Super Secret Vault, The

When did I start drinking coffee? It was the middle of college. I used to go to the Campus Coffee Bean with my friend Katherine, and we studied advertising together. On an unrelated note, Katherine is fluent in Russian. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

I used to get the mochas. The mochas had the coffee in them, but also the chocolate. I liked the chocolate better than the coffee. It was all very Days of Wine and Roses but without the alcohol.

I liked the way the mochas made me feel. Zoom. ZOOM. WHEE!

When I took up smoking full time, I started drinking straight coffee full time. It was like one couldn’t exist without the other. I liked the way the coffee made me feel. I liked the way the cigarettes made me feel. It was natural for me to combine them.

I’m very weird like that. Once I get into something, I’m into it. I’m INTO it. But until I hit that point of crazy obsession, I could care less. I went from never drinking coffee and not wanting to drink coffee to if I don’t have coffee in the morning I will die.

With the exception of pot, which I had a brief but intense love affair with when I was 20, I never experimented with drugs. I never tried acid or ecstasy because I was afraid of the trip. People told me if I was afraid of the trip then for sure I shouldn’t try it because if I tell myself I’ll have a bad one, then I will. I stayed away from coke because coke is the kind of thing I would like.

I guess you could say I’ve dabbled in prescription drugs, but I understand the badness of that and so I only take the things when I think I really, really should. Although, the funny part of anxiety* is that I always think I should…so….

I’m straight up addicted to caffeine these days. I don’t drink soda unless I can’t get coffee. From the time I wake up until probably noon or so–and especially at New Job where one of our clients is a coffee place and so we have unlimited access to their coffee all day long–I drink coffee. I like the way coffee makes me feel. It’s like I could do anything. It’s like I could wake up at 7:30 and write a long, long blog about it and the whole time I could think it’s really cool and interesting and people care about this kind of thing.

My point here is that I like coffee. And I didn’t know I liked coffee until I started smoking. I don’t smoke anymore, but I still like coffee. No, wait. I LOVE the coffee.

*caffeine doesn’t help the anxiety, but whatever

I have enough form rejection letters to start my own currency. The currency of failure. That only costs a dollar? Well, here’s a lifetime of failure. I’ve got more of it out in the car.

I’ve given up on publication. No, no. It’s fine. It’s time. Screw you, publication. You’re so five years ago. You’re so 2003.

My new idea of delicious? Handwritten notes. Mmmm….tasty. I’ll take ‘em plain or with a side of organic peanut butter.

Out of 50 magazines, I got five handwritten notes from my last mailing. Six, if you count one certain someone’s form that says, “this is NOT our customary rejection slip.” It’s not? Really? COULD HAVE FOOLED ME. 

I feel like I’m getting close with the Missouri Review. Close. Closer. We’re at least talking about going out for a drink. What they don’t know is that I’m pretty easy. Hey, look, I’ll take my clothes off and let you post pictures of me on the internet. I like to pretend I’m playing cool, but really I’m not. I’m probably oozing desperation. I send them a story. They write me  back. They WRITE me back. I send them another one and I say in my letter something about maybe this story will better suit their needs. They write back again. We think you’re at least 25% awesome, we love your voice…but…not yet. They tease me. 

When I say I don’t care about publication, I mean that I really do care. I care a whole lot about publication.

Do you know what I love about lit mags with online submission programs? It’s that I can embrace my obsessiveness full on. I can check in EVERY DAY. I see you! There you are! You’re my submission.

Sometimes it will go from 1st reader to 2nd reader. I’m like, oooh! Change! Status change. Yummy. I like watching the process.

I’m monitoring three such stories in this way right now. It’s the most fun. I wish more of them were like this.

Maybe it wasn’t food related. Maybe it was in the air. Or the city water. My husband is sick now, too.

I asked him if he liked how it feels to be so sick you think you are dying. He said it feels pretty awful. He said Monday night was the worst night of his life.

Yeah, I said. I was like that. Remember?

When? He asked. When were you like that?

Uh…two weeks ago? When I went to bed for three days?

Right. I remember. You slept a lot. And you told me all the things coming out of your body and that was pretty gross. Is nothing sacred between us anymore?

He’s better now. Or, sort of. He’s on the mend. Last night I found him on the couch covered in crumbs. I felt his cheek to see if he still had a fever. It was a cold cheek, not a burning hot cheek anymore.
I brushed the crumbs off him and got him a glass of water. I sat there while he sipped it. It was like caring for an infant.

I burned my thumb while trying to light a candle. I thought you all should know.

My first apartment was the size of a medium-sized refrigerator box. There was a bathroom. A small nook which I considered my pantry, where I used my hot plate to cook copious amounts of mac ‘n cheese and penne. A desk that became a TV stand and my bed. It wasn’t my bed. It came with the apartment. It was a furnished apartment.

I lived there between my sophomore and junior year of college because I was taking a bunch of summer school classes, and I didn’t want to spend the summer in Havasu. It was too hot, and besides, I had family issues I was done dealing with.

My neighbor, being all neighborly, came over and introduced himself. He was watching the apartment-sitting all summer for his friends and he wanted to say hi. I was like, hi. Hello. Nice to meet you. He showed me inside his place. It was way bigger than mine. Way bigger.

I’m in college I said. I’m here for the summer.

He said, I’m out of college. I do this and this and this.

Great. Fine. Wonderful.

I made some comment about being a night owl. Like, oh, well, don’t mind me if my light’s on at 3 in the morning. It’s just me being me. I don’t sleep well at night and I’m up late, or sometimes I’m just up late anyway.

A few days go by and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and I’m up watching TV. Insomniac Music Theater was a favorite of mine at that point. So there’s a knock. And it’s the guy next door. Um….

I open the door and he comes in. Since the only place to sit was on my bed, he took a seat on my bed. I stood and crossed my arms.

He said, You really are a night owl.

And I don’t know. We had a benign conversation. He had a serious receding hairline, but he was a young guy. He was probably late 20’s or early 30’s. I’m sure he told me how old he was. He wasn’t unattractive, but he wasn’t someone I was interested in.

He leaves and the next day I tell my friends about it. I’m like, the dude was at my house at 2 AM last night.

Most people thought this was creepy. I started thinking it was creepy. But more than anything, it was annoying. It was an annoying neighbor-type. I was just being polite, but he wanted to be my friend or something more.

Our doors are close together and because he always seemed to be outside at the same time as me, I started to see him all the time.

Hi, Blah. I don’t remember his name. Hi, Blah. How are you?

Oh, I’m good. You? Good.

Good.

Sometimes he would knock on the door and come in and we’d talk about things. I don’t know what things. Dumb things.

Then I decide this guy is really annoying and he’s really trying to start something with me. I put up some pictures of my friend Frank. And I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s my boyfriend. He’s overseas right now. He’s in the Navy.

The dude didn’t let it go there. Suddenly he’s all way interested in Frank. Why didn’t I mention him before?

I said it was too painful.

Why is it painful? Are you having problems?

Uh…no…I miss him so much. It hurts to talk about.

What do you want from him?

I think I want to marry him. I think we’re going to be together forever.

That didn’t really get him off my back either. And remember, my apartment is tiny. Teeny-tiny. So tiny that when my friend was helping me move in, she thought we were in a closet. I swear to God.

When I talked to him, we were close. We’re way close. There’s nowhere else to go. He sat on my bed and I either stood or sat on the opposite end of the bed.

People told me to just tell him to back off. I said I created this whole thing for myself. I let him in. I talked to him. I made him think we were friends or something.

No, they said. You were being nice. He’s, like, 35 years old. You’re 19. You’re living by yourself. He has to know that’s fucked up what he’s doing.

I started avoiding him. I wouldn’t answer the door. If I saw him, I’d say hi and walk the other way. But he kept coming over. He kept knocking. I was like, my boyfriend doesn’t like me to talk to other guys. He gets jealous. He’s an angry guy.

He told me I shouldn’t date angry guys.

One night, again in the wee hours of morning, I got all irritated and tired and I was like, you have to go. You have to leave. I just can’t do this anymore.

But my eyes were down on the ground, and I was mumbling and I wasn’t really strong about it. I was sort of a mess about it.

He said…why?

I said, well, I don’t know what your intentions are. You’re freaking me out a little. You keep coming over.

He said, Do you think I’m going to do something to you?

I said, I don’t know.

I didn’t know. For real. He might have done something to me. But I don’t think he would have been violent. I think he wasn’t getting the hint. It was a few steps past friendly. It was enough to make me uncomfortable.

You don’t know? You think I’m going to, like, rape you or something?

I was like…yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe you are.

He stood up. He was mad. Like, mad.

I’m not going to rape you, he said.

He was frowning at me. He was completely insulted.

I was just being nice, he said.

Um….okay. Well…anyway, I have go to bed.

Yeah, okay. Good. Fine.

He left. That was it. He never talked to me again. I’d see him around. Once, I saw him outside sunbathing. He had one of those reflector things under his face. He waved at me. I waved back. I moved out in August. That was it.

I can get drunk on half a glass of wine if I don’t eat all day.

The bottom of my feet are a crime against humanity.

Summer clothes make me get all hot inside.

$65 dollar polka-dot shorts look nice in a catalog, and they look nice on me, too.

When the freeway closes, and I yell about it, I scare my passengers.

I get more junk mail than any other living soul.

My dog gets nervous peeing in other people’s yards.

I accidentally started liking the new Carrie Underwood song.

I had a dream I was running through my old high school. The halls were dark, like it was after hours and the sun was down and all the lights were out because the janitor had just left. A guy was chasing me. I had a wad of cash in my pocket, and it didn’t belong to me. When he finally caught up to me, he surprised me by being ahead of me. He told me to take off my shoes and to never tell anyone who he was.

The funny thing was that I didn’t know him, but somehow I did know him. He was someone. He was someone I used to know…I think…he was an older version of someone I used to know. He was like a teenager who had been aged in a drawing.

I spent the rest of the dream without shoes. I was barefoot.

The big hall was like the inside of the Venetian in Las Vegas, only instead of slot machines there were men in tuxedos playing the piano. It was a rose garden and miles of green, hanging plants. It was like a department store. It was like a flipbook, only the pictures never changed. The scene was on repeat.

I found my shoes with a note and a receipt from a coffee store tucked on the bottom. He repeated his original threat: Don’t tell anyone.

Since I had his receipt, I was able to get his financial information and I turned it over to my old boss, who was the principal of the school. I wrote her an email telling her about the guy, and she told me not to worry. She would catch him.

When I went home it was still dark, but the dark was from the morning and not from the night. It was my old house where my stepfather used to live. He was making a cake, but he was doing it all wrong.

The Florida Review knows how it’s done. Rejection letter in today’s mail. Straight up form. Nothing but form. I rejoice in normality.

So, it’s, like 9:30 and this is the first real chance I’ve had to relax on the internet today. I feel like I’m out of a lot of online loops. I try to cram some time in at night, but I’m just tired and I have crazy things to do. If you’re not hearing from me, it’s not personal. It’s because I don’t have the day to fuck around now. I have to do stuff. Damn it. I hate doing stuff.

Life is just busy. New Job is keeping me busy. It’s like, I don’t really know it yet and while things are getting easier, they’re still mostly unfamiliar. It usually takes me a year to feel comfortable around new people. It’s only been a month. I feel like I’m on the edge of a football field watching the popular girls cheer on their boyfriends.

I check my mail everyday for rejection letters. There are none. I know I complain about them, but when I get them I know the world is working. I put the shit together, send the shit out, get a rejection letter back, mark it off in my matrix (it tells me when I sent it, who I sent it to, how long it took to come back, if there were any comments and if I think I should send the mag another story), and file it away. There’s been nothing. None of the shit has come back.

I always used to drop mail in the mailbox at my old job. Once, I had a Netflix movie go missing from it. Netflix never got it, and I never got it back and so I don’t know where it went. Maybe there was a problem with the box. I dropped 10 envelopes in the mail on March 7. Ten is not a big number, but it’s not a small number. The odds are such that SOMETHING should have come back by now.

But none of the 10 magazines have responded to me by now? It’s weird. It feels weird. No hi or fuck you or anything. No “our reading period has closed” or “we don’t accept simultaneous submissions” or “we only accept submissions from ex-convicts.” Nothing. Zip. It’s freaking me out. Some of those mags on my list I’m not worried about. Yet. Some of them take six months to send me a form back. But some of them usually get something back within 6 or 8 weeks. Back in December, I sent a different story to a place that doesn’t accept simultaneous submissions. Not like the story is that great or anything, but I can’t do anything with it until I hear from these people. Or do I assume they just didn’t accept it and maybe I forgot to send them an SASE?

Oh shit. I wonder if I forgot SASEs?

I did something I’ve never done and won’t do again, and that’s contact the magazine and ask them the status of my submission. Well, that was a week ago and nothing. Jack nothing.

Lord, send me a rejection letter. Just let me know the post office is working.

I was trying to turn left the other day and all the cars were coming and I wasn’t able to turn left and I was screaming at the other cars. When I was done screaming I was like, oh…um…I guess I’m upset about something.

I keep thinking about my grandpa. It’s sad. It’s so fucking sad. I grew up out here and so I didn’t get as much with him as all my cousins. I miss him. I miss the idea of walking into their house and finding him in the TV room.

My muscles hurt.

I have to have to have to have to have to have to HAVE TO write this weekend. For fucking reals. No laundry. No cleaning of the office. No sorting clothes. No sorting silverware. No organizing CDs. Maybe get a pedicure…. But WRITE. WRITE!!!

Oh, and P.S. - My fucking internet is so slow and fucked up tonight. I already had to restart it. It’s looking like I have to restart it again. If it crashes before this posts, I will fucking freak out.