Tango, etc. - 3/30/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

For the last week, I have been doing about the same things I have been doing for the last month, only I care less. I have been going to work. They are getting to know me better. Guess what? I am still that quiet girl. Even though I talk sometimes. People take on the same kind of attitude around me that they do around Bonnie. They act weird and tease me to try to get me to smile. They talk to me sometimes the way you talk to God or your cat.

"Never have a boyfriend Aidan. Never have sex," says Lyra, a sixteen year old hispanic highschool dropout who looks twenty-eight and who has sort of befriended me in a co-worker type way, about once a week when she gets annoyed with her boyfriend.

"Okay," I say.

"I'm serious," she says. "It's a fucking waste of time."

I have considered reminding Lyra that I am actually older than she is. I have decided, though, that she is right in thinking that this is pretty irrelevant. I am clearly very virginal, and in general know almost nothing about living like an adult. Maybe she should give me advice.

I have been going to school. I have been waking up every morning and spending several minutes seriously considering whether or not I should get out of bed. When I do (and I have taken at least one day off) I think of it as a favor to someone. To the school, maybe. "Okay school," I say. "I guess I'll come in today, just this once more. But don't go expecting this kind of thing from me all the time." When I get to school I do almost nothing. I have a D in French.

I have been violently obsessing over Harry Potter and Julian Miller. It feels very good. I have been pulling out my own hair. I suppose now is as good a time as any to admit that I do that. I have been reading Vonnegut. Maybe you can tell.

This morning I woke up to find that my social filter had completely disappeared. I basically said whatever popped into my head for the entire day. Half the time I couldn't even remember it a few minutes later. I was acting really weird. People were laughing though. I think I was being funny.

Julian talked to me, and I think he thought I was being funny. Today was the cabaret. I think I didn't mention it last year. The cabaret is a big party fourth block in the Williams Center during which foreign language classes do silly things on stage in the name of internationalism. Also sometimes people play music. Julian and I were made to play the French national anthem together last year by Madame Bellakanovski.* I didn't really mind.

This year, Julian, Paul Yu and Brian Li played tango music while a girl danced. They practiced at lunch first, in the band room.

"Is it okay if we play some music in here?" said Paul to Mr. Thomas, in his complete monotone.

"No," said Mr. Thomas. "Jeez Paul, what kind of room do you think this is? If you want to play music, go to the cafeteria."

All the hardcore bandies eating their lunches laughed.

They played. It sounded really cool. Fast, and dark, and exciting. When they finished, the hardcore bandies gave them a round of applause. Julian looked sort of like he had forgotten we were there. Then he beamed, directly at me, for some reason, and said, "Oh, thanks." Then I asked him what that had been, exactly, and we had a small conversation.

They didn't get the same reception from the thousand random teenagers in the Williams Center for the actual performance. Especially not from the particular teenagers sitting behind me and Molly and Dave. These were the particular kind of teenagers whose vocabulary consists of maybe ten words, one of which is "faggot." They cheered sarcastically and talked a lot about how much that sax kid sucked, and when the dancer came on, they whistled and called her a whore.

I considered turning around and telling the kids to shut the fuck up. I thought of several different ways I could phrase it. I thought about how noble it would be. I considered saying, "those are my friends, assholes." I finally decided, though, that it was too noble, that I would be doing it only to be noble and that therefore it crossed the line between noble and selfishly lame. I just shut up. It was the only thing my social filter did all day.

The cabaret as a whole was terrible. This was entirely the fault of the techies. Really the only worthwhile part was M. Wells in drag. Every year for the cabaret he does something out of character, humiliating, and hillarious. This year he reenacted, with his class,

Molly and Dave and I ended up in the band room afterwards, and so did Julian.

"So how'd we sound?" he said.

"I thought you sounded good. The people behind us didn't. But they had a combined IQ of about seven," I said.

He laughed. "Can you believe M. Wells?"

"He has to stop outdoing himself eventually. It can't just keep going."

He laughed again. "See you later," he said as I left.

"Bye."

Molly drove me home. At one point as her giant car was jutting awkwardly into the road, Julian's bus almost hit us. He waved enthusiastically from one of the back windows. I processed it too late to wave back. My first reaction was to look around to see if he could have been waving to someone else. I don't think he was. I could be wrong.

This is confusing. It would almost be preferable if he would ignore me again. No, not preferable. Just better. I would enjoy it less but it would be better for me. God, he better not go to Graham. I shudder to think what another four years of this would do to my personality.

It is late and I am not thinking straight and I have to work in the morning. I feel like I had something else to say. This might be edited later.