Lauren's blog: "i'm alright in bed, but i'm better with a pen."

Warm Mississippi afternoons are what six-year-olds live for. I sat on the front porch swing, staring off into space, and an ant crawled across my bare toe. “Momma says you have to pick up your stuff,” my sister spoke up and I bit back a growl. I just ignored her, and set the swing to movement, the dirty bottoms of my feet slipping against the wooden boards of the porch with a soft swish like an old straw broom. “What’re you looking at?” I shot her a dirty look. She didn’t take hints very well. “That radio tower.” I nodded my head in the direction of it, across the way, in the middle of a corn field. “That’s stupid,” she scoffed, tossing her thick blonde hair behind her and eyeing me with distaste. “Why are you looking at a dumb ole radio tower?” I took a deep breath and swirled my tongue around the inside of my mouth, tasting the slight taste of peppermint from the stick of gum my daddy had given me that morning. “Because it’s God.” She didn’t say anything, and I just kept my eyes on the tower, swinging back and forth, one hand wrapped around the metal chain that held the swing off of the ground. “The tower is God?” she asked, her voice full of incredulity that made me want to slap her silly. She sat down beside me, halting the movements of the swing, and I caught a glint in her eye. She lived for ruining things for me. “Yes,” I answered simply, glancing down and picking at a thread that had come loose from the hem on my shorts. “Why do you say that?” She looked at the tower and back at me and I grinned, though I think it was a mean grin. “Because it’s the truth.” “You’re such a dumb kid.” She set the swing to movement again and I ground my heels into the floor to keep it from moving. “The tower is not God.” “Yes it is. Billy told me yesterday that Father Thomas told him that, and Father Thomas wouldn’t lie.” I could see Elizabeth digesting this, considering whether or not she believed me. I didn’t care whether she did or not. I just stood up and stalked away, trotting down the steps and lying down in the front yard, my eyes still on the tower. I could feel God’s gaze on me, and it made my skin tingle. ************************************************************************ That night, I swung my bare feet back and forth and my heels hit the chair with a thump with every backward swing. It coupled with the splish-splash sizzle of rain on the tin roof, as my mother wiped off the counter after finishing the dishes. The windows were coated with a thick purplish hue and not the ordinary reds and oranges of the setting sun. The air felt thick, and I took a deep breath, chewing on it. I perched in the kitchen chair as my mother brought me a pot of freshly boiled eggs, and held my breath as she placed one gingerly on my teaspoon, my wrist wobbling slightly from trying to hold it still. As I lowered it into the fuscia dye, I caught my lip between my teeth and concentrated, and my sister spoke up behind me. “You put them in the wrong order.” But what she really meant to say was, “You never do anything right.” “Now Elizabeth, it doesn’t really matter,” I heard my mother say, but I was barely aware, more interested in the pink that swirled over the top of the egg like some enchanting spell I had cast. Elizabeth reached over my shoulder and grabbed the cup in the middle, full of red dye, and picked it out of the line. She didn’t grab it by the handle, and the surface must have been slippery, for the next thing I knew, it fell with a distinct clatter to the table and rolled off and onto the floor, smashing into a gazillion pieces. For what seemed like forever, I just sat there. I heard the thunder in the distance, a low rumble like our dog Borimir when he gets mad, and I felt the dye trickle down my stomach to pool at the elastic waistband of my shorts. After a split second, I stood up abruptly, the chair clattering behind me in a violent manner. Elizabeth sprang back and I followed. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” I pummeled her with my fists, pounding over and over again into her stomach. I was much smaller, and she could have easily taken me, but she didn’t fight back. I was crying, so loudly that I couldn’t breathe, and I hit her again and again, violent sobs wracking my body. Red dye splattered all over her, covering her pretty white tank top, and I clenched my teeth in my fury, against my crying. My mother grabbed me about the waist and pulled me off of her and I struggled, flailing arms and legs, my tears trailing down my cheeks and mixing with the dye so it looked pink. She handed me to my father and he blocked the door to the den, taking me inside, away from them, as he held me tightly. I fought in my frenzy, sinking my teeth into the blue chambray of his shoulder. “I hate her,” I cried weakly as he sat me down, holding my shoulders firmly. Spots of red dye had settled onto his shirt, forming little scarlet pock marks. I wondered if that was what blood looked like. I looked away from him, out the window, and I saw the radio tower in the field. In a flash of brilliant light, lighting struck it, and it sparked and flared. One, two, three seconds, I counted. Four, five, six. It didn’t come back on. “Nooo!” I cried, jerking away from my father and running as fast as I could to the front door and out. I slipped on the wet wood of the front porch and tripped down the steps, falling to my knees in the gravel of the driveway. I felt the rocks cut into my bare knees, and I sobbed. As I struggled to my feet, I couldn’t tell what was dye and what was blood, what was rain and what were tears. My father had followed and he grabbed me, holding me tight, and I think he was crying too. “It’ll be alright,” he whispered into my hair. But there was nothing he could say to make it better. God was dead.

i've fallen in love with a butterfly... his happiness, his beauty, all of him would be destroyed if i clutched him in my hand and held on... but if i just let go, he has the chance to fly away, to be someone elses butterfly, to perch on someone elses hand, to kiss someone else's cheeks with the flutter of his wings....

Resolutions He hadn’t changed at all. Five years ago, Michael Hayes McAllister could have been the paradigm that all stereotypical geeky guys were judged by, suspended indefinitely in those Fred Savage-like awkward years, charmingly bohemian while at the same time precociously intelligent, obsessed with video-games, hacking into unsuspecting victims’ computers, the truth, damning the man and saving the empire, the kind of guy that would never get a girl like Janie Mitchell. She smirked, narrowing an impossibly dark blue gaze—one that way too many nights of overindulgence in jager bombs and jack and cokes had compelled Michael to confess reminded him of a midnight sky, but without the comforting sparkle of stars, just cold and dark. In that typical tail-wagging desire to please, he had meant it in a dreamy, romantic way, but somehow she always knew it was a true assessment of her character. As he picked his way though the white folding chairs that filled the ballroom like seagulls perched upon the coast, Janie could see his most secret thoughts reflected in that jade gaze that she knew all too well. Slowly, she swung her feet back and forth from atop the table upon which she was perched, her legs dangling like two broken branches into space as she overheard Michael turn to Jason, his voice carrying across the largely empty room. “She looks so different, older, maybe, grownup; don’t you think she looks different?” Trading a conspiratorial grin with Janie, Jason just shook his head. “Nah, man, she looks just the same.” They finally came to stand before Janie and she tilted an impish grin, swinging one pointed black stiletto particularly vigorously to crash into Jason’s shin. He muttered a creative expletive that she had never heard before and she bit back a chuckle. Refusing to show any sign that she might be nervous at the inevitable encounter, 3 years after graduation, her voice spread over the couple in a low purr, “Hi boys.” “Hey. . .uh. . .hi Janie. How’s it going?” Michael offered his hand, abruptly withdrawing it, then stepping forward for an awkward hug, the type that you usually reserve for aunts that smell like medicine cabinets, clutching her tightly for a moment too long. She patted his back softly, cracking under the pressure of maintaining her devil-may-care attitude. “Hey, Michael. I’m doing really well, how about you?” “I’m. . .ahhh. . .doing great, working with Jason at the firm, ya know.” She nodded and, because Michael’s intense scrutiny unnerved her, glanced over to Jason as he crouched, rubbing his shin. Looking up with a grin, he offered his hand and she gripped it, twisting hers around, slapping twice, Fresh-Prince-style. “And how is the great lawyer?” “Eh, I’m making it. Does Julia know that you’re here? I’m about to go back there, I can send her out.” His attempt to leave the two of them alone was obvious and Janie shook her head. “Yes, she knows I’m here, and don’t you dare go back there—she’s doing the final fitting of her dress and she’d flip her shit if you saw it.” A look passed between them and Jason sighed, shaking his head. “I almost didn’t recognize you without a cigarette in your hand.” Michael’s interjection was abrupt, and though he was referencing a habit they used to share, she frowned, the stern lines of her expression hiding the genuine offense that she took at the comment. “I gave them up for Lent.” He cleared his throat. “It’s June.” “Yeah, I gave them up for Lent two years ago.” “Oh, well, good for you.” She could see the square outline through dark denim of the Benson and Hedges she knew that she could find in his pocket. The silence settled around them, stifling, like hiding under a blanket. Jason covered a cough with the back of his hand and Michael prepared to stick his foot in his mouth once more. “You’re staying at the Best Western, right? With everyone else? There’s this crazy guy staying next to me that looks just like Professor Shafer, remember, from Chem 102? So every morning, or for the two mornings I’ve been there, he gets up at like, 6:00, bangs around his hotel room, plays the guitar for like, two hours, but somehow always manages to be outside in the hall when I come out of my room, no matter what time it is. He’s always putting lotion on his hands, and every time, says he got too much, and tells me to take some.” Michael shuddered and fell silent for a moment, as if realizing that he was rambling. “Can you imagine?” Janie coughed, while Jason bit his lip to keep from laughing, finally managing, “So you’ve got yourself a 60-year-old admirer, huh, Mike? Better lay off the booze, man.” Janie laughed. “Yeah, I think that’s a good rule in general. Remember the fourth of July after sophomore year when you drank too much champagne, combined with those all-american popsicles? It was more like red, white and spew.” Michael fidgeted. “Shut up, Janie.” “What? It’s not my fault that you ruined the fourth of July.” “Yeah, well, you ruin the fourth of everything.” He didn’t look like he was joking, and the silence settled once more. “Well,” Janie said, hopping off of the table, “that’s my cue. Gotta run.” The quiet murmur of Julia and the seamstress talking behind the closed door was comforting as Janie slid along the wall to the ground, stretching long legs across the expanse of the hallway. However many years ago, she and Julia would stretch across the hallway in their freshman year dorm in precisely the same way, popping pixie sticks and trading secrets, large and small. Janie chuckled at the irony; back then, most of the secrets had been about Julia’s doubts concerning Jason, wanting to break it off every other week, and Janie’s constant pragmatic advice that she had to make up her mind for herself—the world would still be there tomorrow, no matter what she did. To be here, at Julia and Jason’s wedding was surreal, like everything that had followed graduation; Michael and Jason were always best friends, but it seemed unlikely that they would end up at the same law firm, and after four years of the best political science classes around, Julia had chosen to open a tiny boutique catering to the despondent housewives of Eagle Lake, Texas and their teenage daughters’ prom dresses. Janie shook her head in amazement at how people can change, their relationships can shift. At one point, Michael had been Ozzie to her Harriet, and now they could barely stand to be around one another—she could foresee this wedding becoming a disaster waiting to happen. Above the low hum of Julia behind the door, she could hear Jason and Michael testing the microphones on the wide platform serving as a stage in the ballroom, their voices echoing across the empty room with the exuberance that centered around humour that was nine years old, jokes from freshman year. With nothing better to do, Jason had set one of the microphones to echo everything that was whispered into it three or four times, the sound waves cascading around the large space with no apparent destination, and he spoke low into it in his Darth Vader voice, making their laughter bounce around the room in echoes, hitting the walls and spilling into the hallway where Janie was hidden. If she listened very closely, she could hear their low conversation, and she was sure that they didn’t know that it was projected by the sound system around the whole building. “It’s just unreal, man, seriously. She looks so grown-up, so professional, but yet. . .so much like my Janie, the one that used to sneak out in the middle of the night to lie in the middle of the road, drink Bailey’s, and eat Oreos.” Michael faltered, and Janie shifted to the other side of the hallway to be able to hear more clearly, nearly pressing her ear against the wall. “She even smells the same, except without that hint of cigarette smoke. You always think of smokers smelling like an ashtray, but it would always combine somehow with her perfume, so distinctly Janie.” “Listen, Mike. You’ve gotta snap out of this. She’s moved on, and you’re just going to get hurt.” Jason’s words, soft and low, creeping over the floor to where she sit, tugged at Janie’s breath, making it catch. Had she moved on? As if they realized their words could be heard, they moved further away from the microphone and Janie shook her head quickly. Year after year, month after month of convincing herself that Michael had been nothing but bad news seemed to fade in the presence of a few compliments; she was losing her mind, curling her fingers into the fibers of the carpet to keep from running into the ballroom and telling Michael exactly what she thought, how angry she was that he would force her resolve to falter, how much she missed being so close that she could feel him breathe, his own combination of laundry detergent, Irish Spring soap, and cigarette smoke marking him as the only boy she had ever loved. Before she could agonize over the thought any longer, the door to the dressing room burst open and the seamstress came spilling into the hallway, still shoving scraps of fabric and measuring tapes into her basket, shaking her head. “That woman is crazy.” Janie tilted her head, watching the squat graying woman waddle down the hallway, the soft sounds of sobbing breaking her reverie. Rising from the floor and stepping into the dressing room, her eyes scanned the pale blue room, decorated less-than-tastefully with eggshell loveseats and knock-off tiffany lamps, finally spotting Julia sitting in the corner, her wedding dress spread about her in concentric rings of white lace. “Shit, Julia, what’s going on?” Kneeling before the sniffling bride, Janie frowned in confusion, absently smoothing a hand over the rumpled lace as if by soothing the fabric, she could soothe its owner. “I can’t, can’t do this,” Julia sobbed, trying to catch her breath, brown eyes rimmed with red. “I just can’t, I don’t want to, I shouldn’t have to.” “Shhhh, Julia, calm down. It’s just pre-wedding jitters, right, cold feet? You love Jason.” She shook her head furiously, as a small child might, her bottom lip bordering on pouty. “No, no. I don’t. I convinced myself that I did, but, I can’t.” Her breath caught again and a fresh cascade of tears washed down her face, spilling off of her chin onto the dress, creating bluish-grey pockmarks there. Janie’s damage-control instincts snapped into action and she grabbed a box of tissues from beside the fake tiffany, probably there for this very reason. “Okay, it’s okay. You’re going to be fine.” Janie dabbed at the trails of tears as Julia started to calm down again. “You look so beautiful; this wedding is the most special thing that will ever happen to you. Jason is out there, so excited.” Julia shook her head once more, her gaze locked on Janie’s, for the first time, completely lucid. “I can’t do it, Janie. Remember all those times that I knew he wasn’t right for me? I was right, I knew all along.” Janie took a deep breath, glancing toward the door. “Well, what do you want to do?” “I have to get out of here,” Julia whispered, and Janie could tell she was more serious than she’d ever been. “Just. . .leave?” “I have to, Janie. I can come back and explain later, I mean, the wedding’s not until tomorrow. I just have to get away from here.” She looked so peaceful in her resolve, as if in the midst of her engagement falling apart, she had finally found sanctuary. Janie nodded slowly, looking around the room. “There’s no simple way out, we’re going to have to go through the ballroom.” Julia just nodded, rising calmly, smoothing the while silk over her hips. “I’m ready.” Janie didn’t know if she was. Thirty seconds later, they walked quickly across the large room, hands clutched tightly between them, ignoring Michael and Jason on the stage. Janie’s heels clicked against the wood resolutely, with no hesitation. Looking over her shoulder, Janie met Michael’s confused gaze, offering a look that expressed the resolution she had finally come to, and her regret that she had to walk away from it. She looked away. Jason’s panicked voice reached them as they opened the door to outside. “Wait, wait, wait. . .where are you going? What’s going on? Julia, Julia, Julia!” The microphone made his plea echo absurdly around the room, bouncing off of pristine ivory centerpieces and crystal punch bowls, each word fading into the next, dissolving them into unintelligible confusion and panic. Julia never looked back, and the door shut behind them with a perfunctory click.

Meteors “I think I’m having a bad day.” Sara bit her tongue on the retort that almost jumped from her lips, pausing merely for dramatic effect before drawling deliberately into the smoke-fuzzied air, “It’s 3:45 in the morning. Bad day today, or bad day ongoing? Or like, does 24 hours constitute a day, because this really isn’t—“ “A bad week, maybe.” “Yeah, well, me too.” Especially now, having been drug out of bed in the middle of the night, forced to creep through her silent house without waking her housemates and now sitting with him on the back steps that were very quickly turning her entire bottom to an increasingly numb block of ice. Paul just looked at her, a small smile tilting that mouth that could match her quip for quip, when provoked, tugging at the hem of her pajama pants. “I’m finding it very difficult to take you seriously.” Confusion brought her brows together and then she frowned. “The wiener pants aren’t my fault, asshole—you’re the one who drug me out of bed in the middle of the night.” His furtive tapping against her window had echoed a sharp staccato over the soft whir of the fan beside her bed, and she had groaned, pulling the duvet over her head. Eventually, she had parted the blinds and, pressing her nose to the glass, practically growled. “Don’t you have a girlfriend you can wake up in the middle of the night?” He had merely nodded, crooking one finger to draw her outside. Now, she could feel her cranky scale climbing, scarlet creeping over her cheeks with an illusive heat as it so often did when she got annoyed, and she snatched his Marlboro, inhaling deeply, fighting the tickle in her throat. Her eyes, the color of the sky during a summer thunderstorm watered at the effort and she looked heavenward to clear them. With a dainty clearing of her throat, she handed the cigarette back. “Who wears Oscar Meyer pajama pants anyway?” “I do.” The silence enveloped them as he visibly bit back a grin, toeing at the splintered wooden stop with the tip of his shoe. “Why are you having a bad week?” She stared off into the distance in that dreamy way that sometimes cracked the façade that she tried so desperately to maintain, gnawing at her lower lip. “I think that my desk chair has gotten uneven—it wobbles sometimes when I move.” “Like a weeble? Don’t worry, it won’t fall down.” “My mascara has gotten all dried out and clumpy, my favorite pen ran out of ink, the sole of my right converse is declaring itself independent from the rest of the shoe nation, I’m graduating from college in three months and I have absolutely no marketable job skills, and I think I may be getting osteoporosis.” “You don’t wear mascara.” “Of course I don’t, what do you want me to be, spider-eyes?” He smiled, the first genuine smile she’d seen in days, the kind that starts somewhere deep in your chest and ends round about your hairline. “Come on, Sara-bear, we’re taking a trip.” He grabbed her hand with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, tugging her across the gravel driveway in her fuzzy slippers, the big tigers’ heads banging against her ankles with every step. “Where are we going?” She was torn between intrigue and annoyance, the latter losing ground fairly quickly. His dirt brown Oldsmobile 84, arguably not dirt-colored by design, but who could tell by now, was parked halfway into the bushes and she had to duck under a branch just to get in. Sinking into the expansive velvet seat, she felt a thrill of excitement flit through her, a touch of adventure. “Paul,” she whined. “Come on, where are you taking me?” He merely smiled, backing the huge car that she had affectionately termed the Wide Ride out of the driveway. “It’s a surprise, now stop asking.” The ride was quiet, the song on the radio the only accompaniment to their thoughts. He bobbed his head along to Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer and she stared out the window, pressing her nose to the glass, watching the thick fog that hovered over the moonlit ground, painting the whole night with a dream-like brush, soft and fragile, threatening to dissipate at the first word spoken. The stars hung suspended above them, unmoving as they sped underneath, and she traced a fingertip over the glass, stenciling the constellations there as if to remember them more clearly, more concretely, with less of that transient feel that seemed to encompass the night, and their lives. Becoming aware of their path, she turned back to him. “I’m not going skinny-dipping.” He turned left onto the highway leading to the Reservoir where more than one night had led large groups of not-so-slightly inebriated freshmen (and upperclassmen, though they wouldn’t admit it as readily) to doff their clothes for the sake of summer-night bonding. He chuckled, taking the first left before the one to the Res. “No, you’re not. I’d have to get you wasted before that, right?” She nodded sagely. “Of course.” He grinned, maneuvering the Wide Ride alongside a stand of pines and killing the engine. “Come on.” Hopping out of the car, he headed for the woods, and she had to jog to catch up, nearly tripping in the process over the branch-littered ground, the cold seeping through the thin jacket she had grabbed on the way out the door. “If I’d known we were going for a hike, I might have worn more appropriate footwear.” He just grinned, kicking at one of her tigers. “I would never ask you to forsake fashion just for a hike.” He flipped on a huge flashlight that she hadn’t even noticed in the car and an almost invisible path became apparent. He started down it without her, and she could only trip after him. The trees arched black and silent above them, forming a fractal pattern with the midnight blue sky slicing its way through in chunks and grabs, the stars just barely visible. She felt like complaining, though a discomfort with the dark woods was more the reason than actual annoyance. “Geez, why are we doing this? It’s creepy. I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things,” she grumped in a near-mumble, crossing her arms over her chest. “Hush, or I’ll make you.” She could hear the amusement that laced his words and was forced to grin in turn. “Whatever, I’d drop you like a bad habit.” She shoved at his back with a laugh and he stumbled down the path a couple of feet. They walked in companionable silence for a good ten minutes, and Sara wrapped her jacket more tightly to her, hiding from the brutal wind that rustled through the old pines. She hadn’t yet been able to figure out Paul’s intentions tonight. He was so often impulsive, but this set a new record, and she wasn’t so sure that she was enjoying it. “Alright, there’s a big decline right here, so be careful,” Paul spoke up, interrupting her internal analysis. She automatically grabbed his shoulder for support, following him down what seemed like steps carved into the stone of the slope, though it was obvious that no man had taken a tool to the earth there. “Okay, almost there.” He stepped over a gap in the stone, then turned around and offered his hand. “Big step.” The fissure between the slope and the slab of stone that stretched out before them looked as if she could shimmy right through to nothingness if she wanted to. Becoming aware of the rock on which they were standing, a shiver traced down her spine, realizing that their perch hung suspended over the valley past the plateau on which they lived, held on by that nothing she had just stepped over. Logically, she knew that it was attached at the base, but the feeling of hovering, balanced above infinity, refused to leave her. “What is this?” she whispered into the night. “This. . .is what I wanted to show you.” He led her with a gentle tug to sit Indian-style upon the cold rock and then killed the flashlight with a flick of his thumb. Abruptly they were plunged into darkness and she gasped audibly, all rational thought escaping as she realized that they were literally surrounded by stars: in front as far as the eye could see, arching overhead, wrapping around either side of their perch. The tiny torches were all at once crystalline pure, cold, unmoving, stretching into forever—and as comforting as her mom’s vegetable soup and cornbread, wrapped between ice-cold hands on a night just such as this. He stretched out on his back beside her and without a word she mimicked his movement, relaxing into the unwieldy stone without a thought to discomfort or a word of complaint. The cold seeped through the cotton separating her from the rock, but she ignored it. She felt immeasurably small, a dot on the face of a giant planet, held down by its imperceptible spinning. She could almost feel the pressure that held her there, pressing her into the stone with a gentle force like two hands upon her shoulders, not letting her miss one second of this experience. She didn’t have a joke to make, no rabbits left to pull out of her hat. “Why are you having a bad day?” Her words sounded hoarse, breathed into the sanctity of the darkness, surprising even to her. Paul didn’t speak for a long time and she wondered for a moment if he had even heard her above the rush of the silence. He was rarely serious, but as his deep indrawn breath broke the silence, she could practically feel their banter slip away, as desperately as she wanted to wrap her fingers around it and hold tight, as desperately as she wanted to hide behind it. “Do you ever think that every decision you ever made was wrong? That you’ve gotten to a point where you can’t go back and change anything? But you don’t know how to continue on the path you’re on. . .where to go?” She was shaken by his question, the lack of preamble, and the fact that she felt as if the words could have been her own; she curled her fingers into the rock, nails scraping over the sandstone to keep from grabbing his hand. She just needed a touch to calm the fear, fear that she usually denied but that after he had put it into words, acknowledged as a mutual dread, was undeniably real. “Yeah, I feel that way.” As graduation loomed before them, the future waited on the other side, the unknown that threatened to devour them. He had talked about joining the Peace Corps and she would be in grad school. . .somewhere. The distance would stretch between them until it didn’t matter anymore. Distance wouldn’t be the issue, they just wouldn’t bother to call, wouldn’t have the time, wouldn’t want to. “What are we supposed to do?” His voice was muted in the still night and she shook her head, knowing that he couldn’t see her. All of a sudden, above their heads one of the pinpricks of light shot across the sky, arching high over its comrades, leaving them behind as it made one last lunge for freedom. Mesmerized, Sara and Paul automatically linked fingers, holding tight as if to keep from following the star’s path. No words were needed as a calm settled over them like a warm quilt; maybe the world wasn’t ending. If a huge ball of flaming gas, millions of miles away could arch its way through a pitch black sky, no thought to trepidation or fear, completely free and alone, maybe they could find their way as well. Their fingers laced like the strings on a baseball mitt, Sara squeezed tight. After a minute, Paul squeezed back, gently, and Sara smiled into the darkness.

I’ve spent my entire life talking about religion. I’ve frequently barked at the least deserving friends lately. I was taught that faith has three steps, no matter what the religion of choice may be. First, there is imitation; we are brought to Church, Temple, Mosque, Meeting Center by a parent or role model. We do not know what’s going on. We watch them and listen (sometimes) to the big voice at the head of the building. We whisper because we are told to—though I think we all remember that need to shrill out one note or another in church just to get that wonderful bubbly feeling of our own voice bouncing back at us. In the second stage of faith, we make our religious practice, in a sense, our own. We go to church, because it is what we do. We learn stories and memorize prayers. We whisper in church because we have learned that we are in the presence of something greater. Then there is the last stage of faith. Understanding why we pray. Understanding why we go to church. Doing more than just going to church. We don’t even whisper in church anymore because we are busy with the business of actually being in church. I am sure there is a hazy golden circle of truth to all this, but like most religious matters. I don’t think it can possibly be that simple. When we are involved in a stage of faith we have no idea, we don’t step back and say, “Ah, yes, stage three, well, that’s about right.” The only time we attempt objectivity in regards to faith is when we have no idea what stage we are in. It has always baffled me that there isn’t a stage of faith called “Doubt”, and another called “Disbelief”. I think that doubt comes in between three and four amongst all he other adolescent irritating ambivalence. “Disbelief” is an optional step. Those who reach it, either know nothing else, or hit it immediately after stage three. I think not deciding whether or not you believe in God is a waste of time and energy that you could put forward to believing or not. The atheists I know are far more devout and firm in their disbelief than any Christian or Jew of my acquaintance. It is a fallacy to treat atheism as a choice that ultimately cuts the individual out of humanity. In their very nature, atheists are committed to life on this earth and dedicated to the betterment of the only world they will ever live in. Before I am drowned in a sea of letters from angry agnostics, lets me explain—I don’t believe agnostics to be life haters—I have my agnostic days. But, I also have days where I really like the Backstreet Boys; neither is something I advertise. The Backstreet Boy comment was tongue-in-cheek—in fact, I have a hard time accepting someone as being a “good fill-in-religious-practice-of-choice” unless they have those, “dark nights of the soul.” Without doubt, there is no fear, without fear the promise of divine hope and love means a little less. This is the time of our lives to earnestly seek the truth and make it our own. I started with books, such a cowardly way out of really facing the world. Iris Murdoch speaks of the sovereignty of the good in her philosophy. I can’t live my life by Murdoch, what I take away from her is also what I take from D.H. Lawrence—a strong love and regard for our relationships with each other. Some would put this another way—seeing God in each other. Others would tell me that that sentiment rings a little blasphemous. Finally, someone would say something about vampires and I’d have reached the bottom of the crazy hate mail pile. Obviously, I am searching for what I believe. I thought for a while at least, that I could reconcile myself to doubt, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. There are too many wonderful, awful, dangerous, and lovely things that happen every second for there not to be some delicate elaborate joke behind it all. Until last week, I could not remember the last time I felt anywhere close to being comfortable in my spiritual skin. I would feel all my nerves stand on end, my pretentious streak comes out, and my eyes droop. Last week, I shared a dinner with my friends. With the food we made ourselves, they continued to cook as we all gathered around the table, sitting in a motley crew of chairs and arranging place settings in a rainbow of colors and textures. Wine was poured; food was passed. A collective sigh went up for that moment in the little house we created, I felt every soul living and dead joining us in this communion. Hokey? A little, but most true. We cannot begin to understand God, life, and death if we sit down and write in our journals and look in our mirrors mouthing “Who am I?” We can only peek at the secrets of the universe when we look to each other and treat each person as a distinct lovely being, connected at some level not yet nameable to the question our fat smart heads keep thinking we have to figure out. Spirituality and love do not only allow intellectuals. They allow thinkers; they allow you. And if they allow you, I can keep my fingers crossed in hope to squeak by without too much ruckus.

A long time ago, I learned that it is much easier to create the thing you pine for, than to wait for it to find you. Wasn’t that a sort of eighties maxim: See what you want, then take it? Mine’s a tad different: see what you want, then make it. You see where this is going. In a “Personals” add, I’m hot stuff: Fun-loving blonde with blue eyes, funny, smart, talentlessly artistic, a little zany and not looking for any sort of up-front commitment. Then the reality kicks in: the “artistic” turns out to be an all-out obsession few can tolerate and the “zany” can at times be less than fun. Even as the kind of girl who I thought might pass for desirable on the written page, I seem to only attract ne’er-do-wells and creeps. I discovered this in my brief foray into the world of the “Personals” with my post on The Onion’s website--- not one of my better moments, I’ll admit. In fact, some would call it desperate. And by someone, I mean everyone. But it was, at its core, a dare and, in the end, general opinion ended that internet adventure. Good thing because I don’t think I was ready to be the subject of some Lifetime movie of the week. (“He seemed so great, how could I know he had a kitten fetish?”) Growing up, I had a list of standards for The Guy—capital letters—some of the choicer tidbits were as follows (I found them in my black notebook written in silver gel pen): --Funny, in a subtle way --Smarter than me by a lot --Non-smoker --Devout in his religion of choice --Vegetarian (who knows why) --Stamp collector (I have no idea what this one’s about) --Actor (yeah, no.) --Older than me by exactly seven years (Why, exactly—because I was so mature?) --Gifted writer --Good singer --Wants to have five kids (God help us) --Likes Indian food --Likes to try new food --Sees a lot of movies --Is kind --Likes me --Has read more books than I have (this was back when I knew how many books I had read. This was when I thought how many books I had read mattered.) Then, I grew up. The list changed. It now stands as follows: --Is kind. --Likes me. This is why in my ever-successful two-year college career I have dated no one at my school. This is why I was so happy when I met Colin. This is why I was so happy when I created Colin, if we are to be completely candid. We met at work, down in the costume shop in the Tennessee Williams Center. I was getting hours for my theatre class, he was just, well, being there. I was sewing a button back onto a vest when I felt someone’s gaze fixed upon me. Colin stands about six feet tall. He has no head. He has no lower body to speak of (including certain integral parts of the male anatomy). He has no arms. His skin is cloth. He is mounted on rollers and very seldom wears any clothes. Colin is a dress-form. But he’s my dress-form. In the romantic world, inside my head, Colin is a soccer-player who wants to be an organic farmer in Brazil or a pediatrician in Manhattan. While no longer necessarily a religious zealot by any means, in this new version of self-constructed happiness, he has a strong, albeit puzzled, sense of God. Best of all, Colin never wanted to play with bacteria for a living, never even set foot in a lab, never spent hours hunched over a microscope, much like me and organic farming, so we have a lot to bring to each other. We’re both homebodies, but enjoy a good time going out and about. He’s a terrible chef who loves to cook and an awful singer, but loves to sing. Neither of us can dance. We aren’t always together. He puts up with my moods, and he makes me laugh. He’s so smart it’s kind of disgusting. I don’t mean, “Look at my grades—let me tell you everything about everything” smart, I mean secure in his place in the world, secure in his knowledge of how things work. What an amazing way to be all the time! Neither of us were phone talkers before we met. I always ran out of things to say, but now I can’t go to sleep without talking to him. I think he feels the same way. Although my friends all think he’s weird, they’re happy that I’m happy. They all agree that Colin is a good name, soft enough, but carried well by a man who is at one with his masculinity. If he gets stinky, I just whip out the Febreeze. If anything, it smells better than some of the stuff other guys drown themselves in. Colin understands why I think cows are so scary and why sometimes I don’t want to do anything at all, but read or just sit. Colin knows I’m smart, but tells me I’m beautiful. For the first time in my life I believe him, and so I am. Beautiful. Lately, I’ve gotten a little concerned. New dress-forms have been wheeled into the costume shop: lady dress-forms. I’ve started to see the pitfalls in our passionate fictional affair. He and I, after all, come from different worlds. Perhaps it will be best to let him go and, to quote Harold and Maude, “Love some more”. The best kind of love is the kind that is real; there’s no argument. The kind that involves hands and arms and teeth and lips and eyes and other lovely bits, the best kind of love is never so perfect or constant or easy or attainable. The best kind of love is rare and not something you’re necessarily going to find here. So we satisfy ourselves with other loves. We satisfy ourselves with weekends, with plays, with good coffee, relentless academics and conversation—in other words, we all get pretty good at talking the talk and walking the walk. We ooze the strength of separate people who don’t need anyone, who don’t want anyone. We satisfy ourselves with words, words, and endless words until the day comes when we are washed in peace and quiet. Or, if you’re me, until peace and quiet, six feet tall with no arms and no legs and no head, rolls in the door.

The music’s blaring, “a little less conversation, a little more action please.” From my place sprawled on my friend Anna’s floor in Benedict with a cosmo magazine, I look over as friend-Anna sits at her computer. With a solitary and understood eyebrow-arch we are on our feet, getting down with our bad, bad selves. It was a glorious moment in the midst of a remarkable, chaotic year. At the time, we laughed at our mangling of lyrics in the already-garbled Elvis remix. Then, we were a whole year younger and could laugh off the total lack of “play” for women like us at Sewanee: Irrepressible, smart, cynical, desperately hiding our charming baggage, and perhaps (I’m ashamed to remark) a little less than Gwyneth Perfect. Yes. The Gwyneth Perfect gets a capital P. Over the summer, my normal straight-out-of-a-musical summer romance failed to occur; because of that, my already quietly nervous romantic sensibilities were jarred. School started before I knew it. A sweet freshman girl claimed she had found the perfect guy for me. I was skeptical, but began wearing makeup to class and tried to stop short my verbally incontinent nature should I ever accidentally encounter this mystery man. I wanted to be observed without worrying that I’d be doing something loud, absurd, or anything that might give a clue as to who I really am – why foist that on someone right away and spoil the surprise? Then, there was the inevitable first sort of conversation. “Sort of conversation,” I hear you echoing, and there, I nod sagely. There was no preface to the dialogue, no hello, none of the usual queries about weather or classes. He opened up his rugged mouth: “Did you know that Alaska is four times the size of Texas?” Followed by much blinking on my part and then – God help me – I tilted my head and replied, “Well did you know that Texas is bigger than France?” It didn’t get any better. Even some nicety inquiring after the health of my parents would have been less shocking. Later that weekend, I told the story to a roundtable of friends over dinner for probably the eighth time and a boy who shall remain nameless, but for artistic purposes will be called Hub Weller – shook his head at me, “Wow, ‘I’m Lauren and my standards are way up here!’” That’s when I realized maybe he was right. Maybe it is expecting too much, desiring to spend time with someone who’s just moderately interesting. I’d rather have dinner with someone I hated then with someone who has nothing to contribute on the way I think or live or even what I order. It was at this low point, while I wallowed in seasoned fries and coke, that my friends decided I needed to arrange a SWAT team every time I went out on a date. Nothing fancy, maybe a surveillance van or underground lair with high-tech gizmos, but I’d settle for a table on the other side of the room, dark glasses, and a tin-can telephone. From this safe distance, I would be instructed on what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and if to say anything at all. Horrifying visions of Anna smashed on Ruby Tuesday’s Appletinis and hoarsely whispering into the tin can “Take off your braaaa!” and me, staring the potential new boy down and requesting that he remove his undergarments flashed through my head. Our cute waiter Jason shattered the moment, and I proved how desperately I needed a team of experts by thanking him seven or nine times and apparently batting my eyelashes. This would probably explain why he looked sort of a cross between confused and sick to his stomach. It’s okay; he had a tattoo of a rose wrapped around his wrist, and what we thought was cute winking finally appeared to be a permanent facial tic. Me and my standards. When I was eight years old I had no idea I’d even make it to twenty alive. I distinctly remember leaning against my kitchen counter and asking my mom if when she was small, she’d found the idea of turning twenty an impossible one. This is not where I thought I’d be. I thought I’d be blonder, funnier, nicer, and more honest. I thought I’d be famous by eighteen, seriously dating Daniel Day Lewis by nineteen and retired after critical accolades by twenty. I thought by the time I was twenty all that my parents told me would have come true and that I’d believe in God with the same seamless strength that they do, and that men would think I was as beautiful and as unique as I’d always been told I was. I thought I would understand the way the world worked, and more importantly, accept it. What has happened isn’t all that awful. I’m nowhere near as blonde, nice or honest as I’d like, and rather than being famous, I’ve finally come to accept that wanting nothing more than to hide out in a lab is a worthy endeavor. I’ve learned what’s important to me, and sadly it’s not Daniel Day Lewis or any of the bad boys my mother promised would someday see the error of their ways. I just want to get up on time every morning, sleep in on the weekends, and never go to bed without having a good story to tell. It’s not an easy thing to realize, after a decade of thinking only someone else could make me happy or whole, that happiness is my own choice, but with every rainy day and aimless boring conversation, every good book and bubble bath, I’m reconciling myself to becoming something better than a nice blonde: a strong one.