ode to phillip (pt 1)
the sky's starting to get light on the morning my very dear friend phillip is leaving for japan for two years. right now he's sleeping for an hour on the couch downstairs. i told him i'd be sure to wake him before his mom gets here at 630 to take him to the airport. i met him in my freshman year, when i came home to visit some friends from high school. we were going out to eat somewhere (i no longer recall where). a nice place. he was wearing a 3-piece suit. i was wearing a red dress that reminded him of a singer he liked. i spent the weekend with them, hanging out in his dorm room watching invader zim, reading johnny the homicidal maniac, and listening to bjork. he had taught himself some japanese in high school and wanted to do the jet program after college. he was not merely interesting; he was fascinating. from then on, i came to see them every couple of weekends. we talked for hours on aim. i moved home for the summer and spent many a wickedly late night in minneapolis and then uptown, at his apartment. or going dancing. or walking. went skinny dipping once - me, him, and faye. a warm, clear summer night. we swam through black water to a boat tied up near the shore in lake calhoun. i think if i could have seen the seaweed that i could feel the first 20 feet, i wouldn't have gone. naked and shivering but hidden by the night, we talked for a couple hours before we swam back to shore, where faye and i discovered the odd joy of "going commando". we went to byerly's to get bagels and cream cheese.
summer eventually disappeared but i stayed, switching to the u to be closer to the people i loved. after long days of school i would get in my car and drive from the saint paul campus to bethel, where april and faye lived. or north minneapolis, where phillip lived. we watched movies and played ddr and bitched about their bad roommates. he called me at 4am to tell me that previously sold-out zwan tickets were now flooding ticketmaster. we went to see cursive and godspeed. i made them dinner and washed their dishes when i had a mind for it. at the end of the year, we decided to all move in together.
summer was long and sumptious, with me working a job that sometimes allowed me to leave by noon. i would work and then meet faye and phillip at a restaurant in uptown or at his apartment. we stayed up late one night and they both got drunk and layed in the middle of an empty central ave at 4 am. a cop appeared from nowhere and asked if they were ok. <.< another night phillip sang me a song he wrote called ode to no one. i loved it, of course. we found a house to move into. at the end of august, phillip, faye, and i drove to new york to see bjork play at coney island, stopping along the way to visit canada and see a few tori amos shows. also stopping when we ran into joy's japanimation in the middle of nowhere in pennsylvania. we slept in faye's minivan and ate cheese sandwiches and visited the prada store on fifth ave and rode the subway at 2 am. 11 days, there and back. an epic voyage.
fall came again and we finished moving in to our house. phillip was the one i could count on to pay bills on time. also the one who would help me clean and give me the best advice on what i wore and what i designed. turned out we had a mutual love for fashion, and his untrained eye was always infinitely better than my restrained one. he switched to the u that fall and decided to major in japanese rather than music. he listened to me bitch about how messy faye and april were. he listened to me bitch about people smoking in the house.
summer eventually disappeared but i stayed, switching to the u to be closer to the people i loved. after long days of school i would get in my car and drive from the saint paul campus to bethel, where april and faye lived. or north minneapolis, where phillip lived. we watched movies and played ddr and bitched about their bad roommates. he called me at 4am to tell me that previously sold-out zwan tickets were now flooding ticketmaster. we went to see cursive and godspeed. i made them dinner and washed their dishes when i had a mind for it. at the end of the year, we decided to all move in together.
summer was long and sumptious, with me working a job that sometimes allowed me to leave by noon. i would work and then meet faye and phillip at a restaurant in uptown or at his apartment. we stayed up late one night and they both got drunk and layed in the middle of an empty central ave at 4 am. a cop appeared from nowhere and asked if they were ok. <.< another night phillip sang me a song he wrote called ode to no one. i loved it, of course. we found a house to move into. at the end of august, phillip, faye, and i drove to new york to see bjork play at coney island, stopping along the way to visit canada and see a few tori amos shows. also stopping when we ran into joy's japanimation in the middle of nowhere in pennsylvania. we slept in faye's minivan and ate cheese sandwiches and visited the prada store on fifth ave and rode the subway at 2 am. 11 days, there and back. an epic voyage.
fall came again and we finished moving in to our house. phillip was the one i could count on to pay bills on time. also the one who would help me clean and give me the best advice on what i wore and what i designed. turned out we had a mutual love for fashion, and his untrained eye was always infinitely better than my restrained one. he switched to the u that fall and decided to major in japanese rather than music. he listened to me bitch about how messy faye and april were. he listened to me bitch about people smoking in the house.