Mr. Jackson If You're Nasty

The summer before my 2L year, I walked into the New Orleans LSPCA a little after 4:00 in the afternoon, looking for a puppy.

My roommates were still gone, and would be until right before classes started in a few weeks. I was lonely. (I've never denied being emotionally impulsive.) Besides, I'd wanted a dog all last year anyway, I lived a five minute walk from school, in a big, wonderful house with a little backyard - it might never be a more perfect time for a puppy. And it didn't feel right, living in a house without a dog. I'd always had dogs, I was a dog person.

That's what I was looking for: a dog, some charming mutt of unknown provenance, a puppy that would grow into a hefty canine, one that would take up space in my car, on the couch, in my life. There had always been a dog. My parents adopted Onyx, their pointer/lab mix three years before I was born. She guarded me when I crawled around on my baby blanket, wouldn't let strangers too near without my parent's permission. Simon, the massive Rhodesian we adopted the summer before ninth grade, slept outside my mother's bedroom door nights my father was working in Boston, keeping an eye on all of us, on the street outside, from the top of the stairs. We had our own special thing, too - he protected the hell out of that house, but never blew up my spot when I snuck home late. That's what I was looking for.

But it's not what I found, those puppies were a mess, either sickly-looking, oddly-tempered, or like they'd grow up to be about purse-sized. No, no, no. That wouldn't do at all. So I turned around and started back. You can try again in a few weeks.

The puppies were at the back of the building, so I had to walk through a full row of the adult dogs to get to the door.  I kind of said hi to them all, but didn't pay them much mind - I wanted a puppy, someone I could know from their start. I was three-quarters of the way down the line of kennels when, on my left side, a stocky brown dog who'd been sitting patiently, stood up on his hind legs, and pounded the cage with his front paws. Not aggressively, just a 'Hey! Over here!' Then he sat back down, and looked at me.

He was adorable. Chocolate brown with a white streak down his chest, big liquid eyes, a face shaped like something between a heart and a square. He didn't bark, he didn't pace. He just looked at me. I read the card pinned to the cage. His name was Hershey, he was about a year old. He was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix. I'd never even heard of that before.

The staff starting coming out through the kennels - it was almost dinner, time for everyone to go. One woman saw me standing where I was and stopped. Her face lit up, slowly, almost cautious. 'He is a great dog,' she said. 'Great.' I nodded. 'We're closing now, but come back tomorrow, take him out.' I said I would, said goodbye to the dog, and left. I don't think I'd planned on coming back, but the next afternoon there I was.

I took him outside, and he was friendly and sweet and all, but kind of...aloof. He wasn't fawning all over me just because I happened to be there. It was cool to meet me, but let's all be reasonable. It was weird, but I kind of respected the hell out of that. And, let's be honest - there's nothing I love quite like an emotionally unavailable man.

The staff was thrilled. They were all in love with him. He'd been there for months, after being left in the parking lot with a chain around his neck. They'd put him in a children's camp program, brought him around as a breed ambassador dog. They could not figure out why no one had taken him home.

And that's the story of how I met the dog we now call Baylor Jackson, canine homie extraordinaire, the oldest soul I think I've ever encountered, and every single thing I was looking for the day I walked into that animal shelter. We had to spend too many months apart that next year, because I went a little crazy, and then nature went very crazy, but otherwise, we've been together ever since. I picked him up in Houston, after Katrina - a friend's aunt had taken him in, one of the greatest kindnesses I've ever experienced, for which I am eternally grateful. She fell in love with him too, of course. When I showed up that night he was fat as a pig, she'd been cooking him his own dinners, full plates of food. She gave me a gallon-bag of frozen turkey on our way out the door: 'he loves my turkey.' He sat on my lap the whole drive home. My legs lost feeling somewhere outside of Lake Charles, but I didn't care.

In the end, it didn't matter that we didn't know each other from the beginning. I'll never know what happened to him that first year. There are clues - he still has scars on his ears, and one on his head if you know where to look. He's not a big fan of tall men, and he hates it when people give daps. HATES it. There's something about knuckles-hitting-knuckles that upsets him deeply. So no, I don't know, exactly, but I have an idea. And it doesn't matter. The day we met was it's own kind of beginning, for both of us. You can start over anytime.

We made his birthday August 12 - exactly a month between my brother's and mine. Which means he will be ten this year. Ten. He's grown in a grizzled bit of old-man beard, but otherwise he's largely the same. People on the street regularly ask if he's a puppy, actually don't believe me when I tell them, which is hilarious to me, that would be the weirdest thing to lie about. And now, nine years down the line, I think about that puppy lesson all the time. You can have the grandest plans, you always think you know what's right for you. But you probably don't. There's probably someone who knows better than you. And it's okay to trust them.

Happy Birthday, Baylor Jackson. Thanks for picking me.

A Post Apocalyptic Year In Review

"That's all right. I like to have my heart broken." - Kurt Vonnegut

***

"Getting my heart broken was one of the best things that ever happened to me."

I said that to a friend last night. We were standing in the kitchen, talking about boys*. Technically, I was crouching in front of the fridge, trying to find a spot to shove the broccoli, so she didn't see my face. I'd had the thought before, but I'd never said it out loud. And I'm glad it was a weirdly semi-private moment of revelation, just me staring down some hummus and a giant rogue beet, because it almost bowled me over, how true it was. I didn't say it to comfort, or provide perspective. I said it because it was goddamn true. I don't think I could have made it through the last twelve months otherwise.

It's a storm at first, of course, and you're just one tiny person alone on the open ocean, in a terribly leaky raft. In the dark. Shit looks pretty dire. It's like all the scary parts of 'The Odyssey', but with cheaper wine. It's fine, though. You'll get through it. Because you can get through anything, you know. And once the sky clears, and the churning stops, there's a gratitude: I didn't know I could do that. A clarity: you can see again. It looks different, everything's been rearranged, this new landscape is totally unfamiliar, but all these new things: caves and craters, majestic gnarly trees along the shoreline, sea boulders baked in the sun - they've been there all along. All this upheaval has simply allowed them to reveal themselves. Get acquainted. Explore it all. You'll only get better for it.
Here's what I found:

Tardy Hardy: Sometime in April, while scrambling to make an early morning appointment in Brooklyn, I realized my perpetual lateness (understand that I am referring to not only PERPETUAL tardiness, but also, in many cases, extremely exaggerated tardiness. Sometimes I show up literally hours late for shit, and no one is surprised) was a primarily a twisted attempt at keeping a stranglehold on youth. Via staggering immaturity. That it was sort of complete bullshit to be all 'Oh, I just don't understand how clocks work' (WHAT? I know! I SERIOUSLY SAY SHIT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME) while actually never having missed a flight in my life**. Including morning flights. And those early morning appointments in Brooklyn. Because I apparently do understand levels of consequences, and if I can navigate those, I can probably figure out rudimentary time management, right? All this dallying to way-beyond-the-last-minute, followed by tizzies and scrambling was just ME creating unnecessary hoops to jump through, with the sole purpose of making myself crazy, because youthful people are harried and crazy, and old people are calm and boring. Then I was like 'LOOK AT THAT CRAZY TRAIN OF ILLOGIC, YOU PROBABLY DON'T HAVE TO PUT MUCH EXTRA EFFORT INTO KEEPING THINGS NUTTY AROUND HERE, ALSO, WHY ARE YOU YELLING, THERE IS NO REASON TO YELL. CALM DOWN.'

Then I remembered that I like being really calm and I sort of hate young people. That a hundred times in the last six months I've said "You could not pay me to relive my twenties" and meant it all the way down to my core***. That my constant commitment to unreliability is not proving anything to anyone. That it's actually pretty selfish. Not that I've actually done anything about this, but it was a new perspective to consider: I can hang on to my immaturity as long as I'd like****. It will leave my youth in the dust. And I get to be completely calm about it.

Puff Puff Pass: Related, I quit smoking. Considering I will basically hold you down and slather you in sunscreen if you so much as think about exposing your bare face to a UV ray, it started feeling hypocritical to be so actively contributing to my own dermal wrinkling*. It's the same misguided immaturity bullshit. Again, my rampant disrespect for my own little lung sacs is not proving anything to anyone. No one cares. Why does this need to be part of my identity? Because when I got down to it, that was the whole attachment: 'This is something I do'. That's an ivy-and-vines way of thinking: such a nice contrast at first, a highlight to the whole, some lovely organic decoration that will, if left unchecked, eventually obscure everything underneath. That will, eventually, tear apart the very thing it's anchored to. Cut it off, man. There's nothing to be scared of. You're still you under there. So, yeah. I quit smoking. Cigarettes**.

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, In the Summertime: That was my mother's personal jingle for summer vacations when I was a kid. She'd start singing it before we even pulled out of the driveway, before we'd even packed up the car. She was so excited. My mother is not exactly the emotionally effusive sort, so it just kind of radiated out of her, this sincere joy. On the highway, my brother and I would cast semi-withering glances at each other across the backseat: Calm down, lady. We are not even close to there yet.

It wasn't until this year, this grindy year of work travel, emotional mountain climbing, coupled with the steadily amplifying atmospheric DC grime, and the undeniable reality that I am getting fucking OLD and all this shit tires me out in ways no one adequately prepares you for... Of course we did not understand my mother's elation back then, I'm pretty sure I only have the most basic comprehension of it now, considering she was like, a full-time nurse with two full-time children and car payments and shit, and I take pictures of pretty houses, and am responsible for solely my astonishingly well-behaved dog. I have a SmarTrip card. That like, never has money on it. And yet - the weeks leading up to vacation were like the first three weeks of December when you still believe in Santa. I might be old now, but I can still recognize that sort of anticipation, the kind that oozes all through you, drips over your heart like honey.

And goddamn if it wasn't one of the best vacations I've ever had. I have a habit of tempering my expectations, lest I be disappointed by the end result, but I didn't here, and I'm glad - because I wasn't. Fuck man, Maine. That whole 'Vacationland' motto is NOT hyperbole. I've been to Maine before, I've loved Maine before, but not like this. This was like a balm. In the kayak, collecting mussels off the rocks, water so blue it was black in places, cold like only ancient things can be, I told Kyle: "Whatever is wrong with me, this makes better." It is a simple thing to say, a tremendous thing to realize. And it's inside me now, I can go back any time I want.

Later that week, after midnight, sitting around a table with two of my favorite people in the world, I laughed so hard I cried (for a variety of reasons), so hard I had to get up and leave the table. I walked the five steps to the bathroom, slid my spine down along the door frame until I was laughing and crying on the linoleum, sitting and rocking and laughing and crying and eventually just straight up crying, these pure love tears, straight from this well of joy I can't always get to on my own. I wish I'd thought to taste them at the time - I know it's impossible, but part of me believes they wouldn't even have been salty. Then I pulled myself together and rejoined the boys at the table. We went outside and sat on the dock and watched for fireworks - there were fireworks almost every night that week, like exclamation points, like confetti, like even the sky was as happy as we were and had to let us know. We were quiet, and we sat in a row, and looked up at the stars until we almost fell asleep.

So I get it, Momma. I get the song now.

Love you guys.



*'Standing in Kitchens, Talking About Boys' is an alternate working subtitle for 'The Katie Neuner Story'.
** ...because I got there too late. I've never missed a flight because I got there too late. I have missed two flights due to distractions in the airport bar. Statistically, this is sort of amazing.
***Unless we're talking about a LOT of money, and only my late twenties. What? I've got loans, bitches.
****Boom Pow Surprise! That probably wasn't the conclusion you were hoping for. Whatever, it's honest. 

* Remember that early 90s PSA where these girls get their friend to quit by appealing to her vanity and crumpling up a photo of her face? That works, PSA people! It just takes like, 16 years.
**The caveat to this being: if I lose any of this hard-earned smoky vocal seasoning, I will suck down packs of Parliaments until it returns. I mean, duh, it was sort of the whole point. That, and being able to duck out of any social interaction whenever I got bored.

Happy Mother's Day

My boss and I had a meeting at our lawyer's office the other day. We met with my favorite one - she's smart, and funny, and warm, and genuine, and a whole lot of other qualities you look for in a human being, generally, and I think are undervalued in lawyers, specifically. Walking us to the elevator bank after the meeting, she mentioned she'd just finished 'Lean In': 'It's pretty universally applicable'. She and my boss - both professionals and mothers - discussed the working mom balance, that maybe the tides are finally really turning, equitable division of responsibilities in households is more and more the norm...I fell back a little. Not because my only contribution would have been along the lines of 'My dog is amazing at cleaning up food I drop on the floor, and he can tell if someone has evil in their soul, both come in handy.' Well, not only because of that. But because, also, I was thinking: 'How strange that any of this would be a foreign concept. No one had to suggest any of this to me. I just watched my mother.'

Four years old, leaving a department store in the rain, sulking and whining because I didn't get something I wanted. Stomping: "It's not fair!" My mother did not break stride. "Life's not fair, honey," she said. "Get used to it." Oh, that ALL PARENTS were this honest from the gate. Because it isn't, is it?

Thirteen years old, the first time I wore foundation, I put on entirely too much. Probably everyone is terrible at makeup in the beginning, you get better. And now people are surprised, given my near religious devotion to mascaras and sparkly eyeshadows and tinted moisturizers, that my mother doesn't wear any makeup at all. She doesn't. I say: 'I figured this shit out on my own'. But that's not entirely true. That night, she took me into the bathroom. As I washed it off, she told me 'it should look like you're not wearing anything'. The second most important thing you can tell a girl about her face. She didn't have to say a thing about the most important part, I learned by example. Her facial care routine has always been on point.

Sixteen years old, in the hospital, feeling the worst and saddest and most unloveable, like a garbage wretch of a child, like I deserved anything awful she, anyone, everyone felt about me. In the depths of that, my mother sent me a stuffed lamb, the softest, loveliest thing, it fit in the crook of my elbow. In the card attached, in her gorgeous, delicate cursive - my mother's handwriting looks like it belongs in a Jane Austen novel - she told me how much she loved me, the way she loved me, in a way that made everything seem, if not immediately better, then hopeful - like there were wonderful things ahead that I couldn't imagine yet, but she had ultimate confidence in. Hope is the purest gift. And, she was right. I kept the lamb; she helps me remember.

Twenty-one years old, melting down over something impossible, some insurmountable challenge. My mother: "You know, human beings can't remember pain accurately," she turned a page, considered a point in the distance. "Otherwise, no one would ever have a second child." It is the most brilliant advice I've ever received. This seems so bad right now, but pain ends. Eventually it's not even a memory. It is amazing what we can get through, what we are capable of becoming next.

Twenty-two years old, my mother takes me on a tour of HHC's new heath care center. She started there when I was in high school, an organization scattered across two offices, now consolidated into a spectacular renovated factory building downtown. It was of course an effort of many, but walking through the building, Sally introducing me to contractors and architects and administrators and doctors, I kept thinking 'my mother did this. My mother did this.' There are people with giant hearts, and then there are the people with giant hearts in action, who do things that help innumerable people that they will never meet, will never thank them, and who don't care about that. Lean in? My mother hoisted that shit over her head and ran with it.

Twenty-four years old, I'd spent the summer having a slow-burn of a breakdown in my parent's house, they barely got me back to law school. Barely. I'd been back in New Orleans a week when my mother called me. Hurricane Katrina was still all speculation and hypothetical disaster. It was a Friday night. "I'm buying you a ticket," she said. "No," I told her. "No, it'll be nothing. We'll go to Houston if we need to, like for Ivan. I just got back." (What a fucking brat.) "I'm buying you the ticket," she said. "You're coming home tomorrow morning." And I did. And everyone knows what happened next.

Twenty-nine years old, sitting on the back porch in Scituate with my mother and KH#1, drinking red wine out of sparkly little glasses in the sun, my mother tells us the story of how she and my father met. I'd never heard it before. Later, when I get a little too emotional at dinner, stand up and cry-toast KH#1, my mother pats the seat next to her, suggests 'No more wine' and pats my leg. It occurs to me that there might not be an ounce of judgment in this woman.

Thirty years old, days from thirty-one, I call my parents and my dad picks up. I ask 'Is Mom there?' and he pauses. "Is everything okay?" It has been an historical rarity, an issue I can bring to one of them and not the other. I take a weird little half breath. "I need to talk about boys." The most insanely reasonable, comforting conversation about matters of the heart follows. I think: 'is there anything she doesn't know?'

Momma, thank you. For being you, showing me everything you've shown me, teaching me everything you've taught me, and mostly, for letting me be myself, for believing in me and always knowing when I need a boost the most, for surprising me into believing in myself. You can ask anyone, I say it all the time: "If Sally thinks it's good, if Sally believes in it..." Thank you for showing me that there isn't a thing I can't do. Thank you for being my mother, and thank you for being my friend. I love you so much.

Happy Mother's Day,
kk

I was waking up from a nap when I heard. S texted me something about bombs in Boston, and I rolled over, bleary eyed, put the phone back on the night stand. Then I sat up. Wait.

I cried in my hotel room, big, hot, little kid tears that surprised me with their pure sadness. I suppose it was a grief some parts of me recognized before others: Marathon Monday can never be the same. How many of us woke up yesterday and thought 'Aw, Patriot's Day'? My brother and I, each three years since living there, three-quarters of a country between us, thought the same thing. It is a holiday that means nothing to most people. It is something very special. "How could you?" I said, to no one. "It's just so fucking mean." I had to get up and go to an appointment. I sent out messages, everyone was fine. I got to tell a lot of people I loved them, some I hadn't told in a long time, so there was at least that.

Boston is provincial and insane. It's strange and windy and grumpy. And I am so, so lucky that so many of my memories, the backdrop to so much of my life is that beautiful, charming, storied city. I may never move back, but it is half of my heart.

At dinner last night, A told me: "When you see those videos from now on, I want you to think of the people that ran towards the blast, all the people who went to help." That helped.

I care very little about who did it. I don't have much of a palate for revenge, it's just not in my constitution. I think we get what we give in this life, and others, if that's a thing, and the responsible parties will face something terrible. I assume they have already, you must be rotted to the core, infected with something deep and awful that haunts you permanently, to do something like this. That does not explain or excuse or comfort. It probably just is.

There is a part of me, of so many of us, that feels utterly violated. So I am thinking of all the people that ran to help. I am thinking of everyone I love, wherever they are. I am thinking of bricks and flowers and sunlight on water, Fenway at night, old men in undershirts playing Bocce on those courts off Commercial Street. I am remembering the insanity of the wind whipping across City Hall Plaza in the winter, the Baylor-faces of the seals outside the aquarium, sitting on rocks in the Public Garden as the sun goes down, tripping down sidewalks on Beacon Hill.

I am remembering that IM Pei designed the Hancock as a tower of glass to reflect its surroundings in Copley Square, because he couldn't make anything more beautiful.

Travel Tips for Post Modern Women

I like this time of year because I travel for work, and 80% of my work travel consists of 'walking around New York in the springtime taking pictures of lovely old buildings'. Honestly, it's pretty great. Even when it's exhausting, or cold, or I'm lost in Brooklyn on a subway that's basically a Jurassic Park Ride of Underground Trash, it's still pretty great. There's a lot of takeout sushi and trashy television and fresh towels and other such things sorely lacking in my everyday life. And all this work travel actually improves me as a person. After weeks spent with someone else emptying your garbage cans and replacing your toiletries when you hoard them in your suitcase, it gets that much harder to tolerate your own filth and disarray*. But there are challenges. I was going to tell you about all of them at once, but that post was so long I didn't even want to read it, so I'm separating it into three parts. This part is about subways. The next parts will be about peeing, and hotels. Aren't you so excited! Okay, Part One:

On The Train: Avoiding A Terrible Fate

Subways are a great invention. They allow you to zip through subterranean parts of a city like some kind of PowerMole. They allow for delightful multi-tasking, like reading en commute. Sometimes there's cool views. They reduce your obscene American carbon footprint, if only somewhat. You're exposed to an interesting cross-section of the population you might never encounter otherwise.

Subways are also HORRIBLE. You're trapped underground with thousands of other scrambling assholes like some Escape From NIMH gone horribly awry. It's too hot, or too cold. It smells like...something unidentifiable, with whiffs of human stink, rat parties, desperation, and poop. You are occasionally crammed next to and up against the very worst humanity has to offer - by whom, I mean, PEOPLE WHO DON'T TAKE THEIR FUCKING ENORMOUS BACKPACKS OFF.

In the end, though, it doesn't really matter: subways are a necessity. And there's almost nothing that makes you feel more competent and self-actualized than being able to effectively navigate a subway system. And it's a skill that translates! To other cities! It's an awesome skill. But there are things to watch out for.

Don't Be A Statistic
When I was little, my mom told us not to stick our arms out the car window. When we persisted, she informed us that, were another vehicle or stationary object to collide with our outstretched limbs, they would be sheared off, likely mangled, and unsuitable for reattachment. I've never stuck so much as a finger outside a moving vehicle again without recalling that warning. I've passed it on - to children under my supervision in at least one instance, several adults in others, and have noted it's immediate effectiveness. On the children. The conclusion here is that adults are incredibly stupid. Because the last year has been filled with stories of people FALLING ONTO TRACKS AND GETTING RUN OVER BY TRAINS. The simple solution here is 'not standing too close to the tracks'. Especially if you're drunk or physically unstable in some way. It's not hard not to fall down there. In the getting pushed scenario...I suppose a crazy person could drag you from by the wall and push you, but that's a lot more effort. And if they're really intent on you as a target, you might be able to buy yourself some time by like, yelling for help. Which you can't do if you're basically standing on the yellow line, dude, just STEP BACK.

Listen to Your Rape Alarms
Some of my friends laugh at me because I'm insane and we'll be going somewhere when all of a sudden I'm like 'my Rape Alarms are going off' and we need to turn around. I am not embarrassed at all about doing this because we live in a horrible world where horrible things happen to everyone, and this COMPLETELY includes small women who wear giant headphones and tend to be lost in their own worlds. Knowing this about myself, I try to be extra-aware of even the faintest alarm bells. As my mother told me (years after the limb-shearing warning) 'If you stop at a rest stop by yourself, you will get raped'. She is totally going to deny saying that, but F was standing in the Hunter's Hill Circle kitchen with me when that bit of knowledge was passed down. When we got into his car and pulled down the driveway (she dropped that right before a road trip) he was like "The scariest part of that was how sure she was. I'm scared of rest stops now, too."

So anyway, sometimes my rape alarms go off in subway stations. This is because subway stations can be hella creepy. Especially isolated tunnels and stairways. ESPECIALLY THIS COURT STREET STATION ENTRANCE FOR THE R TRAIN. Holy shit.

I've been to other entrances, but I sort of stumbled on this one after taking pictures of a building across the street and thought 'Oh, I'll just jump on here' and went down the stairs. When I got into the station, surprise: it was one of those weird entrances that are primarily for elevator access. I HATE being in those giant elevators with strangers, I always think some Lord of the Flies shit is going to break out, so I look for the stairs. There are always stairs. Although sometimes...they're horrible creepy. Like this time. It was a really long, narrow staircase. I'd gone down about a flight and a half thinking 'Yo, this is an incredibly rapey stairwell' when I came upon THIS:

Oh fuck, is that a CARDBOARD RAPE PAD? Jesus, okay, that's weird, just keep going Katherine, deep breaths**.

HOLY SHIT WHOSE PANTS ARE THOSE? At this point I seriously considered turning around. Like, it was noon on a Wednesday in fucking Brooklyn Heights, and I assumed I must be halfway down the stairs already and I had an appointment to make, so despite the CLANGING alarms, I pressed on, down the next flight: 

OH MY FUCK WHERE DOES THAT TINY DOOR GO? IS THIS LIKE RAPE NARNIA? I still had no idea how much more of a descent I was in for, and I couldn't run, because everyone knows when you run  down stairs in a horror movie, you fall down the stairs and Kevin Ware your leg in half and then have to drag yourself down the grimy ass steps all wounded and dirty, but I will tell you: I have never walked so swiftly and carefully in my life. 

Of course everything was fine, I realize it was just an odd collection of possibly-homeless items on a stairway. I caught the next train and made my appointment on time. An appointment at which a crazy old guy showed up on a bike to let me in, and then offered me champagne, and he seemed kind of drunk already, so it wasn't clear if he was joking or not. I declined, politely Note: the only time Katie Neuner declines free champagne is when a crazy old man offers it to her while she's essentially locked inside his house. Even if it's Veuve. Which it was. (YOU DID SOMETHING RIGHT, MOM AND DAD!!!)

The irony is not lost on me, that much of my job entails entering strangers' super expensive houses where large wooden fortress doors close behind me and pretty much no one knows where I am. But sometimes I guess you have to figure on the good in humanity, and assume that most people don't a) have a torture dungeon and b) want to trap you in it. I, at least, have to figure that, or else I'd never leave the house. Just stay out of abandoned stairwells, kids. 

Of course, later that day I was exiting another subway station and came across this: 

So, wtf, everything, maybe we should all just totally stay inside.

*For those of you who know me well, this something of a mind-altering shift. Filth and Disarray have been my homies for a long, long time. Shh, don't say too much about it, I might get scared.
** I call myself Katherine when I need to steel myself, or get my shit together. I use my Mom's voice and it is a SUPER effective motivational tool.

Good Friends and Squirrel Bombs

The week before Christmas was unseasonably warm this year. Remember?

Everyone left town early, until it felt like it was just G and myself, the rest of Glover Park entirely empty. Smoking on my porch before bed one night, I thought: even the lights on the horizon look dimmer. We took to the porch again the next night, finished a bottle of wine nestled in second-story beach chairs. We went inside, then away for our holidays. I left the bottle out there for months.

I am the kind of asshole who clutters a perfectly lovely back porch with unwanted furniture, disintegrating cardboard boxes, discarded books, bags of clothes for Goodwill. Why bother with a table and real chairs when we could just sit on this old desk? You're too good to sink your ass to the floor into one of those terribly awkward canvas chairs? Of course you're not, I'm just kidding. I'm aware it's a terrible system. I've thought about changing it, about throwing all the shit away and making it a pleasant space to sit and chat. I think about it for two minutes before declaring: 'Isn't it already a pleasant place to sit and chat simply by virtue of being a porch? Just let it be a porch!' So it stays how it is, and yes, I see that's pretty bullshit and mostly a function of my general laziness and because sometimes I am a shit friend who does not care about your comfort. You know who is not a shit friend? Kyle.

A few weeks ago we were standing out there while I determined the proper outerwear, and Kyle, as he has done in the past, handed out the gentlest of porch shamings: 'It's so nice out here; 'Chairs would be awesome'; 'I could help you take the boxes down'. Wonderful, kind hints to which I typically respond "Come on Kyle, then I couldn't throw my garbage out here" because I am the kind of person who will regularly throw a bag of garbage or empty box of wine out onto the porch rather than carrying it down to the cans. Then, as usual, he left it alone. There are only so many times you can ask an adult to throw her trash away properly before you start wondering why you're still friends with this lunatic.

I had to go to New York last week for work. The Saturday before I left it was sunny and kind of nice and I opened the porch door hoping maybe it was reading weather. It wasn't. Even if it had been, the environs weren't exactly conducive to relaxing. Unless broken pieces of ashtray, scattered dead leaves, crumbling boxes and mildewing bags of clothes are part of your preferred spa experience. I picked up the months-empty bottle and accompanying glasses, took them inside to the kitchen. Got a garbage bag. Went back and swept up the leaves, the shattered bits of lacquered ceramic*. I pushed the broom under the a/c unit in the window, and noticed something protruding from the largest bag of Goodwill clothes, an enormous black canvas duffel bag, characteristically unzipped.  What initially looked like a stick, was, after closer inspection, clearly a leg. A small, furry leg.

My first thought: How did one of Baylor's toys get in there?
My next thought: Oh that is not a toy that is not a toy that is not a toy that is a dead fucking squirrel and it is super dead, super dead, all the way live dead, how do I get it out of...do I reach in...are there more...OHMYGOD NO, OH MY GOD DEAD SQUIRREL TOUCHING CLOTHES THAT USED TO TOUCH ME. 

I went back inside and had some wine and decided it was time to start packing. And I did. And I shut the squirrel out of my brain for the rest of the afternoon.

A few hours later, Kyle came over. We were hanging out, deciding where to go for food, and I actually considered not saying anything, but then I did: "Want to hear something really horrible that happened to me today?"

I finished telling him, and I think I assumed it would be like confession - once it was out there, the squirrel would magically disappear. I said "I didn't know what to do about it, so I just did nothing." Without judging the ridiculous words that just came out of my face, he said, clearly, reasonably: "Okay, you have to do something." He was right. I did. He helped.

What happened next was Dennis the Menace masterful, something I never would have thought up on my own. It was Kyle's idea to put garbage bags on our arms, Kyle's idea to position the giant outdoor trashcan directly below the porch, to maneuver the monster duffel over the porch rail together, heave it at the can. When the bag failed to land as aimed, crashing face down onto the patio stones a foot away, scattering clothes but concealing the squirrel carcass, I want to say it was my idea to get the snow shovels out of the utility closet and scoop the clothes into the trash can, but that was probably him, too. I invented the term 'Squirrel Bomb', although I also invented the situation that created said Squirrel Bomb, so I'm not sure what kind of pride to take there. Regardless,  the squirrel bomb was successfully diffused. And then we went to Surfside.

And my goodness, if the porch doesn't look so much better without that giant bag of unwanted clothes! And their attendant dead rodent limbs! Who knew? I'm thinking about getting rid of all the boxes now. I'm even considering a table and chairs**.

Happy Birthday Kyle!

*Sorry, D, I really did love that ashtray.
**Where do people get tables and chairs?

Alive and Well

"Chivalry Is Dead." - Ladies, all the time, everywhere

"I was never really much of a romantic. I could never take the intimacy." - Kanye West

"It's insulting to give someone dead things." - Pops, on flowers

"Speaking of Ghost, I'm going to see him on 5/9 at the Wang.  Olson and I are going.  If I get kicked out, I'm taking him with me.  No chivalry when there are no ladies to protect." - Mitch

***

I started my second Real Grown Up Job in January of 2009. As is my custom, I was generally unfriendly to everyone for approximately the first four months. It's primarily a defense mechanism. There are just too many social anxiety tripwires in Office World: navigating elevator small talk, sharing just-the-right personal details to appear engaging and normal, remembering children's names and activities, bringing in baked goods to share - I just can't. I'm not interested in the weather unless we can talk about the Apocalypse and I don't watch the right TV shows. My life is weird, and seems even weirder in tiny snippets. I cannot bring myself to care about the World Cup, so Tommy's soccer game iszzzzzzz. I can't bake, and even if I could, why would I whip up an extra batch of whatever to haul into an office full of people who'll scarf them all immediately?  Wait until the afternoon! Brownies in the morning upset me!

So I'm skittish and standoffish the vast majority of the time, save the rare instances I can't keep something to myself and I engage fully, before I remember where I am. Half surly toddler, half shelter dog: you have your moments, but no one really wants to take you home. It's a pretty effective system.

A person like this turns a lot of things down. What you don't know is complicated, so stick to what you do. So why, on that Friday afternoon in May, after spending months as the least adoptable pet, did I accept M's invitation to join everyone for a beer after work? Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was thirsty. Maybe I was curious. Maybe even the toughest Pound Puppy has their weaknesses. So I went inside the bar. 

You make a thousand decisions every day, and most of them will never matter. If I'd left when I first thought to, after the first beer, that might have been one of them. But someone bought me a second beer, and I stayed for a third, and then we went outside to smoke. It was that perfect part of late spring in Boston, the leaves the greenest they'll be all year, the sky the bluest, all offset by the ruddy brick in the courtyard outside Sweetwater. Even the late afternoon sunlight is brilliant. The bar had been so dark, I was still squinting when I stubbed out my Parliament and realized these were my friends. By the time we made our way to the Common, I wondered where they'd been all this time, how I hadn't noticed before. 

There was something in the air that spring, something different about me, like I'd grown all these new branches. I started the year scowling from the corner of my playpen, and ended it with all these new people in my life, people I realized almost immediately would be there forever, now, people I love so ferociously sometimes I wonder where they end and I begin, scattered as we've become, there are these titanium heartstrings connecting us. 

That sounds a lot like being in love, doesn't it? I can get there, despite the fact that I largely eschew romantic love, the person who refuses to 'date', the whole concept absurd, those tiny job interviews all shot through with the vaguely concealed motives of sex and high expectations*. But I do, believe in love, and in a certain type of romance, even, although it skews to the non-traditional. And there's chivalry everywhere, if you pay attention, those two concepts are alive and well. Thriving, actually. You find them watching terrible television on a rainy afternoon, doing the tiny thing you wanted without having to ask, without having to even think it on your own. It's a lingering dinner in a divey New Orleans burger joint, when the tables beside you have turned over twice already, but the waiter knows better than to say anything at all. A glint of sunlight, a smile meant only for you. It's a moment inside a cone, everything else is outside. Like the pyramid in that episode of Six Feet Under when they go to Claire's art show. Like sitting on a bench by Crystal Lake with J and S, watching the reflections of trains in the water, souls totally bare. We were the only three people in the world. Those are the moments to write poetry about.

And chivalry is not a jacket over a puddle, or opening a door, or flowers to mark a date on a calendar. Chivalry is the little boy on the bus who worms off his mother's lap, tugs her hand, offers the seat to newer mother who just got on. It's the stranger who can see something is wrong, and gives you the cab at the end of the night. Chivalry is November, 2009, the Ghostface show at the Paradise. Mitch was nice enough to provide party favors**, and when a disapproving security guard came over, he took the whole fall. When the security guard asked him if he knew me, a confused and generally unhelpful me with whom he was clearly acquainted, he denied it. Mitch spent the rest of the show in a grimy Allston Chinese joint next door, texted me a photo of the black 'x' marks Sharpied on the back of his hands. He waited until it was over. We joke about it now, but it was, to this day, the most chivalrous act I've ever witnessed. Maybe you had to be there. It was a really good show. 

Thanks for taking me home, everyone.


^I did a Google Image Seach for 'Pound Puppies Ghostface' and was rewarded with this AMAZING picture of Usher and this adorable puppy. So, enjoy that.

*Of course, 'not dating' is equally ludicrous, confusing on all levels, from the person who made an effort at what you predetermined to be a carefree hangout, to the years I've spent 'technically single' without being able to remember the last time I was actually, completely all on my own. It's a habit I'm trying to break.
** Sorry, Mom! This detail is kind of integral to the story. Also, it was a fucking Ghostface show, come on.

Dive Bars and Door Handles

A hundred years ago, I dated a guy who worked at my favorite dive bar.

I met him on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon. I was with M and F, we'd come from brunch to kill time before a movie. Or maybe to stretch out the day. I don't really remember. We just wanted someplace dark and cheap.

Inside it was empty, save a scatter of professional drinkers who'd been there so long you took them in like the wallpaper, or the pool table, all part of the whole. This place opens at 8:00 in the morning; aside from vending machine snacks sporting last-generation packaging, it never serves food.

The Wire was playing on the television behind the bar. I can talk about The Wire all day, and that's what I did, or would have done, if it wasn't time for the movie before I knew it*. He told me to come back for trivia night and I did. Sometimes it doesn't take much.

He was smart and funny and weird and probably not quite as outstandingly handsome as I remember. And best of all: he was wholly, resoundingly, viscerally damaged. The first night we hung out, he told me, on the way to buy papers, about his terrible adoption, concluding with "so I really can't trust anyone". At 31, I'm yelling 'Oh, honey, NO' at the computer. At 25...you might as well draw in cartoon hearts for my eyes in whatever mental picture you're painting.

Our schedules were entirely incompatible. We'd meet for breakfast dates in the middle of the week, lovely suspended early mornings in fancy restaurants, playing pretend, baby grown-ups in leather booths surrounded by people on real business.

On weekend nights I went over to his place after the bar closed. We'd lie in bed smoking, watching the clouds float silvery across a navy ceiling. I'd think about the ocean at night, trace the outlines of tattoos on his arm while he told me things that made me sad, made me feel bad that inside my head all I saw was a glorious sleeping ocean. We could do this for a very, very long time. He'd talk over the movie playing as background noise, some 80s romantic comedy he'd act offended I hadn't seen, before putting it on purely for pretense. I've seen Lover Boy half a dozen times; I have no idea what that movie's about**.

In the mornings, I'd walk him to the bar, where there'd already be at least one greasy-haired man in a rough cloth army jacket leaning against the wall outside. It felt weird to kiss goodbye in front of them, we'd both laugh and he'd get his keys. I'd walk home, across the Common, picking my way over the loose bricks in City Hall Plaza. I'd go home to get Bay and we'd wander North End side streets, and I wouldn't feel happy, exactly, but like I'd helped someone else be less sad, and maybe that was important.

There were some red flags. I mean, in addition to the four paragraphs of red flags preceding this one. I didn't even notice. It's almost charming, in a nostalgic, Horror Home Movies sort of way. In the end, I learned some important things about myself, about life. I learned that any conversation beginning with the words "Baby, I have a third job I haven't told you about" is not ending any place good.

It really didn't last long. One weird thing happened, then another. We both acted like children. Like I said, it was a hundred years ago - we practically were. It was over by the summer, and I never saw him again.

The job I started a few months later involved a new commute, one that required me to walk by that bar. (Of course, it wasn't a requirement, just the simplest way to get from the T to the office.) It was three months before I took the direct route in the morning, six months before I'd walk by at night. I'd duck my head, scurry by the green door, try to steal a peek through the window. It was almost a full year before I worked up the courage to go inside. Of course, once I finally did, he wasn't there.

It's been a long time. I still go back to that bar when I'm in town, it's still one of my favorites. The same woman owns it, and she's always behind the bar. Every time I'm there, at least a little part of me wants to ask 'whatever happened to...' I'll never ask, though. He's vanished, essentially, the kind of person you can't even find on the internet. Who's nowhere on the internet? It doesn't seem like a great sign. I've made up my own ending to that story, and I hope it's close enough to the truth.

I don't have a lot of regrets, but I do think about that green door sometimes. The one I skittered past in the evenings. I think about what would have happened if I'd opened the door earlier, if he'd still been there. I've had the conversation in my head a hundred times, a hundred different ways, but the core is still the same. Nothing changes - there was nothing to fix, and no way to fix it, it was just the end. But we both say 'I'm sorry' and we hug. Then we laugh about something, and he makes fun of me and I swat at his arm, and then we're both quiet for a second, and then we smile. And then I say 'I have to go', and I go. And it's better than it is now, and it's better than the other way it ended.

Q: Wherever you are, I hope it's wonderful.

Everyone else: Open those green doors.


*I remember now, it was before the movie. We saw 'No Country for Old Men'.
**Patrick Dempsey's a teenage gigilo, right? I'm pretty sure that's what it's about.

Fuck You February Part Eleven Million

A big part of achieving my goal of 'not falling apart in the face of every fucking thing in my life' this year has been 'being uncomfortably honest about some personal shit on the Internets'. My parents seem to be okay with it, and the only person whose real name I use is Kyle's (dude, I don't know why I have like, no concern for your privacy? I'm so sorry. Love you!) so I suppose I'll just continue in this vein.

Most of my time in the next 30 days will be consumed by The February Project. The February Project consists of 'not getting completely, utterly, soul-crushingly depressed in the month of February'. Which is REALLY HARD, guys. I know, 'self-fulfilling prophecy'...but the dread leading up to this month is unreal. Stuff REALLY DOES GO TO SHIT. In the last 90 hours I've had fights with two of my closest friends, and another is MIA, when I really need them not to be. Another one flipped our shit completely. My computer keeps threatening to die. I don't fight with friends! Friends don't disappear on me! (I disappear on them...recognizing a taste of your own medicine makes it no less bitter going down.) Flipped shit makes me cry a whole bunch. And computer, I need you. I need you to watch television shows I steal with my brother's HBO.GO password when I literally cannot work up the mental strength to do anything else.

Two of the hardest things to describe to people who've never experienced them are depression and anxiety. Normal people get sad, and normal people get nervous, but they don't seem to get the cloud that penetrates every pore, all the way into your bones, pumps through your blood, chanting; 'don't, don't, don't' when you should, should, should; 'it's not worth it' when it most definitely is; 'why bother', when there are so many reasons; and 'you are, forever, undeniably, a piece of shit', when that is certainly deniable, and nothing is forever.

Depression is a heaviness that settles into every crevice of you, your body, your brain. It makes everything simple seem impossible: getting out of bed, getting in the shower. You actually congratulate yourself for walking the dog, and this makes you feel worse, although he seems to appreciate it. Food loses its taste in your mouth. You think 'maybe seeing people will make me feel better' but then you don't want to see anyone, anyway, because you are just a little grey cloud personified, and there's a yogurt stain on these sweatpants, and oh my goodness, just the idea of finding other, relatively clean sweatpants is too much, please can I just hide in bed and find a marathon of some HBO programming that I've already watched twice? Yes? Okay.

In no way is this relaxing. Because the entire time you're submerged in your little foxhole of dread, currents of anxiety zap you at irregular, unpredictable moments. And anxiety demons are judgmental as shit. Anxiety is like a spider. She spins webs all through your body, settling wherever she sees fit. She never commits, never announces. She likes to make sure you're as uncomfortable as possible, always, right in your own skin.

The worst part is knowing not everyone feels this way. Lots of people do, but not enough so you can call in: 'I can't come into the office today because the world is too awful'. So you take a lot of deep breaths, and try not to cry at the bus when it's late. Try not to cry in the bathroom at work when you can't find a file. Try not to cry on the walk home for no reason at all.

I always want to go back to New Orleans when I'm like this. Isn't that strange? Maybe it's not strange at all. I suppose it's a place I associate with being crazy, and a place where being not-quite-right is okay. A lot more okay than it is here. Here: 'there's medication for that'. I know there is. Meds are a good thing - a great thing, the best thing - for a lot of people with wacko brain chemistry, but they aren't for me. So instead I'll peruse Craig's List every day, finding all the adorable apartments I could rent for so much cheaper than anything here. I'll watch Treme and cry a bunch, because they're always in my favorite bars (but why is no one ever in the park?) and David Simon can make you miss a place like you miss a person, the heart, the soul, the good parts, the terrible bits.

And for perspective, I'll read 'The Awakening' again, because as long as I don't feel like my only option is walking into the ocean forever, I must be doing something okay.

Advanced Techniques In Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Some Things I Don't Like:
- Birds
- Dolphins
- Escalators
- When a drop of water falls right in the part of my hair
- Most preparations of shrimp
- Swimming in natural bodies of water
- Anything anise-flavored
- Math
- When the seam of my sock touches the wrong part of my toes
- Ham/Roast Beef/Most meats served at holiday dinners
- Holiday dinners
- Birthday dinners
- Any dinners with large groups of people
- Okay, just FUCK YOU, Dinner
- Heavy Metal
- Most animal print apparel
- Jerry Maguire
- Going to the bathroom on any sort of moving vessel (what if it crashes/sinks while you're in there, and THAT'S WHERE YOU DIE???)
- Talking on the phone
- The month of February

There's a lot more (just wait), but those are the biggies. I've learned how to handle the majority - even the Top Three, the Phobias. Birds, I pretty much have to encounter in my everyday life, be it pigeons or cardinals or G's mean parrot, they're there. And I'm making progress: the first night the mean parrot came to live with G, I refused to go inside and stayed on the porch all night. Now, even when he MIMICS MY LAUGH - even though it makes my heart jackhammer and my breath stick in my lungs - I can at least stay in the room. Although I still don't like to keep my back to him.

Escalators, too. I used to take the stairs at the fucking Kendall T stop rather than dealing with that mountain of escalators. In DC, there is rarely a stair option, so I just had to suck it up and deal. Even if I do keep the ends of my scarf or my skirt balled up in my hands while I ride. And dolphins have, thus far, never been an issue.

Most of the other shit, I can just avoid. Don't bother trying to eat stuff I know I hate just in case I've 'acquired the taste'. Buy the right socks, don't jump in the water, don't over-hydrate on the plane. But February...ugh. There is nothing I can do about February.

It happens the same way every year. December was great, the first part of January was nice, getting back to a normal schedule, sleeping a little more. But then I start to get bored again. And then it starts to get cold. Really cold. I hate being cold. Even just a little cold. I'm so intolerant to it that I used to think that I got colder than everyone else, like it was a measurable issue of blood-temperature. I believed that until a few years ago when my brother said: "I don't think you get colder than other people. I think you're just really, really bad at being cold." Which is fine, and probably true, but it still doesn't keep the cold from filling me with any less despair. Yes, despair. Compounded by the creeping awareness that things, in late January begin to go slightly awry. Nothing to really worry about yet, just...things aren't right.

Then, as January hisses out its final frigid death rattles and rolls over into February, everything goes to shit. You lose someone important. You lose something important. All you've got is square pegs and the entire world turns into a series of round holes. It's not like you can take a long walk to soothe yourself, it's so fucking cold. You don't even want to walk down to your friend's house, it's SO COLD. Forget taking the train across town. And there's nothing to look forward to. Nothing. Here is another list:

Things I Don't Look Forward To In February*:

February 2nd. Groundhog Day: February is chock full of stupid holidays, this being the chronologically first. Why are we still doing this? Waiting on an enormous rodent to come out of a hole? Any other day of the year, this would be cause to call an exterminator. Also, it's incredibly boring. At least jazz it up a little. Like, what if we took four raccoons, named them shit like 'Prosperity', 'Peace In the Middle East', 'Swine Flu' and 'Locust Plague', then hid a bag of cookies in the bottom of a dumpster, filled the dumpster with trash, and let the raccoons loose on it in the middle of the night. Whichever raccoon gets to the cookies first, that's what's in the Global Forecast for the year. That, I would watch**.

February 14th. Valentine's Day: Oh, come on, like you're surprised I hate Valentine's Day? Honestly, I don't hate the concept of it at all. St. Valentine marrying illegal Christian couples in secrecy so the Romans wouldn't throw them to the lions...I love that, that's great. Love's cool! Everyone should be able to get married! If that's what we were celebrating, dude, I'm down. But in practice, modern V-Day is mean. That's all there is to it. It's a mean, mean holiday where there's all this pressure to impress, or outperform, or 'find someone', and that's too much to put on everyone on the middle of fucking February, so the whole country just ends up binge eating half-price Whitman's Samplers and candy hearts on the 15th. I won't be part of that, I just won't. I hate seeing everyone get so worked up.

February 18th, President's Day: You'd think I'd be all about this one, because I get a day off work. And yeah, that's pretty okay. Mostly I just think this holiday is stupid because I don't really understand it, and that apostrophe situation doesn't help. Is this a holiday for all the presidents? Just Lincoln and Washington? Is this a day that belongs to all the presidents? In any of those cases, the apostrophe should be somewhere else, or non-existent, right? The only way this works is if this is one day belonging to one individual president, yes? So who is it? I hate that I obsess over this EVERY STUPID FEBRUARY.

I know, I know. Self-fulfilling prophecy much? I tell myself this all the time. But February is still, always,
a pile of crap. But, at the very least, this year I'm going to try and deal with it. Because it's inevitable, and because, like all those other things on the list, I can probably figure it out. If you'd told me two years ago I could be in the same room as a bright green bird who copied laughter...man. I'll figure it out.***

I've still got nothing on that whole 'water drops on my part' thing, though, so ideas welcome there.


*NOT TO HATE on any of my wonderful friends with February birthdays, this is absolutely nothing against you, I love you. You're not responsible for February. 
**And of course, I will always always watch the shit out of the movie 'Groundhog Day'. That's just the shit.
**And please do not give me any of that 'but at least it's the shortest month!' stuff. Are you familiar with February? Two more days of February and the world would end. It has to be that short. For like, the survival of the species.

Katie Neuner and the Unbreakable Sternum of Doom

Remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the Bad Priest with the horn-helmet reaches into that guy's chest, rips out his heart, then lowers the now-heartless dude, still breathing, into a pit of fire? And then the heart catches on fire and Bad Priest has a good laugh, and there's a lot of ceremonial drum beating? Yes? Okay.

My brother and I watched the shit out of that movie as kids. We watched the shit out of everything in the Indiana Jones franchise* (including the 'Young Indiana Jones' series - remember that? With River Phoenix? RIVER PHOENIX IN FRANCE? Granted, there was a fair amount of trench warfare going down, but still. RIVER PHOENIX IN FRANCE. Dork girl fantasies breathed alive, my friends.) But particularly that one. It was the most fun. The plot was the easiest for kids to follow. It was the only one that featured a kid. And the only one without Nazis. Even if they do get their faces melted off in the end, Nazis are always a bummer.

So even though Raiders of the Lost Ark's Marian was a better feminist role model, and Sean Connery was cranky-screwball hilarious in The Last Crusade, it was still Temple of Doom that hooked us the hardest. It taught me a lot of influential life lessons: adults can sit on pillows on the ground to eat dinner. Don't pour perfume on elephants' heads. If someone is shooting at you in a crowded nightclub, run behind a giant gong until you find a window to jump out of. And, while I didn't realize it until recently, that de-hearting scene cast a drippy net over my whole life, bled into everything.

The way I saw it, unless something could - metaphorically - rip my heart out through my sternum and set it on fire with a combination of squeezing and maniacal laughter, then it didn't matter to me, and I was fine. Be it a person, an event, an experience, a feeling: all that mattered was keeping my breastplate intact. I went for so, so long with a miniature Short Round perched on my shoulder, shouting, into my ear, with utmost concern 'Indy! Cover your heart!'

I mean, in a way, it worked. I was vigilant. If I never gave anything the power to pull my heart out, I was completely safe. I could take or leave whatever, whoever I chose. It never hurt to leave. It made it very, very easy to pack up and bounce, or to let wonderful people fall out of my life without putting up a fight. When you live like that for too long, it's easy to start thinking you're invincible. But of course that's not the case. Bulletproof vests don't make you bulletproof. They're just vests. And eventually, someone will just shoot you in the head.

But delusions of invincibility have a habit of lingering, a way of getting tied up with your sense of worth and your sense of purpose, and, ultimately, the pernicious little conclusion of leaving you entirely, utterly cold. I don't for a moment second guess where I am right now, or how I got here - in a way, I'm glad I was so unattached to the operations management elements of my life. Gracious, I might have actually become a lawyer**. But what I would like to do right here is give a big, messy, runny mascara and knotty haired apology to people in my life I may have treated like that. Cold is worse than mean, cold is worse than bitchy. Cold is worse than crazy. Cold implies that you don't matter. And you did, you do. You matter. So I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, that I didn't give you the power, I didn't even give you the opportunity to root around in my - metaphorical - chest cavity. I covered my heart for way too long, and you deserved better. I'm sorry I assumed everyone, everywhere, was trying to sacrifice me to unspecified gods and dump my body in a hole full of lava.

Because that is completely insane. No one is trying to do that. Life is not trying to rip out my - metaphorical - internal organs in a creepy underground religious ceremony. Or, maybe it is***. Maybe it is. Maybe life, when you actually like, participate in it, is all just that part where the Kali Ma dress Willie up in that white outfit and lock her in that cage-contraption and she's raised-and-lowered over the fire pit for like, ten minutes while they try to wake Indy up from the Black Sleep, and the entire time she's like 'WTF!' and semi-hysterical, and all the flowers from her massive lei are falling off, and her hair's getting all crazy from the...humidity? Why did I assume it was humidity? Maybe just because she was getting kinda sweaty down there, but anyway - the point: She looks super fly in that scene, and after she gets out of the cage, she's so much more badass for the rest of the movie. I think she even punches some big dude in the face at one point. And, I don't think she'd have reacted to the Rope Bridge of Death Over Crocodile Canyon incident nearly so well if she hadn't been through the whole fire pit ordeal.

We don't really learn what happens to Willie - in the Last Crusade she's out of the picture and Dr. Jones is chasing that (Nazi) German chick (which - come on Indy, have you been paying any attention? The Germans are always the bad guys!****) but I'm pretty sure she turned out okay. Nothing probably seems too overwhelming after a giant dude in sweaty face paint and a fake-goat hair loincloth yell-chants at you while a bunch of hypnotized cult members bang drums and the guy you're sleeping with locks you in a cage while under the influence of an evil blood-drink. After that, she could probably handle anything.


*I loved Indiana Jones so much, that, for a time, I really wanted to be an archaeologist. I guess working in historic architecture is kinda the same ballpark, and I'm glad I veered slightly  to the right on that one, because oh my goodness, have you ever met any archaeologists? They are the weirdest motherfuckers on the planet. Like, I am honestly not trying to throw shade at archaeology, but its professionals are truly odd. I can only imagine archaeology conventions. I would need so many drugs to prevent turning my hand into a fist and eating it. And I bet I could be on drugs, or be eating my fist, or both, and probably no one would notice. And NO ONE even vaguely resembles 1980s Harrison Ford.
**I love you, lawyer friends! No shade here, either! Just - let's be honest. Attorney-hood would really not have been my jam.
*** I do believe in magic rocks, after all
****I can say that because my last name is German.

Break Break Down

I met S for a late lunch in Columbia Heights on New Year's Day. I took a cab there. (Fun fact: If I am meeting you at a restaurant, I am taking a cab there. No matter how meticulously I plan my trip via public transportation, I always end up spending 45 minutes like, individually separating my eyelashes with a pin, and will, in the end, need to take a cab.)

This particular cab ride was...unsettling. After a few perfunctory questions about my job, he started going off on marriage. First, about how it was 'the last thing I had left to do' - which, no. I have a lot left to do: see Macchu Piccu; have lunch with Rashida Jones; learn to pee outside in case of the Apocalypse. Lots of stuff. I didn't get a chance to share that, though, because he'd already launched into a tale about the ill-fated marriage he arranged between his son and his niece. This was a really, really long story, and I didn't get to ask a single 'WTF', because he barely paused for breath. He also kept making really intense eye contact in the rearview mirror: further troubling on several levels. By the time we got to the restaurant, I was pretty disturbed. By the nature of the conversation, and because I didn't get to say anything. You at least check in to see if any Cab Therapy is in order, dude. This is an essential function of your job.

Cab drivers make for amazing therapists. They are completely objective, and allow you to procure a variety of diverse opinions - if nine out of ten cabbies tell you you're acting crazy, the likelihood is: you're acting crazy. You can cop to anything, because you'll likely never see them again. The back seat of a cab would be an ideal place to have a meltdown. But I never have them there. It took me forever to figure out why.

If you've known me for more than five minutes, you've likely experienced one of my meltdowns by reference. This is frequently how I meet people: "Hi, I'm Katie, nice to meet you. Sorry I'm dressed like this, but I had a missing-bracelet induced meltdown right before I left my house and it made three scarves and a long t-shirt seem like a reasonable outfit." 

Yes, sometimes they're triggered by accessories. Sometimes by people, sometimes by disappointment. They can be kicked off by wonderful things, too: recently I got a card from my dad and sweater-tights from S in the mail on the same day. They were both unexpected, and led directly to a twenty minute cry-fest on the couch over how lucky I am. Basically, they're tantrums. Everything is too much, all at once, and the only solution is to crumple into a pile and wait it out. For most of my life, I assumed they were unavoidable. 

Meltdowns can take a variety of forms. Sometimes they are quiet, and involve shutting myself in my room for a few days and not returning anyone's text messages, with a side of insomnia and late-night dog walking. Sometimes they are large-scale and public, like the day after J's wedding, two days before I moved to DC, when I started hysterically crying in the security line at the Detroit airport and did not stop hysterically crying until we landed in Boston approximately five hours later. I was dehydrated for a week afterwards. When I leave a loved one, I regularly cry on the trip home. Less dramatically than the Detroit Airport Incident, but enough so I'm sure I make whoever's seated next to me fairly uncomfortable. 

Meltdowns are a consistent fact of me. But unless you're a really really special friend* (or an airline passenger), you've probably never dealt with me mid-melt. I usually manage to dry the tears up by the time I get out to meet you - even if I'm 45 minutes late and wearing Adidas windpants from high school. Until recently, I thought that was a fair measure of success. 

I had a bad one a few weeks ago. Nothing terrible, just a tad larger scale than usual. I hadn't had one in a while. Part of me even figured I was due. Typical, typical. Except...how I handled it. 

Usually I handle things one of two ways: 1) Deal with it ALONE, melt, then tell everyone about what a mess you were later; or 2) Hail a cab, get in, pour emotions over unsuspecting driver. When life knocked the wind out of me, a cab often felt like the best place to go. For a long time, vulnerability was not a trait I  fathomed possessing. Far better to be an unstable mess than tell anyone what's honestly bothering you. A few years ago, after a particularly cathartic ride, it occurred to me that cab drivers up and down the eastern seaboard knew more about my heart than some of my closest friends.

This time, curiously, I took a slightly different route. I called friends**. I tried to figure out what the fuck I was so upset about, and I asked for help with it. Holy shit, that works so well! Yes, it's somewhat uncomfortable to let people in your life see all your scabby raw parts, but...it actually ends up soothing them. Who knew! And rather than, as per usual, one meltdown creating a series of smaller implosions in it's wake, like a little mental archipelago of insanity, talking about shit actually made me feel better. Lots better. I haven't had another since. AND I saw my family last week.

Of course, I feel like an asshole for needing a decade to figure out why I liked cab therapy so much. (Talking about what's actually bothering you with other human beings is awesome! And effective! It can prevent future meltdowns***. Do other people know about this?) But that's fine. The realization's worth it.

New Year's Eve was my last day of family vacation. Before the flight, I ran errands with my Dad. He wanted to talk about New Year's Resolutions. He said: "This is the last time we'll have to talk before you leave." But I couldn't engage. Those lumps on the sides of my throat were beginning to ache, and I didn't want to start bawling in the middle of a South Florida Publix. "You seem a little sad," he said. I told him: "Of course I'm sad." I was quiet for a minute, and then I said: "But it's okay for me to be sad. I'm leaving my family. It's okay to be sad." And as soon as I said it, it was. It was okay. 

The Detroit Airport Meltdown of 2010? I was just fucking sad, man. So much was changing, for everyone I knew, it was a huge, huge time for all of us, and when you asked me how I felt about it all, I just said 'excited, excited, excited.' And of course I was excited, but a lot of loss comes with change like that, and I was sad. If I'd just fucking talked to someone about it, I probably could have avoided all that time spent standing in a corner hyperventilating and hoping no one noticed the weird choking-seal noises escaping from my face.

On Monday afternoon, my Dad dropped us off at the Miami airport, and I said good-bye to my brother and his lady right away - they were flying out of a different terminal. I didn't cry then. I didn't cry over lunch, I didn't cry on the plane****. I was sad to leave, but I was happy to be going home. They are not mutually exclusive emotions. It was okay. 

On the cab ride home, I talked about how excited I was to see my dog, how New Year's Eve is wildly overrated, how surprised I was that the Raleigh airport a) existed and b) did not serve food after 7:30pm. We didn't talk much about my feelings at all. I can do that with other people now. It feels like a nice change. 

Happy New Year, Loves.

* Or my brother, who deserves a fucking medal in this event.

** Well, first I talked to a random bartender, which was a hilariously tragic misstep. No one gets MORE emotionally reasonable with a pound of champagne in their system, even if it's free.

***This is not to say that I will be crying less. I just desk-cried at some pictures of Obama shaking hands with veterans. 

****Full disclosure: I cried a little when I said goodbye to my Mom earlier in the day.

BONUS MATERIAL FOR MAKING IT THIS LONG: The title of this post comes from the greatest Mariah song that you've forgotten about. Please, enjoy.

A Neuner Christmas Carol

I've been accused of being something of a Grinch in the past. I suppose it's not entirely untrue: I really don't care about Christmas. It's not that I want to ruin everyone's good time - despite my staunch opposition to holiday mandated gift-giving, I'm not trying to take toys from kids or cancel the celebrations. I love toys, and encourage festivities.

I like the lights - the lights are my favorite part - although I do abhor Christmas music. Lately I've been keeping my headphones on in Whole Foods because if I hear Zooey Deschanel's version of 'Baby It's Cold Outside' one more time I am going to straight up throttle the next person who stands in front of the cheese samples for half a second too long. And it's cool that everyone's happy and charitable and shit, but I hate receiving Christmas cards from the whole office. I'm the only person that doesn't send any back, and it's super awkward. I just don't do Christmas cards. Because I don't care about Christmas. I'm sorry! I just don't.

And this isn't a war on the Magic of the Holiday Season. Guys, I love magic. I believe in ghosts for goodness sake. When unexplainable shit happens to me, I usually think 'Irish Voodoo' and that is seriously an explanation I'm satisfied with. When I was four, I swear I heard Santa and the Reindeer on the roof. I have never been so convinced of anything*.  So it was a mega goddamn bummer when my parents let me in on the truth about Santa. (It created some trust issues. Most of which I've worked through.) And although I really like Christmas movies (repeated viewings of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' have convinced me that Charles Schulz shared many of my utopian humanist dreams) most of the real-life celebratory aspects just seem a little...ridiculous, to me.

My parents' interest in the holiday waned around the time we stopped asking for cool toys. As we got older, the whole tree rigamarole became such a hassle**, they downgraded to a small, relatively festive Christmas plant. It totally worked for us. Around then,my brother and I realized we could get each other much better presents if we just waited to buy them with our Christmas money. And so began the grand tradition of Sibling Christmas. In Amherst, it was held at Goten. In Boston, Chinatown. One year, we didn't even leave the apartment. And it was just so much nicer this way, without stress about gifts and travel, no exorbitant price tags, no one-upping a prior year's performance. Just a day off, man. With festive lighting.

All of this serves to explain why I figured spending Christmas alone would be no big deal.

I moved to DC in October of 2010. My parents made their final trip from PEI to Florida over Thanksgiving, and stopped here along the way. We ate Lebanese takeout in their hotel room, and it was awesome. When Christmas rolled around...I don't know. It didn't make sense to go to Florida. My brother was still in Vermont then, and Sibling Christmas can happen whenever, so that wasn't really a concern. And I thought: 'the city will be empty, just how I like it.'

I took myself to museums. I went to the National Gallery two days in a row. I got my super nerd on. It was awesome. The cold made my hands sting, but I took a walk along the mall, which is blessedly quiet at 4:30pm on December 23rd. The lights started coming on just as I was ready to head home, and I thought: 'I'm really glad I moved here.' It was perfect. Who cares about Christmas?

The next day, I decided on the Natural History Museum. I don't know why, but it seemed like an exceptionally charming thing to do for Christmas Eve. I was really excited about the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! (Seriously, I love dinosaurs. If you want to hang out and talk about your favorite dinosaur, this is something I'm into.) It was cold again, and the creepy silence of my empty house was gnawing at my edges a little, but I'd bought myself some ill new boots as a Christmas present, so there was plenty to be positive about. I got to the museum around 2:30 - lateish, but enough time for some thorough exploration, followed by happy hour in a part of town I never went out in. Maybe I could even find a fire to read by. And a burnished leather chair to sit in! Visions of hot toddies danced in my head.

I assumed the museum would be mostly empty. I wanted something tomb-like, intimidatingly quiet. Just myself and people like me, nerds alone on Christmas, and totally cool about it. As it turns out? The Natural History Museum on Christmas Eve is pretty much ENTIRELY THE OPPOSITE OF THOSE THINGS. The joint was full of families. All kinds of families. Moms and Dads and kids, Aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. Grandparents and grandchildren. Foreign students goofing around, tourists unabashedly snapping the most touristy of pictures: ‘One with my arm in the shark’s mouth!’; ‘One where it looks like the mammoth is going to step on me!’; ‘One where it looks like I’m about to do this Neanderthal lady from behind!’. Couples, friends, people all in love, one way or another, with their companions. The museum was bursting with love. I'd made a mistake, coming here.

Back when we were roommates, F and I spent a frigid November afternoon at Harvard’s deliciously vintage Natural History Museum. We spent an hour looking at the gems and stones, at least twice as long in the Great Mammal Hall, browsing the animals behind the 70s-era glass cases, noting the expressions taxidermied onto their faces: alarmed, bemused, stoned. We took pictures of at least a dozen examples of 'stuffed balls' with our phones and sent them to my brother. We laughed all afternoon.

I snapped out of the memory, back to myself: alone, standing in front of a Triceratops. The corners of my eyes and the sides of my throat got a little sore, felt a little full. I got out of there before the tears came. 

Outside, I didn't feel like drinking in the company of strangers anymore, so I went home, and tortured myself with the Ghosts of Christmases Past: watched 'A Muppet Christmas Carol' and thought of the one present we'd been allowed to open on Christmas Eve as kids, the one we fretted over for a week beforehand, poking the wrapped packages and weighing them in our hands. Thought about my Dad grabbing up our discarded wrapping paper and stuffing it in the trashbag before it had a chance to hit the floor. Thought about the year Beetle and I selected 'Avatar' as our Christmas movie, the silent moment when he leaned over and whispered: "How come only the male avatars have nipples?" I laughed so hard I almost had to leave the theater. 

You see what I'm getting at here. No, I don't care about Christmas. But it's not about the holiday. It's about love. And maybe it should be just a day off, but it's not. It's not like I was loved any less because I wasn't with my family. But the presence of love is a powerful thing. And it's even more powerful in the remove. 

This year, I'm going to Florida. I'm meeting my brother and his lady in Miami on Christmas day, and then we're spending the rest of the week with our parents in their adorably weird little golf course community, places that exist by the hundreds in Florida - and seemingly only in Florida, although I bet Arizona has a bounty of these joints, too. I haven't bought presents for anyone, and I'm sure no one's got presents for me. I'll spend the majority of my holiday flying, I'll be late to meet everyone, I'll annoy at least one person by repeatedly asking where the dive bars are in this town. My dad will have trouble finding the hotel the next day when he comes to pick us up, and someone will yell at me for dawdling/getting us lost/being generally unhelpful. I cannot wait, I could not want anything more. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

*I did hear something that night. My adult explanation? Irish Voodoo. Or raccoons, whatever.
** Putting up the Christmas tree is pretty much the only time I've ever seen my parents really hate each other. They didn't like, say it or anything, but the air was pretty thick with an 'If this tree falls on you, I hope you die' vibe.