This delightful, delicious, de-lovely month of September for the year 2002 begins at the bottom of the page, so make your way down there
for all of the sapid details.
September 12th, 2002: Well, it’s nearly time for school to begin at THE Ohio State University, and I’m back on campus in my new home. Yes, friends, you read that right. I, Katie Ett, an no longer a dorm-dweller. Though my time in Lincoln Tower created more than a few happy memories, it’s only so long that a girl can live in a confined space with seven other girls who she never knew before they were thrown into the pod together at random.
My new house is located on the very edge of South Campus, right behind the dorms, as close to campus as one can live without actually living on it. It’s three stories tall and includes a finished basement, so we’re talking major space here, friends. My cousin Bethany and I began talking about living together last winter when our housing and roommates started grating on our nerves, and just before Spring Break, we started looking for a house with her friend-since-childhood Michelle. Michelle was a live-in nanny for a family she really loves, and she was afraid to tell them about her plans to move out, so all of our house-hunting had to be done in secret.
We searched through the paper and online and finally settled on a few houses that offered all of the things we wanted—rent around $1000 per month, off-street parking, a washer-dryer hook-up, air-conditioning, and hardwood floors. I spoent an afternoon viewing a few of our options and totally fell in love with a brick double with a balcony. It was brick. And had a balcony. It was a little out of our price range and a little too small, but it was brick . . . and had a balcony. I told Bethany and Michelle to check it out, but just as I did, someone else signed the lease on it. And then when several of our other choices turned out to be foul, I started to get worried.
But then Bethany found our house, shoved in between some ads in the newspaper, offering everything we had in mind. So she took a tour with Michelle. And they loved it. So I took a tour with Bethany. And I loved it. There’s a living room, a kitchen, and a dining room on the first floor, all with wood flooring, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a random room on the second floor, and two bedrooms and another kitchen on the third floor. And there’s enough room in the basement for twelve ping-pong tables, a sand volleyball court, and a golf course. So we signed a lease, and my mind was untroubled.
Then, the problems arose. See, Bethany has an older brother who graduated from OSU a few years ago, and he’s been “making it on his own” in “the real world” since then. But his housing plans for this year fell through over the summer, so Bethany and Michelle offered him a room in our house and left me with the deciding vote. I was against it for several reasons: 1) Ethan would be outnumbered in a 3 to 1 female to male ratio, 2) Ethan would be a non-college student living on a college campus, which would make him “that guy”, 3) Ethan would fall into a father-like position and not allow me to have drunken orgies in my bedroom, and 4) there just isn’t enough room for Ethan. The house has only three bedrooms, and I wasn’t about to let him make anyone share a room after my time in the dorms. We considered making the random room into a bedroom, but it has the doorway to the third floor, and no one wanted people trekking through the bedroom at 3 AM. But the positives of Ethan living with us outweighed the negatives, and Bethany assured me that the bedroom situation could be worked out with a little compromise.
Many weeks, many ideas, and many arguments later, it was decided that the
third-floor kitchen would be converted to a bedroom, as two cooking areas
seemed unnecessary. Bethany agreed to take that smaller space in exchange for smaller rent, and Ethan agreed to pay larger rent for the larger third-floor
bedroom with its private bathroom. So the mid-sized third-floor bedroom and the ridiculously large second-floor bedroom were all that remained to be
assigned. Michelle had stated that she wanted to pay around $300 rent each
month, so when we set the price of the second-floor room well above that, I
automatically assumed that I would be livin' large in the master bedroom. But when it came move-in time, Michelle was ready to battle me for it. I attempted to coax her into a mud-wrestling match, but in the end, everything was decided by a toss of a coin. And I lost.
I knew that I would lose the toss, so days before we began gathering our things and heading for Columbus, I prepared myself for life on the third floor. Michelle rubbed my loss in my face a bit, but I expected that of her. And really, I'm surprisingly content at the top of the house. I won't be able to have hours of loud sex what with there being two people sleeping right next-door to me, but it feels kind of safe and cozy up there. Plus, there's a fire escape on the side of the house that leads directly to the third-floor
staircase, so I won't have to trek through the entire house when I come home at all hours of the night.
I feel very much at home right now after only being in the house for two days, but there are some things that are taking some getting used to. For instance, it's odd to have to climb two flights of stairs to get from the living room to my bedroom when I was accustomed to having everything on one floor in my dorm. And the window behind the toilet in the bathroom has no covering as of yet, so when I need to get some business done, I have to make a decision to either crouch down and inch my way back up to the seat or to just bare myself for the entire neighbourhood. (I usually take the second option.) It's also hard to deal with not having immense amounts of familiar people at my disposal. After living in the same building for two years, I knew enough people that there was always someone to go out with. Since none of my friends have moved to campus yet and I'm now surrounded by strangers, when my roommates are gone, I'm left scarily alone. With no cable yet. It's a sad, sad state. But in about 10 days, it will be better than it's ever been. I guarantee it.
September 11th, 2002: A few nights ago, I was riding home from Columbus with my dad, crunching on some ice from a plastic cup. And when I was finished crunching, I began thinking about how eating ice on a hot summer night is a lot like the not-quite-a-relationship that I had this summer. I know that that’s kind of a stupid simile, but really, it makes sense to me.
You see, while I’m sucking on a chunk, everything’s great. My mouth is cooled by the ice and refreshed by the water that results when it melts. It seems like the goodness will never run out, because when one piece is finished, I just pop another one in and delight in the increased coldness. The problem starts, of course, when the ice is gone and the cup is empty. Then my mouth is left warm and dry, its numbness serving as an annoying, sometimes painful memory of the happiness forgone. The sweet flavor of mountain spring is replaced with the bitter aftertaste of chlorinated tap. But the most horrid thing about it is that I know what the ill aftereffects will be even before I start chewing, yet I push that knowledge into my subconscious for the pleasure of the now. And then, just moments after reprimanding myself for ignoring out of vanity the information I possess, I’ll discover the tiniest bit of ice lurking at the bottom of the cup. And even though I’ve just decided that ice-chewing is a nasty, dirty habit, I’ll shake the cup for a full minute before finally plunging my fingers into it out of frustration in wanting that cube. And the cycle begins again.
And so I say unto you verily, verily, do not attempt to fall in love with a much older man who has children and an ex-wife who’s still very much a part of his life. But if you ignore that advice and see him anyway, believe him when he tells you that he still loves his ex-wife and will soon try to work things out with her for his children’s sake and for his own sake. But if you don’t believe him and continue to invest yourself in the not-quite-a-relationship, don’t act like you didn’t see it coming when your heart takes a good beating. You idiot.
September 8th, 2002: For the past 2 years, I've driven past the same drive-in movie theatre every
morning on my way to work. I've thought about going there more than a thousand
times, and I'm always looking out for good movie combinations to pop up there.
When I questioned Tracey about the place a while back, she told me about lazy
summer nights spent there with the family in the back of her dad's now-sold
truck. I thought about myself in the back of her dad's truck, lying on a
blanket or sitting in a lawn chair as BIG played on the giant screen in
front of me. And finally, last night, I went to that drive-in for the first
time in my 20.9 years of existence.
Tracey and I left from Ashville for Columbus at around 7:30, after sitting in
her room, looking at pictures, talking with her mom about vegetarian sloppy
joe, and listening to an old INXS single that she had just given to me. On the
ride there, we talked a little about my recent trip to Knoxville, a little more
about how super-fantastic Tracey's boyfriend is, and lot about where we wanted
to eat. She had packed us a cooler full of Sprite and Pepsi and a bag full of
candy, so we stopped to supplement that with garden vegetable cream cheese-
slathered bagels from Tim Horton's and Taco Bell quesadillas. Yes, of
course bagels go with Americanised Mexican food, you silly goose! The
woman who took our order at Tim Horton's was the same woman who was making the
food and serving the food, so she was in a bit of a tizzy when she came to the
drive-thru window to deliver our bag of goodies. She explained her situation,
and after consoling her, Tracey asked me to ask her for a plastic knife. And I
asked her for a plastic knife. As if there was some chance that she
might give me a metal knife. But Tracey didn't call me an idiot.
We pulled up to the drive-in's ticket booth, winced at the fact that the price
has been "jacked" from $5 per car to $7 per person, and drove to the first
screen, which was showing Swimfan and Minority Report. I told
Tracey that I was only interested in seeing the second of the two, but I was
secretly excited about watching the cheesy teen faux-horror flick that Swimfan looked to be. After situating ourselves near the front but far from any other cars, Tracey and I tuned my radio to 91.5 FM and contentedly listened to the Creedence Clearwater Revival that was being pumped through my speakers until I noticed with disgust how dirty my windshield was. Not wanting it to spoil my movie-watching experience, Tracey unloaded some ice from her cooler and grabbed some Tim Horton's napkins, and the two of us went to work on the bug remains clouding my glass. That completed, we sat back and whipped out our bagels, despite the fact that Tracey designated them more of a dessert food than the quesadillas. Much giggling ensued when Tracey noticed all of the extra cream cheese around the hollowed-out portion of her bagel and asked if I wanted to "lick her hole". (That last sentence is dedicated to my sister, who
wholeheartedly believes that Tracey and I are lesbians.) We watched skanks and
hoochies walk by my car, and I yelled warnings to little boys who were running
through the gravel too fast, and we munched on our quesadillas until
Swimfan began at 8:30.
I would call the movie a total success. It was teen-y. It was cheesy. It
included hot sex in a pool. Need I say more? There were some outside influences
that hindered the experience for me, though. See, about 20 minutes into the
movie, a ridiculously large SUV pulled in to our right, disrupting the intimate bonding that was taking place between my car and the minivan on our left. As if it wasn't bad enough that the SUV had to drown everyone with its headlights, the people in the vehicle apparently weren't aware of the fact that there were
other people in the vicinity. They allowed their kids to sit on top of the
SUV, which was no big deal, except that they began passing food up through the
sunroof, none of which the kids seemed happy with. The mother kept telling the
kids to shut up while she sorted through one of twelve bags of food that they
had, causing Tracey and I to throw dirty looks her way. Then the kids decided
that they no longer wanted to sit on the roof, so a 20-minute screaming-while-
climbing-down-through-the-sunroof ordeal began. We finally had silence again
when the father took the kids to the snack bar with him, but that only lasted a
few minutes before the guy in the minivan on the left received a cell phone
call from his mother. And apparently this guy's mom is a real fucking bitch.
Because he called her a real fucking bitch about 12 times. And her told
her that her real fucking bitchiness was a pain in his big fucking ass. I
said, "Whoa!" a couple of times throughout his conversation, but that didn't
stop him from calling his mom all sorts of pretty names. And as if that wasn't
bad enough, he continued to call his mom these pretty names while he had a 15-
minute post-call conversation with the woman in the van with him. Tracey and I
had had enough when the kids came back to the SUV after what must have been the
longest trip to the concession stand on record, so I pulled my car forward a
row, and we enjoyed the rest of the movie in peace. Well, kind of. See, with
about 20 seconds remaining in the film, after everything had hit the fan and
been resolved (or so they would have us to believe . . . mwahaha), Tracey let
out a scream and began battling with an invisible intruder. She claimed that a
gigantic bug had flown through the window and attacked her, so while I was busy
switching on my dome light and she was busy telling me that she thought she
had whacked the bug back outside, the end of the movie passed us by without
warning and the credits began rolling. That all-important last scene of the
movie where the protagonist finds that the killer, thought to be dead, has
recently left him a love note attached to her favourite pink panties? Yeah, we
missed that. I'm sure that it was teen-y and cheesy and didn't include pool
sex, but I was still tempted to ask the minivan-dwellers what had happened.
Instead, we climbed out of the car to stretch and watched the end of Fear
Dot Com, which was soundlessly showing on the other screen across the way.
Zours were chewed and butts were warmed against the hood of my car in peace
until the most wonderful sign of human idiocy sounded from the back row--a car
horn. I didn't think much of it. Perhaps a skunk had crossed someone's path or a small child was having some fun at the wheel of his dad's car. But then another horn sounded. And another. Until the entire field was filled with squawks and beeps. Some rapid, others lazy, all annoying. A car in the row behind us even turned on the police siren that it had mounted on its dashboard. And this went on for many, many minutes. Tracey gets very, very infuriated by displays such as that, so I was quick to answer, "No!" when she asked, "Aren't you dying to join in?" She then remarked how glad she was that we were leaning on the car, far away from my horn, so that everyone would know just how uninterested we were in being a part of their antics. I was proud for us, too.
We finished up a couple of bags of odd-flavoured licorice during Minority Report, which, by the way, I would recommend to absolutely everyone. My posterior was seriously feeling the burn of sitting in the same position for hours, so I fidgeted around for a while and finally gave up, deciding that it was actually the dullness of the movie that was causing me strife. But the movie wasn't dull at all. In fact, Tracey thought it contained too much action in the beginning. But about an hour into it, we were both enthralled. The concept behind the plot is just so original that I wanted the writers to forget about having an actual storyline and just focus on solving random crimes. See it. Really.
The film ended at about 12:30, so after waiting for the parking lot to clear a bit, I drove Tracey home and headed for my bed to prepare for work today and dream about my very first trip to a drive-in movie theatre. Can you see me beaming still? It was that good.