tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61474669353027772642024-02-20T19:27:29.197-06:00tragediennepassive-aggressive poetry + prose. read, weep, repeat.Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-7747552512527385032011-03-18T20:16:00.000-05:002011-03-18T20:16:58.026-05:00Return to the Scene of the Crime - Fiction Friday Challenge #199<i>*The Fiction Friday prompt was "The one thing your character regrets learning the most is……" and while this story is about both learning and regret, it doesn't follow the prompt to the letter, so I hope you're okay with that.</i><br />
<br />
“I don’t remember you,” the wizened old professor said to her.<br />
<br />
Why would he? She wasn’t surprised. She had dropped out of the fiction writing program after one and a half less than illustrious semesters, her inner muse having succumbed to a fatal case of writer’s block. But that was a decade ago. In the ten years that had passed between then and now, the fiction department sent her invitations to their annual festival of creative writing. Every year she declined. <br />
<br />
It was hard enough still living in the same city as the school she dropped out of. She never knew when she’d see a news item about it, or discover that some once-vacant building in its vicinity had been taken over by the school and was now full of students working on something edgy and avant garde. Now that it no longer mattered, she had a firm grasp of the bus and train schedules that could get her to campus on time. Now that it no longer mattered, she had a thick enough skin to take constructive criticism. Now that it no longer mattered, she had enough life experiences to write the novel that would have been her thesis project.<br />
<br />
It was quite possible that ten years ago today she was sitting in the very same classroom she sat in now, anticipating the beginning of the 2 hour writing workshop the old professor would be teaching. More students filed in. Their faces were unfamiliar to her, and too old to have been the faces of any of her former classmates. She had enrolled, under duress and pain of parental cajolement, right after completing her Bachelor’s in a torturously rigorous program. All she had wanted was a year off to rest her brain from the strain it had endured. But she ignored her own instincts, followed orders like a dutiful daughter, and enrolled here at 22. Most of her classmates were about her age, though most of them were undergraduates. Which posed a problem, since they were her peers and yet not her peers at the same time. What separated them was that she had a degree they were still working on. She often forgot that she was being held to a higher standard than they were. There were older graduate students in the program, of course, but she hardly saw them because most of them took the evening classes while she preferred attending during the day. So perhaps that was who she was surrounded by today, the older students she had not met before.<br />
<br />
Today there would be no grades or standards to worry about. The professor had the group arrange their chairs in a circle. She remembered sitting in circles like these. Unlike the other writing courses she took, the ones here required that she and her classmates exchange stories and read them aloud. So someone else was always reading her writing back to her. Hearing it come from someone else’s mouth, cringing at the typos Microsoft Word somehow let slip through spell check, she wished she was not sitting in a circle so she could bury her head in her desk. Something about the setup made her feel small somehow. But she was going to confront her past today.<br />
<br />
“Take a sound.” The professor said. “Listen for it. It could be a sound here in the room, or a sound outside the room.”<br />
<br />
Ah, yes, this dumb writing exercise. She remembered now. This was the type of thing they did in Fiction I to spark some sort of inspiration. But the inspiration never came for her then, not this way. Nor was it coming now. None of the sounds inspired her to see an unrelated image in her mind’s eye, create a gesture for that image, then a story to go with the gesture. This was not working for her.<br />
<br />
Next they took turns reading aloud from Proust. At least it wasn’t “Bartelby the Scrivener” again, or some dreadful Kafka story. If she had to read about Gregor Samsa one more time, she’d send the Orkin man after him. After they’d read for a while, the professor asked them to share what images they remembered from the story. Then there was another story to read aloud, a surreal piece by a professor whose name sounded vaguely familiar. Could she have been one of the instructors teaching a class she dropped out of halfway through the semester? Perhaps.<br />
<br />
At last, with only 30 minutes remaining, it was time for the writers to write. She hadn’t thought of herself as a writer for a very long time. But that’s who they were in this room now, writers, all of them. <br />
<br />
“Take a place,” the professor said, “a space, a room. Picture this place, this room. What’s in this room?”<br />
<br />
Her mind again went blank for a while, until an image came to her, something that held the clue to one of her deepest secrets. Oh, that secret just begged to be made into a novel or screenplay, if she only had the nerve to disclose so much about herself. Of course, she could always use a pen name. Not that it mattered now. These people didn’t know her. She never saw them before and probably wouldn’t see them again. She told them what the item was when she was called upon. There were a few blank stares, but a few more writers leaning forward with interest. And instantly she recalled how she’d felt ten years before, when her roman à clef was being read aloud in class, typos and all. Her field of vision throbbed in time with her pounding heart, and she knew she wasn’t ready to share the story yet. Not with them, not this way. Her fear of exposing so much personal detail about herself was another contributing factor to the death of her muse. How relieved she felt when, at last, she no longer had to sit in classrooms encircled by strangers who knew her fictionalized secrets. Now was not the time for this, she decided. Now was the time for pure fiction. Now was the time to write a scene for the story she abandoned.<br />
<blockquote><br />
<i>He was determined to go through life as though his frailties did not exist. No one had asked, so he could write his own story. He could be the hero instead of the victim. He could be the doctor now and not the patient.</i></blockquote><br />
When she read it, the professor nodded kindly and said it was a good start. She could sit a little straighter in her chair now, and hear the words of the other writers better. She could tell now what was truly a first draft and what was most likely prepared ahead of time. She would not be fooled this time as she had been before. She did not compare herself to anyone this time. She had her story, they had theirs.<br />
<br />
Again the professor asked them to recall the images they remembered most. No one remembered anything she’d written. When that had happened before, back in the fiction program, she had been mortified. If no one remembered what she had written, did it mean she was an unmemorable writer? If it had been based on her real life, as was the premise of the Story and Journal class, did it mean that she lived an unmemorable life? If no one remarked on her writing, did it mean that she herself was unremarkable? These were the fatal blows her muse was dealt. Or perhaps they were near-fatal wounds. Her muse was not dead. Simply comatose. A crime had been committed here, a crime against herself. She was the perpetrator, her inner critic the accessory to it, her own words her weapons. She was the one who had subsequently forbidden herself to write, told herself nothing she had to say was interesting enough or good enough, seen her life as a forgettable bit part in the theater of the mundane. <br />
<br />
This time, as before, she did not leave the class having made any new friends. But this time, unlike before, she realized that she wasn’t a bad writer at a good MFA program, but a good writer at a good MFA program that just hadn’t been right for her. So many times she had blamed herself for not having more exciting experiences to write about. She had actually envied the intrepid classmate who ventured to New York in October 2001 to see Ground Zero with his own eyes. Once she dropped out, she took a series of retail jobs and got all kinds of stories from neurotic shopping women who seemed to frequent high end department stores in lieu of psychotherapy. Besides the vicarious dramas, she’d experienced many of her own in the ten years that she’d left. But now she saw that her lack of life experience had never been the problem. Instead it was her lack of faith. The comatose writer inside of her was awakening, and she could feel its presence in its insistent narration of the story of her life as it happened to her, here, now, in this room.Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-45046255141874973092009-06-30T09:37:00.001-05:002009-07-01T22:23:48.361-05:00Paris Vignettes<span style="font-style: italic;">In the summer of 1999 when I was 20 years old, I went on a study abroad trip to Paris with my cousin Danielle, sponsored by her school, Tulane University. During the month I spent there I learned a lot about Paris, and a lot about myself as well. Here are some excerpts from the journal that I kept.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />…and all Paris belongs to me<br />and I belong<br />to this notebook and this pencil<br /><br /><br /><br />6/30/99<br /><br />Right now I am about to descend from the clouds into a city where no one knows me. After 7 hours of racing against time & space, we have flown into the sun into tomorrow. In a way, planes are time machines. I just hope that the little bit of French I’ve learned will do me some good when we get down there.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/2/99<br /><br />Perhaps I’ll make a little more sense now, though the reality of Paris still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. It seems unreal to me, like a movie. And at times I still feel like I’m back in the states. Thankfully, I don’t really feel homesick. I was starting to get so bored with Chicago and my life there that I’m glad to be thousands of miles away. I don’t miss it yet.<br /><br />But so far, I just feel like I don’t have much in common with the people I’ve met here. Not like I really care.<br /><br />But I did a lot of things today: hunted for an adapter to work with my computer, rode a Ferris wheel from which I could see the entire city (and cured myself of my fear of heights), saw the outside of the Louvre, and had a picnic on the Seine.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66292911%26t%3D1246502917&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66292911&t=1246502917&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66292911" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66292911"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><br /><br />7/3/99<br /><br />I had a fabulous day today. I shopped on the Champs-Élysées and got all this great stuff. I used my credit card for the first time. I also got to check my e-mail. I sent out a little message bidding all my friends farewell before I left. I’d hoped I’d be able to have access here on the laptop via a French access #, but of course <span style="font-style: italic;">ne marche pas</span>. So I bought 5 hours of access at Le Jardin de L’Internet, right across from Le Jardin de Luxembourg. Looks like a certain Mr. Somebody messed up big time. He didn’t even write back to me. It’s getting clearer & clearer to me now. And even though he’s on the other side of the world, I don’t even miss him. Perhaps I can just walk away from it all without even shedding a tear.<br /><br />Enough contemplation. I’m going to dinner now.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/4/99<br /><br />I find Parisians to be difficult to figure out. They can be such snobs sometimes, though their snobbery is often easy to forgive because they are such stylish and beautiful people. Their prejudices, too, are also often difficult to determine: are they rude to me & Danielle because we’re Black, or simply because we’re foreigners? Like today at the <span style="font-style: italic;">boulangerie</span> we went to. Why’d it take 15 minutes for us to get any service?<br /><br />Anyway, here’s a summary of what I did today:<br /><br />- worked out in my bed (quite a feat, doing butt crunches on a mattress)<br />- searched for a good <span style="font-style: italic;">boulangerie</span> in the rain<br />- bought 2 brioches and ½ kilo of cherries<br />- had lunch and read Hemingway<br />- searched for a good restaurant in the pouring rain<br />- went to dinner and had great French fries & yet another awkward experience as a foreigner & felt very stupid<br />- had a conversation with a bunch of people with whom I have nothing in common<br />- came back in the pouring rain from dinner only to have another convo with people I can’t relate to<br />- discussed a 4th of July party at the U.S. Embassy that may have never taken place<br />- watched Danielle stress over what she’d wear for going out tonight<br /><br />So what am I doing right now? Chilling. Listening to this mad tight Jamiroquai song that they were blasting at a party across the street. I never noticed it before.<br /><br />I just wish I didn’t feel so uncomfortable wit people who aren’t on my wavelength. I no longer even look for common ground. I just shut them out of my life. I never let them into my world because I figure they’d make fun of who I really am and I’m sick of having to endure that.<br /><br />Why should I be laughed at? Why should I be ridiculed? Why not just be alone and be happy? Because that’s exactly what I am right now. And I don’t need to drink, nor do I need anyone’s approval. I’m stubborn, I’m hardheaded, I’m Tiffany. And I don’t wanna change any of that.<br /><br />So I came here as a student. Not just studying American Expatriates in a program sponsored by Tulane, but as a student of the city of Paris. I came hear to learn whatever life lessons it has to teach me. Paris is an enchanting seductive place. It draws you in and won’t let go.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/5/99<br /><br />So here’s what I did today:<br /><br />- saw Ernest Hemingway’s apartment again (took a picture of it this time)<br />- had class in the splendor of the Luxembourg Gardens<br />- was annoyed by a girl named Molly* who asked the prof. to do the cakewalk<br />- had a chicken sandwich and fries that would have been so much better with BBQ sauce<br />- was followed by a strange man who was singing & playing acoustic guitar<br />- checked my e-mail (same old same old)<br />- went on a wild goose chase to find out if Lauryn Hill will be here (but she won’t)<br />- sat on the balcony & sketched while listening to Jamiroquai<br />- had pizza without cheese in the front window of a restaurant and was stared at by a crazy man<br />- hit on by a French waiter who wanted me & Danielle to play bee-yard (pool) with him at some bar<br />- drank a cappuccino, which is why I’m still wired at 2:10 A.M. French time<br /><br />That’s all for now. I’m about to call my mom.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/6/99<br /><br />- woke up with 2 cups of strong French coffee<br />- had class in a café & drank more strong French coffee as Prof. Smith imparted his fascinating wisdom<br />- came back, read some articles and fell asleep<br />- found out that Lenny Kravitz was just here last week so we can’t see him in concert<br />- got a great mozzarella, tomato, and basil Panini from across the street (my only meal today <span style="font-style: italic;">porquoi je suis au régime</span>)<br />- had a discussion with Danielle and Carubie about how everyone at Tulane is just alike<br />- saw a KFC on a street corner that reminded me of Harlem<br />- was harassed by a crazy guy on the Metro on the way back. He actually touched Danielle so I guess now she has to cauterize her face.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/8/99 (forgive me for skipping a day)<br /><br />Anyway, you’d think I’d have written in here last night since we went to the Eiffel Tower. It was cool, but not as breath-taking as I expected. Maybe I’m just jaded now. It’s amazing how quickly the “Wow! I’m really in Paris” feeling wears off and the reality of it all sets in that I am an American, a foreigner, unable to communicate with most of the people we meet. Like today, I met these 2 Black guys, Africans I guess. They were fairly nice, but me & Danielle could barely communicate with them. And then at the music store, there were a bunch of fine-looking brothers. After my first disappointment, I pretty much gave up on trying to talk to them. Not that it matters; I’m not even that good at flirting with guys in the States.<br /><br />Well at least classes are going well. But what’s crazy is that we keep waking up later & later. Today I didn’t even get to finish my coffee at breakfast and them even worse, I forgot 2 of my books.<br /><br />I really like it here though. I just worry sometimes about the food. How caloric is it, really? When I stop and think about it, it’s not much different from what I usually had at school. I’m going to stop worrying about it on paper because it is so frustrating.<br /><br />The strangest thing is not feeling homesick in the slightest way. The distance has no meaning for me.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66293683%26t%3D1246503910&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66293683&t=1246503910&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66293683" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66293683"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><br /><br />7/10/99<br /><br />Yesterday (before I forget)<br />- went to a great museum of African art<br />- went to Champs-Élysées & found Zara paradise (now the joy of my world is in Zara)<br />- A man at the Gap said, “Hello, I love you,” to me. He worked there.<br /><br />So now for today:<br />- got up way too early for a trip that’s lasted way too long (I’m on the way back as I write this)<br />- got a croissant & a Sprite at a French truck stop<br />- had a really annoying tour guide who talked too much about too little<br />- saw the quaintest things I’ve ever wanted to take pictures of: fields of sunflowers & haystacks; French country cottages<br />- saw a castle<br />- had lunch inside a cave<br />- saw another castle & was stalked by French madrigal singers in funny masks & capes<br />- saw Leonardo DaVinci’s brilliant inventions<br />- saw houses carved out of caves<br />- had a rendition of a similar meal to lunch inside the cave (quiche & fish again?)<br /><br />And how could I have forgotten that yesterday I discovered Kinder Eggs, chocolate egg-shaped candies that have plastic toys inside. They’re quite intriguing and now there are is a substantial number of us who are cult followers of this exciting confectionery wonder. They can have the chocolate; I just want the little toys inside. We must be bored, or crazy, or both.<br /><br />I did take a lot of great pictures. Hopefully they’ll come out well & I can prove that taking photography class wasn’t in vain. Sometimes I still feel bad about that, though it’s hard to say exactly why.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/11/99<br /><br />Interesting things I’ve seen:<br />- French kids playing rock-paper-scissors on the Metro (they said <span style="font-style: italic;">un, deux, trois</span>)<br />- guys with Spice Girls shoes on<br />- fireworks over the Seine<br />- Naughty by Nature encouraging French people to yell “F*** the police!” at their concert<br />- a French girl who couldn’t rap and got bottles of water thrown at her during the freestyle contest<br />- a restaurant with American food<br />- a cook in the restaurant eating a French fry off someone’s plate when he thought no one was looking<br />- French MTV<br />- a girl told by Frenchmen (2x in one day) that they could be her destiny<br /><br /><br /><br />7/17/99<br /><br />Things I’ve done today:<br />- sent postcards<br />- found cool store that sells action figures from Austin Powers and The X-Files<br />- lunch: cheese, tomato, & avocado on a crêpe with a chocolate shake<br />- rode out to the French countryside<br />- saw Barbizon, birthplace of pre-Impressionism<br />- saw Fontainbleau<br />- dinner at Le Donjon, an abandoned restaurant in an abandoned town across an abandoned road from an abandoned castle<br />- visited Vaux le Vicomte, saw it all lit up by candles. Quite possibly the most romantic place on earth. And now I’m inspired to read (and see) <span style="font-style: italic;">The Man in the Iron Mask</span> because it was filmed there. I think that if a man brought me here (and brought a little Neruda to read aloud) I’d be his forever.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/18/99<br /><br />- took the Metro to the Louvre<br />- I was impressed but didn’t sketch because I just wasn’t in the mood for some crazy reason<br />- saw the Mona Lisa surrounded by swarms of tourists<br />- rode back on a Metro train that reeked with sweat and was hot enough to make people cuss in many languages.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66293376%26t%3D1246503446&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66293376&t=1246503446&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66293376" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66293376"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><br /><br />7/19/99<br /><br />There is a certain restless beauty about today. And it’s not because I might now be (or was once) in love and it’s not because the sun is out and it’s summer. It’s because it’s Paris and I’m 20. I came here knowing only 1 other person, making it wonderful. To be in a city where no one knows you, where you never have to worry about meeting up with people from your past… it’s liberating. And somehow it makes me feel beautiful and exotic, more like myself. In the same way, I suppose, that I feel more like myself when I am alone, or at least away from the forced interactions of others.<br /><br />There is something seductive about this city. And I’m glad I’m here to experience it. Twenty. Alone. Without the interruptions of social obligations. No longer beneath the overly watchful eyes of worried parents. I love Paris so much that I must come here again, and soon.<br /><br />Today:<br />- had class at Sacre Coeur<br />- checked out a few shops on St. Michel<br />- finally got a strapless bra; it cost a small fortune, but it’s French<br />- had dinner at our Italian place: pizza without cheese; spinach; the best chocolate ice cream ever<br /><br /><br /><br />7/20/99<br /><br />- found a real mall!<br />- met a Frenchman who said, “I am boyfriend for you, yes?”<br />- found a cute hoodie & some funky pink pants at H&M, where a big sale is going on<br />- came back here & chilled with Danielle<br /><br />Now I need to go to sleep so I can be rested for the field trip tomorrow.<br />(we leave at 7:30!)<br /><br /><br /><br />7/21/09<br /><br />Giverny was beautiful. It’s where Monet lived and its gardens were the inspiration for so many of his paintings. The American museum we went to after that made me homesick for the Smart Museum. (I really do want to work there again after we get back.) But the castle we went to after that was totally pointless. It was practically falling apart, was totally irrelevant to everything, and besides on the way up the mountain I thought our bus was going to take a dive over the edge. I’m just thankful to God I survived that harrowing experience. So now I’m back in the room and the bells of Notre Dame are ringing. I don’t feel like today was a total waste of time, although I do wish the trip could have been cut short because I really want to go back to that mall again.<br /><br />Today:<br /><br />- got up really early to go to Giverny<br />- saw the gardens, Monet’s house, his blue kitchen, his yellow dining room, and the Black men tending to the flowers and chickens outside; saw a real, live turkey. It communicated with Danielle.<br />- got my mom prints from the gift shop<br />- saw the broke-down castle<br />- threatened in French by a crazy old guy who thought he knew karate & tried to do that lame <span style="font-style: italic;">Karate Kid</span> tsuru dachi kick thing.<br />- found a French/African restaurant with great food, music, and a little black poodle that hid under our table while we had dinner<br /><br /><br /><br />7/23/99<br /><br />How sad that this time next week we’ll be leaving. Sadder still are the credit card bills I’ll have to pay. Oh well, like Granny used to say, there’s a 1st time for everything. Still, I must admit that I am very much excited about all the great finds I have now. I think I’ll make my mother proud (well, if you don’t account for the pink pants & crazy shirt I got) I’m trying to develop a better sense of style.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/24/99<br /><br />Today’s events:<br />- went to the Champs-Élysées, the Elysian Fields of fashion & got some great stuff<br />- saw a cute clerk at the Gap who asked me out (I turned him down)<br />- finally went to the “bright color store” as we called it and found that their prices were way too high (but I loved their clothes)<br /><br />So right now I’m actually about to go out. Can you believe that? Even more stupefying is the fact that our professor is taking us out. I’ll have a whole lot to write about when I get back.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66294083%26t%3D1246504498&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66294083&t=1246504498&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66294083" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66294083"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><br /><br />7/25/99<br /><br />I had so much fun last night that I wonder if it’s wrong. In my defense, let me first state that all I did was dance & all I drank was Coke. And besides, my professor was there. And odd scenario, wasn’t it? To think an English professor would call us up and find out if we had plans for the evening, and then suggest that he take us out. Actually, both Danielle and I appreciate it because we’re sick and tired of having everything we do ruined by the presence of crazy people. And surprisingly, I found the men at the club last night (well, with the exception of a Senegalese lunatic) surprisingly tame in comparison to the crazy, overly-eager Frenchmen who’ve been trying to get our attention.<br /><br />The weird thing about the club (which is called Java) is that almost every dance requires a partner. So I was constantly being asked by men who are my dad’s age. The first one was old and ugly and I thought there was no way I’d dance with him. But when I went out on the floor so we could hear the band better, I realized that’s the way things are done there. So I danced with at least 5 guys who completely repulsed me. One of them had hands so sweaty that they felt like he’d just dipped them in water. But each one taught me a little more about salsa dancing. At the end of each song I’d usually trade partners, working my way up to the one really fine guy I saw there who looked like he was about my age.<br /><br />Anyway, like I said before, I had a lot of fun last night. The music was funky and soulful, I met a guy who was really fun to dance with and learned how to salsa, and I got a little peek at Paris nightlife. Still , I wonder if it’s wrong for a Christian (the bells of Notre Dame are pealing as I write this) to go to clubs, even if for the sole purpose of dancing. Everybody knows C.O.G.I.C. dogma is completely against the very idea of dancing (other than when people are shouting). Is it possible for a Christian to enjoy themselves in a secular setting with impunity?<br /><br />Today:<br />- got crêpes<br />- went up to Sacre-Coeur & ate there ( It was soooo crowded)<br />- met two nice guys who spoke good English (one is a linguistics major)<br />- had our first almost uneventful Metro trip since we got here<br /><br />Still thinking about yesterday and hoping what I did wasn’t wrong. I don’t want to worry about this because I worry entirely too much. And I want to be free of the burden of worrying. But I just need to know whether it’s right or wrong because if it’s wrong then it must be terrible for me to want to go there again Thursday night. But if it isn’t wrong than I just need to stop worrying about it and free my mental energy up for the tests I’ll be taking. I wish I wasn’t so stupid about these things.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/27/99<br /><br />Today:<br />- went to class<br />- took a nap<br />- hung out with Rodney from my figure drawing class last year (he’s here to study French)<br />- got panini & read a little<br />- got dressed to go out (broke out with the funky pink pants)<br />- went on a wild escapade in search of Afro-Brazilian music<br /><br />So sad to think that this time next week I’ll be back at home again. What will I be doing, anyway? Will I be condemned as a poor lost Jezebel? Will they tell me, “woman, thou art loose” because I danced with a lot of guys? I am anguished.<br /><br />So we leave next week. It’s so odd to think of that. In some ways it’s like we’ve been here forever, yet at the same time it seems like a day. Somehow the whole experience had been both enduringly eternal and fleetingly temporal. And there are moments when I felt like I’d always lived here and knew nothing else but Paris. There were, of course, other times when it would suddenly hit me, the reality of being a foreigner here. But now I realize I’ll miss it.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/28/99<br /><br />- had classes for the last time today, the second one in the Jardin de Luxemboug. Our prof. congratulated us on our fortitude ( as well he should have cuz we’re working 2x as hard as the rest of them)<br />- got crêpes<br />- tried to study on the balcony but got distracted by everything<br />- finally started writing take-home essay answers<br />- got dinner at the Italian place for the last (?) time<br />- finished take-home test<br /><br />Now I plan to study some more then go to bed.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66293067%26t%3D1246503090&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66293067&t=1246503090&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66293067" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66293067"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><br /><br />7/29/99<br /><br />I’m so restless now that I can’t study anymore. I just want this test to be over with. I feel bound and tied—wanting to get a perfect score on the test, wanting not to care. My ambivalence has got me all tangled up. I’m so scared I’ll blow it. In some ways I’d be happy with an A- or B+; in other ways I wouldn’t be. And I’m just crazy anyway. If I were normal, things would be different. My mind keeps wandering off.<br /><br />Ever since I went out dancing I haven’t been the same. I want to dance every time I hear a salsa beat. I want to grab the nearest cute guy and dance with him. See, it didn’t take much to send me over the edge. Sometimes I think I am on the border of being borderline. I need to stop writing in here because I came to this café (ostensibly) to study. But I can’t anymore. I am too restless, too distracted, and too confused<br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div>It’s funny to sit here & think that I am once again sitting in a windowsill after finals. Only this time I’m in Paris, and it’s a balcony with French doors and wrought iron, not at all like the ledges I’m used to. Finals are emotionally painful for me. All through high school, it just kept getting worse and worse until I finally had that MI-4 final.<br /><br />I was never really sure how I did on it. I never could be sure with math or science, which is strange considering the fact that in both disciplines right and wrong answers are so strictly delineated. I left the final with a feeling of anguishing uncertainty that grew as I traveled further & further away from IMSA down to Texas and back. I couldn’t enjoy my Christmas break. It was like I already knew.<br /><br />And then, when I got back home and sat down on the couch beside the Christmas tree, I got my gifts: a leather jumper from Saks and the news that I’d failed. I’d already bargained my life; if I didn’t pass that class I was going to kill myself. But I’d failed and besides I didn’t really mean it.<br /><br />So now I’m in the windowsill again. Just like when I was 17 and stood in the 2nd floor windowsill and looked out into a bleak, snowy wasteland. Just like when I was 19 and listened to Collective Soul sing about “the world I know” in as 6th floor window that overlooked an alley and the fire escapes that zigzagged the backs of the buildings facing the alley. Now I am in Paris. I am overlooking a bright & mostly cheerful street, save the known derelicts. There are couples and students and little kids and bakeries and fruit stands. And I don’t want to jump. I’m not even contemplating the act. It’s just that I hate finals. I hate their finality and their uncertainty. Every time I take one I feel as though I’ll fail. I’m forever contaminated by the residue of that poisonous experience at IMSA.<br /><br />For me, finals are an experience of terror, or of life & death. And I know what it’s like to have one take my life. I haven’t been the same since then. The depression went away after 5 months, but every time finals come around I find myself in a windowsill, it seems, then down on my knees crying to God for mercy.<br /><br />The stakes are always so high. Always, it seems like the fate of the free world has been placed upon my shoulders. And my parents say, “we’re counting on you,” and somehow I accept that accountability though I know I’ll collapse under its staggering weight every time. I can’t blame them; they mean well. But this time I think it’s just the psychological contamination of the terrible experience that has gripped my senses this time. I feel my eyes ready to melt into tears at any second. I feel the need to shove all other people away, to pretend no one else exists or better still erase them from the sketchpad of the world so that I have a nice blank sheet all to myself. I want silence. No birds singing, no Lauryn Hill, no cars. Finals always leave me like this, already bleeding and an easy target for infection. I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish things like this didn’t affect me the way they do. I had a knife pulled on me once. I’ve been accosted by strange men in scary places. I’ve seen & experienced many things that should be much more terrifying. But somehow this seems much more deadly, the idea of failing a final. Why am I like this? What exactly am I afraid of? Not being perfect? The death of my mind? And if I re-read this right now, I will most certainly cry. And I can’t let anyone else see me do that.<br /><br />What I did today<br />- went to café & studied<br />- took the test & felt horrible afterwards<br />- went to Chatelet for the last time<br />- went with Danielle to get her nose pierced<br />- went to Hanes for soul food<br />- went to some club I forgot the name of that had Afro-Cuban music but not as much dancing as Java, although there were 2 FINE brothers there (and a few cute White boys, too)<br />- came back here sad ‘cause I realized that I didn’t do as many things as I would have liked<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66294395%26t%3D1246504654&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66294395&t=1246504654&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66294395" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66294395"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><br /><br />7/30/99<br /><br />Now I feel like I have nothing to go back to. The “city that works” can’t even compare to the “city of light.” And what happened last night was the epitome of the experiences that have passed me by . While we were at that club last night, I saw this FINE brother sitting over at the bar. Then he came over to the dance floor where we’d been standing. He was right in front of me, close enough to touch. But of course I was too shy & tongue-tied to speak to him. Soon after that, he was gone and I thought he’d left for good. But no! On our way out, once we’d decided to leave there he was, sitting near the door, smiling at me. That was soooo frustrating. I could have kicked myself.<br /><br />But that is the story of my life. I’m too afraid to even try sometimes, unless I’m in a rare extroverted mood. And last night I just wasn’t feeling it. I was bored the second I walked into that place because I didn’t hear any music. (But at Java, you can hear the music from down the block.) And I gave Danielle my drink ticked because I knew I wasn’t gonna dance enough t get thirsty. And I kept worrying that maybe just being there was wrong, even though I just came to hear the music.<br /><br />I wish I could just be free of this madness. Why does their opinion matter so much to me? Why do I even care what they think? I’m 20. What my parents want me to do shouldn’t even matter. Maybe it’s because I doubt my own judgment and despise the lapses I’ve had. (which they are always so quick to point out) I feel like I’m at a crossroads right now. But not between right & wrong. Just between my way & their way, my conformity to what I think they expect of me and my freedom of expression & individuality. Why do I just go along with so much? Why do I let them persuade me so easily?<br /><br />I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t go on like this, having to do so many things in secret that aren’t wrong anyway. Things have got to change now. I just can’t do this anymore. I’m getting my license, I’m getting a job, and I’m looking for a place to live before I completely go out of my mind. I am no longer content to resign myself to a non-existent realm because I can’t deal with reality. I can actually do something about reality and change it if I try. I guess I never tried before because I never cared that much. I never cared that much because I had never found anything to strive for. But now I do. And when I get back, I’m changing my whole life.<br /><br />Today (our last day here so we tried to cram as much into it as possible)<br /><br />- breakfast: brioche fresh out of the oven<br />- McDonald’s for lunch (don’t even ask why)<br />- went to African Art museum again<br />- went to Champs-Élysées for the last time<br />- back to Sephora to get Dad some cologne; got a free henna tattoo & a henna kit<br />- went back to Louvre & Tuileries<br />- got a few souvenirs<br />- got crêpe mix, Nutella, & Kinder Eggs to take back<br />- went out to dinner at the African restaurant with Danielle, Carubie, Brooke, Rachel, and Amanda<br />-went out to Java for the last time<br /><br /><br /><br />Leaving Paris is going to render me heartbroken & I know it’ll take a long time for me to get over it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; visibility: visible; margin-right: auto; width: 450px;"> <object width="435" height="270"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="flashvars" value="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Floadplaylist.php%3Fplaylist%3D66294637%26t%3D1246504953&wid=os"> <embed style="width: 435px; visibility: visible; height: 270px;" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/mp3player_new.swf" flashvars="config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indimusic.us%2Fext%2Fpc%2Fconfig_black_noautostart.xml&mywidth=435&myheight=270&playlist_url=http://www.indimusic.us/loadplaylist.php?playlist=66294637&t=1246504953&wid=os" name="mp3player" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="435" border="0" height="270"></embed> </object><br /><a href="http://www.profileplaylist.net/"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/create_black.jpg" alt="Get a playlist!" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/standalone/66294637" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/launch_black.jpg" alt="Standalone player" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.mysocialgroup.com/download/66294637"><img src="http://www.profileplaylist.net/mc/images/get_black.jpg" alt="Get Ringtones" border="0" /></a> </div>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-84611429419067496152009-05-06T00:00:00.000-05:002009-05-06T03:19:07.073-05:00The Vanishing PointShe measures herself against a tall supermodel<br />And wishes she were much smaller<br />Every morning before rising<br />she gauges the thinness of her forearms<br />with her hands. <br />Hunger is her constant companion<br />her dress size<br />is more important than cheeseburgers and fries<br />No point in eating breakfast lunch or dinner<br />she has an inner voice that whispers,<br />thinner, thinner, thinner<br />Who needs food<br />when all that matters is looking good?<br />She’s running on empty,<br />she knows that fullness is her enemy<br />She’s not good at math,<br />but she’s the skinniest girl in calculus class. <br />She goes to the gym and does anorexercise<br />She’s got no hips, no butt, no thighs<br />She’s a starving artist<br />Trying to get to the vanishing point<br /><br />She calls it anorexorcism,<br />systematic self-starvation, self-prescribed<br />ready to rise to the challenge<br />from anyone else who dares<br />to lay her fork aside. <br />An implicit competition<br />to be the first to get to zero<br />Annihilation by design..<br />Drawn nine heads tall,<br />one head wide<br />First it was a Coke bottle<br />and then it was an hourglass<br />now she wants to be a pencil<br />drawing perfectly straight lines<br />toward the vanishing point<br /><br />Momma’s perfect little girl,<br />Daddy’s little darling<br />Looks forever prepubescent<br />starving, starving, starving<br />Her grades may not appease them<br />but her slenderness could please them<br />Calculated calories, measured in her head<br />Any fewer calories and she’ll end up dead<br />You want me to be thin?<br />I’ll show you thin!<br />But when, when, when,<br />When does it end?<br />How long before she gets to the vanishing point?<br /><br /><br />©2006 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-3749235168213776142009-05-03T22:35:00.000-05:002009-06-25T17:47:39.171-05:00I Would Prefer Not ToWhen I was 17, I was planning to kill myself. Well, actually, it was more of a dare, a threat, an ultimatum to force myself to do better in school. I had applied to 11 colleges. All 11 were, according to U.S. News and World Report, top-tier schools. So everything I did had to be absolutely perfect. I was in danger of failing a pre-calculus class. It was an experimental class our math teachers were making up as they went along. Our high school was a laboratory; we were its guinea pigs. There were no odd-numbered problems in the back of the book with their answers explained because there was no book. I was in danger of failing, but my math teacher, Dr. Cobb*, smiled and told me not to worry about it. She was a blonde with medium length wavy hair who could have lived in a Pottery Barn catalog. And I believed her.<br /><br />I had to do well. I just had to, and if I didn’t, then my life would not be good enough to continue living. But unfortunately, I didn’t pass the class. And I couldn’t bring myself to commit suicide, either. I began trying to convince myself that the trials of my present teenage life would pass, that things would get better, that I would be rewarded for staying in school, for going to whichever of those 11 colleges admitted me despite failing pre-calculus. <br /><br />But since then, there have been numerous times when I have thought that if I was still 17, if I knew what life had in store for me, that I would have just gone ahead and jumped out the window and gotten it over with. <br /><br />I have watched my dreams get hijacked by other people. I have been shut out of entire industries for lack of experience. I have been offered jobs I don’t want and subsequently taken them just to pay my bills. I have missed out on so much because of my masochistic devotion to school. I have suffered through jobs that were not right for me simply because I wanted to have a particular title on my resume. I have collected unemployment and food stamps. I have deferred and downsized my dreams. This is not they way I thought my life would turn out to be when I was 17. <br /><br />Sometimes, I see that part of my life as the beginning of something. Sometimes I see it as the end. I did what I was told and was expected of me. But not willingly. Not completely and not entirely. It is no different than now, I suppose, as I work at a job I despise.<br /><br />It took me 41 interviews to get this job. The 41st was the one in which I had to come crawling back to the boss to ask to get my old job back.<br /><br /><br />I have been on every kind of interview, it seems. I have interviewed in the fall, at an office campus in Lincolnshire where the leaves of the maple trees turned a rich red delicious apple skin color. I have interviewed in searing summer heat. I carried my suit jacket and didn’t put it on until I got into the air-conditioned elevator of a Gold Coast high-rise. I have interviewed in the winter, carrying my fancy aluminum-clad portfolio amid the burgeoning snow drifts. I have interviewed for positions I found on Craigslist, by people who met me at Starbucks for reasons they never fully explained. I began going on interviews months before graduation. I was afraid I’d end up unable to find a job, which is what happened when I got my first degree, which was why I went back to school again to study interior design. I have interviewed, and interviewed, and interviewed. <br /><br />I got my hair done for my interviews every time I possibly could. One former co-worker called my hairstyle perfectly professional. Nothing that would make the cover of Hype Hair magazine. Respectable. Inoffensive. Straightened my the searing heat of expertly wielded blow-dryers.<br /><br />I have taken tests: AutoCAD tests, intelligence tests, personality tests, even drug tests. I’ve had to draw floorplans and once I even had to re-arrange a suite of furniture and determine just the right amount of rubber grapes and plastic croissants and fake champagne glasses to make it look appealing.<br /><br />I’ve been turned down. I’ve been told I applied too early, or too late. I’ve been called overqualified, or else told they went with someone with more experience. Some people have even asked for my GPA. I was once berated for the way I drew an arrow pointing to something in an AutoCAD drawing. <br /><br />I’ve been asked many questions. Questions like, “What do you have to offer?” Or, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Or, “Why have you had so many jobs?”<br /><br />I’ve been let down easy. And hard. One woman, most likely too racist to hire me for the measly little entry level position I had applied for, complimented my smile, my skin, said I was beautiful. I knew I’d been killed with kindness as I walked out the door. I knew I was never going to get that job. <br /><br />I have sent out thank-you cards, even to the architect who insulted me for the way I drew the arrowhead.<br /><br />“Thank you, Mr. Egotistical Prick Architect for insulting me and making me cry all the way home on Lake Shore Drive. Please let me know if you decide to hire me so I can come back for more insults!”<br /><br />I have been desperate. I have gone back into my old revolving door job at Nordstrom. I have been reduced to manual labor, unpacking boxes , hauling trash, sweeping backroom floors, counting and re-counting pairs of Christmas socks.<br /><br />When I was 17, it was bad enough that I had gotten a “D” in pre-calculus, bad enough that at my high school a “D” was a failing grade, and bad enough that I would have to take the class over again, but making matters worse was Mr. Stone*, who was to be my teacher when I took pre-calculus over again. “D’s” are not to be taken lightly at a school like mine, which proclaimed itself as a “pioneering educational community,” and considered itself more than an ordinary high school. A “D” in a class was a felony charge worthy of a staffing or whatever the heck they called that ridiculous public shaming which I, my disappointed parents, the principal, my resident counselor, 2 social workers, and Mr. Stone had to attend. <br />“What happened?” They asked.<br />We were sitting around a big conference table in some sort of a boardroom. <br />I was painfully shy, especially in the presence of angry and disappointed adults. But still I tried to speak up for myself.<br />“I tried so hard. I don’t understand. I went to tutoring. I really did try!”<br />Then Mr. Stone broke in:<br />“Nobody cares how hard you try. All they care about are results.”<br /><br />I can’t remember if I cried. I know I wanted to. I have the kind of anger that turns inward very fast. It turns to grief, to shame. I never direct it towards others. It is a knife that I point at myself. But I can’t remember if I did cry in front of them. It would have made me feel even worse about myself, like a baby. 17 is too old to cry in front of disappointed adults, even if you’re a girl. So maybe I didn’t cry.<br /><br />Nobody cares how hard I try, I learned from that exchange. And since I had no results to speak of, I felt even more desperate. Desperate enough to take a job with a leering, sneering, conniving, general contractor just so I could call myself a designer. I have put up with having to arrive at 6:30 a.m. to a dark and drafty old building where the upstairs was kept like a bachelor pad and the kitchen was too filthy for me to use the microwave. I have held my peace when assigned duties that shouldn’t have been in a designer’s job description, from writing checks for the tile-layers, to babysitting the boss’s son for six hours while he took care of business downtown. I even put up with harassment and verbal abuse when I voiced my displeasure with having to babysit his son and not getting paid for training. Finally, I had enough.<br /><br />I finally fled my evil boss. Out of desperation I took the job I have now, the only other job I had been offered in all those months: selling carpet at a store 25 miles from home. I had nowhere else to go. Everyone else had closed the door in my face.<br /><br />So I came here, where the carpet comes in every conceivable beige, where there is no music, where we must wear all black all of the time. I came here because no place else would take me. No one else wanted me. I came here a pariah, a leper. I came here, but my heart was never in my work. I came here, but I kept looking for work everywhere else.<br /><br />I started looking here. Why not cross over and work in the interior design studio? Well, because they had a hiring freeze, of course. I tried other places. I persevered. Or perhaps perseverated, like an autistic child who can’t stop beating her head against a brick wall.<br /><br />I got bad advice. A former co-worker of mine, now a self-appointed career guru, condescended to give me her services for free out of pity. She, the same woman who told me my resume was “unimpressive” before she condescended to hire me, (for half of what my predecessor had been paid) was no more impressed this time around. In the 2 years since I had worked for her I’d had several jobs. She crossed things off my resume that “nobody cares” about, like my full academic scholarship and my National Achievement Award. She berated me for not getting a Masters’ degree in interior design and tried to sabotage my plan to get one in art. <br /><br />“It’s just a hobby, Tiffany. What do you need it for? Haven’t you ever heard of starving artists?”<br /><br />Of course I have. And if I had a nickel for every time someone told me that, I wouldn’t need to worry about being a “starving artist” because I’d be a millionaire by now. <br /><br />She told me I should work on my interviewing skills. She said I was “too serious.” She had no idea that my alleged “seriousness” only masked my inner fury. And she, who sat in derision and judgment of my most precious dreams, had the audacity to assign me an exercise in which I would write down my goals for the next few years. And I left that meeting thinking that if I did that exercise, there was no way I’d show her what I came up with so she could criticize that, too. And so the damage had already been done.<br /><br />Driven on by her barbed words about me not even working in the field” and “just selling carpet,” I could no longer even pretend I enjoyed the work I was doing. I had to show her I didn’t need her help. I had to do something to make my resume impressive. And then, the next thing I knew, I was talking to the management across the street at Ethan Allen. <br /><br />We sat there, June* and I, just after closing in the darkened front lobby. <br /><br />She said, “When I saw your resume, I could see so much of myself in you.”<br /><br />She, too, apparently, had made a career switch to interior design. How amazing that a woman who barely knew me, of another race, could so easily identify with me, yet a woman of my own race, a friend of a friend of the family, never really “got” me at all.<br /><br />June told me all about the great things they were doing. There would be tuition reimbursement and a substantial discount on furniture after a year, and a trip to Connecticut for a week of training. She was so eager that she tried to get me to leave my carpet selling job right away. But I decided to be fair, to give them my 2 weeks’ notice. And Tim*, my boss, who’d fought so hard to get me to begin with, tried to get me to stay. He offered me what I’d been wanting all along: State Street. But I said no. I turned it down. All for a chance to call myself a designer. <br /><br />And so I drove to training sessions 40 and 50 miles from home. I made sure I dressed professionally. Made sure my hair and make-up were just right. I tried to make friends with my new co-workers. I never really had a problem making friends at work before. But they were standoffish. Cold. The only time they ever spoke was to compliment me, not without a note of envy, on my clothes. Only one was every truly friendly to me. The rest, like the customers, either eyed me with suspicion or looked right through me. In spite of this I tried to have faith in myself. I prayed to God each day before work that I’d get customers. But they only bought small things from me. They took their time. There was no way to rush them. And when they called me back, and I wasn’t there, there was no way for me to check my voicemail. And when it came time to show them a computer rendering for a sofa with the upholstery fabric they liked on it, I couldn’t use that program either. The first issue was resolved after a month. The second never was.<br /><br />A lot was going on at our store, as June, who had interviewed me, had stepped down from management to be a designer again and a designer, Hillary* was promoted to take her place, and an older woman named Candace* was brought in to be our project manager. And somehow in the transition, my trip to Connecticut fell by the wayside. And with all those managers running around our store, someone was always lurking in the next little display room and listening in to what I said to customers to see if I used the key words and phrases they told me to say. I was chided every time I didn’t use the standard sales script and was expected to do a quick floorplan sketch for every customer, even if they were just trying to buy a flower arrangement for their dining room table. It made me feel like I was under constant scrutiny. I tried to watch every word I said. But in spite of this I tried to be positive. I tried to set goals. I found a condo I wanted to buy.<br /><br />I had taken on a lot. I had made a list of what I wanted to do, 25 goals for my life. And I was trying to accomplish most of them at once. I had started my art classes the week after I started at Ethan Allen. I divided my time between work and school. I had the art classes Tuesday and Thursday nights in the south suburbs. And on Tuesday mornings I took a refresher course in AutoCAD downtown at Harrington. When I wasn’t at work, I was at school, and when I wasn’t at school, I was at work. My downtime at work was spent learning about furniture. It wasn’t like the carpet department, with long expanses of time that could be filled with homework. My mornings were filled with meetings, and my nights were all too often occupied by appointments at customers’ homes. And my mind was all too often occupied with visions of my own home and how I could renovate, reconfigure, or otherwise tweak some sad little foreclosure (which was all I could afford) into a masterpiece for Cameron and I. Art history and painting were relegated to the few Thursday mornings I wasn’t otherwise distracted by lunch dates with Cameron or house hunting with his sister, a real estate agent. <br /><br />The week of finals, everything came to a head. First I got a frantic phone call about the condo. They needed me to sign a contract. They wanted to close on the property ASAP. Then I realized I was running out of time to get my paper done. Time had gotten away from me. Reluctantly, guiltily, I decided to call in sick so I could finally buy myself the time I needed to go to the library and get the last few books I needed. I wasn’t lying. I really wasn’t feeling well. I felt feverish and my head was pounding from the stress of so much happening at once.<br /><br />Thursday, the day of reckoning, I had to turn in my paper, take my final exam, and have my final painting critique. I wanted to cry at the critique, looking around and seeing how much good work everyone else had managed to do. I have had my critics before. I have been told I needed to draw a thousand shoes because the 3 or 4 pairs I had in my high school portfolio were not enough. I have been told I had no sense of composition and forced to take a remedial college art class we nicknamed “cut and paste.” I have been accused of being too cheap when I buy my paint by an instructor who then proceeded to take my brushes and paint half my painting for me.<br /><br />But in this critique, the comments were actually positive. In this critique, I was told, for once, that I had some good ideas Unfortunately, this critique lasted for all of our class time. There was no time for me to cram for the final exam I had in the class that I had right after it. The last time I’d studied had been sometime during the previous week, at work, on the sly, while waiting to be called to the sales floor. The images that appeared on the projector screen before me grew increasingly unfamiliar. And it was then that I knew my grad school career was in serious trouble. <br /><br />I have had that feeling before. In high school, when I failed the final exam in pre-calculus. In college, when I got so mad at the physical science final that I stormed out of the lecture hall and slammed the door behind me. But now when I know I’ve lost the battle, I can leave quietly, respectfully, and without tears of remorse.<br /><br />I did not sleep well Thursday night. I woke up too early Friday morning, put on a nice outfit, and had enough time to stop and eat breakfast on the way to work. While having my French toast sticks, I read my brand new Ikea catalog, which had arrived on Thursday. I was saving it for this moment, once my tests were over. I read through it and imagined buying a few pieces for our condo. <br /><br />It was sunny and bright, and not too hot. I went to work. I got there early. At the morning meeting, I did my best to participate. I met a new customer who had come in with her middle-aged daughter to replace her Ikea dresser that was falling apart. The mother talked like Mrs. Howell from Gilligan’s Island, or any other blue-blood rich lady caricature you might imagine. Everything about her was haughty, even the way she pronounced the word “bonnetière.” She bought a chinoiserie drum table from me. It had bamboo legs. Her daughter wanted to go home and take measurements to see if she if she had room for a dresser or a bonnetière before making a decision.<br /><br />Another woman came in, talking on her cell phone. Unlike most cell phone customers, she was very kind. It turned out she used to work at our store a long time ago, before it became a corporate-owned store. She said I was helpful and gave me her phone number so I could call her in case any new chair and a half sofa beds came in. I still remember her name, Frances. Then one last customer came in before I had to leave for an appointment. She had actually been working with another designer, and I knew that from the beginning. Still, I answered her questions and even helped her pick out fabrics. She said I was so helpful and that we worked really well together. She thanked me several times for making it so easy for her, and even said she would leave a positive message for the store manager about me in the comment box at the front desk.<br /><br />Then it was time for my measuring appointment for a client’s window treatments. I felt like she didn’t want me in her home. I felt like she thought it was somehow wrong of me to be standing in her kitchen with one hand resting on her cold granite countertop on the center island. Still, I made sure she was getting the right valances for the windows in her living room.<br /><br />When I got back to the store, I went to the break room and had the lunch I hadn’t gotten a chance to eat. Then I took a look at the new wallpaper books and got ideas for my future living room. And then I was paged to the managers’ office.<br /><br />I had been in a meeting like this before. Earlier this month, actually. Two weeks ago, to be precise. Then, as now, they were talking about my sales. They congratulated me on the $200 drum table I’d sold. But their praise quickly turned to criticism. What next steps had I taken to follow up with the daughter, who wanted to buy the dresser but needed to measure first to see if you could fit a dresser, or 2 dressers, or a dresser and a bonnetière? Why hadn’t I set an appointment to go measure it for her?<br /><br />And at that moment Hillary’s already fine nose, thin lips, and beady eyes hardened into sharp-edged shapes. <br /><br />“You should have set a next step with her. You aren’t making enough connections with customers. This isn’t working out and it’s not a good fit for you here, wouldn’t you agree?” <br />She nodded the way she’d taught us to, a manipulative and disarming gesture. Nodding, she’d told us at one morning meeting, made people agree with you. <br />Stunned, I said yes. Nobody cared how hard I tried. All they cared about were results, and mine were not good enough. Why remind them that most of the customers I’d started big projects with in June were on July vacations and would be back to seal the deal in August? Why beg to stay at a job where I clearly wasn’t wanted? Why stay where I felt betrayed by managers who had always faked niceness until now?<br /><br />They told me Candace would go with me while I gathered my things.<br /><br />I have lost jobs before, but I was only fired once in my life before this. It was my first job. It was an internship that went badly the second year, and I was not invited back. The second summer, weary from a long and terrible freshman year in college, I was not pleased to be trapped inside a cubicle all day. The college I attended was dry and academic; the company I worked for was dry and bureaucratic. Was my work suffering? Nobody told me. I didn’t ask. I never thought I had to. “Perfect! Right on time! Just what I needed!” My bosses would say when I’d hand them the vanilla-colored folders that contained whatever finished projects I’d done for them. There was never any mention of typos I’d overlooked, line spacing mistakes made on memos printed on the company stationery, or projects that were incomplete… Until my review at the end of that second summer. My boss was in tears when she fired me. She just didn’t know how to manage a 19 year old intern, I guess. And when I went home early that day on the Metra train, I looked around at all the other commuters on the platform, the men in suits, the women trying to stay comfortable by wearing sneakers with their suits and carrying the torturous pumps their jobs required. And I thought about the fact that all these people had jobs to go back to, and I didn’t. I had never felt so alone in all my life.<br /><br />I lost another job 2005, the only good job I had while I was in design school, when Home Depot decided to close most of its Expo stores and the one where I worked, #1972 in Lincoln Park, was one of them. It was announced 5 months after I started. It happened just after I was becoming familiar with the fabric and wallpaper samples in the décor department where I worked. It happened just when I began to dream of making a career there after graduation and becoming a window treatment designer. I lost my job, this time through no fault of my own, as well as the benefits that came with it. I lost my chance to get tuition reimbursement about a week before the summer semester was over. I lost my job just after getting a taste of what I really wanted.<br /><br />It was because of this that I lived the next 7 years of my working life in constant fear of getting fired again. I went out of my way to dress professionally, investing hundreds of dollars on work clothes I could wear when I got my “good job.” I came early and stayed late. I trembled in fear of the slightest mistake and apologized profusely. I followed all the rules, no matter how stupid I thought they were. Because everything I did had to be perfect, otherwise I’d be gone. They’d get rid of me.<br /><br />After those 2 bad experiences, I never felt safe at work again. I never brought any personal items to work and left them there. I never bothered to decorate my desk or try to make an office “homey.” I never saw the point. Never—until Ethan Allen, of course.<br /><br />Laboring under the delusion that things would work out this time, I actually took the time to select and bring color-coordinated desk accessories for work. I’d gotten spiral bound graph paper notebooks for sketching, and a pack of 20 fine-tipped Pilot pens. I’d brought my favorite design magazines and books from home. I had a lot to bring home with me. Perhaps too much. Candace stood over my shoulder, watching my every move. I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. I was afraid to take my notebooks. But I should have. They had all my clients’ information. And so what if that would be technically stealing? Following their rules was pointless now. Following their rules had gotten me nowhere. Why bother with rules and formalities? Well, unfortunately, I’m the kind of person who does.<br /><br />They made me exit through the back door. Candace walked me to my car.<br />“You’re a great lady.” She said. “Good Luck.”<br />“Thank you.” I don’t know what I thanked her for. “I thought I’d have 90 days.”<br /><br />She didn’t say anything. She just walked away and prepared to go on a trip to Connecticut, the trip I never got to take. The whole situation felt completely unreal and even alien to me. Nothing made sense. I was let go at 5 p.m. There was too much traffic and it took me 2 hours to get home. In those 2 hours, I talked to many people.<br /><br />My friend Samekh was the one who told me Tim was looking to fill this position again. So I called him. At least I could still get the condo, I thought. After all, I had gotten prequalified while working here. I had time to think of a cover story: I would tell Tim I’d left because of schedule conflicts. He, for some odd reason, thought I was a good salesperson, so why ruin things? <br /><br />When I got home, I checked my e-mail and discovered I’d gotten an e-mail from my painting professor. He’d given me an incomplete. I have until December to finish my paintings. And it was then—only then—that I truly felt a sense of grief. Nothing I’d done or tried to do the past few months was working out. I’d tried to do too much and gotten nothing accomplished at all. <br /><br />Saturday I called to see if I could pick up a few things I forgot at Ethan Allen. Monday I went to pick them up. Well, first I had to talk to Tim to ask for my old job back. It was stark and still in the carpet department. When I arrived, the furniture floor seemed darker and more cluttered than before. I dressed as though I was going to work—not in retail black, the standard attire of Macy’s—but in the kind of creative business casual I’d worn to Ethan Allen. Tom was on his cell phone when I got there and had secreted himself away in the back of the department for privacy. In the 15 minutes I waited for him to end the call (which, if you ask me, is rude and not very professional considering we’d set an appointment) I was pestered by the other Tim, a mischievous and nosy older gentleman from the furniture department. He wanted to know why I’d come back here.<br /><br />“I’m just visiting.” I lied.<br /><br />Finally Tim, my boss, was off the phone. I gave him my little cover story about the schedule. He said he had no problem giving me the days I needed. But State Street was off the table. If I wanted a job, I’d have to drive all the way out here every day just as I’d done before. And things had changed. The pay was lower. Now instead of $12 an hour, it was only $10.50. Commission had been increased to 7.5%. But when business got slow, as they clearly were, I knew it meant I’d only be earning $10.50 an hour. So much for buying the condo.<br /><br />I went across the street to Ethan Allen one last time. They refused to give me my notebook, saying it was their property, not mine. So I had no new drawings to add to my portfolio. And then on my way out, I saw a customer I’d been working with, just back from her vacation. She was ready to finish her living room—an $8000 project—now that I was gone. And stupid me, I didn’t have the nerve to steal her to be my own client.<br /><br />When I was 17, that was the first and only time I had the nerve to steal anything. After I failed pre-calculus, at that dreadful meeting where the adults in the room got to decided my fate, it was decided that I ought to work in the math office. Everyone at our high school was required to do work on campus, 3 hours a week. I had been working in the library, a job I actually liked, a job where I got to work with a congenial group of ladies, a job where the other kids I worked with also loved reading. A job where I got to discover all kinds of wonderful books that I had never even heard of before. A job that would have been one of the highlights of my second semester of senior year, which was crowded with graduation requirements that didn’t interest me at all. A job that might have eased the pain of a life after failure and almost-suicide. <br /><br />But the adults around that table—in utter disregard of my own impending adulthood—took it upon themselves to decide what was best for me. And because, they said—though they had no right to pretend to know—I was afraid to go to the math office and ask for help, I should work there. So now I’d get to see good old Mr. Stone every day, during and after class. How wonderful. Now I’d have the privilege of working for the teacher who lied to me about passing her class and the teacher who told me nobody cared how hard I tried. So as it got closer to the end of the semester and I was still dangerously close to getting yet another “D,” I did what I had to do. I used my access to the math office to steal the answer key to a problem set. And I gave Mr. Stone the results he wanted. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done that I do not regret. But my defiance has been worn down by all my recent failures.<br /><br />And now I am back here. Now that I finally had a taste of what I really wanted, only to have it snatched away from me. Now that my dream of making enough money so that I can buy a condo for me and my fiancé has been destroyed. Now that my career as a designer has been derailed from its track once again. <br /><br />This is the stone I roll constantly uphill before it rolls down on me. Sales are the thing just out of reach and always receding. This is my life in Retail Hell. I cannot use the Internet. I cannot check my e-mail. So I can’t use this time to find a better job. There are hardly ever any customers, and the ones that do come like to blame me for things that are not my fault. I can only take a 30 minute lunch break. We are always having a sale and opening early and closing late. It is a miserable place full of miserable people...<br />Well the ones they haven’t laid off yet, anyway. <br /><br />If things still don’t work out, I may have to try another line of work, like art forgery or jewel thievery or something. I have tried to be honest, responsible, pleasant to customers, and professional to a fault. But nobody seems to appreciate what I have to offer.<br /><br />I have been overlooked. I have been typecast as a salesperson when I am not even all that good at sales, and I don’t even like selling things to people. No one will hire me for the jobs I really want because I have no experience, but I have no experience because no one will hire me. Everyone else wants to rip me off and use me as an unpaid intern. But I have 2 degrees, and am working on another one. I am worth more than $10.50 an hour. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">*I have changed the names of the people in this story to protect myself from a defamation suit, but this is what really happened. If, after reading this, you think I am crazy and don’t want to have anything to do with me ever again, that is your problem, not mine. So let the bridges burn. I don’t want to cross them again anyway.</span></span><br /><br />©2007 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-46619963042829300992009-05-01T00:26:00.000-05:002016-02-02T15:42:28.843-06:00[Fiction] Friday Challenge for May 1, 2009SPOILER ALERT: If you plan to read my novel, <i><a href="http://www.abitterpill2swallow.com/">A Bitter Pill to Swallow</a></i>, don't read this story yet. Wait until you have finished it.<br />
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He was going to tell everyone who asked that his name was Arthur. He stood on the side of the road, hoping another car would pass by soon. An Edsel had sputtered past, but the little old lady driving it eyed him suspiciously without so much as slowing down. Could she tell he was from the school? He’d hoped he had put enough distance between himself and the place so that no one would figure out who he was, or who he had been. He hoped the old leather jacket and blue jeans Paul had given him would be an adequate disguise. Paul, his only friend in that strange and terrible place, had given him normal clothes to wear so he’d look like any other 17 year old boy, and his brand new copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">On The Road</span>. <br />
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“You should come too!”<br />
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“Nah. I’ll be alright. I’m better off here. This place has kept me off the pills, at least.”<br />
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Yes, only by substituting them with stronger medicine. All of it made him feel absolutely lousy. Lousy and drowsy. He spent the last couple days only pretending to take his medication, hiding pills under his tongue or between cheek and molar. He secreted them away in his sock drawer. Paul said he could sell them if he wanted. He knew a guy just outside Portland who’d buy them from him. Why anyone would be stupid or desperate enough to buy a pill that had once been inside anyone else’s mouth was completely beyond him. But then again, a lot of things were. And that was why when he was just 8 years old, his parents had sent him away to this school among the pines and the redwoods that stood beneath perpetual rain clouds. <br />
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“He’s the cutest little boy. Makes it that much sadder, doesn’t it?” He overheard a relative say of him when they learned of his fate. They had come to say goodbye. It was no ordinary Sunday dinner. They did not know if he would ever come back. <br />
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He could overhear them talking late into the night that last time he slept in his own bed. Some said he was too bright. They said that genius could lead to madness. Others said he was too dull. And what kind of a boy still lived in such a fantasy world at his age? He was too big for this, or too little for that, and what would ever become of him? What kind of man would he become? Finally, to shut them out, he shut his eyes and envisioned Camelot. He imagined that he was the boy who could remove the sword from the stone.<br />
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The place he went the next morning was not like his school at all. There were so many rules, and punishments far worse than detention or demerits. And he was not allowed to bring his toy soldiers, or his cars, or most of the other treasures of his lonely childhood. So all he had was Camelot. He talked to his doctors, stern-looking men who smoked pipes and wore horn-rimmed glasses, and they looked at him disapprovingly. They were always telling him to stop thinking about knights and castles and being the boy who could remove the sword from the stone. They wanted him to leave the one place that made sense to him, the only place where he felt safe, only to join them in their world of rules and regimens and tapioca pudding. They did their best to pry him away from his world. They used ice water baths and cold sheet packs, insulin shock and electroshock. Each time, he just went further and further into the back alleys of Camelot, hiding behind stables, finding secret passageways, even taking on disguises so that no one would know his true identity. <br />
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He wanted to be good, to get better, to make progress. He did what was asked of him. He even kept taking the medication after he realized it was causing him to gain weight at an alarming rate, even though there were no longer clothes that fit him when he finally went home for a weekend when he was twelve and that pretty girl across the street laughed at him when his pants split as he was picking up the morning paper for his father.<br />
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“Did you just get back from the funny farm or the fat farm?” The loudmouthed paperboy asked as he sped by. <br />
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And the pretty girl didn’t seem so pretty anymore once she started laughing at him.<br />
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He dropped the paper, ran inside and up the stairs to his bedroom where he retreated into Camelot, where that afternoon an insolent paperboy was slain by a young knight in training.<br />
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That was five years ago. He had not returned home for weekends since. Partly because he didn’t want to go back and face further humiliation, and partly because he had lost the privilege. Now they were calling him delusional. And this meant another round of treatments. They were no longer as terrifying, and he wondered if that meant they were no longer as effective. Finally, last month his parents came to visit him with tears in their eyes.<br />
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“They told us of another treatment. It’s a last resort.”<br />
An operation, they said, that was called a lobotomy.<br />
<br />
Nobody wanted to tell him much about it. But he had seen the effect of it on some of the other kids. And he couldn’t let it happen to him. And hadn’t he tried to be good? Hadn’t he done what they asked? Wasn’t there some other way? He really did want to get better. He really did want to be normal, and make friends, learn to drive a car, do the things that all the other boys his age did. He did not want to become what those unfortunate few of his classmates had become. The light in their eyes had been extinguished. Paul had called them the pod people.<br />
<br />
“Oh I forgot, you haven’t seen <span style="font-style: italic;">Invasion of the Body Snatchers</span>.” He said, teeth chattering as he shivered under an ice-cold sheet. <br />
<br />
The nurses had left them there in beds that were side-by-side. Talking seemed to help distract them from their frigid confinement.<br />
<br />
“Yeah we don’t see a lot of movies here. Only once in a while.”<br />
<br />
“You gotta get out of here before they do it to you.” Paul whispered.<br />
<br />
And that was they night they formulated the plan that had worked so far. Hitching a ride wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped, though. Why did they have to put the school in such an isolated place, so far removed from the rest of the world? As it began to rain, he wished he could have been in a city, near a bus or train station. But now the only way he could get to a station would be with the help of a stranger, and thank goodness a produce truck slowed down and the driver let him in. The trucker didn’t ask many questions, only where he was going, not why and how and what he’d do when he got there. But he’d been coming up with answers anyway.<br />
<br />
His parents? They died in a terrible accident. He was on his own now. First name? That was easy. Just call him Arthur. <br />
<br />
The money from the pills he sold to Paul’s friend was enough to get him a train ticket out of state. And he needed to get out of state before they found him and sent him back for the dreaded procedure. He worked his way east, taking whatever odd jobs he could. The school had prepared him for little more than a life of light industrial work. The few classes he had taken were too remedial to count for anything. To make up for his shoddy education, he spent his days off reading as much as possible at public libraries. <br />
<br />
In one little town he even worked as a busboy at a restaurant that was so empty it must have been a front for something else. And through the owner he met a priest who created a false baptismal record he was able to use to get proper identification so he could finish high school. He found his way to Kansas City where some buddies at his factory job taught him how to drive. He still spent his free time reading, as he tried to find a way to understand all that his doctors had told him. He wanted to heal himself. <br />
<br />
By the time he moved to Chicago, he was studying to become a psychiatrist at one of its top universities. And almost 20 years after running away from his own (mis)treatment, Dr. Arthur Lutkin was prescribing treatments of his own at a special school for emotionally disturbed children and teenagers. It was a place of healing, not of punishment, and it looked like an old castle.Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-7097418772645319192009-03-29T02:42:00.000-05:002009-03-29T02:49:59.825-05:00false spring<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><br />Gloom is a cloud that settles here. At dusk, the streets grow deserted. There is a hollowness in the clammy air. Everywhere the touch of cold fingers—death. The false spring titillates the temperature and things begin to melt. Everything melts too soon and the ground turns to ooze, to mud, to muck. The naked little trees seem to sink into it. The false spring teases us. Soon it will go away. Soon it will turn back. There is no way to escape it. Not within the cold stone walls of the palaces of this tragic kingdom that we call the University of Chicago.<br /><br />The gloom is all-pervasive. It is ubiquitous in the puddles, in the clouds, in the invisible miasma that chokes out life—the academic atmosphere. There is only cold. There is only gloom. There is only death. The wrought iron, the gargoyles, the buttresses and spikes—they are all symbols of death. We are being scorched in the flames of the Phoenix until we turn Maroon.<br /><br />©2000 Tiffany Gholar<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I was having a bad day. And once again, the weather was annoying me.</span>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-17350150341818444392008-12-05T09:54:00.000-06:002008-12-05T10:33:09.029-06:00for fiction friday: Invent a holiday for which your character is a big fanPeter sat at his desk, folded his arms, and looked out the window. This was the coveted corner office view he'd always dreamed of. From the ergonomic cocoon of his Herman Miller Aeron chair--a luxury only bestowed upon upper management types--he could gaze down upon the parking lot to see his car in a newly reserved parking space that was much closer to the main entrance. All of this just for speaking up. All he had done was make one small suggestion at a routine weekly meeting. <br /><br />How could they improve the bottom line? How could they maximize their return on investment? Jennifer had suggested National Landlords Day, but Shelly and Mike disagreed on the gender neutrality of the word "landlord" while Quentin reminded them that in some markets homeowners greatly outnumbered renters and they would not be able to sell as much product as a result. But police officers, he continued, were everywhere so why not launch a Law Enforcement Appreciation day? Jennifer and Shelly, in retribution for the attack on their Landlords Day idea, pointedly asked Quentin if giving gifts to a police officer might constitute a bribe in some areas, and if this was all just part of a scheme to keep his car from getting booted again for excessive outstanding parking tickets.<br /><br />Finally, Peter spoke up. He had been surreptitiously working on his deep breathing exercises all throughout the meeting, and saying his affirmations in his head. He would be assertive. He would speak up. He would stop being a wallflower.<br /><br />"How about National Send Someone A Greeting Card Day?" He said.<br /><br />One of the advantages of always being so quiet was that few the times when he spoke Peter commanded everyone's attention.<br /><br />One by one, all of them agreed that it was a fantastic idea. Anyone could send a card to anyone else for any reason. It needn't be based on relationships, religions, job titles or the time of year. Recipients could be young or old, married, single, divorced, widowed. It could even get some of those cards that were blank inside off the shelves! And what is a card without flowers or candies or fruit baskets to accompany it? There could be hats, mugs, t-shirts, a website, maybe a television special...<br /><br />And so, sitting in his new office ready to reap the benefits of all the flowers, candies, fruit baskets, hats, mugs, t-shirts, websites, and a television specials his idea would sell, Peter decided that National Send Someone A Greeting Card Day was his most favorite holiday of all.Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-28893404230163927022008-11-30T22:12:00.000-06:002008-11-30T22:14:18.130-06:00the winterSolitary, melancholy, misunderstood. . . that is how I feel today. I do not want to go outside. I do not want to paint this morning. I am profoundly uninspired. So I look out the window and see flat black tar roofs of squat apartment buildings rimmed with melting snow. But the snow is turning gray and dismal and the sun can’t cheer things up. And I know it’s still cold, in spite of how the sun creates the pretense of warmth. The trees are bare, sparse, and futile. They are that nasty color of old cement, so faint that they barely seem to exist. Now that they’re dead and have no leaves, they don’t seem to matter anymore. And the sky is trying hard to be blue, but it seems sick and pale to me.<br /><br />And that’s why I can’t paint today. Today I feel exiled. Today I feel sequestered. Today I feel trapped. And all I can do is write about it. Today it just seems like there is nothing to paint. Why reproduce the ugliness outside? I’ve had enough of dead trees, of buildings with all their color drained from them by the feeble rays of a tired winter sun. And the snow pretends to melt, trying to fool us all. But everyone knows it will come back again, to slow down traffic, to cover the ground like a cold white scab that’s only pretty for the first hour or so and then the dogs pee in it and the drunks puke in it and everyone dents its smooth surface with muddy boots and it gets all gray and nasty around the edges.<br /><br />And the sky tries so hard to be a nice poster-colored non-photo cerulean blue, or azure, or some other color you’d buy in a tube of paint or colored pencil. But a rampart of clouds between its midsection and its horizon spread a sickly grayness and defeat it all. That’s what a winter sky is, defeated. It is there to let a little sun through, to illuminate the dirty snow, to distinguish night from day. But it doesn’t inspire me to paint.<br /><br />So I sit here in bed on sheets of true azure. And the radiator pipes clang in their usual annoying way. I sit here not wanting to go and not wanting to stay.<br /><br /><br />©2000 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-53629484384975737202008-11-25T09:06:00.000-06:002008-11-25T09:14:30.360-06:00Raven's Song excerpts<strong>about Raven’s Song:<br /></strong><em>Raven’s Song</em> is the story of Raven, a 15-year old girl who has been sent away to a boarding school by her parents in order to safely hide her away from her stalker ex-boyfriend Tiyon. Raven is miserable because she is interested in art and the school she has been sent to specializes in math and science. She also feels ashamed that she ever got involved with Tiyon, who had a long history of emotional problems. One day she discovers that Tiyon has sent her a letter at school. One of her friends had been tricked into giving him her new address. Now realizing her cover is blown but not wanting to transfer schools again, Raven decides to take things into her own hands. She will get revenge. She will stalk him. But will her obsession with getting revenge take over Raven’s life?<br /><br /><br /><strong>Hands </strong><br /><br /><br />His hands were long with spindly fingers. His arms were gangly and covered in dark circular scars. Burns from the tips of his mother’s cigarettes. Whenever she was angry—because she couldn’t find work, because of rats and roaches in the apartment, because he looked like his father, or just because Tiyon was her son–he became her ashtray. The arms, he thought now, were a good place to burn. They could mostly be covered with sleeves while school was in session. And it kept the caseworkers out of their business most of the time.<br /><br />He was drawing in his art class. He was no good at it. He told his friend Chanara that the futuristic military base he’d done looked more like a deformed mushroom on a pogo stick. She laughed. He was good at that, making girls laugh. That’s all he ever was to them, a clown. At school, a clown. At home, an ashtray. Never quite human.<br /><br />She sat across from him. She had small hands, like a little girl. Hands the right size for dressing dolls and petting hamsters. Small, drawing hands with a callous on one finger from years of holding pencils too tight. And that meant one thing: either she liked to write or to draw. Looking at her single-minded concentration and the way she held the thick Ebony pencil in her hand, he figured it must be drawing. But he couldn’t tell, since she sat across from him, whether her picture was good or bad, since it looked upside-down to him. Freshman. Fresh meat. Easy prey. He could tell.<br /><br />So he got up and went to her side of the table.<br />“Mind if I have a look?” He asked.<br />“Well, okay. I mean, I’m not finished yet, but if you want to see it—“<br />He could tell she was one of those types who could never quite bring themselves to say “no.” He could tell she was his kind of girl.<br /><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><strong>Raven writes about Tiyon</strong><br /><br />He was sort of like the character in a movie that none of the other characters seemed to understand. And you want to help them, but you can’t. Nothing you do will ever be able to effect them at all. That was how I felt. And it frustrated me.<br />“He is not a monster. He is misunderstood.”<br />That is what I used to tell myself. I read his poems. They were about being lost in a terrible storm with no one to hold his hand and nothing to shelter him. I was so stupid. I fell for it. I drank in all the crazy lies he told me. Even when he said the bomb threat was not his fault. I know he’s crazy. I know he did that for me. And that’s what really made me hate him. I hate him from the bottom of my heart. I don’t care. Nice little church girls can hate people, too. I hate him as much as he thought he loved me. I hate him form the bottom of my heart.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>the bomb threat </strong><br /><br />Our school was on the news that day. He’d called the school and said there was a bomb inside. They made us all stand across the street. My father didn’t want to let me out of the car. He was getting ready to drive away when I saw somebody standing on the roof, waving his arms like he was crazy.<br /><br />He yelled out my name.<br /><br />“Raven! Raven! I’m doing this for you!”<br /><br />Over and over again. My father turned and gave me a look I’ll never forget.<br />And I heard kids asking each other, “Who’s Raven?”<br />So now they all knew.<br /><br />Raven in 3rd person<br />She wears mostly black, walks alone, with a distant expression on her face. She does not want to he here, but knows she should be grateful. Her old biology teacher has pulled some strings, and now there are strings attached, and so she is all caught up in string. Sometimes she tries to humor herself, pretending she is an undercover agent on a mission, and that’s why she has to check in with the security guards three times a day. It’s a deadly mission, and headquarters has to make sure their spy is still alive. It is a game she can only play with herself about 5 minutes at a time. She cannot get too close to anyone here. She sits at a different lunch table every day. She does not want to make friends here. She feels she can trust no one.<br /><br />Two months into the term, in October and very close to Halloween, she gets a card in her mailbox with writing on it that is indistinguishably his. Opening it makes her feel sick, but she can’t not open it either. So she does. There is a cartoon drawing of black cats, ravens, and pumpkin heads. It is still addressed “My Dearest Raven,” just like always.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Raven’s Poem about Tiyon:</strong><br />Elegy for your Memory<br /><br />I let your memory die<br />yet your memory<br />still haunts<br />the empty chambers<br />of my mind.<br /><br />Your memory is embedded<br />in my mind<br />like arsenic deposits<br />in fingernails--<br />a grave reminder that I<br />ingested something<br />poisonous.<br /><br />And every night<br />you visit me--<br />a poltergeist<br />who rattles my thoughts<br />like dishes.<br /><br />You’re mad at me<br />because I left,<br />because I let<br />my feelings for you die<br />like your memory.<br /><br />I hardly remember<br />your voice anymore<br />and I wonder<br />if you died<br />like your memory,<br />your haunting memory.<br /><br /><br /><br />©2002 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-565010643692234962008-11-20T09:27:00.000-06:002008-11-20T09:32:30.575-06:00excerpt from "My Island, Nueva Playa"<div align="justify">Somehow there is a terrible loneliness that comes form knowing that you are in love with a place that no one else can fully comprehend. I want more than anything to go back to my island. So we were saved, we were “rescued” by the Coast Guard. But it feels more to me like I was banished from a magical place. And I must be the only one who remembers taking showers outside in the rain, roasting the fish we caught over open fires, the hot sand feeling like dry, gritty fire under my bare feet until the cool ocean water melted it away. Because my parents have already forgotten. They’re too busy trying to figure out how much they owe to all these bill collectors. And to my brother. . . he’s just glad he’s back here in time to get all the latest video games. I’m the only one who remembers, I’m she only one who misses it, and that’s why I’m completely alone. Leaving Nueva Playa has left me heartbroken and it just might take me a lifetime to recover. </div><div align="justify"><br />But you can believe I’m not about to find out the hard way. I’m going back there as soon as I can, even if it means swimming out into the ocean. It’s where I belong. It’s the only place where I belong. </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"><br />©1999 Tiffany Gholar<br /></div>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-5927084351991218992008-10-10T10:17:00.000-05:002008-10-10T17:38:41.689-05:00For Fiction FridayAlice tried to remember who had given her the key. Had it been Mrs. Hooper, after the developers purchased her late husband’s store in order to convert it into a trendy new Caribbean-Italian-Sushi fusion restaurant called Dine? Or Gordon, after shaking his head and saying farewell to the street here he’d watched his children grow up? The 2 guys in the basement apartment—what were their names?—Bert and Ernie, that’s right. Bert liked to feed the pigeons, before city ordinances were enforced to forbid that sort of thing in this neighborhood. Which was why the big yellow bird was the first one to leave. A psittacosis scare would definitely cause the property values to plummet. And his giant elephantine friend wouldn’t help the situation. So it couldn’t have been either of them who had given Alice the key. They were already gone by the time she arrived with her real estate agent to see the property.<br /><br />Next to the stoop in front the building was a collection of trash cans. Alice thought she saw someone with bushy eyebrows and beady eyes peering out of one of the garbage cans. There was a lid on his head, and though Alice couldn’t be sure, she was almost certain he was a grungy shade of green. But maybe that’s what years of homelessness had done to him. Well he’d be gone soon enough. On the way into the building, she and the agent passed one of the current tenants, who’d be moving out soon.<br /><br />“Hi, Bob!” Waved the real estate agent.<br />But Bob just muttered something about the stress of trying to find another rent-controlled apartment with the same kind of character as the one he was leaving.<br />“What’s the matter with him?” Asked Alice.<br />“I don’t know.” The agent replied. “Usually he is so chipper!”<br /><br />A few weeks later when Alice returned to show the building to her live-in boyfriend, Eddie, a deaf woman who lived on the first floor said something to them in sign language that didn’t look very friendly.<br /><br />“What’s going on with these people?” Alice asked. “Every time I come here, I get the dirtiest looks from everyone.”<br /><br />Gordon must have heard her. Leaning from his second floor window, he explained, “things used to be a lot friendlier around here. Until local politicians like The Count started taking bribes from real estate developers. Mr. Hooper didn’t want to sell his store or the rest of his building, but a few months later he died under mysterious circumstances. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”<br /><br />“Gordon? Are you at it again with your conspiracy theories?” Called his wife from somewhere inside the apartment. Then she stuck her head out of the window next to his.<br />“Don’t believe everything he tells you. From my understanding, what really happened is The Count got some crooked cops to frame this kid Elmo for selling drugs behind Mr. Hooper’s store. And the city was able to use imminent domain because it was considered a drug house.”<br /><br />“Oh, so my version of it is a conspiracy theory but yours is true?” Asked Gordon. “What about what they said about the Cookie Monster? That he sent Mr. Hooper some macaroons laced with arsenic? You know macaroons were his favorite.”<br /><br />“Cookie Monster just doesn’t have it in him. He’s not really a monster, you know.” She replied.<br /><br />The tales of the sinister goings on in this block were not enough to frighten Alice away from the building. The unit she eventually purchased had been gutted and remodeled. It had hardwood floors, exposed brick, and antique crown moldings that had been painstakingly restored. The rusting fire escape in the back had been converted into a beautiful iron balcony that would be perfect for her new Weber grill.<br /><br />There was something very romantic about this place. And even though she was a stock broker and Eddie was a lawyer, they could live like artists here in this trendy new neighborhood that would soon become the envy of all their friends. She had moved to New York City from England after a bad experience with her crazy ex-boyfriend, an accessories designer who made eccentric hats, and an incident involving his Cheshire cat. She had no intention to leave. Whoever had given her the key to the building, it didn’t matter. The place was hers now.<br /><br />Moving day had finally arrived. The movers had gone on ahead of her. She was trailing them on her new mountain bike. But somewhere along the way she had gotten turned around, so at a red light she asked the driver of a cab beside her,<br /><br />“Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?”Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-16454021995351931862008-10-06T14:28:00.000-05:002008-11-30T21:46:48.072-06:00Retail Hell: 60 Days' Notice<span style="font-style: italic;">On May 17, 2005, Home Depot decided to close many of its Expo Design Centers, including the one where I worked as a fabric specialist in the décor department and had hoped to become a window treatment designer. We were given 60 days' notice. These are entries written during those 60 days, the last days of Expo Design Center.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />7/1/05<br />[<span style="font-style: italic;">depression</span>]<br />Nothing but apathy and resignation. Other than that, nothing at all. Disallowed from placing special orders and banned from customizing things, everyone has been reduced to selling the remnants of a once-great home emporium.<br /><br />Now the days drag on. The slow ballads they play on the speakers—based upon the theory that shoppers spend more time in stores where slow music is playing—seem sadder now, and much more relevant. Especially "This Used to be My Playground."<br /><br />I have grown tired of having to explain why the store is closing. I'm tired of them asking. I sit here now at a desk where I am probably not supposed to be sitting. I feel like I have nothing better to do. I've marched around the department several times. Most of the customers seem to not need my help. I do not feel motivated to try to sell things. I'll make the same amount of money no matter what.<br /><br />I just don't see the point of doing anything anymore. They won't let me do what I was originally hired to do, so what's the point of doing anything else? Everyone else is going to work at a Home Depot store.<br /><br /><br /><br />7/3/05<br />[<span style="font-style: italic;">bargaining</span>]<br />This is not the same store that hired me. This is not the job that I applied for. This is the <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight Zone </span>version of Expo. No, not even. This place isn't even worthy of bearing the Expo name. This is a miserable place. I want to sell fabric. So much for that idea. This is no longer a design center. It is a furniture liquidation bargain basement. I am so tired of having to answer the same questions over and over People keep asking me why we're closing. We even have some clueless people here who didn't realize we're going out of business, despite all the big ugly signs everywhere that clearly say "Store Closing."<br /><br />I don't want to work today. This is not my job. This is not my store. This is not what I signed up for. I'm so sick of retail. It's all been one disappointment after another. Maybe I should have never come here. What's the use of being here if I can no longer do what I liked to do? I don't care about any of this other stuff and I am sick of people asking me about it. I hate selling this furniture and I hate looking for drapery panels and I hate having to answer questions about drapery hardware when I've never so much as put up a curtain rod. I just want to sit here and get paid do do absolutely nothing. Might as well, since this store has done absolutely nothing for me since they announced it was closing.<br /><br />Being here is pretty depressing. I don't like the environment anymore. Every day is like a funeral. The store is a shadow of its former self. Coming here is like coming to watch someone die. There is a sense of failure in the air, of dreams that never came to be. It is tense and hostile.<br /><br />Everyone else is content to just move on to Home Depot, but I don't want anything to do with that. I hate the idea of the work I'd have to do there as well as the hours. Opening at 5 a.m. and closing at midnight—are you kidding me?<br /><br />I just don't see the point of this anymore. I feel like a failure to be associated with a failed store. I hate this place. Why did they have to screw everything up?<br /><br />I don't know where else I can go. I am so tired of working in retail, but then again it's nice to have the flexible hours. But I really wish I didn't have to work at all until I graduate.<br /><br />I wish I didn't feel so angry and sad. But right now as it stands I feel as though I can't do anything right. And all around me are prosperous, successful people, our Lincoln Park yuppie customers. I feel like such a screw-up.<br /><br />Look at these customers: a doctor giving a prescription over her cell phone, people with 4 & 5 kids playing tag in the closet department, all these pregnant women trying to build the perfect little nest for their new babies. . . Many of them are still trying to get additional discounts on things. Is it any surprise that I am trying to hide from them all in this little corner?<br /><br /><br /><br />7/16/05<br />[<span style="font-style: italic;">anger</span>]<br />It's amazing how this job turned from something I enjoyed into something I hate. Sitting here at the door wearing this name tag and this apron, I feel like I work at Wal-Mart. Nothing makes sense anymore. Everything has taken a turn for the worst and my job no longer makes sense.<br /><br />So now I am sitting here by the door next to the registers and a long line has formed and customers are looking at me like they want to kill me because I am sitting here writing in this notebook and not ringing up their purchases. Well I don't care. I don't know how to use these weird registers and I can't ring their things up.<br /><br />So let them get mad. It's not my fault they transferred all those cashiers to Home Depot. Besides, I even paged the department supervisor on duty about the situation and she seemed completely unconcerned about it. Now they are paging me to décor. For what? To answer some whiny customer's stupid question? If they took a minute to read our signs, they would be able to answer them. Things are in such disarray here. We don't have enough cashiers, enough shopping carts, or enough sales associates, and the copy machine won't even work. Cameron said that what happened to me reminds him of an episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">Good Times</span> he saw last week, but I think, more accurately, that my whole life has turned into that show.<br /><br /><br /><br />August 5, 2005<br />[<span style="font-style: italic;">acceptance</span>]<br />Lately, it seems like it's too much and nothing at the same time. And so I sit here in the back, relishing the solitude. This small stockroom, with no surveillance cameras and walls that shield me from the scrutiny of prying eyes (not even someone traveling on the escalators can peer down into this room) is the perfect place for me. I've been sitting back here playing Bejeweled on my Clié, reading design magazines, taking little cat naps, and reading my affirmations. All around me I can hear encroaching voices of customers and other sales associates. I heard the cries of a wounded child, the rants of bossy customers, and even one customer who accused someone of not allowing her to purchase a kitchen display because she's Black.<br /><br />So much, yet nothing at all. So much is going on out there, but it's nothing of substance, nothing that I want any part of. Our department has been reduced to an assortment of mismatched drapery finials, a few packages of curtains, one or two potted silk flower arrangements, and a mixture of odd single flowers. I do not see the point of "helping" people with these things when anyone with two hands can just pick them up and take them to the registers.<br /><br />Everything is 80% off now. All of the good stuff is gone, including the book and magazines I'd planned to buy. Oh well. Couldn't afford it anyway. Every time that I think I'm out of the hole another bill comes along that''s more expensive than usual.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">So this was the way my job ended, no severance package, no tuition reimbursement, just an expensive COBRA plan and a few months of unemployment checks. Later that summer, I installed window treatments for the first time. It was much more difficult than I told the customers it would be. Serves me right. I did go on to work in retail a few more times since then, but nothing as splendid as Expo was before we were given 60 days' notice. There will never be another Expo; I am trying to accept this.<br />So ends another dispatch from Retail Hell.</span>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-23599469893127919102008-09-20T21:23:00.000-05:002008-09-24T14:53:09.841-05:00Song of a Dandelion Pushing Up Through An Urban Sidewalk CrackWe sprout up boldly through the cracks<br />yielding beauty that the sidewalk lacks<br />and spread our sunshine-bright yellow smiles.<br />No other flowers can mimic our style.<br /><br />They call us weeds, but we’re a gift<br />sent from heaven to brighten and uplift<br />the sad gray atmosphere.<br />No other flowers dare to grow around here.<br /><br />If you would stop and simply see<br />our beauty compared to the misery--<br />the dirt and pieces of broken glass<br />and useless things that litter the grass,<br />you would not see us as simply weeds<br />but as something that a city needs.<br /><br />Yes, we smile defiantly every day<br />and flash our smiles to boldly display<br />the joy that comes from simple things.<br />We are a song, and if you listen,<br />we sing.<br /><br />©1994 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-51510365832408553892008-09-20T21:21:00.000-05:002008-09-20T21:22:42.016-05:00my love for you is a weedwhose seed you planted<br />with your words<br /><br />it blooms mysteriously<br />without the light of your smile<br />or the warmth of your embrace<br />in the curious fecundity<br />of my fallow heart<br /><br />perhaps it was not planted at all<br />but sent carelessly to me<br />by some haphazard wind<br />of sentiment<br />yet it thrives<br />it defies the orderly redundancy<br />of gardens<br />and it resists reason<br />as though it were a feeble herbicide<br /><br />and its roots crowd out<br />the possibility of any other blooming thing,<br />any other love<br />it is a selfish dandelion<br />that can’t abide marigolds<br />it is a savage thistle strangling tiger lilies<br /><br />my love for you is a weed<br />neither one of us can uproot it<br />and though you never tend it,<br />still it has the audacity to live<br /><br />Now you must reap what you’ve sown:<br /><br />touch the petals of the dreams<br />you’ve planted in me<br />and beware the thorns<br /><br />©1999 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-49737632095499976122008-09-20T21:19:00.000-05:002008-09-20T21:21:31.091-05:00until I get burnedI’m not so sure I should be<br />wanting<br />what I want if<br />what I want is<br />you<br /><br />I am feverish<br />with desire<br />and frozen<br />in ambivalence<br /><br />I push and I pull<br />I want and I don’t want<br /><br />to be drawn like a winged insect<br />to your light and your heat<br /><br />You disturb<br />my universe<br />you intrigue<br />you disquiet<br />you awaken<br /><br />You provoke me<br />to feel<br /><br />But do you even want<br />what you say you want?<br /><br /><br />You give and you take<br />you appear and then vanish<br /><br />with your promises<br />making me want to fold my wings,<br />return to my cocoon<br />fall asleep and have dreams<br />I won’t remember<br />because you’re no longer in them<br /><br />until your spark appears again<br />then<br /><br />you disturb<br />my universe<br />you intrigue<br />you disquiet<br />you awaken<br />me<br /><br />drawn forward on<br />petal-thin wings<br />craving heat<br />flitting toward the radiance<br />of lambent dreams<br />I warm up to you<br />every time<br /><br />I melt every time<br /><br />until I get burned.<br /><br />©1999 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-26222317786242121442008-09-20T20:43:00.000-05:002008-09-20T21:19:36.013-05:00Even In Death - excerpt1<br />loss<br /><br />I realize now<br />the permanence of loss.<br />a quicksilver melancholy swims<br />across my eyes<br />for every second<br />that has died<br />in the time before your death.<br />I lament<br />the questions I never asked.<br /><br />I remember<br />that same melancholy<br />every time we said good-bye.<br />It was as if I knew<br />my favorite aunt would be the first<br />to go.<br /><br /><br />2<br />the idea of ancestry<br /><br />Looking through pictures of you<br />I tried to make a collage of your life<br />to stand beside your casket.<br /><br />I was sixteen.<br />I noticed then that when you were sixteen<br />we looked alike.<br />Your pictures<br />were of my own life<br />as it would have been if<br />I’d grown up in your time.<br /><br />how striking, how eerie<br />the photographs of the little girl<br />with the press-and-curl bangs<br />playing on the swing set--<br />myself at six years old<br />in black and white<br /><br />©2000 Tiffany GholarTiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-78905975285287591532008-09-11T19:15:00.001-05:002008-09-11T19:28:32.549-05:00excerpt from "95W," written October 3, 2001<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;">It is funny that fatigues and camouflage prints are so popular now, especially since we are supposedly going to war.<span style=""> </span>There are glitter fatigues and camo print thongs and bras and pink and blue and even purple camo prints.<span style=""> </span>Don't ask where you'd blend in in something that color.<span style=""> </span>But now you can look patriotic without even trying, like you're going to war like a real American.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;">I had thought about taking pictures of all the "God Bless <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>" signs popping up randomly everywhere.<span style=""> </span>The best one I saw was in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Indiana</st1:place></st1:state>.<span style=""> </span>To me, it sums up true American nationalism.<span style=""> </span>The owners of a house right on the highway had taken paper cups and stuffed them into the chain link fences around their property.<span style=""> </span>And on one fence the white cups spelled out "GOD BLESS AMERICA" and on the other fence it said, "KILL 'EM."<span style=""> </span>Yup.<span style=""> </span>Sounds very American to me.<br /><br /></span></span>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-3299351994811184372008-09-09T20:31:00.000-05:002008-11-30T21:46:48.074-06:00Retail Hell<span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p></o:p></span><span style=";font-family:";" >The Day the Muzak Died<br /><br />It is a totalitarian regime, complete with uniforms:<span style=""> </span>all black.<span style=""> </span>Far from chic or modern or cutting edge, it just looks drab, makes the men look like androids, makes the women appear matronly.<span style=""> </span>It is not a seductive black, or even a mysterious black, not even a powerful black.<span style=""> </span>It is an unimaginative, uninspiring, funereal black.<span style=""> </span>The uniformity is dehumanizing. There is no music.<span style=""> </span>There is no natural light.<span style=""> </span>The bulbs in the track lights are dim.<span style=""> </span>The clocks are all displaying the wrong times.<span style=""> </span>Nobody wants to be here.<o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >The woman in the bright blue top and khaki shorts looks at me.<span style=""> </span>She doesn’t want me to help her but she has no choice.<span style=""> </span>There is no one left to ask, so she has to ask me.<span style=""> </span>She seems mad at herself for having to ask and mad at me for being the person she must speak to.<span style=""> </span>I don’t want to answer her question.<span style=""> </span>I know it will be pointless.<span style=""> </span>So the feeling is mutual.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I have no way of knowing how to placate these customers who are infuriated by my presence and yet at the same time enraged by my absence.<span style=""> </span>I always seem to be around when they don’t want me to be or too far away once they have a question to ask.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I feel like I am constantly being intruded upon.<span style=""> </span>I am not allowed to be myself.<span style=""> </span>I am forced to be phony.<span style=""> </span>I have to pretend to care about things that do not matter to me.<span style=""> </span>I feel like anyone from off the street can just come in and order me around.<span style=""> </span>I feel like I have no autonomy or privacy.<span style=""> </span>I cannot wear what I want to wear.<span style=""> </span>I am only paid for my sales, not for the effort I put in.<span style=""> </span>The whole thing does not seem worthwhile.<span style=""> </span>It does not challenge, interest, or excite me.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I<span style=""> </span>despise having to wear a nametag.<span style=""> </span>I hate having my name out on display.<span style=""> </span>People pretend they know you when your name is right there for the world to see.<span style=""> </span>And then they call you by your name when they think they are doing you a favor because they read some article in <i style="">Readers Digest</i> that told them it’s a way of “appreciating” service workers.<span style=""> </span>I’d rather tell them my name when I see fit to do so.<span style=""> </span>But instead I’m left with no agency and no choice and I hate that.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I don’t know why it offends me, but it does.<span style=""> </span>I do so despise having to pretend I’m on a first-name basis with the world, even those stuck-up old crones who insist I call them Mrs. Somebody.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I am so sick of these stupid people.<span style=""> </span>Rich men’s wives and daddies’ girls saunter past, carrying big shopping bags full of stuff paid for with other people’s money.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >The silence is deathly still.<span style=""> </span>This store, though cluttered with furniture, rugs, and carpet samples, is absolutely and utterly still.<span style=""> </span>I hate my job.<span style=""> </span>I hate that I need it.<span style=""> </span>I hate that I’m not good at it and never will be.<span style=""> </span>I hate this store, I hate this mall, I hate this dumb little suburban town.<span style=""> </span>I am so disappointed.<span style=""> </span>This is not what I went to design school for.<span style=""> </span>All I did was get myself into serious debt.<span style=""> </span>And now I have absolutely nothing to show for my efforts.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >People hire me to do retail sales because it’s what I have the most experience in.<span style=""> </span>But I am not good at it, and I don’t even like it.<span style=""> </span>I am disinclined to do things for customers.<span style=""> </span>I’m just too passive-aggressive to show it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >©2007 Tiffany Gholar<o:p></o:p></span></p>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-40699589905087846582008-09-02T21:47:00.000-05:002008-09-02T21:49:21.919-05:00A Reason to Die<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p>"Are you sure you’re going to be okay, baby?” <o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">This was it.<span style=""> </span>Devante and his mother had finally arrived at his school.<span style=""> </span>He was surprised to see everything just as it was before.<span style=""> </span>Kids were getting out of their parents’ cars or crossing the overpass above the expressway, coming from the El train station.<span style=""> </span>A few blocks away, the police officers at the police academy were lining up in the parking lot.<span style=""> </span>It was amazing that the lives of those around him continued to go on, although for Devante time seemed to stand still.<span style=""> </span>It seemed as though it would always be 9:25 P.M. the night of Valentine’s Day.<span style=""> </span>That was when he knew Monica was dead.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>“Look at me.”<span style=""> </span>His mother urged him.<span style=""> </span>In theses past few weeks, it had become hard for him to make eye contact with anyone, even his own reflection.<span style=""> </span>He hated looking into the mirror and seeing the face of a person who was too powerless to save the life of the girl who could have been his girlfriend.<span style=""> </span>And every time he saw himself, he knew that he had known better than to have gone outside in his neighborhood after dark.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>“Look at me,” His mother said again as she put the Mercedes in park and turned his face toward her.<span style=""> </span>His eyelids seemed to weigh a ton.<span style=""> </span>It was as if all the tears he refused to cry had collected in them.<span style=""> </span>But he couldn’t let his mother know how much the events of the past month has affected him.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>“I’m fine, Ma.<span style=""> </span>Really I am.”<span style=""> </span>He grabbed his bag quickly and hoped he could get out of the door before his mother realized that everything he had just said was nothing but a lie.<span style=""> </span>He flung the heavy door open and rushed out of it so fast that the cold February air scarcely had time to come in.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span><i style="">Just go,</i> he told himself, rushing forward on the sidewalk.<span style=""> </span><i style="">Don’t look back.<span style=""> </span>Don’t even say good-bye.<span style=""> </span></i><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>He heard his mother<span style=""> </span>pulling away and realized that there were only two options for him now.<span style=""> </span>He could no longer sit alone in his room in a state of depressive inertia because he had insisted that he was fine.<span style=""> </span>He didn’t need to see any stupid shrinks, he had told his mother, and definitely did not want her to send him away somewhere.<span style=""> </span>So what if his parents had just divorced, he had moved into a new neighborhood, and his closest friend had just been shot to death?<span style=""> </span>None of that mattered now.<span style=""> </span>He could handle anything.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">He had a teen heartthrob face, with thick eyebrows that his doting mother often tried to straighten out and coarse, curly hair that he wore in a style that his strict father disapproved of.<span style=""> </span>Many girls found him attractive.<span style=""> </span>Even at the funeral, a few fast girls in short skirts had switched up to him carrying boxes of Kleenex, but he didn’t pay them any attention.<span style=""> </span>The one girl who had ever mattered to him was gone, but he’d go on pretending.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">With slow and measured steps he approached his school.<span style=""> </span>Swarms of kids were beginning to fill the halls and he could see them through the large front windows.<span style=""> </span>Hopefully they wouldn’t notice him.<span style=""> </span>Maybe they would avoid him, just as they had done at the repast after Monica’s funeral. <i style=""><o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">I can do this, </span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">He thought as reached the door to his school, knowing that if he wasn’t strong enough to pretend that he was happy, there was only one other thing he could do.<span style=""> </span><i style="">So what if she’s not with me anymore.<span style=""> </span>So what if Monica’s</i></span><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="">¾</span></span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>And just then Devante saw a couple walk by, holding hands as if they were the last two people left on earth, or the last ones left at Whitney Park High school, anyway.<span style=""> </span>Their smiles mocked his misery.<span style=""> </span>He and Monica had been like this once.<span style=""> </span>Sauntering through the halls, sharing headphones as they listened to CD’s on his Discman, and probably seeming, just as the couple that he saw through the glass door,<span style=""> </span>as though he and Monica had a feeling that no one else could ever have.<span style=""> </span>Yet this time, Devante knew that his feeling was unique.<span style=""> </span>He had a reason to die.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span><i style="">Run!</i><span style=""> </span>The urge was raw, primitive, something that was usually aroused in a life-or-death situation.<span style=""> </span>Devante obeyed this instinct.<span style=""> </span><i style="">I can do this.<span style=""> </span>I can die.<span style=""> </span>Monica did it.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>He had thought about this many times before, yet somewhere in his mind lingered the vague notion that Monica was still alive, just sleeping, that she would suddenly awaken and appear right there at the door.<span style=""> </span>The sound of the ambulance screaming past Devante’s grandmother’s house with its sirens wailing had revived that long-forgotten thought, sending Devante charging down the street after it as he screamed Monica’s name.<span style=""> </span>And old Mrs. Willis down the street telephoned his grandmother from inside, telling her that her grandson had gone and lost his mind.<span style=""> </span>She was too afraid to even come outside and speak to the young man, who collapsed in a crumpled heap on her front yard, weeping bitterly.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>I must be losing it.<span style=""> </span>Scared old Mrs. Willis half to death.<span style=""> </span>I don’t care, Monica.<span style=""> </span>I’m gonna see you again.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>A year ago, his life hadn’t been this way.<span style=""> </span>Devante was barely fourteen and already nagging his parents about getting a car.<span style=""> </span>The lived in a spacious house at the crest of a hill on Longwood Drive with a crescent shaped driveway and colonnaded entryways.<span style=""> </span>He had just begun to rebel against his conservative father by wearing baggy jeans with his Polo shirts and listening to rap music in his stereo.<span style=""> </span>He even told his parents that he, unlike his older brother, wanted to attend a public high school.<span style=""> </span>His idea only fueled his parents’ bitter arguments.<span style=""> </span>He spent much of his time playing the baby grand piano in the sitting area adjacent to his room, trying to drown out his screaming parents’ voices downstairs.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>But what could he do now that the turmoil had entered his mind?<span style=""> </span>It wasn’t supposed to be this way.<span style=""> </span>When he moved into his grandmother’s neighborhood, all he saw was Monica.<span style=""> </span>Her personality and charm had drawn him to her.<span style=""> </span>Devante liked the way she said “ax” instead of “ask” and thought it was funny when she talked about going to get her hair “did.”<span style=""> </span>His father, on the other hand, took one look at her and called her “ghetto.” “That girl. That ghetto girl,”<span style=""> </span>his father had always said with such contempt and disgust.<span style=""> </span>He never once referred to Monica by her name. He called her Shaquandah, Safreeta, LaKeisha, or anything else that ended with an “a” that he felt was not a suitable and “respectable” name.<span style=""> </span>His father seemed to think that such girls were destined to become welfare mothers.<span style=""> </span><i style="">You never even met her, pops!</i><span style=""> </span>Devante wanted to say. His father would never know about her beautiful singing, or all the times he and Monica had gone to hear the symphony and see Broadway plays with his mother.<span style=""> </span>He would never know that Monica’s last words were the lyrics of a song from <i style="">Les Miserables</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Is that Chad and Jerome?<span style=""> </span>Please don’t let that be them!<span style=""> </span>I can’t let them see me!<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Devante thought he saw his two friends getting out of Chad’s father’s minivan from across the street.<span style=""> </span>They couldn’t possibly understand what he had been through. How would his friends ever understand his fear of the dark, that the reason he was 15 and wet the bed was because of the horrible nightmares he had?<span style=""> </span>They were unrelenting.<span style=""> </span>Every night he re-experienced the shooting in his sleep or else spent many hours suspended in a purgatorial state between sleep and wakefulness.<span style=""> </span>And early each morning he crept down to the laundry room in the basement to wash his wet sheets before anyone could find out.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>In the late hours of the night he kept his lights on to keep away his fear of the darkness that obscured everything.<span style=""> </span>Many times he played mind-numbing computer games like <i style="">Tetris</i> or even <i style="">Pac-Man</i>.<span style=""> </span>Anything involving guns or blood immediately brought flashbacks of what had happened on that horrible night just a few weeks ago.<span style=""> </span>It was in the eerie stillness of his room that he had come to realize that there was nothing left for him.<span style=""> </span>He lived in the shadow of a bullet,<span style=""> </span>his existence poisoned by misery, his thoughts contaminated by every memory of Monica.<span style=""> </span>He had played the piano to drown out the sounds of his bickering parents, but what could he do to drown out the memories?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Die.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>The word was short, cold, and simple.<span style=""> </span>Simple enough until he thought of all its repercussions.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>To die.<span style=""> </span>To sleep no more.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>He vaguely remembered the words from a play he had read last semester in freshman English.<span style=""> </span>For the past few days he had considered it carefully.<span style=""> </span>And Devante felt somewhat sedated by the contemplation of the act.<span style=""> </span>He had even eaten breakfast this morning and brushed his hair for the first time in weeks. It would be like music.<span style=""> </span>Taking a ginsu knife to his forearm like a violin bow and playing inaudible music with each stroke of a severed blue vein.<span style=""> </span>Or plunging form the precipitous height of the closest towering vertical structure he could find and lying still, at last, on the sidewalk.<span style=""> </span>But his parents!<span style=""> </span>What would they say? His mother would probably start screaming, “My baby!<span style=""> </span>My baby!”<span style=""> </span>like she had that night, when she saw him standing there on the sidewalk, drenched in Monica’s blood.<span style=""> </span>He tried to force that memory out of his mind.<span style=""> </span>And what about his brother and his father? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span><i style="">I don’t care.</i><span style=""> </span>He lied to himself. <i style=""><span style=""> </span>And I don’t care about not caring.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Somehow it had calmed him.<span style=""> </span>And last night, he didn’t even scream at the conclusion of his nightmare; he knew it would be his last.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>What<span style="letter-spacing: -6pt;">’</span>s the point of living?<span style=""> </span>At the funeral they all said, “She<span style="letter-spacing: -6pt;">’</span>s in a better place now.”<span style=""> </span>So, what<span style="letter-spacing: -6pt;">’</span>s wrong with dying?<span style=""> </span>I want to be in that better place, away from all the chaos of this world.<span style=""> </span>Any place where a girl with as many hopes and dreams as Monica can be shot down like a dog in the street is not where I want to be.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>He looked around and realized that he wasn’t running anymore.<span style=""> </span>He had stopped right at the curb, right across the street from the overpass.<span style=""> </span>All along, his body was following the instinct, though his mind still deliberated in ambivalence.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>I should do this.<span style=""> </span>And I can.<span style=""> </span>Why should I go on?<span style=""> </span>It’s all my fault anyway!<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>There was no hope of revenge because he didn’t know who was responsible for the shooting.<span style=""> </span>He knew only that “They” had done it.<span style=""> </span>They were after a boy whose haircut, shoes, and coat were identical to Devante’s, yet he was unaware of who “They” were.<span style=""> </span>This criminal, pants-sagging, low-riding “They” was responsible, but Devante carried the guilt that should have been theirs.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Your fault. . . your fault. . .</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>His mind taunted as a scene he desperately wanted to forget appeared in is mind.<span style=""> </span>Devante tried to fight it.<span style=""> </span>He wanted to force it into the back of his mind, but the memory overwhelmed him completely.<span style=""> </span>He remembered a sky without stars.<span style=""> </span>A black emptiness. A city sky.<span style=""> </span>And underneath that sky, that canopy, that burial shroud, he sneaked out of the side door with the roses and teddy bear that he was waiting to give to Monica.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">And you know you shouldn’t have you knew it would happen!<span style=""> </span>You say you didn’t but you did!<span style=""> </span>Dad warned you about this place.<span style=""> </span>You could have just gone to live in his big condo, but no!<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">He wanted to express to her his desire to be more than just friends. The only light came from the insides of buildings and the eerie orange street lamps that lined the street.<span style=""> </span>This made the shadows unusually long, ominous, and deep.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">And it was dark.<span style=""> </span>It was so dark, a night without stars.<span style=""> </span>But you kept going!<span style=""> </span>You idiot!<span style=""> </span>You went.<span style=""> </span>.<span style=""> </span>.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">He walked to Monica's house feeling warm despite the cold that crept through his sagging jeans.<span style=""> </span>The lyrics and melodies of every love song he ever knew were playing in his head as he climbed up the cement steps of Monica's front porch.<span style=""> </span>So what if the moon seemed to be a watchful, ubiquitous eye spying on him from behind.<span style=""> </span>None of that mattered now.<span style=""> </span>He was glad Monica answered when he rang the doorbell.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>"Are those for me?<span style=""> </span>Oh, Devante, they're beautiful!"<span style=""> </span>Monica said as she accepted the teddy bear and roses that he had gotten her.<span style=""> </span>But a sudden look of fear erased the smile from her face.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>"That driver just slowed down when he saw you."<span style=""> </span>She warned Devante, who had his back to the street.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>"What does that mean?"<span style=""> </span>He was new in the neighborhood.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Monica never answered the question.<span style=""> </span>Devante turned around to see the barrel of the gun sticking out of the open passenger side window.<span style=""> </span>Monica screamed "Duck!"<span style=""> </span>and the shot went off</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="">¾</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>She died almost instantly.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>And they fired and she said 'Just don't move. Play dead' and I did and I saw the blood. . . everywhere. . . all over the roses and the white teddy bear and the Valentine's card.<span style=""> </span>I killed her!<span style=""> </span>I didn’t pull the trigger, but it didn’t have to happen!<span style=""> </span>I should have known!<span style=""> </span>Only an idiot would go strolling through my neighborhood after dark.<span style=""> </span>But I thought drive-bys only happen to other people.<span style=""> </span>I thought I was invincible.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Invincible.<span style=""> </span>Was he invincible?<span style=""> </span>If he jumped over the side of the overpass, would he die?<span style=""> </span>If he jumped, would anyone notice?<span style=""> </span>Would the drivers stop their cars in horror and cause a fifty car pile-up?<span style=""> </span>If he died, would anyone care?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Serves you right, pops.<span style=""> </span>All you ever do is boss me around and talk about Monica like that.<span style=""> </span>You’ll see.<span style=""> </span>You’ll be sorry.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>The Don’t Walk sign went off and Devante ran across the street and skidded to a stop on the other side.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>But what about Grandma?<span style=""> </span>What about my mom?<span style=""> </span>What’ll they do?<span style=""> </span>Then again, what use am I to them anyway?<span style=""> </span>I don’t take out the trash.<span style=""> </span>I don’t shovel the snow.<span style=""> </span>I don’t even eat anymore.<span style=""> </span>They’d be better off without me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>The overpass stood before him.<span style=""> </span>The threshold, the boundary between life and death.<span style=""> </span>Before, he had only seen it as a way to get to Burger King during fifth period lunch, but now it had taken on a new meaning.<span style=""> </span>But wait! There was a huge chain-link fence that towered over the guard rail.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>That thing must be eighty feet tall.<span style=""> </span>Do I really want to do this?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">He did.<span style=""> </span>He hurled his heavy book bag to the ground and began to climb.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">I’m not scared.<span style=""> </span>I’ve looked death into the face before, so it doesn’t matter.<span style=""> </span>Nothing matters.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Yet part of him wanted someone to notice him up there.<span style=""> </span>Part of him wanted someone to tell him to get down from there and show him that he still had a reason to live.<span style=""> </span>And that was when he thought he heard the sirens.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“Hey kid!”<span style=""> </span>A voice called to him.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Try and stop me, pig!<span style=""> </span>All you cops are pigs!<span style=""> </span>Where were you when they shot Monica?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“Get down from there!” Called another voice.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Devante turned around and saw a police academy car screeching to a halt.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">They’re just a bunch of toy cops anyway.<span style=""> </span>They can’t do anything.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Yet oddly enough, part of him wanted them to.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Come and save me!<span style=""> </span>Or maybe this is just part of the lessons they teach those toy cops, how to arrest a Black guy for no reason.<span style=""> </span>What’re you gonna do?<span style=""> </span>Arrest me for taking my life?<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">They were on his side of the street now.<span style=""> </span>Devante still hadn’t moved.<span style=""> </span>He held on to the chain link fence and stared down at the sluggish river of morning rush hour traffic below him.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“We want to help you.”<span style=""> </span>One of the officers said.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“Leave me alone!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">But I don’t know if I want to.<span style=""> </span>I’m scared.<span style=""> </span>I don’t know!<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“Come on, kid.<span style=""> </span>You’re too young to just throw your life away.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Is he right?<span style=""> </span>Will he shoot me? <o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Devante slowly began to climb down the fence, looking back warily at the two officers in training that stood behind him.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">I don’t know!<span style=""> </span>Why am I doing this?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“I don’t want to die.”<span style=""> </span>He answered his own question.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">At last, his feet were on the sidewalk again.</span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">©1997 Tiffany Gholar</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-76720158059717544342008-09-02T21:43:00.000-05:002008-09-02T21:47:19.048-05:00A Little Fall of Rain<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The red Blazer screams off into the darkness and I still can't believe this is happening.<span style=""> </span>Not to me, not on Valentine's Day, not on my front porch.<span style=""> </span>I look up and I see Devante screaming and screaming. What just happened?<span style=""> </span>Not that long ago, we was just chillin' on my porch.<span style=""> </span>So what if it's dark and cold outside?<span style=""> </span>It's Valentine's Day and Devante wanted to make it a happy one for me.<span style=""> </span>He brought me all these roses and this big white bear and I was just so excited I just stood right here on the front porch with no coat on.<span style=""> </span>And then the<span style=""> </span>Blazer just pulls up outta nowhere with no lights on and I know that I shoulda known it was gonna happen and I know that I shoulda known not to be out here.<span style=""> </span>I knew it was a gangsta car, low-riding down the street with<span style=""> </span>gold trim, fat tires, license plate covers, and<span style=""> </span>windows tinted so black that you can’t see the fools inside.<span style=""> </span>But Devante, well you can't expect him to know nothing about that cuz he just moved in here from his boozhy neighborhood<span style=""> </span>where they don’t never get drive-bys.<span style=""> </span>And I still don't want to believe that those were real bullets flyin' at us, and I still don't want to believe that some of them hit me.<span style=""> </span>I just hope Devante okay.<span style=""> </span>And the bear he gave me, its covered in blood!<span style=""> </span>I'm screaming his name but he can't hear me.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“Monica!<span style=""> </span>Monica, you’re gonna be all right.<span style=""> </span>The ambulance is coming!”<span style=""> </span>Devante all frantic now.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>I ain't never seen him look so scared in my life.<span style=""> </span>And maybe he can't hear me.<span style=""> </span>He's<span style=""> </span>got blood on him, too!<span style=""> </span>I <i style="">told</i> him to duck.<span style=""> </span>But since he wasn’t listening, I pushed him down to the ground and fell right on top of him.<span style=""> </span>I just couldn’t let something like this happen to him. And I'm feeling this pain now, but I know this ain't happening.<span style=""> </span>I’ll wake up, and tomorrow I’ll be going to Student Council and track practice.<span style=""> </span>I’ll wake up, and none of this will have happened, I want to tell myself.<span style=""> </span>It's cold, so cold that I think my blood is gonna freeze on the sidewalk.<span style=""> </span>My blood!<span style=""> </span>It can't be real!<span style=""> </span>It can' t be.<span style=""> </span>Okay, Monica, look down.<span style=""> </span>You're just dreaming.<span style=""> </span>Them bullets, they wasn't real. Ain't none of this real.<span style=""> </span>But that's real blood!<span style=""> </span>Oh, God please tell me these bullet holes ain't real!<span style=""> </span>I'm gonna die!<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>They say your whole life flashes before you, but all I see is what I never did.<span style=""> </span>Like how I never told Devante that I like him.<span style=""> </span>I wonder if he even knows?<span style=""> </span>I remember that day when we stopped at Marshall Field's.<span style=""> </span>We was ‘posed to be heading home from school on the El train, but of course Devante wasn't trying to hear that.<span style=""> </span>And I remember the look on his face when I tried on that long, slinky dress with the skanky slit up the side that I knew Momma would never approve of.<span style=""> </span>But that look on his face. . . never in my life has a brother looked at me that way.<span style=""> </span>And he bought that black and silver Nautica jacket even though I told him not to, not just because it was $150 (can you believe he fifteen and got a credit card?)<span style=""> </span>but because Shorty from up the street, he's got one just like it.<span style=""> </span>And then he bought the new Jordans, too, even though I told him that Shorty<span style=""> </span>got a pair just like 'em. And word on the street is they been looking for Shorty.<span style=""> </span>They think he's been keeping some of that drug money to himself.<span style=""> </span>Devante be trying so hard to fit in with these other brothers, so maybe me telling him about Shorty only made him want the jacket and shoes more.<span style=""> </span>I'm looking up at Devante now, and I see it would be real hard to tell him from Shorty from the back. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>And here comes Momma now, just crying.<span style=""> </span>And I want to tell her that it's alright, even though it's not.<span style=""> </span>Kinda like that one Black girl in the play Devante and his momma took me to see about the French people that was having a revolution.<span style=""> </span>They were shooting too, only not over drug money, and ole girl was just caught in the middle.<span style=""> </span>But she told her man not to worry.<span style=""> </span>She didn't feel no pain, and rain would make the flowers grow. . . <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>Feels like I’ve been layin’ here for twenty years.<span style=""> </span>I keep coming in and out, hearing voices warning Devante not to move me.<span style=""> </span>And I'm just like, where's the ambulance at?<span style=""> </span>If I could talk, I'd remind Devante that 911 is a joke.<span style=""> </span>Poor thing.<span style=""> </span>He never did understand that music video. Maybe now he can.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>But it ain't his fault that he just moved here to be with his Grandma since she had a stroke.<span style=""> </span>He coulda gone to live downtown with his father in a fancy apartment, but he said that living here was more fun.<span style=""> </span>Yeah, if you can call living with burglar bars and four locks on the door "fun."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>But it used to be fun to live here.<span style=""> </span>Maybe that’s why the old people, like Devante’s grandma, don’t want to move away.<span style=""> </span>They say that<span style=""> </span>the neighborhood has changed a lot since 20<span style=""> </span>years ago, and I even think that it was different seven years ago when me and Devante was little.<span style=""> </span>I remember when we used to sit here on this porch when we was little kids, drinking Kool-Aid and eating corn chips with hot sauce on ‘em.<span style=""> </span>Every day after school he and his big brother would be at his grandmother’s house, and I liked coming over there to see him.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes we played in his grandmother’s backyard.<span style=""> </span>When it’s warm outside, she got so many sweet potato vines and elephant ears back there that me and Devante played like we was living in a<span style=""> </span>jungle.<span style=""> </span>I wonder if he remember that.<span style=""> </span>But things were changing, even then.<span style=""> </span>One of his parents would roll up in a shiny black Mercedes to pick him up, and he never saw what it was like being here at night.<span style=""> </span>Devante didn’t know about the drug dealers who started hanging out on the corners.<span style=""> </span>He had no idea that by the time they was in sixth grade, a lot of the little boys he used to play with already had rap sheets.<span style=""> </span>Somehow, in the back of his mind Devante thinking that he still living in a boozhy little neighborhood.<span style=""> </span>I guess all them signs that say “Warning: We Call Police”<span style=""> </span>that are up in everybody’s windows never made him realize that. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>I still remember they day he moved in here.<span style=""> </span>I saw him out front, cutting his grandma’s grass without a shirt on.<span style=""> </span>He almost had some muscles, with his tall, skinny self.<span style=""> </span>And looking so fine.<span style=""> </span>I think maybe some of the other boys are jealous of him, especially since he got such nice curly hair.<span style=""> </span>But anyway, there he was.<span style=""> </span>And as soon as he saw me coming, he cut off the lawnmower.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“Monica, is that you?”<span style=""> </span>We hadn’t seen each other for a long time. And I guess he was expecting to see me with braids and barrettes in my hair, not like it is now, in a bob that’s stacked in the back.<span style=""> </span>I was surprised to see him, too.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“Devante?<span style=""> </span>What you doing here?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>And that was when he told me all about the divorce and his grandma having a stroke and his momma not wanting to put her away in a home.<span style=""> </span>For a second, I almost thought I saw a tear in his eye.<span style=""> </span>But then he changed the subject.<span style=""> </span>That boy asked me if I wanted to ride bikes with him around the neighborhood.<span style=""> </span>And I told him I’d have to be crazy to do that.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“Why not?”<span style=""> </span>He asked.<span style=""> </span>“I used to ride my bike all the time when I was at my old house.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“Well, this <i style="">ain’t</i> your old house!”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>And I don’t<span style=""> </span>think I got a chance to finish telling him about how it’s changed around here because his momma came outside after that.<span style=""> </span>Mine did, too.<span style=""> </span>They just kept going on and on about how much older we both looked and how cute we was when we was little kids.<span style=""> </span>It was embarrassing.<span style=""> </span>And then they started talking about how the two of us was just about to start high school, how fast we grew up.<span style=""> </span>I was ready to leave.<span style=""> </span>And just then, Devante momma said something that surprised me:<span style=""> </span>we was<span style=""> </span>both going to the same school.<span style=""> </span>Me and Momma both looked at her funny.<span style=""> </span>And she said it was the best public high school in the city, so of course she’d send him there.<span style=""> </span>Maybe we could carpool, she said.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>But my momma’s idea of “carpooling” is for me and Devante to take the CTA buses and El trains together.<span style=""> </span>That was when I realized that if Devante <span style=""> </span>had a lot to learn about the world. The first few times, that goofy boy forgot to get himself a transfer.<span style=""> </span>And he wanted to take his Discman on the train!<span style=""> </span>I told him to hide it inside his coat so that all people could see was his headphones and not the CD player.<span style=""> </span>And I guess I thought he learned.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>We spent a lot of time after school together.<span style=""> </span>He plays the piano, and when he plays, when them long, skinny fingers of his touch the keys, it’s like he’s saying something to you that can’t be put in words.<span style=""> </span>His grandma likes listening to Nat King Cole.<span style=""> </span>She used to be a ballroom dancer, but since she can’t do that no more, she just sits and listens.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes Devante be trying to play the songs by ear. And one day, I started singing along.<span style=""> </span>He liked my voice.<span style=""> </span>So, I sang a little louder, but since I’m an alto, I can’t hit really high notes.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“Do you want me to play it in another key?”<span style=""> </span>He asked me.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>I didn’t know what he was talking about.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“That’s the difference between singers and musicians.<span style=""> </span>All you guys have to do is just jump up on a stage and go ‘la la la’ and you don’t even know about sharps and flats and major and minor keys!”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>But he taught me all that stuff.<span style=""> </span>He’s really good about that.<span style=""> </span>Just like his momma.<span style=""> </span>She grew up here, and always be giving me history lessons on the neighborhood, telling me about the politicians and movie stars and football players<span style=""> </span>who used to live down the street or around the corner.<span style=""> </span>Seems to me like they oughtta come back and see what’s happened since then.<span style=""> </span>And she told me about how all these houses on the block are Chicago style bungalows, that you can find them anywhere in the city.<span style=""> </span>She’s right.<span style=""> </span>I started noticing that on the way to school. Houses just like mine all over the place, but some people still look at this and call it the ghetto.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>I remember standing here on the porch the night we had went out to see that play about the French people.<span style=""> </span>Devante and his momma always going to plays and operas and things like that, and every time, he remembers to invite me.<span style=""> </span>I never really got the feeling that they do it because they felt sorry for me or thought they were doing some kinda mission work or doing me a favor.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>“I just like being with you, Monica.”<span style=""> </span>Devante said.<span style=""> </span>“And I just want you to see what it’s like on the other side.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>That was when I knew he liked me.<span style=""> </span>And for the whole play, I kept looking at him.<span style=""> </span>I guess somehow I kinda thought he was gonna kiss me, like in a movie or something.<span style=""> </span>And I remember there was this one Black girl in the play,<span style=""> </span>the one who got shot.<span style=""> </span>And I turned to Devante and said, “One day that’s gonna be me!”<span style=""> </span>But I didn’t mean like this.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>It's getting colder now.<span style=""> </span>I never thought it would be this way, dying I mean.<span style=""> </span>Actually, I never really knew what it would be like.<span style=""> </span>They never taught us about that kinda thing in school, just like they never taught us what to do if you live where I live.<span style=""> </span>And I don't wanna die.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes, I used to feel like if I died nobody would care at all, but here they all are— Devante and his mother and grandma (she came out here with her walker!) and my parents.<span style=""> </span>And I don't want to do this, but something's pulling me away from them.<span style=""> </span>And I want to tell Devante about the song I wrote for him that I left in my dresser drawer underneath the CD that he bought me.<span style=""> </span>It's the soundtrack to the musical about the French people having a revolution.<span style=""> </span>And I want to tell<span style=""> </span>Momma and Daddy that I'm sorry about all the times I fought with them over stupid stuff like how loud I can play my music.<span style=""> </span>And I want to thank Mrs. Lewis (that's Devante's grandma) for all the times she baked us sweet potato pies and let me and Devante listen to her Nat King Cole records.<span style=""> </span>And I want to thank Ms Lewis for all the plays and operas she took me to see.<span style=""> </span>But most of all I want to thank Devante for just being Devante.<span style=""> </span>Because he played the piano while I sang, because we took the bus to school together sometimes, and because I don't wanna go out like this.<span style=""> </span>And I can't stand to see his face all twisted up in fear.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>So now I'm gonna try to sing Devante one last song.<span style=""> </span>They all look so scared, but I ain't scared no more.<span style=""> </span>If I could just get<span style=""> </span>my voice<span style=""> </span>back. . . it's really hard to even breathe now.<span style=""> </span>I'm gon’ try. . . just like that one Black girl in the play . . . <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>"A little . . .fall of rain . . . can hardly . . .hurt me. . . now. "<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Blood all spurting out my mouth.<span style=""> </span>And I hope that he knows what I'm saying.<span style=""> </span>I hope they all know. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style=""> </span>"And rain. . . will make the flowers—"</p><br /> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">©1997 Tiffany Gholar</p>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-5430367652066130212008-08-28T10:52:00.000-05:002008-09-02T23:01:25.972-05:00Pennymonster<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It makes pennies multiply in the dark.<span style=""> </span>It is a close cousin of the paperclip monster.<span style=""> </span>Its arch rival is any machine that can sort, count, wrap, or otherwise organize pennies.<span style=""> </span>When it wants to be especially vile, it will transform half of the pennies from American to Canadian currency, making the coins worth even less, although they look deceptively similar and even weigh about the same.<span style=""> </span>It punishes disobedient pennies by sending them in the direct path of a vacuum cleaner, often rendering the victims deeply scarred and choking the vacuum cleaner at the same time, a double guilty pleasure.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <h1 style="line-height: 200%;">Experts Say It Could Be The Penny Monster</h1> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">An area man was found buried alive for 48 hours beneath a mountain of pennies.<span style=""> </span>Jeremy Lake of Buffalo Grove lived to tell his story:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style=""> </span>“It started out small.<span style=""> </span>I found a few pennies in the backs of drawers, behind the cushions of my car.<span style=""> </span>Then, the other night I went to sleep.<span style=""> </span>I kept hearing this strange jingling sound, like coins.<span style=""> </span>But I ignored it.<span style=""> </span>I thought I was dreaming, but I felt something pushing me in my sleep out of my bed.<span style=""> </span>I ended up in the bathtub, luckily.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Mr. Lake survived on water he drank straight from the tap.<span style=""> </span>Concerned neighbors called police after they heard a pounding sound coming from the upstairs apartment.<span style=""> </span>That would turn out to be Jeremy banging his fist on the wall of his bathroom.<span style=""> </span>Firefighters excavated the 25-year-old man from the deadly pile of coins with special rescue equipment.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style=""> </span>A volunteer bucket brigade helped Jeremy and his rescuers remove the coins from his apartment.<span style=""> </span>The change was dumped into the bed of a neighbor’s pickup truck and was deposited by the bagful into the CoinStar machine of a local Dominick’s supermarket and converted into cash. For all their trouble, Jeremy and his twelve new friends will split exactly $153.79. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <h1 style="line-height: 200%;">There is No Penny Monster, Feds Say</h1> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve bank deny the existence of the so-called Penny Monster.</span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">©2001 Tiffany Gholar</p>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-67167870309674710312008-08-28T10:38:00.002-05:002008-09-02T23:02:10.030-05:00museum guard<p class="MsoNormal">staring </p> <p class="MsoNormal">at his own reflection</p> <p class="MsoNormal">in the glass case</p> <p class="MsoNormal">that holds</p> <p class="MsoNormal">a statue of Narcissus</p> <p class="MsoNormal">staring</p> <p class="MsoNormal">into a carved marble pool</p> <p class="MsoNormal">that does not reflect back</p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">©2000 Tiffany Gholar</p>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-21340577910428857072008-08-28T10:38:00.001-05:002008-09-02T23:06:25.430-05:00armor<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Raven</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">black bird</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">pewter beak</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">gun metal sheen</span></p> <span style=";font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;" >of feathers<br /></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">©2000 Tiffany Gholar</span></p> <span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-12235797120307675292008-08-28T10:27:00.000-05:002008-09-02T23:03:45.250-05:00frustrated screenwriter<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" >I've never used a lighter before and so it takes me many, many, many tries to finally get the little spark and flame.<span style=""> </span>But anyway now it’s out and now I've got my worthless script in the sink.<span style=""> </span>I'm going to burn it.<span style=""> </span>I love the way the charred paper smells.<span style=""> </span>I like watching the pages curl up.<span style=""> </span>Character names and lines of bad dialogue are seared away.<span style=""> </span>And there it goes, such beautiful destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" >The gesture is more symbolic than anything else, now I think.<span style=""> </span>The ashes are soggy.<span style=""> </span>They will stick to this morning's dishes.<span style=""> </span>The script is still well-preserved in five other places: on my hard drive, and on the Internet, and on a Zip disk at my boyfriend's house, on a disk I gave my friend Lisa, and regrettably on still another disk in the vegetable crisper of my refrigerator.<span style=""> </span>But I at least have hope that it's been ruined by the cold and the dampness.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" >I am convinced now that they were all right about this story.<span style=""> </span>Nobody wants to read it, and everyone who has says that if I revise it ten more times, maybe just <i>maybe</i> it could be a Lifetime movie of the week.<span style=""> </span>Great.<span style=""> </span>Just like the one about Laurie Dann killing those poor little kids in Winnetka.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" >Anyway now I'm trying to get the wet ashes to go down the garbage disposal.<span style=""> </span>Now the kitchen has a nice burnt smell.<span style=""> </span>I like the smell of burnt paper.<span style=""> </span>Much better than burnt plastic.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:100%;" >Maybe I'll go do something else with my life.<span style=""> </span>Why be a fabulous screenwriter?<span style=""> </span>Why not just a humble painter?<span style=""> </span>I'll continue to live alone, get into a series of M.F.A. programs and never leave.<span style=""> </span>I'll subsist on loan money and never pay it back because I'll be in school for the rest of my life.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">©2001 Tiffany Gholar</p>Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6147466935302777264.post-82959605330341960842008-08-28T10:11:00.000-05:002008-09-25T12:09:36.271-05:00the angriest cover letter in the worldWhat do you see when you look at the résumé of someone who has attained two college degrees but has yet to attain significant work experience in their field? Do you discount them as insignificant and unemployable or do you see that same person as one whose dreams have been deferred for far too long? Do the retail jobs they have taken to cover their expenses in the meantime cause you to feel scorn, or do you see them as resourceful and responsible, with enough self-esteem to know that taking a job that is "beneath them" does not make them a lesser person? Do you ever think of the resilience and flexibility such a person must have in order to adapt to such circumstances? Would you ever stop to consider the useful skills an educated person might acquire from such a position? Do you fall into the conventional mindset that all applicants must have x years of experience with progressively increasing responsibilities, or do you have the wisdom and insight to know that experience is but one factor in what makes a great designer?<br /> <br />Or do you see someone whose intelligence and potential have been overlooked because some unenlightened person in HR was not able to "think outside the box?" Someone who has been typecast in a role she is ill-suited for simply because it is the role in which she has the most experience? Someone who doesn't have much experience because no one has hired her for a position that will give her the experience she needs?<br /><br />Most interviewers tout the importance of experience, but passion is more important than experience. I have years of experience in a field I abhor--retail, menial, tedious and utterly uninspiring retail. Experience does not make me want to go to work in the morning or stay late to complete a project. But my passion for design is what keeps me coming back, interview after disappointing interview, hoping to get my foot in the door of a design firm, hoping for an opportunity to contribute my time, talent, and ideas.<br /><br />I am applying for this job because I am still optimistic enough to believe that you are not as narrow-minded as your competitors, and am hopeful that when you advertise a position as "entry level," unlike your competitors, you actually mean it.Tiffany Gholarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12979768952670661700noreply@blogger.com1