The Nude

I've done such a crappy job of posting lately, I'm a bit ashamed of myself and so I want to make it up to you. This little tidbit is the piece of flash fiction I did for my fiction final. It was hard to write: I had to cut it and edit the crap out of it to get it down to 300 words and it was sad. But here is that final product, which, hopefully, isn't terrible:

The Nude

The first naked body he saw besides his own was at the age of nineteen. One of boys he lived with, an architect, had his middle-aged sister visit for a weekend in April, an April so hot that the buds emerging from the sleepy dirt had shriveled slightly, rethinking their decision to sprout.

She arrived at their apartment around noon, bringing with her one piece of sturdy luggage and a gust of hot, stale air from the train station. She wore a faded pink cotton dress which didn’t hang quite right on her loose, lumpy form. Robert liked her eyes the best: they tore at him, dark and biting in an otherwise demure face. He longed to touch her, to immerse his fingers in the folds of her flesh and see for himself where her softness lay.

He did not mean to walk in on her naked, he explained later to her brother; He did not hear her when she said she was going to take a bath.

Robert was looking for the bottle of Murphy’s Oil they kept in the cupboard beneath the sink: he was going to polish the piano. He did not expect to see the sister standing there, in their mildewed bathroom, her toes pale and exposed against the peeling yellow linoleum. She was entirely naked and stood unmoving, staring at him with startled black eyes. He gazed, entranced, thinking that she looked exactly like the nudes depicted in those Peter Paul Rubens paintings he studied long ago. Her body was plump and gently rolling, the ankles that supported her thick, and solid. Years later he took women to his bed, women with bodies molded and starved to perfection, yet it was the April-time sister that he pictured as he made love to them in the darkness.

December Playlist

Would you forgive me if I said-

This week has been insane, in some good ways but mostly bad ways, and I've barely had a chance to take a breath, so no I haven't edited the tattoo post yet, and I don't want to rail about all my personal crap on this blog, because let's face it, that's just uncomfortable.

But I made this dumb commitment where I said I'd do a post every week, which kind of ruined blogging for me, because I hate commitment. As soon as I commit to something, I stop wanting to do it. However, I'm trying, for once in my life, to stick with something. So I am going to post this week, even if it isn't about anything terribly significant at all.

You know what that means. December playlist time! Enjoy my dears.

(First, before you read on, go and buy these three albums and listen to them on repeat. Then you can listen to the rest of the playlist.
- Ceremonials: Florence + the Machine
- Metals: Feist
- Nine Types Of Light: TV on the Radio)


1. Lonely Boy: The Black Keys
2. Androgyny: Garbage
3. Sea of Love: Cat Power
4. Video Games: Lana Del Rey
5. Poison & Wine: The Civil Wars
6. Flashing Lights: Chase & Status
7. Life is Long When You're Lonely: Monastir
8. The King and All of His Men: Wolfgang
9. How Come You Never Go There: Feist
10. Nicest Thing: Kate Nash
11. Quicksand: La Roux
12. More Than Life: Whitley
13. Bite Hard: Franz Ferdinand
14. Get On: Dirtmitts
15. Colors: Grouplove
16. Falling Slowly: Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
17. What You Know: Two Door Cinema Club
18. Lisztomania: Phoenix
19. All I Ever Wanted: The Airborne Toxic Event
20. Let's Sick On The Decks: Grandadbob
21. F*** Was I: Jenny Owens Young
22. One Evening: Feist
23. Set Fire to the Third Bar: Snow Patrol
24. We Are Young: Fun ft. Janelle Monae
25. What Beats Within: Jenny Owens Young
26. Stealing Babies: Our Lady Peace
27. Dissolve: Jenny Owens Young
28. Clean Break: Jenny Owens Young

Simple Joys and Christmastime

Today I went to a second-hand clothing shop in Cambridge called The Garment District. I bought 11.6 pounds of clothing for $11.60. I bought three more shirts for around $9 bucks each (they were deemed too nice to go into the dollar-a-pound pile) and also, a hat. I love a good hat. And I love a good bargain. Some of the clothes are, well- understandably discarded by others. But I can make them into something cool, I think. I think almost anything can look cool. It's all about the confidence of the person wearing it.

It rained today: it should've snowed. But even without the snow, tomorrow is still Christmas Eve, and I'm glad. I've discovered something about being home that I never used to know. Since college is in New York and the only time I'm ever home is during school break, it's become a lot more enjoyable of a place. The only things I associate home with anymore are hanging out with people I love, sleeping late in my old bed, playing with my dog: just relaxing. It's really lovely. I like being home so much more now than I ever did in high school. I like it a lot.

I drank a lot of coffee today, far too much- I can't really have caffeine anymore since it does terrible things to my body, but I'm indulging because it's the holidays. Currently I'm in my favorite pajamas (my favorite pajamas always consist partially of worn, faded, over-sized t-shirts.) They're not sexy pajamas, my friend pointed out to me. She said she could picture me, married someday, writing, wearing my skirts all day and then getting home to my cold apartment and climbing in bed with my laptop and my oversized t-shirts and my glasses next to my husband...She can picture my whole life very well. Apartments and the city in the winter and simple joys, takeout meals and candlelight and cheap living all around. Book-reading and throw rugs and things that are broken and things that are recycled and creative and homemade and a lot of making do. I think it sounds like an okay picture.

I'm sitting in my bed, surrounded my my secondhand clothes, watching Bridget Jones' Diary, which is a fairly terrible movie, except I love Renee Zellweger and I love Hugh Grant and I love Colin Firth, and I love Jane Austen remakes too, even crappy ones. And anyway, BJD is one of those crappy movies that I love to indulge myself in once in a while. I'm watching it and eating homemade fudge: one of the perks of having a mother whose a 2nd grade teacher: at Christmastime she gets lots of presents from the kids, and one of those presents is always, inevitably, fudge.

I'm also listening, while I write this, to my winter playlist. Right now it consists of Feist's new album, "Metals", particularly the songs "Graveyard" and "How Come You Never Go There". It also consists of Greg Hansard and Marketa Irglova's song "Falling Slowly", The Civil Wars' song, "Poison and Wine", Lana Del Rey's song, "Video Games", Kate Nash's song, "Nicest Thing", Snow Patrol's song, "Set Fire to the Third Bar"...and well, a lot of other music I'm not going to list right now. But it's beautiful stuff, and it's perfect for the mood I'm in right now. (It's not all depressing, I only listed the sadder songs, because they're what I'm listening to now. They seemed fitting.)

I wrote a long post about tattoos and things, and I'm sorry I didn't post it last week like I said I would. It needs editing and such, but I'm off to watch the rest of the movie now, and eat more fudge, and enjoy my new clothes, and enjoy the rest of my evening. I'll post it in the near future, but until then, Merry Christmas to you all. Take baths while you're home, listen to "Metals", light candles, gaze at your Christmas tree, go into the city at night, try to ice skate if you get a chance, wear scarves and hats and mittens, see old friends, hold hands, sleep late, and drink coffee. Let your souls be brightened, because it is that time of year. I wish you all peace and happiness, if only for this holiday. Tis the season.

Meanwhile, if you're desperate for some good reading and this blog has once again let you down, maybe this will satisfy you till I get some better stuff posted up: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/one-sentence-love-story/. I certainly enjoyed it.

With Apologies to the People Who Expect Quality Posts on a Regular Basis

It's early Sunday morning, which means technically I missed updating this week. But you'll have to forgive me, it's been a terribly, terribly busy week. I've been doing lots of things and every possible moment of free time has been spent, well, napping. Deep, all-consuming, really restful kind of naps.

The kind of naps it takes a while to recover from. So that's my excuse, pure and simple. Also this weekend, a friend from Mass actually came and visited me, which is really insane, and cool. She goes to RIT, and she's friends with one of my friend's girlfriends. I think it's pretty crazy that I can go to school eight hours away from home, in the middle of nowhere, and meet up with a friend, who just happened to befriend the girlfriend of a guy I just happened to befriend. I love when life works that way.

Anyway she came and visited, for just about 24 hours, which was nice, just to see her and catch up, so far away from home.

Um um um, that's not what this post was supposed to be about though. I don't have a whole post's worth of thoughts regarding my friend's visit.

Let's compromise okay? This isn't a cop out, I promise, but it is the Christmas season, and it's also finals week, so you've got to cut me some slack and let me just post a list of my top ten Christmas movies ever. That way you can go out and watch them while I study my butt off (who am I kidding, I think I've studied my butt off maybe once in my whole life) and then we can reunite next week, when I've flown back home to good old Massachusetts, and I catch my breath, and I have something interesting and worthwhile to write about again.

...

Who am I kidding? I am the most indecisive person ever and as a result of that I don't that I've ever been able to successfully make a top ten list. So just go, go on, put in A Muppet Christmas Carol and drink egg nog while you set up your tree and think of me being hungry and wanting to put my head through a wall for the next five days.

Until we meet again my friends.

The Top Ten Ways To Turn Off Your Man (Are BS)

I came up with a post topic! (Stave off the tears, I'll keep it brief.)

I want to address, just shortly, the problem I have with certain kinds of articles and/or ads that I have been seeing a lot of on the internet lately.

I'm sure you've been exposed to it too: you go to your Yahoo! home page and the first article that catches your eye is something with a headline akin to, "Top Ten Ways Women Turn Off Guys" or "Ten Things You Want to Avoid Doing In a Relationship". I could give you endless variations, but the gist is the same. There are a million different articles out there trying to tell women what we're doing wrong in relationships, why guys dump us, or don't want to be with us, all the ways we're turning them off and scaring them off and basically just screwing ourselves over.

I find it a little bit offensive, and more than a little bit sad, especially considering the fact that I know there are women out there who read these articles, and more than that, believe the things they tell them.

I know when I was young and desperate, I used to fall prey to that sort of thing. I'd click some article, certain it was going to give me all the secrets to why that relationship didn't work out the way I wanted, why that guy dumped me, what I was doing wrong. Each article gives different, often contradictory advice: you're coming on too strong, you're not coming on strong enough, you don't pay enough attention to him, you give him too much of your attention, you need to be less needy, you need to act like you need him more...the list goes on and on and on. I've read some that have said women are too family-oriented, they are not good enough "home-makers", they spend too much time with their friends, they nag, they don't communicate, they're possessive, they don't attempt (enough) to be attractive, and they are even too religious. All these things and more seem to be the reason that us girls are getting the shaft left and right these days.

Honestly, I think it's all a load of crap. Almost every one of these articles I've read, whether coming straight out and saying it or doing so in a more roundabout manner, encourages "mind games". They don't want you to be yourself or let the guy you're interested in know what you're really thinking. They want you to play "hard to get" but not too hard to get: they want you to hide all your quirks and craziness and shave your legs every single day. Act like you want kids and a family someday, because if you don't he's going to think you're a cold, heartless vixen with whom he could never settle down, but don't talk about the family or a future too soon or he'll go running for the hills.

Basically, suppress everything about yourself, and you should be fine.

It's disturbing to me, it really is, that women feel they have to play these games to lure a man in and finally get him to marry her. I'm not down with that guys. I don't believe in playing games like I did when I was younger. Those games, they always left me just as alone and empty as before.

Basically, I think 18-year-old comedian Shelby Fero* might have said it best in a brilliant little blog post entitled: Go ahead and look desperate.

Obviously this is not me trying to tell you to run up to the guy you have a crush on and tell him you want to marry him. I don't think that'd really be very advisable.

But stop playing games, Girls. And stop wondering what's wrong with you, when guys don't call you back, or ask you for a second date, or break up with you when you thought it was going splendidly. It's not you. It just didn't work out this time, and that's okay. Let's face it: the majority of your relationships won't. You only really need one that will. So please, stop reading these articles and basing your behavior off the things these idiots have to tell you. If you have to win your guy through games and mindplay, is he really the man you want to be married to for the rest of your life?

Maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about, maybe I'll be single forever, never married, never even engaged, but you know what? That's okay with me. I think I'm secure enough in myself to know that it's okay to just be myself with a guy and if he's worth my time, if he actually matters, he'll stick around anyway.

That's just what I think about it.

*If you haven't checked out Shelby Fero yet, do it. Now. Go. Do it. Look through her tumblr archives, look her up on Twitter, read her articles on Cracked.com...(I'm pretty sure she's written for other places too, but I'll let her do her own further promoting...) Just check her out. You won't regret it.

**I realize at the top I said I'd keep it brief. Well I didn't really. But if you're reading this, then I guess you plowed on through anyway. Thanks for that.