The wiry gas station attendant peered down his nose at me, challenging me to an arm wrestling match for the keys to the restroom.

He pushed up his sleeve and slammed his elbow on the countertop, not allowing me even a second's chance to decline the challenge. I squinted down at his tattooed bicep, perched ready and taught on the counter top and snorted disdainfully.  "Well," I said.  And then paused, allowing my city-girl machismo to fill the space between us.

"I AM a personal trainer, ya know."

And as I said the words, they sort of floated there in front of me, just bobbing and dipping through the air, like bubbles, waiting for a small child to pop them.  It was a sentence I'd never said before.

I stood there, watching my words hover over the head of curly dark hair in front of me, still bowed in concentration, ready for the match to begin.

I cleared my throat.  I could tell he wanted to test the strength of the all-american sweetheart standing in front of him almost as much as she needed to use his bathroom."Which means I might beat you,"I clarified.  

He looked up, finally, a goofy grin spreading across his face.
"And that would just be embarrassing," I teased in my usual manner, a delicate balance of feistiness and flirtation- perfected over the years to make men pause and think before responding. 

"Awhawhaw," he half chuckled, half spoke, waggling his finger at me in a knowing sort of way.
"I LIKE you," he said, the way sometimes people from the country do when they tease us city folk.  He waved his arm at me to follow him, and as he handed me the key to the ladies' room suddenly, just like that, it was true.

I was a personal trainer.

just dancing

  

just there

just moving

just moving

like nothing else exists

just there

eyes closed

just moving with the bass-line
that thumps 

and people

are watching

just moving 

and smiling

and sometimes

even laughing

just there

just moving and clapping

and sometimes even laughing

and the dj

is watching 

smiling and moving

and he’s watching

and trying

to get them laughing and clapping

and I'm

just there

just moving and smiling

and also sweating

just moving and smiling and

sometimes even laughing

Here
is the only place where
I am just moving and smiling

and sweating and moving

and nobody’s judging

because nobody else exists

just moving and smiling and clapping and dancing
and sometimes even laughing

Astronauts in Time

It’s been about four years since we became friends, probably about three since we became close.  It’s been almost two since we broke up the first time, probably about one since we broke up for the last time. 


It feels like forever since we’ve even spoken.

The first time we broke up, I told you that we were out looking for astronauts, for fellow adventurers,  and found them at the wrong time.  I had fallen in love with someone I had no right to fall in love with.  I was tired of crying for you.  I was tired of needing someone who  was never mine to begin with.  And three years ago, I was sorry.

The last time we broke up, I told you I was out looking for myself and found it without you. I had fallen in love with a side of myself I'd never known was even there.  And I was tired of crying because of us.  I was tired of needing us to be something we could never be.  I was tired of hunting for a history that wasn’t already broken to begin with. And a year ago, I was sorry.

It still feels like forever since we've even spoken.

And I want to tell you that I'm still out trying to find myself.  I'm still crying and I'm still tired of needing things from people that they can't give me.  I'm still tired of looking for the wrong things in the wrong places.  And I'm still sorry.

We're out looking for astronauts, looking for astronauts
It's a little too late, too late, too late for this.

Isn't it a little too late for this?

You know you have a permanent piece
Of my medium-sized American heart

We're out looking for astronauts, looking for astronauts.
Are we gone?
Come on yeah, we know we're gone.
Bye bye bye
Bye bye bye we know we're gone.

Take all your reasons and take them away
To the middle of nowhere, and on your way home
Throw from your window your record collection
They all run together and never make sense
But that's how we like it, and that's all we want
Something to cry for, and something to hunt.

Are we gone?
Come on yeah, we know we're gone.
Bye bye bye
Bye bye bye we know we're gone.

Broken Dinners

Towards the end of my last semester in grad school, I’d wake up each morning in an uncharacteristic state of calmness.  It lasted through my last set of exams, through my last few shifts at the coffee shop, and even through my haggling with moving companies and internet providers. I suppose it was the type of calmness that settles in when the panic of loss finally wanes.

My PhD program, the program that had been the primary focal point in my life for nearly 3 years prior to my arrival at UChicago, had failed me. Or I’d failed it. I wasn’t really sure. I guess, I’m still not really sure, three years later. The fact was, too many things just weren't working: my advisor was retiring, I had received only almost-adequate funding, and while my academic life was thriving, my social life had declined to the point of virtual non-existence. I was miserable and I wanted out.

My boyfriend at the time was also feeling a similar way, and when we landed in the middle of a finals-induced argument at the end of winter-term, he finally told me that he didn’t see a future for us. This boyfriend was a person unlike any I’d ever met before and probably ever will. I’ll spare you the shitty, push-and-pull process of breaking up we endured over the next few months, but I will tell you this: By the end of spring term, we had officially broken up, my career in academia was over, and I was pretty much a giant, fucking wreck. I had no interest in eating, I couldn’t sleep, and I was crying so much that I had to lie with bags of frozen peas on my face before going out in public.

So, when Claus came into the coffee shop one morning towards the end of term and smiled at me, it was a new smile, and a smile that didn’t remind me of something I was leaving behind or trying to forget. He would come in almost every day for lunch with his two fellow Neuroscientist friends, Jonathan and Tulia, and would usually return for a refill and some sort of chocolate treat in the afternoons. I didn’t think much of our interactions, except that I looked forward to the easy chit-chat I shared with them in the afternoons, this non-philosophy post-doc who didn’t know my friends or my ex-boyfriend, but instead chatted with me about coffee roasts, developments in his experiments, his latest bike ride, and upcoming music shows we were hoping to check out.

I started going to shows and movie nights with Claus and Tulia and Jonathan, and once things were truly over with my ex, I eventually started riding my bicycle over to Claus's apartment after my shifts at the coffee shop. We’d mostly just sit on his back porch in the sun and sip PBR tallboys and smoke cigarettes. I don’t remember us talking all that much, but I remember he would rub my feet and we'd sit quietly in the sunshine. Sometimes, out of the blue, he would crack really horrible jokes. And late in the evenings, he made me dinner. It sounds so trivial, the mere fact of eating, but at a time when food was the last thing on my agenda, Claus took care of it.

It was always the same thing… a salad of nothing but ice-berg lettuce, topped with one of his mother’s salad dressing recipes and sunflower seeds. He’d also toast some bread for us and top it with cottage cheese and Herbs de Provence. It sounds weird, now that I think about it, but it was actually pretty delicious. It was simple, sturdy, and helped make me feel like I was still alive. And even though what I thought was I needed at the time was black coffee and sad indie-rock blaring on my headphones, Claus helped me realized that was I needed was quiet sunny afternoons, a person who didn’t remind me of the person I was desperately trying to forget, and a home-cooked meal. Thanks Claus… I hope you’re skiing somewhere in the Alps today. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Mom, Dad, Marsh, and Allie too, of course. 
I couldn't be luckier to have such incredible parents and such a killer big brother (and sister-in-law).  

-Mer

A Run-In

The running path is empty except for the two of us. The air is heavy with the low-tide scent of salt and seaweed, and the wind whips up the coast in unpredictable, little bursts. I am in my usual running trance: my breathing matches the rythym of my footsteps and my mind wanders from grocery lists to tides patterns.   I jog behind him for some distance, slowing my pace, watching him.  And I think to myself how his librarian costume of tweed and khaki seems so out of place when he's not giving suggestions from behind the fiction desk on the 2nd Floor.

I am closer now, and I can tell he is tense.  His pace is quickened with agitation, and he turns his head to the side with a quick jerk. I catch the movement of his lips: a spurt of words, then pursed lips, an angry pause. He flings a cussword in his quiet librarian voice, laced with frustration, pitch elevated.

I slow to a walk, hoping not to scare him with too abrupt of an approach. His face twitches with disgust as he half-whispers, half-spits his point of view to his imagined adversary. The usual, soft kindness of his face is distorted with frustration, and I’m suddenly embarrassed at my imposition.  For a moment I debate not stopping, worried that my grin will betray that I too have been privy to his lecture that was meant only for the silent aggressor.

But I linger too long and he turns before I have a chance to back out. Startled, he jerks his head towards me, eyebrows still knitted in anger, mouth slightly open in surprise.

“Hi,” I venture, tentatively, trying to supress my smile.
His eyebrows relax; he closes his mouth.
“Hello,” he says.
“I just wanted to say that I love your stories.”
“Oh!” he says, stuttering to find words. “Well!”
“I come listen to you read every week. They’re really great.”

He smiles and cocks his head too jerkily not to betray his embarrassment. “Well thanks!”

And I know that somewhere in his head he wonders if I’ve witnessed him speaking out loud to himself. And then he reassures himself that, surely, I haven’t, that I was too far away and that he wasn't being that loud.  But he knows that I have.

I nod and smile and start to jog off.

“I’m reading Poe next Monday!” he calls after me.

“I know!” I call back to him.

And he laughs.

Pickles and Origami

Last Night

You looked

as crisp

as an origami crane.

To me

you are

pickle juice
and

succulents

and
weird vintage bird prints.

And also
the feeling of being

not-crazy.                                             

In fact...
so very
Not Crazy
that you just might
convince me  
to wash my feet
at work

in toilet water.