THE BUILDING'S NOT GOING AS HE PLANNED,
THE FOREMAN HAS INJURED HIS HAND...
Scream along with me to Weezer if you please. Why don't you? It's super fun!
THE DOZER WILL NOT CLEAR A PATH,
THE DRIVER SWEARS! HE! LEARNED! HIS! MATH!
The wind whips through my hair. It's terribly cliché to write such a thing, the wind whips through my hair, but it's also true. The wind, in the most one-dimensional way, whips briskly through my hair. To be more specific, it whips through my honey-color highlighted, mousse-laden hair, which still smells of cigarette smoke from my previous night's debauchery at The Rusty Nail, a Jamestownian watering hole for underage drinkers. I go there five nights a week, because it's super fun.
THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME,
THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME,
THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME,
THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME, YEAH!
'What is this song?' I used to think, back in my former life as a grumpy gus. I used to say, 'What are these lyrics?' and sneer, and then replace them with something dreary like Nirvana or Patty Griffin. I'd lie back and hate myself some more, and for what? It's sunny outside and there's super fun whipping wind on the north shore of the lake.
Lake Chautauqua. It's the lake I grew up on--a weed and zebra mussel choked expanse of water approximately 60 miles in diameter by way of road. 58 and some change, actually. I know this because I wake each morning to my Paxil, and then tool around the lake on my father's road bike, traversing the substantial hills, exhausting hills, with the ease of a woman on a mission.
A woman on a mission to be Normal, for fuck's sake.
I never thought I'd be the sort to rise early. In fact, I never thought there would come a day that I would recognize, let alone, uphold the tradition of living according to circadian rhythms. Before Paxil, I went to bed at sunrise, and woke at sunset. And napped several times in between. What was my drama? For reals, yo. I had issues. When I left Theresa and my college, I was sure I'd kill myself as soon the Paxil kicked in. Remember that? How silly. How maudlin. I never really wanted to kill myself, I just wanted to be part of the throng, the Normals. I wanted to go roadbiking with Weezer--the Nirvana for Normals--and hang out in watering holes with buddies, and go out on dates with other attractive Normals...to the movies. To Molly Brown's mini-golf and go-kart track. To Perkins for bottomless midnight coffee. I wanted to be a carefree Normal, and most effortlessly, Paxil had made me into one.
A lesbian Normal, that is.
For the first month of my summer, I was maudlin--and obsessed with cutlery--but the most miraculous of changes had happened once I conquered my fear of the Paxil packs. A mood switch flipped in my head, one I hadn't even realized was there. The Paxil absorbed and whipped my brain into shape, and within two days' time, my malaise lifted, a malaise that had gripped me since junior high. The changes were radical; I had boundless energy. I had self-esteem and purpose. I could do anything I wanted with my time, no matter how difficult it had once seemed. If I wanted, I could donate all my time to charity. I could help out at the soup kitchen, or drive the Meals-on-wheels truck, or help teach arts and crafts at the Boys and Girls club. But another curious thing about Paxil was that it made me realize I didn't give a shit about charity. The things I cared about most were my tan and my nightlife and other such trivialities, and so when I searched my heart for the thing I wanted to do most, the thing I was going to go out and do now that I had Paxil, that thing I wanted most was a lot of hot lesbian sex.
I met Candace between my junior and senior years of highschool, during a summer art enrichment program the county put on for co-delegates from each high school. Candace was one of the delegates from the Tulip school. It wasn't called "the Tulip school," but that was how I referred to the Dutch farm burb Candace hailed from...that Tulip place. Cows roamed the streets. Baked goods were very important, but nothing matter more than the fucking Tulips. Candace's co-delegate was the Tulip Queen I praised in part one of this story. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we were all bussed to Fredonia College to receive art instruction, and that was when the great Candace/Bunny Tulip Queen tug of war began.
The Tulip Queen--as you know--had preposterously blonde hair. It was nearly white in coloring, naturally, and in keeping with the motif, her eyelashes and eyebrows were the lightest fluffs of gossamer. She had blue eyes and an ample tan, peachy lips she kept coated in Dr. Pepper chapstick--this was the root of my decades long struggle with a Dr. Pepper chapstick fetish--and a lithe body she'd honed during the track practice sessions that had made her into all regional high-jump champion. She was stupid but charming. She liked Renoir--the Normals' Van Gogh--and her favorite "music group" was the obnoxious Swedish pop band, Ace of Base. She was hopelessly besotted with, and set to marry, the captain of the Tulip football team, a troglodyte named Chad with equally blonde pallor. Honestly, she was a character ripped from the vacuous pages of a Sweet Valley High novel, and I was in love with her.
So was Candace. This was obvious. Candace was her track team friend, a malevolent sprinter with mousy hair and black eyes, a formidable foe to my affections, the AC Slater to my Zack Morris, and no matter how much passive aggressive game we threw at each other to net the affections of our Kelly Kapowski, she remained besotted with the troll.
You can imagine my surprise when I ran into Candace three weeks into Paxil over a keg at a barn party. She had put on twenty pounds of tits and learned to smile, and she did so freely while we drank beer and flirted in a haystack. The smiling ceased when I asked her how the Tulip Queen was doing.
"Ay...not good," she said.
It was a depressing story, the kind you don't read in Sweet Valley High novels. She had completed less than a year of art school before falling pregnant with Chad's troglodyte seed. They were quickly married. Chad worked at the local grape juice factory doing manual labor--which was his personal destiny, to be sure--and Queen Tulips set to work painting country landscapes onto saw blades to sell at craft fairs. They had three children in three years before Chad's barely-hidden infidelities set Daddy Tulips on him with a shotgun. There was a divorce. Queen Tulips moved into her parent's newly converted basement with the three kids, embraced baked goods and called it a life.
But Candace had excelled. She was set to graduate from Buff State's illustrious fine art program with honors. She was already apprenticed with a well-known photographer. She explained lenses and filters and such to me--the important and technical portion of photography that I found bewildering when I dabbled in it--but as I didn't give a shit I didn't pay much attention. I only cared about myself and my desire to have a lot of hot lesbian sex. I smiled and nodded, though. She had bewitched me...physically. I leaned in and got closer to her once-malevolent face an inch at a time--till all the distance that remained between us was the approximate width of a strand of hay--and then fell into it for good. I hadn't come up for air all month. We were instant girlfriends. We spent our nights together drinking vodka and cranberry cocktails at The Rusty Nail and having sex in her neighbors' hot tub. They didn't mind if we used their hot tub at night. At the time, I wasn't sure why.
I liked being a lesbian. It was super fun. The sex was great with Candace, and because we both looked quite feminine, we were free from bigotry. No one suspected. We were naked a lot. That was one thing about being a Normal I really enjoyed, the easy nakedness. Although, I must admit, Paxil did something to my body, hardened it or something. It could have been the super fun bike rides each morning. I wasn't sure; I only knew that the layers of softness between the outer world and the mounds of muscle I'd put on during the marathon workouts I adopted during high school to combat depression and its effects on the body were suddenly gone. My ass cheeks looked like mini basketballs, and two rivets ran down my midsection.
All was perfect, really. Paxil had rocked my world, and I was--for the first time since adolescence--experiencing life as a Normal.
A heavy-drinking, heterosexual Normal engaged in a homosexual relationship. A Normal doing 50 on a roadbike down Mayville hill without a helmet, screaming Weezer without a care in the world. Nor any self-awareness. Nor any empathy. Nor any healthy fear of danger.
Posted by The Bunny at 10:36 PM