THE LAST DAY.
And, in typical fashion, I don't have time to read through the year and reflect properly, because I am off traipsing around some strange land where I do not belong but fit in perfectly.

Before all that, let me say - the grounds here are huge. 200 acres of beautiful rooms with 25 foot ceilings, winding paths through the gardens, outdoor showers, towels and lotion placed everywhere, candles laid out every night lining the footpaths and removed every morning. I am the poor little neglected rich girl, who runs around the property while her parents are off in another part of the (enormous) house. Like an alcoholic Heloise, peering into the (one of many) alcohol cabinets - all types of glasses for all types of drinks, and the limes! Limes as big as your fist!

More later, dinner time.

How to explain fabulousness? "This is the Mexican 'Secret Garden,' " Audrey said.

Last night we sat on our porch, drinking cocktails. The skies are so clear here - we watched a satellite move across the sky.



"Cocktails at seven, dinner at eight."

This is the most beautiful place I have ever been. Ever. Topping the Hawaii house and the Paris flat - though those were breath taking, too.

I would sell my soul to live here for the rest of my life -- and then pray for forgiveness in the at-home chapel.

"Men without women are a scary thing."

More later on:
- the waxing
- the adults
- the meals
- the noise
- the view
- the HOUSE (30 feet ceilings)
- cocktail hour
- more more more more more

Ehhh, yeah, you know, I was going to write up that quick little article for LRHJ, but it just doesn't seem funny enough now. I guess I'll send it anyway. Maybe. In the morning.

---

I had so much to say, but now it's late and I am so tired I can't even move to my bed. Amanda and I split a six pack at the bayou at night and peed outside out of necessity. I only ever appreciate home (let's be real - anything) right before I leave. Mexico tomorrow/today. Don't know if I'll be able to post.

Still one of my favorite little memories from the very beginning of the year was standing in Kevin's kitchen, beautiful in the way that Texas is, leaning against counters drinking beer. Kevin said, "2008, it's gonna be a shit storm." And he proved to be correct! I can't even really reflect on it, but it seems more good than bad at the moment.

AAAND GOODNIGHT.

I hate feeling needed. It disgusts me. My stomach actually turns.
Feeling wanted is entirely different.



I'm full of shit. I've spent the last few days avoiding every request for face-time.
I have been unstoppably ornery lately. Every missive tempts vitriol.
Watch out, world.

Mimi Crimi, everyone.

Really, is there anyone better than her? This song is much longer than I remember, but that first part, still. Jeez. Miley Cyrus sings this song sometimes........... blasphemy.

I'm almost done with a year of daily posts. Can't decide if I should keep it up or not.

Slopfest after slopfest.

--

At the Grahm's house, I was talking in the kitchen with Kirk, Chris, and Wes. Kirk's stalker (after calling 50 times and being specifically told to not come over) walked into the house and stomped upstairs, somehow not seeing Kirk. We grab Kirk, grab the car keys, and run outside to Chris' car and drive around until she leaves. Kirk does't even have shoes on.

Discussing her bizarre behavior, Wes nailed it:
"Kirk, did you take something very precious from her? And is she very religous?"

Kirk's silence was really the perfect confirmation.

"She just stomped in here! She didn't even say hi to mom and dad, did she? She didn't, did she?"
"No."
"And did you see her sweater? It was RIDICULOUS."

--

Went to a pub (a pub!) that we had all driven by a million times growing up in Memorial but had never been to. Phone conversations: "Hey. I'm at SHAKESPEARE'S! Yeah man, Shakespeare's! I know, me neither! Come hang out."

I was there with a group of boys and one other girl. The boys rolled out suddenly: one was pouting that another boy never answers his calls, and another boy's ex-girlfriend showed up - he jumped the fence he was leaving so fast. And they did not say proper goodbyes.

It didn't strike me until this morning when I was going over the night with my brother. "Man.... like, SACK UP."

I'm like a puppy, I need some form of human contact almost all the time.

Spent the day with Matt and did absolutely nothing - it was lovely. Talked about art a lot at the end of the night: I am so excited. Lots of similar themes in our very different work, and comparing/contrasting/musing/bullshitting about future projects was fun. He's writing a (great, funny) song about every girl that's slept over in his apartment, and I'm drawing portraits of every boy I've ever kissed.

We laughed because we are both a part of the other's project.
"You're in there," he said, pointing to the words of the song.
"Well, you're right here," I said, pointing to his portrait.

"Don't get a big head about this, but you really were the most enjoyable part of my summer."
I think I put my hand over my heart and said, "That makes me so happy, because you were too, and you really knew me during the most obnoxious time period of my life."

And in that little moment I felt like I simulatenously apologized and affirmed something.



Saw a lot of friends I won't see for at least 4 more months, if even then. It didn't even feel sad, it was just, Well, okay, this is it.

People make comments to me sometimes that reference things I have done in the past, and all I can do is laugh.
"How's playing with Robbie?"
"I dunno, you tell me."

I only ever feel weird because I don't feel weird.


--

Came home, my parents put my fucking luggage in the backyard again. It gets so annoying when you want to put on your pajamas and then --- SHIT, my clothes are in the BACKYARD. ...AGAIN.

Why can't I ever play nice?

I dunno, let's chalk it up to "I'm insecure". That seems to be a blanket excuse for pretty much everything.
My other excuse is that Bier Haus is located on top of some sort of Hell-mouth - honestly, the shittiest shit always goes down there.

...Oh, but sometimes it's fun.





Still busy, sort of:
- LRHJ still needs to be completed
- Get ready for Mexico. Hard because I forgot to pack ANYTHING.
- Christmas cards
- Haircut
- Wax
- Teeth

First world, baby.

Callum IS coming! I am ecstatic. This is what I was trying to tell him - I care about him, more than he knows, probably, and did I feel any differently, did I sense a change in my life, after I dropped 300+ dollars on him? No. It was as if nothing had happened to me. And really, nothing had.

-

I saw Stephen and Mitchell and Melanie tonight: so lovely, especially since I didn't think I would leave my bed and stop watching Jon and Kate + 8 (I can name them all: Cara, Mady, Joel, Collin, Aaden, Hannah, Leah, Alexis). When I said hello Stephen picked me up and I jumped on him, legs wrapped around the waist, and we kissed hello and hugged furiously - it was beautiful, really, and what I had missed about Texas and hadn't found yet.

"Where have you been the last two years of my life?"
"Lookin' for you, bebe."

At the end of the night Stephen and I took some time to talk on the curb about "guilt shit." It's nice to identify with the people you care about, and to learn that they stuck up for you in the past.


My heart is smiling.

Exciting news, which is still pending - Callum is coming! I'm buying his ticket to Houston, and one more to Pittsburgh. "Is this a good idea," Cal said, "I mean..... this is a lot of money."

"Well... what is money for, anyway?"

It feels good to be able to provide someone you care about with something they want so badly - Callum hasn't been back to Texas in years, and I can hear how homesick he is in his voice. Matthu asked me to deposit money into his bank account, and though I felt badly I had to decline. I only have room for one child in my life, someone I do big altruistic acts for. The position's filled.

I am not a good person, but I do nice things every once in a while. This is my good deed of 2009 - trying to start strongly.

Anyway, it's not on the books yet, but I'll know in an hour. Fingers crossed.

--

There is this feeling, this high-school-puppy-love-late-night-texts feeling that hasn't been around in a while. It's nice.

I feel like I've grown up a lot - my life is in Pittsburgh now. Going through my phone and realizing there's no one I really want to call. And all of the trouble I gleefully laughed over the prospect of causing -- it just doesn't seem worth it now. The "Taylor Tornado", as Jen calls it, has missed the coast.

"No, it's not that I like trouble," I said awhile ago. "I like having fun, and sometimes they overlap."

The two sides of Texas, both evidenced within the first thirty minutes of my arrival.

1. A white suburban slooowly rolls by (the street is full of cars parked for Christmas parties, every house is covered in lights) as I am unpacking the car. Beautiful Texas man driving, beautiful Texas wife passenger, the kids in the back. "Howdy," he says to us from his rolled down window.

2. Eating at my favorite Mexican restaurant. The table next to us is a morbidly obese couple. They do not talk, only eat, and the woman wears a wrist guard, as if she is competing in an extreme sport.



I'm ready to go back to Pittsburgh.

Waiting in the airport.
Ate at the most typical Pittsburgh diner early this morning, the streets were dead. Two scrappy kids walking around in a part of the day we never usually see.

Upon our entrance: "Well, look who is AWAKE! Dave awake before ten in the morning?! It's a Christmas miracle! A Bloooomfieeeeld miracle!!"

When the waitress brought us our coffee she said, "Do you want like... creamers or any of that shit?"



Drove to the airport, sharing a clove and blaring AC/DC.

My lips taste like cloves. Every time I taste them, I smile.

-

This sums it all up well. Look for the details, not the story:
- We have absolutely no clean glasses in our apartment. Even the shallow bowls that can be used as cups are dirty. However - every plate is clean.
- I am covered in bruises. About twenty, with varying degrees of hematoma severity.

-

Text from my wife:
"I'm eating a McGriddle from 9 this morning when i was too sick puking in public bathrooms."

Oh, my love. She said is best: "my love oh dear oh dear."

-

Rough week, you guys. But it's been wonderful.

I am giggling like a school girl. So tickled.
I've said it before, but I think the last few years of my life I have been going through what most teenagers go through, since I missed out on a lot of it then. It's fun.

-

Last night, at Lydia's going away party - odd group of people, from mixed circles. Audrey did a choreographed dance to "Dirrty" for Dave and I as we sat on the couch, complete with throwing her hat off at the climax. Molly is jumping around in a sequined tube top. Brian was dressed like Donald Duck. Paul is ga-ga-goi-ing, 90s club music playing, Britney sing-a-longs.... typical in my yuppie-artschool-shit life-fantasy world, but I realized how completely bizarre it would seem to someone from outside that world.

Dave looked over to me, completely serious, with wide eyes, and said "My mind..... is melting."

-

Lydia had broken up with Ben the day before - they are both Drama students. I witnessed something I thought was completely chic and genuine and graceful: at Ben's arrival, he kissed her on the cheek (closer to the mouth than the ear, as old lovers do) and they hugged and looked directly into each others face. Lovely.

"I saw them say hello," I said to Audrey. "Everything seemed fine."
"Well, yeah. They are actors. That's what they do."

-

I love my life here. I'm sad to leave.
The new morning routine (and this is always the same routine, with different characters and locations, in the best parts of my life) is that I run into Jen's room in the morning, and snuggle under the sheets with her and we giggle and laugh and bury our faces into pillows and kick legs in the sheets. This morning Tom made us both coffee and brought it to us. Everything is beautiful.

"And I wonder if anybody here besides me has got any decent secrets"

When I was sixteen a constant fall-back conversation at parties among Those In The Know was how Heartbreaker was Ryan Adam's masterpiece and everything else sucked.

But I've been getting into all the other albums I was too snobby to examine then, and they are great.

Broke like a stem and I guess you're with him,
I'm sure that he treats you just fine.
So bottoms up, cheers, baby, here's to your tears!
And all of your roses have died.

Better luck in the next life
I'll miss you, but go on, goodbye.


--

Damn, Lisa took me to school today:
"I'm mean."
"Not really.... if you want to be, you can. But don't act like you dont want to be a mean person if you're being mean."

Pretty is as pretty does. I forgot this for a while.
And I was just talking about Ms. Munn's advice: choose love.

--

Um.
"Pisceans possess a gentle, patient, malleable nature. They have many generous qualities and are friendly, good natured, kind and compassionate, sensitive to the feelings of those around them, and respond with the utmost sympathy and tact to any suffering they encounter. They are deservedly popular with all kinds of people, partly because their easygoing, affectionate, submissive natures offer no threat or challenge to stronger and more exuberant characters. They accept the people around them and the circumstances in which they find themselves rather than trying to adapt them to suit themselves, and they patiently wait for problems to sort themselves out rather than take the initiative in solving them.

"They long to be recognized as greatly creative [this kills me. 'long to be' as opposed to 'are'. pretty perfect]. They also dislike disciple and confinement. The nine-to-five life is not for them. Any rebellion they make against convention is personal, however, as they often times do not have the energy or motivation to battle against the Establishment."

Going to have to disagree here, though:
"They are sexually delicate, in the extreme almost asexual, and most Pisceans would want a relationship in which the partner's mind and spirit rather than the body resonated with their own. Unfortunately they can be easily misled by a lover who courts them delicately and in marriage makes them unhappy by a coarser sexuality than they expected. They are nevertheless intensely loyal and home-loving and will remain faithful. [okay that last part is true]"

Audrey told me she heard bathroom gossip about me concerning some sort of lesbian hook-up. Honestly, which half of that sentence is more cliche? Bathroom gossip? Or lesbian rumors? 'CAUSE I REALLY CAN'T TELL.

--

me: how do straight edge kids ever hook up?
i mean srsly.

jen: they don't
that's why they so angry

--
Jen's poem to Tom:
"Everything that is hard on you is soft on me, and I like that,
I hope that you didn't give me chlamydia,
But, even if you did, I think I'd still love you."

"It's some real Brautigan shit, right?" said Jen.

--
Speaking of Brautigan shit:
"Map Shower"
For Marcia

I want your hair
to cover me with maps
of new places,

so everywhere I go
will be as beautiful
as your hair.

Star Holes
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,

watching light
pour itself toward
me.

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things
are faraway.


There is a page in my sketch-book-book where I wrote next to that:
I'm very sad,
but I can see
how I will be happy soon enough




...or something like that.

As horrible as yesterday started, it quickly got better and better and better. I should've napped in between critiques but instead I helped Brian move a filing cabinet across campus for our (kinda) office. Oh, I have become a secretary for two of my dear friends - I wear nice clothes and write on the typewriter and help schmooze at events, and I get paid in scotch.

Remember: After Jen's birthday party, I came in to say hi to her in the morning. Tom was in bed with her - I missed his arrival, and all the boys and girls changing into romper's - because I went to sleep too early. I jumped in bed with them, snuggling in between, Jen literally holding me like her child and talked and laughed. Jen told me today that Tom was naked under the sheets, which is so funny in a very particular, hard to describe way.

Two things to never forget:
- I rule at life.
- K.I.S.S.









...eee!

Shit life.

Three days of constant debauchery and trouble causing. Rolled into school today: achey champagne teeth, dirty face, insane hair and clothes, mouth like death, and a bloody nose. Haven't eaten in thirty six hours. Audrey and I hugged in studio and tried to assure each other we weren't completely horrible people. "We're not great people, but we're not awful."


-

"My dress is too short for this," I said. "Oh well. I'm doing it anyway."

Sunday - drawing party, which quickly collapsed in a real shit storm. Breaking the toilet, then Olga trying to use the toilet while Jess is peeing, then fixing the toilet (yer welcome) to come out and find Olga on the kitchen floor, throwing up into a bucket. "Yeah.... that really couldn't have been scripted any better."

Jen's birthday party last night. "Parties here are always fun... you know a good group of people." Honestly, one of the best compliments I have received.

I wore Audrey's Dolce and Gabana dress. She wore her new shoes (Miu Miu? Prada? Can't remember, but they are strictly "inside shoes only") and came over with a huge bag full of clothes and costume changes. Anthony wore her vintage fully sequined shirt.

Brian, Jen, Audrey, Anthony, Emily -- all changed clothes at some point in the night. Jen changed three times or more and at one point was wearing a flannel-patterned iceskating unitard which now is laying on my bedroom floor. Fabulous.

Someone brought Sparks, which was the one thing I couldn't buy for Jen. "It's just that line between drunk and crazy -- do I want to cross it?" Apparently yes.

I have fallen into this really nice pattern where boys sleep over in my bed and nothing happens. Just legs touching and shared body warmth.



Can't even say what really happened, besides teetering around and talking to people I know, but don't really know. You know?




Jen Audrey Lydia Molly Mike Brian Paul Anthony Spencer Jacob Reeves Jodo Chris Ted Amy Josh Rose Annie Carolyn Ahi Claudia Jess Mallis Emily Dave, and more I can't remember.

"I remember taking a nap..."
"You didn't so much 'take a nap' as much as Audrey had to carry you to your bed and pry a beer out of your hands."

Sigh. I always put up such a fight.

I awoke from my 'nap' four hours later, completely confused and without any knowledge of what happened after, oh, about 5 pm. The nap was a baptism into ignorant bliss.



Yesterday: weirdest. day. ever. It was open studio day, and all the seniors were around the fourth floor, looking at each other's work, talking to the teachers. This got old quickly and the day soon turned into an all-day party.

"I'm glad everyone just decided today was a drinking day," Jack said, swinging his bottle around. He was drinking Jameson wrapped in a paper bag, but had ripped a window (per my suggestion) out so you could see the label. 'Cause that day, we were big spenders.



There were old women wandering around, looking at all the work. One of them wandered into my studio as and was examining my work. What was playing from my computer?

"I be sneaking with his gal yeah massaging that monkey
Slapping her on the ass while she riding that donkey
And now my name in the mix
But thats what you get putting your thang in a bitch"

Jesus.


-

Day old blues.
"Girls are gonna love the way I toss my hair. Boys are gonna hate the way I seem."

"I love that smirk you make right before I kiss you."
"All the boys I kiss tell me that."

--

I called Callum today; he knows it's me by the sound of my voice. He told me I have potential.

--

Jen's birthday festivities start tomorrow. A continuation of procrastination - I went out the last three nights in a row.

Last night's jukebox picks:

Pixies - Gigantic
Guided By Voices - Echos Myron
Jesus and Mary Chain - Just like Honey
-
White Stripes - Doorbell
Guided by Voices - Back to the lake
Pixies - Alec Eiffel

First round was a more successful crowd pleaser, but whatever. I love lil Pittsburgh dives. I love getting to know your friends better. I love playing into the night when I should NOT be. I love love (philia). Friiiiendship!

---

There's only two types of people in the world
The ones that entertain, and the ones that observe
Well baby, I'm a put-on-a-show kind of girl
Don't like the backseat
Gotta be first

I'm a like the ringleader, I call the shots
I'm like a firecracker, I make it hot
When I put on a show

There's only two types of guys out there
Ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared
So baby, I hope that you, came prepared
I run a tight ship, so beware

I would like to think that this song applies to me. Baby, I'm a put-on-a-show type of girl. Sometimes.

Oops, yesterday slipped past me.

I ran - literally ran, gathering my belongings and peeking around corners - out of my last class today. You gotta take care of your mental health, first and foremost. Right? Right.

Brian admitted I had with hands the other night - a victory and a loss, all in one.

--

I haven't had food in my apartment for weeks - three of the last five meals I have eaten have consisted entirely of beer.

Jen and I were taking our Christmas photo last night when Jim called.

"You're not taking it with a camera phone, are you?"
"No. And we made a whole set."
"What are you wearing?"
"Well... I'm wearing a leopard print nightie with a smoking jacket, and Jen is wearing a black sweater dress with tights and pointy high heels."
"...I'llberightover."


The best part was he never did.