When I am alone on dark streets at night, I sometimes pull out my phone and have a conversation with myself. While that sounds pretty special all on its own, sometimes I bring it to the next level and “converse” in either Italian or Russian. I’ve taken three years of Russian and a year of Italian. While that doesn’t make me fluent in either of them, I know enough of both languages to throw random real words into a blend of Russian or Italian sounds. When I can’t think of what words to speak next, I “listen to the other speaker.”

It’s easier to converse in Russian. Two units ago, my class learned how to say simple things on the phone: “Hello”, “How are you?”, “Listen to me!”, “Meet me at the Dacha!”, “At 8 o’clock? No I can’t do 8, I am going to the zoo.”

Italian is a bit tougher for me, since I’ve had less time speaking Italian than singing it. I’ve been learning Italian arias and art songs since I was eleven years old and so I typically just speak the lyrics when I’m pretending to speak on the phone in Italian. The conversation will go like so:

Bonjorno. (Pause). Come va? Sto bene, sto bene. Se tu m’ami, se tu so spiri. (Pause). Sol per me, gentil pastor. (Pause). Ho dolor dei tuoi martiri. (Pause)

And it goes on. I find this not only a pretty successful way to ward off crazy people on the street who want my attention, but it’s also pretty entertaining.

And when I’m with a friend and we’re passing crazy people on the street, I sometimes start speaking to my friend in a different language. Typically, they have no idea at first why I’m speaking to them in a different language all of a sudden. But, after the first few times, but they nod and smile at me, waiting for the crazy person to pass so I can be normal again. If the crazy person insists on speaking to us, we look at them confusedly and I tell him that we don’t speak English in either Italian or Russian. They usually understand the word “English” and don’t bother responding.

Apparently though, the crazy people on the North side of town are a little more educated than those downtown, where I live.

I was meeting my friend Carin for coffee down there around 9 o’clock, and we decided to take a walk. We were having a delightful time when some six ft tall man who looked like he had escaped from the Confederate Army with sleeping bags and his entire kit on his back, came limping toward us. He had long, greasy brown hair, a thick beard, and some sort of dirtied uniform on.

We were the only two on the sidewalk besides him. We watched him anxiously, our heartbeats accelerating. As we kept walking toward him, Carin searched frantically for mace in her gigantic pocketbook, and I began to speak at her in Italian.

The man was saying something to himself, without even a prop that would make him seem less crazy. As he came closer, we heard him say quite loudly, “Cackle, cackle, cackle!”

It took a second before my survival mechanism enabled me to call to mind the lyrics of “La Donna é Mobile”: “La donna è mobile,” I said, gesturing excitedly. “ Qual piuma al vento. Muta d’accento — e di pensiero. Sempre un amabile, leggiadro viso, in pianto o in riso, — è menzognero!”

I said all of this as quickly as I could as we passed him, not looking in his direction. He just kept repeating, “cackle cackle cackle” to himself, though he must have been listening to me the whole time. For when we had gotten about ten feet away from him, and thought we were home free, we were stopped dead in our tracks.

La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento
Muta d’accento e di pensier!
e di pensier!
e di pensier!

He sang. His last “pensier” lasted quite awhile, until he ran out of breath. It seemed he had the lungs of a swimmer.

We didn’t turn around and watched him in the reflection of a store window just ahead. He didn’t come closer, but had turned around and was singing to us.

It would be fairytalish to say that he was a great singer and that we had turned around and sang the next verse. But to be quite blunt, he was an awful singer. At least he was loud enough for his voice to echo on the streets.

We watched his reflection in the side window of a store. After his refrain, he began to limp back toward us, perhaps expecting an opera to erupt.

Instead, we ran like hell to my car and played Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the way back to Carin’s house.

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My left back pocket was empty, so I checked my right back pocket. I would have known if there was anything my front pockets; I always stick my hands in there when I don’t know what to do with them, which is quite often and has already happened at least once today.

I stopped in my tracks, turned around, and headed back the way I came from, crossed a couple streets, opened my front door, opened my bedroom door, set down my backpack, sat on my bed and stared at my feet for a little while.

Soon, I forgot why I was sitting there and staring at my feet instead of sitting happily at my favorite table in the café, sipping tea, nibbling muffin crumbs, and writing.

Random thoughts entered my head and I allowed them to pass through: I recalled times when I was a little girl, testing pens for ink in my father’s office. I wondered how fax machines worked. I decided Jenny in 7th grade didn’t have anything against me, but was really too into herself to even notice me.

Then I stood up and looked around, wondering who came up with the concept of time and how much of it I had just wasted. Typically, I stuck pretty close to a routine. Without one, I became pathetically lazy. The café and my writing were essential parts of it. But to go to the café, I needed money.

Where did my money go? Why were everyone’s birthdays in October? Why did my hair-stylist accuse me of bringing my hair to a slow death by using cheap hair products? Why did I not realize that to pledge the minimum of $100 in the Cancer Dance Marathon meant that I had to pay whatever money I didn’t raise (why didn’t I realize I had to raise money for it, either?)?

So, my pockets were empty. I paced, visions of black coffee and bran muffins taunting me. I would have to alter my routine again and get a job. Where? How much did I want an hour? As much as I could make! But what was reasonable?

I ran around Pearl Street Mall picking up job applications. Several places told me that I needed to drop off resumes.

A resume. I didn’t have one of those.

“It’s easy,” my friend Laurina in the Business school told me. “I’ll send you mine and you can just change the details.”

Her resume was immmaculate. I thought of things I could possibly hire her for, but nothing came to mind. Every job she had, she had a description below it about what she learned from her position, what her duties were, and what she enjoyed most about the job. Beneath the jobs were two lists of references, 3 professional, 3 personal.

I changed all the information, but halted at the “Personal References” section. Who could I call to hand that I’d known for at least a year that would give me a good recommendation? My coworkers were listed for two spots already. For the third, I scrolled through my phone and hesitantly put down Jon Myers. I still had his number from the last time I house-sat for him and his wife, June.

Jonathon Myers was a friend of my family’s. He was a great guy, though I didn’t think he knew me that well. He knew I was a good kid, and I figured that that had to be enough for a recommendation. Besides, if he gave me a bad one, my parents would inevitably find out and stop going to dinner with him and June at the Organic Ali’s.

I printed out 30 copies of my resume, kissed the top of the pile for good luck, and tucked them into a chartreuse, two-pocket folder, ready for distribution. Yes, I know to have printed out 30 copies seems a little overzealous, but my father always taught me that the more I distribute, the better the odds of my success.

Somehow, I managed to drop off all the copies to places that were hiring. Now, all I could do was sit back and wait for the phone calls. I put my phone on vibrate in class so I’d know when I’d been rung. break

My phone never rang. The only person who seemed to get any calls was Jono from my critical thinking class. We were group members and outside of class, he’d told me that he was keeping his phone on because his sister was expected to go into labor any moment.

Every time his phone would ring, he’d jump in his seat and check the caller ID, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion before hitting the “ignore” button and apologizing to our professor.

Nearly every class period, Jono’s phone would ring. About a week after his nearly-incessant phone calls, not only did he stop jumping every time the phone rang, but he’d also shoot me what I call the “look of death” from across the room. Having no idea what was going on, I became increasingly embarrassed as people started following his glares to my desk. I raised my hands innocently to show that I wasn’t the one calling him.

Not being one for confrontation, I avoided Jono as much as I could and communicated with my group through email only. It was about two weeks after the calls and glares that I figured out what was going on.

I’d shown up to class early one day and had to wait in the hall until the previous class left our room. I heard Jono on the phone, coming up the stairs. There was a ladies’ bathroom two doors away from our classroom; I ran to take refuge within it. It was a particularly quiet building; not many classes were held within it, and the halls echoed. From within the bathroom, I could still make out Jano’s end of the conversation.

JANO: Three years. (Pause) Yep. Uh-huh. Right. Yeah, she’s great. I know her really well. (Pause) Well, I mean, she’s a very talented girl – she kind of has a reputation for excellence around here. (Pause) campus. (Pause) yeah. She’s established quite a clientele among me and my friends. I’ve never known someone so impressive in the (chuckle) boudoir. (Pause) What job is this in reference to again? Why would she need to work at Film-base? She makes plenty of money off of us. (Pause) Right. Okay, well I hope I was of help. (Pause) sure. If you see her, tell her I miss her. She’s really hot and it’s been a few days. (Pause) Okay, thanks. Bye-Bye.

My mouth hung open. I pulled out my phone from my bag and scrolled through the J’s:

JACKIE
JAMES
JENNIE
JENNIFER
JOHN
JON
JON A.
JON M.

John/Jon was a popular name. I hadn’t scrolled down far enough to see “JON M.” Jon Myers. My parents’ friend. JON was Jono – when I first met him, I didn’t know Jono was his nickname. I’d already had two Jons with distinguishing last initials, so I had put him down as just plain “Jon”.

My heart dropped into my shoes and I walked on the precarious edge between keeping my cool and crying uncontrollably. Instead, I chose an alternate route, growing flushed and breaking out in a cold sweat. (Why would my sweat be cold if I felt really hot? The body is so weird.) I looked at myself in the mirror. I had to do something; I was developing sweat stains.

I left the bathroom; it was time for class. I skulked into the class and sat in the corner opposite Jono. I looked at him, my face felt like it was melting off my bone structure. Perhaps my roommate could help me tape it into place later – she was good with crafts.

Class began. Consistent with the previous two weeks, Jono’s phone rang – you’d think he would have changed his default ringtone from “Soulja Boy” to something more classroom-appropriate by now.

He stood up.

“Is it time?” our professor asked.

“No. Sorry. I’ll be right back.” The professor shrugged, worn down by days of in-class phone calls.

I had to do something. With all the adrenaline I could tap into, I leapt up from my seat without excuse and ran out the door in time to hear Jono say:
“She has a reputation for excellence.”

I did the first thing I could think of. When I was 7 years old I used to tackle my father and brother, Kato-like. Needless to say, that’s what I thought of.

I knocked Jono to the concrete floor and took advantage of his shock to grab his cell phone. But Jono had taken Judo and was used to falling over. He grabbed his cell phone back and tried to pin me to the floor. But I’d taken Brazilian Jiu-jitsu for a week and a half, and got him in an arm bar. Jono got out of the arm bar (because I suck at them) and somehow pinned me to the floor again. Seconds afterwards, my legs, which were kicking furiously, trying to be of help, kicked/pushed his chest, giving me distance to move away. I slid the cell phone about five feet away from us, along the glossy, concrete floor and crawled toward it like an escaped toddler. Jono grabbed my foot and pulled me back toward him. I clapped the floor with my hands for traction. They made a squeaking noise. I turned around and kicked wildly at him. He dodged my kicks, but they seemed to disorient him, so I kept kicking.

The door to the classroom opened, and the two of us looked over at our professor and the class watching us. I hadn’t stopped kicking – my legs were now on autopilot. Jono hadn’t moved from where he was kneeling, either, his face two inches from my extended kicks.

My legs lost momentum and it donned on me that the two of us could be kicked out of school for fighting. I wanted to tell this to Jono before we both were expelled.

Our professor ordered everyone but us back in the room. As she did so, Jono whispered to me, “We’re friends, or we get kicked out.”

“I’m not an idiot.” I told him.

We began to laugh before the professor turned around.

“I hate you,” He told me between chuckles, running to grab his cell phone.

“Really? ‘Cause I thought you couldn’t get enough of me,” I told him dryly. Was that a better retort than either “Oh yeah, well I love you,” or “Damn, there goes my clientele”? I wish I had said the ‘clientele line’. That would have been better.

I started to laugh. He came over again and put his arm around me, like he owned me. My laughs turned a little resentful and I realized I had lapsed into a cackle. I reverted back to a short-lived chuckle that ended when the professor walked over to us.

“Stop laughing. I’m not an idiot,” As soon as she said that, I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else she had to say; I’d still be thinking about how I had just said “I’m not an idiot” to Jono.

What I got from the rest of our professor’s tirade, was that if she saw “anything else so much as resembling hostility from one of us toward the other” she’d report us immediately to the Dean of Student Affairs. She told us she didn’t want to see us for the rest of the day and dismissed us. We both tiptoed into the classroom to grab our stuff before leaving.

“I only realized what was happening just today, you know.” I told him as we walked along the road, on the way to our prospective houses. I explained to him the mix up of names, using my phone as my prop. I explained I didn’t realize why he was getting all the calls and then glaring at me in class. He told me I should have explained this all to him sooner. I told him he should have realized it was a mistake. We laughed a little bit about our hall wrestling and just before we parted ways, it dawned on me that I was insanely attracted to him.

We said goodbye and I smiled to myself as I walked down the street.

“Tasha!” he called out to me.
‘Yes, lover!’ I thought to myself, turning around.

“You should check out your hair when you get home. It’s classic!”

I ran home. It’s fun running through crowds, but you can’t do it unless you have a purpose – mine was that I had to check my hair ASAP.

Five minutes later, I was staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. I had put my hair up that morning. While my hair was still in a clip, two giant strands had come out and split on top of my head into two frizzy antennas, stretching toward opposite poles.

It was the weekend and our group met once more to go over Monday’s presentation. Jono didn’t receive any calls during our meeting, presumably because the hiring managers were in primarily on the weekdays.

“The Eiffel Tower is really awesome,” Jono said as Roselyn held up a poster-sized picture of it. “It’s got this-“ he was interrupted by his phone. He stopped talking and pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and glanced at me – he looked like an overheated dog. His phone continued to sing:

“Soulja Boy Off In This Hoe
Watch Me Lean And Watch Me Rock
Super Man Dat Hoe
Then Watch Me Crank Dat Robocop
Super Fresh, Now Watch Me Jock
Jocking On Them Haterz Man
When I Do Dat Soulja Boy
I Lean To The Left And Crank Dat thing
(Now Yua!)”

He checked his phone and all his energy was restored when he answered. “Okay! Okay Sheila! I’m coming! I’ll be there!”

‘She’s having a baby!’ he told the class. ‘She’s having a baby now!’ he told me.

I fed off his excitement, “Oh my God!” I told him and started jumping up and down. I got a brief kick out of jumping so that my head was higher than the Eiffel Tower.

He joined in the jumping for a second. “I gotta go!” he said.

“I’ll drive you!”

“I have a car!” He told me.

“Okay! Bye!”

“Bye!”

He ran off with his backpack and I found myself standing in front of my class. They looked as bored as they did when we were giving our presentation.

“You guys can sit down now,” our Professor told me. “He’ll be back on Wednesday, so you can finish your presentation then.”

I sat down, my heart rate slowing down, smiling in spite of the classroom’s dead energy, wondering if Jono would actually be back on Wednesday. I hoped so.

“Is the next group ready? You guys will have to go today instead.”

“Damn it,” a few people in the back of the room chorused.

(In case you were wondering, my job search was unsuccessful. The odds of employers wanting to hire a reformed prostitute were lower than you would think.)

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A little girl in pigtails came up to me last week while I was sitting in the café. I looked at her and smiled. She smiled back, and then, with nothing else to do, I returned to my writing while she was standing right next to me, staring at me.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes, little girl?”

“Are you a Christian?”

Oh Jesus, I thought. I was never that great with little kids and now I really had to come up with something good, something tactful, something to keep myself calm while, at the same time, not making her run off screaming devil and crying hysterically.

“Why?” That was the best I could do? Okay. Okay, I asked why, that’s okay.

“Because, if, if you’re not, you’ll go to hell. I don’t want you to go to hell.”

“I don’t believe in hell.”

Her mouth dropped open and I looked around to see who my audience was. I had two gray-haired women staring at me, one through her spectacles, the other one from over her spectacles’ rims.

“But there is a hell.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not, it’s in the bible.”

Here it goes. Now I have to look like a jerk and be a pain in the ass with a little girl in pigtails. “I don’t read the bible.”

“You should. You’ll go to hell if you don’t.”

“You forget, I don’t believe in hell.”

“Just because you don’t believe in it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“Do you believe in Lala land?” I asked her.

“What’s Lala Land?”

“A lot of people already live there and they don’t believe it.”

“Is it in the bible?”

“I don’t know, I don’t read the bible.”

“Do you go to church?”

“Not your church.”

“But you go to a church?”

“Listen little girl…you’re really cute and all, but I don’t believe in Jesus.”

I was getting tired of her mouth dropping open. I was working on a great idea for a story. All I had so far was: “Though he was blindfolded and sitting in the middle of a park, thousands of miles (he thought) away from everyone, he could smell her fragrance in the air.”

“Jesus loves you. How could you not believe in him.” I looked around for help. I saw a Hassid in the corner and tried to pawn her off on him, “look, over there. He doesn’t look like he loves Jesus, either. Why are you picking on me?”

“I’m saving you.”

“I don’t have time to be saved today. Maybe next Friday.”

She ignored me. “Jesus loves you.” She stared at me a second before she said, “I just want to give you this.” She handed me a pamphlet of with a giant church on it. It kind of looked like Epcot with a giant cross on top.

“That’s alright. I’ve got one already.”

“No you didn’t. I never gave you one.”

“Can we just say you did so that we can save a tree? I’d hate to waste a tree on Jesus.”

“Jesus made the trees.”

“What?”
“Jesus made the trees.”

I took out the Environment Colorado flyer someone had handed me earlier and gave it to her, “then save them, by God, they’re precious.” I handed it to her – there was a big, glossy tree on the front.

“Just…take it.” She put the pamphlet on my table and pushed my head back, saying “Go with Jesus,” before walking off with the Environment Colorado flyer.

On my way out, I dropped the pamphlet in the recycling bin and saved a tree in the name of Jesus.

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There’s a place called “Vintage Snapshots” that I love. It’s a store that sells old film posters, old records, gramophones (which are always old), etc. The walls are a kind of velvety burgundy color and when you enter it, you feel as though you’ve stepped into a rich lady’s hatbox.

As soon as I was released from work, I made my way over there – it was on the other side of the walking mall. On my right was a guy walking in the same direction. I glanced at him at the same time he glanced at me.

I continued to make my way to the store, trying to either walk slower or faster than him because the store was on the right side and I needed to pass him. In my efforts, I looked over at him again, the same time he happened to look at me confusedly. Then he ducked into “Vintage Snapshots”.

My plans were ruined, at least for as long as he was in there. As a rule of thumb, I refuse to go into the same place as someone I’ve made eye contact with more than once; I’m convinced the person will either think I’m in love with him, I’m stalking him, or I’m stalking him because I’m in love with him. I refused to let any guy wearing cargo shorts believe I was acting on any of the three above three options.

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It was impossible to hate Lauren – she was bubbly, generous, fair, and had always been nice to me. But it was difficult to reconcile how she came to be manager of our little coffee shop when I was the one who trained her two years ago. I wanted to hate her.“Lauren’s the manager now,” my boss told me matter-of-factly. “If you have any questions, problems, or need any help with anything, Lauren’s your girl.”
1) Lauren was no one’s girl; you couldn’t even call Lauren your woman. She wasn’t even her boyfriend’s woman – the last time he held open the door for her at the Sistine (a posh restaurant downtown), she glared at him with her hands on her hips and did a fairly accurate imitation of Jessie from “Saved by the Bell.” She was like a feminist on speed, “What are you? Some chauvinistic pig who thinks women can’t open their own freaking doors?” There was more, but at that point, I excused myself to go get a table.
2) I know I already stated it, but I was the one who trained Lauren. I was the oldest employee and I had always kept up to speed with smoothies and syrup protocols – I didn’t need any help and the boss’s inference that I needed any was enough to make me cross my arms over my chest and make faces at him every time he turned around. Read the rest of this entry »

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