the new year. i should say something profound. well, maybe it’s not necessary: maybe the only thing profound about these holidays is returning to the same spot, year after year, seeing the same people, making the same small talk, remarking quietly about their outfits, and praying the same prayers. and reacting to the same stimuli differently. this year, the story of hannah, who couldn’t conceive, for which her husband’s more fruitful second wife teased her mercilessly, left a knot in my throat. not the story in general, though it’s lovely, but her husband’s comment to her: “am i not worth more to you than ten sons?” the bible is sparse and very often it skips over the fact that one person loves another, implies it or perhaps doesn’t state it because it isn’t true. but the narrator is explict here in how much hannah’s husband cares for her.

for whatever reason, it doesn’t say she loves him back. when he poses that question, she doesn’t answer. i’d never noticed that before.

my house is about to swell with hungry guests. another tradition: lunch after services at our house. between 60 and 100 people show up every year. for the first time i won’t even be able to eat the fish. we’ll see how that goes.
happy new year, to my yiddim and beloved Others alike. may it be sweet and healthy and peaceful. and calm.

important step on my journey towards defeating fear of people who are cooler than i am: playing scrabble with suzanne, suzanne’s boyfriend, and ross. this mistress of intimidation, and my editor at the paper, is in my tennis class and gets to witness me making a fool of myself twice a week close up. apparently this merely whets her appetite.

last night i finally succumbed to pressure from ross and joined them group for a friendly game of 4-way scrabble. my hands shook through the first few moves. i made ross count my scores for me (that being somewhat less ridiculous, i suppose i supposed, than making basic arithmetic mistakes.) but ultimately ross and i tied for second. that’s right: despite nerves and knocking heart, i held my own.

my older brother will arrive in a couple hours to swoop me up and back home for the weekend and the ill-timed new year. life here will proceed without me, which is a shame since i’ve been enjoying it muchly so far. i like my classes. i like the people i hang around with, even if they do challenge me to be more witty more often. i like being with ben in the amphitheater. i don’t dislike battling it out with the history and polisci departments for my special major. even the phoenix’s gnarling my review isn’t overly upsetting. over the week it’s become easier to look around, hands on hips peter-pan-style, and say with pride, “yes, i belong here. and no, i will never grow up.”

all day i’ve had the hiccups. what on earth could that signify? they stopped periodically, like when i was playing tennis badly again this morning with eliz (i got whacked in the jaw with a ball, she ran straight into a fence) and, thank god, when i was in class. then however i had other problems. i walked in to discover that the class — an english film class, mind you — has been taken over by huge hulking men. sure, to me, anyone over 5’6″ and 160 lbs is a huge hulking man, but even by objective standards, this was ridiculous. in the sweatpants, white sneakers and t-shirt i’d just sweated in for an hour and a half, i looked like i’d come underdressed for a frat party.

in the cafeteria this evening i ran into a girl who i knew freshman year. she went abroad the semester before me so i essentially haven’t seen her since then; in fact, it took her a minute to recognize me. i asked her how her reentry had been. oh, good, she said, — at first. at some point it just became exhausting.

i laughed and made some joke and we parted and i returned to my table. when i looked around, i realized i was already exhausted. i’d had three classes, the last of which was of the 3-hour variety. and i still had one to go. more than that, though, all day i’d been feeling performative. keeping up with witty special people is taxing. especially since this isn’t my longstanding crowd, i don’t feel secure enough to be boring.

virtually everyone i know here suffers from too much self-esteem and too much insecurity. alternatively that’s just me and i just project. a lot.

the day righted itself later. i spreed on half.com and went to my film class showing of bonnie and clyde, came home and had an clobberingly intense conversation w/ stefanie about sexuality and relationships. i’ve been listening to showtunes. i can’t believe it’s only wednesday, but weeks always seem three times as long at the beginning. inevitably i will run out of clever things to say, and if my friends decide to retain me then i’ll be able to relax. also inevitably, my workload will get so heavy i won’t have the luxury of caring. the only question is which’ll happen first.

my room is slowly but surely becoming satisfyingly cluttered. a space just isn’t a space unless it’s filled — just like, as my mythology teacher taught last semester, a horse isn’t a horse unless it’s acting horselike. there are probably other problematic Thens that follow but i don’t want to think about them now.

a lovely congress just disbanded. sorelle, sarah k. and sarah c. intruded on my solitude. i’d been reading anita hill’s speak truth to power in very atmosphere conditions: but they burst in and turned the lights on and settled in for the kind of creative, straightforward discussion that makes me glad to be at college.

i attended my first tennis class with eliz today. she brought a racket and i wore sneakers so between the two of us there existed one person in readiness to play. we took turns. none too steady in my too-small shoes, she tripped around the court, swinging wildly and yelping. by the time she tagged out, she was convinced everyone else on court hated her and i was laughing too hard to breathe. while i was no better, i made far fewer entertaining noises. i did however demonstrate an uncanny ability to move all my limbs at once and none in sync. mm, athletics.

i actually feel moderately proud of my time spent here so far. today i attended two classes, both history, both taught my super-strong, super-intelligent, intimidating women (this i hope will help with my yearlong goal of subduing my fear of [such] people) and didn’t do anything remarkably stupid in either. i bought some books and an ethernet cable at the bookstore. i patted myself on the back for my demonstrable creativity with dental floss (if you want evidence, visit my room). i rekindled my love affair with elizabeth, realized i live in matt rubin’s old room (oh so THAT’S why the extention sounded so familiar), and punched rob cox until i was giddy. i went to the cafeteria twice and didn’t overdose on diet coke.
now i have to write my movie review. then i have a hall meeting. then i’m going to see dr. strangelove. a girl in the basement told me her name, and when i told her mine, said, “ester – [my last name]?” yes, i replied, feeling deja vu-y, as i just had this exact conversation with someone else. “oh,” said the girl, “you’re fa– i mean, why do i know you?” “were you going to say, ‘famous’?” i asked, incredulous. “yes,” she said. “but i thought it would sound weird.”
and ben claims no one knows who i am.

a moment of panic descended as i sat at this public computer, stared at the blogger login screen, and realized i’d forgotten my handle. that’s at least partly because of my unfamiliar surroundings (so much white cinderblock) — partly also my nervousness, to which i also attribute my bad skin and random twitching. but actually, as reentries go, this one hasn’t been half-bad. my mom and my grandparents dropped me off yesterday on the way to a batmitzvah in new jersey. despite the hurry, they were super-nice to me: they helped me carry my stuff up(4flightsof)stairs, bought me lunch, hugged me a lot. i rewarded them by growling and pointing out the passersby i recognized (in order to establish beyond a doubt they didn’t have what a tiny skool it is). finally, as they prepared to go, i despaired, “all these idiots i know! where are the idiots i LIKE?”

as if on cue, my roomie brigid and my dearfriend stef swept me up. after that it was all good. we helped each other move in and then we helped lazeliz, who won’t arrive til tonite but whose stuff needed to be shifted from her summer residence — also 4 flights up — immediately. we shoulda helped ourselves to her stuff, but, being kind, we just left it in the hallway.

since, i’ve encountered 91% of the people who matter, and as at least 5% are abroad, that’s not bad. brigid’s and my room is white and spacey and we’ve already settled in so that it looks rather inviting (like brigid herself). ross is going to take yoga with me. sarah c. introduced me to her friends who glutted co|motion with japanese candy as we prepared our attack on the frosh at this afternoon’s activity fair.

for a drenched sunday morning i’m feeling pretty chipper. almost, even, though i know this’ll come back and bite me somehow, glad to be back.

my last post before i dismantle this computer and sit in the back of the car for the trip tomorrow morning up to swatland. a few things worth noting: leaving the chinese restaurant my grandparents took my family to this evening so that my mother wouldn’t have to cook, a voice called to me, “did you go to swarthmore?” i turned around to face a nondescript older guy sitting by himself at a table. he squinted at me, trying to figure out how he knew me; and i knew him immediately. “yes. i’m ester,” i explained. “you’re *** ******. we worked on the phoenix together.” that’s the least of it, of course. he also asked me out numerous times, and he pursured with equally indescriminate ardor my flatmate rebecca.

earlier in the day, while running errands at compusa with lana and her mother, lana and i collapsed with joy at the sign for “gender changers.” we flagged down an employee and subjected him to our questions. gamely, though having turned three shades of red, he detailed the logic of assigning computer cord ports genders. we nodded sagely and thanked him and after he scampered away we slipped the two signs out of their holders and into lana’s bag. no one stopped us: two white middleclass smiley girls don’t attract the same kind of undue attention as, say, shifty-eyed bearded men with untied shoes. that’s the closest i’ve ever come to shoplifting.

at long last i met the famous elke at college park. actually it was a two-for-one deal: i got to meet her girlfriend and another close friend of lana’s, kim. the visit was bittersweet, being both my introduction of kimandelke and their farewell to lana, who’s transferring. but elke was in high spirits. she gave me a cupcake, which functioned as my dinner, and a margaret cho poster she’d intended for liz. but when she said “notorious c.h.o.” i yelped louder, so it went to me.

we spent the night at nomi and jamie’s quiteclean, quitewhite apartment. i withdrew cunt from my bag and a discussion ensued about how good exactly women need to feel about that particular region of our anatomi. i thought about but didn’t recite the poem i wrote in cape cod on the subject (funny how certain themes keep popping up sometimes):

The Other Woman

alone of all of us,

she looked at her other face in the mirror.

she examined her other mouth

while we were content to marvel at arm’s length

what went in and came out

of ours.

before we knew of another eve –

not apple-eve, but the eve who laid

a cross-section of her apple out

for the world to examine, and felt no shame – she

alone of all of us

could say Vagina and not turn the color of one.

somehow we’ve leapt ahead of her

Liberated in college, acquainted with women

like the other-eve – not that we should be

ashamed of the first one, who had no mirrors, but

in biting into that apple discovered introspection –

we have developed relationships with our other faces

We have reached inside ourselves and shaken hands

Her acquaintance remains professional, detached

One face communes with the other

without (the pleasure of) electronic translation.

(she who deserves it most)

we share. we try to. we’re shy

and really we know that she, in whom both eves

reside, knows better than we do, still – and when

like children all my faces can do

is make faces at each other, i envy hers. (summer 2002)

today i brazenly decided to have my way with 104 sheets of paper. a hardcopy version of true love waits now sits on my bed. i’ll take it to kinko’s i guess to get all them pages affixed. now if only i knew the step after that.

in the first of two gorgeous literary surprises, last night i beat my father at scrabble. we went to dinner at our indian place, where everyone knows us and we figgered they wouldn’t mind if we took our customary table by the window and spread a board and little wooden tiles all over it, and i got 78 points on my first move and maintained roughly that lead throughout. not an unimpressive feat considering my father is the smartest person i know and does an average of two crossword puzzles a day; but then, i’ve had a lot of recent practice.

afterwards he grumbled/gloated to my grandmother (cuz when your child surpasses you in anything it’s nachas) and then drove me to liz’s house. we watched amelie, which i liked even better the second time, and entertained rick the vagabond. he’s been wandering the country for two months and looks no worse for wear — in fact he looks just as scruffy and puppyish as he did at the end of high skool when i beat my head against a wall trying to stop liking him. he’s one of those people who never lose the quality, usually associated with infants, of being cute in all circumstances, even when vomiting or explaining earnestly why one’s girlfriend should be small enough to fit one’s arms around and touch oneself. i guess in a weird way at that time in my life i was into s&m.

but we had fun. and today, after a disappointing greek wedding and much running through raindrops, liz brought me home and i found on my doorstep my second gorgeous literary surprise: cunt: a declaration of independence by inga muscio. my dearfriend andrea from denmark sent it to me as a belated-birthday present. that’s how cool she is. her package contained a note written on lavendar stationary with a kitten face on top, big bubbly handwriting, snapshots of us in copenhagen and barcelona, and a cheerful yellow book called cunt.