L. Passell, D. Pesta

Most of my posts, so far, have been bitching about something or making fun of something. I thought I'd try something new and be a little honest, about myself. I'm going to talk about something I know absolutely nothing about: Love.

A few months ago when I was with my mom, we were drinking and getting a little more honest with each other than normal, and she admitted that she was a little worried about me, that I would be alone forever. "Dad and I won't be alive forever, you know," she reminded me. She knows. She knows me. For most of my life I have stood alone. I have been single. And this worries her. (Apparently more than it does me.)

But it's mostly her fault, anyway. When I was in grade school, she taught me that it was really important to be myself, and that liking myself was more important than boys liking me. That's a good lesson to teach a young girl. But she left me feeling that girls that were on boyfriend hunts or obsessed over middle school mixers were silly. Weak. Fast forward to now — I'm twenty three, and pretty happy with myself and who I am. But there might be a part of me that sees depending on someone as a weakness.

I wonder if it has something to do with being an only child. Since I was a tiny tiny girl, I was very independent and alone. I played alone, my parents took me everywhere so I entertained myself amongst adults, and most of my life I have lived alone. Maybe I am missing some vital drive to coexist, connect with others. Maybe my longing for independence is so strong it is thwarting my ability to maintain a relationship. I don't have a therapist, I have no idea.

But I do know how I see myself: the girl that is usually alone. Maybe not built for relationships. Guys have come and gone out of my life, but I have never had a serious relationship that felt normal and good and made me happier than I would have been otherwise. In the past, my casual relationships have left me feeling as if I were giving away a part of my self to someone that didn't understand me. In the past, I would have rather been alone.

In the past, my relationship "successes" have always been terrible matches (Mr. Fratboy, who I suspect only liked me because I really was an excellent dancer and loved to have a good time, the younger boy that went to a school far away, so I never had to see him, the punky soccer player that didn't like me nearly as much as I liked him.) I don't really have fond memories of these guys — I always knew it wasn't right.

I can remember thinking in college that I just wanted to be myself and if someone noticed that and liked that, then awesome.One person, in four years at Gettysburg college, noticed and liked it. I'll call him Zane. He was known as the campus weirdo — always sporting tye-dye cowboy boots, long, unwashed hair, large wired glasses that took over his red, aggravated face and small pinched nose. I had never talked to Zane before, but one day I was walking through campus to my class. He stopped me and said "Lauren—you will NOT believe what I bought on Ebay today." I looked behind me. How did he know my name? Was he talking to me? Did we know each other? "Antique, Japanese Samurai swords," he went on to say, continuing to wax philosophical about the swords and I asked him how much they cost and such. And I quickly realized that we didn't know each other, but Zane felt a pull toward me. I was someone he could talk to, someone he identified with. I was non threatening. In fact, maybe I had a lot in common with Zane. Does this mean I was the college weird-o, too?

Since college I've learned that it's more complicated than being yourself and hoping someone will notice, that you need to more aggressive and I've adopted myself as I see fit. But it's hard. And in the end, I often end up eating dinner in my underwear watching "Mamma, ho perso l'aereo!" and spooning with my stuffed animal Ralph. (I am NOT complaining about ANY of this.)

None of this bothers me at all, actually. I didn't realize it was supposed to until my mother mentioned it. But I started picturing my future. Will I be a grown woman involved in nothing more than random casual relationships? Will I be someone that guys go to when they want a girl, but not a girlfriend?

Luckily this makes me a great third wheel. I have this crazy, random single lifestyle peppered with unfortunate dating stories that are fun to listen to but not fun to live through. So I'm entertaining—and not a threat. People should hire me to come on dates with them if they fear there will be awkward silences. All you'd have to do is say "Lauren, what'd you do last night?" or "Lauren, how was that date with the guy you met on Match.com?" and you'd get a great anecdote about how I shared orange juice and conversation with a homeless person at Starbucks or how I have gone on a blind date with every single gay kick ball player in the city.

I am sort of half barely maybe kind of seeing someone and he recently got a little freaked out because he thought I was looking for a boyfriend. When he told me this, I couldn't help but laugh. I actually said to him, "If I was in search of a boyfriend, don't you think I'd look for one that acted like he gave a damn about me?" He apparently didn't get the memo— I'm never the girlfriend. Perhaps that's why we found each other. He's too big of a jerk to have a girlfriend and I'm the never-girlfriend.

It's a match (or not) made in heaven.

The reason I am with this jerkface is because I live alone, and even invincibles get lonely sometimes. Sometimes after work all I want to do its get a beer, play pool, and have sex. I would date jerkface, if that's what he wanted. I would see him more often and introduce him to friends and go shopping with him. I like him. But that's not what he wants, and I want my sex and pool, so I'll take what I can get. But did you hear what I said? It's not what he wants. So I'll keep on being never-girlfriend.

I'm not sure what all this means, I'm just being really honest. I'm assuming other people have similar stories, or opposite stories. I'd love to hear them.

Originally published in The New Yorker September 24, 2001.

..........................................

The one recurring nightmare I've had for many years is about the end of the world, and it goes like this. In a crowded, modern cityscape not unlike lower Manhattan, I'm flying a jetliner down an avenue where everything is wrong. It seems impossible that the buildings to either side of me won't shear my wings off, impossible that I can keep the plane aloft while moving at such a low speed. The way is always blocked, but somehow I manage to turn a sharp corner or to pilot the plane beneath an overpass, only to confront a skyscraper so high that I would have to rise vertically to clear it. As I pull the plane into a dismayingly shallow climb, the skyscraper looms and rushes forward to meet me, and I wake up, with unspeakable relief, in my ordinary bed.

Last Tuesday there was no awakening. You found your way to a TV and watched. Unless you were a very good person indeed, you were probably, like me, experiencing the collision of several incompatible worlds inside your head. Besides the horror and sadness of what you were watching, you might also have felt a childish disappointment over the disruption of your day, or a selfish worry about the impact on your finances, or admiration for an attack so brilliantly conceived and so flawlessly executed, or, worst of all, an awed appreciation of the visual spectacle it produced.

Never mind whether certain Palestinians were or were not dancing in the streets. Somewhere—you can be absolutely sure of this—the death artists who planned the attack were rejoicing over the terrible beauty of the towers' collapse. After years of dreaming and working and hoping, they were now experiencing a fulfillment as overwhelming as any they could have allowed themselves to pray for. Perhaps some of these glad artists were hiding in ruined Afghanistan, where the average life expectancy is barely forty. In that world you can't walk through a bazaar without seeing men and children who are missing limbs.

In this world, where the Manhattan skyline has now been maimed and the scorched wreckage at the Pentagon is reminiscent of Kabul, I'm trying to imagine what I don't want to imagine: the scene inside a plane one moment before impact. At the controls, a terrorist is raising a prayer of thanks to Allah in expectation of instant transport from this world to the next one, where houris will presently reward him for his glorious success. At the back of the cabin, huddled Americans are trembling and moaning and, no doubt, in many cases, praying to their God for a diametrically opposite outcome. And then, a moment later, for hijacker and hijacked alike, the world ends.

On the street, after the impact, survivors spoke of being delivered from death by God's guidance and grace. But even they, the survivors, were stumbling out of the smoke into a different world. Who would have guessed that everything could end so suddenly on a pretty Tuesday morning? In the space of two hours, we left behind a happy era of Game Boy economics and trophy houses and entered a world of fear and vengeance. Even if you'd been waiting for the nineties-ending crash throughout the nineties, even if you'd believed all along that further terrorism in New York was only a matter of when and not of whether, what you felt on Tuesday morning wasn't intellectual satisfaction, or simply empathetic horror, but deep grief for the loss of daily life in prosperous, forgetful times: the traffic jammed by delivery trucks and unavailable cabs, "Apocalypse Now Redux" in local theatres, your date for drinks downtown on Wednesday, the sixty-three homers of Barry Bonds, the hourly AOL updates on J. Lo's doings. On Monday morning, the front-page headline in the News had been "KIPS BAY TENANTS SAY: WE'VE GOT KILLER MOLD." This front page is (and will, for a while, remain) amazing.

The challenge in the old world, the nineties world of Bill Clinton, was to remember that, behind the prosperity and complacency, death was waiting and entire countries hated us. The problem of the new world, the zeroes world of George Bush, will be to reassert the ordinary, the trivial, and even the ridiculous in the face of instability and dread: to mourn the dead and then try to awaken to our small humanities and our pleasurable daily nothing-much.

—Jonathan Franzen

December 4th, 2007

I've had time to think and I've been feeling strange.  Self-analytical, more pensive.  I've stepped outside of myself and I feel fine, happy, content, gracious, and earnest.  I appreciate the events that have unfolded in recent months, as well as the people who have drawn me closer, and I have done the same to them.  I'm interested in a lot of things and have been taking to them because I've got time.  I can read, write, crochet, sew, draw, sculpt, play, watch, sit, stretch and so forth.  This is good as I am learning, as well as educating through my writing and talking.  I want nothing more than connections while correcting weak parts of myself, of which there are many. I'm trying to be more open.  Today is the first day I am 25 and I feel good.  I've matured in action and art.  I started a new venue for my alter ego aesthetic.  I've matured, but I am offering both sides of myself-- the wild, eccentric, unabashed... as well as the stringent, thoughtful, designed, executed, and modest.  Pretty even.  A literal divide-- color and pattern, texture and sedation.  I am both things and like both things.  I can be dichotomous, as aren't we all.  I'm on the path of exploration.  I believe in taking breaks from people I love in an effort to grow with and without them and vice versa.  I hope that love pervades and permits.  Death is not an end, its a beginning.  I am trying to live without fear.  I am trying to avoid fearing what can happen doing today in case I can no longer do tomorrow.  

Imagine this:::

My mother and father and I sitting at the kitchen table at 9:30am.

They are half-arguing half-discussing investments and money.  Invest it there?  For that much ? .... It's getting heated.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, I am watching Wayne's World and it's at the part of the singing of Bohemian Rhapsody.

I am mouthing the words to my dog , while raising my arms at every "dishmilla!" "dishmilla noooo!"

__________

oh life.

Robert Hawkins was a mentally ill high school drop out who had been in constant disputes with his step-mother and in trouble with the law. Twice he was termed a ward of the state, meaning he had been legally removed from his parents’ custody. A friend’s mother, who allowed him to live with her, called him a “lost pound puppy that nobody wanted.” Hawkins said of himself in his suicide note: “I’ve been a piece of shit all my life and now I’ll be famous.”

I, too, ache for the shooter, as well as the victims. The shooter was a victim. This story doesn’t point out a sickness of one person, it points out a sickness of our entire society. A society that makes kids feel like shit in high school — one that Desira described in her own school experiences. Kids are cruel and teachers want to be cool so they don’t stick up for them. Entrenched in high school hell, many kids think that’s all there is. That life doesn’t get any better. Matt Stone, creator of South Park, said something along these lines in Bowling for Columbine and I thought it was brilliant. If you’re a loser in high school, you think you’re going to be a loser forever. You won’t get to fuck, you won’t make money, and you’ll die miserable and alone. You don’t realize that once that high school bullshit is over, you can decide where your life goes. Lots of kids just don’t see that.

Hawkins was out of high school, (he dropped out... what does that tell us about his high school experience?) but he was still enveloped in bullshit. His long term girlfriend just broke up with him, he was fired from McDonalds for a missing $17, he had been kicked out of his home, and he was scheduled to appear in court for underage alcohol possession.

This kid was getting his ass kicked again and again, and he needed someone to help him, to let him know things would be okay. We failed him.

I worry that kids all over the country are going “yes! Those stupid holiday shoppers deserve to be killed.” I’m afraid some people might be thinking this was a victory for "Team outcast". These shootings are getting copied all over the country for this reason. Kids see how much fame a shooter gets, and when they feels really miserable and worthless and want to die anyway, they figures they should at least go out with a bang. Another one for Team Outcast.

I also worry that in the future, April 20 will be something like “High School Shooting Day” and schools will have to be closed. We have already seen copy cat Columbine acts on April 20. We know there are kids who glorify the Columbine killers. They are out there. And they will do it again.

Until they do, uhh, if you see someone is a little depressed, if you hear something, if you are worried about something, do something. The mother of Hawkins’ friend admitted she was worried he would commit suicide “but didn’t think he would involve so many families.” It would have been awesome if Hawkins could have known that he didn’t have to be on Team Outcast, that the world was not against him, and that he wasn’t alone. But how could he know that? He had no one to tell him.

This is going to come off as very very hard to hear for some.  So be prepared. ...

Yesterday a 19 year old boy killed eight people and wounded many others while opening fire on strangers at a mall.
A day of terror for many and loss for many cannot ever be excusable.  My heart opens wide for those who were involved in this terrible incident yesterday.  I know death and I know it is tremendously difficult to swallow, especially when those lost were so because of the hands of another.

School shootings have happened continuously throughout my lifetime.  After Columbine, I started writing a story... This story was prompted by the shooting and took the shape of something a tad bit different than one would expect.. it was the narrative of one of the gunmen.  These people, always males, are written off.  They are given the titles of "killer", "murderer", "psychopath", "monster".  What we are omitting is easy to omit. 

I grew up in a small city.  I was sent to the best private schools by two parents who had had a hard life and wanted nothing more but the best for their children.  They gave everything they had to send my sister and I here and this annulled any sort of savings for they themselves to enjoy.   I can't say that I regret going to these schools, as I survived them, yet I can say that they made my first 17 years a living hell.   I was an outcast and for reasons, even as a twenty-five year old, can't quite grasp. 

It's impossible to give a full picture of why I have empathy for those who lash out.  I have never wanted to kill anyone and I am a non-violent person, as well as someone who thinks guns should be illegal; yet I understand why kids lose their minds.

I was a quiet and studious child and always kept to myself in school.  I don't quite know why I was so quiet, but I was.  It all started in first grade.  Miss Murphy was our homeroom teacher.  A thirty-something with huge black hair and big bulging green eyes.  She choose her favorite student--Maggie-- to do all of the fun tasks like writing things on the blackboard.  She also choose her least favorite--me.  I never talked in class, I never was rowdy or late.  I did my work and was one of the best students.  Even still, Miss Murphy decided this wasn't the case.  I don't remember a lot of instances of her wrath, but the one most formidable in my mind was the time we were having class pictures taken and I told her my mom said I didn't have to wear my giant purple glasses for the picture, but she said I did.  So, there I was, looking like a moron for my class picture, all on account of her not letting me remove them.

Fast forward to middle school.  I had no friends and all of the kids who had been in my elementary school had moved with me to the new older school. 
We went on a field trip and were walking around by my former elementary school.  I don't know why, but my classmate Kelly decided to kick me in the ass.  Like, really, kick me in the ass.  She hit my coccyx and from that day on for several weeks it took me a painful thirty seconds to get up out of my school desk when the change of class bell had rung. All of the other kids would be long gone and the teachers would wonder what I was still doing trying to pull myself from my seat.

I sat alone once or twice at lunch and remember crying while doing so.  After a few days of this, a girl in the popular group took pity on me and told me I could sit with her friends at lunch.  Shocked, I moved to the big picnic table and sat near them.  One day of this passed before a girl named Megan announced to the table, "Why are you sitting here, no one here likes you". 

Having moved to another table, I sat with two girls.  Chris ____, the class bully came over to me and asked for some lunch money.  I didn't have any and had brought my own lunch.  Not liking this response, he punched me so hard that I fainted.  It took a moment for the blood to leave my head and I fell straight back off the bench and landed on the floor... with my skirt up exposing my underwear.  I remember dreaming about Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
  No one did anything....

While sitting in the back of the room in health class I was paying attention to the lecture, I imagine, when the girl sitting next to me asked me if the emerald ring I had on my finger was real.  I responded, "Yes, it was my grandmother's".  She replied with, "No it's not, you could never afford a real ring".  This was unmitigated.  I didn't bother anyone.  What the fuck was this person's problem?  Or any of their problems?  My family didn't shop at Ralph Lauren or have expensive clothing, shoes, or backpacks and people constantly asked, "where you get that?" .  They judged you from head to toe.  I grew angry towards my parents inability to make me "normal". 

Even friends you make in school could turn out to be social climbers and leave you.  Molly and I had become friends in 5th grade and spent loads of time catching crayfish in a creek, having sleepovers and eating at her grandmother's house.  On the first day of sixth grade we were all sitting in the auditorium. I was next to Molly.  I said something to her and her faced turned sour.  She said "You have really bad breath", got up and left.  From then on, we were no longer friends and she joined forces with the popular girls while becoming loud and voicing how much of a loser she thought I was. 

Never lashing out at school, I would come home and take it out on my family.  I ripped the headboard from my little sister's bed in a rage.  I slapped my sister a lot.  I had all of this anger, yet couldn't dispense it anywhere but home.. on those who actually loved me.  Even still, I had trouble at home.  Troubles I won't recount, but I had no real outlet.  No safe space.  I spent a lot of time alone in my neighborhood and in the woods, walking around, imagining I was someone else.  A witch, a vampire hunter.  I made things and drew endlessly.  I also started designing houses and became interested in architecture.  I stewed in my own juices. 

More days passed and I made new friends, yet for some reason this town and this school was plagued.  I swear to you, I had a lot of friends who I had a lot of fun with.  I was a smart and funny kid who loved to cover her notebooks in drawings and play hide-and-seek.  H___ and I had fun playing baseball in her backyard and walking around the neighborhood.  To be honest, I don't remember much of what I did with these people, I just know we got along. 
H___ was an outcast too.  One day her father smoked a cigar in the house while I was visiting.  For some reason they left me there early in the morning to deliver newspapers?  Always having been allergic to smoke, I opened the window while they were gone.  I didn't realize that H___'s sister was there and saw me do it.  Who knew that this was the end our friendship and would prompt them to kick me out of their house.  It seems so ridiculous writing this now.  I even called H___'s mother and apologized for having opened the window and offending them, which was hard to do.  This is really dumb. 
So prior to H___ ending her friendship with me, she called me and told me she had seen B___ at the mall.  I had a major crush on this boy... She said that she had seen him there and he had told her to have me call him... he was interested in me.  When she told me this, I didn't believe it, but asked again, "really?".  She swore.  I nervously took the school phone directory into the bathroom in my house and dialed his number.  His mother answered and called his name.  He picked up.  (Mind you, I had never called him before and we were not friends)  I said, "Hi, sorry to bother you, but did you see H___ at the mall?"  He said , "no".  I said, "oh, ok, sorry, bye".  She had lied to me.  Thank fucking Ghandi that I hadn't said anything for the sake of my poor twelve year old soul.  When I told H___ that I had called him, she didn't believe me.
Anyway, H___ stopped talking to me, which could have been fine, but she also made a point of making fun of me with other people.  Then one day, while walking towards the stairs after school let out, I felt a shove and plummeted down the steps.  Another student told me that they had seen H___ push me.  She pushed me down the fucking steps!?!?

I can keep recounting stories, but I'll just say that I was made fun of for "not having money", which meant my parents were not doctors, lawyers, business owners, or city councilmen.  I never ever had any boys interested in me and even the teachers were assholes and favored the rich and popular kids. 

When I got to high school I joined the swim team.  I started slowly and after my first year I became a promising athlete.  I then went on to win medals in Districts and joined the State team my senior year.  All of the athletic coaches at our school were asked to select two recipients of a sports award for the seniors-- one boy and one girl.  He selected me.  On the day of the awards ceremony, my name was not called.  The male swimmer's was.  After the ceremony,I asked my coach why he had told me he nominated me.  He said he did and was shocked I hadn't gotten it.  I went to the dean of students office and asked why I had not received the award.  She said the school didn't want to give it to me.  I told her that I was nominated and finally my coach got them to give me the award.  We graduated and I still hadn't received it.  A year later, at the end of my first year of college, I got a plaque in the mail.  It was the swimming award.   They had spelled my name wrong...

Existentialism leads me to say that how we accept our situations and events in our lives is what can make or break us as people.  I grew into an incredibly strong and resilient individual who will not longer "take shit" from people.  I used my experiences to realize that these people were weak and needed me.  I was something lower in their eyes and so it made them something higher.  I was also a very good artist at a young age.  Who knows if these people weren't envious of things they couldn't have or control, just as I was envious of their lifestyles and material possessions.  People who choose to lash out, whether it be shooting fellow students at school, or strangers in a mall have become misguided.  Mental torture, throughout years of neglect, ridicule, and  subordination  gets to you.  When I saw an escape, these people saw a possible lifetime of this sort of treatment.  I can say that my "survival" was not easy.  I was depressed, alone, and void of an ounce of self-esteem for most of my early life.  Others can do that to you.  You can feel unworthy of living, being pushed down over and over and over again.  Some are survivors and some are not.  I'm not trying to say my situation was equivalent to Robert Hawkins or Derek Harris or Dylan Klebold, but we all have something in common.  We were all taught at an early age that social failure was embedded in us, in our skin, our minds, our hearts.  We were forced to walk through tangles of mistreatment and ill will, blinded by thorns and blows from a people, people who looked just like us.  I saw hints of light through these branches and managed to keep going, they sadly, did not.  R.I.P. Derek, Robert, & Dylan, as well as the countless others who found no way out of this oftentimes cruel world.  Again, I am so sad for the families who lost loved ones because of the hands of these boys.  This is a social problem.  These boys are products of a sick society, one who has a hard time nurturing.  If you know of, were, are, or contribute to someone who is treated this way, I implore you to see the fucking light.  Stop.  Let live.  Live.  You can do it.  This is all a silly world anyway.  What is important?  Figure it out.

There are lots of things I love about the English language. There are so many words, you can choose the best one... and we borrow from so many different places that it is rich, complex, and eclectic. It's flexible and concise, fun to play with. (And very difficult to learn!)

But Italian is the most beautiful. Better yet is how the Italians pronounce them-- with such care, putting great emphasis on double consonants, opening their mouths and singing their words. When I was in Rome, my friends would tease me. "You Americans don't open your mouths when you talk! Apri la bocca! Open your mouth!" Here is a short list of my favorite Italian words. Feel free to add to the list!

• Allora (so)
• Lussuoso (luxurious)
• Cucchiaio (spoon)
• Chiacchierare (to chat)
• Dubbi (doubts)
• Raggiungere (to add)
• Merenda (little afternoon snack)
• Dunque (therefore)
• Mamma (ma!)
• Giostra (merry-go-round)
• Fagiolini (beans)
• Pescivendolo (fishmonger)
• Magari (if only, i wish...)
• Infatti (in fact)
• Quindi (so)
• Scusi (excuse me)
• Dimmi (tell me)