on the subject of dumping

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I recently found these notes from the end of a short but sweet love affair:

Hi ____…I can’t go out with you…I can’t date you…so I need to cancel our date.

I got a little drunk and acted like a fool, but I didn’t mean to act like your girlfriend.

I thought it would be really fun to get to know you. I really enjoyed going out with you when I did.

Part of it is I know that I’m going to be working with you and seeing you professionally
mixing that.

I feel like I may have started leading you on & I didn’t mean to. Sorry.

but I can’t date you. So I need to cancel our date tonight.

I’m really looking forward to working with you in the future, I’ve seen shit go down with other people…

So I’ll see you at work.

i got this job

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I think I forgot to mention it. Anyway, it’s a great job. I really like it.

But it’s review time. I’m facing the Tyra of my office. The “congratulations, you’ve made it this far! And look how much you’ve accomplished!” followed by three pages of constructive criticism. How will I take it? Will I cry and blame my sister’s success for my own ineptitude? Or my parents recent divorce. Will I make the semi-finalists, or will I be cut from the running?

Cut from the running of life. My heart is in my throat.

can you darling…can you picture this?

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

The sun’s shining, but you curse its very life-warming essence, that’s how far down in the H.O. you are today. But the air smells crisp, and if it wasn’t for your inevitable arrival at your place of employment, life wouldn’t be so bad after all. You approach your BART station, stick your ticket through, and ascend/descend to the requisite platform. A seasoned traveler, you don’t have to wait long, no, not long at all, for your train to arrive.

And sure, your earphones are coddling your hangover. It’s not soo bad. It doesn’t matter where on the train you choose. Wherever you’re going, your day is about to be perfect.

This is why: Over the bitter strains of Belle and Sebastian, or maybe you’ve given in and bought a Brighteyes album… whatever your poison, fate interrupts, and you hear my voice – yes! my voice!! – announcing the approaching BART station. Your body fills with glee. Just imagine. “Dublin/Pleasanton.” Maybe I would pronounce the forward slash “Dublin-forward-slash-Pleasanton.” Maybe you’re not going to DP. You’re going to 12 street. “Twelth Street” – can you hear it?!! And then, how eloquently I would deliver the transfer instructions! Oh. That’s the sound of sweetness, that’s what that would be. Your toes would curl in anticipation. You wouldn’t be able to wait to detrain. And when you did, there’d be my smiling face peeking out of the top of the train. Waving; ensuring all my passengers safely made it off the train, over that little gap and up the stairs.

Yes, yes, this would be perfection. This is my calling. I am ready. Sometimes I might misspeak and say “MacBart” rather than “MacArthur.” I’ll develop a following. Folks will laugh – actually laugh – on my BART train. We’ll have dance parties when we go under the bay. I’ll turn on my mini radio, and abuse the microphone. I’ll open the doors at strange places late at night. We’ll let on the loonies, and never complain.

And let’s say you and I have plans for the evening, but we have yet to finalize them. While commuting, all you need do is press that little button (maybe three times) and you will actually talk to me way up at the front of the train in the control pit! We’ll have a quick chat, and arrange to meet at 16th and Guerrero at 5:15. I’ve been working since three a.m. – it will be time for drink. And then you’re not going to wonder all day when we’re going to meet up as you otherwise might have.

I say, life is grand. We’re not even going to need cell phones anymore. Now, aren’t you glad to see me?

Oh Those Cigarettes

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

My skin was itching, and I was tired of fighting it. So I dug through my purse to find the eighth of an inch of cigarette I’d hoped was still around. It had been a day or two since I’d indulged. Not long for some, but long for me, on this particular day, yesterday.

When I lit the match to the stub of a fag, the smell transported me back nine long years. It’s the difference between smoking and being a smoker, that smell. It was the beginning of a life-long love affair, and I smelled it yesterday.

I wonder if I’m alone in differentiating this odor. Perhaps it was the particular mix of suburban Northern California and newly lit charred tobacco. Perhaps I was just feeling nostalgic, but no, no, there was something different about this cigarette. Maybe I’d been carrying it around in my purse since high school, and Parliaments smelled differently then. But that’s not it, cause I smoked reds in high school, like the cool kids. No, it was the smell of that first drag, the particular odor of naivete. Something I’d lost, but somehow regained.

Today I wondered if a pack of smokes might make my day tolerable, and, should they, if they would again provide entrance to this strange time warp I’d stumbled on. I bolted out the office of the temp job formerly known as best temp job ever, to my local smoke shop, which I have, on occasion, utilized to buy the smokes that have proven in the past to make days tolerable.

And today? Well…

“A pack of Parliament Lights please” as I dig around my purse for quarters, hoping to put together the requisite $4.48.

“Are you 18?”

“Yes. I have an I.D.” oooh, but he doesn’t want to see my I.D. The question, apparently, was not out of concern for his tobacco license.

“Are you single?”

“Yes.” What was that?! Don’t tell stinky old nasty man the truth, stupid girl.

“You are?!” Lie now?! I already dug my grave. Let’s lie in it.

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you out on a date?” Let’s see. You’re at least fifty, and you work at a convenience store. Perhaps you own the convenience store, but…

“Um..not this week. I’m having a hard week.”

“Why?”

“Oh…family shit.” The short answer. I mean, really, there are tears in my eyes. Do I need to explain myself?!

He mumbled something I didn’t understand along the lines of helping me through it. I must have looked skeptical. “Okay. Well, I’ll see you next week, then.”

And now, yet another reason to quit smoking. Or at least to avoid that particular market. I realize that I crossed a line. Now I’m old enough that old guys will hit on me too. And, in case you’re wondering, the smokes taste like I’m a smoker, cause I am, and, no, my day is not yet tolerable.

I hate people

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I try to do something nice, it blows up. I try to make a new friend, and it turns out I don’t want them. I try to keep old friends, and shit hits that fan. I try to fall in love, and…

there’s just no point. There’s no point. When one of us falls in, the other falls out. Regardless of who, why or where. Terribly consistent, disquietingly unrequieted.

G. said the other day (and I paraphrase) that commas can surely mislead one into believing that they are reading something poetic, when really the sentence structure is just as empty as the words.

I walked to work today with my pathetic excuse for an umbrella. It would flip up and I’d face into the wind. It would flip down and splash me with all the water that collected in it during its time flipped up. Do I need to suggest that this might be a metaphor for life? I think not, though I just did, of course. I stole the shitty umbrella from worst temp job ever. More of a curse then a blessing, both the job and the umbrella. I’m still shivering.

Who reads blogs, anyway?

I installed an invisible tracker in this thing – I didn’t think anyone even had the address. It got 16 unique hits yesterday. Apparently, some poor bloke in Missouri spent two hours and seven minutes on it. I do hope s/he enjoyed himself. Those are two hours and seven minutes that s/he’ll never get back. Blogs are the perfect avenue for sucking away other people’s time. If only other peoples’ time gave me super powers.

My mother was laughing hysterically at dinner last night, and uncharacteristically delving into philosophical questions. I drank my wine and retreated to my room to pack my childhood into boxes, getting rid of as much of it as I can. I’m glad they’re getting divorced.

I spend my time daydreaming of a magic BART ticket. It would never make the turnstyle blink SEE AGENT, and it would always have $17.80 on it. No matter how many times I used it, always $17.80. I’d save so much money, and time. And the convenience! Oh it’s almost overwhelming.

But, then, what if I lost it?!

back at worst temp job ever

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

and i finally figured out what to do with my time…

…drink as much of their crappy burnt coffee as I can stomach. This causes me terribly smelly gas, which I then release as silently as possible while filing in the boss’ office. It brings me infinitely more pleasure than dramatically mouthing the lyrics to the soft rock playing in the background.

Of course my absolute favorite activity remains flirting with the auto mechanics. You might say that they’re the Mercedes Benz of auto mechanics. And they sure are cute in those Dickies. Except the old and fat ones. Eww.

It backfired, though, this late morning. I was in the process of snaring my favorite Russian mechanic when my gas wasn’t nearly as silent as I’d expected. It also solved the mystery – if there had been any mystery – as to where the smell was coming from. It’s their damn fault for having such shitty coffee anyway. I’m on to them. The French Roast is totally the same as the House Blend.

daunted on a Thursday

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

i have what i’ve decided to call “the worst temp job ever”, though that is possibly untrue. Possibly, or probably, i will discover in my life a “worse temp job than the worst temp job ever” and I find that possibility only minimally satisfying.

the planet ruling my life right now is characterized by a constant desire for a more satisfying satisfaction. i used to have a shower head that advertised it was “even wetter feeling” and if water has degrees of wet feeling, and higher degrees cause a more satisfying shower – it really was a damn good shower head – how many degrees of satisfaction do I in fact need?

direction = satisfaction, perhaps a true statement. love = satisfaction, perhaps true as well. no definitive identity relations hold in these equations…at least from my point of view. without any, then, the I is an i, is a me, and I am daunted by dissatisfaction. so daunted i did not go to the auto repair shop to file files and move files and unmove filed files and then move the files i moved yesterday.

but i am not daunted. tonight…a night for satisfaction. my horoscope said so. in the fine print that no one else can read without the lense of one experienced in such things. a night for a new bar – an experience always satisfying. i like going into a bar that i have previously only experienced intermediate to maximally wasted. it always looks so different with fresh, undrunken eyes, as the Elbo Room looked to me last Tuesday. and it was that in an effort not to be daunted i utilized those four gin and tonics during happy hour and wound up at work in the h.o.. and that i have utilized nameless other drinks and bars on these days of existing thus unsatisfied. Southern bars filled with southern men wanting to take me home or for a ride in their helicopter…or not southern men, but still, the same damn itinerary.

Satisfying would be a fresh itinerary. today i got a fresh itinerary, and I shall and am utilizing it. tomorrow i will make a fresh itinerary. everyday is a fresh itinerary, but how can that not on its own be fairly daunting?especially with the decreasing chances of visiting novel bars. what i need to find are the correct conditions for satisfaction = everyday. or satisfaction = breathing, cause then, i couldn’t avoid being satisfied. or, perhaps…

satisfaction = blogging.