Austin, 2.24: The Mielke Way

“He is being cremated, right?” I asked the coroner this morning.

“He” being the kid who used to call me at 2 am in every weekend high school, asking if I wanted to come over and loot through his parents’ attic or drink beer in the woods. When Matt Mielke lifted up his shirt to show me his garish, sprawling post-transplant scar last summer, I had no idea he’d be reduced to ashes in less than a year. I found out about it yesterday on Facebook. Someone who I’d sent a New Year’s text to was dead.

Matt was one of those people who subverted cliques in high school, instead, he befriended everyone. He had a wide smile and a strong jaw, and skin so white I just called him by his last name, or Milky. He called me homeslice. He probably called everyone that. But I wore fake glasses and carried a gameboy back then, and the fact that Milky would call me anything, much less on the phone at 2 am so many nights (and years later, when I returned home from abroad) was enough to change my opinion of myself.

Matt's wall, canvassed in mourning notes

Death of a young person is strange, especially in an age of social media. Matt’s Facebook wall has become a sort of crowd-sourced obituary – something eerie and endless, where mourners come to post their memories or condolences. Another high-schooler I knew who died, Matt Bryar, still has an active account that accrues well-wishes and strangely vulnerable posts from his mother. I also wrote on Milky’s wall, something I swore I would never do. On Facebook, anything that you do can be interpreted as egoist, even grieving. Immediately after I posted, I felt both vindicated and ashamed; I felt like Matt could somehow see that post (the way that my middle-school friend Tracy Crossett could read the letter I put in her casket). But then again – everyone else could read it too.

In a way, I wanted them to. Not because I wanted them to know he and I were friends, but because I wanted to add to the dialogue that Matt’s good-natured soul, the one that smiled even with that sci-fi style gash under his shirt that last time I saw him, was extended to everyone.

I’ve constantly changed my opinion of social transparency and its role in the ongoing evolution of our generation’s narcissism. However, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe grieving publicly is actually better for us. We don’t have to hide our grief, or our memories, from one another. Nor do we really want to.

I think Matt knew he was going to die, which is even stranger to admit. He’d ask me to dinner over and over, and not eat, picking at lettuce and reminiscing instead, avoiding going home as much as he could. But today, I couldn’t stand seeing pictures of him online, or his name popping up when I was creating an event. But god – I can’t de-friend him.

Immediately, I’m glad Facebook helps me remember. But I’m more worried that, like with so many things and people, it won’t let me forget either.

I’m sorry, Milky. I’ll miss you.

-Homeslice.

“Oh Fuck Yeah, I’m gonna get my goddamned fortune cookie.” - Ben Kweller, onset at the What You Mean video. Other people I interviewed today, who will be in said video:

1. A hispanic man who smelled like pie and carried hand-drawn sketches of True Blood characters in a portfolio.
2. A contortionist called “Moon” who was very upset that her real name, Amanda, was singled out in Freakonomics as an indicator of low-income status.
3. A 125-lb man covered in Yakuza tattoos, who did not smile.

I can tell you no more.

Austin, 2.21: The Producers

All my boyfriend wants to be is a director.

He woke up at 9 and got a call from his producer telling him that he had to be in a meeting ten minutes ago.

Ten minutes later he was sitting in the offices, sharing his ideas. They re-wrote the scripts based on them. Another producer came in from down the hall, asking if they could steal him away, he was directing another project too. So he went down the hall and changed gears, this time for a kid’s commercial. At noon the producers sat a bag of hamburgers in front of him. Here’s your P. Terry’s lunch, they said. Then he set up lights, directed gaffers. He was smiling a bunch and drinking whiskey. Our apartment is a wreck.

This is the world you’re getting into, I said.

I bet you felt real important, I said.

“No! I hate directing,” he said. “I hate this regimented stuff.”

“The best projects are the ones you get to work on in your living room, at your own pace,” he said.

I wish I had my recorder, I said. I should be recording all this. For my story.

***

“What are you writing?” he asked.

 

Crested Butte, 2.15: Happy Birthday

Nights during my vacation:

“You are ‘always working,’ which really means you are never working” – My Mom.

 

Austin, 2.12: And IIIIIIIII

Whitney Houston is dead.

…And I could care less. Sorry.

Austin, 2.10: Or Nothing At All.

Ideas aren’t real unless they’re posted on The NYT.  Like that one that says you can’t have it all.

I came across this article VIA Jezebel, which discusses a book written by the advice columnist at The Financial Times:

Asked recently to sum [her book] up in a phrase, she said: “You can’t have it all.”

More controversially perhaps, Ms. McGregor unapologetically puts her career first — ahead of children, husband and friends, she says. Among her top tips for women who want to make it to the top: accumulate skills (if you’ve got a mediocre degree from a mediocre university, get another one from a good one); build your network; become financially literate (not least so you know what interest rate you’re paying on your credit card debt); outsource at home and delegate at work; scrap the sentence “I can’t do it” from your vocabulary (Ms. McGregor, 49, learned how to fly a plane at 47 and how to shoot a gun at 43. “Do men take you seriously if you are 49 and have a B.M.I. of 37?” she asked. “No, but they do if you have a gun in your hand.”); and, crucially, learn to say “No.”

I’m always moaning about how Dave is always putting his career before me, but secretly, I’m envious he’s found it in himself to do so. Maybe it’s not neglect, but self interest – which I thought were one in the same, but maybe, they’re just strange bedfellows.

Women these days face a different problem than a generation before us: We don’t have excuses to lean back on that permit us to fail.

 

Austin, 2.4: No Shame No Game

Things I have done for money:

1. Taken experimental drugs while watching Total Recall. (Age 21, $400)
2. Dressed as an elf and drove a train. (Age 19, $4000)
3. Ate a whole habanero (Age 15, $20)
4. Sold my 107 of my  future children (Age 24, $20,000)
5. Upsold candy at recess (Age 9, $8-15)
6. Purposefully miscalculated dinner bill (Age 18, $15)
7. “Taught” “English”, Do you like it, Seoul? (Age 23, $28,000)
8. Shot water up my nose on film (Age 24, $8,000)
9. Sold my urine to a drug addict (Age 23, $20)
10. Allowed aging landlord refund my deposit … twice (Age 19, $800)
11.  Just left  bigass dent on my bumper (Age 18, $2000)

 

Austin, 2.1: The Joys of Someone Else’s Motherhood

Ever wondered how big your stomach gets when your ovaries are the size of grapefruits?

 

Hey mystery mama! Have fun with your 60 eggs. I’m gonna take my cool $10,000 and buy myself some jeans that fit.

Seattle, 1.23: I Like Pike

Recently, someone told me I’d really like Seattle, WA.

outside Pike Place

I didn’t.

Portland, 1.21: What We Do

 

Today I went to Powell’s Books, the largest bookstore in the country. It’s divided into quadrants.

They only had new copies of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and a full shelf for Settlers of Catan and its expansion packs. The coffee shop has almond milk (!) and I desperately wanted to buy The New New Journalism.