It is Sunday morning, and I woke up thinking that Alex should call today, because when he does call, Sunday mornings are when he does. That’s about the time he’s crawling into bed in the wee hours of Monday morning after a hard weekend of mostly programming, and readies himself for the work week. I sometimes wonder if calling me is partly like work too; it’s his job. He’s gotten himself a new style girlfriend now, and so the calls have tapered off a bit. I don’t call him, because I’m still really intimidated by international dialing.

My mother is 80 percent certain that his going back to China is 100 percent responsible for my falling apart. She told me this the morning I was packing up for my Chicago escape-route. We sat on the floor of her bathroom, and she told me she thought I was in love with him, and that that’s when all this unraveling started going on. Of course I’m not in love with him, but the only teacher she’s ever had and loved was my father, and that’s why she doesn’t understand.

I explained to her that if he had been here it never would have happened, but his leaving was not the catalyst. I do remember telling everyone that he was leaving because his grandmother was terribly sick back home, which was really just a lie I told myself to realize his family and friends needed him and had been missing him as much as I would. Then in the airport, Aaron had to pry me away from him to let him board the plane because I had him trapped in a bear hug and was screaming No! No! No! ‘Don’t do this.’ he'd whispered to me in the perfect tone to start time back up and snap my head back over my guts again.

Maybe these things mean that I did fall apart- making up lies to make the truth go down. Making one last plea to the cosmos before they took him away on the chance that all this is just one big Aesops Fable on how telling people what you wish for is the only way to make sure it comes true.

Everyone’s just doing the best they can, and some times the struggle to do that makes remembering to act normal blurry and unimportant. Sometimes, when you feel things that people who raised you never knew, there are blank spaces where a tool would have been helpful, but you just have to wing it. Other times, you find the tools working, but you just want to put your hand on the stove to know what exactly hot means. Maybe you just want to remember what hands mean again. I’m not ashamed to know that the stove is hot, not ashamed to know how sweet it is to have top-notch digits. Still, I hide my burnt bandaged hands from everyone, from God Itself, because how foolish it is to have forgotten in the first place; what hot means, what hand means. Only a lunatic could forget…

…or only a lunatic could remember.

Maybe Alex is the greatest example of love in my lifetime. Saving me from myself a thousand times; standing vigil for however long it took. There is no way to pay it back. There’s no way to deserve it. There’s no way to replace it. A guide: a personal gift in proving the density of God.

You stop believing when those things go away. Just letting the chips fall where they may. So many of these God damned chips everywhere.

I love you, My Confessor. All the shrinks and Blogs and best friends in the world will never know.

"He's a distorted individual. It's going to take me a while to go through his expense report." -R. Barmore

"Hi Heather, this is Mom.
The number for Ann Jennings is xxx-xxxx and I think she still makes cakes.
Jill Howard's number is xxx-xxx, if she doesn't answer, just leave a message.
She's pretty good about calling people back.
If you need anything else, just give me a call."

The strange thing is, the voice was not my mother's. This woman has a sweet Texas accent though that tells me she probably knows how to make light fluffy biscuits and hosts scrapbooking parties. She calls from a 903 area code repeatedly, but ever since that message, shes never left another voicemail.

Once I tried to call her back, but I got an 'All circuits are busy, please call again later", so, I think she lives waaaaayyy out in the boonies. I refer to her as 'my fake mom', as in: 'Hey Mindy, my fake mom tried calling again today.' 'Again?'

I try to imagine how this little scenario came into being:

How could someone think they could just fake being my mom? Especially, with that crrrrazy Texas accent!! I mean come on! It's a dead faker give away. Faker! Faker Mom! YOU'RE NOT MY MOMMY!
or
How could a woman roughly my age pass off a bad phone number to her mother of all people? How did she find another number for another Heather roughly her age to pass off as herself? This Heather is a real bitch. One mom is enough for me, and she's supposed to get off mom-free?
or
Have I been given a new mom by some sort of new mom fairy?
or
Is this some sort of crazy marketing ploy carefully constructed to find out my personal information and preferences by staging a call from a 'fake Texas mom'?
Sweety, I'm going to the store to buy some chips. Tell me again what are your favorite kinds of chips Honey? Doritos? Would that be the Spicy Nacho, Nacho, Cool Ranch, Dorito's Dip Chips, or Regular Corn?'
or
Maybe I'm expected at two houses for Thanksgiving this year.
Maybe I'll get double the Christmas presents.
Maybe this fake mom idea is really starting to grow on me.

Heat and stir sugar, syrup and water in a heavy 3-quart saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Add salt. Cook over medium heat to soft ball stage (234 degrees). Add peanuts at 250 degrees. Cook to hard crack stage (290 degrees), stirring often. Remove from heat.
Quickly, stir in butter and soda. Beat to a froth for a few seconds. Pour at once onto 2 well-buttered 15-1/2x10-1/2x1-inch pans, spreading with spatula. If desired, cool slightly and pull with forks to stretch thin. Break up when cold.

I’m not fond of the taste of it, and cooking it is a beast. The temperatures have to be dangerously hot for the sugar and corn syrup to properly harden.

If desired- cool slightly.
Break up when cold so they say.

It’s what old people eat. Brittle people. Mostly grandfathers with if-y teeth drool and gnaw at it. Kids from other neighborhoods go door-to-door selling it at a 300 percent mark-up out of huge Tupperware containers, and those cheap lonesome farts reach for it every time. When my father reached for it a few months ago, I saw his mortality flash before my eyes. Hair rushed from his ears and nose and he started shamelessly flirting with teen-age restaurant hostesses with dork-ass jokes. It’s only a matter of time before the mothball cloud starts following us all.

A typical timeline as told through purchased milestones:

star wars trilogy
Pocketknife
truck and/or sportscar
lazy-boy recliner
peanut brittle
casket

I aired up my bike tires and pumped my bum up the street to the public library too fast. There was the pumping and the wind and people perched at the curb, in lawn chairs, and on the front porches anticipating a parade. People with kids kinds-of-people, people with beer cans kinds-of-people, people with cell phones kinds-of-people, and then there were the people with metal baseball bats and rocks kinds-of-people (which I peddled faster past). Kids were lined up with brown paper bags at one corner, men pushing bell tolling ice cream carts on the asphalt, and on two separate lawns, old men were standing alone with their heads tilted up to the sky doing I don’t know what, and both smiled as I passed because they were doing absolutely nothing and it felt really good. (Though maybe my tank top was creeping a little low, and me bent down over the handlebars unconsciously flying down the street seemed more like a dare or a strange act of kindness.)

It was reassuring to see all of these people enjoying the weather, and the outdoors, and their neighborhood. Even more reassuring, was that they were doing this in the their front yards so that they might share it with other people around them. That was the good part.

I saw two Johnnies drive past and smile and wave like I’m one of the good guys too. But despite these pretty street blocks lined in old elm trees and innocent 1940’s homes with picture windows that let you peer straight through to the back, the noise on my ride was just dirt. The sirens were making the breeze. Non-stop.

Cop-cars, ambulances, fire trucks. My bike stopped and swerved to miss them rolling past, but every corner was soaked with those sounds. Sweet to the neighbor’s ears, it said that something happened, but the bad was over and being cared after. I searched down all the side roads to see if I could find what made the chatter, but there was nothing but a pretty day going on and relief on everyone’s faces. Something had called us all outside at once though, myself included. I’m not saying that the noise was what did it, but maybe something that had passed through just before.

If it’s always been like this, I’ve never heard it. I asked Kirk about it, and he said that the night before last it was bad too.

Mindy and I dove again into the smoky wood-paneled Lakewood Landing Saturday evening. After confirming our young profile in the mirrored wall, we sank into a tattered brown vinyl booth by the swinging front door and split a chicken Cesar salad complimented by Camels and white wine. She introduced me to two men with cockeyes: one with a straw cowboy hat, and one with a long memory for old American poems. Both men taught languages, and both were charmed by old country music and blues masters that nobody my age ever talks about around here. When last call rang out, Kyle and Doug ordered two beers and a whiskey a piece to pass the last 5 minutes, then invited us over to their home.

We passed the Greenville Avenue lockout where traffic snuck slowly, cops stood in huddled teams, and drunken TX/OU revelers studied strings of skirts that might unravel the evening into something more than just 2am. We tripped over the fans all the way up to Kyle’s front door, past swaying men urinating in the bushes and throwing up in the gutters.

Cool inside the lamp lit house with a wooden floor and a screened front door, I found a dark corner with shelves of books, and settled in to skim, while Mindy talked of her latest action item, while Doug listened with bobble head, while Kyle clacked his boots in time to a coarse record player that woke Hank Williams. Occasionally, he’d tap over to me at the little wooden table to tip his head and mumble softly his disappointment in Dallas women who don’t ever seem to want to dance, and I'd smile and nod sympathetically over his books.

We stuck together reading and reciting poems, making pancakes, black coffee and hand rolled cigarettes. Mindy made us promise not to give up the collective until the dawn happened; no matter who amongst us gave over to sleep. But Kyle left us to seek out a dance partner somewhere else; his boots and eyelids twitching to a tune we couldn’t make out, and the rest of us laughing into our stomachs and smiling into the palms of our hands so as not to cut in.

Ahhhh girlfriends. They love who you loved long after you're done loving them, and they hate who you hate long after you're done hating them too. It's a little akward watching them facilitating your revenge long after you've passed all the bad energy to contribute. Still, its sweet and twisted both, and it's better just to let your girlfriend go. It's saying 'I love you sister' the same way we sit together alone and hold eachother in that non-sexual way. (I'm laughing right now from that big fat lie I told...)

Girl Advise (for the boys)
When you first meet a woman, it's perfectly all right to act as though you've just met the most perfect woman of all time (just don't say right away: 'You are the most perfect woman OF ALL TIME') It's a bold beautiful move to look them deep in the eyes when they're talking as if you're diving in through the eyes, past the eye sockets, the skull, and then finding a deep soft pulsing oozing brain bottom. It feels like kissing without really kissing somehow. Like your soul is pressing against your ribcage because it's found something better and wants to believe outside of itself. Some people are better at this then others just like some people are better kissers than others. Some people just never get it at all. Eventually though, if you get it, it's everything. You might be tempted to lie with it. Do yourself a favor. Don't.

but the advise...
Do not, NOT touch this woman in any sort of familiar way if you want to see her after this one night. Not a hand on the knee, around the waist, or on the back. But, lets say you do. You touch her and can't stop. You're probably thinking, she's not stopping you, so it must be okay. Wrong. Her not stopping you does not in any way mean that she wants you to touch her like this. In fact, chances are, she's dissapointed because you just gave her the signal to never to see you after tonight.

So why doesn't she stop you? Save you both from the sad impending train wreck? Same reason you went home with that one girl, that one time, that you never told anybody about. The same.

e-mail from my new soldier in iraq style boyfriend.
I'm back, I am not really sure why this place is the way it is. But,
it seems like alot of the people don't like us being here and some of them
do. Alot of the people think we are the reason for some of their problems,
and the ones that do like us just want stuff from us, like money, water,
food, or whatever you will give them. I don't give them anything I don't
like them, this place is so dirty and deserted. Alot of the stuff they put
out on the news to me does not seem true but what do I know. Like, when
the president says we have accomplished alot over here, I just don't really
see any progress. What, I meant by they was just Iraqi bathe party
loyalist I guess, theres no real way of knowing how many there are left because
they are all over Iraq. But, there attacks most of the time are not very
tactical and not really organized at all. For instance, it seems like
they just say hey let's mortar the americans, "ok, why not". Our camp
literally gets mortared like all the time. But, this is definitely not like
vietnam we are not allowed to go and just mingle in the towns with the people.
I really wouldn't want to anyways. I guess, the guys who were in vietnam
who came back married were really just desperate for something. Times have
really changed since then because, they went through alot of emotional
distress, where as we really aren't I don't think anyway. I definitely
could never marry an Iraqi woman, much less someone from another
country probably for that matter. I think anything these people here can sell
to us is the hottest thing on the market. I gotta run for now, but hit me
back later or something, also for some reason I just found out that my
account will not let me open pictures and such from other e-mail ads besides
hotmail.

Calming down a bit now and getting into normal sleep. Last night in my dreams I searched Gaps city wide for the perfect sweat suit in a heather grey small top and medium pants. At the end I wrapped myself around a hesitant monster man on a dark mountain top.

But, my attention focuses back to good clean fun, a spotless apartment, and dinners carefully prepared. Basically, no good stories to expound on, and I think that's just fine. My skin is looking pretty and well on it's way to having that 'Highland Park' glow.

Plans for my southward departure gel up. I have had nothing but the go worm about it from the start, and then today I felt a little prick at the meat of my arm where my mother used to grab me when I acted up.

Going to Mexico means my feet pivot. I accept the cash buy out and take my little golden parachute where the sun always shines. I forgo the great chance of an uber-promotion, and play all the sillies out.
Meanwhile....
a lady in the office brings me bridal magazines to look out. Some of it looks very beautiful, but all of the models in the main photo spread have serious faces and a grayish tint to their skin that makes them look like dead prom queens. We stand around it and laugh at a dumb way to blow 25 thousand dollars.

25 thousand dollars is a down payment on a house. It's a wedding. It's a new car. It's a move to Mexico. It's ollie ollie oxen free on the student loans. It's a small business loan. It's all of these one at a time, but not all together.

This morning on the drive to work, I felt myself ready to be in love like a wave, like a just released chemical. It was pining and wonderful, and I thought to myself that somehow, I must have already fallen in love, but didn't know with whom. With someone that I've caught just a glimpse of, but who hasn't completely materialized yet. A ghost. A chemical is all.