Verbal's my thing.

12 of 12!

2008-09-13T01:46:45Z

* Life has been so crazy that a real update is too daunting a task -- one of those things where I feel like too much has happened in too short a time to talk about any of it. So, I'm taking advantage of 12 of 12 and it's awesome "a picture's worth a thousand words" philosophy to cheat my way back into your lives :)

Coffee table, 7:12 AM. Sad breakfast and one of the awesome teaching books that sosmitten23 sent me because she's the sweetest.

New duvet cover = best motivation to make my bed every morning.

This picture represents those three minutes I waste every morning searching for my car keys in my huge bottomless bag, as it crushes its 298382 pound evil weight on my left shoulder.

My lower half in the car. It's Casual Dress Day! Kids get to wear real clothes instead of uniforms, and I get to wear jeans and Chuck Taylors. FOR. THE. WIN.

At my desk before the bell, reviewing the past week.

FRIDAY AT 12:25 EQUALS WEEKEND!!! For the love of the sweet little savior! (PS: Hey, want to know what time it is, what temperature it is, what CD is playing, how many miles until the gas tank is empty? If you're in my car, you're shit out of luck, because it has recently decided to go through a schizophrenic period.)

These came for me today from my cute family. Vintage red pitcher was my Nana's.

Maddy's artwork smiles at me whenever I open the fridge.

Rainy afternoon in my biggest, comfiest sweatshirt, obtained from swim team circa 1996. My hair's a hot mess.

I made a yummy balanced dinner to make up for aforementioned sad breakfast and accidentally skipped lunch. (dijon tilapia, broccoli, roasted brussels sprouts, tomato/onion/red pepper salad.)

After dinner I did a HUGE grocery shop. I finally have fruit again! And I found these placemats at Wegman's for 2 dollars each. WHAT?!

Fuzzy still life of the lamest Friday night ever (work, tea, and chocolate covered raisins).

This is me, out of ways to procrastinate.</lj>

*I promise to try not to be so spotty with the communication. I have been keeping up with everyone's posts, even if I'm not commenting as frequently!

*Also: I fear that airing "Center Stage" and "Bring it On" at the same time is breaking some unspoken law of the universe and the earth is going to spin off it's axis. Way to go, TV.

*Lastly: Seriously, though, how surprised are you that I remembered to do 12 of 12?!

ajdklaljdkslajdksiejdxlxsklsked.

2007-06-20T23:09:47Z

I'm totally stressed out right now and need to do something mindless. So: music meme.

Step 1. Put your playlist on random.
Step 2. Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrasing.
Step 3. Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly. NO GOOGLING.

(I'm adding a personal disclaimer here: there is a really good chance that I will forget to post the answers to this. So if you have a burning desire to know, feel free to remind me. If that discourages you from guessing, it is completely understandable.)

1. If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be: we're all okay. (This is still one of my favorite lyrics ever)
2. Six AM, day after Christmas, throw some clothes on in the dark.
3. Too low to find my way, too high to wonder why.
4. We were swimming with the snakes in the bottom of the well.
5. Please, please, please, no more melodies.
6. Aaahhh, I love the colorful clothes you wear, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair. (nice mixed pronouns there, lyric geniuses.)
7. In my little town, I grew up believing, God keeps his eye on us all.
8. Well, I'll follow you wherever when you lead me by my nose on another big adventure, I suppose.
9. I want a girl with a mind like a diamond.
10. A winter's day in a deep and dark December.
11. Cigarettes and chocolate milk, these are just a couple of my cravings. (right now, these are my ONLY cravings. and I'm not a smoker.)
12. There is nothing that is wrong with wanting you to stay here with me.
13. You're a white collar boy, and you gave into the law.
14. My world, it moves so fast, today the past it seems so far away.
15. I was looking at the sky, just looking for a star, to pray on or wish on or something like that.
16. It was one hundred degrees as we sat beneath a willow tree.
17. There's a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was (a throwaway, I think)
18. I don't know you from Adam, you could make my day.
19. Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed. (another toughie)
20. Baby Britain feels the best floating over a sea of vodka.
21. I got a lot of something you oughtta try.
22. Pull the ripchord, this ship has lost its sail, you're mama's got a new man, your daddy always fails.
23. If I run uphill, I'm out of breath, if I spend all of my money, then I've got no money left.
24. You say it fits, if you let it, love was made to forget it.
25. I remember when rock was young, me and Susie had so much fun.

(I feel kind of guilty that the really embarrassing things didn't show up. But I feel obligated to disclose the following: I own the Ashlee Simpson CD, and I have listened to it way too many times.)

It's a speciallll dayyyyy.

2007-05-23T04:54:44Z

Happy Birthday Bridges!!! That is all.

Mmmmm, I love me some stripey peas.

2006-10-21T17:04:16Z

I'm writing a reported piece for Creative Nonfic on NaNoWriMo, and I know a few of the f-listers have/are participating... if you are, and would like to help me by being one of my "experts," and letting me bombard you with interview quetions, I'll... do something nice for you! You can even pick the something nice. :)

From Phoebe:
"Sometimes I go in your room and touch stuff but I don't break it. Just like your CDs and things. I look at the little books inside but put them right back. Daddy thought you should know. Halloween is in ten days then HALLOWEEN! Maddy's pea costume is just her pumpkin costume from last year dyed green, but it looks like a pea. If you look really close you can see the pumpkin stripes but maybe she's a stripey pea and if she tells you that then just say that's okay Maddy or else she might get sad."

That is all.

Ramblings about the Tooth Fairy, dresses, and other things.

2006-10-07T19:11:36Z

Madeleine's birthday is on Tuesday, so I'm home for a few days. Last night, Phoebe lost her first tooth. Dad and Julie were spending the night in New York for their anniversary, so the role of Tooth Fairy was mine. However, I forgot until, like, four in the morning, woke in a blind panic, grabbed a dollar from my wallet and shoved it under her pillow. Only to have Phoebe wake me up three hours later, ecstatic, talking about how the Tooth Fairy is "generouser" than she thought and waving a twenty dollar bill in front of my face. I'm sure this has happened to parents everywhere; you're tired, it's dark, you're preoccupied wondering about who it was that first decided we should give children cash in exchange for the shedding of their teeth. So I'm nineteen dollars poorer than I thought I'd be this morning, but (cutest of the cute) Phoebe insisted on taking Mad and I out to breakfast with her loot. Why is she the sweetest thing in the world? I do not know.

I have a wedding to go to next month- Graham's mom is getting remarried! I'm so happy for her. He is one of my oldest friends, and I feel so close to his mom; growing up, she was such an awesome person to have in my life. One year she took me back to school shopping (I think it was fifth grade, when clothes were becoming important but I had no clue what I was doing and my dad had less of a clue and my grandma was- my grandma.) Anyway, I'm so so happy for her, and I'm Graham's date, which means that I'm sitting at wedding party table, which for some reason feels like added pressure about finding a nice dress. And today? I found a nice dress. I found THE nice dress. The funniest part is that Julie and I both turned the corner and pointed at it at the same exact time, jaws dropped. It's perfect. It's everything I've ever wanted in a dress! Look how pretty. Enlarge it. It's a little sparklier than it looks in the picture, actually, more gold, less tan. So pretty, right? So perfectly appropriate? So three hundred dollars? Sigh. I'm not in the habit of needing formal wear, so it took a lot of convincing on Julie's part that this isn't an exorbitant amount to pay for a dress to wear to a wedding. I decided to look around a little bit more this week and then, if I'm still coveting it before I go back to school, I'll suck it up and buy it. I mean, it's definitely a dress I could easily wear again some day. Ha, see? I can't stop trying to talk myself into getting it. Moving on.

I love Sports Night. Officially and forever.

Midterms = le suck.

You know you want to help me.

2006-09-27T18:43:01Z

Anyone want to send me a link to the GG premiere? You would make me so, so happy, and I'd be eternally grateful :)

avery292 @ 2006-07-06T01:39:00

2006-07-06T05:58:31Z

I have been exhasted all day. Seriously, spent the better part of today planning and daydreaming about the glorious moment I could crash into my bed (after first tripping over my sister, asleep on an air mattress on my floor, and GOOD LORD that is a whole other issue that is slowly killing my spirit, because I love her, and it's only for a few more days, but she needs to get back into her own room and bring all her toys with her, particularly the ones that make noise, and ESPECIALLY the ones that are posessed and start singing/speaking/tickle-me-elmo-ing in the frakkin middle of the night. And while I'm on this tangent, Tickle Me Elmo? Demonic. Freaks me out. His laugh sounds like the evil cackle a witch might let out as she slowly stirs her boiling cauldron full of children.) But of course, once it finally did become a reasonable hour for me to go to bed, I couldn't sleep for anything. Hence, my first commentary, and the reason for this post, which is linked below.

I skinned both my knees at camp today. Because apparantly, seven year olds have better balance than I do. I have Scooby Doo band-aids all over my legs, and my dad was understandably embarassed at their visibility below the skirt I wore when we went out to dinner at a kind-of nice restaurant for Julie's birthday tonight. (Anecdote So Cute You Want to Gag: We walk into the restaurant, and Phoebe looks at the maitre de person and goes "This is a lovely home!" She's in her parrot stage right now, and we're still trying to figure out when she picked that one up.)

Okay. I'm trying the whole sleep thing again. Tickle-Me-Elmo cackles that it's time for bed. (Oh, the nightmares I'm about to have. I bring them on myself, I know.)

[I guess I'll start with a word about the framing device I used throughout this story. While I was brainstorming fic ideas, I had this one stubborn image in my head that wouldn't go away; this isn't totally unusual, because I use imagery as writing prompts pretty often, and I'm a pretty visual person. But anyway, this one image had a different quality to it, somehow; it didn't feel like a real-time kind of image, if that makes any sense. It felt more like a photograph, like something nostalgic. And that's kind of where it all grew from. Ironically, I didn't end up using the image that started the whole thing. For a long time, it was going to be the "last one" that Lorelai pulled from the box, but somewhere along the way, I abandoned it and by the time I was wrapping up the story, I had a completely different picture. I should also mention that both had the same idea, emotion and feeling behind them. I just figured out a better way to get it across (I think).]

They’re all dressed up, but their location, in someone’s living room, and the uneven boy-to-girl ratio rules out the idea that they’re at a prom, or (more likely with this kind of crowd) a cotillion or a coming-out ball.That's some awkward sentence structure, there. And the first line, too. Ha.] Three teenage boys in very expensive looking suits are seated front and center on a very expensive looking sofa with identical expressions of rowdy fun; the one in the middle holds out a crystal decanter full of amber liquid, as if offering you a shot. An icy-looking blonde stands behind them in a dress of crimson taffeta, the padded shoulders and low-hanging sash a clear indicator [I think I forgot the word for "indication"] of the decade, as if you wouldn’t have been able to tell by all the hairstyles. Her features are sharp and pouty and it looks like she’s on a diet of laxatives and diet pills; you can tell just by looking at her that she has a whiny sounding voice. Rounding out the group is a fourth boy, sitting a few inches away from the decanter-flaunting frat-boy wannabes, with a girl perched on his lap. The boy looks older than his teenage counterparts by at least three or four years; his jaw is almost chiseled, his expression less of drunken amusement and more of drunken boredom, even though his hand has inched its way under the short hemline of the girl’s dress. Her raven hair cascades in waves down around her shoulders, hiding half her face as she leans down and whispers something to the boy who has his hand on her thigh. [I don't like this sentence. I think the problem I sometimes ran into with these descriptions is that I had too clear a vision, or at least that I was trying to translate it in too much detail. It can lead to some very unstylish prose, which I tried to avoid for the most part, but... sigh.] This girl’s dress is timeless and classic, cool blue satin hugging curves that must be relatively new to her body, the color setting off her eyes, or at least the eye that’s still visible: startlingly blue, still piercing behind a haziness caused by the alcohol you can almost smell on her breath. Her dress is pretty and feminine, her hair kept long and girlish, but there is nothing innocent about her. She wears a fuck-you smile that is playful, even warm, but her eyes are red-rimmed and empty: they give her away. She’s the kind of girl your mother warned you about, the kind of girl who’d get you into trouble. Even when she’s barely noticing any of them, even when she’s off to the side contemplating how dangerous she feels, even when they have to tear their eyes away from her for a moment until the flash goes off, she’s the center of attention. Like moths to a flame, they crave her, unafraid: they know she’ll be the one who gets burned. [One of my favorite lines in the whole story, I think.]

[Someone- sosmitten, maybe?- mentioned in a review that the description of Lorelai in that last paragraph was so unsettling and disturbing, she almost had to stop reading. I'll talk more about my intentions for this story and the reasons behind my decisions at the very end, but I just wanted to say that I think that was a really satisfying comment for me, because creating a tension based on the reader's fears and concern for Lorelai was my intention in setting up this chapter. I toyed with the last few sentences a lot, especially the harsher phrases. The description of her eyes as empty seems particularly striking to me now, though I didn't fret over it as much as I did"fuck-you smile," which was deleted and re-typed about fifty times- ultimately I kept it, because even if it's a tad extreme for the kind of girl she is, it seems appropriate for the kind of night she's having.]

The Gilmore mansion was teeming with people milling around from room to room, sashaying in Chanel dresses and Armani suits, sipping gimlets and champagne cocktails and talking about their stock portfolios, their golf games, and, of course, about the topic of the hour, the Hartford City Ballet, that particular Saturday evening’s excuse for a party. There were so many people, in fact, that the formation of a sub-party was not only an attractive option, but a necessary one: the children who had been dragged to this event, after being trotted out and bragged about and petted like prized ponies, were only taking up space now. Escaping to the pool house, they knew they would be neither needed nor missed for several hours. [A lot of times, the hardest part about these chapters was segueing from the photo into the story. This feels a little too expositional to me, still.]

It was a small group of them, this time. The Hartford City Ballet patrons were generally an older bunch, most without kids under the age of eighteen to drag around anymore. Lorelai poured the first round of drinks and surveyed the crowd: Drew McLahon, Nick and Jason Whitmore, Patrick Campbell, Vanessa Grayer- all kids from her school, and all, except for Jason, a grade ahead of her. [Hate, hate, hate naming random unimportant tertiary characters. And again, with the exposition.] And then, an unlikely addition, a virtual celebrity in their midst: Trevor Sullivan (“of the Hartford Sullivans,” Emily’s voice rang uninvited in Lorelai’s head). Trevor Sullivan, who wasn’t a boy like the rest of them, who actually looked like a man in his striped tie and dress pants. Trevor Sullivan, home on break from Amherst - could anything sound more exotic than that, to a group of fifteen and sixteen year old high school kids? He didn’t look like anyone else she knew, with his brown hair that was longer and curling at the ends, his muscular body, all hard angles from lacrosse, his greenish gray eyes that had been trailing up and down her legs all night long. As they all settled on the various furniture, and she noticed for the sixtieth time in the past two hours that they were conspicuously missing one of their usual members, she had to admit that there was a reason she was letting Trevor Sullivan rest his arm across her shoulders and stare at her so hard his eyes might as well have been burning a hole through her dress. She had to admit that perhaps his single most attractive quality, that evening, at least, was that he was Christopher’s perfect older cousin, the object of a life-long rivalry and a subsequent inferiority complex that she was more than well aware of. [In an earlier draft, Trevor wasn't Christopher's cousin, and once I decided he was, so many doors opened that made the story so much better in a very Elizabethan-tragedy kind of way.]

“Where did Hayden disappear to?” Drew McLahon asked, downing the drink he had just been handed in two enormous swallows.

Both Whitmore brothers had the decency to cast an almost sympathetic eye towards Lorelai, and Patrick elbowed Drew in the ribs. Vanessa Grayer, true to form, smirked and smoothed non-existent wrinkles out of her hideous red dress, her tones even and measured while she gave the answer everyone else had been too polite to give. [Who hasn't known this girl?[I love the idea of Lorelai being popular because of this cool mystique thing she has going on that looks so effortless, but then it's later revealed that she does have to work at it, or at least conceal certain things about herself to perpetuate it.]

“Ask Julie Hirsch. Oh wait… she’s missing, too. Mystery…” she said coyly. Her eyes were trained on Lorelai, desperate for a reaction, a modicum of proof that she’d managed to rattle her. She wouldn’t get any.

Lorelai shrugged her shoulders and tossed a lock of hair, her heart racing and every muscle itching to spring to her feet and scratch the hell out of Vanessa. She rolled her eyes, the essence of cool: “He’s probably screwing her in the driveway behind a parked car right about now,” she said. She waited a beat, then checked her watch. “And, now he’s done.” [The Chris hater in me still loves this joke.]

The boys responded appropriately with howls and “Oh, shit!”s, and Lorelai leaned back, quickly downing the rest of her drink. She felt a heat rush through her body that could be attributed to the alcohol, or to Trevor’s fingers playing with the strap of her dress, or to having a captive audience of teenage boys in peals of hysterical laughter; she wasn’t sure which it was.

She was only mildly surprised at how easily the crude words had left her mouth. Her comfort with these kinds of people, with telling these kinds of jokes to make them laugh, with using phrases like “screwing her in the driveway,” would shock Emily to her very core, would make her remind Lorelai that this was not how she was raised, young lady. [I really tried to capture that sense of being fifteen and in the process of becoming a totally new creature, one that half the time you don't even recognize, one that sort of excites you and scares the shit out of you at the same time.] The satisfaction provided by even the thought of Emily’s disapproval made Lorelai resolve to say “fuck” instead of “screw,” next time; it fit with this persona she had developed to use the actual word, and she was cheating herself, and her audience, but shying away from it. Her armor was tough and polished, accented by dirty jokes like these and harsh words like these, dresses like this one, dark red lipstick that stained the ends of her cigarettes; it had been worked over and inspected relentlessly, and when chinks were found, they were plugged right up with minutes spent between classes making out next to the water fountain, with the plaid skirt of her uniform rolled up several inches, with a flirty laugh that she used often and easily. She was well-guarded, and had to be- she had a reputation to live up to (or to live down to, depending on your point of view): While Casey Nugent failed every test in imitation of Lorelai’s disdainful boredom in class, she was still secretly making straight A’s; when girls like Alexandra and Natalie and Serena followed her on the fast track with boys, they quickly lost their virginity in hopes of achieving her coolness, yet had no idea that at fifteen, although she had walked the line as closely as possible, she had yet to pass that milestone herself; when Chris Hayden decided to be a huge asshole and, after nearly six months of dating, tell her that “things were getting too intense,” her scoffing “Whatever” and chilly, careless attitude carefully hid the wounded pride and the agonizing, gaping wounds of a first heartbreak that pulsed just beneath the surface. It wasn’t an exact science, but she was a genius at keeping up appearances, at giving people what they wanted. [I love this paragraph, because it's so Lorelai, this idea of being different people for different people, of putting on a show. She makes me so sad, my 15 year old Lorelai, while at the same time being someone I never would have felt sorry for when I was fifteen. The first draft of this story had Lorelai coming across as much more brittle, and I think that by going back and inserting paragraphs like this one gave her a little humanity and a few more layers, inviting more compassion.]

Tonight was getting exhausting; everyone wanted something different from her. The Whitmore boys wanted her to be light and funny, to keep any bitterness about Chris (Jason’s best friend) in the context of a joke, for entertainment purposes. Patrick, a sucker for drama, was secretly hoping for some kind of melt-down, or at least a heated confrontation when Chris eventually managed to remove his mouth from Julie’s and return to the party. Trevor wanted her body; Vanessa, part socialite, part demon spawn, wanted her soul. For the first time in a long time, she felt almost overwhelmed by all of them, and wished she was the kind of person who could excuse herself and go sit in her room with a good book and have herself a good long cry. [Read: Rory. More about that later on]. She poured herself another drink, ignoring the boys when they commented on the size of it, and gulped it down.

“You always drink like this?” Trevor asked her as she settled back under his arm. His voice was unconcerned and tinted with the vague boredom with which he had been addressing all of them all night long.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, flashing him a smile.

“The only thing he’s worried about is getting puked on,” Patrick interrupted. “You have to admit it looks disconcerting, Lorelai, to someone who doesn’t know you; you’ve already drank more than Jason, and you weigh half as much.”[Had some trouble with the teenage boy dialogue in this chapter, and struggled for a while over using words like 'disconcerting.' But in the end I decided they were sort of the Logtristcolfin of Lorelai's adolescence, and should speak as such.]

Lorelai turned to Trevor and smiled coyly. “I’ve had a little practice,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he asked skeptically. “Last time I saw you, you were wearing a Wonder Woman bathing suit and chasing Christopher around his pool with a wet towel.”[One of the best results of making Trevor and Christopher related was the opportunity to create a history between the three of them. I love this image, and it hurts at the same time, alluding to her innocence that's about to be lost.]

“So last weekend, then?” Lorelai quipped. Beneath the cover provided by everyone’s laughter, she leaned in close to Trevor’s ear. “I’m not a little girl anymore, in case you didn’t notice.”

She didn’t have to look at his face when she pulled away to know what his expression was: surprise, and naked desire. She made a point of not looking at him, in fact, and instead, crossed the room to put on some music. When she turned around, Jason was right behind her.

[I don't really like this whole next exchange. I didn't put as much into it as i did the rest of the story, and Jason comes across as sort of flat.]

“Jesus. You scared me,” she said, laughing, then noted the seriousness of his expression and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Putting on some-“

“I mean, what are you doing, Lorelai. With Trevor? Are you serious?” [Did I really have him say "Are you serious?" Seriously? I don't know why but I HATE that line.]

“What?” she asked defensively. “We’re all just having fun. Aren’t you having fun, Jason?”

“I understand wanting to get back at Chris; he was a dick tonight. But Trevor? That would be crossing the line, and you know it.”

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m sorry, when did you get hired to be my conscience?”

“Just don’t do anything you’ll regret, okay?” Jason said, and she was struck for a moment by how sincere he was; how, as much as he was looking out for Christopher, he also didn’t want her to get hurt.

“I don’t have regrets,” she said, “Ever. And Chris made a decision; now I’m making one, too.”

“He’s too old for you.”

“I’m not looking for a relationship,” she said dryly.

Jason stepped back and regarded her curiously, as if seeing something in her eyes that he had never recognized before.

“God, Lorelai. When did you get to be so cold?”

She laughed, the kind of vaguely hysterical laughter that sounded as if it could turn to tears at any moment; that’s how she knew the alcohol was finally doing it’s thing. “Cold? Didn’t you hear, Jason?” she asked, eyes wide, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m the coolest girl in school. So I dropped a couple degrees,” she shrugged. “No one’ll notice.”

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you,” she sighed heavily. “Listen, I’ll make sure to tell Chris what a good little watchdog he has, okay?”

Jason’s face reddened and he shrugged her arm off his shoulder. “That’s what you think this is?”

“You’re a good friend,” she said as she turned to walk away. “Better than he deserves. I hope you know that.”

She thought she heard him mumble “Back at you,” at her retreating figure, but the music was loud and the boys were simultaneously wrestling over her parents’ antique crystal decanter and over Patrick’s fancy new camera, so she couldn’t be sure. Trevor was holding out her glass, full again, and when she took it and dropped to sit beside him, he grabbed her arm roughly and yanked her onto her lap, amber liquid sloshing over the side of the glass and leaving unsightly dark stains on the skirt of her beautiful new dress. She just laughed.

“You’re hurting me,” she admonished, tugging her arm out of his tight grip. The drinks were hitting her hard and fast now, the room not quite spinning yet, but definitely tilting a little on it’s axis. Trevor moved his hand from her arm to her knee, from her knee to the exposed skin just above it, and from there, his fingers danced with no hesitation under the hem of her dress. She tried to convince herself that she liked the way it felt; tried to convince herself that she was feeling it at all. [I'm a semi-colon whore, and I really didn't try to hide it in this chapter. Each time I notice one while re-reading this story, it makes me flinch, just because- come on, Ave. New sentence structure, please. Gah.]

She was thankful for the alcohol, which was allowing her to feel even bolder than usual, not to mention helping to make the childish antics of the boys, indulging in some kind of raucous photo shoot, amusing instead of irritating. [This chapter was THE HARDEST one to logically factor in how the picture described at the beginning was taken. I do like that I avoided the exact moment the camera clicked; I think it stays true to the feel of this, and to the foggy drunken haze that Lorelai must remember this night through]. She felt Trevor’s lips on her shoulder, suddenly and without warning, and froze for a moment. She squeezed her eyes shut, imagined Chris and Julie off somewhere doing the same thing, and shifted in Trevor’s lap slowly and deliberately. He groaned.

“A kid like you shouldn’t be allowed to wear a dress like that,” he said hoarsely, pouring alcohol down his throat desperately. [One too many adverbs, and it bugs me.]

Her arm twined its way around his neck with absolutely no direction from her brain, and she leaned down to whisper in his ear, satisfied at the sweet flowery smell that settled upon them like a curtain when her long hair fell over her shoulder.

“I’m not a little kid,” she reminded him. She briefly entertained the idea of letting her tongue trace his earlobe, and only realized she had given into the impulse at the sound of his quiet, tortured moan.

“Bathroom,” he demanded. It wasn’t a question or a request, the way it had always been from other boys. It was weird, she reflected, how his sense of entitlement felt: offensive, but at the same time, exciting. [Oh, Lorelai.]

“You want me to show you where the bathroom is?” she asked innocently. “Of course. How rude of me for not giving you the tour.” She stood, placed her latest drink, untouched, on the coffee table, and wrapped her hand around his wrist. On the short walk from the couch to the bathroom, she ignored the cat calls and whistles from the boys, ignored the expression on Vanessa’s face, which was half-smug and half-jealous, and most of all, avoided eye contact with Jason Whitmore.

Her heart was pounding and, despite her alcohol consumption, the bravado she usually wore like a shield was wearing thin when he pulled her none too gently into the bathroom and pressed her up against the closed door. His hands were instantly everywhere at once, and she seriously wondered if he had more than two, had been hiding a third somewhere up his sleeve, because there was no other explanation for how much of her he could touch at once. As his mouth worked over her neck and up to her lips, she tried to shun the thoughts that were rushing fast and endless, bringing with them the truth about this person that she had been successfully avoiding all night long. About how he was selfish and mean, about how he had once broken Christopher’s arm during what was supposed to be a friendly game of basketball and then laughed when Christopher cried while getting it set, about how he had slept with practically every girl in his graduating class and probably half of the giggly co-eds at Amherst by now, about how when she was six and he was ten he held her head under water in the Hayden’s pool for so long her lungs burned and threatened to collapse, and when he finally let her back up, coughing and sputtering, he called her a baby for crying. He was saying it over and over again, now, that word, “baby,” albeit in a very different context just think about now, just think about this.

“You’re so hot,” he grunted during the brief moment that his tongue, heavy and wet, left her mouth. He tasted like alcohol and cigarettes, like every other boy she’d ever kissed except for Christopher stop don’t think about him. She was surprised at his clumsiness, this boy so much older and more experienced, surprised by the way his movements were rushed and sloppy. She had expected it to be different, had actually set her sights on Trevor not only because it would kill Chris, but because she had assumed a college boy would bring with him a whole different experience. He pushed the straps from her shoulders and let the silky material pool around her waist, his hands on her breasts making it clear that any effort he was putting into the ministrations were for his pleasure, not hers. She idly wondered, as he guided her hands down to his zipper, how much further she’d let this go. [This section was surprisingly the easiest to write, and I'm still not sure why. I wanted it to flow in stream of consciousness kind of way, reflecting her impaired judgment at this point, and so I think I wrote it that way, in one big long rant that I eventually had to cut down, but it all just sort of flowed without me actively thinking it out or choreographing it in my head. It's weird, because it's painful to be an observer of this scene as I read it now, but it was completely unemotional to write.]

Her back was starting to hurt; he was handling her roughly, like a rag doll. His moans of approval were loud and constant, but she was silent. It meant nothing she realized, marveling at the truth of it. If she didn’t want to feel, she could block out the panting in her ear, the too-heavy pressure of his hands on her body, the overwhelming scent of his cologne. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or just the fact that for the first time in her life, she was having a completely physical experience; there were no feelings attached to this person at all. [And this is where the Christopher stunting begins, in my mind, because her first and only relationship before Rory was this intense romance with someone she had way too much history with for it to be the kind of dating you should do when you're fifteen years old. Not that she should be off having this purely physical experience instead, but it's understandable that it would feel foreign to her and that she'd be interested in experiencing it. What she really needs is some kind of happy medium, but she's just not strong enough to realize that.] For a moment, it became suddenly clear to her why there were girls who did this all the time, gave themselves to people who didn’t care about them. If your heart wasn’t in it, you couldn’t get hurt. You’re invincible she told herself, and she believed it so fervently she could scarcely breathe. [Like that line.]

“You’re so fucking hot,” he moaned into her hair, and she resented his words not only because they were cheap and redundant, but because every time he spoke, his voice threatened to bring her back down to reality and she had to work twice as hard stay numb. He ground his hips against hers, trapping her hand between them, and she pressed their mouths together and kissed him as hard as she could to shut him up anything to shut him up please please stop talking to me.

A prim fist banged against the door three times in rapid succession, and Lorelai felt each of them in her spine.

“The party’s breaking up in the big house,” Vanessa said, her voice saturated with false sweetness. “We have to get back before they come looking for us.”

“Let ‘em come looking,” Trevor muttered as he tried to keep Lorelai’s hands in place. She pushed him away once, and then again harder.

“Unless being castrated by my father is on your list of things to do before going back to school, you better get out of here,” she said.

“Tease,” he said, but he was smiling. He’d have to be, she figured, having already obviously gotten much more than he’d expected. His pupils were dilated and she squirmed under his appreciative inspection.

“God,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face as if to gather himself. He looked at her again, a smirk on his face. “My cousin is so fucking stupid.”

Her ears were buzzing loudly as the alcohol started to wear off, and with every passing second, the feeling began to return to her body: tingling in her fingers and toes and spreading, humming through her until it felt like she was retroactively receiving all those touches she hadn’t felt.[I like that description, and this is where writing became emotional again. This part was hard to put her through. By the way, does that make me crazy?] Every inch of her skin that had been branded by his lips and hands pulsed and throbbed as she focused all her energy on trying not to cry. Baby, he would say, a mix of both connotations now. As he adjusted his belt and tucked in his shirt, she caught a glimpse of her naked upper body in the mirror over his shoulder, pulling the blue straps of her dress back up, pale and exposed. Her eyes were large and dark and, to her disgust, almost frightened; her hair was wild, her lips swollen. Measured against the reflection of his broad, athletic back, she looked impossibly small. She thought that she’d never hated anyone, not even Vanessa Grayer, as much as she hated that wide-eyed girl with her dress half-on. [To me, that last sentence is truly the crux of this chapter, and possibly of the characterization of teenage Lorelai that I developed for this story.]

“Are you two coming?” Vanessa’s voice broke the silent awkwardness of re-dressing.

“Yes,” Lorelai said sharply. “Right behind you.”

“You know she’s gonna tell Christopher the first chance she gets,” Trevor said, fixing his hair in the mirror.

“I’m counting on it,” she said. He laughed.

“Jesus, kid. Anyone ever tell you you’re trouble?”

“Don’t call me kid,” she said, running her hand through her hair and thrusting the door open violently. “It makes me feel like I’m going to throw up.”

He rolled his eyes. “Sixteen, right? So dramatic, kid.” [Ew. I forgot how much of a dick I made this guy.]

“Fifteen,” she corrected him casually, the mention of Christopher having reminded her of the purpose of this entire thing and enabling her to regain some of her armor.

“Shit,” Trevor breathed. “Fifteen.”

She turned to leave him there, but he grabbed her arm. “Hey, you know, you don’t do this like you’re fifteen, Trouble. Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll call you next time I’m in town?”

Her stomach turned over, and she regarded him coldly. “Get it from your cousin,” she said, before turning on her heel and heading back to the main house without him.

Two o’clock in the morning found her creeping back out to the pool house, her hair damp and skin still pink from the scalding hot shower she had spent over a half hour in, crying herself raw. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep forever, but there were measures to be taken, protocol to be followed after nights like this. She knew the drill. And so, after Richard and Emily were fast asleep, having been upstairs long before the clean-up crew had even driven their white vans away, Lorelai grabbed the bottle of booze from the living room drink cart that matched the liquid they had been downing in the poolhouse and crept silently out the back door.

After a party, particularly a big one, there was no way for Emily to know how much her guests had drunk. [Drank? That's one of those things I never remember.] Refilling the empty decanters in the pool house with the bottles that had been used all night in the main house was brilliant, fool-proof, and had been working like a charm for the past two years. She used a plastic funnel she had swiped from ninth grade chemistry lab to pour the alcohol from one bottle to another.

As she finished carefully filling the decanter with the exact amount that had been there earlier and rested the heavy stopper in the opening, she froze in panic as the door behind her opened and closed. Whirling around, caught, she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more distressed when she saw Christopher standing in front of her in the darkened pool house, looking like he’d just been run over by a truck.

“Shit, Chris,” she hissed. “You scared me.”

[If writing teenage Lorelai was a challenge, writing teenage Chris was so ridiculously easy. I thought it would prove to be equally difficult, until I realized that I didn't (and really shouldn't) write him much differently than I would write adult Chris. Such is his stunted development, immaturity, weakness and dysfunction. I think of his dialogue in this scene, and I just see David Sutcliff playing it, because this boy never grew up.]

“What did you do?” he demanded. She rolled her eyes and screwed the top of the bottle back on securely. He didn’t scare her.

“None of your business, friend,” she said pointedly, using his new favorite word.

“The hell it isn’t my business,” he fumed. “Vanessa told me everything.”

She pretended to think. “Really? Because I was a little buzzed, but I don’t remember her being there for everything. How did you get here, anyway?”

He stared at his shoes. “I waited until my parents went to bed and took my dad’s car.”

She gaped at him, then started laughing incredulously. “You don’t even have your learner’s permit. You’re so dead. Straub is literally going to kill you. Like, end-your-life kill you.” [As opposed to spare-your-life kill you, of course.]

“How could you do something like that?” he asked quietly, staring her straight in the eye.

She scoffed. “Pots and kettles. You’re really going to try and tell me you and Julie just went for a walk and sang church hymns all night long?”

“You knew,” he continued, as if he hadn’t even heard her. “You knew what that would do to me. And you did it anyway.”

She crossed her arms. “You have absolutely no say about what I do or who I do it with. You gave up that right. Your decision; not mine. Does Julie know you’re here?”

“Stop talking about Julie!” he hissed, the closest he could get to yelling without worrying about getting caught. “She doesn’t mean anything! All we did was kiss, anyway, and it was awful, okay? It was horrible.”

“Good.”

“You could have had anyone,” he said, shaking his head, anger and disbelief fighting for expressive control. “Anyone, and you picked him.”

She sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Chris. I want to go to bed.”

But on her way out, as she got closer to him, she saw that his eyes were filling with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, grabbing her arm. “I screwed everything up. I’ll probably never forgive you, but I know I drove you to do it.”

She stared at him. “Why are you here?”

“Because,” he said. “Because I couldn’t believe you’d done it, when Vanessa told me. I wouldn’t have believed it without seeing you.”

“Bullshit. That could have waited until morning. Why are you here, Christopher?”

He drew a ragged breath. “You never asked me why I broke up with you.”

“Because I didn’t care,” she retorted.

“Bullshit,” he echoed. “My dad’s been on my case more than usual. He said I was too young to be in such a serious relationship. He said I had to cut you loose and see what else was out there. My mom was worried, too. I’m only fifteen…” he trailed off.

“So you broke up with me… because your daddy said to?” she asked incredulously. “I knew you were weak, but I didn’t think you were spineless. You need to go.”

“No,” he said. “I want to answer you, from before. Why I came over here.”

She looked at him expectantly, determined not to help in any way.

“I love you,” he choked out, through tears. “You did this totally fucked up thing, and I hate you for it, but I can’t help loving you.”

He pulled her towards him and she let him kiss her, let him cover every inch of his face with kisses. “Did he kiss you like this?” he asked desperately, holding her tightly and moving his lips over hers tenderly. When he pulled away, she tilted her face to him in a silent plea for more. He responded, but asked again: “Did he?”

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered, and she was crying, hard, heaving sobs that showed no sign of letting up. “I’m so fucked up,” she cried into his collar. “I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything. God, I’m so fucked up.”

The raw emotion seemed to appease and encourage him; he rocked her and wiped the falling tears away until they slowed. Soon they were kissing furiously, as articles of clothing (his shirt, her pajamas, his dress pants) were lost and they were lying together on the floor, having approached the point that they usually stopped much more quickly in all their desperation. He kept asking: “Like this? Did he touch you like this?” And she kept assuring him, whimpering at his caresses: “No. Only you.”

She finally pushed at his shoulder gently, whispering his name. “Chris…” she said, their usual signal that time was up.

This time, though, he brushed a lock of hair from her face and kissed her just below her ear. “Please, Lor,” he said steadily, not begging, simply asking. “Please. I love you. I want you. Let me show you I love you.”

The cynic in her, even in that moment, knew that as an adult she would look back on this night and cringe at what an obvious and pathetic line it was, like a direct quote from some movie that he hadn’t even bothered to rephrase. But instead of pushing him away and laughing it off, she returned his intense gaze and nodded, just once. Just once was all it took. [That last little line caused so much confusion/contraversy. Lots of people took it to mean that their first time having sex was all it took to conceive Rory, which wasn't how I intended it at all. It was more about Lorelai's uncertainty and Christopher's immaturity, his selfishness, how he's not at all attuned to her and what she really wants or needs. How he's thinking with his you-know-what, basically. And I wanted Lorelai to regard the fact that she only needed to nod once with sort of detached astonishment, like maybe she'd always thought there would be a discussion, or at least that it would take more than a single gesture to enter into this life-changing act. I didn't want her to remember it accusingly, because: she nodded. But I thought it was an interesting angle at the fact that these are two kids who have no idea what they're doing.]

It hurt. But then again, she had known that it would: it always hurt when you let your heart get involved.

[As a whole, I was really happy with the way this chapter came out. I struggled a lot with the characterization of Lorelai, with trying to achieve a balance between who she is and that guarded persona she puts on. I think that, as an adult, she still does this in a different way and it shows itself (especially in the earlier seasons) in the way she keeps pretty much everyone except Rory and arguably Sookie at arms length. So it was important to me that I take that character trait and modify it to fit her as a teenager, to show a girl who could feasibly one day turn into the woman we've seen. And yeah, she's confused and maybe a little tortured, but unless you're extremely lucky, I think that's kind of a prerequisite of high school. I think I lost some people, here, who may have mistook my intentions- I know that some felt she was too cold, detached and calculating to be the Lorelai we know and love. But I was really trying to create a mood that fit with the circumstances. In no way did I mean to imply that this girl is a cold, manipulative shrew who uses sex as a weapon. Rather, I wanted to take what might have been normal, teenage angst had she grown up in any other way and twist it into something larger and darker because of this character's admittedly spotty, dangerous past. Somewhere later in the story, in another chapter, I mention that Lorelai credits Rory's birth as having "saved her," and I tried to set up for that in this chapter, by showing this girl completely self-destructing and fleshing out her screwed up existence prior to getting pregnant.

In lots of ways, I tried to parallel this party scene with the one Rory experienced in "The Party's Over." I think that was really the first time we saw Lorelai truly start to freak out at the thought that her daughter might be embracing the life she ran from, and I was really interested in examining why she was so fearful of that. By creating a memory for Lorelai of a similar situation, but one that is tainted by unhappiness, desperation and danger, I was attempting to spotlight both the differences between mother and daughter and the potential similarities that Lorelai is so afraid of.

I guess that's all I have to say! Thanks for reading (if you've made it this far, that is). This was a lot of fun, looking back on this this way, even if it did make me feel a touch self-important :) I think I shall try it again soon. Leave more suggestions, if you wish.]

My LJ de-flowering.

2006-06-29T23:01:55Z

I don't know why I was sort of avoiding this whole online journal thing like the plague, but I have been. I think it was equal parts not truly understanding how it worked and not thinking I had very much of interest to report on my daily life. But I had to get an account to help with the ficathon, and so now it's just kinda sitting there, and that fills me with this very odd sense of unease, the way I feel when something is unfinished or when I start a project and then drop the ball (which is ridiculous and kind of makes me... right, CRAZY. But there ya go.)

My two jobs this summer are already running me ragged. The nannying in the mornings was supposed to be the easy, cushy job, because the kids are 8 and 11 years old, and I kinda figured they'd be a little self sufficient. I was mistaken. I feel like I spend half my time entertaining them and the other half picking up the random stuff they leave strewn in a messy wake behind them. These kids- I swear, I've met kindergartners who require less constant attention. I think it's maybe because I was a pretty independent kid, and because I was raised in a house that treated me like a person and not a baby, but I have absolutely no patience for things like that. And also? I shouldn't have to tell you to PUT YOUR SHOES ON when we are LEAVING THE HOUSE and GETTING IN THE CAR. If you took the milk out of the refrigerator, you know what would be great? PUTTING IT BACK. You're freaking old. Oh, and sidenote? I'm not sure there's an entity in the known universe quite as awful as an eleven year old girl. I may be generalizing here just a tad but: they. are. horrible.

So then, afternoon-Avery spins into her cape and is a counselor at day camp, which means: hey there, seven year old girls (26 in my group, to be exact)! Whose names all sound the same (Marissa, Melissa, Kayla, Kailey, Bailey, Sophie, Sofia, Lauren, Laurel, Laura, Jody, Josie... I'm not even joking)! Who push me in the pool! Who are so cute they make me feel guilty for wanting to rip their pretty little hair out half the time! Who 'play with my hair' until it is one massive knot! Who take forty minutes to change into their bathing suits!

And then I come home. And die. (Unless I have after-care. In which case I stay until six-thirty. Then come home, and die.)

Okay wow, sorry. End rant. I'll end with something happy: a friend of mine who has a cute little house right on the creek in my town is having a big 4th of July BBQ on Saturday and I'm wearing a pretty blue dress and it's been a while since I had an excuse to wear a pretty dress and flirt with boys I went to high school with and float idly around the creek in a canoe and and play with sparklers (and I like run-on sentences).

So, thus concludes my first LJ entry. (Did I do it right?) Ha. (No. Seriously.)