super tuesday and the week around it
On Super Tuesday, it was supposed to be warm so I suggested to my friends that we go on a picnic. I slept late because this last week I've been doing a lot of that. Other things I've been doing a lot of that of this week: listening to country music. taking portraits. buying things I shouldn't. (not that. not yet.) reading books that make me emotional about bennington. thinking gentle about grenadine.
Paige picked up Alicia and they went to the supermarket. They swooped by to pick up Georgia at the house and I missed the walk light to text her please bring my pink blanket from the couch on account of it being colder than I'd fancied I'd dress.
Completely botched the interactions around the voting thing but things were better when there was a small honk and Paige pulled up in a car of my friends and drove me across the bridge and away from that town.
Unfortunately, it was much colder than we'd anticipated, and the wind unstopping. Alicia left to pick up Adrian, so we didn't even have an indoor place to hide. But the light was nice and I took so. many. pictures. of my friends. My sister recently gave me I bought a camera off my sister and I've been using it nonstop every time I'm in the embrace of my friends. At first I just thought I'd use video to make a music video, but the portraits I'm getting out of it are super, too.
Paige held on close to me on the picnic table bench, with her arms around my waist and her head on my shoulder buried in my neck. She held tight and rubbed her hands along me and maybe I imagined her looking at me longer at McDonald's last Saturday, on Leap Day, when we dressed up and went to eat fries. I kept noticing how much I was shaking, and stopped because Paige could surely feel it. I was so cold. It was nice to be held.
As soon as Adrian and Alicia returned, we wanted to leave, to go back to me & Georgia's house. Hygge house. Hygge Haus. HEG. The Hague.
"Okay, get in," Alicia said, reaching for my legs after everyone had piled in. "How am I gonna fit?" I shouted, literally not seeing how geometry, physics, color theory, was gonna allow me to get in the backseat. I still don't know, I must have passed through the ceiling but I ended up flat on my back across the laps of Wes, Georgia, and Alicia in the backseat. It was very comfortable because we had everybody's blankets and so it was like a bed. Or an ambulance. Paige did donuts in the park parking lot. I could hardly tell we were spinning.
Back at my place, we watched a comedy special from the guy who was in Joker for a hot minute, and whom I've made fun of (I have apologized since) and Alicia fell asleep with her head on my lap while I played with her hair. Later we switched places and I lay on her and dozed. When it was time to go, Wes reached his hand out to me to help me up and then he held me close and I thought he was going to kiss the top of my head like he did in the parking lot after bowling last week, but he just pulled me in and put his head close, and I folded into him and put my head on his shoulder and it was almost sad. A whole-feeling.
The afternoon before, I'd gone to Paige's and sat on her bed and listened to her talk about so many things, about friends and photobooths and postcards and paintings and her to-do lists and her ex-boyfriend's desk. She took me in her office and took me through all of her art. Then we went to Domino's and sat at the counter where they have outlets at every seat. We got Hawaiian pizza and I had cherry coke and we wrote. For a few hours we used Domino's like Starbucks. I've wanted to do that since I lived in my studio apartment.
I keep thinking about last December. I felt unneeded and so unloved. It's in my blue journal. It was hard for me to believe anyone loved me anything more than out of habit. I keep getting it pushed on a steaming plate in front of my face over and over again that I was wrong then. The cliche and hardly-believable Bjork song, You'll be given love, You have to trust it. Maybe not from the sources You have poured yours, Maybe not from the directions You are staring at. Twist your head around.
Today Paige came over to grab a notebook and I sat with her on the porch as she smoked. The afternoon was cold and gray and empty and still and nobody was out but us. It felt like nobody was anywhere but us. Hygge was so solidly empty it felt like the house was newly dead. She told me about a really nice date she had last night and smiled knowingly, nodding through gorey details. I asked her to teach me witchcraft. I remembered the book I picked up from the Crossett Library free-pile on the last day before our parents came for us at Bennington. I remembered the book I'm reading about Shirley Jackson.