Cut and Paste, Start Again

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Winter 2002

There's a bottle of vodka hidden away in my dresser,
under a pile of old slip dresses I don't have the gall to wear anymore.
Every few days I lift it to my mouth and start to drink,
but stop and screw the cap back on,
and put it away for another day.
It's cold here, but that's not the kind of warmth I'd like this year.

I listened to the girls in class this morning talk about how "the city is low on men,"
we'll all just have to take what we can get before winter comes;
they all agreed that winter was the worst time to be alone.
Only one girl spoke up and said that maybe we shouldn't be so desperate to be held
that we give ourselves over the first person who looks our way,
maybe we should be self sufficient and wait for real love to come.
Who cares if it's not this winter, or maybe not even the next?

"But experience!"
Why be alone when you can try out new bodies every night?
Who needs love when we've got sex?
One girl began to preach that love meant nothing,
dating was not about love, it was about convenience and experience.
Who cares if some guy loves you if he's poor?
She went on to explain that our best bet for survival was to find guys with money and play their little game...

It went on, and on and on...
At some point it turned into a discussion of diet plans
and exercise regimens that did or didn't work,
I think it was around then that I turned up my walkman and drowned them out.
It's strange to me to be in this environment full of feminine energy,
not the new age empowered woman energy,
but this weird, submissive bullshit in the guise of empowerment.
They're intellectually wimpy.
Sometimes I think that they're scared they might turn ugly if they read a book,
or thought about something besides how they looked.

Graffiti on the wall outside school said: REMEMBER, WE ARE STILL HUMAN.
Does this all come together?

My back curves in the wrong direction.
It's how I made up for becoming a woman:
falling into myself.

9:56 p.m. 10-25-2002
(I sat down to write something about the people I work with, and realized that I'd already written it 6 years ago)
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22:27 - 24 April 2008

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