I feel like your roommate's gentrified you right out of your own apartment.

-kx

*

I'm sneak-recycling later tonight, and I planted flowers and traded books earlier today, so all is okay.

Now I just need to find a job.

*

Also, have you ever noticed how willing people are to snark?

I went down to the plant nursery I worked at last summer, set to buy a flat for balcony color, which will hopefully last until I escape. And in the process, I saw a few folks I knew, me feeling oddly nervous about picking up a few cheapy flowers never-you-mind. But as it turned out I ran into C - a woman I was hoping to dodge; she happened to be ringing up a customer as I drolled in to pay, and she noticed me and said, "Hey, how are you!?" so pleasant and friendly.

Then she asked if I had talked to Maria recently and before I even finished the word "no" she was telling me about how she had, and how Maria just went out to Vegas and got hitched. And despite my soft undertoned response that I had heard this news [via the eternal uninvited grapevine], C continued to tell me about how Maria and her boyfriend, who had moved to Chi for a month-long job this past summer, went on a camping trip and then continued westward to Vegas, crazy folks, where they were married, etc.

And in that flowershelter hothouse where I was buying my simple flat of pansies, I wondered how long this woman would continue, all the while saying (with a smile) shit like "how funny!" and "that's crazy!"

Deal is, Maria acted temporarily all wild about me, dated me (also this past summer), even ran her friends by me, but clearly lied and misrepresented her lovely self, and above all (this is where my ire kicks in since I realize we don't know ourselves and that life is a strange mystery we don't always intend), afterwards made it clear she wasn't up for coming clean and taking the time to become friends after her inevitable post-trauma tempLesbo summer-fling. Some bile here on my part, but mostly just a desire to not be strung like a sucker fish again. You know, just the usual residual haunt.

But I'm pretty sure C knew at least part of the story here and was finding a subtle, shitty shitty pleasure by telling me at length about Maria's marriage.

Used to be, I'd assume innocence in this circumstance. Like, the person telling me this news just doesn't know the story behind and figures we were once Only Friends, and are still surely such amigasitas. And me being such a good True Friend, I should reasonably get happiness out of hearing of M's happiness: such a perfect assumption, if only that were the firmament built. But I don't think that's what most talkers are after (the exchange of pleasure and good news). As I get older, I'm sadly finding myself more adept at figuring when people are innocent and when they are just getting some boffo-kick out of rubbing salt gritty in another person's disappointment.

Maybe I notice this because in the past few years I've learned to keep stories to myself when I know they'll not feel good to those I could tell them to. Maybe this was something I started to figure out eighteen years ago when my Granny chastised me about pulling out an old boxed-up picture of my newly married uncle with an ex-girlfriend as something to give to him for his archive. At thirteen, I halfway didn't understand my Gran's irritation at my choice (since the ex-girlfriend's name was more familiar to me than the wife's, and so made Memory, you know), but I halfway did understand and felt ashamed and wondered at myself. Ahh... how motivation can sometimes be simultaneously pristine and cruel.

So now, I believe in compartments as the nomadic havens of our ethical age.

Anyhow, in this particular instance, I was pretty sure C was being a jerk, and my discomfort wasn't so much caused by being jealous of, or hurt by, Maria's fortune as it was a sadness about how some folks enjoy manipulating the info-stream so as to upset those who only amount to ghosts with genuine emotion.

Too much of this shit in my life. But really, the downside was that it took some pleasure out of the flowers.

The coda occurred when the millionaire partner-boss I used to work for, and stood in line to say howdy to, charged me fullrate for my flat, which was tantamount to flipping me the finger (which I am well-equipped to realize after having spent a summer watching the normal friend/old-employee discount patterns).

Guess it's time to buy flowers in places other than Gethsemane. Guess it's time to avoid the sneaky-bitchiness of so many. Whatever. Dirt n' the Nails. Spillage from the Overflowed Cup. & I'm still heading towards the smell of ocean. Rainstorms tonight.