I now own the leather jacket of my dreams. Dirk's major, but by no means only, Christmas present for me this year was the leather biker jacket I was always meant to own. He tried to go out and buy me one as a surprise, but it didn't fit. Sunday found us at the mall discussing the merits of the $150 vs the $250 jacket. I was a little leery of buying the $150 one because it looks so much like Aaron's. It would be like I'm copying him or something. However, the $250 jacket was made of this lovely soft leather that I knew from past experience wouldn't stand up to very much in the way of abuse; plus the arms were too long. So I said to hell with whatever Aaron might think of me for having a jacket exactly like his and got the $150 jacket. I sometimes put it on and just sit in the kitchen because it's so cool.
My parents left on Sunday – I don't think Dirk's mom was particularly happy with him for moving into my place while they're gone, but that's her problem. They took all the alarm clocks with them and all the Ibuprofen. They lied to me and told me that we had fresh tortillas to make burritos with, and it turned out that the tortillas went bad on December 1st (they are inedible, I tried). Dirk, after much prodding on my part, ran out and got some fresh ones last night.
I already opened my gifts from my parents – my mother put zero effort into shopping for me. I got an emergency car care kit, some face stuff, and three sets of velvet panties & bras. Okay, only two of them were velvet; the other one was this lacy black stuff. I didn't get them squat, though, so I'm not complaining.
I think the hardest part about them being gone is the cats. With seven of them, eight including the outdoor cat, they really need more than just me looking after them. After all, they have to be watched/listened-for constantly lest they destroy anything, and then you have to scoot your butt over to where they've just destroyed something to swat them while it's still fresh in their minds. Otherwise, they won't have any idea why you're hurting them and you'll just look like a big ‘ol meanie. One of them waited until an hour after my parents left on Sunday, while I was taking a nap, to take a huge shit on floor in the hallway. Luckily, the floors are now carpet-free, so I just wiped it up.
They're also very bored. My mother is perfectly content to spend an entire evening lavishing affection on them. After all, she has her husband to do all the housework. I don't have time for that. Even my beloved Sasha has been banished from my room for using my bass cabinet as a scratching post. I get home, start doing housework (after seeing how much I can bully Dirk into doing, since he's basically leeching off me all week long), sit in front of the t.v., and either make candles or bake cookies. One of the two.
I'm starting to get the hang of the whole candle-making thing, which is not to say that I haven't had a few problems. But I managed to get the wax off my cats eventually.
I got a couple gifts from my friend, Amy – she sent me a HelloKitty wallet and a HelloKitty ornament that plays Xmas music. Trust Amy to drop-kick my ass into the holiday spirit. I did a happy dance when I opened the box.
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Dirk and I found the seashells from the summer of ‘97 last night. That was the summer everything happened in terms of break-ups and it was the basis for all the tension in the first months of my journal. GSFU had a show (the only show we ever did with that lineup) at a place called the Admiral's Inn. We were actually one of many bands playing, and the first of those, to boot. I had to drive my mother over to Chincoteague, and it was planned that I would drive back home the morning of the show (basically, the day after we got to Chincoteague). However, I needed someone to come to Chincoteague with me so they could ride back with me (I'd been driving for less than a year at this point). It was the only way my parents would let me go back for the show.
Since my parents didn't like Ken (my ex), the only other alternative was Dirk. He agreed to go when we made the plans several weeks in advance, because he and Krisco were in the midst of one of their many break-ups. However, they started dating the Monday before he was supposed to accompany me, and Krisco was Not Pleased. Even though we'd be going with my parents and I'd be sleeping my parents' room to make certain nothing untoward happened. Dirk tried to get out of it and I bullied him into going. Basically, I told him that since doing this show meant so much to me and it was his own fucking fault that he decided to resume his relationship with her right before the show, when he knew she wouldn't like the idea; if he backed out I would destroy everything that meant anything to him. I worded this so that he understood that I was willing to gut his precious little Krisco like a pig, if that's what it took. He came with me to Chincoteague.
We had a lot of fun during those 24 hours in Chincoteague together. We came back, did the show, and Krisco and Dirk had a predictable falling-out. Of course, I did not help matters by monopolizing Krisco and ignoring Dirk, but I think the main problem there was Krisco's nasty habit of picking at her zits and facial scabs until they bled. When your skin is corpse-white, this is always an astonishingly bad idea; I mean, it's a bad idea anyway but it stands out less on normal skin. She spent the whole evening being terrible to Dirk and picking at her face and Dirk left in a huff. He ended up spending the night at my house – the next morning, he'd all but decided to come back to Chincoteague with me to spend the rest of the week. Unfortunately, he called Krisco to let her know and she told him that it was over if he spent the entire week somewhere with me. Dirk, marshmallow that he was, immediately caved, and I went back to Chincoteague on my own.
I spent most of that week alone on the beach, writing to Dirk in a notebook and looking for seashells. For some reason, the only seashells I could find were black scallop shells. I collected dozens of them, of all sizes. On my last day I tied them up in several layers of paper towels to protect them and put them all in a ziplock bag. That bag stayed sealed, in the bottom of my bureau drawer, until last night. I'd meant to show them to him as soon as I got back, honestly, but everything went from bad to worse and pretty soon I'd forgotten about all those shells.
We spread them out on my bed, scattering the sand that you can never fully separate from beach-found objects. A week of quiet despair and faint hope embodied in all those black shells; not black anymore, but dark grey. They're only black in the water. The air leaches the colors. We talked about that week and everything we would have changed, if we could. Then we wrapped the seashells carefully in the paper towels again and put them away, to be found another day.
I never knew what to do with all those seashells. They didn't have bright colors or pretty designs like the ones you show off. I think it's enough just to keep them.
To remember what despair really feels like.
To realize that I never have to feel that way again.
