Growing Up, Selling Out - 4/2/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

I have purchased two relatively significant things recently. They definately seem to be significant, and they definatley seem to be related. They are eyeliner and prescription sleeping pills. I think they are related simply because they make me feel kind of uneasy, and also like a sellout.

I have been using the eyeliner once in a while. It makes me slightly prettier. It also sometimes makes my eyes itch. I'm not sure why I got it or why I wear it. I never used to think I wanted or needed makeup. I have used the sleeping pills twice. They make me not remember what happens after I take them. One of them also made me have to collapse in the dry store room at work for a while.

I feel like eyeliner and sleeping pills are what being a full-blown adult probably feels like all the time.

I got an even more lesbiany haircut today.* I basically cut off all my hair. It was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I thought about it a little before. I actually thought about doing it myself - just cutting off all my hair. But I didn't think about it much. I thought it was just one of those weird manic urges that I wouldn't act on. But I had a haircut scheduled for today, and I thought, "eh, what the hell." The hairdresser was pretty excited. She told me how cute it was going to be and started.

"I feel like I might as well take risks with my hair," I told the hairdresser, "since I don't care about it all that much. I figure if this is cool it's cool, and if it's not, eh, it's only my hair."

She told me that I was funny, and that it would be cool. Whenever people tell me that I am funny, I am being funny unintentionally

The hairdresser, by the way, is the mother of Matt MacArthur, the coward who smoked cigarettes in back of the old bagel store. She is also the mother of Christine MacArthur, a girl in my humanities class who is good natured, popular, a three sport athlete, startlingly pretty with dark hair and dramatic black eyes, and easily one of the dumbest people I have ever met.

She finished. She swept large amounts of my hair into the trash, and my hair was barely jaw length before. My mother seemed slightly shocked. At least, she was joking around in a way that suggested that she was shocked but trying to convince herself not to be. I considered just saying to her, "Mom, I'm not a lesbian." Except that that would be misleading, even though it's true.

In all honesty, I suspect that my mother already knows exactly what my sexual preferences are. She knows pretty much everything important about me, just by guessing, even before I know it, sometimes.

I like my hair. I spiked it before B band and put on some eyeliner. Dave picked me up at my house since my mother had to go somewhere and my father drinks too much wine in the afternoon to drive me the five minutes to the school. I appeared at the foot of the stairs and grinned. My father looked at Dave, waiting for his reaction. He smiled very slightly and shrugged. My father laughed. He asked if I had everything, and I said I did, and we left.

"I like it," I said, grinning.

"It looks pretty good."

There was a pause.

"So all the bees are dying," he said.

"Oh I heard about that. That's weird. Is it because of global warming or something?"

"Combination of things. But I guess crops are dying out because there are no bees."

"Oh. That sucks."

We had been in the car for a few minutes before he said, "So I got waitlisted at CPU."

My heart sank a little for him. "Aw man..." I said. Dave had clearly been in love with this school.

"But I'm not very sad, really. I've been perky all day. Yay defense mechanisms."

"That sucks. So what's your first choice now?"

"I don't know. I have to look at some places again. ITI, I guess, or Johnson."

Molly got into CPU, even though she was indifferent to it when she visited. Neither of us mentioned this. Molly has already been accepted at ITI. She didn't apply to Johnson.

He was shaking a little as he spoke. "I'm not going to bother to reapply to CPU. I just don't really want to deal with it. I guess... I guess my essay wasn't really very good. I was getting kind of tired of the whole college thing when I wrote it. It's funny, I really found myself able to anylize the defense mechanisms I was using when I found out. Like I started rationalizing first..."

"How were you rationalizing?"

"I was like, 'Oh, I didn't really want to go there anyway.'"

He was laughing a little, but also shaking. I could not really think of anything comforting to say. I was not really empathizing as much as I should have. But I just sort of let him talk. He talked some more about it a few times during practice, which was horrible. My general apathy doesn't quite extend to A band, but it sure has B band covered. I don't enjoy it at all. I slack off in it noticably. Dave and I pretty much just have a conversation in it for an hour and a half. I feel a little bad about JV jazz band guy. He's a crazy musician and I respect him a lot, and he's also kind of socially awkward and his band isn't going very well. For this reason, I feel like I should be as hyper about practicing and paying attention as I was last year. For his sake. But I can't. My apathy has a life of its own.

The term ends in a couple of days and my grades aren't very good at all. I am starting to feel very acute, physical, adrenaline-fueled type fear that I will be kicked out of Graham and not be able to go to college because that is the only place I applied. Even this fear is not enough to turn me back into a good student.

I set my alarm earlier than usual for tomorrow so that I can spike my hair. Also, I have to take the bus so that I can take my guitar to school because I am in pit orchestra, apparantly, again? This pit consists of six people including Mr. Thomas and Mr. Casto, so it is even less organized than these things usually are. I don't even know if the rehearsal is really happening.