eggnotes - April 2000
tuesday 25 aprilI miss Amy real bad.
she's the best girl i ever had.
If I could climb a tree
and hang out with my baby
i'd be more content
instead, I feel a bit bent.monday 24 april
man do i miss my egg. her being gone makes me realize she comprised the vast majority of my meaningful human contact. I work all day and have fun joking around with people, but every night I could count on some serious talking talent from my best girl, who afforded me the honour of sharing my bed. Man that girl is something. It's the conversation I miss - she can go low or high. Talk about rap music or romantic poetry. She's open to so many things, and familiar with enough to keep me learning. She's interested in my project ideas, and encourages my best talents. She keeps me honest. She cuts my hair. She warms my body and reminds me to relax.
Without her I feel like a brooding beast of a man, lurching from work to greasy food to shower back to work, pausing for some deep and strange dreams in a lonely bed. When she comes back it can't be soon enough except that I remind myself she is having the experiences of her short lifetime and I can't begrudge her a moment of her time in Thailand because I'm longing for some love. She's gotta be seeing things outside of her ordinary world, extra-sensories, which is just what she's been craving.
But still I'll be so glad to see her when she lands. Hug her smell her and hold her a long time. I drive down the road now and I realize I'm just a man working until I'm dead. And at least all the unfinished business I leave behind and the few projects I can be proud of, there's Amy, who makes a tangible differece in my daily life. The slow dwindling of time is a remarkable gift every day that I can fight argue frolick and cuddle that girl all over the east bay of California and beyond.
So then sometimes people say "are you and amy going to get married?" and I'm dumbfounded - how can I be that serious? that sure? that permanent? I can profess profound love for Amy, and feel that what might suit us both best is to be so far away from each other that we may have to make new love. And today I can't decide the shape of that to come. I've got Howard and Judy as examples - they lived together for at least 10 years before they got married, and they are some of the very few people I know who have been married once. The idea of a "practice marriage" doesn't sound totally appealing to me.
tuesday 18 april
She reached me on AOL instant messenger from Thailand today - that's just great. Gosh, the internet brings people closer together! in some ways.
She's 13 hours ahead - I was finishing up a work day near 10pm and she was getting ready to shower just after 11am there. She has fun stories and one liners about her family there. I'm glad she's taking video so I can see where she has been.
I like to picture the body I know so well doing so many things that I can't now see - trying to imagine the chair her butt is on, the shower stall she's bathing in, the street she's walking in, the room where her family sits and laughs and talks. Her typing at an old PC in a family home in the north of Thailand somewhere. I miss Amy a lot.
I talk to the cat a lot and that helps just a little. He's soft but he doesn't appreciate stroking as much as Amy.
sunday 16 april
So that night to celebrate my bachelor-hood, I ate fried chicken, drank beer, and play computer games all night in my underwear. I thought about buying myself a nudie magazine for while she was gone, but then I realized I have the internet.
friday 14 april
Researching Amy's trip with her online, via chat, I come across LonelyPlanet's User Comments on Thailand with a long thread suggesting travellers visit prisoners in jail in Bangkok! (Mostly foreigners). Not the usual fare for travel-related web sites. But then again, neither is ThaiScene.com.
wednesday 12 april
Amy's in a grim mood, we had a spat, I threw food at her.
later, laying in bed
A: "what gives you the right to look at me?"
J: "i love you and i live with you."
A: "some people live with cancer."
tuesday 11 april"Price Check Gone Bad"
Amy loves Ross ("Dress for Less") and I visited last night and I saw some great button down shirts. I waited in the car (finishing a 20 person tournament in CFC) while she had an awful customer service experience - waiting in line 35 minutes to buy three dresses. So we realized that sometimes people get rich and then shop at more expensive places because they get waited on better. Amy's been such a loyal Ross visitor, it was sad to see her so alienated.
We also went luggage shopping, for her impending Thailand trip. There was some Samsonite - a 26 inch monolith of a rolling suitcase, you could have carried body in there, for 140 dollars. Or, you could get a somewhat smaller, more rugged looking Eagle Creek rolling backpack thing for $270. She wanted to save money and she thought she could use the space. I argued that she would very rarely have an occasion to use the largest suitcase ever but I would pay for half of the nicer, smaller one because we'd use it more. We eventually did that (in part because she realized that the weather there would be something like 80-90 degree farenheit, and that doesn't make so so much clothing to bring).
"The Popcorn Paradigm"
It reminded us of movie theatre concession stands that offer a medium popcorn for $4.25 and a large popcorn for $4.50. That's twice as much popcorn for only 25 cents more! But if you're only hungry enough for a medium, then that's wasted food. So sometimes it doesn't make economic sense in our society - you have to pay more to get less.
sunday, 9 april
I went to Nebraska, especially since I missed Gramma's funeral, it seemed time to visit Grampa and pay respects. Colin joined me and Jim and Lori drove up to Basset with us. We had a great time laughing and listening to stories of Colin's love life. The crew in the car did not so heartily enjoy the Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Amy and I had a talk the night before I left, because I had been late picking her up and I dropped my phone and missed her call and I was just kinda out of it, and I missed a chance to hang out with her a little bit before I left. That was exacerbated by her impending two week trip to Thailand. We're very excited about that (tho I'm not going - wouldn't look right for the old-school fam, you know); she hasn't been since she was 5. She's going with her Mom. I'm hanging out at home, probably a lot at work. Who knows. New car shopping. Jerking off. Games galore.
Later during the Nebraska weekend we rezendezvous with Adam and Aimee, Lori's sisters children. It's always great fun to see them, they're teenagers trying to make sense of life, growing up in Lincoln Nebraska. Visits from Colin and I, we four take turns peppering each other with questions. We ask them about school and socializing, they mostly ask Colin and I about our love-lives and occasionally our jobs or lifestyles.
Amy came with me to Nebraska last year and Aimee remembers meeting her. I guess Amy must have seemed pretty unusual - Aimee remarked more than once that Amy was cool. I certainly think so!
I mentioned that Amy talks of moving, or just doing something in her life to get herself to a place where she feels like making movies. Aimee asked if Amy wanted to act or direct. I said direct. Aimee asked if she's made any movies yet? I replied that Amy made a film called Blood, about menstruation. Lori and Colin both said something about a change in subject. What's it like? Aimee asked. It's three short stories about people and their relationship to menstruation (I kept it as clinical as possible). Lori tapped me on the leg, That's enough Justin. I said, yeah, I guess menstruation is a taboo subject, that's why Amy made a film about it. Lori tapped me again. Adam mentioned that he'd seen a cop, I asked if he thought the cop had heard me talking about "it." and Lori tapped me yet again even more insistant that I hesh up.
I sat quiet, a little tension in my chest and just kind of smiled at life to myself out the window, identifying with my girlfriend who makes art that some people find too strong to see. And then later the family was discussing "American Pie" and what a funny movie it was and Lori was condoning it for these teenagers and I thought about what a strange moral standard that is - celebrating movies about male conquest while silencing content about womens' cycle. Strange culture we're brought up in. I guess I've moved pretty far away from Nebraska, but every once in a while when I visit I see something old.
Later after Lori successfully cadjoled me into shaving my face for the first time (with Amy's full support from long distance) we were talking about what it was like to kiss men with stubble. And while I listened to Lori talk about it, I had some data myself to share, having kissed some men with facial hair at Swarthmore but I edited myself. It was strange - I'm so used to being a raconteur. In this case I felt as though if I said too much more weird stuff Lori would not be excited to have me around her neice and nephew much any more and I would rather be around them than insist on sharing all the weird details of my life.
There's something to be said for honesty, and standing up for your life and openness, but today I felt as though one step at a time was hard enough, without stepping so far that I might walk out the room.
