Binary
11/11/01
Now THIS is the last binary date of the year. Few people always notice these things but the way my mind meanders and skips about,that was the first thought of my little nugget this morning when i hit the alarm at 10:01. I’m weird that way.
I almost miss the period in my life where I used to see everything in terms of mathmatical equations and calculations. Everything seemed clear and true. There was no lying in arithmetic. There was no deviation from absolute truth and accuracy. And then that part of my brain broke as did all affinity and aspirations for mathmatical or scientific pursuit. The reasons, well, there were a few conspiring factors. The first of which was a cackling math teacher named Forintos who waddled and cackled like the Marvel villain “The Penguin.” The next was an inability to reconcile the perfection of math calculations and proofs versus what I felt to be the absolute imperfection of my life.
I was a 17 year old dork.
My world consisted of a guilt stupefying mother, an emotionally absent father, a brother who could do no wrong, and breasts that refused to admit that they existed. It was dismal. Senior year in high school, one hopes, is the time when life is perfect. The only worries for the students of my school involved spring break plans and what kind of prom dress they were going to get. These were followed up by the meager challenges of scheduling graduation parties and deciding which which college to party at for the next 4 years. I was also a virgin. Worse than that, I’d never been kissed. All I wanted to feel was the glory of my youth and it’s amazing possibilities. To feel beautiful, the focus of attention, a princess that had finally bloomed from the scrawny duckling.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Harsh reality who?
Harsh reality, this is no fucking joke, got it?
Instead, I felt locked inside a thorny little box that I couldn’t get out of. And every whimsical desire I had was selfish and cruel. My summer and afterschool jobs had saved me enough money to go on spring break in South Carolina with some girlfriends. Plans were made, giggles and whispers, phone calls, swimsuit shopping, etc. I desperately looked forward to that one week, where I would be allowed to escape my life and be someone else. Maybe even get kissed. These were my silly notions. What do you expect, I was 17.
My mother was re-hospitalized the week before my spring break and though I offered to cancel, my parents insisted that I go. I think they knew. The first night there, I declined getting drunk with the other girls. I danced with them, talked with boys with them, etc, but still felt detatched and very cold inside. One of the days there, I walked out to the beach alone, and cried long and hard with my sunburnt knees ground into the sand. Later that week I literally tripped over a tall tannedtennis player on the night of my birthday. He kissed me on the cheek with a birthday wish. I was disappointed to notice that his kiss felt somehow very cheap and tinny. The rest of the trip was unremarkable.
After returning to MI, I was back at work, trying to retain a sense of normalcy. Junior year I took my AP Bio & Euro exams. Senior year my AP Chem class was held in conjunction with University of Detroit so I had the credits secured for college there. The last of the AP exams was in Calculus, which, based on my academic background, should have been a piece of cake. Had I been in my classes. In the end, I shouldn’t have even graduated, having missed weeks of school to help at home, my dad’s store so he could be at the hospital, or just keeping house in a home that started to smell like stale dust, medicines, and utter stillness.
Susie, the competitive brat who had irritated me through every semester by keeping the same academic tract as myself, was there on one of those days that I was back in classes. I was just trying to behave normally. But I think I’d forgotten what that was like. While Sr. HangingJowels collected papers for registering for the AP Calc exam, I sat still, slouching into my seat. Susie glared at me, “Aren’t you taking it?”. “No.” “Why not, can’t keep up?”. “No.” “Then what?” “Because my Mom is dying (you bitch.)”After that Susie never spoke to me. No loss.
Prom came & went. I didn’t go by any conventional means. Dad asked me not to go. I conceded. Guyfriend1 took me out for dinner as consolation and we talked smack. Lots & lots of it. Then we called up Guyfriends 2 & 3 to join us. We then went down to the Rennaissance center of Detroit, where my prom was being held, and lied to the series of security guards as to our purpose for being there.
“Hi, um, I’m Sony Yamaguchi, part of the yearbook crew for Mercy’s prom.. um.. .yeah, that’s why we’re not dressed up… um… and our camera equipment is in the car, we’re runnign late, these guys are my assistants, um… where’s mercy’s prom? We’re running late and we need to get a sense of the layout before bringing our equipment up? Oh, you need me to sign in? Um.. sure…I can spell that out for you S-O-N-Y Y-A-M-A-G-U-C-H-I.”
After eating all the desserts in the kitchen, and humming the theme to Mission Impossible, we made our grand crashing entrance to the prom. Did I fail to mention we were in jeans? And oh yeah, we got thrown out. But not before we’d made our mark on the parfaits.
After that we pranked some folks we knew, stole roadsigns, and laughed hard enough to cause hiccups. It was the first honest laugh I’d had in months and it felt good. The lie, I remember fondly as my first big wopper of a lie and I was rather proud that I pulled it off.
I was fortunate to have those good friends, the same ones whom I’d crashed my prom with, crash my graduation, hold up the procession line to hand me cards and hugs. The illogical in me still struggled to find mathmatical logic to the sequence of events in my life that year. Mum, she died 3 days after giving me her wedding ring. 10 days after my graduation. 40 days after my 18th birthday. Still it didn’t make sense to me. And that was nearly 10 years ago. The logic of numbers had grown quite dull to me and I’d lost that zeal for completion, truth, and purity in mathmatics.
I failed.
I turned to words and their clumsy, clunky expression of ambiguity. Words didn’t have to make sense. And that was beautiful. They could be tangled. They could be true or near truths, half truths, white lies, boldfaced lies, or worse. And all at the same time. Words were just as they were, without having to be a single answer forever and ever. Even the words “The End” lacked the finality and absolute assertion that math did, and to that, I found complicity and comfort.
So please, don’t ask me to calculate your tax and tip. I’ll fail miserably but will write a few lines of poetry on your reciept.
Poetica Spontenaum (Fake Latin, I know)
I left you a kiss
But you won’t see it
Until you flip open
the cover
of your paper matchbook
As you burn each one
match by match
bent
broke,
Remembering the wine
shadow of my lips
singed slightly
and tasting of smoke.
As you strike
the red tip to black strip
On the back
will you scar your fingers?
Will you blow away
Shake out the flame
Casting them out your car window
Will you do that with the cinders?
Or will you
like me,
place the firey tip
on the wet hollow of your tongue
and kiss.
In Other News (Decidedly Less Somber)
I am finally quitting smoking. No really. Yesterday I smoked my last one. No. REALLY. Today, I started on the nicorette gum which tastes like ass but does stave away the cravings a bit. Wish me luck.
Also, while brunching with Annie we came up with an interesting product idea for the single chick.
And no, it doesn’t vibrate, though that is an accesory option.
Sometimes a woman just doesn’t want to sleep alone. They want someone big and warm there to put their feet on, or to hold, but won’t snore, cheat on them, or talk in the middle of Sex in the City. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a big, warm body pillow with an arm that could sweep over you to make you feel held. It really only needs one arm to simulate “being held” since the other arm is pretty much useless anyway when it comes to sleeping with a real boy, and maybe it could be like one of those microwavable sobakawa buckwheat pillow things that you can heat up in the microwave. And oh yea, wouldn’t it be great if it had a heated enveloping pocket like thing, fuzzy, furry, or downy that you could tuck your feet into? (Upon further discussion, I guess it sounds like a big warm vagina for your feet). And oh yeah, another little pocket where it could have a vibrating accessory? Remote control operated perhaps? Wouldn’t that be cool? Nifty? It could come in a whole variety of colors, patterns, & fabrics or have a whole seperate duvet cover type thing to coordinate with your bedspread…Wouldn’t you want one if you were single or newly single and couldn’;t sleep without feeling something warm next to you at night? Huh? No? Sounds crack headed? Uh…ok, never mind.
Ernie’s birthday is less than a week away.
Ritchie & I are working on a *ROAST* for him so if you have photos, stories, tributes, etc, please send em our way.
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