Friday

Part 1:  Temptation

I can't get it out of my head: the echo of his passionate plea.  So dramatic, so perfectly scripted, and I was the smart and beautiful and interesting and funny and sexy woman in his story.  He was proud to be my boyfriend.

It's so enticing, his image of me.  Oh, it's sweetly dangerous.  It would be so easy to have it again.

This is why we can't be friends.  Not yet.


Part 2: Habits

I am trying to identify and restrict my personal writing clichés: the word desperately.  The run on sentences, and the sentence fragments.  Not every subject really wants to grow up and marry an object, and some nouns are really happy alone.  But when they become my clichés they become shorthand for what I really mean.  They become the easy way out.  When every time I want to communicate urgency I say desperate, the word loses the very importance that I want to communicate.  Like awesome, which no longer bears any connection to the feeling of awe.

And I think I do okay at restricting standard clichés, because they teach us that in writing classes, but these are only cliché when I use them.  So listen up blog: I'm watching you.


Part 3: Ohio

I can't compete in Ohio.  Or rather, I can't compete for less than an $1,800 investment, which is essentially the same thing.  I was surprised at the strength of my disappointment.  Even though, at the dress rehearsal, I felt shabby and unprepared, not in a "how I'm dressed," or "how I am today," but in an "essential quality" kind of way.  And when the dancers processed grandly onto the floor, arms wide and palms up, following rules that no one had ever told me, I thought it looked terrifying, but I still wanted to go.

I was home on vicodin the night they signed up.  And the week after, I was home because I was tired and grumpy and didn't feel like it.  And, to be honest with myself, I probably wouldn't have signed up even if I could have.  But I feel bereft.  I feel exiled.  I am just close enough to liking these dancers, who are acquiring names and personalities, that I can enjoy watching them, I can admire them.  But I am not so close as to feel like I belong.  I still feel like the kid sister.

God, I always feel like the kid sister.  It was almost more fun when I despised them.


Part 4: Details

I have maintained a steady 195 pounds all week.  Given recent events, and the pie and cheese that I've treated myself with, I'm kind of amazed.  I think my body feels sorry for me and has decided to give me a break this week.

My gray pinstripe vest came in the mail.  It, sadly, will not match the gray slacks I already own.  It is also too big.  Not in a ridiculous kind of way, but a hiding kind of way.  It's what I would wear if I thought I were fat and kind of wanted to pretend I was a guy.  Rather than send it back and hope that the next size down will work, I'm going to take it in.  So it will be fitted, like actually tailored.  It will be the kind of thing I'd wear if I were feeling confident and sexy.  The kind of thing I wore when I kissed the sexiest woman I've ever seen, then or now.  She was full and lush and kissed me softly back.