Spidercamp

temporary: telephone

long freaking drama with phone, hours of driving and calling and fighting with people over the phone that broke itself. ended up with a very ugly new phone, GREEN the thing looks like a damn oldsmobile and does not remember any of my old contacts.

so if you have my cellphone number, will you please call it sometime soon? most of you are un-look-up-able, it's beyond me to keep a real address book i guess, and the only numbers i know by heart are my parents' and my damn job.

one chemical one condiment one alcohol one allergy medicine and one thing that just sucks

1. sulphur dioxide. i never heard of it until they startd putting it in dried apricots. i thought i was allergicto apricots because of all the entertaining throat swelling-up. then someraisins did the same thing. and on the label and there you go, sulphur dioxide. i do not understand why its got to have preservatives anyway, what is dried fruit going to do, rot? it cant really, ive had a box of raisiins for years and its not good but its not rotten either.

2. horseradish. discovered when logan had a big horrifying horseradsh sandwich and then kissed me on the neck and then awful neck rash. i never knew this until now because i never tried horseradish because it seemed gahst;ly, i was right.

3. gin is hours of stomach cramps, thats fine i wiill get along just fine without it i imagine with the girl beers.

4. benadryl puts me ino full body paralysis. no shit. happened when i was 4. not awesome. it wen away on its own , baffling dorctos, they said if i ever took it again the ffects might not go away as quikly or perhaps not at all. so i have to carry a card in my wallet that says i am allergic to alergy medicine and also that it is not a joke.

5. i'm a big kid. i keep busy. but i mean damn its an empty apartment tense as an unanswered question and im having all these pining dreams. every night. this building hasnt heard much of my voice for a week and it sure as hell has not heard me laugh. i'm making a thing. i think it's good. butwhen it gets dark everything starts to go to hell. and i dont know what to do with myeself.

loathing / rescued by my favorite jackass

At the end of the school year everything goes to hell because our after-school program shares space with the school itself. End-of-year teacher luncheons, kindergarten graduation ceremonies (really.) and so forth all necessitate rooms full of festooned tables, deli cakes, banks of folding chairs, and other stuff that means we have to find somewhere else to put the kids.

So I know these last few weeks will be a hassle. I do not expect to get to work and be told, whoopsy, no, we can't use makeshift room A nor B, due to pushy church women assuming they can use our space for junk storage and coatrooms. I don't know where they think we are going to put sixty children (by "put" I mean feed, homework, and entertain for five hours) without, you know, a ROOM of some sort.

These uppity white society ladies feel entitled to whatever they can take and are consistently bitchy beyond all reason. A few months ago, they wanted to set up tables (many hours before said tables were actually needed) in a room where I was playing board games with the kids. They did not say Please at any point. They didn't say Hello, either. I know the drill - I'm the help, I'm lower than shit, I get it - so I glared, had the kids clean up our mess, shuttled them elsewhere, and accidentally left my car keys and my winter coat on a chair. A coworker later fished them out of the trash for me.

Anyway, the lack-of-space issues are relayed, and I figure out the genius solution for my hyperventilating boss (duh, ship the kids outside) before the day's other, rather more serious traumas are mentioned: I've just missed a choking incident wherein the Czech, who would've guessed it, performed the Heimlich flawlessly and possibly saved a four-year-old life. (glad surprise here is based on having attended first aid class with the woman and seen the vast number of plastic babies she killed) Oh, and this morning during 8th-grade graduation, Joey's grandfather dropped dead in the audience right before Joey accepted his perfect attendance award.

Um, all right. So this is the base level of stress visited today on my fragile, lapdog-like boss, who routinely loses her shit over such mundane events as one employee being one minute late. So today she's kind of out-of-her-brain insufferable. She can't work the alphabet and has to ask for help at it. She yells at kids who haven't done anything.

Squatting to help a kid, I split the crotch of my pants and go looking for a sewing kit; boss says WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR (it's full shrill bugeyed pitch all day) and I say A sewing kit, so I can sew up the crotch of my pants. She says WHAT?? WHY?? and I say, Uh, so I can sew up the crotch of my pants. Because I ripped it. And I would like to sew it up. She says, BUT I HAVE TO MAKE A PHONE CALL!

I say, Er. Is it a private call?

NO! BUT I NEED YOU TO ADDRESS THE ENVELOPES!

I just scorn her as much as is possible through the eyes and stalk out. If the envelopes are so important she's going to have to fucking explain what she's raving about. I do up my pants with coarse thread. It is not comfortable. I have cramps and have to sit in very hot sunshine because there's no other place to be.

Later when she starts telling me the basics of how to do my job I cut her off with an I KNOW THAT. She stomps away miffed and shuts herself in her office, which is a pure joy. I get out my ipod and listen to the angriest rap I have, which isn't very angry at all but it would still dutifully shock any good Catholic. Screw supervising the kids; I'm sure if they actually kill each other I will notice.

--

The only good part of my day, and it is very good, is brought to me by Patrick, of all unlikely people on the planet. Patrick is an asshole. He's 13 so to some extent he's entitled, but DAMN does it ever get in my way sometimes. The obnoxious king of loopholes. (Patrick, please stop talking. ...so he sings instead.) It's like he is trying to get on my very last nerve just to see what'll happen when I snap. Malice bred of boredom combines with a very quick mind to make Patrick one royal pain in my ass. Still, he hates school and he's just trying to stay awake. Honestly it's the sort of jackassery I was always too afraid to try at his age, but I was just as angry. Every day.

It occurs to me, Damn, this kid knows how to piss me off, but I can't find any hatred in my heart for him. Because this is so true, I say it out loud. And I add, How do you do that?

He says, I dunno. Maybe because I'm the one kid here who understands exactly how you feel.

He's so right that I want to hug him. I surprise us both by doing it. It's a risk. He's 13, you know?

But it goes well, and it doesn't stop at one. It's lots of them throughout the afternoon, mostly awkward, one-armed gruff attempts that make us both laugh, but that's all right and it's certainly better than the 7th-graders who fake affection to feel me up (it happens).

All day long he sneaks up and grabs me. I ask him how he knows exactly when I need one, and he says, I'm watching you, and every time you look like you're gonna punch some brat in the face, I figure it's time.

Patrick is transferring schools and this is the last week I'll know him. All told, I get six hugs. On the last one he says Thanks and I say What for? and he says, For proving that not everybody who's in charge of stuff has to be such a bitch.

He does two more things he never does: he looks me right in the eyes, and he smiles.

In the spirit of using the internet for its intended purpose I will now yap about something I hate

I hate it very much when strangers get all up in my business. I would hate it if someone gave me health advice in the post office and I hate it when someone does it through email.

I mean for shit's sake. Did you seriously think "ah now I will just pull up my chair to my keyboard and type out the special and unique words - you should see a doctor - and that will be the magical impetus needed by this TOTAL STRANGER." See a doctor, god how fucking novel, eat some vitamin C, won't you come be my personal advisor? I do not actually base my health decisions on anything said to me by nosy strangers who don't know the whole story, don't know WHY I have been sick and have no reason to email me other than to exercise their own frail yammering. Will I explain the whole story of my shattered immune system now? I will not, but I will tell you to shut up.

You can all fuck off telling me to quit my job as well. I know it isn't the ideal situation. My constant bitching about it is proof of that. And yes, the idea of quitting has occurred. I have reasons for staying which I have not publicly gone into. I am actually more than a collection of anecdotes; I am more than my stupid blog. Is this idea comprehensible?

I am wronged every day by an asinine boss, a relentlessly annoying Slav (remind me to tell about all the times she kept nagging me to go to the doctor. haha.) and consistently cruel society parents. None of it is the public's business unless I choose to make it so. And really I don't give much of a damn who reads my jabbering - though I am grateful when this site allows me to reach people and foster interesting communication, primarily this is a log of my life for my own purposes, made public because I felt like it.

But here's something I will choose to make your business. There's a very sweet little girl I've known for years and this was the year she chose to quietly take me into her confidence and tell me about the time she was molested. It happened a long time ago and it was correctly dealt with: she told her parents; her parents raised hell; it was professionally sorted out. The horribleness of her voice when she was telling me the details was something I will not ever forget. She told me the details and I will never share them with anyone else on this earth, not only out of the obvious concern for her privacy, but also because I do not want these images living in anyone else's brain the way they will always live in mine.

She told me the details, and was quiet for a while. I said, You know that if anybody ever hurts you again, your parents would do everything they could do to help you. And so would I. You know that, don't you?

She said Yeah, I know. We were silent for another little while. Then she said, in the same weary voice, I know this is a hard job for you sometimes. Will you promise not to quit until at least the end of this school year?

I said, Of course I won't.

So you will see that I have my own reasons about my own actions in my own life. And while everyone is invited into conversation, if you send me an email telling me what I should do with my life, I think I will probably override your judgement. I think I will probably put you right into the trash. So that's why some of you have not received my customary polite reply.

All this frustration is directed at hardly anyone who is reading this. Again, it's mostly for my records. It's just all such a shame because I am completely open to the idea of human connections which originate with the internet. Some of my best friends know how to type. It's just the past handful of emails I've gotten that make me think it's a world full of wanks. Prove me wrong? Please, honestly.

the new hilary and the secret of girls

I am pretty good at figuring out the magic words to use with a given middle-school kid, much less capable when faced with a whole flock of them. They're spastic and loud. They talk over me. When I'm pissed, I can take them on individually, but yelling at them in a group is fruitless because as a group they just don't give a damn. It's not good to yell and be giggled at. For these reasons I pass the buck whenever possible, avoiding group communication and aiming instead for those little perfect moments on the side where I can make a real connection with one kid.

I know exactly how to win Hilary.

A gangly geek, this is her first year with reliable friends. She no longer does the silent worried freakout when there might be nobody there to talk to, because there's always somebody. She's suddenly at home with everyone: even little kids or adults will do. A combination of growing into her own personality and being discovered for the fun weirdo she has always secretly been. Most days, she doesn't even bother to bring an emergency book. That was not an option last year.

The friends are essential because her father is abusive and her mother is a drunk and vice versa. Her little sister is too young to be a comfort and is more Hilary's responsibility than she should be. There's often no one else to cook dinner for the two of them.

Hilary plans to be a chef.

Across a crowded room I see a group of girls laughing, hyper from the rare thrill of being in street clothes at school, lightheaded with the joy of being thirteen and bulletproof. They're so loud. I'd be irritated if I didn't know it's the last time I'll ever see some of them.

For a second I think they're clustered around an adult - but it's Hilary, a head taller than the rest, her hair in a painstakingly casual knot. The rest of the girls have spent their choices on glitter - on flipflops, on barrettes, outlining the American flag on more than one Old Navy tshirt. Hilary has quietly and stunningly become an adult in a simple black top and blue skirt. A low-slung silver belt around her - yep - hips. Black shoes of a sort I wouldn't be able to walk in, but Hilary strides long-legged. She's radiant with a confidence I've seen building for a year, but the full version of it is so enormous that it's hard to remember she's just a kid, even close up, even when I can see the amateur eyeliner and unfortunate earrings.

Later, when I tell her I'd taken her for a college kid, and why, I make sure it's in a group of her friends. They're jealous; she blushes and grins (without the braces it's just another way for her to radiate). Still not used to being the center of attention, Hilary changes the subject, but will love me forever.

--

Later, because the fever has come back, I give up on doing my job and sprawl on a lunchroom tabletop like somebody dropped me there. The awful fake wood veneer is sticky in spots from lunch but I don't care, it's so cool on my face. I maneuver for a non-sticky spot and flatten my cheek against it and close my roasting eyes.

The girls, without discussing it, come to sit around me. There are other empty tables. They talk about boys and what they're going to do this summer. They tease each other and laugh. The usual. When I don't participate one of them asks me what's the matter. I say M hot. Fevr.

Rustling. Rachel has in her bookbag, among three hundred gel pens, a tiny battery-powered fan. She doesn't stop chattering about her new neighbor's inCREDible blue eyes as she bathes my face in cool air. It's not much of a fan but it feels so beautiful I'd like to cry.

Totally interrupting, I say, You know, I was just having the weirdest thought. I was thinking, these are some of my favorite kids, and it's because they're old enough to have actual good conversations with, and they're old enough to be cool people. And then I was thinking, man, I wish they were little enough to need a babysitter, so somebody would pay me to hang out with them all day, because that would just be the best thing ever.

Shock; awe. They don't laugh.

A few moments, and conversation comes back. I lie there and listen. Rachel gets bored with the fan but makes sure another girl takes over for her. I lie there in the little breeze thinking of how excruciatingly alone I was through most of middle school. I didn't have anybody. I knew exactly what friends I wanted. I studied them every day. Not the popular girls - I knew what it was to be empty - I wanted the goofy ones. I just wanted to be allowed and able to hang out with nice people. A childish goal, but not a silly one.

Had I approached them, I don't think they would have scorned me. But I never did try, and I was easy enough to overlook. In fact I engineered it.

So now, this many years later, I've accomplished it. I'm lying on a table being entertained and taken care of by girls I would gladly have taken as my friends fifteen years ago, and who I gladly take today. I think that after all, all I had to do was collapse among the nice girls and be taken care of. It's so strange and so funny. I laugh and laugh and they ask what's so hilarious and I say Everything, just everything. They tell me I'm crazy, and they laugh too. This moment can't go on for long; they're too capricious and they're graduating tomorrow. But while it lasts, it is very very sweet.

Since Saturday, when I woke up destroyed,

Since Saturday, when I woke up destroyed, it's been many different forms of nauseatingly altered perception. Drugs. The eyes bake in their sockets - does this change what they see? It must. I'm used to it. Are my hands shaking or are my eyes vibrating as they boil? Probably both. Sleeping and being awake happen at all the wrong times, an inverted day. Sleep isn't real sleep, it's a procession of fuckedup dreams that might as well be real. Last night the ugly man wanted to kiss me, like always, and I said no and he reared up anyway. I laughed and said, To make you disappear all I have to do is open my eyes. It happened to work that time, but the odds were as good that I'd have slid myself into another nightmare. The sheets are not rough but they feel rough. I sneeze and sneeze and forget to breathe; the brain reels.

My a.c. has broken so the windows stay open: there's always a woman crying in the courtyard, or music I would not have chosen. Or that loud motherfucker whose redneck accent is so distorted I can't make out one word of what he's constantly yelling. It's infuriating. He's right outside my window, I can look down on his bald spot. I want him to shut up or take a class on elocution and shut up.

It's only a cold and I'm only being dramatic. My take on the world is off kilter and so, for me, the whole world is imperceptibly ruined. A great gift: today, an hour spent in bed with juice and crackers, feeling fairly like myself, my attention alternating between the magnificent book sent by Ira and the magnificent box of dirt sent by the doctor. It's the first thing I've been able to smell in days, and I won't stop.

languishing in a fever is way more fun than writing long stories for the website. sorry.

The thing I love about Ava is that she's six years old and she's consistently funnier than me. She defeats me every day and I can't get enough. Today I was feeling crappy (sick, I think, again, again) and she came over to ask me a question and she was hopping on one leg.

I said Ava why are you hopping on one leg.

My mommy told me that I have to hop on one leg the whole time I am talking to you. Not other people. Just you.

I said Now why did your mommy tell you that.

She says you're dangerous.

Hopping the whole time and falling over a little, plaid jumper, hair in her eyes, giggling, the whole bit. Then she took it back. Not dangerous. That's not nice. I mean, just, I have to get my exercise.

Since her real name is Beef Wellington I asked her what my real name was. She thought about it and said, I don't know what your last name is, but your first name is Shrimp.

What? I don't want to be Shrimp.

She shrugged. You asked. And ran away.

too much watching the smart cutie, this is what you get:

Jon Stewart accidentally insulted the First Lady. It was kind of funny that after thousands of intentionally sarcastic jabs, the one that would get him in trouble would be a simple misstatement. He slurred a phrase and ended up calling her something unimaginably foul, to her face, on live tv. Such a scandal. Although never one to shy away from controversy, Jon now has a wife and a baby to think about, so he figured it was better to lie low for a while. The show gave a little more airtime to foreign affairs and a little less to the administration. He cancelled upcoming interviews. I imagined he was pretty sick of the whole thing - the same questions over and over, the outraged rhetoric asking for his resignation (from a comedy show? calm down) - but I wanted to see if there was anything I could do, so I IMed him.

>jessicapier: hey buddy how you holding up? >JonnyStew: oh man you have no idea. th fucking phone wont stop ringing, its like there isn't anything else happpening in the whole goddamn country. they got my MOM's number and now they're calling her day and night, "was he this big an asshole when he was a kid" etc. i hate this. I'm used to being the troublemaker not the jerk you know? it's fucked up. >jessicapier: dude I'm sorry to hear it. let me know if there's anything I can do? >JonnyStew: you know it. holla
A few days later I went to the shoe store to see if I could catch Jon when he wasn't busy, maybe take him to lunch. The place was pretty busy and I didn't see him anywhere. I tried on green jelly shoes until the shrimpy manager came over to see if I'd been helped. I said, Actually I was hoping to find Jon. He here today? The manager scowled. No, he's taking a 'personal day.' Guess he caused a bigger stink than he could deal with. This is why I was against him taking that second job - he swears he can handle both, but I dunno - this comedy shit is really interfering with his job performance. You see him before I do, you tell him I'm not impressed with this little stunt, right? I said I would, and paid for my green jellies.