basement party

This is my first full time job. This is the first time I have signed a lease. This is the first time I bought lipstick. This is the first time I have made an on line dating profile, and gone on a blind date. This is the first time I have bought a gym membership. This is the first time I have bought pussy willow in the spring.  like my mother does. This is the first time I've had a budget spreadsheet. This is the first time I've attended a party that was attended by the police, twice.

The apartment-wide party really did end up happening on Saturday night. Adrian Paras Amy and I went down to the basement and there was a dj playing in the corner with his laptop and a movie projected behind him, another one waiting for his turn at the set, wearing lab goggles over his glasses. A couple lamps and some Christmas lights, someone turned on a couple bike lights and it looked like a strobe blinking in the corner. Like an edgy bar where they can charge you 12$ for drinks, except with a laundry room at the entrance. At 10:30 the cops showed up, right as we had shut off the music (there was a quick interlude for a fund-raising auction, which was actually pretty funny.) They said something about usually being reasonable before eleven but that we were so loud they could hear us a block away. I blame the building architecture for acting as an amp.

They left and soon after we continued, the number of people swelling and multiplying; people who didn't live in the building, people who were friends or dating, people who came after they heard it was actually a party, people who came before to create critical mass. I ended up stereotyping apartments: the demure and professional girls, and tall bro-y potheads, the nerdy MIT students. A few of the apartments opened up their doors and we went on an apartment tour, exploring the different layouts, the messes of one set of people, the meticulousness of another, the pile of shoes at the end of a hallway and the posters in the kitchen, sangria standing on the kitchen table. Paras's friend came with a horde of Germans, I talked to a couple who didn't live in the apartment, recently moved here - she's Columbian, he's Italian. One girl started apologizing to me that she wasn't more outgoing, as if a total stranger could have noticed her sadness amongst dozens of people. A girl asked her "why are you sad?" and she said "oh. nothing, oh someone just didn't come" and we nodded sympathetically. I said "if I knew you better, I would give you a hug" and she responded "I can use one, yes" surprising me more than the boy who decided to put his phone my dress pocket, a pocket between my shoulder blades that I cannot really reach myself, and a little less than the German boy whose female companion kept pointedly making out with him while he was talking to me and Paras, him going on about how not Jewish my nose is and that I don't have horns, not necessarily in a mean way but just rather unaware that I don't know anything about him. I walked up and down the stairs, weaving in and out of a few apartments, grabbing another bottle of beer, going back to the warm basement and up for gulps of fresh air on the deck, again with the Italian-Columbian couple. And at 1am the cops came again and Paras and I sat contentedly on the porch.

blue tape white snow

I got paint at Pills Hardware store and somehow ended up with a VIP card, 10% off with a signature of the owner (I'm much friendlier when I'm tired.) I got Yosef to come and help me evacuate all my belongings, blue tape the floor, paint the walls. I took him out for pad-thai, so I don't think he regretted coming.

I also went with my family to New Hampshire. We went snowshoeing. Sima struggled to get up the mountain but then we slide down most of it on our butts, the longest snow-slide and excruciatingly fun.

Black Cat White Cat (1998, Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica)

dream --
We had crash landed on another planet, our jar of human stem cells cracking in the process, the culture spilling all over, infecting the air. The creatures that lived in took on the form of what they touched, and so they looked human. But if they touched you, you turned into one of them: empty, imitative, reflectory. And so we were terrified: who is human and who is not? They moved and were watching us, slowly pretending not to hunt.

a taste of life

Work, Work, Work (double), Work, (off), Work, Work (double), (off), Work, Work, Work, Work.
The snow hit hard and I ended up staying at Rita's, sledding in the morning before going to work and getting stuck there because people didn't come in for the night shift, and with the exception of me and one other person, everyone working evening was working a double from the day shift. Which meant that, five days after being mandated to do a double, I got mandated to do a double again. 3pm-7:30am. Not something I ever wanted to do or desire to repeat.

But one good thing: one Sunday the mbta was canceled and I had already gotten home on Saturday, so I had to call off work. Therese and I went to Aeronaut Brewing Co. for a beer & cheese tasting. We walked through the snow for half an hour and it was so beautiful, the snow falling softly, the roads mostly void of cars, and street lamps casting yellow-pink light. The brewery was gorgeous too: a huge hall with high ceilings and a bar, large Christmas-tree bulbs hanging on the rafters, which made it feel both spacious and intimate. And another hall where the beer and cheese was presented to us, pleasant strangers to talk to and we walked home through the snow satisfied.

My apartment just had the fire alarm go off. Everyone evacuated and a girl from one of the apartments started organizing a party for next Saturday. Amen to taking advantage of the situation.

free chocolate

That same day I met up with Karen in the evening. It was my Monday off (I'd worked the weekend of the play) so I wanted to make the most of it, and for once everyone else had a Monday off too. Full weekends become a very exciting event when you only get every other one - a marked switch from the three-day weekends typical of my college experience.

Tuesday, Wednesday were normal work days: up before the sunrise, done by 3:30. Thursday I got mandated to do a double shift for the first time. I still had work Friday morning and had woken up at 4am for no reason. I was so loopy (and also it was my fourth unit in three days, which meant yet another set of names and rapport to establish) but it went well, though I'm sure the other MHW, who had never worked with me before, thought I was crazy. I told him that during my break my eyes welled up with tears after watching a Cheerios commercial.

I met with Cat and Alana after work that day, and watched The Wolf of Wallstreet once I got back to the apartment (2013, USA, Scorsese, not worth your time). Beer and a movie; classic American way to end the day. Totaling being up for 22 hours for no reason at all.

Saturday morning I got up and Therese (roommate) and I joined her friends at Harvard Sq. where a chocolate festival was going on. Lots of free samples, also lots of people lined up, patiently. We were not patient. We ate the samples we got before a couple hundred people swarmed the square, at which point we left to get afternoon margaritas. This is what classy ladies do - drink margaritas in the middle of the day. And the cherry on top was my parents coming to drop my bike off, and then falling asleep, finally, after they left. (There ain't no rest for the wicked.)

after my parents left and I fell napped, I woke up in time for wine & sparklers

Snow Queen

 

The best part about repeating the play I was in during the summer (Snow Queen) during the winter was this:
- I did, I think, do better this time. I also got a lift from rehearsal in a Tesla.
- Waking up the next morning, Veta asleep to one side of me, Liza asleep and snuggled up against my shoulder to the other, Eloosha not yet up in the room across the hall. And then a multi-course breakfast that turned into lunch while we remained seated.

YP in GB

patient: how old are you?
patient: you're too young to be working here.

Monday morning I disassembled a bed, drove it to Central Sq, and assembled it in a small room on the fourth floor of a building where I now live. Young Professional in Greater Boston. I don't make enough to be a yuppie. After meeting up with Sorrel, I spent the night at my parent's place.
It snowed (again; it snowed when I interviewed for the room too)

patient (with history of assault, paranoid schizophrenia; thought I was lying about my name): I'm going to smash your head against a wall!
[a few minutes later, affect back to normal, apologized. and again, three days later when we met in the cafeteria] I'm sorry about the other day.

Tuesday I could not fall asleep terrified of taking the bus the next day. I noticed that the ceiling in the room is pretty high. I remember how the street sounds at night.

patient: how tall are you? model height?
[and] you are the nicest nurse here. What do you think I should do? Should I try to get out of here as fast as I can, or should I stay here for, like, ever?
[and, five days later] are you a model?

Friday night I read at 1am, woke up at 5:40 for work, and then, fully intending on a quite night in, found myself at Middlesex (club) with Paras (roommate) and his lady friend and not-lady friends.
I hadn't been out dancing in so long, never mind at a club, certainly a first in Cambridge. Danced with someone briefly who had a boner, saw someone basically jerking off at me, and got berated for not dancing with anyone [with him] by yet another gentleman. Ended by dancing with some tall, blond, boring looking guy, not for too long. And to top it off, two guys from my high-school were there as well - a past I do not care for. But I did dance, and I thank humanity for dancing.

patient: you are a good doctor-person. From my first day here I thought that.

Saturday I met up with Yulka at Harry's Bar & Grill. We've both moved out now, both have jobs, both assume things we shouldn't sometimes - but we drink different drinks.

patient: she has a soft angel smile and a hard glint in her eye. 


Sam's boat is in North Carolina but he came here from Germany. We got to convenience-store-land which is not in a convenient location to get to by subway. It was freezing. I was glad to see him.

patient after patient after patient: what ethnicity are you? Portuguese? Brazilian? Spanish?
best response to my reply (by one who claimed to be in love with me): I knew it was something unusual.

wrap up

I was just watching stand-up on youtube with people, but have a hard time getting into it. The go-to explanation is that I'm too pc to laugh, but a lot of it was pretty inoffensive. Just boring. Or sad. Many jokes come from sorrow.
But I'm not a lost cause -- A few of the patients said about me "that one has a sense of humor".
I'll take it.

Welcome in the new year. Here is what happened in the last one (listing off for myself so I can start afresh?):

The next generation was in the second iteration of the Harms play from 2008. I talked to Eloosha, half asleep, after that, and to a half-awake Valya the next morning. Dew-covered thread connect sleeping moment to sleeping moment, new faces on an altered stage.

I went to the Goya exhibit with Max M. There was this beautiful print The Blind Guitarist and some paintings on ivory that had a really interesting effect.

bits of James Bond. The Manchurian Candidate (1962, USA, Frankenheimer); Print the Legend (2011, USA); Footnote (2011, Israel, Cedar); Mazerunner (2014, USA, Ball).

photo by Miriam E