have to wear heels. You don't have to do anything.

Demand more, ladies. I think it'll make us all feel better.

(Also, if you want sex tips, put down that inane Cosmo already and just consult a slightly older, slutty friend. Boom. You're good for life.)


*Also insane to me: that man spent more on lamps last month than I'll make in a year and a half. And can we PLEASE with the fairy bullshit.