Moot Point

I came upstairs from watching a movie, my break (which was actually still sort of work), and there was a message on my machine. From him. Just wanted to see how my essays were going, how I’d liked the play I’d seen last night, &c.

I had to pee, so I went to the washroom before calling him back. “Gosh, he called me, just to see how I was,” I thought. “He must really like me.”

I saw myself in the mirror, grinning like an idiot.

“I look so happy,” I thought. “I must really like him.”

Hands-down weirdest thing that I have ever said while making out:

“…You have a really well-defined jawline.”

Today I have a lot to do, so I am wearing a tie to be more businesslike. It’s very Elle Woods on her first day at Harvard of me.

So far, it’s sort of working. Wish me luck!

In the past few months I’ve developed a habit of chewing on my lower lip. And I don’t mean in the cute, outer-lip biting way. I’m talking about nibbling away at the skin on the inside of my lower lip. The area’s now full of little cuts.

I think it’s part of a larger oral fixation issue. I’ve battled nail-biting on and off since childhood, but it’s pretty easy to stop by painting your nails. Then, my teeth get bored and they start looking for other things to bite. My lower lip is convenient because it’s right there, and no one really seems to notice you’re chewing on it. (No one’s said anything to me about it, not even the guy I was dating for part of the lip-biting period, and spent more time in close proximity to my mouth than anyone else in my life.)

Trouble is, it’s really easy to break yourself of nail-biting: just put bad tasting stuff on your nails until you develop a Pavlovian biting nails/bad taste association. I can’t simply put bad-tasting stuff on the inside of my lower lip because it’s, well, inside my mouth. So I’ve let it slide.

Today, however, was my breaking point. I ordered curry chicken for my take out dinner, from a not especially spicy restaurtant. As I ate it, I started thinking, “Why does my mouth hurt so much from this spicy food? Oh yeah, full of tiny open wounds.” It took me over half an hour and two glasses of water to suffer through what normallly would’ve been a delicious dinner. This is no way to live.

But how to break the cycle? In the past, even when I’ve refrained for a time, I start up again worse than ever when the wounds start to heal.

Clearly, I need something new to orally fixate on. But what can I chew on or have in my mouth all the time that isn’t unhealthy or otherwise disgusting? I should surrender and take up smoking. It would quell my oral fixation and give me something to do with my hands. I’m like a smoker trapped in a non-smoker’s body. Except that I like smelling good and flesh-coloured fingers and breathing easily and having money and not having cancer.

Yeah, I know that last post was all “Look how adorable I am.” But sometimes a girl needs a fantasy comfort-boyfriend.

Because when I left the library, I just bought hot chocolate for myself.

Tonight, I really just want a boy to come home to so I can rest on his shoulder and he can stroke my hair (I have very soft hair, it’s one of my best traits (that and my top-notch spelling abilities) so it’s not like it would be a huge hardship for him) and tell me I’m pretty and bring me hot chocolate and possibly massage various body parts. (Don’t worry, I’m not one of those girls who say they want a boyfriend but actually want like a faceless sensitive guy who plays the acoustic guitar and is there for them and has no personality and demands nothing more of them than that they allow him to stroke their exceptionally soft hair and bring them things. When he was tired and discouraged and his eyes were so dry and tired from planes and computers that he felt like they were going to fall out of his head, I would be right there to let him rest his head on me and stroke his hair and tell him how pretty he is and bring him hot chocolate and massage his parts for him.)

But I don’t really need all that; I’d settle for the hot chocolate.

I still say I should try to use “I’m an excellent speller” as a pick-up line.

Last night my parents took us to see blues genius Buddy Guy do an acoustic show, which was wonderful, ’cause it’s not the kind of ticket that I could usually afford. I’d love to write about it, but it was really a singular experience. To give you an idea, when my dad asked us what we thought, the first thing my brother and I did for a few minutes was nod slowly and approvingly.

Anyway, the opener was “sixteen-year-old guitar sensation” Kyle Riabko. The boy’s obviously a very talented singer, songwriter and guitarist, and a brilliant showman. However, he had one song to which the chorus was:

I want your es-tro-gen
Gimme some of your es-tro-gen
I want your es-tro-gen

As someone who’s on her second month of birth control and has suffered at various times nearly all the myriad side effects - bloating, tender breasts, cramps, nausea (it was pretty severe in the first month), uncontrollable mood swings, &c, all I could think was “Dude, no you don’t.”

• My Audrey Hepburn purse, stained with Christmas window paint


• The battery holder on my digital camera, broken the day I received it


• My computer, which I have had for a year


• The frayed, salt-stained cuffs of every pair of pants I own


• The keepsake pocket of my journal


• My salt-faded red Pumas, which can never be restoreod to their former glory


• My new red sweater, with a hole in one seam


• My Nick-and-Nora rubber duck pajamas, the bottom button ripped since day one


• The right-hand pocket of my winter coat, ripped


• The small tear in the Ewan MacGregor “Truth” poster of my Moulin Rouge four poster set; the stains from that blue poster goo on my Italian Notorious poster


• The volume control on my computer speakers, mushed when dropped


• The scrolling wheel on my mouse, stopped working when water was spilled on it


• The red nail polish stains on my keyboard and desk


• My khakis, stained with ink less than a month after their acquisition


• The breaking handle and scuffed bottom of my (non-Audrey Hepburn) purse


• The folded, water-damaged covers of every book I’ve carried around in my bag while reading, especially Greenmantle by John Buchan and the ink-stained Death Comes for the Archbishop


• Every single one of those double-CD cases that look like one CD but are actually two, somehow broken


• My variously broken and chipped striped ’70s coffeeset

This is why I shouldn’t have nice things. I always break them slightly right away and then get used to having them damaged.

This has been such an emotionally fraught reading week.

There’s so much that I don’t quite know how to put into words.

Things went okay with gIbuwlm last night. He’s being all sweet and apologetic and generous to try to make up for the way he treated me, but it’s not the kind of thing that contrition and gifts and an expensive dinner can make up for. The thing is, I don’t know how he can.

We were friends for a long time. And he still wants to be, it’s just - I don’t know if I can do it. Or if I should.

Today, I needed a vacation from intensity. After going to two movies* and out to dinner and basically running around all day yesterday, today, I went to the dentist, ate lunch with my brother and then watched TV and pretended I had no worries, especially not about all the schoolwork I was going to be doing.

*Chaplin’s The Circus with live organist accompaniment in the afternoon and then Triplets of Belleville at night.

In the last 24 hours or so, I’ve been growing increasingly tense.

I don’t know if it’s just the three cups of coffee I drank this morning.

Or the sort of frustrating family spats that I always forget about when I’ve been away.

Or that I don’t know how I’m going to afford to stay in Toronto this summer.

Or that the gIbuwlm* (”guy I broke up with last month” or “gibewlim,” for easier pronouncing) emailed about having dinner tonight or Tuesday several days ago to discuss salvaging our battered friendship (which is much much older than our dating relationship) and I wrote back today, question mark, but he hasn’t called or written back and it’s after 5:30. (Scratch that, he called as I was writing this.)

Or how dinner will go.

Or. Or. Or. Or.