Loving Cooper Finnegan

[Note: This is a short story I wrote the summer after I graduated high school. Set in a boarding art school much like the one I attended, it's intended to be a universally-empathetic story concerning the end of a high-school romance. It is 100% fictional, though slightly based on actual events. This is the fourth or so draft; I've re-edited it several times because, as with all first drafts, the first one sucked. Here it is now in its most polished form. I hope you like it.]

“Loving Cooper Finnegan”

June

How can four days be this damn long?

I feel like Conor Broekhart after he was thrown into prison on Little Saltee. Hopeless. Lost.

I’m so used to seeing him every day, you see. So used to having that nice little human to bounce those ideas off of. So used to saying, “So, let’s go do something insane…let’s go dye the water in the pool bright purple!” and hearing an enthusiastic voice respond, “Sure, why not?”

Now when I say out loud, “Let’s do something insane,” my mother replies, “Let’s don’t and say we did.”

It finally sinks in. Four days without him and I’m a mess. I don’t want to see myself four weeks, or four months, after I’ve been without him for that long. It’s not possible. It’s just not freaking possible.

It must be possible, because it’s real, it’s here, and I have to accept that there is a very, very high probability that I will never see him again.

October

I don’t know him, but something tells me I should.

He is nondescript, but he’s wearing green. I love green, I love people who wear green. Make all the Irish jokes you like, but people who truly know how to wear green are a rare breed, indeed. This one wears dark-green, and it matches his dark-red hair and pale—but not too pale; he’s not Dracula for God’s sake—skin so perfectly.

I don’t know him, but I know that we are going to be friends.

He is not ordinary. He has an aura that seems to scream, “I am not an ordinary person.” He reminds me of Artemis Fowl. He has the look of someone who hasn’t slept in weeks, of someone who stays up late into the night writing—or reading, perhaps; I hope so, I love boys who read—I can tell from the dark circles under his green eyes.

More green.

On either side of me, my friends make inappropriate jokes and discuss the latest Blogging Twilight post. I listen, but I don’t join in. I’m too busy looking at the boy in green.

June

Two weeks since graduation.

Cooper wrote to me yesterday, but it was a short, barely-there email.

Hi Nori—

I went to the library again today. I’m halfway through Future Eden, and you’re right, it’s amazing. Strange, but amazing.

My parents and I are going on a picnic tomorrow. I don’t know exactly where. If it’s pretty, I’ll take a picture for you.

Love,

Cooper

I remember when Cooper and I first met and I introduced myself as “Eleanor—but call me Nori, everyone does.”

And he smiled and said, “Nori. Like the dwarf in The Hobbit?” And when I blushed he said quickly, “It’s a perfect name for you. No one else could be named after a dwarf. You could, without losing a single shred of dignity.”

I liked his name too. Cooper Finnegan. I knew name meanings. Finnegan meant fair. It was an Irish name. Why didn’t that surprise me—all that thick red hair? Cooper. Barrel maker. What did that even mean? Did it even matter?

Now I wonder if “barrel maker” meant something. And this is just what I do, when I don’t understand something—I analyze the living hell out of it. Does “barrel” mean “barrel of a gun?” Because if it does, I’m scared, far too scared to think about what that could symbolize.

If it means what I think it might…

BAM—straight through my heart.

November

Cooper Finnegan. That’s his name. Cooper Finnegan, senior, transfer from Detroit.

“Someone set my school on fire,” he explains to me, over burned coffee and chalky, white-flour pound cake. “My parents thought it wasn’t safe, so they sent me up here.”

Sentenced to a boarding school in the middle of fucking nowhere because your parents wanted to protect you? My God, and he’s so calm about it. I can’t imagine not coming here by choice. “Why didn’t you stop them?” I ask.

He looks at me, shocked. “They’re my parents.”

“But they’re not you,” I point out. “You should have a say in what happens to you.”

Cooper looks at me for a long moment. Then he shrugs and says bluntly, “Well, I trust them.”

I trust my parents too, but not blindly. I don’t trust anyone blindly. But I trust him, even though I have literally no reason to. I trust him, I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s the sparkling green eyes that remind me of Harry Potter. Maybe it’s the thick, straight tufts of red hair that fall just barely to his shoulders and give him the appearance of having permanent bed-head. Maybe it’s his voice, so soft and sweet that he makes Michael Jackson sound like Al Pacino.

Maybe it’s just fate.

July

The sky is beautiful. The clouds are a dark, almost sinister shade of orchid, roughly the texture of cotton batting, against a background of deep plum. When the fireworks begin, around nine-thirty or so, the bursts of red and yellow and blue sparks explode against this background, creating an image so breathtaking that it almost hurts. I desperately want to save this image, but even my fancy T2i can’t capture the beauty, and it makes me sad.

He would have loved this.

I try calling him again, but his phone is off. He’s probably meeting the president. Oh no, wait, the president lives in D.C.—like me—and he lives in Boston. Never mind. Scratch that. He’s probably off writing the next Odyssey or inventing the cure for some rare disease.

And what am I doing? Sitting here watching fireworks. In a few moments my mother will call out the back door, and she will have me come inside and help her ice the lemon pound cake that she just took out of the oven. I will eat the pound cake after we ice it, along with a generous helping of fresh strawberries and a mug of hot, black coffee. We will watch a Harry Potter movie, probably the first one, because that is her favorite as well as mine.

Meanwhile, the boy I love is somewhere in a museum or a science center or a library, getting smarter for Vassar. Lucky bastard. If Vassar hadn’t rejected me I could be there in two months with him. Instead, come August twenty-fifth I’ll be off to the strict, evangelical Christian Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ironic, considering that I just escaped from a strict school in Michigan.

But this is my life, and I have to accept that, and I have to accept that I will never be good enough for Vassar, just like I am not good enough for him.

December

Snow covers the ground. It’s as cold here in the winter as it is hot in D.C. in the summer. Sam and Maggie and I grab each other’s hands and run and slide, run and slide, until we collapse in a heap on the thin layer of ice that has formed on the ground.

We find Cooper near the auditorium and bring him in with us. We run around the auditorium and shout lines from our favorite movies, and sing songs from RENT and Hairspray and Sweeney Todd that we only know half the words to, and we skip and play and dance until a security guard kicks us out.

On the way back, Maggie comes up with the idea of naming our favorite constellations. The night is clear, and we look up and see every star through the tops of the trees. “Mine is Seven Sisters,” Maggie tells us, reaching up to point out the shape in the sky.

Sam thinks about it for awhile. “I think Orion is mine.”

I stop and look up, staring around until I find my favorite—the Big Dipper. “Such a cliché,” Sam teases me when I voice this opinion.

But Cooper takes my hand, and points up to the very same constellation I just named. His breath makes a perfect little cloud in the crisp night air as he says, “My favorite is the Big Dipper, too.”

July

North Carolina is a six-and-a-half-hour drive from D.C., and I want to go there about as much as I want to stick hot needles under my nails. If I stay in D.C., I reason, there is a possibility that Cooper will come for me. If I go, he might come for me and then leave, disappointed, when he discovers that I’m not here.

I try to pack, but it feels like I’m preparing for the apocalypse. I pack nothing but short skirts and shorts and sundresses, and only one pair of jeans and one cardigan. I bring as many books as I can fit in my suitcase. Assuming that we actually don’t stay in the hotel the entire time, I figure I can at least be prepared for the ride to the hotel and the ride back.

I charge my iPod the night before. I also sync it, adding my new playlist of songs that remind me of Cooper, starting with the song we danced to at our senior prom and ending with the song that makes me cry every time I hear it because I miss him so much.

The stuffed white tiger that he won for me at Great Wolf Lodge sits in plain view on my shelf. I’ve taken that thing to bed with me every night. I want to take it with me—but if I’m seen cuddling with a damn stuffed tiger my parents will know that something is up. And I don’t want them to see that I’ve completely gone off the deep end.

Through the six-hour drive, I spend about one-third of my time sleeping, one-third of my time reading Fight Club, and one-third of my time staring moodily out the window as I listen to my iPod. Dad tries to engage me in conversation. I ignore it. I drink iced tea out of an insulated bottle and eat McDonald’s fries and cheese puffs from rest-stop vending machines, and I block the world out when the car begins to move again.

January

The bell has just begun to ring. A handful of kids from our school run to the playscape, shrieking in excitement, knowing they’re about to get drenched. I hang back, Cooper and Sam by my side. Sam—skinny, lily-white Sam, with about as much hair on his chest as a Chihuahua—has absolutely no reservations about whipping off his clothes and exploring the busy waterpark in his daisy-duke swimsuit. I, on the other hand, refuse to take off the t-shirt covering my one-piece. It’s not that I don’t want to swim, I do; I’ve been water-fight deprived for the last four months…but I have a good reason to not take off my shirt.

“Come on, Nori,” Sam coaxes me. “No one is going to notice your boobs in here.”

I am five-six, 119 pounds, and I wear a size 34E bra. I hate, hate, hate my breasts. As soon as I’m old enough (and I can afford it), I am going to get my breasts surgically reduced as small as the plastic surgeon can manage. And I swear, if one more girl looks enviously at my chest, I will hit her. If she wants them so badly, she can have them.

I fold my arms across my chest. “Damn right they’re not.”

Sam sighs exasperatedly. “For God’s sake, this is Great Wolf Lodge, not a beauty pageant. Now please take off your clothes and come on.”

Sam just wants to get wet. But Cooper understands. This is when I realize that his swim trunks are about three times longer than Sam’s, and he hasn’t taken off his t-shirt, either. “I’ll stay with you,” he promises, and Sam rolls his eyes and heads off, leaving me with Cooper.

“You don’t have to swim,” Cooper says once Sam leaves.

“What else is there to do?” I say stupidly, forgetting that the waterpark is not the only entertainment option in Great Wolf Lodge.

Cooper looks off in the other direction. “Come on,” he says, taking my hand almost absently. “Let’s go the arcade.”

July

We drive through West Virginia at five o’clock in the afternoon. It has been pouring rain all day, but now the sun is just coming out. The landscape looks washed-out, like the work of an amateur watercolor artist—dreamlike and pale and hazy. I close my eyes and turn up the volume on my iPod, and hug my tiger tightly.

Bethan. That’s the tiger’s name. I don’t remember exactly why. I just remember that I started calling her that, and it stuck. I remember that Cooper hit it big on one of those game-token slot machines, and it put out about a hundred and fifty tickets. Grinning like an idiot, he marched me up to the counter and asked me what I wanted.

Slightly dazed, more than a little surprised, I pointed to the tiger. The white tiger, the endangered white tiger, my favorite animal. The man working the counter handed it over, and Cooper handed it over to me. I remember nuzzling the soft, plush toy and saying something stupid about how I owed him. He said I didn’t.

Bethan sits in my lap, brown eyes staring blankly ahead. I think if I look closely enough, I can imagine that she’s real. If I look closely enough, I can almost pretend that she will get me through this.

And I wonder, as I look into her empty plastic eyes, How did it come to this, Cooper? How did it come to me relying on a stuffed animal to keep from missing you? But it doesn’t work, I don’t miss him any less. If anything, I just miss him more.

Bethan, it seems, is falling down on the job.

February

February in Northern Michigan. God forbid.

Everything is encased in a thin casing of jewel-like ice, making the entire world look like a huge, pristine diamond. Light layers of dusty white snow skirt across every flat surface. Icicles the size of broom handles hang from every rooftop. The world is a frozen wonderland. All emphasis on frozen. When I was a freshman I damn near died every time I went outside from December to April.

And yet it’s absolutely beautiful. I want to take a thousand pictures of it. I want to take a piece of it with me back to D.C. and re-create this wintery beauty on some hot, stifling July day, long after I’ve left this place for good.

Cooper and I walk to the library together, our gloved hands interlaced. He suggests we stop for hot chocolate in the café. We do. Once inside, he takes off his glove to draw on the inside of the frosty window. A heart. My name, my initials—his initials—together. He turns to me, self-conscious. He smiles.

I am speechless.

He goes to get us hot chocolate and gives me time to process what he has just done, what he’s just told me. I can’t think straight. Imagine, if you will, being handed everything you’ve ever coveted, carefully packaged inside one frosted heart. It’s frightening—sweet, yes, but frightening.

But he comes back, and puts his hand over mine when he sits down. His hand is so warm from holding the hot chocolate, I can feel it through my glove. He’s protective. It’s nice.

He looks at me, and I’m not afraid. I crack the frosted heart wide open and accept that he is handing me the world, and when he finally asks, outright, if I will be with him, I say yes without hesitation.

July

North Carolina is hot. Much, much hotter than D.C.; I don’t know why I ever would’ve suspected otherwise. I lie in the air-conditioned hotel room wearing short-shorts and the loosest tank top that I own. So not classy—Maggie really would not approve—but I don’t care. The news stations all call this a heat wave. I call it a heat apocalypse. I’d take a northern winter a hundred times over right now.

I check my phone every fifteen minutes. Cooper has not called. His parents have kidnapped him for a family outing, I think, or maybe he’s just busy getting ready for Vassar.

Vassar really should be grateful. He could have gone to Princeton, Yale, Stamford, Harvard, Notre Dame, USC, University of Chicago—but he chose Vassar. That school should feel honored. They should give him a damn award for existing. Sometimes I think that’s what our high school did—give him awards just for his existence.

Meanwhile I was the overlooked one. I was the wannabe Gus Van Sant who could never get into a film festival. I was the girl who never got any recognition for breaking a barrier that had been in place since the film department was formed. I did not win a single award or get into a single film festival the entire time I was at that school.

But Cooper did. Cooper was successful enough for the both of us.

Cooper Finnegan, we give you this award simply for being born. You are a miracle.

He is a miracle, he is, and he is mine, he said he was, and he will call me because he loves me. He loves me, he told me so.

March

Three days before Spring Break, Cooper comes rushing up to me mid-dinner. I’ve just escaped from the Film Shoot From Hell and hope that he has good news; as long as someone is happy I can put up with just about anything. “Nori, you have to go check your mail!” he says, gasping for breath, as he waves a huge white envelope in front of me. “I got in, Nor—Vassar just sent me the letter this morning! Go check! I bet your letter is waiting there!”

We run back to my dorm together, my bad mood evaporating like dry ice. So far I’ve gotten into all three of my safety schools—Calvin, DePaul, and Emerson—and two of my target schools, Columbia Chicago and University of North Carolina. This leaves Vassar, USC, University of Maryland, and Michigan State to reply.

My mailbox is stuffed. There are two big white envelopes and four skinny, pathetic-looking envelopes. Two of the skinny ones hold letters from my cousins, one from Maya, who lives in New York, and one from Krystal, who goes to University of Maryland—I put those aside; I’ll open them later. The two big white ones are from University of Maryland and Michigan State. I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all.

The first non-letter skinny envelope is from USC. No surprises there. I hated the idea of going to California for school anyway.

But the second skinny envelope is from Vassar.

We regret to inform you…thousands of qualified applicants…invite you to reapply…don’t be discouraged…qualities that Vassar admires, however…cannot accept at the present time.

I think Cooper’s hand is on my shoulder, but I am crying too hard to hear what he’s saying.

July

I’m not sure why I chose Calvin. Wait, strike that, I do: It’s because of my dad.

You see, my father is a graduate of Calvin College, and he swears by their film program. Never mind that after he left Calvin, he went into graduate school for computer sciences and wound up as a project manager for a tiny computer company that no one has ever heard of.

I got a full scholarship to Calvin, thanks to my dad’s alumnus status. I only got a half scholarship to Columbia Chicago, which is where I actually want to go. My parents said, Don’t be silly, go wherever you want to go. You can get a job next summer. We can help you apply for outside scholarships. We can get money somehow. Don’t tie yourself down for our sake.

But I had to, I couldn’t just take their money again, they’ve done so much for me, putting me through Great Lakes Art Academy and paying the fees for all my film festival submissions. It wouldn’t be fair to make them pay for art school when I don’t deserve it.

If I am not good enough for Vassar, I reason, then I am not good enough to force my parents to pay for Columbia.

“You were good enough to get in, idiot,” Maggie has scolded me multiple times. “Your parents want to see you happy. Go to Columbia, and for God’s sake stop worrying so much!”

I can’t stop worrying, because I am afraid that if I choose wrong—if I don’t make exactly the right move, right now, today—I will end up flipping burgers and begging people for money to make five-minute mumblecore shorts, while Maggie publishes her novels and Sam releases chart-topping records and Cooper finds the cure for cancer or writes the next Great American Novel or invents a new musical instrument.

April

As the rain melts away the last of the winter snow, Cooper and I run around in every possible thunderstorm and drink the rainwater from our cupped hands. One precious afternoon, we snag Sam and Maggie from their respective dorms and the four of us run around in the rain together, splashing and singing and shrieking like owls.

I think it is Maggie who asks me to take pictures. I’m afraid for my camera, but she reminds me that, like any good wannabe photographer, I carry clear plastic shower caps as makeshift camera covers for precisely this situation. So I cover my camera and start snapping photo after photo of Cooper, Sam, and Maggie dancing in the rain, and somewhere between shots I begin to cry. Not because I’m sad, not because I know that these moments will soon evaporate into memories, but because I’m so happy that mere laughing and smiling just isn’t enough; I need some other outlet for my emotions.

Cooper notices my tears, despite the rain. He rushes over to me and takes my hands. “Are you okay?” he asks, concerned.

The late-afternoon choir practice has just let out and the underclassmen begin to stream out of the covered amphitheater as he speaks, ending our solitude and reminding us that we are, after all, on a campus and not in an enchanted fairy glade. I look around, momentarily distracted. While I stare at the intruding choral singers, Cooper gently takes my camera and puts it back in my waterproof backpack. “No, don’t,” I protest, but he grabs my hands again.

I hear Maggie say, “Come on, Sam…we’re in the way.” I don’t know what she means by this; it’s not like they’re between us.

But Cooper persists: “Why are you crying?” he asks, reaching up and gently brushing tears and rainwater from my cheeks.

It’s the most intimate touch he’s ever bestowed upon me and it sends more tears streaming from my eyes. “Because I’m so happy,” I explain, and laugh even as another river of tears escapes.

Cooper leans down, his face inches from mine. My breath freezes in my throat; I’ve never been kissed and he’s never shown any indication of wanting to kiss me. I’ve never questioned that—it’s just who we are—but now, it seems, he’s changed his mind. We agreed to go slow, that much I understand. This, I can’t get my head around. If he wants a kiss he can have it, but oh, God, I have no idea what I’m doing…

“I prefer to see you smile,” he whispers, and gently plants his lips on my cheek, kissing my tears away.

August

I pack for college much the same way I packed for North Carolina: like I’m preparing for certain doom. Once again, I have that feeling that I can’t leave D.C. because if I do, Cooper won’t find me if—no, when—he comes for me.

Mom drags me through the mall, shopping for clothes. I have no problem finding pants. Forever 21 has a sale, and I get what I think must be enough jeans to make wall-to-wall tapestries for my bedroom. But tops? Forget it. My breasts have specific requirements for tops. I end up getting unisex size-L and female size-XL t-shirts to accommodate what I’ve begun to refer to as the Twin Planets…not that I’m allowed to get many t-shirts anyway.

“Michigan will be cold,” Mom reminds me—as if I could forget, after spending four years in that Godforsaken boarding school.

Time moves so slowly when you want to throw yourself into the nearest fire pit. (Though D.C. being what it is in summertime, that’s not too far from reality.) Dad hosts barbecue after barbecue, offers multiple times to throw me a graduation party, offers to take me to the carnivals. I used to love carnivals. Now I can’t remember for the life of me why I ever thought it was fun to be whipped around on a huge metal structure that had in all probability been built about twenty years before I was born.

“No, thank you,” I say over and over.

Cooper has written me exactly one time since I’ve gotten back from North Carolina—a short, tense letter that made me wonder if he was okay.

Nori—I won’t be able to talk for a bit. Going to New York for the week to check out Vassar with my parents.

—Cooper.

No “love” this time.

Still no calls.

May

Cooper laughs as he watches me dance—or should I say, attempt to dance—in a black-and-white ballgown and black pumps. I’m laughing too—at his hat—the most ridiculous thing, it looks like a graduation cap had a love child with a patterned ski cap. Ke$ha—the one song of hers that I can stand—blares out of the speakers, out-of-step with our “Phantom of the Opera” prom theme.

Cooper finds this song hilarious, especially the line “We make the hipsters fall in love.” “Can I call you something tonight?” he shouts over the music.

“What?” I ask.

“Hipster!” he replies, grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

“And damn proud of it!” I scream, and he shrieks back—a high, girlish sound—and begins to dance with me.

We dance like we are the stars of a music video. He grabs me by the hand and twirls me around. I can’t stop laughing—not the delicate, girly kind of laughing that most females do when trying to flirt, but real, honest, exhilarated laughing. The kind of laughing you do when you are having the time of your life.

Lights flash, colored spotlights swinging freely around the fake-wood dance floor. Around me is a mass of multicolored taffeta and satin and chiffon and lace, some of it iridescent, some of it matte. I am a black-and-white dot in the center of a giant kaleidoscope.

The music pounds through my body like a drug. Dizzy, almost high, I grab Cooper by his tie and pull him close. His hands come to rest on my hips. We are close, so close, and I’m still laughing, laughing hysterically, and I’m so happy I can’t breathe, and when we kiss I’m still laughing and I can feel his body trembling against mine because he’s laughing too, even as his mouth clumsily, shakily connects to mine.

Cooper’s first kiss. My first kiss. A moment to cherish.

August

Last time I was at the dentist, they must have dosed me too heavily with Novocain. That must be it. That must explain the cold numbness that has taken up permanent residence in my body. Either that, or I just lost my virginity to a Dementor.

I stare at the clouds through the plane window. The man next to me seems a little too interested in showing me pictures of his two-year-old daughter. His wife, a gentle, scolding, motherly young woman roughly five years older than me, continually tells him to “leave that poor girl alone, can’t you see she doesn’t want to talk right now?”

I turn up my iPod, blocking both of them out.

He finally called.

I’m sorry, Nori. I’m so sorry.

He doesn’t want me anymore.

It’s the long-distance thing. It’s too hard not being able to see you every day. I’m sorry, Nori. I’m so sorry.

He thinks I’m going to cheat on him.

This way we can both go off to college and be free. You can be with someone else, without worrying about me or thinking about what I’m doing….I’m so sorry, Nori. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

He doesn’t want me.

It just isn’t going to work. I’m sorry, Nori.

He thinks I’m not good enough for him.

We’re just too different…we have different lives, different values, different ambitions. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Nori, I wish I could be with you, I really do.

That was all he could say, on the phone, not even listening as I died, as I tried to remember how to breathe—

I’m sorry, Nori, I’m so sorry.

Like fuck you are, I want to tell him. You’re not sorry. You’re better off without me and we both know it.

I’m sorry, Cooper, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I love you. I’m sorry that I’m such a freak. I’m sorry that you had to deal with me all that time. I’m sorry you had to take me to the prom, I’m sorry you had to kiss me. I’m sorry I made you help me with my homework. I’m sorry I made you feel guilty about getting into Vassar.

I’m sorry, Cooper. I wish I didn’t love you.

May

It’s the night before graduation.

Crying parents, excited seniors, hyper siblings, wistful underclassmen. The works. The seniors had a special picnic earlier today. Cooper laughed as I tossed pretzels in the air and caught them in my mouth. We ran around the clearing and played Frisbee with Sam and Maggie. Then he pinned me up against a tree and kissed me even though I was wearing his least-favorite flavor of lipgloss. Strawberry, for the record. He hates strawberry.

Now it’s almost midnight and we’re dancing together for the last time at the end-of-year party in the gym. Sam and Maggie have long disappeared. The DJs are playing “Don’t Stop Believing” and I want to kick them, this is not the song I want to hear last. “Don’t worry. It won’t be,” Cooper assures me when I complain to him.

The last song turns out to be one of my favorites—“All the Small Things” by Blink-182. “Did you—?”

“Of course I did,” he grins, and then begins to spin me around the dance floor as if we’re in a ballroom instead of a gymnasium.

He’s laughing in the same exhilarated way that we were laughing at prom, and I love that he’s touching me, I love that he’s holding me and laughing with me, I love that he’s so happy to be with me. I love that we feel so young, so immortal, like this night will never end, like we can stay here with each other forever. I love that he kisses me as the last chorus swells, and I love that just before the song ends, he leans in and whispers in my ear—

“I love you, Eleanor Harrison.”

August

There are two songs I can’t hear without thinking of him. Neither of them are the slow, sappy love songs you’d expect. It’s just those two—“We R Who We R,” the song we danced to at senior prom, the song that was playing when we had that wonderful first kiss—oh, God, how I wish we’d done that sooner, “going slow” be damned—and, even worse, perhaps the worst of all, “All the Small Things.”

Because he used to sing me that song.

Because when he called me from the train station just before he went home, he called me his “little windmill.”

Because it was the quote in his signature at the end of his e-mails, and now it’s not, and I know he’ll never change it back.

Because he used to kiss me whenever I sang the chorus back to him in my thin, shaky singing voice.

Because he used to call me and sing me the chorus when I answered the phone.

Because he used to make me playlists and share them on iTunes.

Because he used to quote lyrics to me when I was having a bad day.

Because he was the first boy to do any of that for me and I know that no matter how many boys (though there won’t likely be many) do those same things for me, even if I let them, it will never mean quite the same thing.

Because he used to love me.

[Avery Udell, 2013. Please credit me if you quote this story online, in person, or elsewhere. Thank you.]

Looking back, looking ahead

One of the things I love about photography is the intimacy of it--or at least, what I perceive as intimacy; I'd bet that there are a fair few legitimate photographers out there shaking their heads at what I just said. But I'm going to pretend, at least for now, that everyone who's reading this is with me and totally gets what I'm trying to say.

Whether it's a self-portrait (which I'm just learning how to take), a portrait, a group shot, or a shot of an inanimate object, there's this inescapable closeness, this unshakable feeling that whatever or whoever you're capturing is, for that moment, totally in your hands. For a second, even if it's just for that second, you connect. It's suddenly your job, and your job alone, to make that person or that object beautiful, and just for that one moment, only your camera can do that. This is why taking candid shots is always such a gamble--and so disappointing when those candid shots don't turn out. Because if that shot turns out blurry or unflattering, you can't just do it over the way you can with a posed shot--that moment is gone forever, and your attempt at capturing it just as it was failed.

I'll be first to admit I'm terrible at candid shots, just learning to take self-portraits, and still struggling with the more technical aspects of photography. It took me an unseemly amount of time to figure out that, no, the f/stop and shutter speed are not in fact the same thing. This is why I'm going to take this opportunity to tell all of my fellow amateur photographers to first and foremost READ THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL THAT COMES WITH YOUR CAMERA. For the love of Pete, save yourself the headache--READ THE DAMN THING BEFORE YOU PICK UP THE CAMERA. Trust me on that.

But technical headaches aside and amateur fumblings notwithstanding, I feel powerful with a camera in my hands. I feel like an artist. I feel like I have the capability to do things that not everybody in the world can do.  I feel strong, I feel smart, I feel beautiful (behind the camera, mind you--put me in front of it and it's a different story entirely). I feel like someone worth paying attention to, and believe me, people do. I learned a long time ago that if you have a camera in your hands, there will inevitably be someone within ten feet who notices and feels the need to pose for you. I don't just feel empowered. I feel complete.

These photos were taken mostly around Christmastime, the most recent being from Superbowl Sunday. I felt a sense of nostalgia while looking at them--and a sense of accomplishment. Because, hey, maybe that's just a slightly overexposed shot of a pack of Gatorade--but it's my slightly exposed shot of a pack of Gatorade. It's what I saw in that moment and what I felt was worth capturing on film. And who knows? Maybe that one weird little picture from New Year's Eve 2012 will be worth something someday. I don't know. All I know is that right now, it's worth something to me.

My first attempt at a self-portrait--I was trying to demonstrate loneliness, hugging the body pillow instead of hugging my girlfriend. I don't know if it worked, but I know that I was damn proud of this shot because it involved mounting the camera so high I was afraid it would fall over, setting the timer, then pressing the button, jumping back into bed, arranging myself around the pillow, and freezing into that pose in the timespan of about ten seconds.

When Fluttershy Goes Too Far

I've been wondering for quite some time just how to express my distaste for the "brony" culture, and once I found where the problem lay, just how to phrase it without going way too far and offending a ton of people--for all I know, my blog could be followed by dozens of bronies (but that seems fairly unlikely). But then I realized, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Even my female friend who adores My Little Pony (the term for her, I think, would be "pegasister," unless I'm much mistaken) admits that while she loves the show, she greatly distrusts the fandom. Now I've never seen the show, except for a couple of clips she's tried to show me, so I don't really know much about it other than it's just like Spongebob: aimed at kids, with enough adult humor woven in to entertain the mothers, fathers, babysitters, and siblings who also watch it. (I heard something about Big Lebowski ponies...that's one episode I might not mind seeing, actually.) So no, I don't know much about the show, but I doubt I'd hate it. I just find the "brony" fandom, pardon my French, extremely fucking creepy.

And for awhile I couldn't figure out just what it was about them that I distrusted so much. I had a bad experience with a brony who goes to my college, but he and I never saw eye-to-eye to begin with; his love for MLP was way, way down on my list of things I despised about him. I've never been locked in a room with a hundred rabid bronies and subjected to MLP marathons. Like I said, I've never even seen the damn show. So what, precisely, was setting off my Ick Alarms?

It wasn't the fact that it was a kid's show with an adult fanbase. I know forty-year-old men who watch iCarly with their kids and admit to loving it. My college friends and I still watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. My physics teacher from high school wore a Spongebob Squarepants tie on a regular basis. I don't find any of that creepy in the least...not in that form, anyway, but I'll get to that later. And it sure as hell wasn't the gender-bending idea of a man liking a female-oriented show; I see that a lot too. One of my guy friends in high school used to watch Hannah Montana with me just for the hell of it. I love watching football, as do plenty of girls in my Christian fellowship. So, again, it wasn't the basic idea of "guy loving girl's show" that was squicking me out.

But there was still something about bronies that made me uncomfortable. And it wasn't until I came across THIS on Tumblr that I figured out what it was:

It’s funny, because when women enjoy male-dominated things like video games or comics, we are called “attention whores,” yet men who take over an entire fandom of a show aimed at little girls and create their own little movement based on it claim to be oppressed because people are creeped out by them. And then they've got the nerve to argue they are “challenging masculinity”? Puh-lease. Bronies are entitled males, they hate women, they even seem to hate the little girls the show was originally made for.

That. That, right there, is my underlying problem with the Brony culture and the stigma attached to it.

Let me put it this way: I'm a girl, and I like football. I don't obsessively follow football; I can't quote every statistic of every game, I don't even have the chance to watch most games, and I can't name every quarterback of every NFL team. I can't even name every player of my favorite teams. But there are two men that I follow, and their names are Eli and Peyton Manning. They play, respectively, for the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos. I look up to these men, I admire these men, and believe it or not I actually know the rules of the game that they're playing. I have played that game before--not on an official team, but in small groups, you know, in someone's backyard, or wherever. I know how to throw a football and how to catch a football. I watch the Super Bowl for reasons other than the halftime show and the commercials. I know what a touchdown is, I know what the linebacker does, I know what "first down" means. I have never once asked the question, "Do two quarterbacks make a halfback?"

I even have teams I don't like. As in, not teams I just don't follow, but teams I actively dislike, teams I want to see lose. I highly dislike the Detroit Lions (I know, I know--a Michigander who doesn't like the Lions? Never seen that before, have you?), but I detest the Patriots. If it came down to it, I'd be happy to see the Lions  beat the Patriots. In Westminster you'll frequently see the slogan, "I root for two teams: The Ravens, and whoever's playing the Steelers." For me, it's more like, I root for three teams: the Giants, the Broncos, and whoever's playing the Patriots.

Okay, I got a little off-track there. Simply put: I'm not obsessed with football, but I enjoy watching it and, on occasion, playing it.

Try explaining that to any of the men I deal with on a day-to-day basis other than my father. I can't count the number of times I've heard the following:

"Yeah right. You like football."

"You know that's a sport, right?"

"If you really liked football, you'd go to all our home games."

"Okay, you're a football fan? Tell me how many touchdowns [player's name here] got last season." (Or who's the coach of the 49ers, or what it means to punt the ball, or how many minutes are in each half, or whatever.)

"I bet you've never even been to a game."

"What teams do you like? The Giants? Pfft, you're only naming teams that have won the Super Bowl, you probably don't even know any other teams."

"You don't even own a jersey, do you?"

"You can't be a real football fan unless you [own a jersey/cap/hoodie/coffee mug, go to games, follow NFL on twitter, etc.]."

And last but not least, my personal favorite: "You just say that to meet guys, don't you?"

I was once having a ridiculously late lunch with a guy friend in a practically-deserted cafeteria. One of the other three occupants was wearing a NY Giants t-shirt. When he passed, I gave him a thumbs up and said, "Love the shirt."

He stopped. Stared. Looked at me like I had three heads. "What?"

Confused, I replied, "Um...nice shirt? I like the Giants too."

He continued to gape. My guy friend jumped in and said, "Yeah man, the Giants are cool."

BOOM. Immediately the guy turned around and started to talk to my friend, going on and on about man that Eli's got an arm and will they make it again this year you think? while I sat there, essentially invisible. After a few attempts even my friend didn't bother trying to include me in the conversation. Every one of my comments was rejected as "stupid" or ignored entirely. I was a girl. It was a guys' conversation. I had no place there.

Finally I made one last effort and remarked that the fact that they'd now beaten the Patriots in the Super Bowl twice was what sealed their place in my heart. The other Giants fan turned to me and said scathingly, "That and the fact that Eli Manning's hot, right?" and carried right on chatting with my friend. I sat there, stunned, tears in my eyes. After a moment I got up and left. I don't think either of them noticed I was gone.

I don't talk to that friend anymore. (This wasn't the first incident in a similar vein, believe me.) And I've learned to bite back compliments or high-fives relating to other fans' team pride. Why? Because I can count the times I've seen another girl wearing those shirts on one hand (unless you count the cameras at the Super Bowl, which I don't). And if I do comment on it, I'm usually rewarded with one of the friendly comments listed above. Unless I'm talking to another girl, in which case the conversation usually turns at some point to the subject of how often we're blown off for making football-related comments.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with Bronies? Well, it's like the comment on Tumblr: when a girl loves something that's "for guys," it's treated as completely out there. Totally unheard of. The Big Bang Theory loves to make fun of this: if a woman is seen in the video game or comic book store, "she must be lost." One of my best friends loves video games, anime, superheroes, and Star Wars. She will talk your ear off about any of these subjects, given the chance. If she's in a game store or specialty shop, you can be damn sure that she isn't lost. She's there because she fucking wants to be.

And guess what, gentlemen? It's the same story for the rest of us. If I hear one more "Girls can't be geeks" slur or joke, I'm going to throttle someone, because guess the fuck what? When I walk into a costume store and ask how to replicate Loki's armor, I'm not joking, and I'm not requesting a midriff-baring imitation that looks like a green leather minidress with a horned helmet on top. When I quote A Clockwork Orange, I'm not trying to confuse whoever's listening, I genuinely want someone to jump in and quote the next line.

Basically, I'm--we're--not looking for attention. We're looking for identification.

And I would be totally down with the whole Brony thing, if that were it for them as well. But it's not.

Again, let me explain it this way: When I make a reference in a random group of people and someone gets it, I high-five them and, more often than not, start a conversation about it. If I understand a reference that someone else makes, I usually get the same response from them. And if I don't understand it? I get a recommendation. ("That's from Two and a Half Men, you should totally check it out!") And if I've seen the show, movie, or web series and didn't like it, I'll say, "I've seen it, I just don't care for it," and sometimes they'll push it ("Oh come on, did you give it a chance? Really? Well..."), but if I firmly repeat my position ("I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not my taste"), they'll let it go ("Oh ok, well have you ever seen Big Bang Theory? You might like it better.").

Now, if I'm in a similar situation with someone who identifies as a Brony, what will usually happen is this:

Brony Guy: [reference to MLP, laughs]
Me: What? I don't get it.
BG: WHAT? But that's a MLP reference, don't you watch MLP?
Me: No...
BG: YOU SHOULD TOTALLY WATCH IT OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING DOING WITH YOUR LIFE.
Me: I'm just not interested in it.
BG: YOU SHOULD BE!
Me: I don't think so, it's not my thing.
BG: You should watch it. You're a girl.
Me: But I don't like it.
BG: You should like it and if you're not into it there's clearly something wrong with you.
Me: What is it that you love so much about it?
BG: Are you saying I shouldn't love it because I'm a guy?
Me: No...
BG: Because it's TOTALLY okay for guys to like MLP. I LOVE MLP and I'm masculine as fuck. We're challenging the stereotype of men and you should be happy about that, you Member of the Female Gender, you.
Me: Okay...yeah I get the gender non-conforming thing, I'm a girl and I love Marvel.
BG: WHAT? No you can't love Marvel...I bet you've never even read the comics...You don't even know where Loki came from, you don't know anything about the mythology, you just think Tom Hiddleston is sexy and you probably think Iron Man is hot tell me the true origin of the Hulk and what was Pepper's given name and what year did the first Captain America comic come out and oh you don't even like X-Men you clearly don't know shit...

You see what I'm saying?

Obviously that situation is exaggerated. And I'm not saying I go around searching out Bronies to have that conversation with. But in case you're scratching your head right now, wondering what it is besides the obvious sexism of his reaction to my participation in the Marvel fandom that would bother me about that exchange, let me point out three key issues about that conversation:

1) His participation in a non-gender-conforming fandom is worthy of a pat on the back. Mine, however, is implausible. He is challenging masculinity. I'm just indulging an alleged crush.
2) He assumes that because of my gender, I automatically will be a fan of something "girly." The fact that I wouldn't like a show full of pink ponies just never crosses his mind, until I tell him.
3) Most annoying regardless of sex or gender: Even when I tell him I'm not into MLP, he continues to press the fandom on me despite my lack of interest.

To me, this is one of the biggest mistakes any member of any fandom can make. I don't care how much you love your fandom--if someone isn't interested, shut the hell up and move on.

I love Harry Potter. A lot of my friends love Harry Potter. And honestly, we are not, for the most part, going to understand people who hate Harry Potter. We especially are not going to understand people who think Harry Potter teaches witchcraft to unsuspecting children. We will mock these people to one another. We'll roll our eyes when someone suggests that Harry Potter is bad for kids because it teaches Satanism and Wicca. We'll swap stories with each other about what happened when we were judged in the bookstore or department store for buying Harry Potter books or gear. We'll swap those stories about getting awkward stares in Toys-R-Us (because for some unknown reason, 90% of the Harry Potter props are marketed as toys) or about meeting someone with a rare Hufflepuff varsity jacket that we're now determined to replicate. We're a community; it's what we do.

However, what we will not do, as a whole, is go onto forums like ChristiansWhoHateJKRowling.com and plaster their message boards with stills from the movie. Yes, there's the odd troll who will do this, but you find those everywhere on the internet; you can't tell if they're real Potter fans or just trying to stir up trouble. And that's a sad reality of the internet and something we can move on from. I'm okay with that.

Bronies do not seem to share this sentiment. They're like the evangelical denomination of geek-fandom: they plaster their ponies everywhere, regardless of whether or not they're wanted. I've de-friended two people on Facebook and blocked someone from Tumblr because I was legitimately so sick of getting assaulted by pony propaganda every time I went to check my dash or newsfeed...and that's from someone who's just indifferent to MLP. I can only imagine what people who actively hate MLP must feel like when they go to check their favorite social media sites and get hit with the image of fifty Rainbow Dashes (I think that's the one pony's name...not sure...)

You don't force your favorite show on someone. It's not nice. Period.

But there's one more problem I have with it, and this one comes across as a little judgmental...as in, more judgmental than the rest of this post could be construed as; I'm not trying to judge, really, I'm not...but here goes: It's not that I think older people loving a kid's show is creepy. I think that what's creepy is how these guys completely dominate the fanbase of this show while completely disregarding the audience for whom it was initially intended.

Wait, wait, I know you're thinking "But we already covered this..." Not exactly. What we covered was the misogynist nature of Bronies. What I'm talking about is how the idea of this being a children's show (WHICH IT INITIALLY WAS) that has been totally taken over by an adult fanbase warrants a major rating on the Ick-O-Meter.

I'm not talking about teenage guys watching this with their younger siblings and enjoying it more than they'd care to admit. I'm not talking about fathers watching it with their kids and chuckling at the references the little ones don't understand. I'm not talking about college kids watching this to mock the hell out of it when they're bored. I'm not even talking about watching it as a guilty pleasure; I have nothing against people who watch shows like MLP simply because they want to, and not because they have young children or siblings who want to watch TV with them.

I'll confess something here: I used to watch LazyTown when I was...well, way too old to be watching it, let's put it that way. I'm talking like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen here. I mean I read the fanfiction, rented the DVDs, seriously considered dying my hair pink, dreamed of meeting Sportacus (because let's be honest here, Magnus Scheving was freakin' hot), and related to Stephanie as though she were my age, even though the character was supposed to be something like eight years old. I still maintain that LazyTown was a damn good show, a hell of a lot better than most of the shows I've been unfortunate enough to sample today...but I still didn't like to tell people my opinion on that, because you know what? People wouldn't have understood why I liked that show. No matter how you sliced it, I was a teenager watching a show intended for little kids and...well...that's kind of weird. I didn't feel the need to tell people about that. It was just one of my secret guilty pleasures.

Now, if I watched that show with a Brony mentality, I'd have behaved a lot differently. Covered my notebooks with LazyTown stickers, posted pictures and videos on all my social media, and loudly and violently proclaimed my love for the show to anyone who would listen--and plenty of people who wouldn't. What? You don't like LazyTown? You think it's just a little weird for a high-schooler to be watching a show intended for seven-year-olds? Let me tell you, in four-part harmony, about how you're oppressing me and how narrow-minded you are and how I should be able to watch whatever I want to watch, damn it!

If I'd done that I'd be labeled weird or scary. The MLP fandom, however, can do that and the worst thing they get is "annoying."

And that right there is my underlying problem with the guys who watch MLP and identify as "Bronies." I don't have a problem with them watching the show. I have a problem with them shoving the show down my throat and accusing me of "oppressing" them or "stereotyping" them when I say I'm not interested.

Watch what you want to watch. Talk about it. Be excited about it. But for the love of God, if someone says, "I don't like that fandom, stop talking about it to me?" Stop talking about it to that person.

Please.

Consider it a random act of kindness.

Don't call me Fangirl

Whenever a new obsession comes up, there is almost inevitably a character in whatever book, movie, or TV show that I've either utterly fallen in love with or identify with so completely that I'll start saying things like "Oh, I'm actually Hermione," or "If I met Juno she and I would be best friends."

And a lot of these are fairly understandable. Can be explained in one line, actually. I can identify with Luna Lovegood because we're both a little out-there, a little weird, no one really "gets" us but we'll be your friend through anything. I identify with Rose Tyler because we both crave adventure and know how to grab hold of it when it comes knocking. I identify with Eowyn because we're both women who know how to live in men's worlds and aren't afraid to be strong even when it's not "ladylike." I identify with Meg because we're both outcasts who are closer to our families than our friends.

And so the story goes. From what I understand, I'm not the only one to do this, either. Hell, my friend and I do it all the time (our favorites being characters from 'On the Road' and other such lovely bits of Beatnik literature). Cosplayers do it. Fanfiction writers do it. People who just plain love the movies or books or TV shows do it. It's not uncommon.

But what do you do when you know--you know, with every fiber of your being, you don't just vaguely think it--that you are a character, and everyone takes one look at you, one look at the character you're mentioning, and just laughs it off? "Ha. No. Not you. Not even close." Or, "Oh, ok, well I could kind of see it, but you're more like [insert cliche character who is the exact opposite of you but has the same hair color/gender/occupational activity]." What then? And what if they do it so casually, cruelly even, that you're so blindsided you don't even have the wits to defend yourself?

This happened to me. Actually it's happened to me several times now. Actually, it happened to me last night. And into this morning.

So, I've seen The Avengers. I saw The Avengers last August when they showed it to us at my college for an outdoor movie night, and I loved it. I hadn't even seen most of the other movies that preceded The Avengers, and I still loved it. My favorite character? Easy--the lovable, volatile Bruce Banner. The Hulk. One of the few characters in the film that I actually recognized. (The other being Iron Man, whose film series I hated--but make no mistake, I love the character, he's hilarious.) I laughed as hard as anyone at "Puny God" and "They want me in a submerged, pressurized container?"

But there was someone new. Someone I didn't recognize. A villain, actually. The kind of villain I like because you know there's more to them than you're seeing in just that movie. You know they have a backstory. And they might be the antagonist, but you can't help but feel sympathy for them. And you can't help but like them because, well, yeah, they're bad, but they're funny.

You know, of course, who I'm speaking of by now.

Please understand, I hadn't seen Thor. I didn't know Loki's backstory, at all. I just knew he was one of my favorite villains of all time, because he was, unlike most villains, a three-dimensional character. Hell, even most of the good guys aren't as three-dimensional as he is. By the end of the film, I understood Loki better than Captain America. (That was actually sign one for me. But I didn't get that at the time; I just went "Wow, cool villain" and thought that was the end.)

But then I did see Thor. And I watched it back-to-back with The Avengers. And I realized...oh my God, he's three-dimensional to me, because I understand him, because I am like him.

Loki starts out Thor's brother, a "friendly," as S.H.I.E.L.D. would put it. But...what happens? He gets corrupted. The Chituari basically screw him over. But in his natural form, the way he was raised, the person who he was meant to be, Loki will do the right thing, period, no matter how unpopular it makes him. (Example: Thor, when Loki "tattles" to the Allfather because he knows that Thor and his warrior friends are going to bite off more than they can chew when they go to Jotunheim.)

Maybe I'm just way off. Maybe I don't know shit about it. But my perception of Loki is that he's a good guy, until he gets hit with a tidal wave of bad news mixed with responsibility that he isn't ready to handle, not by a long shot, and to make up for it he almost gets killed and gets mixed up with some really, really sketchy people who hurt him, threaten him, and then promise him a chance to shine but only if he does what they want...otherwise, his ass is grass and the Chitauri are the collective lawnmower.

Now, I'm not a Norse demi-god. I'm not adopted, my (non-existent) brother isn't the God of Thunder, I don't have magical powers, and I wasn't tortured by some power-hungry aliens who wanted me to steal government-protected technology. But there are aspects of Loki's character that I not only sympathize with, but truly empathize with. Painfully so, in some cases.

Feeling out-of-place.

Feeling unwanted.

Not wanting all the glory--just wanting to be recognized for what I've done. ("I never wanted the throne, I wanted to be your equal!")

Being trapped in someone's shadow.

Growing up thinking I'm completely aware of who I am, and then suddenly discovering that the "real" world sees me entirely differently.

The image of Loki's "Asgard" form, covering up his true "Frost Giant" form, oh my God, can we just talk about that for a hot second? That's something that I feel just about every female on the planet should identify with. The smbolism is screamingly, blatantly obvious: makeup, covering up anything that our peers deem imperfect, trying to make ourselves "acceptable" by fitting in or being more beautiful than our friends.

Speaking of Frost Giants--Loki is naturally adaptable to cold (considering, y'know, he was born on a planet of creatures who pretty much live in the fucking snow). He doesn't have a problem with cold, or snow, or frost. But if he's touched by someone who isn't used to cold, it gives them frostbite. I'm from Michigan; I grew up in ice and snow, and it doesn't bother me the way it bothers my warm weather-inhabiting counterparts. And when I run into someone who isn't used to the cold, and try to explain why it's not really that bad, the reaction I get sometimes borders on hilarious. I don't mind the cold. I actually like the snow. (My girlfriend has sometimes been known to refer to me as her polar bear or penguin.)

I love pranks, I love pulling them off but I also don't mind being the target of them, so long as they're funny and not cruel. Loki is the God of Mischief. He deals in pranks, for Pete's sake! (I won't go off on a tangent about how adorable it would've been to see Loki and Thor as kids, and Loki pranking Thor and starting prank wars with his brother and...gaaaack. I won't go on. I won't. But I could.) Mischief =/= evil. Mischief = fun, a little devious, but in the end laughable.

Loki's dumped with the responsibility of being king while his father is comatose and his brother is exiled. Okay, I haven't had that much dumped on me, but when you're an only child, you know what it's like to be saddled with responsibility before you can handle it. It's not like your parents intend to do that to you (hey, Odin didn't mean to clock out and leave Loki on his own), but it happens anyway.

Above all else, Loki is a mischievous, lively, goofy smart-ass. There are moments of his that just crack me up, and what makes me even happier is that I can see myself saying things like that. I love it when a character's sense of humor jives so well with my own. It makes it feel like that movie was made just for me. And there are plenty of characters whose humor I can appreciate--Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Phil Coulson--but Loki resonated in a way that not many characters do. Loki was someone who was just enough like me to initially grab my attention.

Loki and I are not, by any stretch, twins. Not personality-wise, and certainly not physically. (Though I'll admit I'd kill to have eyes like that. If only they made hair bleach for your irises...you know what, let's just pretend that sentence is half as disturbing as it actually is, okay?) There are plenty of little ways that we "match up." But there is one area in which we are breathtakingly similar: Emotional processing.

Have you ever seen me angry? No? Well, have you ever seen Spirited Away? I'm like No-Face. I can destroy an entire bath-house in one of my rages and then spew the most God-awful word-vomit you've ever heard. But then, an hour later, I'll find myself with the same person I was just in the process of attempting to annihilate, trying my damndest to be a good friend to them. And when I'm sad or, God forbid it, heartbroken--forget it. Try to get a sensible word out of me. It can't be done. I'm a crying, shrieking, distracted, all-over-the-place mess. Try to follow my mood from one day to the next. I dare you.

Now I'll grant you, I've never gone as far as trying to take over not one, but two planets in an attempt to make myself feel better. But I too have a destructive streak. I too have a harder time controlling myself than Bruce Banner. Watch out, Hulk. You think you're volatile? The young art-school girls of this world put you to shame. Particularly this one. No, I haven't totaled Asgardian castles or burned New York to the ground. But in my most heated moments I have destroyed friendships and said things that any sane person would be able to keep inside. That would be my inner Loki, coming out to play.

In fact I think it's one of the most interesting things about Loki, that he scorns Bruce Banner as a "monster" when really, they're extremely similar. Both Loki and Banner are ruled by emotion. The difference is that Banner admits it and at least fights to keep control of himself (jury will please note, that doesn't always work). Loki, on the other hand, insists he is unaffected by emotion when it's actually what's driving him. Think about it: his attack is entirely motivated by anger at his father and bitterness towards Thor. Loki smacks of vulnerability through Thor and volatility through The Avengers. And yet people label him as "psycho" or "sociopathic" because he's the so-called bad guy? No. Bad guy he may be (in Avengers, at least; I refuse to slap him with the title of sole villain in Thor), but he is not emotionless or cold or calculating. Everything he does is driven by an emotional reaction, either to his former family or to the threats of the Chitauri.

So, with all that said...yes, I do think I'm like Loki. A lot like him, in fact.

My friends, however, do not share this view.

In fact, two of my teachers took great delight in informing me that I'm more like Bilbo Baggins than Loki. Hmm, okay. So I remind you of a hobbit who's scared of his own shadow, steals a ring, shows his great humanity by not killing something that's very willing to kill and eat him, scares the hell out of all of his friends and basically runs out on his nephew, leaving an innocent kid with the task of destroying the most dangerous object in history? That's just wonderful.

It's not that I'm hating on Bilbo. (Okay, maybe I am. Just a little.) Chalk it down to one of those overblown emotional reactions, I suppose. It's not that I hate Bilbo, it's just that 1) I think Frodo's much more of a hero, and 2) I really don't think I'm like Bilbo, at all. He has to be forced out the door to begin his adventures and I, like Rose Tyler (as stated above), jump at the chance of any adventure that comes my way. Am I sometimes terrified of it? Well, yeah, but I never let that stop me.

Bilbo starts out timid, and that is an adjective that I have never used to describe myself. And if there's one thing I'm getting sick of, it's being firmly placed into the "Miss Muffet" category. I may be girly, but I'm not shy. And honestly, the next person to refer to me as "submissive" may actually get punched in the face.

I may not be a supervillain. (Rest assured, I have no ambition to be one, either.) There's a difference between my fascination with the darkest characters of my favorite films and literature (the name "Alex DeLarge" ring a bell?) and the true identification I feel with someone like Loki. My mother always told me I "brought home the strays." I've always "run with the mad ones." I'm a magnet, it seems, for outcasts, for people on the fringe, the ones who aren't popular in the conventional sense and wouldn't want to be anyway. I've always been drawn to them. Always.

Maybe now it's time to finally admit that I'm more like them than I used to think.

Let's Have an Adventure

Because we could all use a reminder that the world is beautiful...especially now.

(Pictures taken with a Canon T2i and Samsung Galaxy SII, at Interlochen Center for the Arts, McDaniel College, Six Flags Baltimore/D.C., Sheraton Hotel at Cuyahoga Falls, OH, and from the backseat of a moving Toyota Sienna.)

(photo credit to Ella)

 

 



(photo credit to Ella)

 

Hold it in...but not this time

I can't, I can't, I can't take it
This is a time to smile, I can't fake it
Please allow me the chance now to break it down
It's not snow, it's rain coming down
And the lights are cool, but they burn out
And I can't pull off the cheer
Not this year, not this year
Not this year
~Aly and AJ, "Not This Year"
 

 When I was a little girl, Christmas was such a big deal in my house. We'd all go and get the tree together--chop it down ourselves, of course; we couldn't just buy one--and decorate it while listening to Christmas music, the most eclectic mix of songs you could possibly imagine--Annie Lennox, Whitney Houston, Tom Petty, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, you name it, we listened to it. We'd bake Christmas cookies, sugar cookies, the kind you get to decorate, and I'd make a gingerbread house. There was almost always snow, and my dad and I would go sledding and then come home and wrap presents together. When I got old enough, I could pick out presents for my parents and other family, and sometimes pay for them--and we'd have little present-wrapping parteis. We even made our own ornaments out of Polymer clay. And on Christmas morning, there would be the most incredible presents under the tree. One year there was a brass bed for my American girl doll (which I'd just gotten for my birthday a month earlier). One year there was a play tea party cart that I'd begged for. One year, a little Hogwarts castle, complete with Polly Pocket-sized Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. One year there was a beautiful bronze-colored electric guitar, just the right size for a short little twelve-year-old. I believed in Santa until I was almost a teenager.

And if you'd told me then that someday I would possess the knowledge that out there, in my country, there was a young man my age who had the capacity to take a handful of deadly weapons, walk into an elementary school, and shoot seven-year-old children, multiple times, at Christmastime, I wouldn't believe you. I wouldn't want to believe you. I wouldn't want to think that anyone had that capacity.

He was my age. That boy was my age. He could, just as easily, have been someone I went to school with. He could have gone to my college, gone to my high school, gone to my boarding school. I could have known him. There is every chance that, right now, at my college, there is a twenty-year-old man who could so easily take a gun, walk into my classroom in the middle of a lecture, shoot my teacher, and then turn on me--cold-faced, no emotion in his eyes, no remorse, no fear--and shoot me, multiple times, in the chest. Watch me die, no regrets, and walk away. I wouldn't be able to do anything about it except bleed.

I can't get that out of my head. I keep seeing, from the point of view of a six-year-old, a man walking into my classroom like that. I keep hearing a little voice saying something that I read in one of the articles about the shooting--"I don't want to die, I just want Christmas, I just want to have Christmas." That would be me. That's always me. I'm the one who always says, "Not yet, not yet, not yet." If I die of old age, God willing, I'll be on my deathbed saying, "Not yet, I want to see the turn of the century." I can't imagine being six years old, in school, just before winter break, and being in the position of saying, "I just want Christmas."

Six years old.

Six. Fucking. Years. Old.

In my lifetime I have seen cruelty. I have seen what I thought was the maximum capacity for human violence. Wars, both started by us and ended by us. The Holocaust. Genocide. My Lai. The picture of the little Vietnamese girl running naked down the street, her body covered in Napalm burns. All of those things they teach you in history class, all those situations where Americans were allegedly the heroes or, if your teacher is honest, the worst villains.

Then, those ones closer to home. The things I watched on the news with my mother. The Columbine massacre. 9/11--I'd been studying World War II, and I was so afraid that day that my father would have to go off to war, just like the men drafted back in the 1940s. The Virginia Tech massacre, the Aurora shooting, which I wrote about a few months ago--I thought, until yesterday, that I'd seen it all.

I was wrong.

I could not have imagined this. But my mind keeps trying to make up for that, making me picture it.

This Christmas, families in Connecticut will take down their Christmas lights, which they put up just for their children. The presents bought for their children will never be opened. Christmas cookies will not be made or eaten. Neighbors will offer sympathy, but it will be useless. Families who took for granted that they'd be able to take their children to their grandparents' house for Christmas dinner will sit in the living room and hold each other, crying, wishing like mad that they could have just one more day with the child they lost.

I can't cry. Not yet. Not about this. Earlier I cried during a fight with my dad. The tiniest little thing set me off--I couldn't think why. Now I know. I want to let this out somehow, but I can't. Writing usually helps. Not now.

As a Christian, one of the first things you are taught is to forgive. And usually, I can. Over time, my fury at the Aurora shooter has slowly begun to fade away. I'll never stop thinking what he did was horrible, but I no longer hate him, I'm no longer curious about him--but I'll never stop wishing that people like him didn't exist.

But I will never, ever forgive the man--the man my age, the man who could so easily be my classmate, perhaps even someone in my group of friends--who went into that school, and murdered those children.

This man is a monster. He is not the sci-fi kind, not the beast from 20,000 fathoms, not an alien life form from some far-flung planet. He walks among us. He is us. The man who took a gun into a school and murdered twenty children is human. He is beyond the evil of the antagonist of Psycho. But even Alfred Hitchcock would think twice before making a movie about a man like this.

While I will continue to pray for peace, and pray for the families who were torn apart by this monster, I won't fool myself into thinking that just prayer will be enough. Obama's visit to Newtown won't be enough. Watching the shooter die by a thousand flaming arrows wouldn't be enough. When your child is ripped away from you, nothing is enough--I haven't had children, but I know that if I were to die the way the children in Newtown died, murdering the murderer would not be enough for my mother.

I'm not in the habit of invoking Hell. But in this case, I don't think anything else is worthy of the perpetrator of this crime.

So, Adam Lanza, I do not feel curiosity about you. I am afraid of you. I am afraid that more like you walk the earth, and even more afraid because I know that my fear is justified. I don't want to know more about you. I don't care what made you commit this crime. I don't want you to stand trial. I'm glad you killed yourself, because it means I won't have to read articles about you standing trial and defending your actions. Is that awful of me? Perhaps it is--but I feel my minor crime of being thankful for your elimination pales in comparison to the fact that you took twenty-eight lives, twenty of whom had barely begun to live.

And I'll pray for your victims, I'll pray for their families, I'll pray for their friends and neighbors and loved ones. But the one thing I will not pray for, is for God to have mercy on your soul. For what you did, I think you deserve every punishment He gives you and beyond.