I want to be naughty.

Whenever I visit Red Hot and Blue, my former place of employment, I like to saunter in like I own the place grab my drink, maybe wander into the kitchen-- where I'll often have to stop in the doorway because a manager or other authoritative person is there and say, "Oh shit. I keep getting lost and ending up here." Otherwise, especially if Angela is there I'll be like, "hey, can you get me some banana pudding" and she'll say, "Sure baby. Get a container." Then I'll grab one randomly and she'll say, "No! Not that one, you stupid? The pint container."
I smile and shrug and get her what she wants then she gives me what I want which I usually immediately hide within my jacket or my shirt and then I wander outside looking guiltily at the manager, usually larry before devouring it with the animalistic passion of someone who hasn't eaten in forever and doesn't know when she'll eat again.

That's the extent my naughtiness goes to nowadays, not that I'm necessarily complaining. It's really fun to misbehave and do things that are not illegal, but that are still just the wrong thing to do. Supposedly at Christmas time we're going to go through the halls of K & C 's apartment and switch everyone's christmas wreaths and then see what happens. See, that's the kind of thing I want to do. When I break laws, 75% of the time its because I think the law is silly and most of the other percent of the time its because I don't realize I'm breaking the law, but that's just not the same as being naughty.

Sometimes it is. Like when we do shots in the car, or just outside of it on the street, but K & C and me don't like to drink and drive, so when we do that there's a DD, or a Taxi close by. We haven't even done that lately. *sigh.*


We used to go to Clarendon and collect "trophies". These were not necessarily trophies per se, but more like interesting belongings of other people. Specifically, leis. People like to go out to bars and dance floors wearing leis apparently. It probably has something to do with something stupid like, "Haha, you just got leid."

Well, fuck. We would go around and unlei people. It was awesome. Christine and I had different tactics. She would go up to a guy, dance with him, ask for his lei and he would say, "Yeah girl, you know I want to lei you," or something to that effect. It was a very effective way to get leid. She got like 3 or 4 on one night.

Me. My MO. I would watch those with leis from afar, nursing their drinks, and I would stealthily stalk them about the ballroom and then... THEN I would run up behind or in front of them, grab the lei and run away. Sometimes it would get caught on their neck. Sometimes they would get very angry and Christine would make me give the lei back. Sometimes they'd give me a look like, "Did you just steal my lei? What the fuck is wrong with you?" and I'd just smile sweetly, and put the lei around Christine's alabaster neck.

I never got leid as much as her, but I feel like my way of lei-ing was slightly more exciting and fun.


There was this one time. it was the time right before we met Patrick the Leprechaun, Harold and Kumar and saw JohnfromFredericksburg. This was the night of Kevins 1 and 2. Kevin1 was your typical drunk fellow who gets separated from his friends on the search for honeys. He started dancing with us and Christine admired his necklace. It was right around St. Patrick's day. His necklace was light up and it had a shamrock on it. Christine had been chatting him up a bit and I was just trying to shake my groove thing in my reckless abandon toddlerlike white girl fashion when she told me, "Amber, I want that necklace."
"I got this." I nodded and winked at her... and then proceeded to do my usual sneak attack steal. The necklace was dropped on the floor in the struggle. It broke a little, but not too badly. Kevin1 looked down at it with tears forming in his eyes, "You broke my necklace."
"Nah dawg nah. It's good." I said with a smile.
"Were you trying to steal my necklace?"
"No, I was trying to dance with you." I smiled cherubically. which is apparently not a word. I need a thesaurus.
"You were trying to steal my necklace. Wasn't she?" he turned to Christine.
Christine looked at me and then at him as if she was going to give my supersecretbutapparentlyobvious plan away.
"Let's just dance, okay?" I suggested, my eyes not moving away from my actual goal which was the necklace. We danced again and this time I got the necklace off of his neck and ran away calling after Christine to follow me before Kevin1 saw us.

Surprisingly, she didn't follow me. I looked back at her and she beckoned me back. Kevin1 was definitely crying about his necklace. what a pussy its just a necklace, I rolled my eyes.

"You were trying to steal my necklace and you broke it!"

"Hey hey, it's okay. how much did it cost anyways? Its just a cheap necklace. You can do without it."

"No I can't. I got it at a festival today. It was $7.50. Why did you steal my necklace?"

"$7.50 is nothing. Don't worry about it. There'll be other festivals and other necklaces."

"Amber, give it back to him." Christine said.

"But its mi-i-ne..." I whi-ined.

"Amber..."

"All right. I'll give it back." Perhaps she didn't see the gleam in my eye. I proceeded to try my Christine type feminine wiles and get the necklace legitimately. Perhaps this plan would have worked in the beginning, but after stealing the necklace twice already and breaking it, I think he was a little suspicious of my motives.

I slammed him against the wall after a bit of dancing and, "Why won't you give me your necklace? you know you want to." and him responding, "No I don't. I like my necklace."

"C'mon," I said "seductively", "What do I gotta do to get this thing?"

"Well..." He said looking down at his pants.

"No, that's really not going to happen."

And then we fought forever over that damn necklace with me trying to slip it over his head while he sobbed and tried to hold it on until Christine pulled us apart and made me leave him alone.

"Christine, I was getting the necklace for you. I had it..."

"Amber, you made him cry."

That was a great night.

A Year Ago Yesterday

A year ago yesterday now was a day that will stay with me for no reason other than the fact that I was so stupid. I was miserable then; completely stuck on some little boy. Now I'm miserable because I have no job. If I looked back I'd probably see that I'm miserable every fall and the only really good things about this season are the amazing weather and cool new clothing styles.

I worked at Red Hot and Blue a year ago and I had blonde hair. I'd gotten it cut a year ago to make myself feel pretty because my skin kept breaking out and the people at work told me I looked like a rockstar. I wore a shirt that belonged to my sister. It had a bunch of shoes hanging from a power line and then at the end of the power line there was a person hanging upside down. I loved that shirt. Everybody asked me that day why I was so happy, and I'd tell them, and they'd say, "Oh, Girl... you need to stay away from that," all the while they've got their own man troubles; being with guys who had girlfriends, got around, were in general just not the greatest, but theirs were at least the right age. I tried to argue that was all that was wrong with him; he wasn't the right age, and be reminded no, that wasn't all that was wrong, "He has a girlfriend. Doesn't he sell drugs? I think he's manipulating you."

And he was manipulating me, but I don't think anyone knows to what extent, and I'm embarrassed to say now. A year ago yesterday, I rolled up my rugs when I got off work, and I was happy and excited and I met him at the CVS, and parked my car and climbed into his and made him take me to the mall to get something to eat and he was high so I was mad at him, and for the first time I wasn't happy to see him; didn't want to be around him. He wasn't like I remembered and maybe after two or three months of not seeing someone you can't hold onto your mind's conceptions of them and the feelings they arouse in you. Maybe he was changing, or maybe I could see through his charm and attractiveness.  I just wanted something from him. Power, love, money, anything. anything he could give me because I had been expecting him and wanting him for so long that to have anything less than him would have been an insurmountable disappointment.

I was a foolish girl.

He had never parked in a garage you pay for before. He waved the ticket around like he was about to drop it, "What do I do with this?" "That's for when we leave." I scoffed at him. Then inside the mall, I ran to the escalator and down it and he told me to slow down, "I'm too high for this." I just wanted to fuck with him, but then we walked around the perimeter of the mall looking for a place to eat and then I bought him dinner. The waiter was someone who had been in my fiction writing class a little more than a year before, and he remembered me and my stories and told me what a good writer I was. I tried to put myself in the position of the little boy sitting across from me in the booth, but selfishly only thought of what he would think about the fact that someone I hadn't seen in a year approached me and told me how wonderful I was. Would this make me more attractive? One of my male friends had taught me a little about gaming over the summer, but I didn't like to believe it's all a stupid game and you can't just find a person attractive and do whateverthefuck you like with them.

I was sad and annoyed by the end of the meal, and then we went back to my house and I just felt this huge surge of disappointment; like I had gotten nothing for this evening... and he was right here! What I'd been thinking that I wanted all along was right here and I didn't want him anymore, but I still wanted him in case I'd regret not doing it later. So, I let him in the back door, pretended to my family that I was just going to sleep so they wouldn't see him, and then before he left--- I didn't let him leave. I didn't know then, but I suspect now that there are certain things that a girl can do that will make it pretty much definite that she'll get some, but he didn't seem to happy about it. His mouth didn't grab at mine in that hungry way it used to; it was just lips and skin moving against lips and skin, and the sex lasted about 2 seconds. Then he was done with a self satisfied smirk on his face and my mom was banging on my door and turning a key in the lock and I was frantically trying to get my clothes back on.

He started to go out the door and I threw on pants, carrying my shirt. He wasn't going to leave without saying bye to me, and I ran out the door. The lid of the trashcan slammed on the side of the house and I ignored the disapproving gaze of my grandfather.

He was at his car, "You're not wearing a shirt." I rolled my eyes at him and put it on, and said goodbye, then he left and I started to cry, and I knew then that I was stupid and I shouldn't care so much, and I shouldn't have done it, but I couldn't help it because I was stupid, and cared too much.

Then my mom came in my room, drunk, and she wouldn't leave so I couldn't cry and be alone and feel sorry for myself.

In the end that's all it comes down to; I like excuses to feel sorry for myself and someday I'll miss right now just as much or more as I miss a year ago yesterday, and even though I don't believe that right now, I know its true because it's happened before and will happen again.

Goodbye Mary, Goodbye Jane
Will we ever meet again?
feel no sorrow, feel no shame
come tomorrow, feel no pain.

Ravings of an underachiever: on Writing.

Ever since college ended I have lost my ability to write. Maybe it's because now there's no reason that I shouldn't be the famous published author that I've always dreamed of being. There's no more excuses and so my mind has become blank.

Enter: the Future. It's a scary, scary thing. I have created this blog in an effort to keep myself writing, but in places where no one will see me and where there is less pressure to be perfect. Hopefully, it will never be found out that I'm no good at what I do; at what I want to do.

My brain is blank. I've noticed that as I grow older there is less and less that I can make up. In college I lost my ability to write fiction and began writing fiction that was so obviously based upon my life that it was ridiculous and nonfictional stories of all the TERRIBLE things that have happened to me in my short life.

Maybe this is fear. Maybe it is because I've actually lived some life now and when I was younger I had to  make things up because there wasn't anything real in my past that I could draw upon. Maybe when I wrote about dragons and magic and alternate realities I was writing about past lives. Or maybe... just maybe... I used to think I was making things up when in fact cultural constructs around me were making these things jump into my mind. Maybe I have Asperger's and an amazing memory for stories, but no memory of where I get them from, and maybe through the process of earning my English degree I also had to learn to cite my sources and so I began to recognize that my ideas are not my own.

I have no ideas. I'm just writing to pass the time. Maybe someday I'll figure myself and everyone else out. Maybe someday I'll have an audience to write to and their dependence upon every beautiful word that comes out of my mind will drive me to create beautiful and wonderful things. Maybe I'm not ready to tie myself down to
 my eventual obvious outlet for creativity. Why can't I draw? or Act? or sing?

It's like hunting for a man. Why do I have to have just one? There's no perfect outlet for creativity. There's no perfect job. There's no perfect boytoy. Nothing fits perfectly, and when you put all your energy into one thing and are disappointed it's a much bigger disappointment then when you spread yourself out and give a little bit to everybody.

And that, my friends, makes me sound like a whore.

So on that note, I'm terrified of failure and rejection, but I'm putting myself out there anyway...

BECAUSE:
I wanna put my tender heart in a blender and watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion. Duh!