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If it weren’t for the whole “trying to annihilate my people” thing, it sounds like we could have been pals!

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Last night I took my lady love out on the town, for dinner at a local brewery and then a viewing of Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. For our meal, I sat facing the windows that look out onto the covered outdoor dining area, and she with her back to it. While our black beers ran low, I told her the story of The Worst Thing I Ever Did, which had somehow never been revealed to her earlier in our long friendship. As I wove my tale of shame and sorrow, a storm blew in, dumping sheets of water onto the ground outside, rolling in cascades off the canopy that sheltered the diners, who rushed inside. Facing me, she never saw any of this, and by the time my story was through, the storm had mostly passed by.

Then it was off to the movie, which was essentially an assault on the senses and which we enjoyed verily. I’d never delved too deeply into Leonard Cohen, instead maintaining a fanatical devotion to a select few songs. Once I was visiting the chimp’s mother and heard her start to hum a tune that was unmistakably Famous Blue Raincoat; when I pointed this out to her, she denied it, not knowing the title or that the version she liked was a cover. Somehow, I felt closer to her after that, like we were both in on the same secret (the secret being that the lyrics to that song are so devastating that they give the feeling of being trapped in the moment before a first kiss, sick to one’s stomach with anticipation and longing). I’m not sure she feels it that way, but I do, every time. Many of Cohen’s songs are paralyzing, but that one in particular got itself etched onto my DNA the way things do when you love them passionately enough. Do yourselves a favor and acquire it, or at least read it.

As my friend and I were leaving the movie (which features other musicians performing Cohen classics), I mentioned to her that it’s interesting to see and hear cover versions of brilliant songs; if you yourself were Leonard Cohen, you could never fully appreciate the crazy beauty of your own work. Only other people can do that, can sit listening to the songs dozens of times, submitting themselves to the agony of the fact that they will never be you. I once said something similar about Tom Waits: “How awful,” I whined, “to be anyone but him!” Such is my reverence for my gods.

Every morning I make myself a cup of coffee, and sometimes by the afternoon I want more. Not just more, but different. Something…foamy. Something made with espresso. And see, some days a girl just doesn’t want to take the bus to her favorite coffee haunt, and sometimes she wants to sit down with her cuppa in an establishment somewhat cleaner than her beloved Dunkin Donuts. On those occasions, it is necessary to walk down the street, past the brilliantly-named Lustgarten Chiropractic and Handsome Cleaners, to the Ubiquitous Overpriced American Coffeeshop. I can handle paying four dollars for a drink; I can handle listening to the pseudohip music they play.  I can handle the fact that some of the other patrons arrived on Vespas.  I can even handle the creeps glancing at me from behind their laptops, and the general shame of being there at all. But by gosh, I cannot abide the ridiculous naming system of the cup sizes and the refusal of the staff to let me order in a non-fucktard fashion. When I ask for a medium, the cashier shouts to the barista “…grande!” while my soul contorts in agony. Then when my drink is ready the barista alerts me with, “…grande…!” I’m the customer here, dammit. Don’t condescend to me. I ordered a medium, so just give me a frigging medium.

I will dry hump Pat Robertson while listening to top forty before I will ask for anything “grande”.

Much to my dismay, I didn’t get any studying done today. Here’s how!

1) I woke up a little late and then spent the rest of the morning engaged in a conversation with an ex-pat re: the insufferability of american culture. This got me thinking about my personal theory that humanity in general is insufferable, but there are pockets of greatness all over the world, and Boston is one such pocket. I realized that people who aren’t from Massachusetts don’t understand that this lovely commonwealth has long since seceded from Amerika in the politics and behavior of its people. We’re basically Europe with nicer teeth, but we still get the bad rap that goes along with being physically attached to the rest of the country.

2) I drove a ways on the turnpike to meet a friend from school. She’s almost exactly twice my age and almost exactly twice as sarcastic as I am. She made us a salad and showed me around her crazy-nice house in the woods. Her huge yellow lab and I became friends. Then we drove down some podunk bumpy dirt road to a farmstand, where I procurred gigantic fresh blueberries and other fruit-related delights.

3) I went home and decided to make a sandwich with my newly purchased made-only-from-peanuts peanut butter, but found that I had no bread. So then I had to walk down to the supermarket.

4) Then it was time to head to Zulfiqar’s so that we could become a living joke (a Pakistani guy and a Jewess walk into a bar…[except we didn't go to a bar]). I walked over and we commenced to watch bizarre films from our childhoods, most notably Return to Oz.

5) My paramour showed up at some point on the motorcycle. When it was time to leave, he expected me to wear his helmet and ride bitch, which would have left him helmet-less, and I thusly refused. The walk home was only a mile, but he opted to ride along beside me at 5mph for part of the way, and then wait for me on our front stoop until I caught up. Aw.

6) Now it’s now and I’m typing this, so, still not studying.

Some friends and I recently caught a documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer, and afterwards I found myself quite melancholic. The consensus on Dahmer seemed to be that he was not an evil man, but rather a victim of vile urges that he was unable to control. My parents have long defended their own atrocious parenting and occasional violence towards me with the “we were sick and couldn’t help it” line, which I’ve roundly rejected each time. This difference of opinion has essentially caused me to stop speaking to them. I find it impossible to accept their justifications of their behavior. But a cannibalistic rapist who tried to turn boys into sex zombies by pouring acid into their brains? Oh, how my heart aches for him when I see footage of his sorry self, handsome and gentle at his trial. Somewhere out there, a shrink is desperate for my business.

This reminds me of the time, several years ago, when a man attacked and tried to bite me in a CVS. I had been standing in line, flipping through a magazine, when I sensed that someone was reading over my shoulder. Suddenly I felt fists at my back, hitting me with moderate force; I thought it was a child playing, but I turned around briefly and saw that my assailant was a grown man. I faced forward, unsure of what to do. Still hitting me, he began to growl and grunt, and I didn’t quite feel his teeth on my neck, but I felt fingers in my hair and the sound of his voice closer to my ear. At that point I said, “Stop,” and moved a few steps away from him, as the other customers stared slack-jawed at us. The man hissed, “You look just like my Priscilla. She’s gone now but I can send you to meet her.” Suddenly it was my turn to step up to the cash register, so I quickly paid for my magazine while the man approached another cashier and threatened to blow up the building. I went home and called the police, who had already seen the whole thing on video after a call from frantic CVS employees. The man was, of course, long gone by then.

I still think of him sometimes; he who must have lost a daughter or a lover, whose grief had rendered him so mad that he hit a random teenage girl in a convenience store. I only ever felt sorry for him and never raised a hand to defend myself from him, because even in those fleeting moments I was saddened by the clear truth of the situation: he was sick and couldn’t help it.

…that’s when I reach for my metaphorical Browning!

The Ipod Saturation Saga continued yesterday as I was cleaning the apartment with my trusty friend in my pocket…normally I leave my boogie shoes in the closet, but Beefheart’s “Electricity” came on and the desire to bring The Funk briefly overpowered my morose leanings. I was engaged in a little shaking of what my mama gave me when I glanced out the window to see the Ipod Shuttle going by, the nefarious dancing silhouettes plastered to the train mocking me as they seemed to declare, “We’ve got you right where we want you!”

I caught a program on PBS last night extolling the virtues of the late Marilyn Monroe. Most of the interview subjects were elderly men who were actors or photographers in her heyday, describing how a mere glimpse of her earlobe would reduce them to quivering heaps of jelly. One man said that he never met her, but had occasion to on one particular day; however, on this day, Marilyn was out of sorts, wearing a schmata and no makeup and looking quite unlike an archetypical goddess. He concluded that if he met her in that state, his fantasies of her would be ruined, and thus he opted not to meet her, and never got the chance again.

Maybe there’s a generation or gender gap, or maybe it’s simply a matter of preference, but since I was a young girl I always thought it was that little touch of the grostesque that made someone especially attractive. I’d think it would be exciting to meet a sex bomb at her dowdiest, adding a human element to the unattainable…how can one really fantasize about something made of alabaster and dewdrops?

Incidentally, some comic-book-based examples of this jolie-laide that I’m describing would be Mickey Rourke’s character in Sin City, or Ron Perlman in anything, specifically Hellboy. Without monster makeup? I’ve always harbored some secret affections for Cosmo Kramer.

There are surely few things lovelier than drinking my morning coffee in front of an open window with no threat of the hundred-degree fog coming in and strangling me with its humid tentacles. A storm blew in just at bedtime last night, cooling the air and scaring the construction workers from my neighborhood; thus can I sit here this morning with Mr. Waits crooning macabre and fantastic things into my ear without the backup percussion of the ever-present jackhammers. It’s the perfect environment in which to contemplate why, exactly, I woke myself up today by loudly and passionately crying out in protest at an adversary in a dream, thus frightening my partner who had just returned to the bedroom from his shower. Once I had fully rejoined the waking world and recognized my outburst, said partner grabbed me, declared me crazy, and then motorcycled to his office, leaving me to agree, and wonder…

1) Running on the treadmill while listening to my Ipod and

2) looking out the window as the train goes by, plastered with Ipod ads

3) as it shuttles its passengers who are also listening to their, you guessed it, Ipods.

I don’t know what that amounts to, but it isn’t flattering.