This delightful, delicious, de-lovely month of November for the year 2002 begins at the bottom of the page, so make your way down there
for all of the sapid details.
November 12th, 2002: Recently, I became The World's Greatest Matchmaker™. The BIG K.N. is always complaining about her lack of man, so I attemped to get something started between her and my friend Co-Worker Nick's friend Samir this summer. After a couple of e-mails, though, Samir decided that he just wasn't ready for a woman. But right about that time, Nick was released from the bondage of his woman and began looking around for someone to occupy his time. So I got to thinking how great Katie and Nick would be together. They're both fun folks who like life's simple pleasures. They're both God-lovers who have kept their families a big part of their lives. They both like South Park. A veritable pair of soul mates, I tell you. So they've been dating for a little over a month now, and let me tell you, it's almost too cute for me to handle. So, anyway, I was talking to Katie online last night, and she thanked me for working where I do and thanked me for Nick, as if I had created him with my own hands. And that began a conversation between Nick and me that makes me laugh to read it even now:
Queen Katie Ett: I just told Katie that you're made of Tetrahydrochlorolynal and oxygen.
November 5th, 2002: Today in bio lecture, my professor discussed cancer cells and treatments for diseases. I thought back to my mom’s months of chemotherapy and radiation as he asked whether or not we thought there’ll be a cure for cancer in the next twenty years. I thought about the grotesque things we do to people we love in the name of helping them. I wondered if, in twenty years when we have a cure, I’ll remember back to my mom’s hair loss and weight loss and nausea and liken chemo and radiation treatments for cancer to using electroshock therapy to treat mental illness. Outdated, ridiculous, horrible.
As today was Election Day, Ethan invited me to the Election Day dinner that his church holds every year. I didn’t have anything pressing to do, so I called my dad and told him that I would be in The BIG A-ville if he wanted to drive into town and have dinner with me. When I arrived, he was already seated with a bowl of soup in front of him and The New Wife™ beside him. I never mentioned it, but he got remarried in September to a woman named Lois, the mother of one of my childhood friends. I’m still in the getting-used-to-your-being-my-stepmother stage with her, as I probably will be for the remainder of my life. It was really weird at the dinner to see Dad sharing Lois’s friends. People who only knew him casually when Mom was still around are now calling him by his nickname and talking to him about “married life”. And sometimes I feel like he’s left my mom behind, though she’s not even been dead three years. Like when he informed me that Lois hosts Thanksgiving for her family at her house and acted like he’ll be spending all day with her rather than going to Mom’s sister’s house for a late dinner like we always used to. But other times, I realise that he’s not left her behind but that he’s just moved on. The three of us went back to Lois’s house, where Dad is now living, and we just sat around, sharing stories about Mom and my childhood and all of the times that Lois has scarred her kids with bad cooking. I reminded Dad that he and Mom once told me that my cat had just disappeared when they had actually found him dead, and Lois said that she did the exact same thing to one of her sons many years ago. Horrible. But it was really wonderful to listen to Lois and Dad share their dirty, little secrets about one another as they sat on the couch together, casually in love.
November 4th, 2002: Today, I worked for a couple of hours at my science museum and then headed to the basement of OSU’s student union for my radio show. A girl and boy showed up for training a few minutes later, and we dove into an hour-long music discussion. The girl likes Cursive and The Juliana Theory and the Get-Up Kids but refuses to call herself “emo”, because she finds the label too general to define a genre. The boy likes Beck and Ben Folds and Spoon (who I had never even heard until last weekend, when I drove to Chicago with a boy who became my Spoon Mentor). It’s funny how I always lead myself to believe that there aren’t people out there who listen to what I do. “There are fraternities and ski clubs and societies of free-thinkers for those who like sex and snow and Satan, but what is there for the music-lover?” I used to ask myself. Well, there’s the underground.
Then, I went to my film noir class and watched the movie The Night of the Hunter. It made me cry. And then, as I was walking home, I saw five 40-something men walking toward me, spreading their large 40-something bodies across the entire sidewalk. And as I passed them, not a single one moved aside for me. They all continued to talk over one another about something political, totally unconcerned with the fact that I had a right to a chunk of sidewalk. When I saw that none of them was going to move, I considered standing my ground and forcing the end man to either step aside or hit me. Then I considered just stopping on the grass and watching them pass with The Look™ upon my face. In the end, I kept one foot on the sidewalk and one foot on the grass and allowed the end man to bump into my shoulder. I never play the part of the feminist. I never feel intimidated by the fact that I’m a girl living in a man’s world. I’m usually the one doing the intimidating, after all. But at the moment when that disgusting man brushed past me and pushed the left side of my body backward, I actually felt a little bit inferior and a little bit invisible. I became acutely aware of my vagina. And I’m acutely aware of my vagina a lot of the time, but rather than rejoicing about the power it gives me over men, I could only consider the fact that the vagina is merely a placeholder for a lack of penis. How awful.
And then, in an opposite manner, I went out to dinner with Ethan and noticed that not only is the old saying true that men really do look more at women who are with other men, but I tend to flirt more with other men when I’m out with a man who isn’t mine. I shared a good, long smile with an older man as soon as Ethan and I walked into the restaurant, and a guy out to dinner with his father kept nodding his head at me from the next table. I imagined that they thought themselves to be super-masculine for being able to steal my attention away from my “date”. Little did they know that Ethan is my roommate and even worse, my cousin. Ha HA.
TheUntouchable2k: I dont know what to say
TheUntouchable2k: what does that long word mean?
TheUntouchable2k: THC?
TheUntouchable2k: you told her I'm made of pot?
Queen Katie Ett: That's right.
TheUntouchable2k: but...I'm not
Queen Katie Ett: Oh.
TheUntouchable2k: I don't think I am
Queen Katie Ett: I made you with my chemistry set.
Queen Katie Ett: And that's what I made you with.
TheUntouchable2k: I've never smoked weed in my life, and now I find, I'm a pothead.
Queen Katie Ett: And a pottorso and a potlegs and a pottoes and a . . .
TheUntouchable2k: what brought you to tell her this?
Queen Katie Ett: She thanked me for working at [the science museum] and then thanked me for you and then said, "Because you made him with your chemistry set."
TheUntouchable2k: ahh
TheUntouchable2k: I truly wish that you did
Queen Katie Ett: I did, fool!
TheUntouchable2k: Then why don't I have bigger arms?
TheUntouchable2k: You made me too skinny
Queen Katie Ett: I made you perfect, peasant!
Queen Katie Ett: Quit complaining and be thankful that I gave you arms at all.
TheUntouchable2k: This is really taking your superiority thing to a whole new level.
Queen Katie Ett: I like it.
TheUntouchable2k: I'm sure
TheUntouchable2k: Who else did you create?
Queen Katie Ett: Jesus.
Queen Katie Ett: Ha. Ha. Ha and ha.
TheUntouchable2k: You are so going to hell
Queen Katie Ett: I know!
Queen Katie Ett: Wait.
Queen Katie Ett: Let me quote you a line from an e-mail I wrote tonight.
TheUntouchable2k: a shame you can't see me cringe in anticipation
Queen Katie Ett: "The entire world could implode on January 1st, and you would have to rot eternally in HELL, thinking how all of your pain and suffering could have been avoided if you would have worked just a little harder to see me! I, of course, will be perched on a throne in Heaven, laughing at you and forcing Jesus to spoon-feed me StoveTop Stuffing."
Queen Katie Ett: That's right. Jesus with a spoon. On my right hand.
Queen Katie Ett: Feeding me.
TheUntouchable2k: You are truly a sick person
Queen Katie Ett: Thank you.
TheUntouchable2k: Makes me wonder why I look forward to seeing you so?
Queen Katie Ett: Oh, Nick.
Queen Katie Ett: I'm too wonderful to comprehend.
TheUntouchable2k: You're too....something
Queen Katie Ett: You'll never understand my glory until you meet me in Heaven.
TheUntouchable2k: can I feed you grapes?
Queen Katie Ett: Please.
TheUntouchable2k: I'll peel them
Queen Katie Ett: This is all going on my website.
Queen Katie Ett: I like the globe grapes with the seeds still in them.
Queen Katie Ett: You, of course, will be forced to suck the seeds out before giving them to me.
TheUntouchable2k: Your next update in 5 months?
Queen Katie Ett: Quiet! I've had two updates in November already!
TheUntouchable2k: yes your greatness, I'll fetch the grapes.