camp starts tomorrow. the girlz all are doing jigs in nervousness whereas i’m relatively calm. that is quite possibly because i haven’t processed that it’s happening yet, that at 8:15 in the brightearly morning, 14 shiny happy faces will be looking up at us, trusting us, slipping their soft paws in ours, opening their hearts for the love we have promised them to share. there is a large naked woman named petunia hanging on the wall outside my room, and a blow-up crossection of her reproductive organs on my door. this should serve as reminder enough — yet the whole thing just doesn’t seem real yet.

but we putter along, meeting after meeting, going over curricula, drilling each other on the transmission of HIV, flipping through are you there god? it’s me, margaret and reminiscing about the part judy blume played in our childhoods, debating the importance of bringing up masterbation v. letting the girls ask, alternatingly laughing and worrying. sorelle and i spent the bulk of yesterday on a marathon shopping trip. one man in a video store claimed that a league of their own was out of print. the highlight came in a bathroom when sorelle outsmarted the tampon dispenser. after she handed over the demanded $.50 and then it refused to dislodge the item in question, she gave the thing a Look, took off her watch, stuck her arm in virtually up to the elbow, and pulled one free herself. my hero.

later, in the parking lot of BJ’s, we found a copy of toni morrisson’s sula, which we hadn’t purchased. after shrugging at each other, we decided someone simply wanted us to read this book — and as it’s one of the two of hers i haven’t read yet, i’m only too pleased to oblige.

i — incredible to say; i hesitate; do i dare plunge? aye, i must, regardless of whether i must retract with all swiftness in the near future — am better. not best; far from it. i wouldn’t skip right out now and dive headfirst into a Willy Wonka type river of chocolate, swallowing as i swim. the thought (and not merely what it would do to my hair) still frightens me. butbutbut i have more energy this morning than i’ve had for many mornings, and i fed myself a nutri-grain bar with no ill effects. at least none so far.

as it turned out, sarah c.’s notion of combining the powdered-pill with my customary green liquid and downing the two together was the most acceptable. i’m on my third day of treatment and the antibiotics seem to be helping fight the good fight against henry james.

perhaps being at swat helps, being drawn back into co|motion activity, planning, marathon meetings, nervousness, excitement, suspense. the girls arrive monday morning and it’s nothing but preparation and sweat til then. perhaps being near ben. i have so many incentives to get better; every moment feeling sluggish and lethargic feels wasted. i’m nearly done with the french lieutenant’s woman, the movie version of which i saw in dk. last nite i was honored by the hilarious company of eliz’n’stef. and this morning i learned that the “co-ed” sign on our bathroom is not merely for show. the fun never ends.

my first visit to reAding (but pronounced reDding) pennsylvania will shortly come to a close. liz, the fellow co|motioner who allowed me her bedroom last night and whose father is about to deposit us back at swat, has been kind and forgiving of my symptoms. her mom on the drive here yesterday stopped at the cvs so i could pick up my perscription, unfortunately only available in pill form. i can’t take pills. this source of endless frustration to my parents has yet to be circumvented or explained: i just start panicking when i see them and my throat shuts down. luckily i’ve never been in a dire enough situation to demand them before.

three times a day for a week, suddenly, my creativity is put to the test. on the brighter side of things, the Accomplishment side, i can chalk up that i am officially certified in first aid, cpr, and using a defibrilator. you know, like they do on tv — shouting, “clear!” pretty cool, eh?

at swarthmore. made it. with a tenuous grip on reality though a strong one on the oversized bottle of lime gatorade ben bought me when i told him firmly he could not take me to the emergency room. i don’t blame him for worrying — my reaction to any kind of exertion isn’t pleasant to watch. it’s strange (and hot) to be on campus again. i’m sharing a room with sorelle, using her computer, and am waiting for someone’s mom to take me to redding, pennsylvania where tomorrow morning i must go through a hopefully-not-too-grueling 8 hour cpr first-aid certification ritual.

sorelle: “you don’t have a grip on the oversized bottle. i do. you can’t carry it.”

sigh. true.

(names are changed to protect the ignorant — eds.)

becage28: i think she’s gay

ishtar42: who? [X] ?

becage28: yes

ishtar42: why? did she hit on you?

becage28: most compelling piece of evidence

becage28: she plays an instrument that you stick your hand up into

ishtar42: rebecca.

ishtar42: what instrument is that, incidentally?

becage28: french horn

[…] becage28: [X]’s like [Y, a mutual friend who is queer]

ishtar42: how so?

ishtar42: [Y] would never go to [geeky, 70% male tech skool which X will attend]

becage28: she has a lot of queer friends

becage28: just makes you wonder

ishtar42: so do i

becage28: ester.

ishtar42: i love queeer women

ishtar42: queer women are the best

ishtar42: all women should be queer

ishtar42: let the men have children, goddammit

becage28: ya

becage28: ok

ishtar42: let the men get fat and droopy and have to give up work

becage28: you’re proving my point

ishtar42: what was that, exactly, again?

[ … ] becage28: hate to break it to you–

becage28: i’m in my childbearing years

ishtar42: you are not!

ishtar42: and neither am i

becage28: i’m twentysomething

becage28: you’re not, yet

ishtar42: no, darling, childbearing years is a frame of mind

ishtar42: i will be, in a month!

becage28: no, you’ll be twentynothing

ahh, best. good distraction from my frustration and depression at the moment. my stubborn stomach refuses to get better, which means i’m back to my diet of bagels. technically i should be at swarthmore already, prepping for co|motion, but my stomach forced me to detour back home for an indeterminate amount of time. with any luck i’ll be on a train tomorrow, antibiotics in one hand, a bag of plain bland carbs in the other, and a steeled determination to get through this month.

furiously noshing on challah, i am home, having eaten nothing but saltines since waking at 3:45 this morning and flying southwest all day; the merest suggestion of covertly brought muffin from yesterday’s breakfast buffet enough to make me ill, in which state i spent much of this otherwise lovely trip to san diego. well, the weather also left something to be desired. i have rotten luck with gorgeous climates: they seem to clam up whenever i’m around. unswayed, my mother and i tootled around in our rented white minivan, pausing to hike torrey pines, walk the pacific coastline, and admire the zoo.

the bat mitzvah itself was for a cousin of mine whose family only moved from our coast to the Other a few years ago. as far as we could tell, they are thriving in del mar as they never thrived in mclean, a VA region to whose ritziness their old neighbors and friends who flew cross-country could attest. never had i been surrounded by so many bright women with even brighter diamond rings and no jobs. country club ladies, to a one, with grown children and their freedom hanging heavily on their manicured hands. i was wearing, as per my father’s instructions/entreaties, a lapus lazuli bracelet he’d pulled from the vault — i almost never wear jewelry of any kind and it reminded me how constraining — literally — the stuff is, and i didn’t begin to compare to the women around me.

our first day in CA, my mother and i brunched at an airy, festive coffeeshop, the kind i’d love to be a regular of, and afterwards moseyed nextdoor to an independent bookstore where mom threw caution to the winds and emerged with three books. one, rachel simmons’ Odd Girl Out, i started reading later that day in the hotel and it sparked numerous interesting conversations between my mother and me cuz i kept shouting, “of course!” and being reminded of my own stories. it’s terrific. it should be required reading for high skoolers and highskool teachers alike. as i wrote lana, who knows miss simmons, (i only know her mother, the luminous and terrifying mrs. simmons, who taught 12th grade jewish history and then marched us through poland) i want to email her, work with her, shake her hand, and have her children. in that order.

my dog is panting unhappily beside me. the sky looks ominously egg-shell white outside my window. the sweet hereafter depressed me without elevating me on the more significant spiritual plane the way Great Art should. i can’t tell if this points to a flaw in my spiritual plane or the film. i’m switching from quick to either/or, which seems more suited to my mood. i’ve been reading commencement speeches. danny calls them complementary but i found them rather contradictory: doesn’t power’s stand in opposition to burke’s? i found each of them terrific regardless; then again, i have no problem with contradiction.

i hate packing. it forces me to think ahead. forget ahead! think behind. where were you a year ago?

my skin, like my stomach, seems to still be adapting to the change. i think both preferred to be on the other side of the atlantic. my hands have never been so stubbornly unattractively spotted with white. i feel leprositic (that should be a word. among other things it goes so well with parasitic.) they simply laugh at my poor Lubriderm bottle until it looks frozen in offended dignity.

last night’s entertainment was mediocre shakespeare, two gentlemen of verona, at carter baron, the in-the-park theater. otherwise i spent the day running around erranding, catching up w/ old friend johnny, job searching with/for lana, who was so bored later at two gentlemen that she wandered off while jamie and i stuck it out, laughing at the exaggerated sex jokes. people always play up the sex in shakespeare when they don’t know what else to do.

still on my oldskool ani kick, i realized for the first time that i’m the age she was when she released the self-titled album. gives a new insight into the music, no? i remember not being able to wait til i was as old as the babysitters in the babysitter’s club and then suddenly i was and i couldn’t have cared less about them anymore. just like who, at seventeen, actually reads it?

but ani’s different. at 19, she still seems older than i am: i’m determined to survive on this shore; you know, i don’t avert my eyes anymore. in a man’s world, i am a woman by birth, and after 19 times around i have found they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth … brings to mind immediate differences. for instance, survival is very low on my priority list. i’d say at the moment my priorities include: paddleboating this afternoon with dearfriend tamar, being able to fly to san diego with my mother tomorrow in relative comfort, finishing the sweet hereafter, and thinking of an idea for a movie. i’m starting a class when i return from do-gooding in swat on feature film screenwriting.

on another note entirely, though relevant to the theme of aging, i’ve been doing this for just about a year now. i started this webjournal, albeit under a different and ridiculous in retrospect name and with a design that i cringe to recall, the first week of june of last year. happy birthday, babblebook.

when i go a while without driving i forget how much i enjoy it (obligatory ferrick link here). in fact i fret about perhaps-having-forgotten how. bollocks. i slid behind the wheel like a pro this morning and fit so nicely there i continued driving through most of the day, from errand to errand to lana’s house way out in the ‘burbs. we watched little women, our second women-centered dress drama in two days where the characters end either dead or married. a century ago or more i suppose there were fewer options. why on earth would anyone want to live in any time except the present? or is that just me being time-ist?

when we were done weeping over beth and reconciling to laurie+amy, we crawled out onto her roof with the latest issue of bitch — ooh, read the frontpage article — to grrl-talk and take pictures of each other looking cute. this successfully put out of mind the young gentleman’s pre-noon departure. he joined me in my limbo so easy-going-like; just with him, i felt better. henry james, my parasite, faded to near-insignificance, as though he knew immediately he couldn’t compete. he can go the way of daisy miller for all i care. hj, that is, not ben.

i’m listening to imperfectly, the lyrics of which consistently surprise me. vintage ani, aged 20 years: strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends, but there’s nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends …

when i was young, my dearest dream was to be met, while walking around the neighborhood singing, by a talent scout who immediately recognized my potential and whisked me away to studios where i could sing without the bother of a piano, because pianos make me nervous, and become a star.

when i was slightly less young, my dearest dream was to meet a boy my age while i was walking sheba, my rug / inactive, slightly dopey but loveable golden retriever. his name (the boy’s) was to be randy. he was to have blond hair and green eyes. he was to act and glow subtly with star-potential, but for all that be down to earth and easy to talk to, even if occasionally bitingly sarcastic to remind the rest of us how wise he was.

i never dreamt that i would have a young gentleman who would hop states just to spend one night; who, when the car broke down, would find an obliging greyhound; who would arrive and lie with me on the grass in my neighborhood; who would laugh as we were approached by suspicious, unleashed dogs belonging to a man i’d never seen in my 19 years on this street. i asked the man if he and the dogs were new. just moved in two months ago, he said. i’m randy.

(oh yes, said my mother later, he and his partner, and the two dogs …)

because it is what we don’t dream, to our delight, that comes true.