Off the Record

Nothing better: 1) Riding to the party on your bike while it's pouring down rain, dressed in your amazing $50 white/pink striped shorts from GAP. 2) Going to the STL Mag A-List Party filled with A-Listers and free booze, talking to fellow writers, then heading to Franco with underpaid bar owners who buy the drinks and talk non-stop. 3) Then getting dropped off at your bike at 1AM, riding down Kingshighway/Delmar slightly intoxicated and stopping at the hot dog man outside the Delmar Lounge. 4) Eating an amazingly fresh Polish sausage topped with celery salt, mustard and sauer kraut at 1.15am while riding your bike down Delmar to your housesitting gig in the Jewish Land of U City. 5) Writing on your blog at 1.26AM right before you go to bed, only to get up for the Board of Alderman meeting in the morning.

A little over a year ago I wrote an opinion piece for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about what it was like to hear "So what are you doing after you graduate?" Very tongue in cheek, the article addressed the goals I did and did not have and the way I felt about typical office, 9-5 jobs. At the ripe age of 21 I received many a hate letter, all of them saying the same thing: You pompous bitch--how could you disregard normalcy and try to attain stardom by way of freelance jobs? I took it all with a grain of salt for the most part, but some of those harsh words still stick with me as I take on more and more responsibilities. Aside from my office job, I also began some time at Local Harvest Grocery on Morgan Ford. I helped work on the place months ago when it was just an empty room, and Patrick, the owner, asked me to help out on the weekends. Between writing, Villa, Sno Cone, Cyrano's and the grocery, I'm working a good 65 hours a week. And I'm exhausted. Now do I drop a job or do I simply manage my time better? Or try to consolidate? I'm struggling with the issue that I'm too willing to help out--too willing to accept new opportunities, even if I don't have time for them. Raised a strong Catholic (even though I haven't been to church in a few years), I suppose I still have some of that work ethic and inability to let anyone down. There's also the guilt. Oh, the guilt...

Dear Woman on the bicycle who I saw at Forest Park Pkwy and Skinker: I wanted to let you know that you gave me a sole moment of hilarity when you rode past me yesterday as I arose from the underground Metro stop. You were heading westbound, riding your cycle in the crosswalk and you wore your helmet differently than I'd ever seen anyone wear it before: backward. The visor, which is usually a definitive determinate indicating which direction the hat should face, shielded your scruff from the sun, causing your unprotected eyes to squint as the traffic chose to cross in your path. The plastic straps that are meant to nestle just under the lower back part of your cranium, pierced your forehead, the wheel used for adjustment leaving an indention of the brand name in your sweaty skin. You looked ridiculous, completely unaware of your miscalculation and obliviously uncomfortable. Thank you, woman on the bicycle at FPP and Skinker--thank you. 

"Is that what you're wearing?" my oldest friend asked me as she, already 15 minutes late for the five-year high school reunion, took a shot of whiskey in my father's kitchen. I looked down at my white linen dress, lime green Sperry Top Siders and navy neck tie I had somehow managed to knot. "No, I guess not." "Good. Because it looks like you're trying to impress." I let the thought sink in for a moment. I had thought the same thing as I packed a white shirt and Levi jeans with a pair of maroon Converse high-tops in my overnight bag for the trek to Alton from St. Louis. I could wear this dress that I've worn a half-dozen times since I bought it two months ago; this dress that I'm incredibly comfortable in; this dress that all my St. Louis friends know as 'me' and find it to be the standard style of Sarah Truckey, but, because the people from high school know me as the Converse high-top t-shirt wearing jeans girl, I felt this overwhelming need to cater to the eight years past. On one hand I felt vulnerable when faced with these people I spent four formative years with, but, on the other, I felt that I had changed in ways that some yet hadn't. It was nice to see us all in the same room again; only this time we weren't wearing scratchy skorts or answering algebraic equations or inspecting our imperfections in the lock room--we were genuinely proud of being together and didn't hesitate to answer each person's seemingly invasive question, "Are you at a better place in your life then me?" Of course, it was posed much more tactfully.

My housemate who narrates his life is talking to the collar 

of his shirt while ironing.  

"Collar, don't fuck with me. I've only done this a few  

times  before."  

I've also noticed that he makes this weird high pitched  

"bluhbluhbluhbluh" sound when normal 

people might sigh.

After enjoying a tasty 8%+ snifter of delicious Schlafly ale last night with terrific company, I was picked up by the insanely well-dressed Jesse Irwin. I threw my bike into the bed of his truck, full of metals and irons and plastics and copper, and we raced to Kirkwood, him half asleep, to see a musical for which we had received complimentary tickets. We enjoyed the show, laughing at the lines about having sex so much you limp for a week, but we had to stifle, as the audience at Stages is a bit older than us, thus less appreciative of the aforementioned crassness. In dire need of a milkshake, we rode to Steak'n Shake where he sat, his plaid shirt somehow blending in with the black and red striped booths, and "jaundiced" every picture on the paper menus with two yellow crayons: one of which was made in Malaysia, the other in Thailand. He made me laugh until Frisco Melt came out of my nose, and then we went home--the long way because I can't get anywhere using Highway 44 apparently. We passed the Hampton Car Wash, the lights on the -mpton -r and -sh burnt out, and Jesse asked me, "What's a Ha Ca Wa?" I didn't have any idea.