Man cannot live by bread alone but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of Katie. And by mouth, I of course mean hands. So read on, little ones, and fill yourself full on this month of January, starting from the bottom of the page.

January 2nd, 2002: In case you can’t handle the entirety of this too-detailed tale of my trip to Georgia and South Carolina over the days between Christmas and the New Year, here’s a summary:
I drove down to meet a boy named Michael in Augusta, Georgia, on December 28th. He was beautiful and intelligent and fun. We drove to South Carolina and saw three Jump, Little Children concerts. The most amazing three concerts of my life, in fact. I saw lots of people there. People who wanted Michael. People who hated me. People who used to want me but now hate me. Michael and I drove back to Augusta. We did the Hand Jive and celebrated on New Year’s Eve by getting me drunk. The next day, I went home.

And now, the whole, for my stalkers:
James Ashley Hopkins and I began planning to go to Dock Street together more than two years ago. Dock Street is a three-evening Jump, Little Children concert in Charleston, South Carolina, at The Historic Dock Street Theater. It’s THE pinnacle Jump event of the year, and this year’s was the 6th annual. Ash is from Georgia but attends the College of Charleston, so he offered me a place to stay and a tour of the city if I would only go to the shows with him. Ash and I met through the official Jump, Little Children listserv after he followed a link to my website through an e-mail of mine and wrote to me, saying, “Oh my god you are the most wonderful person ever! Marry me! Pleeeeese????? I can play guitar and i don't smoke!!!!” Quite an invitation, I thought.

But then Ash bought Dock Street tickets without me. He had an excuse, but it was an awful excuse. He became angry at me for questioning his excuse. I became angry at him for becoming angry with me.

I decided not to go to Dock Street.

Michael Roberts and I began chatting online nearly a year ago. He instant messaged me one day after I wrote an e-mail to him asking when we were to have children together in response to his requesting a few words from me on the official listserv for the band Jump, Little Children. He was delightful, I was my usual charming self, we began conversing regularly.

I told Michael the harrowing tale of Ash’s rejection of me one day, and he asked, "If I’m single and we could get tickets, would you go with me?" Without question. But when it actually came time to start looking for tickets, he wasn’t single. But I was more interested in the concerts than the making out with Michael, so I suggested that I just tag along with him and his girlfriend. He conceded, though rather grudgingly, and found someone who was willing to sell us three tickets for the sold-out Monday evening show, the last of the three.

Then Michael and his girlfriend decided to be "just friends" and she decided to make other plans for the Dock Street weekend. Not wanting to deal with the uncomfortable silences unavoidable with two people who don’t really know each other yet still wanting to go to the show, I invited everyone I knew to drive down to Charleston with me. But everyone was either already with plans or not of the mind for a 10-hour car trip from Ohio to South Carolina, so I told Michael that we would have to have a go at it alone.

I left for Michael’s house in Augusta, Georgia, on the morning of Saturday, the 28th of December. The idea was to spend the night there and leave for Charleston the next morning to arrive in time for a special Sunday matinee show that Jump had added at the last minute to ease the pain of all three of the evening shows selling out immediately. (Yes, I know that you’ve never heard of Jump, Little Children. But they’re popular in the South. Seriously.) I woke up at 7 AM with plans to shower and pack six days worth of stuff in two hours. I fell a little short and finally piled into my car at 9:45, surrounded by 20 of my very favouritest CDs and wishing that I had a little Advil to dissolve the headache that my lack of sleep the night before had produced.

My first stop was in a little town in West Virginia. It’s very, very hard for me to leave the highway once I get into my Haha, My 2001 Hyundai Accent Goes Way, Way Faster Than Your 2003 BMW, Fool!™ groove, so my needle was fondling the empty mark when Jesus finally took over the wheel for me and chose an exit with a nice selection of un-ghetto-looking gas stations. I exited my car and felt a little breeze upon my stomach, triggering the memory that I had unbuttoned and unzipped my too-tight jeans somewhere near Zanesville, Ohio. With a friendly little wave to the gawking boy in the car next to mine, I put on my super-retro navy running jacket and ignored the bulge around my waist created by my gaping pants.

Determined not to stop again until I was well into Virginia, I spent at least an hour devising ways to leave a voicemail on my own cell phone with this brilliant idea for a story that hit me right around 87 MPH. I finished off a quarter of a bag of peanut butter M&M’s before finally giving in and parking myself in a booth at a Subway with a Veggie Delite and a notepad. I had totally forgotten what state I was in and almost ravished the little Sandwich Artist behind the counter when he broke out in his beautiful Virginia accent. Mmm, I love me some Virginia. I allowed all of the boys and girls to stare at my sandaled feet and shiver before giving the road another what-for, and it was then that I discovered the majesty of the Runaway Truck Ramp. I really hate driving in Virginia. The roads are curvy and hilly, the drivers either grandmas or maniacs, but the Runaway Truck Ramp makes me proud to claim Virginia as one of Ohio’s Almost-Neighbours™. They warn you of their presence a mile before the first one comes into view, and it’s no damn wonder, folks; they are large and in charge. At first, I wanted so badly for some monster truck to come barreling down the road behind me, all out-of-control-like, so that I could see a Runaway Truck Ramp in action. Then, I thought to myself, "Why don’t I put the dang thing to use?" And then I realised that it’s for people like me that the "Runaway Vehicle Use Only" signs are made. 'Cause you know how many idiots like me there are out there.

The other highlight of my drive was the deer carcass that I just couldn’t seem to shake. I noticed this thing lying on the back of a truck a few vehicles ahead of me and tried to ignore it, but there it was. And it wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the head was dangling off of the truck’s bed, sort of flopping around whenever the truck went over a bump in the road. I kept trying to get around the truck, to go speeding by it, hollering out my window, “Eat my dust, deer!” But as soon as I passed it, there it would be, suddenly on the back of the truck now in front of me, laughing at me with its glassy eyes o’ death.

Michael called me at around 2 PM to check on my progress and offer me some of his roommate’s No-Fail Directions to Augusta™. I was well into my driving groove by that time, flashing my lights through the Virginia mountain tunnels and cheering at the "Welcome to North Carolina" sign. Michael called me again right after I stopped at a McDonald’s for a final Road Trip Urination™ to avoid having to go as soon as I stepped foot in his house. But on the phone, Michael informed me that I still had another hour to drive, that getting onto highway 20 was not the end of the trip but only the beginning of the last leg. I slammed my phone onto my steering wheel for dramatic effect—you know, because plastic against rubber creates such an eardrum-shattering blast—and continued on to reach Augusta at 8 PM. I didn’t actually find Michael’s street until 8:45, though, because the roommate’s No-Fail Directions to Augusta™ didn’t take into account the fact that the street to end all streets wasn’t marked in any fashion. I traveled from downtown Augusta back over the Savannah River to industrial Augusta and back twice before finally stopping at a gas station and finding a woman who understood that when I asked for a road called Hinkman, I actually meant Hickman.

My friend Eric called with offerings of wisdom and Mapquest, so I kept him on the line to have someone to yell at while I searched for a brick house with pink trim. (No, seriously. Pink trim.) I put him on hold for a moment while I interrupted a couple’s make-out session on the front porch of a brick house with pink trim. They told me that the house number didn’t match the one I was looking for, though, so I meandered around for about .02 seconds before returning to the lovebirds and asking them again for the street address of the brick house with pink trim. I mean, I realise that things are all sorts of crazy in the South, but honestly, how many people are sitting around with pink trim on their houses? That’s what I thought. The couple, who had stopped their making out and were now arguing, asked me who I was looking for. When I tossed out Michael’s name, they asked what he looked like. The moment I mentioned sideburns, a path was cleared and I was allowed to knock on the door.

Michael opened it instantly, saying, "Katie!" or "Katie?" or maybe just "Katie." My response? "Just a second." Yep, that’s right. Here was this boy I had talked to for a year but never met, and instead of greeting him with a hug or a handshake or anything remotely friendly, I had to put him on pause while I said goodbye to Eric. Nice, Katie. Very nice. Then I made an even better impression by responding to his remark about my finding the place with, "Finally, goddammit!" Michael had to remind that I couldn’t say that word in his squeaky-clean God house (full of drunkards and potheads, I might add), and I was given a disapproving look by the roommate who had given me the directions. This roommate also claimed that it was not at all his fault that I got lost, when I, of course, hadn’t even suggested that it was. Michael took me back to his bedroom immediately in typical male fashion, but I wandered off after admiring his drawings of Beethoven and Liv Tyler, forcing him to show me the rest of the house. Note that the best part of the tour was his opening the basement door, finding it aglow, and calling out to his roommates, “Turn off the light when you’re done smoking pot!”

Then we went to Best Buy to purchase a microphone for recording Dock Street. Michael and I exchanged stories about our first encounters with the Runaway Truck Ramp and other idiosyncrasies of the South on the way after I assured him that it was okay that he was wearing socks with his male clogs due to the their closed-toeness. Michael is very long-legged, so I spent the majority of our time in the store trying to match his stride to avoid lagging behind him and being deemed unconfident. I caught a little whiff of what I thought to be Michael’s narcissism when he insisted that I look at the “rockstar signature” that he used to sign his Best Buy receipt. I wondered . . .

We stopped for dinner at the Atlanta Bread Company. The girl behind the counter flirted with Michael immediately, so I had to make him pay for my meal to make her think that we were together. Actually, I had left my wallet in my car back at his house and didn’t have a dime with me, but I realised later that his having to pay for me probably quieted Bread Girl a little. I skipped my usual restaurant settlement of choice and chose a table in the middle of some eating couples so that Michael wouldn’t feel like he was being forced into isolation with me. I found a toy monster truck under my seat. Michael sat down but told me that he would have picked a table in the back corner where he could watch everyone. We moved there; I took along my new plaything. Dinner was, surprisingly, very comfortable. I honestly felt like I’d known Michael forever; there was no gap between talking monitor-to-monitor and talking face-to-face. We talked about his hometown of Greenville, my new home in Columbus, and our joint want of working for a newspaper.

We went back to Michael’s Den o’ Love™, where he played a bit of a song by Jay Clifford, the lead singer of Jump, Little Children, called The Holy City on his guitar. Having spent only miniscule amounts of time listening to the song, I didn’t recognise it, prompting Michael to claim that I don’t know my Jump very well. I complained that he needed to sing along, so he had to explain to me that the crookedness of his not-at-all-crooked nose prevents him from breathing well through it, which prevents him from singing well. Very odd thing. I didn’t question him but merely assured him that’s it’s surely one of his most attractive characteristics to non-showering girlfriend-types. He told me about his ex-girlfriend’s absolute hatred for me and the things I say to him and then got out his cello for a bout of “Look at Me! I’m a Rockstar on an Orchestral Instrument!” The acoustics in his bedroom were no good, though, so we moved to his expansive dining room, where he showed one of his roommates’ girlfriends, a girl called “Twiddles”, how to play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Then he gave me a little lesson, showing me how to hold the cello and what to do with my arms and where to put my fingers on the bow. I felt super-dirty with that massive hunk of wood between my legs, but it was such a beautiful instrument with such a beautiful sound that I felt a desperate need to learn to play it. And still do. Michael told me that I looked like a natural cello player with it in my arms, and I don’t care at all if he was lying.

Michael asked if I was going to sleep in his bed with a devilish twinkle in his eye, tease that he is. He ended up on the floor with a lime green pool raft and a sleeping bag after I finally agreed to take to the mattress. After he asked if I was going to, I got underneath his blankets. I never use other people’s warming threads, but I suppose I just wanted to be able to say that I had his nighttime filth on me. Saturday Night Live was on the television, but it was so awful that we mostly ignored it and talked, me leaning over the side of his bed to see if his drawl was actually slow enough to liquefy on his lips as he spoke.

At 3 AM, Beethoven fell off of the wall and hit the floor with a sound that cardboard on carpet cannot possibly make except when it really wants to startle someone who has only been asleep for 45 minutes. Michael was trying to stay up all night since he had to leave for work at 5, so he was fully conscious and able to truly appreciate my struggling to find out what had just gone down while still being mostly dead. He told the story of The Fall of Beethoven and my “hilarious” reaction to it several times over the next few days.

I woke up at 8 and took a bath. And I’m not saying bath in the general sense where it can be a shower or a hosing off or a spin in the washer. I’m talking about and actual foot-of-water, sit-in-your-own-filth-for-an-hour bath. The house doesn’t have a working shower, you see. So the whole time I was bathing, I had to keep thinking about Ridiculously Tall Michael™ and his super-manly roommates all scrunching themselves into this bathtub with their favourite flowery bath salts. Michael came home at 9:30, made me smell his milk to see if it was still good, fed me some Life cereal, and consulted me on clothes for our Dock Street shows. We left somewhere around 11, planning on having plenty of time to kill once we got to Charleston.

Except that Michael drives 10 miles below the speed limit at all times. So we didn’t actually get to the city until a little after three due to a stop at Best Buy to buy another microphone, a run through a Sonic for grilled cheese sandwiches, and an unsuccessful attempt to buy Cheerwine at a gas station where the cashier could not work through my northern accent and had to have another customer translate for him. However, we did have the opportunity to fully enjoy Michael’s Cool Mix, a home-burned CD full of late 90’s favourites from the likes of Better Than Ezra, Ben Harper, and Guster. Oh, and Michael flipped off random road-sharers who were sharing less-than-nicely. I find "giving the finger" to be about the most puerile thing imaginable, but well, Michael tried to conceal it from me for the most part, and one of the more-unaware drivers gave him a friendly wave in response. Unsure how the Theater would react to Michael’s strolling in with his laptop in plain view, he shoved it down his pants and broke two ribs in the process, forcing him walk with his hands folded over his stomach to hide the protuberances of both the computer and the broken bones.

Jump was already into their first song when we entered the ridiculously dark balcony to find our seats in Box B. The stage was all in purple and Jay was all in white and I was all in hysterics that I was actually in Charleston for Dock Street. Michael grabbed my elbow and I grabbed his and we moved forward in the murk until an usher spotted us and tried to maneuver us to our seats. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet, so the usher walking behind us and pushing us forward into Godknowswhat made me a little apprehensive. But our seats were glorious, as was the hair of the guy behind us, whose knee I kept smacking with my elbow. But for God’s sake, when someone continues to accidentally beat you every time she turns to whisper something to her friend, you should probably give up and move your leg from between the seat that’s separating the two of them! Thank you.

When the intermission came around, I looked down to the floor and spotted Ash walking out to the lobby. Now, I had no idea what Ash looked like at that point, having asked him not to send me a picture of himself, but I just knew that it was him. I have no idea how, but I did. I did, all right!? But I did nothing about it, because just then, Allison Huff and Jenna Parker spotted me. Now, I first met these Georgia girls in Chicago a year ago at a Jump show and saw them later in northern Ohio at another show, and both times, I’ve made horrible impressions on them. I’m not the least bit funny nor charming nor even annoying around them. I’m just . . . blah. Yet they always act happy to see me, and Dock Street was no exception. Allison (who I refer to as Big Huff) waved and Jenna stared, and I commented that those girls get cuter every time I see them. Just then, Lauren (a.k.a. Little Huff) appeared in the balcony with one of her friends and came bounding over to talk to us. They instantaneously became more enthralled with Michael than with me, though, which was to be expected given my past blahness. But any blah from me was expunged by fabulousness from the band, who put the best show that I’d ever seen up until that point. But you can read about all of that stuff here.

Michael and I went off to find a Kinko’s at which to check our e-mail and attempt gain tickets for that evening’s show, which we couldn’t possibly not attend after the earlier performance. We had no luck of our own but got a call from Jenna, who promised to meet us at the Theater with extras. The plan was to eat some very un-vegetarian-friendly soul food at Jestine’s, but the place was stuffed to the hilt, so we chose Andolini’s instead and settled down with a calzone and a slice of pizza. I started popping pills to take a jab at the headache I’d had for three days while Michael critiqued the show, telling me how raw it was compared to the usual evening Dock Street affair. I rifled through his wallet for evidence of all of the love slaves that he keeps around to do his bidding but sadly found none. It was all very comfortable. Michael claimed that it was my “charisma” that made us able to talk so easily, but I think it’s just that we were two mildly interesting people with a little bit in common.

We changed clothes for the evening show like the girls we are and made our way to the Theater, where all sorts of people were already gathering inside. And even though I had never met these people, I recognised them all. And do you know why? Because the official Jump, Little Children listserv is made for psychos like me. The list, which is called Opium and therefore has list members called Opiates, gets along veeeeery well. Too well, perhaps. Well to the point that people meet their best friends through it. And of course, there’s a directory. A place where girls from Ohio who think that they will never actually meet any of these people can go to match their pictures with their writing styles. Let me tell you, it was possibly the scariest moment of my life when I realised that all of them are real. That every single one of those pictures belongs to a real person who talks and breathes and quite possibly even has cognitive thought. And there they were, all talking and breathing and hugging and taking pictures and becoming giddy at the sight of one another.

And they knew Michael. In fact, they loved Michael. Because Michael is beautiful. I really mean that. I don’t mean it in a lusty-21-year-old-girl-type way but in an admirer-of-pretty-boys-type way. He’s very tall and very thin with perfect pale skin, lovely black sideburns, the kindest eyes, and just the right amount of stubble to keep him looking rough-but-not-trashy. And brother, what a smile. Thanks to his exhibitionist-like qualities, I had seen a thousand pictures of Michael before I left home and knew how very attractive he is, but I had totally convinced myself that he was going to be hideous in person. But he only gets more gorgeous as you get closer to him in all actuality. So I wholly understood why everyone we went, girls were admiring him for a moment and then sneaking peeks at him again . . . and again.

And since they were looking at him, they were looking at me. Oh, how they looked at me. Some with a look of confusion, perplexed with the fact that they know his girlfriend and I’m sure not her. Some with a look of longing, wondering how I was so lucky as to be there with him. Most with a look of hatred, angry that some random girl had “stolen” this boy they had admired at every show. I was highly entertained, especially since Michael and I were just there as friends. And he introduced me simply as his “friend Katie” so that no one would recognise my name from the listserv and blow my cover. It was really great to just sit back and watch while Michael pointed out all of the Opium celebrities to me.

We made our way to our seats in Box H of the balcony beside my favourite celebrity, Kim, and her friend Heather. Before we climbed the little stairs to the box, Michael said rather mutedly, “There’s JLT.” Now, I had no idea what that meant, so I just totally ignored him and excused myself as I pushed past the people in the last two rows of the box to our seats in the front. He and Kim exchanged some words, most of them very nasty thanks to a faux-fight that the two of them can’t back down from, and then he and I leaned in close on the ledge of the balcony to talk about people as they gathered on the floor below us. And then he half-whispered to me, “Jerry’s kicking my chair.” And I about lost it.

Jerry Loki Tyler is a girl who I began chatting with one night this past summer. I became interested in her because a certain lyingdirtyoldman who claimed to love me up until the beginning of September also claimed that Jerry was in love with him. He told me that she’s psychotic, that she’s always following him around at Jump shows and trying to get on him. And I believed him, because I was jaded with his passionate kisses and hour-long professions of adoration. Michael also chats with Jerry, and he was led to believe the same thing by this lyingdirtyoldman. Yet, I was terribly excited about meeting this girl, and I think he was, too. We discussed what she would be like and decided on a simple “foaming at the mouth”. But it turns out that this lyingdirtyoldman had told us a dirty, old lie, and Jerry was as mental illness-free as can be. (At least around us. She claims that she really is psychotic, so who knows what she’s doing on her own time. And you should note that we made her hand over her driver’s license so that we could verify her name.) I turned around to see who this Jerry person was, but there were two blonde girls sitting behind Michael, so I looked at them in turn and asked, “Which one of you is Jerry?” They both looked at me blankly for a moment, and then the more make-upped of the two said with a certain annoyance in her voice, “I’m Jerry.” I told her that I’m Katie Ett, and she replied, “I figured.” Of course she knew who I was; she must have known that I would be there with Michael. I inquired as to why she hadn’t spoken up, and she said that she was waiting for us to talk to her, the tormenter. She was more beautiful than her pictures foretold and looked far older than her 17 years and introduced us to her brother, Bob, who instantaneously began talking to us as if we were all chums. And then my second Dock Street show (which you can read about here) began, and the crowd disappeared.

During intermission, Michael wanted to compare sizes with the other boys in the restroom, so we went for the lobby. And there was Ash, talking with Jenna Parker. I had seen him before the show started, standing in a little group of four. He had looked at me and then looked away, so I asked someone who he was and his identity was confirmed. Now, I didn’t know what I was going to say to him and if I was going to still be angry at him, but I had to find out. I sent Michael away and slipped my arm through Ash’s without a word. Jenna stopped talking, and Ash said, “Hey.” He either put my curly hair and his knowledge that I would be there together or else he was just really good at faking familiarity. I said “hey” back. And then we had absolutely nothing to say to one another. Here was this boy who called me “a devastatingly beautiful creature” and wrote to me, “My heart will burn until the sheer coolness you bring me puts out the raging flames,” and we didn’t have anything to talk about. I complimented his scarf, we both looked away, he spoke to the top of my head, I spoke to his awful teeth, we laughed uncomfortably, and he took his first chance to escape when one of his friends came along. It was a pretty horrid scene. But any blah from me was expunged by fabulousness from the band, who put the best show that I’d ever seen up until that point.

Michael and I had gotten some invites to certain hotel parties and such, so we met up with the girls whose house we were to invade for the night, Carrie and Kristie, and asked what they wanted to do. They were up for one of the parties, so I told Ash (who was actually standing near me again, despite my frightful display of social ineptitude earlier) that the two of us would spend some time chatting later. Michael, Carrie, Kristie, and I all trudged back to their house to change clothes and such. But once we got there, everything changed, and suddenly someone was bringing over beer and someone else was going to get more and vodka sounded good and staying in seemed very appealing. I called Jerry and asked her to come get drunk with us while Michael, Kristie, and I went to Harris Teeter (a crazy southern grocery store) to get the goods. I was the only one of the ten of us who would eventually wind up at the house who was legally allowed to consume the Beverages of Satan™, but Michael was going to pay for everything, so he and I worked out an elaborate plan involving my pretending to forget my wallet and asking him to pick up the tab. The folks at Harris Teeter didn’t care who the hell was buying alcohol at midnight, though, so our plan was totally unnecessary.

When we got back to the house, Jerry and Bob were there, along with Carrie’s friend Michael and a couple of other random friends whose names I didn’t exactly bother to learn. Michael called me to his side at the kitchen table, where I sat down with the only beverage I would have that night. And the drinking began. It’s a darn shame, but I just wasn’t up for getting inebriated that night. I don’t generally drink as a rule, because so much alcohol tastes so good that I don’t see the point in chugging it down just for its effects. Plus, for me, being drunk is only fun when I’m around people I know, and the only person there who I really knew was Michael. (Okay, so I had actually only met him a day earlier. You’re evidently unaware of how much bonding takes place during a 3-hour car ride.) So, I had a Skyy Blue while everyone else had a fine mixture of Rolling Rock, Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde, Bud Light, and of course, boxed wine. Nine of us pretended to get a little tipsy. Nine of us really love our drinking games. One of us used our supposed tipsiness as an excuse to throw ourselves at Michael. One of us really loves to tease men. And then there was me. I sat quietly peeling the label off of my vodka and practicing my origami. Michael looked at me, studied my expression for a moment, and asked, “You’re appalled by me, aren’t you?” I told him that he was free to do whatever he wanted; he apparently wanted to drink. Jerry came over and sat with me to stop consuming and start telling me random stories about her fears and “skanky stores” at the mall.

Finally, stories of someone’s bladder control issues drove half of the group away, leaving Michael to sleep and the rest of us to argue over whether or not Phish sucks. (They do, by the way.) And then, an hour or so later, everyone went to bed. Of course, this was after I had read a Cosmo article on how to “jingle his bells”, Kristie had placed a pile of faux feces on Michael’s sleeping stomach, and I most unsuccessfully tried to convince the other Michael to stick his head between Michael’s spread legs for a picture.

When Michael woke up the next morning, he went right to cleaning, forcing me to become a little more conscious with every clank of bottles being thrown into the garbage. Then he called his workplace and lied to his boss about being stranded in Charleston with a non-functioning car. He went outside so that Carrie and I wouldn’t hear his untruths, but I get the idea that he’s no stranger to making things up. After a shower, I rode to Ruby Tuesday with non-showering, filthy, reeking Michael for lunch. We talked a lot about Jerry. About how totally different than expected she was. I made fun of him for putting his arm around her in their pictures, but he tried to convince me that he does that with everyone. I think that was the only time that he and I didn’t talk much, that lunch. I wasn’t feeling particularly charming, so he picked up my slack after some long silences and asked what makes a good kisser, a reference to an earlier conversation in which I informed him that I enjoyed kissing an acquaintance of his more than I’ve enjoyed kissing any other man. He told me that his new favourite words are cunnilingus and coitus. And then we went back to Carrie’s. Not to critique each other’s tongue action but to get ready for the final Dock Street show.

We had a bit of time to waste before the concert, so we took a jaunt around downtown Charleston. The market was rather empty, so we checked out a few little shops and stopped to take a picture of Michael smashing the window of Hyman’s. Get it? Breaking Hyman’s? Oh, come on. It made us laugh all weekend. Another thing that made us laugh was seeing a certain member of Jump, Little Children riding his bicycle down Church Street. We had just passed famed pianist Michael Bellar getting out of his car, when a cycling figure neared us on the left. He was very obviously staring at us, but I didn’t know why under he passed and I realised that it was THE Jay Clifford, wearing the same jacket that he’s always wearing before and after every show. Michael said, “Yes, that was who you think it was.” No doubt he recognised me from all of the times I’ve attacked him at previous shows and Michael from all of the times his ex-girlfriend dragged him along while she did some attacking of her own. Do you know how odd it is to see your favourite rock star doing everyday, normal, human things? To know that he lives in a real city where he can ride a bike, a real city that I can visit whenever I choose, absolutely blows my mind. I’m not sure if I imagined that he sprouts wings when he’s not onstage, but Jay just riding past me like nothing was almost as shocking as, say, watching the movie Fargo for the first time and finding out that it sucks.

Michael finally had his laptop ready to record, he thought, so we got to the Theater a little early to have Resident Opium Computer Genius™ Chris Slack help him set the levels on his mic. Chris was nowhere to be found, though, so we dodged the rope blocking the way to the balcony and sat on the stairs to wait for him. Michael was very distinctly untalkative the entire time we sat, which led me to believe that my delightfulness was beginning to wane. I was convinced of this further when he took me back down the stairs to talk to Jenna and her cronies. He even went so far as to introduce himself to an Opiate he’d seen but never met, which really worried me, what with his being so anti-social and all with them usually. But once we got up to our seats in the balcony, everything seemed very normal. We whispered and laughed as we had at the two previous shows, and he even allowed me to stand on a chair and mock his height in a picture that Opiate Mary K. took of us. The final show began with my favourite Jump song, Say Goodnight, and it sounded better than I’ve ever heard it before. Absolutely amazing. In fact, the entire set was . . . until the final “song”, which was the most wonderful concert-killer in the entire world, but you can read about all of that stuff here.

After the show, Michael and I began discussing our plans for the rest of the evening. We weren’t sure where we were going to spend the night, but he wanted to take me somewhere to try a Mudslide, so Michael began questioning random acquaintances of his about good bars in the area while eager young lassies snapped pictures with him. (Example.) It was finally decided that we would follow a large group of Opiates to Kaminski’s, this dessert place that was supposed to be able to offer the children their cheesecake and me my alcohol. But when we arrived, the place was all full up, so the lot of us stood on the sidewalk outside of the place and stared at one another. It was one of those times when I felt this very real connection with Michael. It didn’t matter that everyone there wanted to talk to him, because he was always looking over the crowd to locate me. I was very appreciative. A string of men tried to pass us, and when the first one said, “Scuse,” I looked across the parted sea and said to Michael, “Scuse? Did he just say scuse?” The guys behind him gave me dirty looks, so we decided that it was time to head out and avoid a stabbin’. After a twenty-minute walk through the city, complete with numerous rounds of cell phone tag and stops by ten to twelve hundred different Charleston restaurants, the large group was split into four sections. Michael and I ended up at a ghetto pizza place called Gilroy’s with Jenna, Little Huff, Ash, Ash’s friend Lizzie, Tessa-Who-Is-Also-Friends-With-Chris-Slack, and Tessa’s friend Melissa. Tessa asked Michael 1400 questions about himself on the walk there, but he was a good boy and walked behind the rest of the group with me. I made fun of him some more for touching Jerry as much as he had the night before, so he kept trying to put his arm around me, and I had to pretend like I didn’t like it by pushing him away. He reminded me that he had put his arm around me in front of the entire Dock Street Theater during the previous evening’s show; that made me smug. At the restaurant table, I found out some not-so-flattering “facts” about myself that are currently being passed around a small sect of Opium, Lizzie passed around the grandma porn that she had purchased as Ash’s birthday present, and Little Huff and Jenna asked, “Jealous?” after stating things like, “Pizza makes me fart.” Someone mentioned that the name for female genitalia sounds like a disease, as if someone might say at random that they recently contracted a "bad case of vagina". I stood by the soda fountain and called out the name of a certain Opiate (Anoop) who doesn’t know me but whom I recognised. He turned his head; I looked away. I received a phone call and had to leave the table; Lizzie saved half of the last piece of green pepper pizza for me to eat when I returned.

Tessa took Michael and Melissa and me back to her hotel. Not for an orgy but to drop off some extraneous packages. Michael put both arms around me as we crossed the street and refused to let go until I cried out in pain. More making fun of the Jerry thing, dontyouknow. We walked back to meet up with the rest of the group and attempt Kaminski’s again for our dessert and inebriation needs, but it was closed by the time we made it there. So we busked. I’m not exactly sure what kind of geeks perform their favourite band’s songs in the middle of city only two hours after the band’s concert, but that’s what we did. We ran into the cello player who served as part of Jump’s back-up orchestra on the way. She was busy forcing a random male up against a building to better get a grip on his lips, but that didn’t stop us from interrupting her and asking her to sing a song with us. She was thoroughly unimpressed with our talent and rather drunk to boot, so we left her and headed for the market, where all of us girls sat on the cement while Ash and Michael sat on tables with Ash’s guitar and mandolin. There was some Jeff Buckley, some Owen Beverley, and of course, some Jump, Little Children. Ash is a pretty impressive guitar player and has a voice to match, so he led us while Michael picked out harmonious mandolin parts. We girls kind of sucked ass, to put it nicely. Tessa and I seemed to have bonded heavily, though, probably because we’ve both been lied about by the same person. Lovely.

Michael kept kind of catching my eye to ask me if I was ready to go, but I kept getting sidetracked in my response, so he finally whispered my name, causing everyone to turn his way. I ignored him for a moment until everyone else had grown bored of waiting and then looked back. He mouthed a question about our leaving, so we told everyone that we’d be back after we had gathered our things from Carrie’s house. Michael has somewhere around 52 points in his driver’s license and is currently without a headlight on his car, so our entire drive through downtown was spent with Michael hunched over the steering wheel, looking out for the police. Cops seem to be drawn to him, though, so there was a lot of dodging down side streets and going the long way around, but we finally made it to Carrie’s house and said a tear-filled goodbye. On the way back to Market Street, we were met with more police brutality. Michael was getting impatient, so he pulled off to the side of the road to pull the songs he had recorded that night up on his laptop. We were there for a total of 23 seconds when some cops turned on their lights and parked behind us. Michael rolled his eyes. When one of the guys came to my window and tapped on it, I rolled it down and discovered that he had merely stopped to see if we were having car trouble. Michael fed the cop a story about needing to find directions that he had saved on the computer, and we were left alone. So by police brutality, I actually meant friendly policemen taking time to see if we needed their assistance.

Chaos was ensuing when we got back to the busk. Some drunk men had joined in the singing, and a homeless man was rummaging through the box of food that someone had brought over from Kaminski’s. The homeless man came over to flirt with Tessa, who very quickly walked away, leaving Michael to ask the guy questions about himself. He went into an extensive rant about how horrid Charleston shelters are. They have their mattresses lying directly on the floor, and they don’t even provide towels! Oh, the terrible plight of the lazy, non-working, non-functional member of society! This man claimed to be a writer of prose and poetry, traveling across America on a “research” pilgrimage, so Michael asked him to recite a little of his work for us. The man fumbled around for an answer and finally decided that he hadn’t actually written anything yet, that he was still in the “research” process. Mmm-hmm.

We dropped Tessa and Melissa off at their hotel and followed the Huffs back to Kim and Loni’s house, where they were staying for the weekend. There were a total of eleven of us staying there, and Michael was the only boy in sight, so you can imagine how that went for him. Jenna and Little Huff continued with their, “Ice cream makes me fart. Jealous? thing, which surprisingly never got old for me. They also brought out a redneck doll whose hat had originally said Tucker but who had cleverly become Fucker with the help of a strategically-placed dash. He was Fucker the Trucker, and he was a child prodigy. A prodigy when it came to driving trucks. Brilliant. Those Huffs and that Jenna Parker, they’re very funny girls. The problem is that I never have anything remotely interesting to say to them. I’ve made it my business to always have just the right thing to say to someone at any given time. A stock of clever things ready to be spit out on command are being built up in my head as we speak, yet everything I say to them comes out sounding a lot like, “Yeah . . . neat . . . okay.” It’s the most horrible plight imaginable for a girl like me. Being attached to Michael’s hip made my presence bearable, at least. We sat around in Kim’s living room, watching Little Huff and her friend Megan try to get drunk, while Michael played Live songs that no one recognised but me. And then Kim was ready for bed, and Michael and I were supposed to sleep in her room, so I followed her upstairs to brush my teeth and such. Michael decided to stay awake with the other girls, so Kim and I talked all about him and how badly we want to rip off his clothes and get on him every time we so much as hear his name mentioned. And that, of course, is a joke, written only for Michael’s benefit.

Michael woke me up the next morning by kicking my foot. It was one of those things that I knew was happening but somehow worked into the dream that I was having so that I could ignore it. But when he moved to my shin, I rolled over, smiled my cheesiest smile, and yelled in faux anger, “Stop!” He did, and we went downstairs. He was unimpressed with my traveling clothes, which consisted of my pajamas, but he sucked it up and allowed me back into his car. And we drove home a new way, through the backcountry of South Carolina, past more trailers than should have ever been manufactured. Michael gave me control of the laptop and allowed me free range of his MP3 CD’s, which contained all of the songs that he’ll never grow tired of. And they were all songs that I’ll never grow tired of, either. There was Fiona Apple and Angie Aparo and Kula Shaker and Pearl Jam and The Beatles and a hundred more. And then there were the bands that I’m embarrassed to admit that I enjoy. Groups like Creed and Savage Garden and Kid Rock. But the thing is, Michael isn’t embarrassed at all about liking those bands, because he likes them for good reasons. I like them because they’re catchy, a real departure from some of the other bands I listen to. Michael likes them for a specific bass line or drum solo. Michael likes rhythm a lot, you see. This classic cellist wants to trade in his instrument for a drumset so that he can work on becoming John Bonham. I argued that the rhythm section is the least important part of any band, so he made me play Led Zeppelin’s Going to California to prove me wrong. Foiled. I think that’s probably the thing I liked most about Michael—he’s this beautiful, intelligent boy who steals the heart of every women he meets, yet he’s hiding a wonderful secret: he’s a dork. Dangit, I love that. I had a lot of fun on that drive back to his house, singing along to Cowboy and knowing that my friends would scorn me for it later. But hey, he was the one reciting lyrics to Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise. I decided that even though I already had New Year’s Eve plans, I wasn’t ready to leave the South. I asked Michael what he would spend the evening doing if I went on home, and when he told me that he would simply go to bed early, my fate was decided.

Michael left for work as soon as we arrived in Augusta, so I spent the next three hours taking a long bath and playing a game of Dueling Stereos with Roommate Tony the Pothead™. When Michael came home, he was in Super Starvation Mode™, so dinner was decided upon in lieu of a shower . . . AGAIN. I had a hankerin’ for Mexican (as I do for about 98% of every day), so Michael asked Roommate Devin the Pothead™ the whereabouts of a good taco stand downtown.

Thirty minutes later, we had driven past 200 “gentlemen’s clubs”, cornered a cop at a traffic light, and mingled with a meathead bouncer and his boxer, but still we had no nachos. And downtown was completely dead. I don’t know what Georgians do on New Year’s Eve, but it must involve solitary reflection or skeet shooting in the woods. Either way, nothing was open, so we left that part of the city and head for a joint called Teresa’s. It was to be the best Mexican food of my life thus far. The place had an entire vegetarian section of the menu, for God’s sake. But sadly, I eat so slowly and had so much to say that I barely finished a third of my dish. Plus, I took 20 minutes arranging the most picturesque pictures of Michael against the orange vinyl of the booth (which, of course, were ruined when I accidentally popped open the back of my camera, exposing the film). By the end of the meal, we had decided to drive to Wal-Mart for a VCR in which to play Gummo, the most wretched movie ever filmed and incidentally, one of my favourites.

But, as would be our luck, some bad directions from a gas station attendant led us down the wrong path; a stop at a corner grocery store put us back on track. I loved watching Michael through the windows of the places we stopped. Always a foot taller than everyone else, always in a thick sweater, always with a smile on his face, he exuded both confidence and warmth. It made me grin to look at him. (And yes, I’m perfectly aware of how psychotic I sound.) We finally made it to Wal-Mart, which was, of course, closed for the holiday, so we resorted to driving back to Michael’s house and borrowing the VCR of Roommate Devin the Pothead™. We took off our shoes, turned off the lights, and locked ourselves in Michael’s room for two agonising hours of interviews with white trash and large-headed midgets wrestlin’ with dining room chairs. The pain of seeing the movie for the 401st time was righted by the look of anguish on Michael’s face as he cowered in the corner of his bed in his white tattered-by-a-motorcycle-accident t-shirt. I felt even better when the closing credits began rolling, and Michael flipped on the lights, saying, “I don’t like you anymore.”

It was 11:30 by that time, and Michael was convinced that I would have a Mudslide before the New Year, so he questioned Roommate T.J. the Pothead™ and his girlfriend, “Twiddles”, about good bars nearby. T.J. was already pretty drunk and wanted to get a little more messed up, so he suggested our stopping by a liquor store on the way back. Michael drove us to Cafe Du Teau, where twenty middle-aged couples were busy hanging all over each other in formal dress and glittered “Happy New Year” tiaras. The bartender allowed Michael to purchase my alcohol without questioning either of our ages (yay, Georgia!), and then we took a tour of the place, which looked like a cottage from the outside but was actually the size of a castle. The drop of the ball at midnight was probably the most un-hyped thing I’ve ever seen, with the band stopping for the ten-second countdown and then wasting no time with the Auld Lang Syne while the entire room erupted into a mass make-out. I should have kissed Michael then. Not in a lusty 21 year-old way but in a sisterly damn-you’re-hot way. It may not prove to be one of my life’s great regrets, but I’ll certainly beat myself for it at a later date. Let me tell you why:

1) Michael’s one of the ten most beautiful men I’ve ever met, even if he’s well-aware of how good-looking he is.
2) New Year’s Eve is the only night of the year when one is obligated to kiss someone.
3) It would have made me one of two girls to ever kiss him. 4) His lips are so pink that it’s an impossibility that they don’t taste like ripe mango or candy apple.

Instead, Michael and I kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and found a seat so that I could have my drink and not have to worry about randomly falling over. (Because you know that one is all it takes to get me drunk.) As per the usual, my Mudslide was enough to get my head to spinnin’, which I thoroughly denied until Michael made me get up and walk around. But it tasted good, and that’s all that matters. When I finished drinking and Michael finished laughing at me, we went back to the house to find Twiddles all in shambles because T.J. was being mean to her in his state of drunkenness. So, of course, T.J. got out his bottle of Jack Daniels and tried to convince me to drink with him. He called me a pussy for not drinking it straight, but Michael proved his manhood nicely. I, of course, didn’t realise that I was stumbling over myself until Michael did that cute little finger test and watched my eyes dance. He sent me to his room to watch Conan O’Brien’s New Year’s countdown for the central time zone, but when he was gone for just a little too long, I went to investigate. Michael was serving as a mediator between T.J. and Twiddles on the front porch, so I tried to slink away quietly but inadvertently let T.J.’s rabbit outside, creating ruckus and chaos and yelling and T.J. “asking” me to close the front door. I felt bad and drunk and went back to bed.

Michael came in some minutes later, just in time to watch a horizontally-hanging random male prostitute lowered onto Conan’s announcer, who was lying on a table, via some sort of man-lowering device. It was very dirty and wonderful, pseudo-drunk as I was. The new year was rung in again, and again there was no kissing. And dammit, if I didn’t have a perfect excuse, pseudo-drunk as I was. How easy it would have been to suck on his lower lip a little, run my fingers through his hair, roll over, and pretend as if I had passed out. In the morning, I could have simply said, “I did what?! Man, I was so wasted.” Totally believable. Well, I really did roll over, thinking that I would let Michael rest for a moment before making him entertain me for a few more hours, but all of the sudden, he was waking me up to ask for his quilt, and it was 5 AM. I left to go to the bathroom while I was awake and found Roommate Tony the Pothead™ eating my leftover Mexican food and pumping bad techno through the dining room, both of which made me want to cut off his ponytail with his own pocketknife and dangle it mockingly in front of his face. Instead, I did my business and went back to bed.

I tossed around to squeak Michael’s bed frame the next morning until he decided to get up and take a bath while I watched football, of all things. He walked out of the bathroom in his boxers to get his now-unwrinkled pants from the dryer, and I thought to myself how lucky I am that I don’t do everything that my mind tells me I should. Then I watched more football while he recited more Coolio lyrics, claimed that my presence was the only reason he could remember them (as if he doesn’t listen to Gangsta’s Paradise every morning), and shaved for the first time since I had arrived. I’d like to think that he stopped shaving with the knowledge that I enjoy men with facial hair, but while I know that he knows that I enjoy men with facial hair, I won’t flatter myself that he wanted to satisfy me. (And you know that that’s a total lie. I’ve dedicated my entire life to flattering myself, you’re well aware.) He wouldn’t let me take a picture of this most perfect shaving moment, though, and in fact, he wouldn’t even let me look at him while he was doing it. And it was so perfect, too, what with him sitting on his bedroom floor in front of his mirror-which-was-not-hanging-but-merely-leaning-on-the-wall with his electric-shaving-mechanism-which-was-a-Christmas-present-from-his-dad-last-year-and-hasn’t-worked-very-well-since-he-dropped-it-a-while-back. Actually, I wish that someone else had taken a picture of me lying on his bed with my head in my hands, watching Michael in front of his mirror with his shaving mechanism. If I made a movie of my life, it would have that scene in it. And I would play myself, naturally.

An hour later, all of my things were packed, I was heading for my sister’s house in Kentucky for the night, and Michael was heading off to work. He looked very different than he had in our previous days together, much more casual and with much less hair gel. Maybe not as strikingly beautiful but certainly so friendly that I almost considered dropping out of school for the quarter and employing myself as his housemaid. Instead, I thanked him for everything. I hugged him goodbye. He was so skinny. And probably still is. I told that I had had fun. More fun than I ever imagined that I would, actually. We saw T.J.’s rabbit hop by, no one at all concerned that he was outside. Michael hugged me good-bye. Actually, technically, he smothered my head against his chest, him being a foot taller than I am and all. And then we both got into our cars. He waved me on when we got to the place where our paths diverged, and I realised that I probably won’t see Michael again until next year’s Dock Street, if the band is still functioning at that point. It’s very weird to think a thought like that after spending 24 hours a day with someone for four days. Good God, four days is 96 hours. 5, 760 minutes. 345, 600 seconds. That’s just neat.

Days Still to Come . . . The Archive . . . Days Gone By

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