I did some digging around, and most of the site still works. You can see a
list of stuff I've written (faux interviews, odes, bad haiku, etc.). I read through a few things, and I admit that I still like the faux interviews. They were a little weird at times, but they were probably the most fun to write. The bad haikus really lived up to their name. They are
terrible.
It was fun to revisit my old stuff. It kind of makes me want to write new things. I don't know what yet. Lately I've been working on creative non-fiction. Here's one I wrote in a creative writing class last fall:
My Many Loves: A Record of Suitors and Imaginary Relationships
Due to certain circumstances, I have been very unlucky in love. I tend to blame this on a curse, which is my favorite explanation as it takes the blame firmly away from me. There are four categories of people who are attracted to me: fast food employees, clingy losers, children, and middle-aged women. Fast food employees probably sense my busy, cosmopolitan lifestyle. They most likely think to themselves, “Look at her! She doesn’t have time to cook because she’s out seeing the world.” My favorite fast food suitor was a Wendy’s employee named Bubba who asked me out on a date each time I saw him. I was always “incredibly busy,” though not rudely so because I feared more than anything that Bubba would spit in my food. Finally I invented a pretend boyfriend who I had just recently fallen in love with despite my previous claims that maybe we could go on a date someday. “Well, if anything happens with that guy,” Bubba said, “you know where I am.” I became seriously afraid that Bubba and his gang of fry cooks were going to smash my boyfriend’s legs with a bat when I remembered that he didn’t exist.
The second group of people attracted to me are clingy losers who ask, “Am I bothering you? Do you want me to leave?” Even when I pretend that I am not bored by them, they don’t seem to believe me. “Should I have stayed home tonight?” one guy asked me a few months back.
“That depends,” I said. “What would you have done at home?”
“Watched MTV or something,” he said. I asked him which show he would have watched.
“Um, Newlyweds,” he replied. I told him that I thought Jessica Simpson’s fifteen minutes of fame surrounding that show were closing in fast, so he probably made a wise choice in coming out to the bar. Not five minutes later he asked me if he should never have moved here from Wisconsin, and I couldn’t take it anymore. To escape him and his kind, I did one of the most horrific things I’ve ever done; I went out on the dance floor and danced in public. I was sickened with myself, but what choice did I have? I was desperate.
The third group of people who are attracted to me are children. I have been propositioned by my sister Colleen’s thirteen-year old friends, as well as an entire school bus. In this technological age, the children on the bus had cell phones to which they gave me the numbers on sheets of loose leaf paper pressed up to the back window. They motioned for me to call them, but I only smiled disapprovingly and waved. Sorry, kids.
The last and final group of people who are attracted to me are middle-aged women. If I were attracted to straight women in their late forties, I would never be dateless again. They love to tell me how pretty I am, and sometimes I like to pretend I believe them. The women at work often tell me that I have perfect skin and beautiful hair, but my personal favorite is when a woman told me I looked like a ballerina. I wish I looked like a willowy, graceful dancer, but I’m actually klutzy and flat-footed.
So, with these groups to choose from, is it any wonder that I choose celebrity boyfriends instead? They’re so much easier to work with and generally regarded as the most attractive options. I have a long history of forming romantic attachments to people I have never met and will likely never meet. It all started with Michael J. Fox on the show Family Ties. In my estimation, Alex P. Keaton was the smartest and funniest person on television. I imagined us growing old together, attending Republican conventions, and buying expensive cars. I would draw pictures of the two of us on our wedding day. I was a huge fan of the old Batman series, so Burt Ward was the Best Man. (In my renditions, he was still the youthful Robin because it never occurred to me to age him twenty years or so.) Susan Lucci was to be my Maid of Honor, and it would have all worked out beautifully if Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block had not stolen my affection away a few years later. When I first heard Joey’s voice on my New Kids cassette, I was completely confused. I hadn’t known there was a girl in the group. I took this question to my older, wiser cousin Megan who informed me that that was no girl, but none other than Joey McIntyre: total (girl-voiced) stud. When I considered it for a while, I decided that his voice was adorable, that he was adorable, and that Jordan Knight could be Best Man at our wedding. A few hundreds of dollars in VHS tapes, gym shoes, a lunch box, and trading cards later, I officially ended my love for Joey. I wrote him a nice breakup letter, citing the fact that he never pulled me up onstage and serenaded me in front of millions of people. What kind of boyfriend was he? I never got a response, but I’m sure he felt the loss.
The next love of my life was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who played witty middle brother Randy on the hit TV show Home Improvement. According to Bop Magazine, he was an inch shorter than me, but I vowed that I would wear flat shoes for the rest of my life if that’s what it took to show him I cared. I plastered my bedroom wall with his sweet face, writing clever things on them like J.T.T. + B.M.N. = 4EVER. I liked to imagine myself making guest appearances on his show as a jumping off point for a long career in showbiz. “Who would have thought that she would one day become a bigger star than me?” Jonathan would ask Diane Sawyer. “All I know is that I’m so extremely proud of her and our love.” Surely ours was a love that would last the ages. As luck would have it, it only lasted as long as his show entertained me. Once I grew bored, it was time to take the glossy pictures off the wall and invest in a pair of heels. It was time for George Clooney.
Always a sucker for a television couple constantly on the brink of actually getting together, I invested my time in ER’s Doug and Carol. Carol was fiery and curly-haired, the way I imagined myself to be. George Clooney played Doug, and even at the age of thirteen, I knew he had at least twice the sex appeal of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Ours was a loopy, funny sort of courtship. I renamed Thursday “George Clooney Day” and forced my friends to play along. Sometimes I even talked my dad into driving us to the mall directly after school to prepare for the wonderful gift of a new episode of ER. My loyal and indulgent friends clipped out pictures of George for me from their mothers’ subscriptions to People Magazine. Some of them claimed to be “grossed out” because he was “an old guy” but I knew they were jealous. Those fools were busy looking at the snot-nosed bunch of eighth graders we called classmates for romantic partners, but I had landed myself a real man. None of those children could compare.
After a while, it became pretty evident that every week of ER was going to include a terrible accident, one of the doctors becoming personally involved in said accident, followed by tears at a death or smiles at a life being saved. After you’ve seen this happen over and over for six months straight, it becomes easy to guess what’s going to happen next. I lost interest in the show just in time for high school, where I quickly formed a crush on an actual fourteen year old in my class and was inevitably disappointed by him. I learned my lesson and went straight back to pretend relationships with famous people.
The next celebrity relationship also lasted the longest. This is probably because my feelings for Jon Stewart weren’t superficial but completely genuine. He was a comic genius, I told my friends, who disapproved on the basis that he was older than George Clooney, short, and “not hot.” I scoffed at their immature thoughts on love. When watching Jon host The Daily Show, I laughed aloud way more often than I did with my friends. Sometimes I even laughed at the lame jokes I didn’t find funny because I felt like he could cosmically feel our connection. I campaigned for Jon Stewart with the vigor people have for presidential nominees. I informed people of his book and television show. They usually asked, “Who’s Jon Stewart?” I was more than happy to tell them. When in bookstores, I would find the lone copy of his book, pull it out of alphabetical order, and put it in a place of prominence. I hoped that someone would buy it and three more would appear in its place. In July of 2000, it was a dream come true when I flew to New York City to see a taping of his show. I had never traveled for such a crazy reason before, but I guess that’s what happens when it’s true (celebrity) love. Being in the same room with him had me on a love high that lasted through August. I hadn’t worked up the nerve to speak to him, but we made eye contact once and that was enough.
Like married couples who suddenly separate, I decided to take a break from watching Jon on The Daily Show. I focused my energies on school, theatre, building friendships, and watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Jon has only grown more successful in my absence. A few weeks ago, I noticed that Barnes and Noble had an entire display devoted to his book, Naked Pictures of Famous People. I smiled, feeling that maybe my small efforts over the years had paid off in some way. Jon Stewart may never know about me, but I’m at least a tiny bit responsible for his fame and good fortune. I made Jon Stewart a household name in at least tens of households. I can feel good about that, though sometimes I still think about writing his agent a letter asking for some financial compensation for single-handedly raising his popularity. In the meantime, I am doing pretty well on my own. Someday I plan to find a nice guy who doesn’t work in fast food, constantly whine, or attend grade school. Until the day comes when this pesky curse is lifted, I’ll just enjoy my movie stars and freedom.
