Student Set Up

A ninth grade boy said he wanted to hook me up with someone so that I would "loosen up" and not be so strict.

Thinking he wanted to hook me up with one of his relatives from prison, I gave him a list of criteria...like college.

He came back with a student teacher. He was so convinced that if I would just go out with this student teacher, I would be happy.

I said, "Reggie, I will be happy when you do your work."

Thanksgiving

The thing I love about Thanksgiving break is that it is this time warp break of food and friends.

My first Thanksgiving away from my family was with friends in New York City, and I have never gone back. I was quoting Victoria Principal from VH-1 Behind the Music with, "I told Andy to choose drugs, or to choose me...and he chose drugs!" Everyone was laughing and I finally realized why people enjoy the holidays.

It's like the day stretches out, getting fatter with each bite of turkey and taste of stuffing. It's a holiday high, lasting a few days.

Then the reality starts hitting that you have to go to work on Monday.

But then begins the countdown until Christmas and the ball dropping.

So for someone who grew up dreading putting up the Christmas tree, the holidays have been transformed into palm trees with friends.

And for that, I am grateful.

Dying Roots

My grandma told me she was dying.

And it has made me reconsider dying my roots.

I have been thinking about how I came to Hollywood, to escape the small town in Michigan.

Just like Norma Jeane and Madonna.

Only I ended up trapped in South Central, not in pictures.

My grandma wants me to make amends with my father.

But I still don't want to go home for the holidays.

I always feel like I failed in my career.

But the other day I was driving...and I thought about the girl so full of life that wanted to get the hell out of Michigan.

And I did.

So maybe I didn't fail afterall.

My Big Ass Diamond

I had to buy it. Not for the body wash, but for that fake diamond gaudy keychain. What brilliant marketing.

I absolutely love it.

My keychain has history.

My sister gave me my first keychain when I was sixteen with engraved coins from the Space Needle, "You are my sunshine." After she died, I went to the Space Needle and added, "You're here in my heart, like the sun coming out" from the Kate Bush song.

I added the "This Is It" ribbon to to the keychain for her and my best friend.

And now, I've added this huge diamond made in China because although it is so cliche and antithetical to my beliefs, I like it. I like how it represents a rich man like my fake hair represents a Hollywood starlet. Everyone wants a rich man, but I want more than just that, just like I am more than my blonde hair, just like the key chain is more than just a ring for my keys.

I want it all.

And I have it all. Right here at my fingertips.

Et tu, Brute?

That is what I remember my tenth grade English teacher explaining to me when I asked her if she liked Julius Caesar.

We just watched the BBC version today in class. The Calpurnia dream isn't nearly as dramatic as the Charlton Heston version. I like it when she screams and runs to tell Caesar her premonition.

You know how sometimes you just sit there and ponder something when you see it again in a new way? That is how I was when they bathed their hands in Caesar's blood.

The smart students with the higher test scores listen and read along with the text. The others complain it is too hard.

Napping

I am a big believer in napping.

It just makes everything better. More bearable.

Sometimes I just have to think of my life between naps.

I get up in the morning, tell myself I just have to make it through the day and then I can come home and nap.

It’s a mind trick.

My mother taught me to look forward to things.

Good thing my addiction is to naps and not crack.

Grades

She wonders now that it is not part of the grade, if she will keep writing.

She has been working on grades all day.

Students that realize after ten weeks, twenty assignments, that they don't want to fail.

Her own obsessive compulsive high school nature to be the best and claw her way to the top is still writing her daily post.

Wondering why grades matter, why it matters if someone reads this, why it matters if she posts this...

Ratings on readers of blogs, or ratings on a singles' site picture, or how we measure up...

as if any of it really matters.

Different Beans

At the beginning of the year, I called my grandmother on the phone during class to prove to my student, Jose, that we had Native American blood in our background. “Don’t let the blonde hair fool you—it’s out of a box!” I said.

My great-great grandmother was part of the Polawadamee tribe. I remember when I was in kindergarten, we had to paint this plaster of a Native American woman. I didn’t know any Native American roots at that age…in fact, I didn’t even believe my father when he told my boyfriend that we had Native American in our lineage.

My English teacher in high school wanted us to “Cherish our heritage!” I had no idea what that meant. I didn’t want to admit that we were German because who wants to be responsible for persecuting the Jews? As a child, we had Finn Power t-shirts, but Finnish is not as exotic as Swedish.

The only comment my Dominican has ever made on my facebook page is “your roots are showing.”

He was referring to the dark roots of my blonde hair, but I quipped back with “You mean my Native American roots?”

He says that the bath mat is “the white man’s invention.” He never used one growing up.

He gave me a can of baked beans because “white people eat baked beans.”

My grandma makes the best baked beans. When he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I sent her the poem I wrote about him giving me baked beans. She said, “I am sorry to hear about your Dominican boyfriend,” even though I used the phrase, “the guy I’ve been seeing on and off since 2002.” She doesn’t understand that he is not my boyfriend. She doesn’t understand that we just eat different beans.

Screen Saver

He has a red sports car as a screen saver on his computer.

I told him, “You are just like one of my students.”

I’m thinking now maybe I should teach them Great Expectations if he couldn’t put it down.

He used to tell me how he never thought about going to college—that if it weren’t for Angel, his friend who said he was good at math and told him to take classes, that he never would have gotten a degree.

His mother wouldn’t approve of him being with a white woman. My mother knows this. When I told my mother that he has his engineering degree, my mother said, “What white woman would want him? I’ve never heard of an engineer with no job.”

“He’s an actor, Mom.”

He told me he can’t wait to get back to work. We met catering. We were working for a cheap company that didn’t serve us dinner. He swept the filet mignon for the guests from the proofer for me. I was “too good” following the rules to do it for myself—I didn’t want to get in trouble. But it was very romantic how he did it for me. He had a fuck you attitude about the whole establishment, that they owed us dinner. I did too, but I was too chicken to act on it.

He made me feel better about my week just be being him. My French friend says I always talk about him “happily smiling.”

He used to work at the same school where my girlfriend that just bought the condo works. She is white and is dating a Latino.

I had this fantasy during Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I mean, all those people play the cancer card…why not him? Once, I told him I had this fantasy that his career would take off—he’d have this huge house and I could live in the guest house. He said to me, “Why would you live in the guest house? Why not the main house?”

I’ve been thinking about his screen saver.

Saver.

I hope he gets his red sports car.

I hope my students do too.

Burned Bird

He answered the phone.

I think this may be the first time he has answered the phone in months. He must be feeling better.

I was on my way home from my girlfriend who had just bought a condo in Glendale. He used to live in Glendale.

“Living in Glendale was the worst year of my life.” He said.

I questioned, “Worse than this year with chemo?”

He thought for a minute, “Just as bad. I didn’t have air conditioning. The walk to the car nearly did me in—it was an oven.”

I told him about my week. How the student plagiarized, the girl came to class high…he said, “What, that’s just growing up.”

He told me he starts radiation this week. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…who said that?” He asked.

“Charles Dickens.” But I go over to his computer and look it up just to be sure. He tells me I’m addicted to the computer and that it’s a very white thing to do.

Then he tells me how much he loved Great Expectations. “I couldn’t put it down. I read it freshman year of high school.” He continued to give me an entire plot summary. He never ceases to surprise me. So he doesn’t know Sylvia Plath, but he does know Charles Dickens.

He lit the candle while I was in the bathroom. When I came out, it was almost gone.

“It’s a cheap candle. How much did you spend on it? Did you break more than two dollars on it?”

He’s always talking about how cheap I am.

“What did the bird say when it flew over K-Mart?”

“Cheap, cheap.”

Focusing on the Good

One of my ninth grade girls asked to go to the bathroom today. She came back high. It was her birthday. She had a little balloon and gift bag on the floor next to her desk. I pulled her outside and she admitted that there were girls smoking in the bathroom, but that she didn’t do it. I told her I had called school police yesterday on a boy, but I didn’t want to do that to her on her birthday…but not to come back to my class high ever again.

It just made me so sad that a ninth grade girl is smoking pot on her birthday. When I was in ninth grade, I was writing autobiographies, played Miss Hannigan in Annie, obsessed over school projects. I wasn’t smoking weed in the bathroom at school.

But maybe I was just different.

I wasn’t living in poverty. I didn’t have to deal with gang mentality on a daily basis. I didn’t feel the need to escape.

I was having severe abdominal pain the other day from stress. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

I had all my students write persuasive essays about why I should keep up the blogging project after students were downloading weed as screensavers and women in evocative poses with their legs spread.

Most of the students are good. They argued that they never get to use computers, that their typing is getting better, and that it was cool to have their writing online to show others. They said it wasn’t fair for them to be punished for a few students’ “dumb” behavior. They made commitments to make sure their neighbors were on task.

So I must keep focusing on the good. Because they do deserve it.

Put Me Down Like Old Yeller

I have such a headache.

That is my post.

I can’t even begin to tell you about my day. The ninth grade boy that posted a blog in MY name and to top it off, it was plagiarized from another student. Parent conference, the administrator doesn’t show up. The other ninth grade boy that showed me a picture of MY name loves marijuana after he left the class and came back smelling of some kind of smoke. Call school police because the deans aren’t answering the phone in their office. Document, document. Right now I hate my life teaching in the inner-city.

I feel like shutting down the whole blog project. It started because our school has no computer lab in which to take the students. Since most students don’t have computers and printers, how are they supposed to type their papers??? I hate the system.

And I was out of aspirin.

I just woke up my neighbor to borrow some.

Now I am going to bed.

But I am obsessing and hope I can sleep.

Happy for Hands

Since I had the day off for Veteran’s Day, I watched Oprah. She had the woman on who was defaced by a chimp. Literally. A chimpanzee attacked Charla and ripped off her face. She was left with only a thumb.

Every day, even if she doesn’t feel like it, she goes for a walk. Oprah used her humor to say that she, herself, really has no right to complain about exercising, if Charla can maintain such a disposition.

Oprah had said how many people would just cash in their chips, (I may be using my own metaphor here, but you know what I mean…not literally cashing in chips in Vegas, but figuratively giving up to the pie in the sky.) I, myself, don’t think I could go on under the circumstances of Charla’s health. But she does have a daughter. And I always say we never know what we are made of until we are put in the situation.

Then I read about the soccer player that committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a train. His wife explained that he was afraid their adopted daughter would be taken away from them if the public found out about his illness. Their biological daughter died three years ago from heart problems when she was two-years-old.

Meanwhile, I am supposed to be focusing on all the good things in life. Maybe I should stop reading the news and watching Oprah. Maybe I should start my own list.

Thank god for these hands that can type this—that they were not mauled off by a chimpanzee.

I am praying for the widow who has now lost her husband in addition to her daughter.

Black Bird

Whispered Between Women whispered, “What happened to Chemo Guy?”

“I shot him, a black bird killed off with a BB gun,” I stated simply.

But it is not so simple.

I had written a poem for him in Korea called “Blonde Bird.” When I was there, I emailed it to him. I said something about flittering my wings in his mind, trying to land closer to the nest, becoming more than just the bleach blonde bimbo in the distance…that perhaps one day he’d put out his palm for this humming bird to feed on his nectar for longer than the flash of a camera.

So when I went to give him the blonde wax shaped bird candle I had brought back from Korea for him, I thought he would be moved by the symbolism—how he had been in my thoughts like the candle I was lighting for him in my mind every night.

He looked at it and said, “A yellow duck. I don’t get it.”

And I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t even try to explain. I think I said, “The blonde bird poem…oh, nevermind.”

The next day I got the email from him, “i dont understand u. u like being around me but i dont like being around u. dont know how ellse to say it. we are very different people . just leave it at that.”

I thought, “Fuck you. Drop dead.” But I didn’t write that back. Because my friend said he’s going through chemo and he doesn’t know what he’s saying.

But he doesn’t know a blonde bird from a yellow duck.

And that’s why it is easier to kill him off. It makes the death a little less painful.

Shitting Blood

But is constipation just the beginning? I read an article where this woman’s vagina fell out! Ignorance is bliss, which is why my parents never took us to doctors growing up. The old fear of the unknown…if you don’t know it, why fear it? But once you start reading, you can never go back. The article stated, “In addition to a uterine prolapse, Allison Henry also suffered rectocele - a condition wherein the rectum pushes into the back walls of the vagina. ‘That explained why I had been constipated for months,’ she says.” Oh my god! Rectocele! Here I was thinking the worst thing that could happen was that I could be allergic to the man’s sperm whom I wanted to conceive a child with—but no, it gets much worse…I could have my inners become my outers! Allison said she had to keep her sense of humor about it all—that and a good dose of anti-depressants. I thought Dr. Schultz was the dope…but if I’m dealing with all that, a few herbs aren’t going to be all I need to get through.

The last time I spoke to my best friend was Christmas Day 2007. I was in the car, about to go have Christmas dinner at a colleague’s. I remember we were reminiscing, laughing about all the Christmas’ we had spent together. When he had to poo really badly back when we were hanging out as teens, he used to make this gesture with his hands, where the finger was tipping the hole, about to come out. It was so disgusting and funny. You never know the last time you are going to speak to someone in their thirties before they die. He told me he was shitting blood. I think I laughed in horror with him, our dark humor trying to find some light. I know I told him he needed to see the doctor. “What does your sister say?” I asked. He hadn’t told her. He died the following week.

Hemorrhoids!

I used to say, “I’ve got to take a shit.”

My mother would quip back, “You better leave one instead.”

There are few things better than a good shit—the relief, the sense of accomplishment, the load left that makes one feel ever so much lighter than before.

But when one is constipated, it is no laughing matter.

I had just turned thirty when the childhood joy of shitting became my “what is happening to my body??! It’s just not working right anymore” nightmare.

I used to ask as a child, “Does your poop sink or float?” This was a rather odd thing to ask new visitors to our home, but I thought it was the perfect break the ice, get to know you question.

So when it felt like I was shitting bricks, I knew I had to break the silence. I began asking around.

I thought, best to begin with the older crowd…because old people are always telling you what is going wrong with their body or who went to the doctor and found out they had diverticulosis. So my sixty-five-year-old friend tells me to buy some stool softner from the drug store and in the background, his wife yells, “Tell her to get some Preparation H.”

Preparation H!!? Oh my god. I remember those commercials from growing up in the eighties. Does this mean I have hemorrhoids? What even is a hemorrhoid? I remember the woman in the commercial with a pained look on her face and some animated drawing talking about pain and inflammation. The word was horrifying and the fact that it was shrouded in mystery could only mean it was so bad, that no one could even say it on tv.

Alas, today we live in 2009, when we have porn on the internet and pictures of hemorrhoids with the click of a mouse! But who wants to see small veins around the rectum and anus that have become varicose-dilated and swollen. It was disturbing enough when I saw the blood in my underwear that was not from my beautiful Aunt Flo, but from my sensitive bleeding butt crying red tracks…what is wrong with this picture??! This is only supposed to happen after a hot, rough night of anal sex with your latin lover…not from your virgin hole that has never seen so much as a finger. Do porn stars have this problem? If so, they never seem to talk about it. Although that might be a downer between takes. Chloe talked about her yeast infections in a documentary. I love her candor. But no mention of hemorrhoids. Looks like my life as a porn star really is over now.

I don’t believe in drugs. I even try to limit my intake of Aleve during that time of the month. So I look to alternative medicine. I run in the circles. So I confide in my dear friend the troubles of my delicate little anus. I am not alone! He has these problems too! He tells me to go to Dr. Schulze’s in the Marina and purchase Intestinal Formula #1. (Herbal Formulae That Work! is right on the bottle.) He assures me that will take care of the problem.

I waste no time. Bowel movements that can’t get out are a pressure cooker waiting to go off…I mean, it all has to go somewhere, sometime.

Thank you Dr. Schulze. Within a day, the floodgates are open. The intestines are moving. The dam is broken.

Sky Happy

I was in this musical when I was in second grade where I was a duck. It was my very first play called Sky Happy. It was about Rock and Rhonda, a couple that wanted to fly. I hadn’t thought of it for years, but saw the film Amelia today.

I was in another play called Chamber Music by Arthur Kopit in high school about women in a mental institution. One believed she was Amelia Earhart.

I like how Ms. Earhart was such a feminist—keeping her name, making a career for herself, having a progressive marriage for the time. The official website has all these quotes from her, including, "Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization." Sounds to me, like she was an addict of the air.

Vagina Headlines

AOL news is freaking me out.

Last night there was a woman who was allergic to her husband’s sperm—she formed blisters inside her vagina and everything.

Tonight it is a woman whose vagina fell out.

Let’s see, and there was the gang rape at the high school.

Oh, and the Cleveland house of horror where the man had bodies in his house decaying that he had raped and murdered.

Everyone already knows about the shooting slaughter at the military base by the psychiatrist. But I digress, because that isn't directly related to vaginas.

Yes, this was a lovely week of news.

Where are the warm, fuzzy stories?

Blonde Bird

Someone asked me today why I dye my hair blonde. I don’t even know if I can answer that question.

My hair is yellow. I dye it myself with Clairol Born Blonde, but since I am naturally a brunette, it comes out orange, gold and yellow hues (perhaps even stripes.) I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m too cheap to pay to have it done. My dear friend has even said to me, “Treat yourself.” This is her polite way of voicing her disapproval.

It happened accidentally. I used to have short hair, pixie short. My hairdresser at the time highlighted it as a gift for my birthday. She assured me that I could do the same thing with a box from Rite-Aid. I, of course, was trepidatious at the time. I had only done semi-permanent. Blonde was a world of its own.

But I took her belief in myself and found the courage to paint my hair in chunky bits just like she did. I was hooked. With short hair, there is a certain freedom, because if you fuck it up too badly, you just cut it off and start over. But I began to like the texture the bleach gave to my fine, silky hair. It was easier to spike with molding mud.

When I moved to California, I started growing my hair out because I grew bored of the same short cut flipping back from red, to plum, to magenta, to blonde highlights. I kept dying it blonde because this was new for me. I had had long brunette hair, but never longer blonde hair. Now I even lived at the beach!

But this stereotype also horrified me. I hate the Beach Boys “California Girls” song. David Lee Roth’s cover growing up was this bizarre male fantasy to a young feminist that was completely foreign to a girl in Michigan. His voice in this song grated on my nerves. The jumping around in striped spandex was one thing, but the women in bikinis lined up on the boardwalk with him weaving in between them—too much cheesy objectification…did people actually find this entertaining?

Furthermore, I didn’t like Marilyn Monroe (until I read more about her pill addiction and misery, that is.) I just didn’t get the whole here are my boobs and blonde hair in the wind manipulating the males with my sexuality. I was more of a brain girl. The granola, Birkenstock wearing, worked her way through college at Greenpeace kind of girl.

But I do love Madonna. So when I read Bell Hooks' essay desecrating Madonna, I thought twice about my own blonde ambition. My black professor had said that I enjoyed the attention from men when stereotyped into “the blonde.” When, in fact, such objectification and projection only made me sad. Didn’t they know that I was more than that? I was valedictorian, graduated University of Michigan with honors, and thought the government was responsible for the assassination of the Black Panthers?

I still don’t know why I stay a blonde. The shampoo I have to use in order for it not to look like complete straw costs an arm and a leg—that alone should be the impetus for au naturel.

But part of me thinks it is the adolescent rebel in me. An associate said in her condescending, critical way, “Why blonde? Why don’t you go back to your natural color? Dark hair with light, blue eyes is exotic.”

To this, I wanted to utter a, “FUCK YOU. Did I ask for your opinion behind your fake tits and nose job?” But I would never say that to someone.

Because if her fake tits and nose job make her feel good, where is it my place to judge?

I like the dichotomy of the blonde bird with the big brain. I like to make people keep guessing. Just like I like to keep searching for the why of my dye.

How much is a parking space really worth?

I have been living in Venice Beach for over five years. I have never had parking. This was okay when I was in my twenties. Now that I’m in my thirties, it’s getting old.

I’ve always carried my groceries blocks. When I was living in Queens, I was fifteen blocks from the subway. I carried many things many blocks many times. I was much thinner then.

Someone in our apartment building has moved out and for roughly $4,500 more a year or $400 more a month, I could go from a studio to a one bedroom with parking.

But the thought of actually moving exhausts me—even if it is only downstairs.

Plus, I HATE my neighbor. He belts out “Man in the Mirror” at the top of his strained vocal register and it is offensive to MJ’s memory. He is slaughtering the song. I want to take a hatchet to his head. Our building is not a rehearsal studio. Rent a space.

I fear I have become old and bitter.

I should be in a house. Old and bitter people live in houses.

But I live in an area where one has to be a millionaire to afford a house! Why is life so cruel? Then I think about the children born into brothels in India and know I have no right to complain.

But I’d still like a parking space. And a father to my children. As long as I’m making the list, I might as well check it twice. I’ve not been naughty, but nice. Eh, it depends on who you’re asking. As Samantha Fox sings, “Naughty Girls Need Love too.” I bet she has a parking space.

Average is so Prosaic

When I was on Match.com, I met a guy who told me my body type was average. I was horrified. Average is so close to prosaic. Me, ordinary? Never. I had put down slender. It then dawned on me that I still saw myself as the skinny, little girl I had been growing up.

My sister (the angry lesbian one, not the dead one) asked me when I was five-years-old if I would be her model for a school project. She was very coaxing and social worker like about the whole matter. She had me take these shirtless pictures and then used them for a project on anorexia! Had I known better, I could have sued her for child porn.

So I began asking around, am I not proportionate? Do I not qualify as slender any more? My guy friend said, “Average is good. A few extra pounds is not.”

I was so hurt when people would call my mom fat when I was little. She used to tell me she was thin as a little girl. I was offended when a girl in elementary called my dad bald. We were supposed to be friends and here she was throwing around these words with negative connotations. I ended up hearing some sexual escapade of that same girl a few years later and thinking, hmm, I thought she was supposed to be smart in math.

I had to come to terms with the fact that my body image did not fit my perception. It’s kind of like when a boy said I was the flattest girl in seventh grade. I still see myself as not having breasts, even though I measure a double D at Victoria’s Secret (or so they say...I think their sizes are inflated.) It must be all that weight I gained during the years.

I am the perfect size for “Put the lotion in the basket!”

That is a disturbing, yet darkly funny thought.

Pot Pie

It seems like the highlight of my life the past few days, has been marked by food.

I convinced my friend to go to Souplantation on Monday night football because they were serving Chicken Pot Pie Soup.

Oh my god.

Better than sex.

I love November.

Trader Joe’s starts stocking their Fondue in a box. The guy at the check out asked if you needed a fondue pot. “Just a saucepan!” I exclaimed, as if I were Betty Crocker, not the domestic disaster my friends know me to be.

Did I mention the amazing acorn squash I had last night? Delicious. My friend and I were discussing what makes some acorn squashes sweet and succulent, and others not. We couldn’t figure it out. But I have discovered cooking the squash seeds. At first, I felt like I was doing something scandalous, a pioneer on the home front. I wondered if there was some poisonous reason that people never ate squash seeds. I think the squash seeds were sold out to the pumpkin seeds for no good reason. I am speaking out on behalf of squash seeds everywhere! Why are they discriminated against and pumpkin seeds get all the packaging? Taste the same cooked in the oven!

What is amazing to me is how you can eat the exact same thing and it can taste completely different depending on where your taste buds are at. (There’s that ending the sentence with a preposition violation, but how else do you say the same thing with the same umph!?) In that sense, eating and fucking are very much alike, because sex can feel totally different depending on your mood too. What you’re craving one night, might not hit the spot the next.

Believe it or not, you can get Chicken Pot Pied out.

Sooner or later though, you’re always hungry again.

Hungry for some ice cream?

My dead gay best friend told me I should throw a brick through this guy’s window right onto his bed—and to make sure he was in it. We laughed. That’s what I miss most about him—we both had such dark suicidal/homicidal humor that most people just don’t think is funny.

One time, we were in line at the grocery store when we were both in high school. There was a woman in front of us with a gallon of ice cream. So I said in a goofy, silly voice, “Hungry for some ice cream?” She didn’t think it was funny. At all.

She said to my best friend, “Your girlfriend needs to learn some manners.” This, of course, just made us laugh harder because he was gay. I’m sure reading this, you probably aren’t laughing like we were, but I just miss him so much. I appreciate you humoring me.

The last time I saw him, he wouldn’t let me see his apartment. He said it was a mess. I thought of that today. I thought about the fact that he had shame about it, that at the time, I didn’t understand that. I was just mad he wouldn’t let me see his apartment.

No one mentions Michael Jackson’s addiction. But I think it should be talked about. I was mad at the man that gave him the overdose. I’m sure the doctor did as he was manipulated by an addict to do—but he should be held accountable. I thought about the doctor’s fear of losing his job, but what about the fear of being prosecuted for homicide?

My best friend’s sister didn’t tell anyone how he died. I think it was an opportunity to talk about addiction. I think it was an opportunity to take the shame out of it.

I dreamt about the guy who we joked about throwing a brick through his window. He is still alive and on facebook. I wish my best friend were so I could tell him and we could laugh about it.