tic-tac-toe

We watched the band, listening half-heartedly, and played tic-tac-toe on a small square napkin. Colin, leaning back on two legs of his chair, wearing an ancient Weezer T-shirt, tapping his smashed box of cigarettes on the edge of the table, sat next to Eva, my best friend. I was across from both of them. They were engaged. I was not. I was wheel number three. Eva had yellow hair that night. Not blonde. Yellow, like a magic marker. Or, like plain magic. Either one. The drummer on stage was shouting profanity at every pause in the singer’s voice.
Colin lit his cigarette, took one quick puff, and squinted. “He’s gonna get arrested, I dare say.”
I swilled the rest of my apple martini and gasped, “You are not British.” The idiot. “You are not in a Jane Austin novel. You are not even rich. You,” I gestured drunkenly at him, “are not even rich. You have no right to say things like ‘I dare say’ and certainly no reason to.” I was slurring. I knew it. I didn’t care.
Colin peered through his black rimmed glasses at me as though he were my shrink. His cigarette scissored between his pointer and middle finger, he pointed at me. “No more drinks for you, my girl. You’re a mean drunk.”
It was all so random. Colin, who I’d known for three years, dated for two months, and hated for the remainder, now my best friend’s beloved. Eva, yellow hair, wearing my ice blue sequined tank top, watching the band and tapping her red glittery nails on the crap-ass rickety Formica table. The drummer with Taret’s syndrome. Me. Here.
“I’m not a mean drunk.” I savagely drew an O on the napkin. Colin pursed his lips and considered the board. With a flicker of his eye to mine, he neatly marked an X in the square I had planned to put my O. I must have sworn; Eva scooted her crap ass chair closer to the table and leaned her elbows on the surface.
“Jay,” she said.
That would be me. Janet Ernestine Phillipa Georgehouse. Jay, if you wanted me to speak to you.
“Jay,” she was saying, “you are a bit harsh after four martinis.” Her brown almond eyes lined with electric blue sympathized with whatever trauma I was suffering and had to overcompensate for by being a mean drunk.
I snarled at her. At Colin too. I drew two O’s, to block Colin’s next move as well, and smiled broadly.
“And a miserable cheat, as well.” Colin raised his cigarette and pinched it between his lips while leaning back in his chair. “It’s really quite—“
“Insupportable?” I mocked. “Cheeky?”
“Shut up. Let’s go home.” Eva was standing, swinging her purse onto her shoulder.
Drummer boy was serving as my ventriloquist. I staggered to my feet, kicking over my crap ass chair, and followed Eva. Sir Colin followed me. I could hear him reset the chair and leave a tip on our table for the crack whore waitress. I have excellent hearing when I’m intoxicated. What’s truly sad though, is that this place, The Swan Dive, this is my favorite place on earth.

Before the cussing band and crack whore servers, The Swan Dive was a smoky little hole in the wall coffee house that served coffee in real ceramic mugs. Almost bowls, if you got the largest size. That was all there was, coffee. If you were lucky there might be some muffins or Danish, or perhaps even some cake. Students came there to study, to take study breaks, and to, well, get coffee. Some locals would show up too—those students who never left Tuscaloosa Alabama, the ones who had invisible signs meant for my eyes only:
Haggard looking middle aged guy in acid washed jeans and a tan line where his wedding ring used to be: ordering a large Americano at the cash register. Reaches behind him to flip his white signboard around his back to face me. “You should be so lucky.”
Woman with unfashionable messy hair, weird lipstick, and thrift store corduroy blazer: reading what has to be an intellectual book with a snobbish expression. Muffin crumbs stuck at the corners of her weird mouth. Produces an 8x10 placard from under the table while chewing and does not look up from her book. “I am your best bet.”
A skinny young man rests his hand on an unopened book, dewy decimal system markings on the spine, sipping espresso at the window seat with a contented air: joined by a smiling young woman and they kiss warmly as she sits beside him. They begin to talk animatedly as the young man pulls an index card from his book with two fingers and casually holds it up. “This will never be you.”
Baby in a stroller, back and forth, back and forth, as his mom talks with another woman in line. Baby drools. And while squealing and drooling, pounds his chubby slimy palms on the tray in front of him, on which is spelled with cheerios: “I am more creative, likeable, and intelligent than you are.”

The End


X to Middle Center
Ok, so my banana bread will be done in less than 10 minutes now and this is what I’m excited about. It’s not even that I live for food anymore—though I did at one time.
This is not one of those victorious stories of a fat girl who
a) learned to love herself
b) found the way to give up her love affair with excessive food consumption
or even
c) remained displeased with herself and died unhappy and alone with a carton of ice cream clutched in her cold dead hand.
Dude, it’s not even going to be one of those stories about a skinny beautiful single girl and her
a) exploits in the dating world of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or some other cosmopolitan city
b) exploits in the dating world of Paris, Rome, Madrid, or some other exotic foreign setting
and
c) most definitely not anything to do with fashion, expensive automobiles, mansions, or jewelry.
Sadly, this is not even remotely going to resemble a social deconstruction, outcry having to do with cultural injustice, or subtle commentary on either which has been cleverly layered into a riveting narrative in order to astonish you.
No no.
This is where we are: Arizona, a small but nice duplex home, in the back room that should be a second bedroom but owing to the fact that my husband and I have no children, contains a futon, two filing cabinets, and too many computers. The Bat cave, if you will.
Here’s what we’re thinking about: the fact that my left thumbnail keeps snagging on my robe because I cut the nail with a knife while slicing two-week-old green pepper pieces for an omelet, the kitchen is a post-Saturday morning breakfast making disaster area, I’ve GOT to buckle down and learn German, and the banana bread will be ready to cut in 5 minutes.

O to Bottom Right
We’re also thinking about how sad it is that I went to school all those years, took all those classes, wrote so many stories counting back to Kindergarten, and now the only things I can think to write about are my own boring every day experiences. At least in elementary school I was writing bona fide Children’s stories. Middle School was probably the height of my literary career, now that I think about it. Basically everything I concentrated so hard on refining all through College came out of those ideas.
I’m shuffling to the kitchen and gleefully cutting both of us some banana bread (cake substitute—dessert type stuff having been given up for Lent), he doesn’t want any, so I dump his piece onto my plate and sit back down.

X to Top Left
In theory, this is the most exciting time of my whole life this far. One would think, THINK, I’d have more to say. One would THINK I’d be writing in my journal every freakin day. One would think, knowing me, I would HAVE a real journal instead of the haphazard notebook filled with fragments of journal days, story bits, outlines, and lots of scribbles. Perhaps that is what disturbs me most—that I don’t have a real book, as I always have had, to call my journal.
For crying out loud. I really have had a pretty cool life in this first quarter of my existence. I’ve traveled to distant lands, I’ve gone to college and graduate school with artsy people and “partied” with probably future Pulitzer prize winning, best selling, writers, I’ve had a romantic courtship full of more drama than I could have (should have) ever wished for, endured the beloved gone to war for a year, written a small book never to be published, and now I’m moving to Europe for an indeterminate amount of time.

We’re trying this. This writing straight onto the computer. No handwriting first. Throwing caution to the wind, we are. If the power goes out and all is lost, so be it. We are brave at this moment. We are not 100% attached to this page. We are Golem, apparently…

O to Bottom Left
How can I call myself a writer if I don’t write? A kid asked me what my job was when I wasn’t substituting. I almost squared my shoulders ever so slightly and pronounced that I was a writer or that I write, as I’ve done in the past. This particular day I told the truth. “Nothing. This is it.” As the shame and disappointment settled on me, I justified my answer. Technically, substitute teaching IS the only thing that pays me in actually money at the moment, so it technically IS my only job. Now, if he’d asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I’d have to say a “writer.”


X to Bottom Center
I did actually write a whole lot after I first got married, which surprised and delighted me. But then I started “working”, as in “for money,” as in dressing professionally, going to another building, and staying in that building from 7:30 am until 3:00 pm and being responsible for keeping the peace, tasking, and basically reading books for my own pleasure. And the reading part I can dig. I’m a very well read young woman. Just uninspired at present.
I watched my first “reality show” start to finish last night. “The Next Top Model.” I told myself it was to scout out new hair styles, as I want one, but in truth I was riveted. I was surprised to have such violent emotions—I truly hated some of those girls. And some I liked very much. And in all honesty, I cried when they cried. HOW SICK AM I? Their dreams had been crushed! They’d worked so hard! How could Tyra Banks do this to them? That bitch! Can’t she see how much they wanted this chance! They have to reevaluate their whole lives now! They are 18, 19, 20 years old and have children to support! What are they going to do now? And as I swatted at my puffy, watering eyes, I realized…their dream was to be A MODEL. They are collapsed on the grass, cradling their heads, wrapping their stick arms around each other, sobbing not because their family had been slaughtered by ethnic cleansers, not because their home had been burned to the ground, not because they were starving, not because they had been thrown onto the street penniless and destitute, raped, stabbed, and beaten. They had not been selected to wear pretty clothes, have a team of artists reconstruct their appearance, and would now have to live a life devoid of people telling them they needed to lose 2 inches off their hips. Bastards.

O to Top Center
Tell me I’m different from them. Please. Tell me I don’t want to be published for the recognition and some money. I believe I’m different. Any money I’d get would go straight into the black hole, that abyss, that school loan I’ve got to repay. There’s no glamour in being a writer. No one even knows what they look like for the most part. There are no nationally televised events calling for red carpets, Gianni Versace, and acceptance speeches.
What I want is to be Dave Eggers. Chuck Palahniuk. Amy Tan. Diana Gabaldon. Tracy Chevelier. Pat Conroy.
I think it would be incredible for someone to read something I wrote and think, “I wish I’d written that.”

Let’s return to Jay, Colin, and Eva. To the scene that will not be a story.
All pretty much ganked and stolen from other real writers or thinly veiled real life people. Jay is me. Eva is the winner Top Model’s name. The setting is a combination of Crimson Café in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and a place in The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke.

X to Middle Right
Colin, I might have made up.

O to Middle Left
Material point: I can’t sustain a story line for longer than the few paragraphs it takes to set it up.
The invisible signs: I do actually like that part and I did actually think of it all by myself.
Like a big girl.
Like what writers must do all the time.
(ooooooo, ahhhhhhh…)

So, what are we doing here? Are we just going to type whatever comes into our head and assume that it can be warped and twisted into something cool and cohesive? This is our problem, Precious: Our musings, no matter how hard we try to write them cleverly or funnily, will forever be simply unimportant and uninteresting. You can copy and paste your favorite parts of your journal into story scenes that you have no intention of finishing or developing until you’re blue in the face, but the fact remains…no one cares. You are not Dave Eggers. You are not Anne Morrow Lindberg. No one can learn anything from you.
Not yet.
And see, even though YOU’RE thinking of the last scene in Gladiator, no one else would have read that as impending glory. Everyone else is thinking, “So, shut up then. Wait til you’re important.”

X to Top Right
Tic-Tac-Toe is the poor man’s Chess. The “Sam’s Choice,” the “Equate,” the “Compare Ingredients to ______” of strategy games. And what is it when there’s no winner? Someone’s supposed to say something like “cats!” Or am I having some sort of stroke… In any case, it happens all the time. It’s not technically a tie, but no one wins. Thus, no one really loses.
Kids love Tic-Tac-Toe.
I love Tic-Tac-Toe.
I love to remind myself that A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by publishers something like eleven times. Aloe Vera on a sunburn, that is.
Insert pretentious airy voice: “What is winning?” What is “publishing?” The blasted thing would still be the same as it was on my computer as it would be with a colorful cover.
So, does it mean anything? Is this a few pages of anything worth the last bit of my printer ink? Do I sabotage myself in my reader’s eyes by constantly hinting that what they are reading is a pile of absolute garbage? Do you get what I’ve been trying so shamelessly to do with the Tic-tac-toe theme? Perhaps you’re ready to “tic-tac-toe” me right into the ground. Well, what this has done for me, what we’ve learned here, is that I am apparently still able to form shapeless things into something sort of together. However thinly. However pointlessly. However meaningless. It’s still a puzzle that I can solve. Unfortunately, the benefits are much greater in essays written for school, graded on “organization” and the like. Not so much for stuff people read for pleasure. But I’m not going to apologize for that. That would mean you’d wasted your time here. I prefer you to come up with that conclusion all by yourself.