The UV Ray Knows All

Jeremy gave me caffeine, and as a result I was hyper and coming on to him rather strongly. It's more that I need his attention and executing various gestures of affection is a good way of getting it. Jeremy said "Yes, dear" once when I was in one of my more frivolous moods as an offhanded comment, but if he says it again things will become vastly unpleasant for him because I do not like those words. I am used to being sidelined all though high school, acting as an observer of things. I think it amusing that Jeremy and Jose call me an extreme extrovert. It's simply that I don't make friends easily and therefore if I don't constantly try, making myself go to socials and by force of will enjoying them and whatnot, all hope is lost for me. Perhaps it is that I have had it pounded into my head that social activities will make my life better.

The Briggs-Meyer personality test says I am exactly half intro and half extro, if you really must know.

(Malex, this may seem random but it is not): Went to the comedy show starring Tracy Morgan. Yes, SNL's Tracy Morgan. It was funny (lots of sex jokes) but not very witty. I also think this whole 'guys are sexual, girls are emotional' thing in general is overdone to the point of being affecting how I interact with guys. I am doing things I think Jeremy would want me to do/ would make him happy. I don't know how it is really possible to make assumptions about someone you love based on vague generalizations about one half of the human population, but I have warped expectations as a result.

Right up your allez

Fencing is now three times a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I still suck, and as a newbie am not allowed to use an epee until indefinitely (currently I am with foil). This is slightly aggravating because Amber, who is also a newbie (commonly known as maggots) about my size, is allowed to use sabre. She was fairly successful in direct eliminations at College Park or something which is why she's judged good enough to start another weapon I guess, but I'm wondering if I'm not just 'fencing retarded.' I never seem to be able to make corrections people tell me to and I think I am once again the worst of the regular newbies. Fencing leaves me a bit disappointed when I'm done.

I want to come back over winter break and fence Nick B who has hit the ground running at Vassar with epee and this mysterious 'fencing conditioning' he blogs about. I imagine he must be very good by now; he was the best in his pool at DCFC. I was the worst in my pool, which seems normal. Regardless of experience or physical condition I always seem to be fencing retarded. Nick B will of course kick my ass again once he sees me. Stupid tall people. But we can haunt DCFC again and tease Greg and see if all the old people from our class are still there (like Stewart, and that tall blonde woman who was Nick's nemesis). Nick says on AIM that we should fence Greg but of course we'll get slaughtered. He's a B rated epeeist now. I swear he was D in 10th grade so either I'm mistaken or he must've improved.

I like fencing on Saturdays though because there really is nothing better to do here. It's strange not fencing at night, and seeing daylight outside the windows. There is more time (two and a half hours) and less people, therefore more space and more equipment for the each of us. It's rather relaxed, like a gym or something instead of a class and people just hang out and bout, which is nice for a change instead of being ordered around. A lot of the time though is spent waiting around for people to fence me; Jeremy and Jose will each fence me on occasion but they both dislike foil so they end up fencing other people in their respective weapons (epee and sabre). I hope repeated bouting will make me better. Jeremy fleched me (layman's term- bumrushed) and I in response went EEPPP! and fell over. This amused him to no end though it pissed me off enough to fence better, and raised me from 0-4 to 3-4 before he won, 5-3.

Wherein Angie's Inner High School Girl Tries Pathetically to Compensate For Being a Dork

Jeremy gave me two rules for clubbing: Have fun, and Don't Do Anything You'd Regret Telling Me.

Lori had come over Erickson North at 10 last night to help me pick out clubbing clothes and apply makeup. Being that all my clothes (and duplicate copies of my toiletries) are in Jeremy's room, it was logically the best place to do it. I pressed my mouth to tissue paper. I thought I'd leave it on Jeremy's bed as a souvenier but didn't know if he'd recognize a (admittedly very blurry) lipstick mark if he saw one. Feeling girly, we clonked down three flights of stairs in dressy calf boots and out the door.
---

Went clubbing yesterday at Mint Baltimore with Lori, setting out with an air of vague excitement as we pulled onto the highway in a school bus loud and dark and crowded, lit by the cool blue of cell phone displays and the bobbing embers of lit cigarettes. I don't understand why it was so necessary that lighting up couldn't be done either in the parking lot or at the club, but I digress. The girl sitting in front of us sprayed fireflies of flaming paper over everyone in her proximity, and guys talked in low jock voices ("Dude.. yeah.. huh huh huh") and I missed Jeremy for being articulate. There's something subversive about riding a full school bus at night, something that screams, "Hey mom, I'm not in elementary school anymore!" We were all happy in a very stupid way.

The thing about going to college and having to walk everywhere is that car rides of any sort now make me ridiculously happy, as if I'd spent all my childhood only riding donkeys. We flew into Baltimore proper over those marvelous soaring skyway ramps and I gaped like a little kid at the horizon that seemed to be a massive floating disk of orange lights and illuminated skyline.

Mint Baltimore is not that far from the Inner Harbor. We stood in line for a while, laughing at the people who weren't wearing jackets. I think it's stupid; girls may feel they look ugly in jackets but they look like morons anyway, shivering like plucked chickens with their hands stuck in their armpits. Be that as it may, they got to laugh at us in return because in the club, for some demented reason, the coat check "wasn't open" so we had to lug our jackets around for a while before giving up and setting them down on a chair. We bumped into Kristin T who was very happy to see us. Lori commented (discreetly) that she was slightly drunk; I never noticed and will stick to the term "sociable."

Griping aside. The Mint used to be a bank (hence the name), so inside Corinthian columns lit up in orange and purple extend to a high paneled ceiling, and above us, a balcony of ironwork tracery that overlooks the dance floor. I got the impression of those places I dream about that make no sense in a jumble of the classical and modern, like a hyperactive masquerade (with really skanky people). I went onto the dance floor and looked up and a flurry of soapy snow caught in the smoky beams of spotlights came down and settled on everyone's hair and shoulders, and strobe lights cast everyone in a state of stop-motion animation. Girls orbiting the dance floor managed to dance and serve shooters from a tray balanced on one hand, which, I admit, takes talent.

It was Ladies' Night. It is no fun unless there are boys to do erotic things with, and I regreted not taking Jeremy because he would've liked it, introvert or no. He needs to unwind. In any case, all the other guys were lame. Lori got groped and ground (past tense of grind) by a stoner (I think so; his eyes were out of focus), and got beer spilled on her. We got bored/tired/headaches and decided there were better ways of meeting single boys. We left, were accosted by panhandlers, and hailed a cab at the harbor.

It was an experience nonetheless, and fun if you suspend your cynicism. We promise to return to Baltimore again sometime for something social and girly, but probably to the Gallery on Calvert street for some high class shopping.

A good day, I think. Worth noting because of anything extraordinary but because there are so few of those around. I am happy at times of course, but it hardly lasts. Sleep and the muzziness of mornings are an escape where there is warmth and softness and peace.

Learned binds in fencing. Still suck at it, of course. Both binds and fencing. I wonder when I'll ever be good, and if it'll feel different.

Had honeydew bubble tea this morning. Going clubbing with Lori on Thursday. Possibly going to Costco with Kay and Jeremy, which is cool because that means going off campus, and good sushi. Possibly visiting Janis over the weekend, possibly going to the Walter Reed Art Museum for a lecture on Athenian friezes. I have too much to do ex potentia, but in a good way. ^__^

Outside the Loop

On Friday morning, I was on my way to class, cutting across Erickson field when I noticed two people standing there staring at the sky. Of course I did the same after asking what they were looking at, and it was a black balloon disappearing into the low white clouds. We watched it become proportionally smaller as the wind took it, until the ribbon dangling from it was no longer visible, and then it was only a pinprick as if someone had poked a hole in the sky, and then if you looked away you had a hard time finding it. A friend of the onlookers came to see what they were doing. I turned to greet him and when I turned back the balloon was gone, though I continued staring into the sky all the same and pointing, like the rest of them. I wonder if we made anyone curious.

Perhaps it is not a conventional accomplishment, but one of those things in life worth noting.

I, Angela C, have seen a balloon disappear.

Friday afternoon after biology was spent looking for cool and shiny rocks.

On Friday night, me and Jeremy ate dinner with and played Apples to Apples with Tanya (one of Jose's numerous female acquaintances) and Sam, an eccentric cloaked figure I'd seen around campus and had accosted, since I figured that anyone who wears a velvet cloak to school is interesting enough to introduce myself to.

Saturday was boring because everyone in Jeremy's suite was gone, as was basically everyone in fencing since they'd all gone away to College Park or something for a tournament. I spent the day contriving to find Friends With Cars, which involved me dragging Jeremy along and forcing him to socialize with various people in my dorm. In short, no one had a car available. I talked to Lori, who was in Rockville, for like an hour on the phone about issues that Jeremy found to be totally mystifying (such as the impossibility, among the female gender as a whole, to go into a store and buy pants that fit, boys and their strange minds, tendencies to gain fifty pounds after eating like a carrot, and the seductive evilness that is Late Night* at UMBC; so on so forth). Great conversation; no car. We vowed to be girlfriends and go clubbing sometime.

*Late Night is the after hours meal thing at the dining hall, with pizza, subs, chips, soft pretzels, soda, etc.

Me and Jeremy went to dinner, with Will and Melissa, and found out that we'd missed the shuttle bus to Baltimore, which set me in a very cranky mood. Andrew, the Terry Goodkind fan who lives downstairs, had a term paper to do, and so couldn't do anything that night.

I needed to go off campus or I would go crazy. I wanted to find Sam, but Jeremy was looking wilted from having met so many people. We (me and Jeremy) got a map to Patapsco State Park, and we started walking.

Yes, state parks close at sunset, but the point is to have a place to go, not to actually get there.

We left the enclosing loop of asphalt around UMBC and begin walking along places not overlit, where you could actually see stars once in a while, and I recognized Cassiopeia as I had that clear night at Rocky Gap. The roads had no sidewalks and we walked along the shoulder by the woods silhouetted by purple sky. In the distance we could see the blinking radio tower that marked our secret hill on campus (which has a dewy grassy dip behind it where no one ever goes except for us). Strings of cars would come over the curves of the road and occasionally blinded us with their halogens. We walked through the outskirts of Catonsville through the brisk cold and the smell of woodsmoke and dinner, through the leafy streets with porched houses, that looked like Takoma Park and in that way seemed not very far away from home.

It was good to be moving, beyond that binding circle around campus, and though we never did find the entrance to the park (maybe our directions were wrong or we missed the entrance in the dark) it is the thought that counts.

When we came back on campus Jeremy went inside the Fine Arts building for some reason. I thought he wanted to take a shortcut out of the cold or something since he didn't have a jacket. (I wasn't quite sure how the Fine Arts building could be a short cut to anywhere, but Jeremy had, on one occasion, to escape the driving rain after fencing, shown me some convoluted secret basement passageway leading from the social sciences building through the math building through the biology building to just outside of Erickson dorm. So I pretty much took his word for it.) At the door to Fine Arts, I was distracted by a large gaggle of laughing people getting out of a car in the parking lot, because I wondered what could possibly be so interesting at this time of night at UMBC of all places. They were well dressed. "That's nice," I said, and went into the FA building lobby, where Jeremy wasn't.

"Hello," I called up the stairwell. No response. I thought maybe he was outside looking for me.

I went back outside again and stood next to the FA building on the stairs that go down from the parking lot to the main street where all the academic buildings are. I waited for a while.

There was a group of people descending the grand stairway from the parking lot, girls with dark smooth hair combed back. They shivered in airy saris that swished behind them every time they dropped down a step and mirrored pieces glittered from the obiquitous lamps lining the stairway, and they clung to tall and groomed boys on their arms, and asked me, a ressie girl in jeans and a boy's jacket with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than wander around on a dead campus and had lost her boyfriend, the direction to the UC Ballroom.

"Go down these stairs and take a left," I said.

They thanked me, and continued downward.

"Uh, I mean right," I said.

They were gone, and the campus fell dead again.

I stood on the steps some more. More shiny people came down. "Go down these stairs and take a right," I said. They thanked me, and went. I followed them down the stairs to the UC Ballroom, where they were waiting in line to buy tickets to something. At the side of the ballroom I could hear music coming through the emergency exits. I went down the stairs some more, to the main street. Shiny people were coming up it.

"Up the stairs and to your left," I said, before they asked. They asked me how I knew. I told them to follow the crowd of shiny people.

Jeremy was neither up nor down the stairs and I stood on them for a while like Cinderella.

I went back to Erickson to see if he was there. He wasn't. I watched some crap tv in the lounge for a while. Some shiny people came down the elevator, and went outside, and left for the ballroom. I followed them partially, then went up the stairs again to the FA building, which Jeremy was standing outside of. He said he'd gone to the bathroom, and I felt like a moron for having left.

I asked him if he wanted to go to the ball. He said no, loud music and people weren't his thing. I shouldn't blame Jeremy for having no money and no car and no inclination for social gatherings but sometimes I do a little and I'm wrong. In any case we didn't go, and I sat around in my dorm room with him, watching video clips of people fighting with longswords and looking at John Howe's bright and misty oil paintings that take my mind places beyond the binding circle.