Vibe-check, it’s Friday. Yay! A delightfully cool Friday at that! I’d like to thank the democratic party (which I’ve heard controls the weather now). Has the heat finally surrendered to the inevitable freshness of fall?
Can we please proceed directly to a cruel winter?

“What are we doing tonight?” I asked Lisa as she sat on the edge of a chair to put on her Nine West tunic pointed-toe booties. She has class this morning and I don’t. I’m sipping coffee, curled up on our red-corduroy couch, under a school themed throw, trying to grasp the plot of a fascinating chemistry book.

“Something fun,” she said, verbatim, offering little concrete as she picked up her slouchy silhouette, hobo bag.
“See ya,” she said, shouldering the door open with her right arm and securing her coffee with her left.
She’s got one of those giant coffee cups that are so vogue. She gives herself 30 minutes, after our morning jog, to get ready for class and that whole time, she’s brewing cup after k-cup of Keurig coffee to fill that monster.
“Byeeeeee,” I responded, before the door clunked closed.

Sunny, came to the door of her room, “Do you separate your whites and darks?” She asked.
“Of course,” I said, not looking up, to save my page-place, “we’re not animals.”
“I never separate,” she confessed.
“That’s why your white socks are pink,” I updogged.
“They are pink,” she said, pulling up her pajama leg to expose her pink socks, “bright pink.”

The serious events have started. Parties thrown by groups, always to a theme, offering whimsical, rainbow palates of fun. We’re here for it, my room and suitemates, all of us. There’s no better way to spend a Friday or Saturday night, than dressing up as a Disney princess, jedi princess or streetwalking zombie princess.

Some nights, there’s more than one and we jump gatherings until we find the perfect one. We easily feed off of each another’s energy. We’re all 21-year-olds now and pushing past painfully obvious insecurities, legal restrictions and occasionally, moral boundaries.

Ok, let’s reach for some Friday night rhymes:

Fridays are reserved for revelry, for noise and crazy mirth,
you can find a rave or masquerade with very little research.

The venues are themed and adorned for festive cheer,
and the turned-up music ignites those dance-like atmospheres.

Picture tapestries of youthful fun and you’ve grasped the vibe of the night.
In fleeting moments, we reach for it - I hope you brought your invite.

There was a disappointing ‘jungle rave’ where people were smoking inside!
Are you a ‘master of the universe,’ if you can’t get air-quality right?

Way too soon the revels cease
and in the Saturday morning quiet, we search out tasty eats.
We did it for memories, to give our dull lives a makeover
and good news! I didn’t wake up with a hangover.
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Songs for this:
Nite Becomes Day by Citizen Cope
Breathe In by Frou Frou

J D Vance has such smoky, smoldering eyes, doesn’t he?
The way those baby blues coruscate, as if from the darkness.
Are those shadows natural? No, it’s eyeliner, of course, but on
a 40-year-old man it’s called guyliner.

Any teenage girl will tell you the kohl pencil is the gateway makeup tool for self-definition, if not exactly self-improvement.

As an ex-teenage girl, I can picture the hours senator Vance spent,
hunched over his laptop watching make-up tutorials on TikTok or
Instagram, analyzing eyeliner techniques in overwhelming detail.

TikTok clips are today’s replacement for the Teen Vogue magazine
product pages of back-in-the-day. I recall watching these videos,
at 14 and devolving into a fog of envy and inadequacy.

JD began wearing guyliner in 2016, so he probably watched those
at age 33 and by now, he’s certain to have upped his game by having them permanently, cosmetically tattooed on.

Of course, Trump himself has never been one to shy away from makeup.
His weird, orange, glazed-ham look comes from his preferred spray-on concealer, ‘Bronx Colors,’ a cruelty-free makeup manufacturer in Switzerland.

If this all sounds too judgy, I’d like to say, “JD, I’ve felt your clearly adolescent girl pain, and I get your desire to represent a softer and more romantic republican political aesthetic.”

And let’s not forget that Kamala’s been known to wear makeup herself.

Here are before and after JD Vance eyeliner pics - you decide: daweb.us/jdVance.png
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Songs for this:
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue by Falco
Gonna Get Along without you now by She and Him

Peter (my bf) flew away early this morning,
like Shakespeare’s eagle, “leaving no tracks.”
Now I lie here, as a leftover or Millais’ drowned ‘Ophelia’.

That’s an image ripped from adolescent, female visual culture.

Time‘s adversarial magic drags us ever future-wise,
eroding sweet moments we would cling to.

Shall we poetize?

I want a quiet afternoon,
on the bright side of the moon.

It’s an actual-factual place,
convenient, in close outer space,
like mythical Elysium, Shangri-La or Valhalla
where I’d still be intertwined with my fella,
like characters from literature or legend.

A place where “I’ll get to it tomorrow,”
is, alas, an everlasting pass,
because on the dusty, unreeling moon,
tomorrow never arrives,
our lovers never have to go,
and we can relax, ******* clothed,
simply enjoying the everlasting earthrise.
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Songs for this:
To The Moon by Meghan Trainor
Moon River by Frank Ocean

Peter (my bf) is coming to town - tonight. I’m breathy with excitement.
My energy is so sick. “Someone scrape her off the walls,” Leong remarked, as I bounded out of my room this morning.
Lisa winced, holding her hand up, as if to block the sun, “You never smile in the morning.”   “And she’s humming,” Sunny observed.
“I’m not,” I started, then after a pause I amended, “yeah, I guess I was.”

I’m not just happy, I’m some new kind of happy. It’s been too long.
I’m swinging a school’s-out, pre-Christmas, free iced-latte vibe.
I’ve been on the busiest stretch, clearing my schedule. I have to define my thesis this semester. Argh!

But I’m ready for some bf fun. I’ve changed my sheets, hidden the general mess and God, even vacuumed.
That’s very un-university-like behavior - believe me.
As down as I was last Friday night, from tanking that quiz, that’s how up I am now.

Speaking of that quiz, the only way to deal with a fret is to exorcize it, defeat it, vanquish it. I stalked the TA after class last Tuesday, finally cornering him, like a wounded animal at his desk.
“I tanked last week’s quiz,” I admitted, which sounded way more whiny out loud than it did in my head.
“Vionet, right?” He’d asked rhetorically, already clicking his keyboard to bring up the grade sheet.
“Are there any extra cred..” I began. “You got an 88,” he interrupted me. “Yeah, but,” I’d begun again
“That’s a B,” he’d deadpanned in a low, ‘why do I have to talk to idiots,’ voice.
“Yeah, but,” I’d began freshly, only to be re-interrupted.
“A weekly quiz,” he’d said, “like a hundredth of your grade.”  
“A B,” I began, shaking my head side to side in a ‘no’ way, but I’d smiled ingratiatingly too - I was going to win this guy over.
“You’re way too tightly wound,” he’d snarked, insensitively.
I opened my mouth to speak again when he said “OUT,” twisting his head to nod towards the door.
“You don’t,” I began, only to have him give me a teen-like, wide-eyed look as he nodded again at the door.
So, I flounced out, giving a silent voice to my indignation.
Bureaucracies.
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Songs for this:
Take Off Ur Pants by Indigo De Souza
Kool Thing by Sonic Youth
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Our cast
Peter, (My bf), is a bearded, 27-year-old from the sage hills of Malibu, California. He’s 6’1, too thin, his jet-black hair is perpetually uncombed and his skin is pale from over exposure to fluorescent lighting. He earned his PhD in Applied Physics last year and now he works for CERN in Geneva. He’s smart, quiet, awkward and he can be too serious. I’m unreasonably cRaZy about this guy.

Lisa, (roommate) 21, my bff and Manhattanite ‘glamor girl’ (who’d bristle at that description but it’s hundo-p true.) who grew up in a 50th floor Central Park South high-rise. A (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

Leong, (roommate) 21, a ‘molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major,’ is from Macau, China - the Las Vegas of Asia and she’s a proud communist (don’t knock it til you’ve tried it). Growing up, I lived in Shenzhen China (about 30 miles from Macau) we both speak Cantonese (maybe why we were paired?) and we're able to talk a lot of secret trash together.

Sunny, (suitemate) 21, a (pre-med) molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major, is a cowgirl from Nebraska (seriously, she has a quarter horse and barrel races). She’s an outspoken fem-facing ladies-lady.

Your author, a simple country girl from Athens, Georgia is also a (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

Here’s to scrumptious nights.
cats and boots and cats and boots
We went clubbing last night, to recalibrate
ourselves on the dance floor, where magic happens.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots
To focus on sensory experiences, the beat,
and share in the fun and tangible sense of freedom.
cats and boots and cats and boots
Feel the wave, show your energy, be the wave
cats and boots and cats and boots
be disheveled, swing your hair like a weapon
abandon, silly, self-protecting vanities
cats and boots and cats and boots
flashing lights on dancing figures
make it all seem slo-mo and extreme.
cats and boots and cats and boots
It’s been too long since we’ve done it like this.
Work-worn, I’d lost my lucidity and stumbled badly on a quiz.
Lisa pushed my books onto the floor, declaring, “Get UP, we’re grabbing some bliss.”
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots
failure has a reality, a gravity and pull all the more shocking in relief.
I’d started out the evening gloomy and ashamed - a figure of regret -
but I’m better now, buoyed and recharged and soon I’ll have a plan - hopefully.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots
There was a guy there, on the dance floor, who looked like a young Leonardo DiCaprio.
We made eye contact, nodding and smiling at each other in motion.
We gyrated, together, sort of, for a second, in our separate orbits - no conversation
I just watched him for a moment or two, sexualizing him like eye candy.
Just seeing him was sensual fun and I wondered what he smelled like.
He had a gritty, sweaty, idealized beauty, like a dancing ‘David’
that no Michelangelo could ever capture in stiff granite sculpture.
The music ended - momentarily - we knew it would start up again
and we were there for it - til 1 or 2 am anyway - then it recranked.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and..
Lisa grabbed my hand, jerking me onto the dance floor almost
before I could set down my drink. Eeek! “Slow Down!” I yelled,
but my complaint was lost in the din and my involuntary laugh.
cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and..
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Songs for this:
Dance To This (feat. Ariana Grande) by Troye Sivan
Good Time Girl (feat. Charlie Barker) by Sofi Tukker

I’m taking control, making changes.
Some for the worst, others for the best.
I don’t like to evade or retreat.
My secrets are inconsequential.
I’m taking things into my own hands
- I kissed my therapist. On the lips.
Life is but a game of ‘Smash or pass’
and I hate waiting for ice cream.
“I like the way you move,” he said, “I like your skin.”
“It’s what people notice first” I admitted, “want to see it?”
Or maybe I dreamed that - I dream about him, sometimes. shrug
I think the helpless, astringent, professional intimacy fires me.
I want him to ask me about my jerkwater *** life, he has a concomitant
passport, but he never does. Isn’t that important - what about Freud?
What do you think you inherited from your parents? He asked.
“What a question!” I observed, “You mean genetically?”
“Come on,” he prompted, and I thought for a long minute.
“I have my mother’s impatience, her drive to succeed
and her thick blonde hair that seems to dry instantly.”
He nodded, indicating he liked where I was going.
“I have my father’s eyes, his flashing temper and flat chest.”
He chuckled, but I could tell he wanted me to stay serious.
“Then there’s my Stepfather (Step), he taught me humor,
patience and self-control - oh, and how to drive.”
He ****** on his pencil eraser and nodded.
He always blurs the line between performance and approval.
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Songs for this:
Secrets (Your Fire) by Magdalena Bay
The Spot by Your Smith

I have a couple of ‘research for credit’ classes this semester and I’m spending a lot of time with my TAs. Teaching Assistants (grad students) are essentially approachable professors with longer office hours, faster response times and a willingness to spend a little time walking me through options, so I understand the material and don’t charge-off in some crazy direction. I have a flawless record of wasting time on the wrong things at the wrong times, so I never feel silly or dumb asking questions.
AM I having fun yet? Yeah, I am.

A bell dings. Let the fighters enter the ring.
There’s a gathering of things, then we rush for the wings.
Students are bolting from classes, like riders out of rodeo shoots.
Focused faces, off to the races, phones appear from a hundred places.

Outside, a cool, brisk breeze moves paper-mâché clouds, across the blue-dome sky.
Squirrels freeze from their thieving, and watch this sudden, noisy invasion of their world.  
There’s a bee-like buzz of conversations, from ahead, behind and in doppler passing.
“Question six - was that right - what are you wearing to the thing tonight?”

My tummy growls for some lunch time relief - a plea for a snack - or coffee’s appeasement.
I glance at my watch, there’s no time. I leave the path for the grass;
I have an immediate class! Why are people so slow?
I get heinous looks - it’s grass people - kiss my *** people.

I squeeze sideways in the crush to enter the Kline Biology Tower, atop science hill.
In the hallway I find Lisa, we share the next class. “Do you have a granola bar?” I ask.
“I’ve got two,” she brags, fishing one out, as we drop our bookbags.
As I moan with pleasure, she chuckles at the relief on my face.
The TA announces, ”You should have papers, pass ‘em, please.”
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Songs for this:
Home by Luke Chiang
No Other Plans by Sunny Levine