By the by...

Here is the link for the world's greatest commercial-- the one that started all the sidebar trouble to begin with. While the commercial itself is nothing special, I defy you to get the catchy jingle from your head after a listen or two. And it's in Rocky Mount, NC! I am very envious of the people who actually get to see this commercial during their every day television viewing...



By the way-- notice that the jingle specifically calls them "Good" buffalo wings, as opposed to "Great," which would have fit the rhyme scheme just as well. That can't be good...

Catching up is hard to do

My God, my God, why won't I stop with the retarded catchphrase-y blog titles?

Anyway, as you can see, The Unwilling Adult is back in order, with a sweet new Urban Decay-esque background. Please let me know if my link to your blog didn't survive the format change; thanks to Frisby, I was able to solve the Where Is the Fucking Sidebar issue, and thanks to Penelope, I restored my counter to its rightful home.

You know? I was going somewhere with this blog, but I've just started to notice that I am, right now, sweating through my shirt, which is really putting a downer on this whole leisurely blog thing. Apparently, Ohio has forgotten that it is a mousy Midwest state where the temperatures don't go higher than eighty, ever; also apparently, my landlord has forgotten his promise to provide screens for the upstairs windows, meaning our attic bedroom currently contains the exact weather conditions ideal to perpetuating life in the rainforest.

So before I dehydrate much further, I'll cut right to the chase: Saw X-Men. Great movie. Stay till the very end if you go. Also, is it at all humanly possible for Hugh Jackman's arms to be this big? Especially considering that, when not being Wolverine, he's generally starring in Broadway musicals, which I love, but imagine not being very conducive to sweet upper arm workouts? My personal theory is that they are very nicely constructed foam sleeves. I would like to believe them to be real, but at the same time, their veiny-ness and occasional popping tendon-ness tend to unnerve me.

More tomorrow, probably from work, where I am less likely to succumb to heatstroke.

What the?

Weird shit going down on blog-- no time to fix now. Thought changing the background would fix the "why the fuck is the sidebar now at the bottom?" problem, but it seems to have only made things worse, as I now have no counter (NOOOOOOOO!) and lost all my links (which I will be restoring when there's time-- T, sorry your blog in on my list so much, but I was using it as the cut and paste model to paste in all other links! That should be fixed this evening).

Any suggestions as to how to get my counter back, or move my sidebar back to the side? As for the blank post, it was supposed to be a You Tube with the World's! Greatest! Commercial! But clearly it failed. Sigh!

This is a test

Testing, testing. Did this fix it?

Ohio is everywhere!

I was standing outside my new office this afternoon with Marita and Chanel when I noticed this rock on the ground in the exact shape of the state of Ohio. Which supremely weirded me out, since on my first day of band camp in college, I found a piece of trash on the ground in the shape of the state of Ohio. So of course I had to bring it home, as I am apparently in the habit of bringing home random crap I find on the ground, as long as it bears a passing resemblance to my home state.

I have photographed them both here-- marvel at the eerieness of their similarity!

But I have to ask-- what does this all mean? Is it a sign that Ohio is where I am meant to be? Or that Ohio is trash, meant to be discarded on the ground? Or does it simply mean that I have an idiot-savant type skill for quickly identifying the shape of states?

The Unwillingly Porny Adult

So I can't stop thinking about why my blog got so many hits last Sunday-- has Mark Harmon turned his League of Evil on me? Are other Witnesses looking to cover every angle of the LeBron dynasty (wait until next year, Pistons, you crap-ass thugs) (although Rip Hamilton looks like a pretty nice guy, actually, when he takes off that freaky face mask)? After going back and checking the referrers to my site, I have come up with a shocking conclusion.

Aside from the usual links from The Verse: Making the Ivy and Oopsie Daisy, among others, there were also a large number of Google searches for one Tiffany Vandemark, a name I had totally forgotten until I searched it myself, only to realize that she is Ric Flair's fiancee, and I wrote about her once in an old post about the Nature Boy.

Slowly, it dawned on me: adult plus Tiffany Vandemark. People are looking for porny pictures of Tiffany Vandemark! On my blog!

Which then took me down the even more disturbing road: The Unwilling Adult, when taken the wrong way, sounds like a totally nasty porny scary pornucopia! Of nastiness! Why did no one ever point this out to me? I might as well have called my blog "Hot Bitches Tied Up Against Their Will"!

Unfortunately, unless I relocate my blog altogether, I can't really change its name. And besides, I am an unwilling adult-- I spent the last evening of Ben being out of town alternately vacuuming (to give the false impression that I had lived in immaculate splendor during his absence, rather than huddled on the floor eating hot dogs) and watching old episodes of Spongebob Squarepants.

So we'll see if my excessive mention of Tiffany Vandemark creates another spike in readership. If that's not it, then I really can't rule out the evil machinations of the Mark Harmon Fan Club.

Thoughts from atop the washer

As I type this, I am sitting on top of our poorly-balanced washing machine, which, because our basement floor is slanty, must be up on a complicated system of brick and planks, and must be sat on at all times while wash is being done, lest it walk off its brick-plank structure and tip over, disgorging my ostensibly clean sheets onto the basement floor. It's a really bumpy ride, so I hope I'm not doing any damage to the inner workings of my laptop, but dammit, the world needs its blog fix, and I cannot deny it!

Although, sadly, I have almost nothing of interest to say. Ben has been out of town for the last five days, so I have slowly been devolving from self-sufficient girl ("I'll cook chicken and rice for dinner! I'll clean out my closet!") to lonely hobo wearing the cast-off clothes found in said closet ("Where are the fucking Cheez-its? They will make an excellent repast!"). This was made much worse yesterday when, inexplicably, I was hit with a high fever, and so spent most the day being hot and watching Lifetime Television for Women, which only heightened my delirium.

Feeling much better today, I drove to Seven Hills to see our new office (I have to drive around Dead Man's Curve to get there, which is both terrifying and amusing, because now I regularly get to say the phrase "Dead Man's Curve" in every day conversation, which is much more useful than you would think). My new desk is by a window, which thrills me, because now I not only get regular direct sunlight, but my Sirius satelite radio works there, meaning I will now be in super-heaven, all the time.

And obviously, I have scraped myself together enough to get around to doing laundry, which is why I am currently riding the bucking bronco that is this Maytag. So now I'll have clean underwear to put on so my mother won't be embarrassed when they scrape my remains off Dead Man's Curve.

Somebody's watching me

Hey, anyone have any ideas as to why 210 people came to my blog on Sunday? Not that I'm a counter junkie or anything (LIE), but I do check my counter regularly, and generally, only about 15 people look at it on Sundays. There were 78 on Monday, too, but now everything seems to be back to normal. Was my blog on the news or something? Because that would have been sweet.

Sadly, though, I can't shake this sort of ominous feeling...

Though Nike made me say it, I am a witness.

It may come as a shock to some of you-- particularly those of you who saw me in gym class in middle school, when I would purposefully step in front of fast-moving kickballs so I would get hit in the face and have to sit out the rest of the period-- that I am, thanks to Ben, a die-hard basketball fan now. Let me clarify-- a die-hard Cleveland Cavaliers basketball fan. Because as much as I might scream my face off in public (and yes, maybe cry-- a little-- when we win) for the Cavs, I would really rather die than watch that big scary German guy on Some Other Team do big scary German-guy things for 48 minutes.

But look at us now! Only one game away from beating the Pistons! Ben's out of town, and I'm still here, screaming until the dog and cat run for the basement in horror at my intense freaky Cavalier love!

How awesome will it be for Cleveland if we go all the way? Will people forget that our river once caught fire?

Also, sadly...

I don't have the hate mail I received from Mark Harmon. For those of you who don't know the lore behind this, let me retell it quickly: when the package came, I threw away the letter, saved the photocopied note that said "I don't care if she gets an autograph or not-- Rude is rude, and I don't reward it" (but then lost it while I was in grad school, although I can't imagine it's gone forever), ripped up the photograph and ate the signature.

However, my dad assures me that, though the letter was technically thrown away, he rescued it from my garbage can on trash day, saving it for future humiliation. My parents just moved, but after they're settled in, I might begin hounding him for the letter again, so that I can share its evils with you.

Yan Yan Mango World Market Wowee!

(Sorry, I have no idea what that means. It just sounded vaguely like those crazy t-shirts you occasionally see Japanese people wearing.)

So Ben and I are walking around World Market the other day in search of tasty wine when I stumble upon a display of English candy (my favorite, brought back by my dad's trip to London, is the Cadbury Flake) when it occurred to me-- if they have English candy, they might have Asian candy! And the presence of Asian candy can mean only one thing:

Yan Yan.

You may remember Yan Yan from its brief foray into American food, maybe around 1989, under the name Skinny Dippers. The premise: bland cracker sticks with a tasty, tasty chocolate dipping fudge.

I had pined for Skinny Dippers from the time they mysteriously disappeared after I left the fourth grade (when I used to eat them during the Jim Henson Story Hour) until I went away to graduate school and Hoang-Anh, Ashley and I rediscovered them, as well as the world's greatest dried mango, at a Vietnamese market in Wilmington.

After I left there, I thought I would never have Yan Yan again, unless I could coerce Ashley or Hoang-Anh to send me some. But after a frantic seven-minute search, I managed to unearth not only the delicious mango, but the motherlode itself: shelf after shelf of Yan Yan.

Being a more consciencious eater than I was in grad school, I restricted myself to only two Yan Yans-- one for me, and one for Ben. (I ate most of the mango in the car.) But it will make me sleep easier, knowing that Yan Yan is readily available, only a few miles from my home.

Soon, I will be fat. But I will be full of Yan Yan, so it just might be worth it.

They live!

My parents just moved out of the house I lived in through high school, college, grad school, and meeting Ben-- it was all quite sad, since I get intensely distraught when told I can never re-enter or revisit a certain place (I am still sad, for example, that they closed the Long John Silver's I used to frequent in Streetsboro). But one fascinating tidbit did arise from the move-- I went over on Sunday to help them empty out the remainders that the movers had left behind, and taped to the inside of the closet doors in my bedroom, I found these-- the two original Mark Harmon photos that sparked my long, odd journey into celebrity harrassment and subsequent receipt of celebrity hate mail.

See how they're shiny? I told you they were laminated.

Work, everlasting

How is it possible that it is still only 10:37 in the morning, when I have clearly been at work for at least fourteen hours? Time passes, currently, at an unacceptably slow rate.

Curse you, 10:37, and all the garbagy mockery you convey!

You buy now!

Must be quick, as am on lunch break and desperately need to e-mail back tens of thousands of people (my apologies if you are one of them!), but I absolutely had to inform you SMUCKER'S UNCRUSTABLES ARE THE GREATEST FREAKING FOOD ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET. They look gross, but DO NOT BE FOOLED! They are so tasty that you imagine this is the treat you would get if you asked God Himself to make you a sandwich.

Perhaps I am being a bit hyperbolic. But I really don't think so. Because the only bad thing about the Uncrustable is that it is very, very small. And since today was my first time trying them, I only brought one, in case it turned out to be disgusting and vile. And now I am fiending for another one right now, even though that would be Too Much Sandwich.

I swear, there's a layer of peanut butter around a layer of jelly around a layer of crack.

SSSSD: Day Seven

Here it is, my seventh and final short short-- I did it! I'm a winner! Now I can get back to doing what I do best-- intermittently writing sometimes entertaining, sometimes boring snippets about my life. But I had a great time doing this-- it at least reminded me that I am capable of sitting down and writing SOMETHING. So hopefully this will spur me on go back to writing at least somewhat frequently.

I really hope you've enjoyed reading these-- I secretly imagine that people were showing up on my blog and going "Damn it! Another freaking short!" But I thought it would be fun to share...

In the meantime, here's today's prompt. Ahh, memories. Although I never danced with anyone to Prince, unless you count the time we were at Martha's and that guy with the wicker hat sang "Kiss."

***
The alarm clock sounded red and loud, like a fire alarm. And even when she turned it off, the red sound was still there—inside her head, honking, flashing red, then blue—police-car lights in sound.

She looked at the clock—eleven-thirty. The windows in the bedroom were cracked, and birds were singing their mid-day song already, even though it seemed she had just fallen into bed.

What did she remember? Kissing him—red sound again, high pitched and all inside her. And dancing, which she never did. The songs they played had been purple songs, purple velvet—maybe Prince? She had danced to Prince? With him?

It was time for the bathroom now—black noise now. Stomach and head and black and red and blue noise now. And as the entire evening fell into the toilet, the siren call of inner noise reached an unbearable pitch.

SSSSD: Day Six

I know this is going to look like a wuss-out, but I'm not actually going to post my short for today, Mainly because it really, really, really, really, REALLY sucks.

Before I go on, check out the prompt for today. Then check me out. As the least scary person in the entire world, I am wholly unqualified to even attempt something like this. And I know I could have actually spent more time thinking about it, rather than dashing off the crappy thing I did write (more on that in a moment), but my cousin Jennifer is getting married today, and I'd rather not have to spend the entire reception thinking to myself, "So if she slipped in a pool of blood, then how could I stop the alien-impregnated rabid vampire sheriff from just killing her?"

So my acutal piece turned out to be about a girl who overhears her mom's boyfriend saying he's going to "stick it in her until she screams," and assumes he's going to kill her, only to come home from a sleepover hoping to thwart him and instead find them doing it on the kitchen table.

The mere fact that I just wrote "stick it in her until she screams" makes me want to vomit.

Anyway, then she leaves, and he reaches for a butcher knife-- ooh, double entendre! And that's the end of The Worst Short Short Ever Written By Anyone, Ever. Please no one ever bring it up again.

Trust me. You forget.

While I bragged on Penelope and Mendacious' blog that I had been blogging every day, it occurred to me today that although this is technically true, I haven't shared anything about the fascinating goings-on of my actual life for almost a week.

You haven't missed much.

Until tonight, that is. Because tonight I am Home Alone-- Ben's gone to his sister's in New Jersey for her college graduation, and I am left to my own devices with the following items for amusement:

1. A copy of Liza With a Z, which arrived via Netflix this afternoon

2. A box of "slightly damaged" hair dye I bought at Giant Eagle for $2.49

3. My old bike, which Ben recently repaired for me.

While a good dance number or a chance at a browner shade of hair are appealing, I could not resist the siren call of the bike, which is interesting, because I haven't actually ridden a bike since I was about sixteen, and my dad, who among family and friends is known as Safety Man, would have strongly cautioned me to not ride my bike if no one was home to save me when I inevitably fell off and broke my head open on the sidewalk.

But I was sitting the garage, reading the circulars from last Sunday's paper, and the bike was just sitting there, mocking me. It's the same bike I've had since I was in the eighth grade (although still in pretty good shape, owing to the fact that, as Safety Man's daughter, I never really rode it anywhere other than the evenly-laid sidewalks of the subdivision I grew up in), but it seemed so much more ominous now that I was pretty sure that I had forgotten how to ride it.

So after a quick phone call home to tell my mother that I was planning on riding my bike without any supervision, I dragged it out into the driveway and cautiously mounted it. (Mounted it. Ew.)

Turns out, I had not forgotten the basics of biking-- like pedaling and breaking. It was the steering that had kind of faded from my memory, so that the first five minutes of my bike ride were spent going straight down the middle of the street, with cars unable to pass on either side, because I was too timid to veer off in one direction or the other. Soon, I remembered the relative safety of the sidewalk and went there, only to be forced off by a little girl on a bike with training wheels who had pretty much staked her claim on the flat, straight strip in front of the elementary school.

(Curiously enough, this is the same elementary school I attended for kindergarten and first grade, and they used to have bike rallies there at the end of the year, but I never participated because I wasn't good enough to maneuver through the traffic cone slalom.)

All in all, I rode for a total of ten minutes or so, and did not fall off, although I did have to do an emergency brake-job into someone's front lawn after I lost control (apparently, if you go too slowly on a bike, you start to tip over). And I have to say, I'm excited to go biking again, mainly because I look forward to a day when I can legitimately wear bike shorts. Also, all the little kids in the neighborhood seem to think it's cool that I'll ride bikes with them, which means they are less likely to throw juice boxes in our lawn, which seems to happen pretty frequently.

Now I just need to plan a route where I don't actually have to make any turns or ever, ever, ever leave the sidewalk...

SSSSD: Day Five

Here's today's entry-- I think it's the shortest one yet. Me so smart, with my few words.

I would also like to state for the record that the guy in this story is not Ben (he's made up. I think in my head his name was Joshua, because I was thinking about The Ten Commandments.)

Here the prompt.

***
When he comes in the door after work it hurts to look at him, that's how strong my love is. That every time I see him, even now, after two years, I seize up, and then I explode, all limbs all ways, wanting so badly to touch him, to be so close to him that I simply sink inside him. I put my hand against his cheek and look into his eyes, and he smiles down into my face. "What you making for dinner?" he asks, and then spins out of my grasp to the newspaper, the easy chair, the loving caress of ESPN.

I'm thinking maybe it's over between us, but I couldn't bring myself to leave. I'll wait for him to do it. It's easier to be left than leave-- maybe not easier, but more familiar. Watching the backs of old boyfriends as they walk away, a cardboard box filled with the spoils of our relationship tucked under each of their arms. The presents I give them they keep. The cards, they leave splayed on the coffee table. It's the gift that counts, not the thought.

Even friends, old friends, they come home from college, and tell me I'm too intense, now, that maybe I call too much, that maybe I'm too jealous. The tone of their letters is as distant as the cities they now live in. Not one of them would stay for me.

I've given so many people my heart. And all I get back are kidneys and lungs-- painful to lose, but not life-threatening.

SSSSD: Day Four

Here's today's microfiction-- hope you've all been looking forward to some pro-wrestling themed crazy-go-nuts!

Here's the prompt.

***
Right before they call my name to go out in the ring, but after the camera crew has finished taping my pre-match interview (you’re going DOWN, Undertaker, you’re going DOWN!), the cameraman hands me a razor blade and tells me to slip it in my boot.

When I ask him why, he says that when the Undertaker hits me with the chair, the camera will pan away. When it pans back, he says, he wants to see some blood on my face.

The Undertaker is so predictable. He must hit people with chairs a lot, if the cameraman already knows he’s going to hit me with a chair. Try and hit me with a chair. Because I’m fast, that’s why I got this job, that’s why my tights have my name sewn down the side, like Ric Flair, like all the best wrestlers. It ain’t because I’m slow.

“Now when you lose the match,” the cameraman says, watching me tuck the metal of the razor into the tongue of my boot, “I want to see some rage. Maybe a tear or two. Your first time in the ring, devastated by the Undertaker. Yeah, a tear would be good. Cut through the blood.” And he turns, and he leaves. I have a staredown with the back of his head, turn his brain into jelly with just the hate in my eyes.

When you lose. When the Undertaker hits you with the chair. This guy, with his no faith. Can he see into the future? Does he know what’s going to happen?

Clearly not. Because I think it’s fairly obvious that I’m going to win. I am, after all, the one with a razor blade in his boot.

SSSSD: Day Three

Okay, no prefaces this time, as I have been warned against it. Except that I would like to point out that this family is also named Purvis, as in my "Purvis Family Portrait" from grad school, but it's not the same ones-- just possibly the best catch-all fictional last name.

Oh, and also, I've been writing the name down wrong-- it SSSSD-- Seven short SHORTS in seven days. My apologies!

Here's the prompt.

***

Purvis family vacay 2006, and where are we? Niagara Fucking Falls. Again. Like last year, and next year, and every year until I graduate and blow that cow town and all the bourgeois vacation shit that comes with it.

Like this: shoving through tourists to Clifton Hill, wet and half-blind with mist from the Falls, to where we end where we always end: Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!.

This, despite my pleas to go to the Wax House of Criminals or whatever that shit is down the way. Figures of Manson and Capone. Still lame, but it’s not: SEE THE BUFFALO WITH EIGHT LEGS! SEE MANY SHRUNKEN HEADS, TOO FUCKING MANY SHRUNKEN HEADS, SINCE YOU’LL LOSE INTEREST AFTER THE FIRST THREE! SEE THE BIG MODEL OF THE WORLD’S TALLEST MAN! BELIEVE IT! OR! NOT!

But my stupid little brother Louis wants to go there. I think he wants to live there, live in that tunnel with the spinning lights, that always makes you think you’re falling.

We walk in and I stop at the two-way mirror—so and so many people can curl their tongue—can YOU?—and look at myself. Everyone here can tell I’m too old for this shit. Seventeen and not impressed by snakes with two heads anymore. Hair blued with Kool-Aid—it works, that shit, it does. Nose ring. It’s magnetic, but fuck it, as soon as I graduate I’m getting a real one.

I look down and Louis is looking into the mirror with me. At me. So I flash him a shot of my tongue—I can roll it, I’m one of the so and so people who can—and walk off, leaving him there to try to perfect his own tongue roll.

My parents are off asking Canadians to take their picture in the SEE THE COMICALLY OVERSIZED CHAIR! chair, so I just cut through to the end, through the falling tunnel, to the other side of the two-way mirror. Guess Louis doesn’t know, or forgot, or is pretending not to know—it’s the big treat at the end, watching the spazzes roll their tongues through the mirror.

And he’s still standing there, concentrating so hard he’s squinting. His tongue a leech careening from his mouth, making all shapes but curled. He can’t do it. But I know he wants to—he does everything I do. Little sheep. I stand for awhile and watch him do it. He tries so hard to be like me, but he just ends up looking like a freak.

SSSD: Day Two

This one was a lot harder-- I was hoping for something funnier, but... this is what I got. Someone please tell me I'm still funny, or soon I'll just be calling in to talk radio shows and expressing lame opinions no one cares about.

Here's the prompt-- the whole thing will make a lot more sense if you check it out.

*

Friends and family mourn the loss today of Twinsburg native Ennis Farquhar, who choked to death on a grisly wad of Salisbury Steak at the local Cracker Barrel last Wednesday evening.

"It was all so quick," sobbed daughter Wanda Blauvelt, who attended what would be her father's last meal with her husband Ronald and their two daughters, Maybelle and Dani. "He was in the middle of screaming at the waitress—Listen, you little cunt, if this piece of shit steak is your idea of a joke, then I’m not laughing, he said-- and then he just..." Blauvelt trailed off, her eyes falling to the framed picture that rested in her lap, a picture of her father dressed in a Speedo and wearing a foam finger. A single tear splashed onto the glass, obscuring the invisible dog leash he held during happier times. "At least he died doing what he loved."

Currently in police custody is Blauvelt's husband Ronald, who, as a trained EMT, had an obligation to perform the Heimlich maneuver on his father-in-law, but did not.

"I don't know, I just... just couldn't stop watching," he said. "Right before the waitress got there, he had been performing his usual routine-- Ronny, you're a no-good Pollock. Ronny, my Wanda deserves so much better-- his usual Ronny Scumbag routine, you know-- and then the waitress came with the ice water, and then... I don't know. I hear him gagging, you know, and see him clutch his throat, but he's mouthing Help me, motherfucker. No please, nothing. Even a Please, motherfucker would have been nice."

Unrepentant about his actions, Ronald Blauvelt will remain in custody during his father-in-law's funeral today. "Ennis Farquhar died like he lived," Blauvelt concludes. "As an asshole."

SSSD: Day One

Okay, so here is my first piece of micro-fiction-- nay, my first piece of non-blog related writing-- in like many moons. Please let me know if it sucks so bad that it should be removed and replaced with another article on The Wonders of Neil Diamond (because I think I could crank out at least three more).

To see the prompt this came from, click here.

Also, before I begin, I would just like to say that Ben is a million times more awesome than the guy in this story, and I am not nearly this dorky anymore, and generally do not pick up shit I find on the ground and carry it around in my wallet.

And now, without further ado,

Where We Were From

They were dorky times, filled with dorky words: band camp. College freshman. Homesick and scared. Words that don't inspire "cool." And he was dorky, and I was a dork, and in dork love with him, standing next to him on the practice field, too afraid to say anything because at the time I thought him cool, older, exotic with his long eyelashes and his fancy, special trombone. Shiny trombone.

And there on the ground, tramped into the practice field by the feet of many marchers, was a piece of trash, a flake of a cardboard box, maybe, or a scrap of this brown paper, worn away at the edges. It looked very much like the state of Ohio. This was a sign. It was pockmarked around the place that I had grown up-- that dent, that was Aurora. And creased where I was now-- near that crawling ant, that's Ashland.

So I turned to him, and showed him-- I liked to pretend, at first, that it was him who had shown me, that he had found it, and he had given it to me, but that was not the case, because he didn't give me much, ever, really-- and pushed one edge into his hands, so he could see, and said: "Look. Ohio."

The first dorky words spoken in our dorky non-romance, which spanned four years-- first months of me calling down to his room-- "Do you have any aspirin?"-- even though I had no headache, just wanted to see his room, smell its boyness, then years of lunches together, evenings spent together, one awkward kiss that was never spoken of again, while we watched The Beatles' "Help!" on his tiny dorm room TV. Then a fight, a reconcilliation. Nights spent at his house, in the same bed, but never doing anything. Ever. He wore band-themed t-shirts all the time and dreamed of a day when he would live in Miami, because he liked the music there.

I was so in love with him.

I quit the band for the slightly less queer world of college journalism. He graduated and became a doctor. He called me once while I was in grad school and asked me to marry him, "because all doctors had wives." I was briefly elated, but it was gone fast. I never spoke to him again.

I still have that garbage Ohio. For a long time I carried it in my wallet, with my student ID and list of emergency phone numbers. Then, when I didn't care as much, I glued it into a scrapbook. I get it out and look at it sometimes, and see us at the very beginning, each holding one edge of a piece of trash that looked a lot like where we were from.