Yesterday, I had the quasi-surreal experience of helping move my brother-in-law into his freshman dorm. The kid's a good one -- thoughtful, kind, and a hell of a lot more independent and mature than I'd expect the second-youngest in a family of five to be. But he's been living with my husband semi-permanently and me intermittently for the past six months, making it all too easy for us to forget that he's still just an eighteen-year-old boy reared in a provincial Texas town and his mother's doting arms. All things considered, he acclimated himself quite spectacularly to the boring post-grad married environment of Ryan and I: got himself a job and a PlayStation 3 and spent many a quiet night with us, drinking lots of beer and watching trashy scary movies. That's why I was so surprised to hear him say he was nervous about the whole college thing. I couldn't imagine this suave, svelte six-something stud being nervous in an environment full of awkward, sheltered teens fresh out of high school. But I quickly realized that hanging out with us was not exactly the same as forging a path through the complex social circles of American Higher Learning Institution. There will most likely be much alcohol-fueled devilry, not a small amount of futile eleventh-hour cramming, and girl drama like nobody's business. And as hopelessly permissive as we were with the kid, it's still a world of difference for him to really live on his own and really be expected to make his own decisions full-time. So different that I'll split infinitives about it. It'll be good for him; he needs some young blood. Because if there's one thing that moving somebody else into a freshman dorm can accomplish, it's making you feel hopelessly old.

But apart from the not-so-subtle age difference between me and the pimply-faced youngsters gearing up to start their journey through the American academic conveyor belt, what's even more surreal about yesterday's experience is this whole "brother-sister" relationship I've come to acquire with three random boys over the span of two years. Having spent my whole life dividing young eligible males into the subclasses of "...I can have sex with," "alcoholic second-cousins I see once in three years," and "pink Polo shirt wearers," it feels odd to develop a strong but sexless emotional bond with an attractive male. My brothers-in-law are all great guys, and it's a refreshing change of pace to want to dig around in their brains and hearts, not their pants, to find out what makes them tick. Perhaps this gives hope to the proverbial male-female "friend" myth? ....Or, perhaps, simply reestablishes the female only-child as the quintessential man-eating succubus.

Edit: And, in the grand tradition of the American sibling relationship, I've just been asked to make a beer run for the bro and his new little college friends. This is too cute; I might just shed a tear at the checkout line.

A Moveable Feast

Habitually, I monitor the trajectory of my life through meals, because days when dinner is potato chips and candy are markedly different from days when dinner is frozen lasagna; or midnight diner delivery; or half a loaf of Tuscan bread and a brick of Gruyere.

For example, yesterday started off with an ill-omened brunch at a Boston taco place. To be perfectly clear, Boston, aside from maybe some rut in Cowboy Spurs, North Dakota, is the worst possible US city for Mexican food. This is not some essentialist claim to "authenticity" for the cheese-logged concoctions of Texas or the lettuce-y salad bowls of California, but rather a sober statement of quantitative comparison. In Boston, "Mexican" means one of three things: a large burrito, a taco, or, if you're very lucky, a quesadilla. The end. In Texas, the menu of Mexican foodstuffs can stretch for pages and pages, ranging from traditional Tex-Mex to offbeat nouveau fusion to pure exercises in gluttony and death by cheese. Knowing all this, however, makes me no less desperate for some sort of meat in a cornmeal filling, and even though I'd actually be in Texas later in the day, I gave in and went to the cheap Taqueria down the street. Standing in line, I noticed a small sign that advertised lengua, and my hopes for a decent Boston Mexican experience began to grow. The guy behind the counter gave me a skeptical look when I blithely ordered my boiled beef tongue, and the cashiers whispered something to one another in Spanish, probably to the tune of "silly white people," but I got my tongue tacos and sailed out the door. Not surprisingly, Boston Mexican let me down once more, as the meat was pretty rubbery and bland. But it still had enough of that velvety tongue essence to do the trick. Tongue: the meat so good it tastes you back.

My second meal experience of the day was no less of a cultural collision. I was in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina and had an hour layover before my flight to Dallas. Walking through the terminal, I mentally checked off one terrible airport dinner option after another ("NASCAR Cafe? Ex. Manchu Wok? Ex. Chili's Too? ...seriously?") before finally hitting gold. I skirted past the crowd of soccer moms clamoring around some bagel place and slid into the lengthy, all-black line at Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits. Alright, so it's no Popeyes, but I'll take what I can get. As I was waiting, middle-aged white woman saddled up to me and, with a desperate look in her eyes, said, "I'll pay for your meal if you'll let me cut in front of you." Being the pushover that I am, I just laughed and waved her through. Turns out she was also a Southern transplant living in Boston, and, even more heroically, had come from a totally different terminal, paying off one of those beeping motorized buggy drivers just to get some real Southern food.

Unfortunately, Airport Bojangles was experiencing a severe chicken shortage, meaning I had to wait twenty minutes for my damn breast-and-wing dinner. I was coming off a months-long fried chicken fast, so I waited stoically, ticket in hand, gritting my teeth. The others in line were not so patient. The poor manager ran around trying to placate the hungry masses and ended up handing out dozens of free drinks. Finally, I leaned over and politely asked the kid working the soda fountain if I could please get a cup of water. "Don't be shy, get more than that, honey!" murmured an attractive young black woman waiting next to me, who'd handled the situation far more adroitly and already pumped the manager for free sides and biscuits. But it looks like I've officially been spoiled by Northern self-sufficiency and accountability. I waited in silence, got my chicken just as my plane started boarding, and had to eat in the cramped middle seat between two people shooting me looks of rancorous envy for my styrofoam container of grease. Their biscuits are but a pale Popeye shadow, but I might have to seditiously admit that the chicken is about on par.

And, finally, to round out the day: a late evening second dinner of chips, salsa, mojitos, and flan, capped off with what's quickly becoming my preferred trashy redneck beverage of choice: the indomitable Bud Lite Lime. You know you've done a day right when you start off with tongue and end in a twist top. Success.

Levels of addiction

As expected, last night was a prototypical exercise in childish sulking.  I trudged through the rain to the corner liquor-and-grocery, picked out my dinner of a) peanut butter M&Ms (delicious) and b) sweet potato chips (... nutritious?), then had to angle awkwardly around a couple of what I can only assume were young resident physicians, standing in the middle of the cramped booze section and talking loudly about how so-and-so was "totally septic!" -- they're way more charming on Scrubs.  Since I at least had the foresight to avoid a whole bottle of wine on the shaky foundation of aforementioned "dinner," it took me awhile to decide on which pint-sized single would make me look the least like a lonely alcoholic.  I finally picked out some crappy hard cider that tasted like apple-flavored Mad Dog, but for a night of commanding undead armies in a dark, empty apartment, there could probably be no better choice to drink straight out of the bottle.  Basically, I'm twelve, but with a liquor ID.

It's supposed to storm again today, to which I can only say: OMFG NO.  If I miss another flight, I may not be so innocent in my choice of sulking.  I wonder if you can get kicked out of an airport for purchasing a bottle of duty-free liquor and consuming it inside the terminal?  Only one way to find out.

Missed connections

There's something inconsolably pathetic about a cancelled evening flight.  On the long bus and subway trip back from the airport, I felt like the straps of my bags were the leashes of dogs eager to burst forth into the unknown, but instead I had to reign them in wearily and drag them, whimpering, back home.  The rain didn't exactly improve my mood; neither did the snot-gargler and crotch-grabber sitting next to me, who spent the twenty-minute airport shuttle ride contemplating something very fascinating inside my right ear.  And now I'm back in the apartment it took me three hours to clean and put in order this afternoon, packing everything away and destroying all traces of my two-week life there so that the movers could do their job more easily.  It's almost funny, really.  Toiletries trapped inside taped-up cardboard, towels and linens smashed together with dirty clothes in the hamper, all the leftover food in the cupboards thrown away.  Nothing but boxes and a bare mattress for the next sixteen-some hours.  

My life this month was supposed to be on its way to positively domestic.  Finally, I was going to do some of that nesting I'd read about, maybe get my act together and start playing the part of a "wife," whatever the hell that is.  And yet here I am, musing indifferently that the next time I'll be able to shower might be around nine or ten tomorrow night, if I'm lucky, and contemplating a run to the liquor store for a therapeutic evening of solitary beer and video games.  Pretty much like every other night this month, except with even less in the way of creature comforts.  Joy.

The thing about the karmic wheel: I tend to take it all, bank or bust, with the same level of complicity.  And once that bitch starts rolling downhill, I just let it draaaaaag me down.  

Mana from heaven

The reason why I'm never terribly disheartened by serialized misfortune in my life is that, true to the pseudo-peasant belief system instilled in me by my mother and grandmother, I'm very superstitious.  I have no patience for "serious" religions, but my love of ritual and magical thinking rivals that of any incense-burning, Celtic-music-listening, RenFaire-costume-sewing nouveau pagan.  Just ask Husband the Lawyer, whose sober pragmatist influence on me has been tenacious but spotty, continually running into walls of willful idealism when capital-C Concepts are discussed.  So of course, when bad things happen to me in succession, I placate myself with the gooey New Age theory that balance will always be restored in life, and that a string of goodness must be just around the corner.  Not saying I'm proud of it, but it works.

Well, after the draining long-distance love thing and the Great Moving Debacle of Aught-Eight, I've been overdue for this alleged "good" for quite some time, which must be why it all rained down on me in the past few days.  First, there was the alchemic transformation of old acquaintance into new friend over a beautiful Pixar film (WALL-E, holla), sausage 'n' beer, and impromptu drunken Twinkie consumption.  Then, there was a Princess Bride Quote-Along, which dropped me into a sold-out theater full of what can only be described as "all my ex-boyfriends, aged 13-20."  There were inflatable swords involved.  Then, a series of mundane minutiae involving work and money I'll refrain from discussing, being as I am all humble and ladylike, but simply insist in passing that they were awesome.  

And, finally, to crown my goodness glory, I spent the better portion of last night playing a newly-purchased Warcraft III.  Because, while video and computer games have eaten months (if not years) of my life, I've never actually bought one.  Shamefully, I was always that proverbial pretty girl user who mooched off the consoles of others, loitering around boys' apartments and dorms at all hours in cute outfits, just waiting for a chance to get my hit.  But now... now!  Drunk with adult purchasing power, I feel it's high time to atone for my adolescent sins and fully embrace the pixelated world I've only loved in short, illicit bursts.  

Magical thinking is fun, but there's something to be said for clearheaded, goal-oriented action done in good faith.  Something that I fully believe is acquired in part by commanding armies of ghouls and orcs.  Consequentialism, here I come!

Pilgrim's progress

I did a lot of walking this weekend.  Since summer school is over and I have a week of nothing before leaving for Dallas and then Ukraine, the next five days are spread before me like an enormous oil slick, whose edges disintegrate and blur into the shimmering horizon.  It's also been overcast and stormy practically all month in Boston, adding even more fodder for hours-long restless, lonely rambles.  Last night, after a particularly epic thunder session that twice killed the power and made the windows rattle in apocalyptic fashion, the rain finally gave way to a glowing twilit sky covered in the haggard remnants of storm-clouds.  I threw on my husband's old Harvard Law sweatshirt, the one I'd cheerfully defaced with an anarchy A just a short year ago, and set off for a hike around Brookline.  

After living in the graffiti-and-broken-glass neighborhood down the hill, it's still a shock for me to walk down block after block where the only sounds are fountains, wind-chimes, and the plaintive shrieks of spoiled children.  After eight o'clock on a Sunday night, the only people out are men in bermuda shorts being tugged around by the family dog, and women in yoga pants immersed in their power-walk.  The street side of the sidewalk is lined with recycling bins, all neatly sorted into plastic produce containers, flattened cereal boxes, and bottles from expensive booze.  To the house side, tall roses and sunflowers lean out from mulched gardens to graze the shoulders of passing pedestrians.  At the top of the hill, there's even a house that sports a row of tomato vines right on its front lawn, the fruit ripening in blissful self-assurance of never being stolen or trampled.  Dusk settles slowly around the colonial-style houses and puts a soft focus filter over the yellow light in each window.  

It must be quite the pretty sight when you're behind the glass of one of those warmly lit windows and look out onto the blue-black street.  But I was shuffling aimlessly in the dark, hunched over to hide in my hoodie, the hems of my baggy jeans soaked in puddle water.  I realized then that the letter emblazoned on my chest was taking on a very different meaning from the one I'd intended when I shuttled my time between Allston and Cambridge and still thought I should épater le bourgeois.  Who am I kidding with the rebel loner business.  More like: A lone, prowling wolf in a world of happy fatted lambs.  A bedraggled outcast slinking through the safe suburban shadows.

Loss and gain, again

My body is mysterious and erratic.  Every once in awhile, I go through periods where I suddenly lose my appetite.  The sense of hunger remains, but it's about as fruitful as a trapped rodent trying to claw frantically out of a trash can.  If it gets too restless, I shove some colorless, packaged, frozen thing down my gullet to calm the pesky ruckus, but I remain disdainfully distant from its cause.  After a week or so, my pants all hang sadly off the twin peaks of jutting hip-bones.  After a month, the flesh slowly creeps from my shoulders and leaves a deserted playground of nooks and shadows.  Of course, these wasting spells are inevitably followed by some equally sudden internal flip of the switch, wherein, like last night, I find myself getting ice cream and chicken wings for dinner, then standing in the kitchen at ten o'clock at night, smearing herbed goat cheese and ginger-fig jam over the fourth, fifth, and sixth slice of fresh farmer's market bread.  

It's too bad that there's an entire teenage subculture devoted to the former syndrome, while the latter has never found so broad and fetishized a following.  I'm sure there have been times where my xylophone ribs and naked elbow joints have elicited envious fascination from the Hot Topic-wearing set, but I'd much prefer to be somebody's gluttonspiration.

Indulgent self

I know I just got done lamenting the oxymoronic permanent transience of my existence yadda yadda etc., but.  Sometimes I change my mind and secretly love it.  

I love waking up as early as I want and padding through an empty, echoing apartment, putting a pot of Turkish coffee on the stove, and watching the pink glow of the dawning sky reach the exact shade of the flowers on the mimosa tree outside the kitchen window.  I love filling up the tub and reading, half-immersed in hot water, until the steam warps the spine of my book.  I love losing track of meal times and grazing on fruit, bread, and beer at odd hours of the day, standing over the sink to catch errant juices and crumbs.  I love spending days in a wife-beater and a pair of torn boy's boxers with the words "Stocking Stuffer" printed on the back, not ever folding my clothes or cleaning up my tea cups, and generally living like a child whose "Home Alone" dream was centered more on the voicing of an elaborate internal monologue than on wild parties or potato chips and ice cream at midnight.  

But the thing that I love probably the most is falling asleep every night to the plaintive metallic hum of the subway train, a sound I instantly associate with childhood summer trips between Lutsk and Kyiv, the rocking rhythm of the top bunk, and staying up as long as my eyes would let me to watch the sleeping Western Ukrainian countryside rush past the grimy train window.  These are all only child things, moments and memories that get collected with the same loving care as delicate sea shells or semi-precious stones, and it's hard to pay the proper reverence to them when you're living with someone else.  No matter how low-key, the presence of others always somehow interferes with my sensory organs, scrambling the signals I spent so much time cultivating.  Ten tons of shit scraped aside, I'm glad I got this chance to fine-tune.

Bourgeois dream; or, Solzhenitsyn R.I.P.

The past week has been a steady series of foiled expectations and dashed hopes, the most glaring of which involved, of course, moving.  After a day of frantic packing and cleaning, the hubs and I loaded up a rental car, circled the new building ten times to find parking, waited for the concierge for half an hour in a stiflingly unventilated lobby, and were finally greeted with the joyous news that the former tenant had decided to stay for two weeks past her lease.  We've been temporarily housed in a similar unit on the sixth floor ("What a view!  Think of it as a honeymoon suite!") and assured that by the time we return from our Eastern European vacation in September, all of our belongings would be hauled back down to our real apartment on the second floor, free of charge.  We're also getting a pass on rent for the month... all of which would be nice, except for the fact that after living alone for two years in a filthy student ghetto, the last thing I want to be doing for the final two weeks of the long-distance relationship between my husband and I is coming home to bare walls and cardboard boxes.  In fact, the only thing that got me through the past month, nay, year, was the giddy daydream of hardcore nesting: elaborate floor-plans, kitchen wizardry, and Martha-Stewart-meets-D.I.Y.-punk crafting projects to make our house a home.

Well, scratch that one.  Stuck settling again, buying plastic cutlery and four-dollar knife sets from CVS because it makes no sense to equip a kitchen that's only temporarily mine.  Temporariness.  Transience.  The kind of feeling that was already familiar when I was eight and already a veteran of no less than three major cross-country moves, not to mention one involving traversing continents.  When I was eight, my mother was the one who got stressed and cried, while I busied myself playing with packaging detritus.  Moving is sad, I'd say to myself, but empty rooms are the best for cartwheels.  Now I'm eight thrice over, and I'm the one who bursts into tears at the prospect of dealing with landlords and electric companies.  And across the twin seas separating us, the Atlantic and my frustration, my mother now spreads her unconvincing over-the-phone balm: "Don't worry!  Don't stress!  It's nothing, nothing!"  I don't buy a word of it.  I remember how much it wore on her, this living out of half-unpacked boxes.  I remember how much it wore on me, quietly and insidiously, and how amazed I was to visit friends' houses and see the stolidness, the weighty reliability and immobility of their furnishings.  

Not surprisingly, I've adapted quite well.  Ran little errands today in between reading, stopped by the local bakery for a fresh loaf and tore into it with my hands when I got home.  Pirated wireless at Panera, drinking coffee for three hours while I worked on a Russian essay.  Now pirating wireless at "home," cheap cereal box fan rigged up to keep me cool and drinking tea from an ancient plastic Mardi Gras cup.  The same kind of life I've been living for the past year, but in a bigger place and nicer zip code.  All the tears of frustration have been squeezed out.  At least there's Imperial Stout in the fridge and the neighborhood is great.  Time, again, always and once more, for a little antici...pation.