Jaime Gets Edgy

About five years ago I met someone whose diary I was obsessed with right here on Open Diary (formerly Teen Open Diary).  I had never before then, nor since then, met anyone from the internet.  She lived in Seattle, we listened to Placebo a lot, and she showed me how to develop pictures in a dark room.

Last weekend, I sit with her at my favorite Tempe bar and she tells me about graduating from Evergreen this May.  She orders the same beer as me ("because I don’t want to make decisions") and we get lost on the way to the comedy show, the same way I got lost with her five years ago on our way to the mall.  But things are different now, the same as they were when I saw her a year ago, or three years ago.  She eats really, really fast and sometimes can put things into words better than she writes, but only when she’s not too nervous, and it might even be better if she wrote it. 

Later, we sit along the futon and watch Precious but the boyfriend "can’t get into it."  We drink every time there is a black stereotype, a gross out moment, or something really depressing happens.  We forget halfway through, and I fall asleep on the love seat before I get her a blanket. 

Later, we hang out with another friend of hers from Tuscon (gross) who talks really slow and is really funny without knowing she’s funny.  She sits on my couch, crocheting an oven mitt, and says,

"Yeah, if he loves me he would put a ring on it, but, like, I just want something inexpensive for my birthday."

Time out.

The TV is on right now, I don’t know why, and Dancing With the Stars is on.  Kate fucking Gosselin is on Dancing With the Stars?!  Are you fucking kidding me?  She is a horrible, horrible person who used her family for fame and recognition and apparently only grew hair on one side of her head.  Also, BUZZ ALDRIN?  What?  YOU FUCKING WALKED ON THE MOON  and NOW you’re on DANCING WITH THE FUCKING STARS, a horrible low brow competition reality show?  This is what you want to do as an 80 year old legend?  Jesus Christ.  I can’t begin to explain what this says about America.

Time in.

At work on Friday, two editors I know only slightly well invite me to have lunch with them "in the park."  I’m put off at first, considering I used to refer to one of them as Sexually Inappropriate Guy, but I accept nonetheless.  We sit under a tree at a park nearby and eat potato salad and chicken legs and it’s nice outside in a way it can only be nice in March.  People walk their dogs around us and a gritty looking boy is passed out on a bench.  Some kids play baseball in the field and I am reminded suddenly that I never go to parks, or notice cute flowery shit such as trees swaying in the breeze or whateverthefuck.  Stuff that they tell you to notice; niceness, serenity, nature, perhaps there is something to be said for it, since, you know, it’s pretty.  All at once I feel like a stupid, snobby asshole for being like "eww, the park, weirdos" especially since the conversation never stalled and they even bought me bread pudding.  Picnic at work, how edgy.  

I often feel like a snobby asshole with these two editors since they are World of Warcraft players and both socially awkward in a way that is not endearing, but off putting.  Yet on this day I enjoyed their cynical talk about how stupid the writers are and how ignorant our boss is.  Though, when they invited me to the "Ren Fair" on a Saturday I told them I’d text them, and then never did.  Welcome back stupid, snobby Jaime, I missed you.  

I would, of course, be busy making margaritas and playing Little Big Planet with the boyfriend.

Life drags on, like a dog with no back legs or something.