Off the Record

My aversion to wearing a nametag is comparable to that of ordering dishes with names like "Joe's Jackelburger" or "Happenin' Hummus" or "The Bodacious Beef Brisket." Using words like those and wearing a nametag both make me feel uncomfortable, awkward and slightly fearless. If you want to know me, ask. If you want me to order something to eat, just put a number in front of it or change the name to "The Burger" or "The Hummus" or "The Beef."

Even after getting my car broken into and seeing the city cops act like complete dimwits, I seem to fall deeper and deeper in love with St. Louis each week. Today I spent my afternoon walking around Calvary and Bellefontaine Cemeteries in North St. Louis. Sara Teasdale, EB Du Bois, the Anheuser-Busch's, the Lemps, Tennessee Williams, the Laumeiers, the Browns of the shoe company, the Faust family, Sarah Bernhardt, TS Eliot's Prufrock family and William S. Burroughs are all buried in these places. Some of the mausoleums are extravagant, but most of the monuments are quite modest with a small sculpture or cross on top. Bellefontaine has more varieties of plants and flowers than the Botanical Garden does. Cemeteries were actually built for public park purposes as well as places for burial. For sanitation and city expansion reasons, bodies were moved from Jefferson Avenue northward, in a more rural area--to Bellefontaine, which was built in 1849, the year the typhoid and cholera epidemic hit St.Louis. There are still vast acres available for plot purchase and the walk through the cemeteries is absolutely stunning.

So it appears that I'm quite stuck-up in several areas of culture--one of them being usage of foreign names for foreign countries. I took my letter to the Post Office, the destination being "Barcelona, España." "Umm where is this going?" the attendant asked me. "...to Spain...," I responded. After a look of annoyance like I had failed to completely fill in the "To:" field, she said, "Well, can you write that on there for me, please?" My first instinct was to say, "It IS on there. 'España' means Spain. I would think the postal carriers should know that." But, instead, I silently took the envelope from her and wrote "Spain" perpendicular to the country that had previously been written on it. I felt pretentious for just a moment, like I do when I ask for no ice in my water, but then I realized that this woman didn't know what España meant because some Americans (even postal clerks who deal with international mail) feel that their country is it, and that they don't need to travel outside of it when they can have tacos for dinner or french fries for lunch or a glass of Amarula before bed. Spaniards know what "USA" means when they see it on letters (in Spain, it's abbreviated as "EEUU")...why can't Americans know what "España" means?

I don't live in the hood. Well, compared to every other place I've ever lived, it IS the hood, but that's not the point. I took a stroll down to Walgreen's, just about 3/4 of a mile down the street, past the highway exit/entrance and a busy intersection with a 7 Eleven and a BP station on the corners. There are a lot of houses/apartments for sale along this street and the yards are not well-kept and Suburban Journals litter every sidewalk and maibox. "Hey baby!" "Woooooooo!!!!!!" "What's up, girl!?" I got long stares and waves and creepy glances. WHY DO MEN DO THIS? Well, actually, they aren't men, they're more like mutant assholes from Hades who don't know the difference between an on-duty prostitute out for some dirty business and an innocent girl in baggy sweats and a t-shirt who only wants to get to Walgreens to get her Spain pictures developed. But what's the point? It does not make me feel sexy. Or wanted. Or desired. Conversely, I feel threatened, victimized and up for grabs. Does the mutant asshole from Hades think I'm going to wave him down and tell him that I feel he and I have a real connection and should go talk about it over a cup of coffee? Will he tell me he loves me for my mind and my shoes and my beautiful eyelashes and way of brushing my teeth? Does it make this mutant asshole from Hades feel good about himself? Powerful? Desired? In a different neighborhood I would have flipped him the bird like I usually do, but, in the "hood," I figure I should just keep to myself and flash my disapproving look. Which doesn't really look much different from my normal face.

Since returning home nearly three weeks ago, my concept of time has completely escaped me. I think a party I went to three months ago was just last week. A friend I just saw two weeks ago tells me it was really about 5 months ago. The days go by slowly sometimes, and, at others, they fly by without leaving a trace of what really happened. It feels as though I never even left the country; but that I've just been sitting here, at this computer for days and hours and minutes and seconds until I faced the Metallica and wrote how I really felt. I made promises to myself that I haven't kept and I've forgotten what's really important to me. I feel like someone living in another person's body. Seeing things in ways I don't like, accomplishing things distastefully and saying the wrong things when I wish I could simply be silent. It's pretty much like an out-of-body experience. Not that I've had one before this point in time, but I can only imagine what one would feel like. Being on sabbatical has made me need another sabbatical to recover from the sabbatical of the past year. I'm really not who I used to be, sad to say. Seeing people from college makes me cringe and those from high school make me melt. Others around the town have brought me nothing but a certain overflowing emptiness that I've never felt before. Maybe I have lost my people skills or my tenacity or my drive or charm. I only feel like I'm watching me, from the sidewalk, from the street. Taking it all in, in silence, in defeat. I can't find where to go or where to hide, I only want to be in there, riding next to you, at your side.

When I am about to start my period, I take everything too seriously. I cherish time with friends and cry like a baby when it's over. I don't want to go out to dinner or to bars or to movies--I'd rather get take out with a can of beer and watch a rented DVD or baseball game on the tube. I have extreme times of happiness then am pushed down into the gutter by a simplest thought that enters my head. I confuse the hell out of people and say I'm leaving a party because I want to be alone. But really I don't.