2005/2006
Juneau, Alaska: I take the bus home from school and
walk up Bonnie Doon Street to Marguerite Street. The road is potholed and the
hill is steep enough that, at fifteen years old, I can’t ride my bike up it.
But I don’t mind because I have no interest in bicycles or physical activity. I
don’t like to work hard. The house where I live is the more northern side of a
camel-colored duplex with a red/brown trim. From the front it looks like the
house is mostly garage, extending out from the house part like a beer gut. The
rhubarb that was there when my mother, brother, and I moved in is doing well,
becoming more voluminous every day. On the other side of the door inside the
house is a three-year-old golden retriever who needs to pee but who won’t
remember that when he sees me because he’s so happy. His name, Teelo, comes
from a children’s book about a cat who learns to drive a sailboat. I let him
out and throw his tennis ball for him with minimal enthusiasm. His face is wide
and smiling and I love him although I truly believe his brain is empty. At
fifteen I am harsh and unsympathetic. Inside,
I make myself an English muffin—cinnamon raisin—toasted at the highest setting,
topped with velvety margarine. I am excited about the food and relieved to be
home. I take it back to eat in front of the oil heater. The heater is in the
dining area and my back rests against a set of wooden magazine-holders
fashioned to the wall. They are uncomfortable and the wood bars across in them
dig into my back. It gets almost too hot when the heater kicks on and it turns
the skin on my arms pink, but it feels good. The high school I attend is the
only one in town and was recently remodeled. The newly-completed atrium is
admittedly impressive but also extremely drafty and somehow impersonal; the
whole building, even some of the warm, small classrooms, has me craving heat
throughout the day. I
read my brother’s comics: not the regular, classic comic books, but the
collections of comics strips from the newspaper: Foxtrot, Zits, Sherman’s
Lagoon. The story arcs are more enjoyable when you don’t have to wait a full
week to find out that Jeremy’s mom is actually going to be really cool and
understanding about him going to a no-parents party. I read for a while, then
get up and make a second English muffin. Some days I have a third, but today
it’s getting dark fast. It’s November. I sigh deep and find my coat and boots,
the dog’s leash and a plastic bag. The dog leaps and wiggles, whines, whaps my
legs with his messy tail.
2007/2008
Juneau, Alaska: My brother is a freshman in high school
now. I give him rides to school and yell at him when he won’t wear his
seatbelt. NOT IN MY GODDAMN CAR I
say, imitating myself as mother, because I’m the voice of reason. We don’t come
home at the same time, though. He has after-school activities or friends to
hang out with. I am fumbling my way through the last math class I am required
to take: Algebra II/Trigonometry. To say that I am fumbling, actually, is quite
generous. The darkness of the season is exhausting and I’ve taken to napping as
soon as I come home, just for an hour or so. Then I pull myself out of bed
feeling much worse than before. My homework station is my desk, which used to
be the kitchen table before we moved and had to find a small one to fit our new
small home. My room is the biggest and can accommodate the table. I have carved
my initials into it as well as several designs I find charming: yin-yangs,
bunny heads, spirals. I am a designer. One thing I’ve found that I do like
about math is that I am able to do my homework while listening to music without
it being a distraction. My jams include various mix CDs from my friends, and
the soundtrack to the movie Holes. I sit and draw parabolas, not understanding
what the curves mean, where the numbers live. I rub my head. My mom calls DINNER.
2009/2010
Eugene, Oregon: I live in an apartment complex which
sits among other apartment complexes housing college students. Our apartment is
not nice, but I do not know yet that it is not the worst place I will live. I
am seeing a boy I met in my ballroom dancing class. I am a community college
student and I am loving every second of it. I am only enrolled in three
classes; the others are wilderness first aid and beginning drawing. I live with
my friend, Erin, a Japanese major at the University of Oregon who I know from
Juneau. The boy from the dancing class is a deadbeat dad from Idaho who is
sloppy and inconsiderate but has good hair and a good laugh and is liked by
people I think are cool. He lives in an actual house with two roommates, and I
take the bus from my complex to the downtown bus station to get to his house.
It’s almost always dark when I’m on the bus; usually I pack clothes with me so
I can leave to go to class directly from there, or else I have to get up early
and take the bus home, then back to downtown, and then to school, which is a
“commuter campus” and therefore out of town by a few miles. When I’m riding the
bus, I take notes. Every entry looks the same: I notice the time, the route and
bus number, and a few lines of my impressions of the bus driver. The boy I am
seeing does not care for the bus, but I love it. He and I smoke weed and watch
movies and fuck. He eats fast food a lot and always asks if I want anything and
I always say no. I steal a few of his fries and go to bed high and hungry. I
feel mystical.
2012/2013
Marshall, Minnesota: I have committed myself to a gym
schedule from which I will not deviate, mental health be damned. As the
region’s lovely late summer has transitioned into a snap-morninged fall which
has given way to biting winds pushing insubstantial whorls of snow around on
the pavement like cornstarch. Daily, at 5 a.m. I pull myself out of bed and I
do fifty crunches, hold a plank for one minute, do fifty bicycle crunches, do
ten pushups. I am obsessed with the simple implications of musculature forming
on my arms. The way I seem to be shaving layers of my body off, especially my
hips and belly. I change from pajamas to shorts and a t-shirt and add fleece
pants and a sweatshirt. I walk to the kitchen and make a mug of black coffee
with my single-cup drip setup. No cream, although some days I do want it. I fry
one egg in butter and salt the shit out of it. I take my planner out of my pack
and flip to the front. I write “Black coffee and one egg cooked in butter with
salt—90.” The coffee stays in the freezer for a minute or two while I go to the
bathroom to pull my hair back into a low bun and stretch a hat on over it. It
is nearing the low teens in the morning even without the wind chill. Every
thought I have I allow to dance and ping around in my brain and work through
five or six times. I wonder if this is because of all the empty space here. The
coffee has been drunk and with my winter coat and mittens added to my
layerings, I am out the door and on my way. I ride in the absolute dark and the
streets are empty, or maybe there is one car. Red and bright white flashers and
a light on the front tell me and motorists where I am. Contrary to my perceptions,
they’re saying it has been a mild winter. The streets are, at least, fine to
ride on. I go directly through town on my way to campus, past the main street
intersection and onto the road lined with chain restaurants and a few local
businesses. There is a vacuum repair shop, a coffee house, a gas station called
Super America which I will forever find fitting and hilarious, although it’s
not yet a fully-realized irony. Once the brick buildings of campus come into
sight, I make a hard left and lock my Trek on a rack in front of a set of
doors. I take in the building’s warmth as I enter, removing my hat and coat.
Inside the campus fitness center, a relatively small, nubby-carpeted room, I
swipe my student ID and try to force a smile at the softball player behind the
desk. She is one of five different people, but always blonde, always with a
school sweatshirt. On the right side of the room are mirrored walls, a rack of
weights, and cushioned mats. In the middle of the room are treadmills,
elliptical machines, and a few bike machines. The far left side is weight
machines; the front wall is windows that look out onto what might be the campus
green (the campus dirt-brown); paths cut through short hills. The back wall is
a wooden thing with spaces below for backpacks and shoes, and on top are
magazines: Women’s Health, Fitness, GQ, Vogue. Sometimes there are more
interesting ones but usually the standard is health-related. My routine will
include more floor exercises along with weight machines and exactly thirty
minutes on the elliptical.
Elfin
Cove, Alaska 2012: My father has graciously (his own words)
fixed up the former floathouse, which now sits on pilings, for me to use as my
groovy bachelorette pad (his words). It has a wood-burning stove which can only
swallow kindling-sized pieces of wood at a time, electricity, running water,
and a bathroom area with a toilet that doesn’t work, but what difference does that make? Just drag the bucket in there—it’s got
those walls up to your waist, that’s all yah need. I sleep on springy,
narrow couch and I have learned to ignore the mildew smell. Most nights I go to
bed slightly stoned, writing letters to friends or making up stupid stories for
myself in my head. I set the alarm on my cell phone for 4 a.m. When it goes off
in the morning I rise and add another pair of pants and another sweater to my
outfit. I smell like I’ve been keeping fish corpses in my pockets and maybe
rubbing them on my head and the insides of my thighs. Sometimes I wonder if I
don’t do this when my mind isn’t watching. I grind beans and make a thermos of
coffee. I do five pushups, fifty crunches, and hold a plank position for one
minute. I grab my rain gear, three sizes too big, and my coffee, and shut my
floathouse door. It is technically morning although it is almost completely
dark. I walk the trail around town, pushing back the wetness hanging off of
blueberry and salmonberry bushes that crowd the trail.
