It's Not So Bad, Being Dead Like Me.

One more hour left of Halloween. When I was a kid I loved my birthday, but I think most kids do.

Got back around 9pm after having dinner with my friends. The time change is screwing with us. Phuong's birthday present to me was a sack full of groceries-- ice cream, soup, rice-a-roni, etc. She said "I was trying to think-- what does she need....what does she need? And then I though, *duh* she needs food 'cuz she's always sick." We were supposed to get Japanese food, but most of us were too poor to do that. So instead, we went to some place called something like "Sweet Tomato". It wasn't bad. While we were there my side started to hurt again. I just tried to hold as still as possible.

Phuong treated me because it was my birthday. There were tons of little kids there, for some reason. Hello? Why aren't you guys out getting candy? All those kids were making so much noise that, even though they were clear across the restaurant we could hear tehir shrieks. Being a Vietnamese speaker herself, Phuong recognised their language.

"Jesus, that must be the battle cry of the Viet Cong!" Phuong said as she craned her neck about, trying to get a good look at the hell raisers.

We all started cracking up at that. "I feel like yelling at them like my Grandpa used to! He was sooo scary! He'd yell at us in Vietnamese 'Shut up, you little Satans!'" Then she said in Vietnamese too, at which point, Adrian proclaimed it to be the scariest sounding Vietnamese phrase he'e ever heard.

We got back to our meals and were talking about Tony and Lara (hand to god I didn't bring those two up.) See, Tony owes Phuong $64 for the baseball game on Sept. 14, and he owes me $10 from when we all saw "The Village." As we were talking this older lady walked by and quitely said something to me, and I quietly thanked her.

Adrian asked me what she said because he hadnt heard. "Oh, she said that she liked my costume." Lisa, Phuong, and Adrian busted out laughing. Adrian actually almost squirted his soda through his nose. Phuong was laughing so hard that she was almost crying. "I can catch her if you want me to, man! I got your back. She's moving pretty slow..." Adrian managed to get out between laughs.

See, this time of year is always tricky. There are always all these well meaning people who tell me that they like my costume, which is sweet. Yet in actuality, this is just the way I dress all the time. For example, on Tuesday, this middle aged African American lady stopped me on my way to Ancient Near East studies and told me that she loved my costume and then asked "What are you supposed to be?" When presented with situations like these, I have two general responses. The first is to thanks the person for the compliment on my "costume" and walk on. The second is to say "Ohhh..... this is just how I dress, like, all the time." The second response tends to fluster people and then they start apologising or whatever. I chose response #2 for the lady who stopped me at school. She stopped walking, looked at me quizzically and said "But... you hair... it's pink!" To which I responded that I'd had it this color since October 2002 (for the Rock Steady Tour, if you must know.) After that she just said "Well, you look very nice, dear" and walked away in the other direction.

After we left the restaurant, Phuong drove me home. Adrian and Lisa had been to some big party on Saturday night, and were still worn out. Lisa was hung over, but Adrian was just tired. He can't drink for along time anyway because he hurt his liver or something. Phuong had gone on a quasi- date with her crush of 2 years on Santa Cruz last night. So while everyone was out having a blast on Saturday night, I was home. Odd girl out. Anyway, on my birthday I was home by 9pm, give or take.

I can't help but feel like a younger, punkier version of Bridget Jones. Maybe I just should have stayed home anyway, not gone out at all, and just cried into my vanilla vodka (a little tiny bottle like the kind they used to give out on airplanes-- except I paid $2.75 for this at Beverages & More up in Oakland.) I wanted to go the anti social route. But, I have been far too much like Ada Monroe in "Cold Mountain" lately.

"Her thoughts had been broody and morbid and excessively retrospective for so long that she welcomed the chance to run counter to that flow, to cast forward and think about the future, even though she expected to see nothing but water at the bottom of that well." ("Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier, p. 48.)

Let's see. Broody? check. Morbid? check. Excessively retrospective? check. In the immortal words of Nelly Furtado "It's not that my glass is empty/ I just need another cup."

And yet, I guess I just haven't given up quite yet. Even though fate and change keep slapping me in the face, maybe I, like Ada want to run counter to that flow. Maybe I just prefer to hide my hopefullness under my cloak of doom and gloom. Maybe it's just a reaction to being alone for so much of the day-- day after day.

I don't know.

"She could read such books and a day later not know what they had been about. When she had read more notable books, the harsh fates of their heroines only served to deepen her gloom. For a time, every book she plucked from the shelves frightened her, their contents all concerning mistakes made by wretched dark- haired women so that they ended their days punished, exiled, and alien." (Frazier, p. 35.)

Alien? check. Exiled? sort of. Punished? Let's hope not.

Happy Halloween, Tragic Tuyen