11.10

In the last few days of Listening To Music, I knew I would never see Marco and never get to rely on him to Speak In Class again (or at least, I wouldn't be able to rely on him to secure the class a participation grade anymore). So I studied his ways and wiles. This was my only motivation. Don't believe the hype. I didn't like him, I just wanted to know how he could talk about so many things in class. And now, I have denied that I liked him too vehemently and you will assume I liked him anyway. Go ahead. Do what you like. I know the truth.

11.9

[again, not Catherine]

I am
a man.
I can prove it. See my chromosomes? One X, one Y. Crucial. There's more. Broad shoulders, facial hair, deep voice, height, love of well-cooked pies. It's all genetic.
There's more. Just one thing more, but it's there. I love her.
It makes me a man.
Not that it defines me, you understand, but it's what makes me feel most strongly as a man. You don't get it. That's fine. Let me use terms you understand.

When I hold her, my heart
     races.
When I touch her, my fingers
     tingle.
When she laughs, my laughter
     flies.
When I see her, my eyes
     smile.
When we talk, my words
     dance.
When I hear her, my mind
     churns.
When I miss her, my soul
     creaks.
When she loves me, my joy
     bursts.
When we kiss, my world
     stops.

And that makes me a man. I can feel it, right deep down in my soul and I never need to question because she's there and she knows and that's alright with me.
The only thing that I don't understand
is
I haven't found her yet.

If you see her, tell her to call me. I've missed her while she was gone.

11.8b

I like the taste of citrus. Limes, especially, are very good because they taste so good and clean and exotic and new and fresh and not at all like what you'd expect from a pitted green football shape that grows on a tree. They're almost perfect. Lemons are good too, because you can turn them into all sorts of things. Lemonade and lemon meringue and zest and lemon wedges for contests to see who can strip the enamel from their teeth the fastest. And grapefruit (so excellent as breakfast food or basically anytime food) because there's so much citrus in a grapefruit I don't have to work so hard to eat it. And oranges make me happy (especially navels, I mean who can turn down a fruit with a belly button) because they're sweet and tangy all at once and oranges are just so excellent as juice. And the segments? Segmented fruit? Whoever invented that should be taken to a dream castle where their every wish comes true. It is the best idea ever in the whole world, and it is so perfect that I can always tell when I am exactly halfway done with a fruit. Apples can't do that. Yeah, that's right. I compared apples to oranges, and oranges won.

11.8

[This is not Catherine. I can't believe I am at a point in my life where I must specify. I do so like short stories.]

I never wear cologne. I also don't understand why it must be called cologne. It's just perfume for men. I wear deodorant, but I don't go around smelling my pits. Normally, I just smell air, and that's it. Sometimes I'll smell my breath and freak out looking for a toothbrush, but normally just air.
That's why the smell of her is so overpoweringly important. I never smell anything but food and bathrooms. That's why the smell of her is so incredibly vital. If you never smell anything in your whole life unless you're going to eat it or clean it, you lose the part of you that recognizes the emotional power of smell.

Until I smelled her, I forgot the emotional power of smell. That's why the smell of her is so crippling. And when another woman sat down across from me and wafted over the smell of her, I wanted to stand up and leave the room and run to my car and drive to her.
Instead, I just thought about waffles and urinal cakes.

That's why the smell of her is a terrifying wound.

11.7b

Interesting fact about me: I can't bring myself to hate celebrities. Try as I might, I just cannot. I think it is a virtue to hate people freely and without restraint, because it shows some measure of mental cohesion and fortitude to make the choice to actually concentrate all the desires and fears of the mind into a single package of pure, unadulterated hatred.
I was never blessed with this gift. Instead, I was given the ability to see someone else's side in every argument ever. I can see the point that Brittany is just a tortured soul, Mr. Crocker. Or is it Ms? I can't tell anymore. The point is hardly whether or not Chris Crocker has chosen xer gender or whether xe will just fade into oblivion when all the people who have seen xer videos are dead. The point is that I feel both sides of every argument, and it hardly helps me sleep at night.

11.7

I realized at about November that I would have to learn to coexist with EnriqueRosalyn if I was going to continue without blowing up much longer. So I
"Hey, Rosalyn?"
"What's up?"
"I don't know--you wanna hang out on Sunday with a bunch of people? I know about this art exhibit the art department is doing and I thought--"
"You what now? You want to hang out with people? Catherine, are you ill?"
"No, I'm fine! I just don't want to go alone!"
Ros withered me a bit with her glare.
"And! I think it would be a great opportunity for me to get to know Enrique if he's going to hang around for much longer."
Rosalyn didn't swallow my lie, but she took the truth like the proverbial fish: hooklinesinker.
"Oh! That's great! I'll ask him if he's free on Sunday, and then where is this place? I bet we can get there by foot, right?"
She ran around the room trying to figure out where she was for a minute and then turned abruptly and grabbed me in a hug.
"Thanks, Cath, for trying. I know dealing with me is weird for you sometimes."
She had sad in her voice, so I just held onto her. There wasn't anything else to do.

11.6b

[I feel the need to write something not in the novel. But I can't.]

Her hair curls there over her ear. Her fingers work deftly, just so. Her lips pull up into a slight honey sweet smile.
She's not mine.

11.6

The funny part of rooming with Rosalyn is that she has fits of clean. Most of the time, her side of the room is trashed (she is spread mostly everywhere [and not just clothing, sometimes it's actual garbage. She ate the remains of three pizzas one day (she must have gotten them from a friend) and left the boxes on the ground] and I try to contain it to one side [not mine]). Every once in a while, though, the piles mysteriously disappear like a magical cleaning genie visited the room and granted Ros one wish: a floor to walk on. The fits of clean mysteriously coincided with the sporadic dates with Enrique. They weren't every week, so I couldn't guarantee any kind of regularity, but once in a while he would call and the room would be clean when I got back after lunch and I would know to text before I came back to the room. If I got a reply, it was an all-clear. No reply meant no entry.
I started carrying a heavy coat on days when the room was clean. I stuffed big knit mittens down in the pockets and when I felt the urge strike me, I wandered outside into the night.

It never snowed. It was supremely annoying. I wanted it to snow if it was going to be cold, because cold without snow is like brainfreeze without ice cream, like a plot without an ending, like nausea without a theme park. Totally not worth it. Since it never snowed, I had no need of snow boots. It was a big disappointment.
I did wander around the campus and learn it at night, however. That was a bonus. I didn't know before that the big clock on the ad building was illuminated from within. It appeared to be a tremendously old lightbulb, the kind that have a big swirly shape on the top because they were blown, not molded, because they were so tremendously old. I could not see the bulb, of course, but I assumed from the acid paper yellow of the light that it must have been incandescent. Every other bulb on campus was energy efficient halogen white. Impersonal. Cosmetic. Clean. Hateful. But that one bulb, way up high on the edifice of the grand old building--now that was home. It was safe. It was warm. If Ros didn't respond to my desperation texts, I sat and stared at that warmth so far away and imagined what it must be like to live in the clock (with the ticking regularity and the measurable pace of time, nothing out of place, nothing unexpected, ten, then eleven, every night as it had been and as it would be and nothing to displace you out of your home with an impromptu makeout session with a boy who certainly wasn't nobody and a girl who exploded too much for her own good and I just don't know why life can't follow the pattern I gave it when I was smaller and when life was easier to control) in the tower of the ad building.

And then I got the text and everything was alright and I could go home again to Ros and we could fall asleep on my bed for no reason other than it was warmer and it reminded us of high school.
"Ros?"
"Cath."
"Have you seen the clock tower in the ad building?"
"Cath, you know I don't like analog clocks."
"Oh, yeah. Good night."
Good night, me. Good night us. Again and again with the disquieting irregularity of broken faucet.

11.5

Time to face the music.
Not figuratively.

11.4b

[Really, it's not the content that's killing me. I could probably go on forever like this. As a matter of fact, I know I could. I could just write and write and write and never finish. It's the PACE that's killing me. I just don't feel like I'll ever really quite catch up. So I'm writing another thousand something right now, just to put myself within striking distance of being caught up. I NEED 8,000 WORDS! I have 5.5! CRAPPPP]

11.4

For a while, I assumed my life would go on without incident, that everything would be the same, and that I would continue to cling to walls and violently invade the shadows and everything would be alright.
I forgot basketball intramurals.

11.3

After classes, I ran back to the room Ros and I shared (in a co-ed [terrifying] dormitory [lame] on campus [helpful] which, as you will be pleased to know, had suite bathrooms [thank God]). I burst in the door, ready to ask Ros all the questions. I opened with
"Enrique--"
She closed with
"He's a boy. He's not the only one I find cute, anyway. I'm not you, Cath. I'm not you."

11.2

I saw Enrique today. Enrique isn't nobody. Enrique Iglesias sang songs when I was really young and gullible and pop music just because. Enrique is the name of the boy who apparently wears plaid shoes when he's not beating Ros at soccer. He stopped me in the hall of the Marianne Vargas building and asked
"Are you the girl?"

11.1c

I like these men. They jump with the music (not for show, but because the music kicks them there in the soft spot in their soul that resonates in time with the bow and the wood and the resin and it kicks them there then they jump). It doesn't matter quite to them what we think of them and their jumping weaving bowing swaying. They're here to make music. The audience doesn't matter at the end of all of it. I like these men.

11.1b

In my all-consuming quest to become the best I can be without ever once standing out or being noticed, I came into the same snag as always: Rosalyn. Ros was dynamic fire, twisting and contorting into every space she could find. Since she had so much energy, she went out for intramural sports. I was very very proud of her but at the same time very very afraid of the games. Ros walked, fearless, into huge sporting events like she was a goddess, trailing a retinue and letting her hair fly free in the breeze. I crept in like a mouse, keeping close to the walls and avoiding eye contact with anyone who smelled like a stadium bathroom. She blew in like the strong west wind and I faltered my way through the stands like an inconsistent spring rain. Our metaphors didn't even align. That's how far apart we were when it came to sports.

Yet, Ros dragged me into the stadium to watch her play nearly every time. "We're freshman! Homework is for upperclassmen!" was her admonition. So she raged across the field in reckless abandon and I waddled through the stands looking for an appropriate place to sit.