Inner dialogue:

February 11. That seems familiar. Not virginity. Not birthday. Not...oh, god.

It is the seventh anniversary of the most shameful day of my life. A little episode that was once known as That Tuesday. (Feel free to skip down to the next section if you like. It has Blake in it.)

I never bothered to write down what happened that day, despite hinting madly. The closest I ever came was 2 years ago, when I wove it into a tarot reading & a dream I had the previous summer. I think that seven years is a magic number, and certainly long enough for me to tell the bare facts. Which are:

Seven years and three days ago, I went to the Fireball with Alexi. But before we made it through the big doors of University College, I was already the worse for several glasses of wine that had only passing acquaintance with the plentiful cheese & crackers nearby. Yes, I was smashed. You can tell this from every surviving picture, as I lurch through various groupings and offer several unflattering views of my underwear. I also left Alexi alone most of the time so that I could chase after Paris (who was chasing after Ophelia, who was chasing after...I can't remember. Someone.) At some point we all ended up on the roof of UC, smoking various substances & staring at the frozen landscape. You can see Etobicoke from that height.

After they kicked us out of the dance (and we were there HOURS after everybody else left. I remember dancing to a jukebox at 3 in the morning) we went to the Grad Pad in the basement of Ferguson House and ate purloined ice cream. I went upstairs at one point to take off my golden dress (much the worse for wear) and my shredded pantyhose (I'd crawled to the roof without shoes on). Alexi had retired much earlier and woke up to find my dress on the floor, its inhabitant nowhere to be found. He tried to give me shit when I finally returned from hanging on Paris' every word in the Grad Pad, but I was too far gone to care.

Shit. This is petty, uninteresting & hard to write. Still.

Seven years ago, Alexi was supposed to meet me in the afternoon (which we'd done every week for the whole year). Instead, I took a day off from sanity. I woke up, cried through my shower, & found Ophelia (who had it just as bad as I did. She told me that she'd spent the night lying in the snow). On my suggestion, we skipped breakfast, gathered up some alcohol, and walked to Paris' house. We sat on his couch and drank for the next several hours. I passed out at some point. Someone found Alexi and brought him over to the house. He finally had a breakdown and started sobbing. I suppose 4 hours out in the cold & complete emotional betrayal by your girlfriend of 2 years can do that to you.

There are lots of things I've forgotten about that time, but I still remember what it was like to come out of a painful alcoholic haze & find myself on Paris' bed, watching Alexi sit in a desk chair & weep. I still remember with crystal clarity the feeling that I should do something but being too out of it to remember exactly what human beings did in this situation. And although we circled the drain for a few more months, that was truly the moment that punctuated a pretty nice 2 ½ years.

So there it is, in all its unflattering detail. I hope Blake never does anything so stupid that he can only write about after nearly a decade of interior penance.

I think Blake is learning to turn over! Today he lay on a pillow while I dressed & managed to flip himself onto the bed twice. I think that it was gravity-assisted, since he couldn't repeat the stunt when he was on a flat surface, but it was still utterly thrilling to witness.

We're having a good day today. He had a loud episode late last night, but slept from feeding to feeding when we went to bed. The Boy, who has a test today, was pathetically grateful for an unbroken 6 hours of sleep (sucker). My only worry is that he's spending the night at Dirk's house (a.k.a. the self-described "House of Lonely Single Guys"), so I'll be on my own with the babe tonight. Eep.

I just hope we can get some sleep – tomorrow is our big city outing and it'll likely be just as long as last week. Yay!

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 2/11/2004 04:16:00 p.m.