moo
2007-10-24 2:14 a.m.

i knew a girl who said, "moo" to mean, "tell me about it." this was middle school, when we were all desperate to forge identities but terrified of being unique, and we resorted to lunacy to deal with this contradiction-- inventing words, making our own makeup.

"greg looks good today."
"moo."

"my mother won't let me buy any more yellow nail polish. she is a nazi."
"moo."

wonder where she is now, that cow girl? a TA mooing to a barnful of undergrads? cooing and mooing a baby to sleep?

i think everyone i know must have babies by now. they have found love and have braided themselves into love and now have produced more love. love springs love.

in class we discussed cliches.
"tell me some cliches for middle school girls." i did not know what would result; i did not consider myself normal in any way.

"what do you have."
"insecure, boy-crazy. silly. wears barettes and lots of bright nail polish."

how was i to know i was a cliche? i gasped when the student said nail polish. and then a new problem, for us all, but for writers especially-- where is the line between a cliche and something so true it makes you gasp?

grandmothers, alcoholics, business women, cheerleaders--i'll bring them back for this exercise next spring. but not middle school girls.

--

i had a dream you climbed onto me and put yourself in my mouth. how am i supposed to deal with this? what do other people do? keep these things to themselves--fine, fine, moo.

--

i get so frustrated that my comb is not a hand.

there are hand images everywhere: i want a hand; i wish my glove compartment was full of not maps, but hands; my own palm is cupped, waiting, ready to accept anything but hollowness; yellow fingernails; i wrote to a friend to say, hello, i'm inside a closed fist.

--

there's a community of gchatters with darkness at their backs.

--

i knew a boy with sandy hair and an unbuttoned shirt. what's between "boy" and "man"?

--

an optical illusion like pink squares inside other colored squares:

sometimes the bags under my eyes age and embarass me, and other times they are sensual shadows that lure you in, you who? you, the man looking at my picture, not me looking at my reflection.

--

eric says i write two more stories about myself or resembling people like myself and then i'm free. free! it's almost enough to make me want to write.