Be Warned: This is a Goat Entry (cf. May 25 entry)

Well, for the second time in as many nights, I'm getting off the phone in tears in someone else's house. I haven't cried this much since my last old movie marathon. Last night was...anyway. Tonight was dealing with something I haven't been on the receiving end of in a while: parental disappointment.

Don't get me wrong--the 'rents aren't arms-up shamed by me or anything. No, they're more subtle than that. I called for my weekly check-in-at-the-house phone call, which unfortunately hasn't happened in about two weeks. And I called in the middle of "Studio 60" for them, which was crappy on my part. I forgot that it's at 10/9 central and apparently AK counts as central. (What really bites is that, while I remembered that Steve and Michele don't have cable/tv reception, I forgot that I had shows to watch, so I will have to catch up online tomorrow.)

So I'm on the phone with my parents. My father's computer is acting out again, so he's a little distracted and irritated: understandable. Mom's a little distracted by the show and the fact that it's 9:30, which is kind of late for her. She's usually asleep on the couch by now. I talk about the fact that I'm housesitting for Steve and Michele, which leads to discussion of Steve needing the vacation because he's been a little tetchy in choir, which somehow then led to a confession of my newly-claimed back-row status.
*Sidebar: The back row has always been where "the cool" kids sat; the ones with all the good quips and fun antics in choir. Until this year, I had not been "back row," and have recently been reveling in it. Before you say it, yes, I realize how juvenile it is to care about cool points this late in the game, and I know I'm far beyond the high school age after which this should cease to be a concern. But I...really like being one of the cool ones, for the very reason that it took so long to get there. So there's that piece of baggage for the goat.

Anyway, no big thing in the conversation and we move on. Until about twenty minutes later, and after a variety of topics, my dad, who has been silent for a couple of minutes, pipes up with "Did you ever think that maybe Steve counts on you NOT being back row?' Talk about conversation bombs. Dammit, here I go again. "I mean, you were saying that Steve has been frustrated, and you're making jokes in the back..." It's like the man can see in my head and I hate it. I hate the hypocrisy of it all--a month ago I was bitching about lack of focus in the choir, particularly in large rehearsals, and how it makes us look and sound bad, and have I done anything about it since? No. I have added to the problem. Knowing exactly what I was doing the whole time but refusing to care because I was being a rebel and breaking the rules: something I generally don't do because I'm fairly bad at getting away with it.

Worst part of it is, I know Steve counts on me, not for my voice, but because in the past I have been a focused member of the group during rehearsal. I have been the shusher, as it were, and now I need to be shushed. And I've seen the disappoinment and a little confusion on his face when he looks at me, and I've brushed it off. Because being funny is, apparently, more important to me than his respect. How feking lame that is. What a slap to the face after everything he's done for me.

Now that I'm wallowing in self recrimination, I think it's time for bed. Better outlook tomorrow, though I may need to count a few goats to get to sleep.

Truth of the moment: Just because you have a guilt complex doesn't mean you've done nothing wrong.

Dam.

Okay, so I didn't want to get in trouble for having a swear word in my title--that's the only reason I spelled it without the 'n'. So don't even think about correcting my spelling, because I am in no mood for it.

But honestly--ever have one of those moments where the fates conspire against even the slightest chance you have at a love--or lust--life by means of piddly coincidences that then become insurmountable obstacles, if only because you wrap them in more layers of anguish than that kid from A Christmas Story? Yeah, we're talking some serious overdramatizing, but I can't help myself.

I'm at the Bookstore Cafe, not thinking about Big Block of Cheese Day or anything to do with Aaron Sorkin. No, I am prepping a set of submissions for the Amy Lowell Travelling Poet Prize, due in Boston by Saturday. Yesh: thank God for express mail. Anyway, the prize itself is $47,900, with which the poet must spend 12 consecutive months outside North America or the possessions of any of its countries. I know I could have said a year, but that has different meanings to those within and without the academic system. I discovered this prize last night, while I should have been reading Hegel and Kristeva on the purpose of poetry...and before I spent four delightful, wicked and totally unproductive hours with Greg Ramsower and Jake Teitgen in the Keough dining room. Though I did learn that a house of brands is where the parent company, like Johnson & Johnson, spreads like a roof over the bricks of its brands, while brands of house appear to be like--correct me if I'm wrong--Apple, where you have the iPod and the iBook and iTunes, but all are pasted with the Apple logo.

Back to the point: upon discovering this prize, I immediately started--no, not revising poems for submission--looking for long term cottage rentals in Australia, Ireland, Scotland and Spain. Yup. Smart. But now, as the deadline looks closer, I am in the Bookstore Cafe, selecting and revising, when who should appear but someone we shall call AH. He's looking very cute and Londonesque as always, very nice black wool peacoat, hair curling just past the unpopped collar, and accompanied by a companion of the young-male-teen persuasion. The situation reeks of Big Brother-ness, which only makes him more appealing.

He comes over and says hi, asks what I'm doing, etc. Charming, between bouts of advising his protege. We close the conversation with him saying he'd like to read some of my work, and that he'd like me to read some of his. I stumble over an idiot's version of "I'd be delighted to" and then he leans over to pat my shoulder at exactly the same moment that I shift in my seat. I do this so I can face him, as opposed to talking sideways, but I'm fairly certain it comes across as "the last thing I want you to do is touch me." When really I'd like it to be both first and last and everything in between.

Honestly, I like him, I think he's incredibly smart and funny and quite attractive, but I'm not stalkerish crazy about him. From all my sources I know that he's fairly well attached to someone else, and I have no jealous-rage issues about that, which tells me that my attraction is pretty superficial. But I really want him to think I'm as cool a friend-type person as I think he is, and subsequently I will spend the next hour and a half obsessing over the chance that now he thinks I have a) a personal disdain for him or b) a general phobia about being touched, neither of which is even remotely true except maybe the last one and only by strangers.

Great. And now the cafe has been invaded by middle school creatures who don't know enough to turn off their iPods if they're going to let the earbuds dangle. Just great. At least one of them has the decency to have brought a well-loved copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's not quite enough to redeem the whole gaggle, but it's close.

Song of the moment: "David Duchovney"~Bree Sharp