stress can make you do crazy things (this one's for _k_)

so last night some work friends got together with a very good friend of mine, not me.
i ended up at another get-together with some quite nice, really quite nice new people
and at the end of the nigh, kerry leaned in, big round mouth,

"really wonderful to meet you--you're a great personality."

and somehow i wrangled it into an insult by the time we hit the parking lot.

vince listened for approximately 40 seconds while i railed against the world, aiming all my frustration instead and squarely at her comment.
then he made fun of me.
"you hate everything, stace." he threw his hands in the air (couldn't hug me, he was driving). "really. do you hear yourself? you hate that someone just said something affectionate. semantics aside, what's the deal?"
i said i didn't like the language. "i AM NOT a p e r s o n a l i t y..." (jim carey is a big ego-driven wind bag personality and i don't like it *plus* he's an overactor) "i haaaaaaaaaaave a personality."

"baby really. c'mon."

but i'm not ready to listen yet. i have been found out as a dancing jim careylike monkey and now i want to cry.

wait.
what's that i hear?

"stace. really. c'mon. YOU have a problem with the words. SHE meant nothing negative by them. she didn't mean to offend you."

okay.
"vince, i'm going to start my period soon yah?"

"uh. yeah."

that was around midnight. fast forward to 6am. couldn't sleep. vince came out to the living room, laying next to me on the couch, on top of my books.
"baby, are you worried about your dad?"
i cried again. just for a sec. there's nothing to cry about except the worry. and why worry till we know something. we wait to know something. thursday. we wait till thursday.

you know, the last (most recent) time i got all emotional for unexplainable reasons i was reading denis johnson's jesus' son. one line of one short story set me off. it was in the morning. i was sitting on my bed talking to marco who was in his omnipresent laboratory--always slaving over something dense and mechanical waiting for programs to stop or tests to start. i read of denis'/character's grief; the aftermath of his girlfriend's abortion, the horrible things he'd done to himself, the horrible things he'd said to her. the line that i remember went something like this: "they don't know. it's not what or when it happens or what it's called. it's what the mommy and daddy did."

and i couldn't even finish reading the line. i started crying w/o words. the yawling near-no-sound balling that made marco on the other end of the phone frantic. "ms. muszynski... stacy... dear... say something... hey! what's going on over there!?..."

and i said, it's about the love. "just the...the...obliteration of love and self-respect and respect and drowning and pity."

how do you explain utter loss?

"i don't understand," he said.

and all of a sudden i was listening and intent. forgot to steep and wallow around in my grief about the lousy rotten world. all of a sudden i realized...what?...the truth of possibility. another option. perspective.

i sat up straight in bed and started laughing at myself. i pulled out my calendar--the one i've been marking since the early '90s with the first day of every period. you'd think i'd ever look at it to count days. nope.

i pulled out the calendar and assessed that my period was due the next day.

and so.
tomorrow i'll probably start my period. i better cuz today i nearly cried again of embarrassment after some sweet-faced nice 20-young-something guy told me i couldn't sleep in the mutherfucking huge gigantic trolly cart at best buy. okay, maybe you think it's not correct for a grownup to try to lounge around in a shopping cart. but i say have you SEEN these things? what ELSE could i do but jump inside the thing while vince was trolling the aisles for stereo speaker stands, axial cables, boom box blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

plus the party last night and my inability to sleep made that cart extraspecial comfortable looking.

really. can you blame me? bah. it doesn't matter. even if the dancing monkey believes in dozing for 10 minutes in a shopping cart, she's still a crazy dancing monkey.

so a worker bee with great skin and hair says, "sorry, but i have to ask you to...not sleep in the cart." he offered his hand to help me out of the cavernous interior. it had only been about 4 minutes. not even enough time to fall sleep.

"what--nobody else has discovered this?"
he smiled. "i don't care if you sleep in the cart," he said. "but customers are complaining." he shrugged.
"jealous."
he smiled again.
"man, i hate technology."
"me, too," he says. "hey, we have a chair in the back if you'd like to lay down...."
"nah, i'll just drag my wagon around and try to look presentable."
"sorry," he says, then disappears.

why didn't i think before my nap that my lack of respect would show.

innovation, technology and godforsaken CHRISTmas shopping must REEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIGN. the drowzy frowzy in the cart--git her outta here!!!!!

the society doesn't like to see the homeless it creates. it doesn't like to admit that silence is permission and it could be their very own sons, husbands, boyfriends and fathers keeping the prostitutes in business and the whole affair in the closet.

remember this: designer labels don't matter when you're snoozing in a shopping cart--even if the fucking thing is the size of a queen-sized bed.

ellen probably had a great time last night at the party.
my dad's test results should come back 5 days.
and i just got out the calendar and counted days. tomorrow i begin again.