2001-11-02 :: 6:57 p.m.

futon girl and the job search from hell

Soundtrack: The White Stripes, White Blood Cells

I keep missing the binary dates. If only I'd written yesterday, 2001-11-01. I'll have to shoot for the 11^th or something.

I'm tired. The Internet is dying on me. Mr. Showbiz just shut down today. Back in the day, I had friends on IRC and they all winnowed down to a select few. Not so long ago, I had friends with diaries, I read way too many diarists in general, and now who do I even read. I'm lucky to write email lately. Writing quality, content, layout, I don't care. I'm non-plussed. Heather could turn into a shit writer with a boring ass life tomorrow and I'd still love her. I think I am almost too successful at maintaining that distance I originally worked for.

With my Internet boredom I left Diaryland for a while, but you know me. Rare entries that are too long to read, but I boomerang back when I can't stand writing on paper. Hi, hi, hi.

If I'm not job hunting lately (which entails going to New York and getting grilled repeatedly), I'm failing out of school (in the way that all nerds fail: getting C's), or asking out people I'm wasting my time on (i.e. a girl who flies to Arizona to fuck her ex-boyfriend in Tempe -- Tempe!).

I just got back from the futon store here. The lady who works there, Melanie, I asked her out at the beginning of the month. She's 29, but you wouldn't know it looking at her. She's really pretty, she's got that permanently-put-together, conditioner-ad hair look. The kind of woman who looks like she wakes up with her makeup done, like it never leaves her. She was sort of taken aback given the age gap between us (I wouldn't have guessed it was that large, but I certainly didn't care), the fact that she has a 10-year-old (I was asking for a date, not marriage), and the random situation (I let her pop quiz me on any topic she wanted to ask about). She said she'd have to think about it and call me in a few days, she really would (I was rather skeptical). I didn't bet on much, but I did think she'd call. After four or five days passed, I knew it wasn't happening. I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but given our conversation, I thought a response in general would only be fair, and I was prepared to go down to the futon store and get it. Unfortunately, I either A) looked like shit or B) felt like shit, so I never went down to see her. Now, about a month later, I went.

Turns out she lost the business card that I jotted my name and number down on. I asked her several times if this was true, because that smelled of the biggest bullshit, but she insisted that she's just awful about losing things. "I felt bad," she added. It was no good now, though, because in this month's delay she'd managed to procure a boyfriend in San Francisco. A country away.

It's cute, actually. She knows his brothers, they had a great eight days when she went out there, maybe she could do retail buying for Nordstrom (good luck in this abysmal job market), blahblah new adventures blah. On the other hand, this state is small. I like going to college here, but I can't see living 29 fucking years here, I'll say that much. So no matter what happens with this guy, she ends up in San Francisco, and her kid will probably like it more than here, and she'll have a chance for newness. And who doesn't want newness? Worst case scenario, she moves back here. She's right: it wouldn't be that hard.

I originally was going to keep the conversation short, but I'm horrible at that, and she asked how my job search was going (I'd told her that I used the story of asking her out as a response to someone who asked me to tell him about something risky I'd done recently). Somehow we ended up discussing past relationships. She'd had two serious ones, the father of her daughter and one other, and the rest she got bored of by the three-month mark (many didn't make it past one date). I told her about my stories, and how not even the most permanent goodbye I knew meant anything anymore, how anything can change. "Well, this will still be a good story," I said. "We'll keep it in our journals." After one of several awkward pauses, I added, "Seems weird that we have this conversation and then just leave it at that." God, talk about never giving up.

"You said you had enough friends," Melanie said (with a healthy dollop of sarcasm). "I said we could be friends. You were like 'Whatever, Melanie.'" That's true enough. I don't need to be anyone else's neutered buddy. But in true dogged fashion, I wrote down my information again and asked her if she'd lose it again. She taped it to her desk. I told her I'd let her decide if she wanted to hang out, and maybe that'd be good. "We can't date though. I'm in love," she said.

"You're in love?" I asked, with the eyebrow of judgment in full effect. "That soon?" She'd only spent a little over a week with the guy. Talking on the phone every day doesn't mean much to me, I've seen enough IRC relationships go down the toilet. But she thinks this could be something, obviously. "You're not in love," I said. "You're twitterpated."

"Twitterpated?"

"Didn't you see Bambi? You know, when Thumper is like, stamping?" I vibrated my leg to show her what I meant. Prior to that it'd been twisting back and forth in true defensive posture fashion. Melanie gave me the eyebrow back. "You don't know anything about love, you young little thing," I said, voicing her doubting thoughts. "I might not be as old as you, but I know that isn't love yet. Love takes time. But it's a cute story you've got going. My parents have a cute story."

We talked some more. I told her about the girl in speech class who made me banana bread and included cream cheese from Dunkin Donuts because I told her that's how I always ate banana bread at home. She gave it to me just before I left for Manhattan on Tuesday. When I saw the cream cheese, I knew she definitely liked me. No one does little detail-oriented shit like that without liking you. It's the sort of thing I'd do. "Why don't you ask her out?" asked Melanie.

"I'm sure I will," I said. "There's just not been much as far as time goes lately."

I said that I'd leave it up to her if she wanted to call to hang out [As Friends^TM]. If she wanted to fine, if she didn't, we had a good story. We shook hands, and I left, but I felt like the ending hadn't been tied neatly. I sure am a closure freak. A few minutes later, I went back in. Melanie shot me a look of sorts, and I made a "1" sign with my hand, mouthing "One question." I really had no idea exactly what I'd ask, I just felt like I'd walked out and ensured that was the last we'd speak, and that didn't sit right (this feeling may well have been misguided, but it's the saver in me).

I asked her if she really thought I'd been a jerk about not wanting to be friends. It was really stupid of me to have gone back in, I suddenly felt it. She couldn't really understand me. I was mumbling too much. I made some remark about the speech class I'm taking and opening my mouth. Australia taught me to shut it more, to quiet my resonance a bit. There were some customers who were kind of confused, but I waved to them that they should speak up, I wasn't being helped. "Do you need to talk to her?" they asked.

"No, he's just a friend," Melanie laughed and we exchanged a "Boy, what they don't know" look. The customers moved on and she mouthed "What?" to me, gesturing for me to speak up. I asked her the question again and she said that she was only teasing, and laughed her laugh. (It's a solid laugh.) I told her maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, maybe I'd talk to her again, then turned to leave.

"Bye," she called after me. I turned around and returned the farewell, adding a wave as I brushed by a fake palm tree leaf. During our exchange, I told Melanie I felt very John Cusack. And I guess I still do.

---

I don't know where time goes. I'm writing less at the moment. I'm so blurry I don't even take my medicines and my vitamins. Hours disappear into the train tracks and hotel rooms on 44^th. I learn more in my spare time about derivatives pricing than I do about the classes I'm supposedly taking. I've seen Robyn twice and I was so glad to have time with her. I want to remember these happy blips, but I'm so exhausted I don't even have time to write about it. Where the hell is my senior year going? What good are the sacrifices I'm making now if I don't get this job?

If I get a job offer I'm taking next semester pass/fail (all humanities, too) and working on my Creative Writing thesis and partying until my brain falls out of my skull. Tonight will be fun and well-deserved. It's time to play some Nintendo (having an emulator and every game ever made for use on the Dreamcast is pretty sweet). If you're reading this, keep your fingers crossed that this job search turns up something good. And that the Internet gets interesting again. Lately, I'll take whatever certainty I can get.