Sinister: thank you for bein' a friend..travel down the road and back again....your heart is true....you're a pal and a confidante...thank you for being a frie-e-e-e-e-e-end.

[Kirsten Kenyon]

  this past sunday evening, i sat down with a cup of coffee and 
thought about what the week might bring.  i'd like to say this is a 
weekly ritual, but that's just not true. i only did it because last 
week brought a funeral, an armed robbery, and a monstrous teenage 
girl who bumped into my sister and knocked her to the floor, breaking 
her elbow and rendering her useless for the remainder of the junior 
varsity basketball season.  it was a strange week.  so i decided i'd 
sit down and imagine everything that could possibly happen in the 
next seven days, thus sparing myself at least a little bit of 
potential shock, fear or disappointment.  now, on a friday, the week 
has brought the following:
 A)  the much-anticipated return of 'bitchy erin,' a sixteen-year-old 
noodles employee who was suspended for two weeks after her deranged 
boyfriend broke house arrest for a bowl of sesame lo mein, resulting 
in a jerry springer-style shouting match during the lunch rush.  
erin's hasty dismissal brought a spattering of applause from staff 
and patrons alike.  her red-faced return left most of us speechless, 
although a certain flamboyant associate manager can be accredited the 
words 'help me jeebus, the bitch is back.'
 B)  some lovely shimmery grapefruit-scented lotion
 C)  undeserved words of gratitude from a hippie-turned-
microbiologist.  i met him on an email list during my freshman year 
at valparaiso.  the timing couldn't have been better, really.  he 
called himself a 'turnip,' but everyone else called him 'the dharma 
bum.'  at the time, most of my evenings were spent sipping port out 
of a coffee mug, carefully directing the cigarette smoke out the 
window, listening to django reinhardt and dreaming of a mountain 
climber called japhy...with a little goatee and an impressive 
collection of portable cookware. of course.  i was bored out of my 
mind, and jeff was out of money.  so we had ample time to chat. he 
was living in maine, saving his pennies for enough gasoline to get to 
the west coast, and dividing his free time between his cello and me.  
nearly ten years my senior and bursting with 'real life experience,' 
he was full of wise words and literary recommendations.  eighteen 
years old and stranded in a town that would surely rank among 
america's sleepiest, i really had nothing interesting to tell him.  
just silly stories.  about the infamous 'stickshift sarah' and about 
my roommate's 'glutes and abs' workout video that starred this girl 
with hilarious breasts.  (i can't remember why they were so funny.  
but they were.)  and i told him about the stupid parties, about 
the 'valpo popo' and about drunken frat boys belting out 'redemption 
song' like some kind of anthem for the affluent white male attending 
a private university on a basketball scholarship.  there really 
wasn't anything else to tell, and i felt sort of bad.  but we kept in 
touch.  spring break came around, and a rainy evening found me 
sitting on the sofa, watching seinfeld with my parents and racking my 
brain for a way to escape.   the telephone rang, and my mom said 
there was 'some man' on the line for me.  jeff had finally saved the 
money for his cross-country journey, and he was warming up at a 
milwaukee pizzeria and wondering if i'd care to meet him for a bit.  
so i drove out and found him, and we chatted for awhile and had some 
tea and custard, then he hugged me and sprinted into the pouring rain 
and drove off to oregon.  i didn't hear from him for several months.  
when he wrote again, he was living in a greyhound bus with a crew of 
environmental activists, chaining himself to trees and fine-tuning 
his survival skills.  we wrote back and forth a few times, and he 
kept trying to convince me to come out and join the organization.  he 
insisted that the only things i needed were a good pair of shoes, an 
understanding that i would see my peers dragged off to jail in 
chains, and an acceptance of the fact that sooner or later, it would 
happen to me.  believe it or not, i was tempted.  but i declined, and 
he stopped writing and i felt i'd let him down.  
   a year passed, and he dropped me a line to report that the 
organization had sort of rotted and he was back in school and feeling 
good.  i wrote back to report that i was hopelessly intoxicated in 
the french riviera.   after that, i didn't really expect to hear from 
him again.  but then....yesterday, i received an email from a 
familiar name.  and it said 'thank you.' and i'm still not sure why, 
although i've read it several times.  something about going 
through 'some strange things' and really appreciating my friendship, 
and that although we hardly know each other, i have played 'a 
significant role' in his life thus far.  help me jeebus.  all i ever 
did was impose upon him with some of the lamest anecdotes ever told.  
hm. not unlike the way i ramble on to all of you.  sorry, by the 
way.  but i guess that if, on a certain day, what he needed was a 
detailed account of an unsuccessful attempt at 'natural 
refrigeration' (taping tubs of ice cream to the wall outside a third-
story window in january).....then i suppose he was probably talking 
to the right person.  goodness.
  oh.
 D) four pairs of socks, a new composition book and a large bottle of 
cheap vodka.
 hah.
  eleven days.
 love kirsten


Care2 make the world greener!
http://www.care2.com - Get your Free e-mail account that helps save Wildlife!
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+