Whatever

Movies people think I'm crazy for not seeing that I feel no urgency to watch:

• Pulp Fiction
• Dirty Dancing
• American Beauty
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Star Wars Episode I
• Shrek 2
• A Beautiful Mind
• Gone With the Wind
• Shakespeare in Love
• Citizen Kane
• Animal House
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Pretty Woman
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding
• Any Harry Potter
• Any Lord of the Rings

His Real Name is Chris

I guess you could call it a game that Furio and I used to play. Furio was my roommate my first two years of college, a random assignment that turned out golden. We had a hobby of not throwing out our trash in a timely fashion. Beside our mini-fridge and microwave were piles of discarded to-go boxes and freshly browned banana peels, all festering until someone gave in and walked the 50 feet to the trash chute. Usually I surrendered first. Actually I always gave in and threw out the trash, especially when I'd discover meat in one of the styrofoam boxes.

One night I walked through the door and saw something astonishing. On the other side of the room stood Furio, bent over picking up piles of trash. He was taking off toward the trash chute, throwing out our trash. I wondered if I had written "Pick up your own damn trash one of these days!" on our dry erase board and forgotten. I couldn't recall ever seeing Furio throw out the trash before. In fact, he hadn't even allowed the pile to accumulate to its usual 4 feet; it was barely half that.

There had to be a reason to this bizarro world I had entered, and there was. Some girl Furio had told me about was coming over to highlight his hair. She had never been to the dorm room, and Furio didn't want her to see that he slept beside a rotting pileup of discarded food. I knew that for him to throw out the trash for her, Anne had to be special.

Three years later, one of the most well-grounded couples I know are engaged to be married. They are two beautiful people who deserve to find joy and prosperity in this world with one another by their side. For Furio to fall in love with Anne, for Anne to fall in love with Furio, and for them decide to build one life together, it just makes sense. They have a glorious, exciting mystery ahead of them, and I'll be happy and honored to say I saw it from the beginning, when a sloppy, spikey-haired nineteen-year-old threw out the trash.

Overwhelmed (or, I Think "Qualms" is the Coolest Word I've Ever Used in This Blog)

I've always considered myself to be reserved yet open at the same time. What I mean is, I keep to myself and don't usually go out of my way to voice my opinion or discuss my personal life, but I have no qualms about doing so and am comfortable answering almost any question. This is how I have always perceived myself, but that's not the person who came out last night.

I essentially have two true, legitimate friends so far here in Harrisburg. We've gone out as a group somewhat regularly in the month and a half I have been here, and they're two great girls who are fun to be around. Just like with anyone you're just beginning to befriend, you present a polite, likeable front, and this facade serves as your representative until you're gradually ready to open up more and more and reveal your true self. As my friends have gotten more and more vocal and feel more comfortable openning up, my presentation has changed only slightly. This is not from not being ready to open up to them specifically; it's that with me, what you see at the beginning is pretty much what you're going to get. While I get along with people very easily, I'm shy and talk in doses. This can sometimes be mistaken for lack of interest or conceit. It's neither. It's quiet reservation, a trait without a definite positive or negative connotation.

Last night over drinks, my friends were ready to open up more. But apparently girls talk together (you're not fooling anyone when you go to the bathroom in pairs), and they had a mental list of several questions, personal issues, that they wanted me to open up with. I don't tend to go out of my way to answer these questions. At the same time, I am fine with informing people of how many women I've slept with, that I indeed have a somewhat closet risque side and a thing for older women, that I've only had one true, bring-home-to-the-parents girlfriend, that I come from a well-off family who doesn't want to coddle me but is more than willing to make sure I'm taken care of, that I tend to overthink and worry in certain situations.

I had no problem answering these questions individually, but the layer effect of one issue after another began to overwhelm me. I realized that these girls could very well perceive me as uptight (which I can be from time to time) and fear that I was judging them for not being as "pure" or "good" (their words, not mine) as me. I wanted to make them feel better, to show them that I wasn't judging, and that I indeed had my vices too. But I got so focused on that, I let out more than I usually would, and I fell out of my comfort zone. At one point I was beginning to tell a story that they had high expectations for (the high expectations were my own fault), when in actuality the on-paper scenario was wilder than the actual situation. I embellished on my story. While what I said was technically true, I made deliberate hints that the story was far more outlandish than what actually happened. It was an effort for them to feel that I can relate to some of the stories they will tell me, but in the end the story seemed a little unlikely to come from me. I think I got caught.

There were some high times and low times, some heartfelt support and awkward silences. When I have a night as eventful as this, I tend to think about it as I'm in bed. My thinking isn't usually productive, however; it's usually a circulatory recreation of the events in my head. But last night, so many things came out, so many things I'm unaccustomed to revealing in such an open manner, that I couldn't concentrate on one thought. My mind was going chaotic trying to jump from one scene to the next without ever being able to gain composure. That's when my heart started racing. I could feel the thumps against my mattress. My muscles subtly quivered. And when I woke up a few hours later, I was still slightly shaken.

I believe this was true anxiety, and what the underlying cause of it was, I can't say for sure. Perhaps even though my shyness and reservations don't prevent me from opening up and expressing my deepest emotions, they do somewhat limit the rate and intensity of what I can express. Just as I like to prove myself over time, I prefer to reveal myself over time. I have a limit of what I'm willing to reveal at a given time. Before last night, I wasn't aware of that boundary. I only discovered that line by crossing it.

Oktoberfest

At 31 days and 1 hour (thanks to the one-hour tilt back from Daylight Savings), October is the longest month of the year. It's a good thing, because I need that extra hour in this month more than ever. If September was for getting my feet wet in grad school, October is figuring out how to escape from quicksand. It's a bunch of little things, and a few big projects, that just add up to a weighty month. Mornings of distributing surveys to kids who don't want to take them, afternoons of catching up with this week's readings, evenings of attending classes, and nights of studying for midterms and writing papers. Somewhere in this I must find time for the bare essentials, like eating, sleeping, hanging out with chicks, and listening to The Shins.

And other essentials, like experiencing life, must fall in there as well. It is somewhat ironic that in the month that perhaps gives me the least wiggle room to have a life, I'm living a more rich and productive life than I would, say, during the dog days of summer. The month is 11 days old and I already have countless memories...

1) There's the time the NYC hobo stole a 20 right from my friend's hand, swallowed it, and remarked, "Call the cops, bitch!"

2) There's the time I locked myself out of my apartment, slept on a friend's pullout sofa, and walked over to the front office 10 hours later with morning breath and bed head, all so I could save the $65 they would have charged me for unlocking my door after hours.

3) There's the Saturday night I walked down Broadway with a friend I've known since I was 4, while we pinched our nostrils shut and loudly mocked the suckass nasal singing of the lead singer from New Found Glory.

Countless) There's the time I was on the phone with a girl I truly care about, as sick and nauseous as she could be, taking a brief break from our conversation to throw up in her bucket, but refusing to hang up because "I want to keep talking to you. It distracts me from the fact that I have a bucket of puke by my bed."

You can't make these things up, folks.

I don't know what will come of this month. My lack of terrible study habits could resurface, something I don't think I'd be able to overcome as a virgin to the grad school exam experience. I could write an incredible research proposal that leads to my name being published rather quickly. My bed could be replaced by a computer chair and a cup of espresso every other night. I could lock myself out of my apartment again.

There are some serious implications this month and some serious fun times (I'm flying down to Florida essentially for a party, the Florida-Georgia weekend). But what's actually in store, and what will actually happen, that's writing itself right now...