march 28, 2000.

My cubicle mate got back from Latin America today. During the week she's been gone, she got married to native, with all the paperwork that entails. I'm told that he disappeared the night before the wedding. And now he's engaged in something shady and she hasn't been able to phone him since her return to Canada.

She's a mess, a walking, talking, continually-exploding trauma bomb, spraying hurt and unhappiness in a 5 cubicle radius. And I'm working next to her.

Blech. I keep hearing the story, over & over to anyone that comes by & asks about her trip - how she thought he wouldn't show up at the altar, how much she wants to stay in Latin America, how worried she is about him now, how she refuses to tell her parents. After the third repetition, I started to lose sympathy. Admittedly, I'm a bit old-fashioned about a few things. I believe in things like long-term commitment and respect for others. But come on. It sounds like she basically had to trick him into getting married. Obviously, she's not 100% sure of his feelings...he's disappeared twice in the last week, for Christ's sake! I find it hard to believe that with this kind of behaviour, he's such a prize that she absolutely had to marry him before she came back to her country of origin. Now she's miserable because they're apart and she can't find him. But none of this was unexpected if you think about it.

I just have very little patience for people who walk into these sorts of things wide-eyed, and then make everyone around them hear about how much pain their in. Whoops, that description fits me living at home, too. Damn. Caught in the net of my own fashionable alienation.

Today feels very Amazonish for me. Instead of having my parents drive me to the subway and them commuting into the City, I actually drove down all by myself. This was the source of much anxiety for my parents in the last couple of days. My mom characterizes this as overprotectiveness. To me, fresh from the history lectures of the 20th century, it feels more like Mussolini's fascism. Sure, there's safety...but at what cost?

In any case, they could fret & moan but I had to get downtown for class tonight. It was a rather good time...traffic was a little pokey, but I sang Police songs at the top of my lungs and did my best. I was only honked at once.

Instead of trying to park at the university, I parked in the Boy's backyard & took the bus in. It felt very pleasant, like a prelude to co-habitation. Unfortunately, the Boy's been working a night shift job since January, and he's starting to hit the wall in terms of being able to sleep during the day. So he was a very sleepy baby and I went home soon.

One more incident bears relating. While I was gathering my stuff to go back to the suburbs, St. Stephen was talking on the phone to Jeremy, the boy I knew way back when. Actually, it was more than knew, I thought him surpassingly neat way back when. (My predilection for sweet, smart, painfully skinny boys had an early start). Anyway, as I believe I've explained in the past, St.St and Jeremy were in some of the same courses, and became friends before I even knew that Jeremy & I were at the same university. Wackiness.

But like I said, I was on my way out the door, Josie in my hand and her waving goodbye for the both of us, when it occurred to me that I'm probably a cuter as a woman than I was as a girl. I mentioned this to St.St, who stopped me at the door to relay a message from Jeremy.

"I don't know how cute the doll is," he said through St.St, "but I remember you being a pretty good Veronica."

A mysterious statement to be sure, but a nice one nonetheless. My heart felt light on the way home, lighter than it's been since camp. Feeling a little attractive goes a long way.

Driving home from the City tonight, I caught 2 minutes of Led Zepplin broadcast from one of the many cockrock stations littering the dial. Transcendently cheesy...especially the part where Robert Plant starts moaning. Yeah, that's art.

Shake for me girl. I wanna be your backdoor man...

Again, the sort of thing that's prolly atypical for a girl coming home from a gender-in-history class.