Please read these entries from my paper journal; I slept 4 hours last night and worked 10 hours today and I'm too tired to type anything original for you; besides, I planned this entry last night before I knew I'd be so tired today.
Tuesday, Jun. 01, 2004 - 20:39

Sunday, May 2, 2004 19:15
I am swearing off boys for the month of May.

Doesn't that sound cool? But - no, it's not like there's been so many boys or anything - it's just that I think I've been letting it get to me too much, dictate how I feel, get me down or up. And I want to see how I am on my own, how high or low I am by myself. So, for the month of May, no boys.

This is good.

There's this guy in town now that I see at the bar, and I stared at him the whole night, and then started wanting to make him like me. But now that it's going to be a boyless May, I won't do that.

Yup, I can often make people like me. And I like it when people like me, it makes me feel good. And I don't want to be addicted to that, get my self-worth from that, let that bring me up.

So any boys this month will only be friends.

Kelsi will be on her own, will listen to music she's found herself, will write stories, will sleep all night, will find a job, will go for walks and jogs and bike rides through new parts of town. Kelsi will think and read and learn and experience and feel. Her fingernails will grow, her cheeks won't get bitten, she won't play spider solitaire for hours. She will go to Denver. She will be fine, she will be good.

Tuesday, May 4, 2004 14:43
Only a few days into my boy-free month and I find myself spending the night on the beach snuggled next to some guy I just met.

I did not violate any of my principles, though. I will admit that I snuggled next to him once, or maybe twice, but that's just because I was cold. Besides those two minor violations, all I did was talk.

It's not my fault. I can swear off boys, but I can't make them swear off me. What can I do? Wherever I go, people fall in love with me.

That's a huge exaggeration, of course, and written very tongue-in-cheekily.

But for some reason many boys eagerly develop crushes on me. One week three different boys who I hardly knew at all developed crushes on me. Two of them I'd just met, and one of them had only "seen" me, never actually met me or ever talked to me.

It's slightly offensive. Are men just animals driven by their hormones? Am I giving off some scent that says to them, "I am ripe. Please mate with me." Are they rational at all, or are they purely sexual animals?

None of these guys knew me. They didn't know if I was mean or nice, loud or quiet, dumb or smart, dull or funny. They didn't know if we had anything in common or if we'd get along well together. All they knew was that I was female with a vagina and they were males with penises.

This sort of attention - unwanted, undeserved, unprovoked - is still pretty new to me. It's only started happening in the last year. Before that I was in a nine year relationship, and I guess that always being in the presence of a 6'4" 230-something pound guy doesn't make a girl very approachable. So it never happened to me, and when that first started changing I was, I suppose, a little flattered: "Wow, that guy who just walked past me smiled and raised his eyebrows. Maybe he thinks I'm pretty."

Friday, May 7, 2004
And in completely unrelated news, it's National Masturbation Month.

I am not doing a very good job of keeping boy free. In fact, I'm seeking out situations where I think I might get attention from boys. This is exactly the reason I need a boy-free month. I don't want to need the attention and I don't want to expect it.

I've been getting drunk a lot lately.

I've been going to the bar a lot lately.

I just saw Pete sitting on his porch. He might have been playing his guitar. And I wonder why he doesn't like me anymore and I wish I didn't care.

I haven't been sleeping much lately.

I hate being unemployed and having no prospects and no ideas.

I'm tired and in between things. I need to think.

Saturday, May 8, 2004 ~19:30
I'm watching About A Boy. I wonder why some things come into your life at the time they do.

I went to the bar last night and realized:

• I've been drinking a lot lately
• I'm very fun when I'm drunk

I've been drinking so much that I almost thought I was just naturally that fun. It's addictive, feeling fun and likable.

I didn't drink last night and I wasn't very fun. Well, I was tired, and there was a band playing. But, well, I need to stop taking these boy things so seriously. Also, I need to get out of the funk I've been in. Also, I need to write stuff. Also, I need to work on that script I'm supposed to be writing.

Think, write, and listen to music. Those are the things that are important to me. Go for walks and bike rides, find a job, even a little job.

So my goal for this month is to find a little job - maybe landscaping - and to write a little story.

To that end, I think, I'll only drink once a week. And I need to find that blanket pattern, which must be in a box in the garage.

Me, myself, and I.

Now I'm going to Wal*Mart to find a plant for my mom for Mother's Day.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004 22:47
Starting a new job tomorrow - landscaping - at 7 a.m. Nervous, or just not looking forward to it. I hate new things, starting new things. I'll be the only girl. I hope they'll be nice. I think they will be. Hope I can sleep tonight.

Thursday, May 13, 2004 23:00
Tonight after leaving the bar - after having only one beer each - my sister told me that she's become an idibot. I was worried about how to spell it - ittybit or idibot. It was hilarious.

Sunday, May 16, 2004 22:52 Mountain Time
I'm in Denver. A year ago...

I'm seeing Friend 2 tomorrow.

I saw my grandma today.

I'm watching the Matrix right now, I got up at 5 this morning, I ate homemade ice cream, I played with my cousins today, I think I'll go to bed now.

And I'm reading Slaughterhouse 5.

Monday, May 17, 2004 22:37
Friend 2 reminded me of a dream I had sometime in grad school - maybe last year - that I don't think I ever wrote down. I can't really remember it, but it was something like ... there was a mini Princess Diana on my shoulder or maybe on Princess Diana's shoulder, and the mini one had its own mini one, etc., infinitely. It was an infinite loop of Princess Dianas. And they didn't know they were dead but they somehow found out during this dream, and when they found out they all started screaming. It was a scary dream.

Had lunch with my grandma. She's well-liked at the place where she lives. We sat at a table with two other guys - Martin and Richard Schissler, 91 and 89. Martin still lives on his own and was visiting Richard. They grew up in southwestern Kansas on a farm speaking German. Their parents were from Austria - mother from Vienna and father from somewhere else. Their father had 22 children - 8 from his first wife, and after she died he married their mother and had 14 more.

My parents and grandparents used to send audiocassette tapes to each other and my grandma has one, mostly recorded over, of my grandpa telling a story of a trip they took to visit my parents in the early '70s. I'd never heard my grandpa's voice before.

Seeing Friend 2 was good - her stomach's just starting to get big. Her hair's cut off short. She looks good, seems happy. It was nice to see her. Their cat wasn't scared of me - I don't think I ever actually saw their cat in California, just her eyes from under the couch. She's pretty, soft and shiny with nice green eyes. Fat. Made me miss my cat.

Hmm. I need to bring a little notebook around with me to write stuff in throughout the day. Like tongue of the sea.

Fried Green Tomatoes is on now.

It's 11:59 now. Tuwanda!

Tuesday, May 18, 2004 ~15:50
I was barked at by a one-eyed dog. In Denver walking down the street. Heard a couple cars coming behind me, heard a whistle. "Wow, not again. Stupid men." Kept walking, then turned around. He'd turned, was going down the street in the other direction but had stopped, stuck out his head and waved. I smiled, then laughed. At him, not with him. Men, fucking animals. I was wearing jeans and a hooded jacket, not provocative or screaming for attention. Kept walking. The one-eyed dog, who shared a yard with a two-eyed dog. Heard a car coming up behind, and it was that guy again. I laughed, pathetic. He stopped. "Where are you going?" "Uh, for a walk." "Can I join you for a walk?" "Uh, no." "Are you married?" "Yeah, actually I am." He said more but I kept walking and he drove away. My hair was French braided, loose and a little frizzy. I went back to the home where my grandma lives and I sat on a bench and finished reading Slaughterhouse-five, or: The Children's Crusade.

I don't have enough creativity to write fiction. But: my dreams. My dreams are crazy, all fucked up and bizarre and hilarious and interesting.

My dad says, "You know, Dr. Pepper out of a can tastes a lot better than the stuff you get out of a fountain or in a bottle. A lot better taste." and my aunt said, "Oh, any of 'em do."

So back to what I write: that's my problem, what to write. I always want to write nice stories, inspiring, personal growth, someone's amazing journey or something. But reading Kurt Vonnegut: I need crazy people or aliens or murderers. There was that story about Lizzie whatever her name was who killed that other girl. I should finish that.

And the murder mystery.

But the one about the girl/me who decides to change her life... it needs to be more interesting.

And I should write something about best friends. I watched some of Fried Green Tomatoes last night after spending the afternoon and evening with Friend 2. I've been thinking a lot lately about how huge my exbestfriend's influence has been in my life. Especially the last year, the way I've handled things, I've really be able to see the effect she's had. I can't imagine what I'd be like if I hadn't been best friends with her. I'd be a completely different person.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004 13:06
I went to a lecture with my uncle last night, a lecture about Sakagawea - the first academic talk I've been to since school. It was good, interesting. And afterwards we walked out into a lovely evening, the sky still light, wisps of clouds, and, hey look, there's a tornado. It looked like a thin line of smoke. We walked back to the car and, hey look, there's the state capitol building with its gold leaf dome, just like the Georgia state capitol building that I saw five months ago.

I'm a very lucky person. Luck follows me around, luck drips off my fingers. It's a mystery. It's magic.

My hands hurt and I'm tired. But I'm younger now than I have been since I started getting old.

I like traveling. I like the journey better than reaching the destination. Sometimes I wish the journey would never end.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004 18:56
I've been at my job for two weeks and I haven't written about it at all.

I haven't written much lately so I have lots to catch up on.

Why? I guess because if I don't write it down I forget it and it's lost forever.

First, yesterday morning I woke up from a very bad dream about Pete. Or actually the dream was about me being stupid and he was there. In the dream I was going for a drive and then without realizing it or thinking about it I went to his street, parked right behind his car. It's okay, I thought, because it's 11 at night and he's probably in bed. But it was light out, even though it was supposed to be 11:00. Then I was in my sister's van and I decided to take a nap in it or something, but then Pete and two girls got there and were talking about what to do. Pete said, it's 11, I should go to bed, and the girls said, but it's still early. I decided to hide under the front of the van so he wouldn't see me. The girls laughed. Pete said, do you need some help? The girls laughed. I said I didn't need help, in a very high voice, trying to disguise myself. Then I gave the girls a ride, and my sister was with them pretending not to be my sister. The girls asked me if I was from here. I said no. They said I looked familiar. I was embarrassed about being caught in front of Pete's house.

So I guess I should start avoiding his side of town? I have to admit, I have many times gone to Fourth Ave. to see if his car is parked there, I guess to make myself feel better, to see that he's at home and not out busy socializing. He has been home a lot, a lot more than he was when we were seeing each other. So maybe he really was affected, he was upset, he wasn't just lying to me to get rid of me. I haven't written about this, but a couple weeks after the last time we saw each other I saw him by the bike path with some girl. I was on my bike, they were on a bench by the beach. When I came back after riding across the bridge they were walking back and holding hands. I tried to go slow so they could get out before I went by. They got in his car but sat there and I had to ride by. I felt dumb and realized that I'd just been one of many, easily swayed, and that he'd probably lied to me, maybe had started seeing her before he stopped seeing me. And he knew that I go there - I told him I jog to that beach, and I saw him one day when we were both on bikes and I said I was going across the bridge. He knew I go there and maybe wanted to rub it in, say to me, "See, I've moved on."

I saw him downtown a couple weeks ago, said hi. He was with a couple guys, I was alone. Walked past. I said hello, he said hey. And man, he was so cute. I guess it's just that now that it's over, now that I can't have him, he's oh so desirable. Which is dumb, because I wasn't like that before I met him. Yeah I thought he was cute but looks don't impress me, or so I like to say, I guess.

So what can I say? I guess to sum it up, which I've probably already written but haven't fully accepted, here's all it was: Pete, he's cute, he was nice, I liked kissing him. That's all. That's all. That's all there was.

Okay. Now on to other boys. At my job I work with three guys. My boss before I started and periodically since has told me to tell him if they say inappropriate things, if they go over the line - but... yeah the guys are perverts, but I think the only one I might have a problem with is the boss himself. Individually the boys are all really nice. Collectively they're a bunch of boys. But, I don't know, my boss just can't get past the fact that I'm a girl. And I think he's irked that I don't think he's hot. Ew. God. So. I don't know what to do.

But now it's 9:30 and time for bed.

Monday, May 31, 2004 21:55
I'm writing this with a green clay mask on my face, a very girly thing to do, and a fitting way to spend the last night of my boy-free May. But it's also kind of necessary because the Female Hormone Gods have decided to grace my face with a couple big red zits. Yay. My boobs hurt, my period is only inches away.

So my boy-free month has been a success, despite a shaky and insincere start. Quite a few of the girls I've talked to about this experiment have expressed interest in doing their own boy-free month, which is cool - but not nearly as cool as mine, just because my boy-free month happened to occur during National Masturbation Month - a coincidence I didn't find out about until a week or so in. So those other girls will not get points for hilarity. I do.

I'm writing like this - all annoying and grandiose - because I'm going to be putting this in my top secret online diary. I've already typed in my other entries for the month of May, and then I thought it would be nice to have one last one, from the last day of the month, sort of a retrospective. But it's a stupid entry because I can't write naturally imagining that other people are going to be reading it.

I want to write up a summary of my month, you know: I gave up boys, it was National Masturbation Month ha ha ha, I spent a night early on cuddled up to someone I'd just met oops, here's why I decided to have a boy-free month, then I went and got a job where I'm the only girl, men pee everywhere and say 'fuck' a lot, fucking animals, I've been hooted at and whistled at and it's new to me, I'm not used to it yet, blah blah blah the end.

But I don't want to do that right now, and maybe I never will. It seems boring, and I've written it all in little pieces and I don't know if putting it all together into one essay is even worth it. I kind of liked how it sounded just as diary entries, how the story unfolded entry by entry.

There are things left to tell my readers, like maybe explaining more about Pete. Or maybe not. He seemed like a nice guy, but maybe he wasn't, I don't know. Maybe he's an asshole. He doesn't have to work hard to get girls - he's devastatingly handsome, if you're into that sort of thing. And the sweetest thing I've ever seen was his smile the night I got back from Seattle. He was so happy to see me, and he smiled all night.

Anyway, soon after the demise of the Pete thing, I met a guy named Dave who also decided he liked me. Dave's nice, he's a history teacher. He's small and he talks in an interesting way. And also around that time I met Jeremiah, who, as soon as I met him, started trying to tell me that American English is lazy - obviously something he's put a lot of thought into, and obviously something he thought would make him seem intelligent. Poor guy didn't know, though, that I'd spent three years doing linguistics in graduate school, and if there's one thing I can argue about with finesse it's goddamn American English. So I spent the whole evening arguing with him: "Saying 'walkin' instead of 'walking' is just lazy." "So you're saying an alveolar is lazier than a velar?" "What?" And: "And 'ain't' - that's not even a word." "It's not? How can you say it then?" Etc. I won, it was rad. (I didn't attribute any speakers to those quotes, but obviously the smart-sounding ones were me, and the not-so-smart-sounding ones were Jeremiah.)

I see Dave every week at dollar beer night, and I see Jeremiah whenever there's a band playing - and I guess you could say I've engaged in light flirting with them, but just for kicks. It's not anything I take too seriously - which has been the whole point of this month. I was down about Pete and was using the attention from guys like Dave and Jeremiah to start feeling better again - which was crappy, and which isn't happening anymore. I've thought about extending this vow of platonicity through the whole summer, but I don't think there's any need to.

I'm too busy to have anything serious with a guy right now anyway. Plus I work with them all day. Alls I wanna do when I get off work is grab a cold one and check out the hot chicks walking by. Ha ha, that's supposed to be funny.

So here's what I've learned this month: guys are stupid, it sucks working outside when it's raining, I'm very fun when I'm drunk but I can also be fun without drinking (I've had some fun-filled sober nights which I haven't written about, so you might not believe that, but it's true), I've gotten my groove back, and I'm very lazy.

Dear journal, I love you. You're so interesting. XOXO