title unknown

For the most part, my life is pretty boring. I’m fairly routined and I stay out of trouble, but you know, sometimes adventure comes to you, and I’m okay with that, spice of life and such, you know?

I feel like this adventure needs a name. Like “The Great Hooker Adventure of St. Paul Street” or “The one where Kate meets a drunk mortician”. Read the story, leave title suggestions in the comments.

Yesterday morning at about 5:30am, I woke up to the sound of someone falling down the steps in our apartment building. I was sound asleep, but the sound was pretty loud, and the girl who fell was wailing pretty loudly. I immediately heard a little commotion which consisted of a man’s voice asking if she was alright, and a quiet exchange. Now, don’t think I’m a monster when I tell you that I considered staying in bed. Just because someone hurts themselves doesn’t mean that a thousand people should run to their rescue, and maybe it made sense for me to just stay out of it. But the man’s voice disappeared and the girl started screaming for someone to help her, so I grabbed my phone and my glasses and went out.

At the bottom of the steps was a girl that looked about 21 and probably about 100 pounds, laying at the bottom of the steps crying. This girl had clearly had a rough night, but at first glance, I just assumed she was drunk as hell and that she was upset over the fall. I did a quick survey of the situation, to make sure she wasn’t injured and to see what she really needed. She claimed she didn’t need an ambulance, and she didn’t look like she was hurt, so I didn’t push it.

“Help me. They don’t care about me. I don’t know where I am. I just want to go home. Please help me, don’t leave me.”

Holy crap. What?

When someone says to you “please help me, don’t leave me”, you’re kind of stuck. You can’t just walk away from that situation, and I was still trying to figure the situation out so I just sat down on the floor next to her and hugged her. Sisterhood and ovaries and shit, right?  She was sobbing and repeating the same thing over and over again. “I don’t know where I am, they don’t care about me, please don’t leave me.”

This is when I thought shit, son, this here is a real life sex worker.

“Baby, you hookin’?” (I have street cred, so I can say that, and yes, I did actually say that.)

“No, no, I would never do that, I’m not that kind of person.” More wailing. Sobbing into my shirt. (Have I mentioned that I was just in my pajamas? An old Planet Fitness t-shirt and some embarrassingly short booty shorts.)

Okay, okay. She says she’s not a hooker. Fine. But it would make perfect sense. Man picks up this hooker, brings her to his fine apartment home (lol) and for whatever reason, kicks her out on her butt without paying her, maybe because she’s drunk? I don’t know. At this point one of the neighbors comes out to see if we need anything. I’m still of the belief that all this girl needs is a friend so I give him the thumbs up.

“How did you get here? Who did you come with? Do you live in this building?”

She didn’t know, she didn’t know, and no. More crying, sobbing and don’t leave me’s.

“What’s your name?”

“Paris.”

“I’m Kate. I’m not going to leave you. It’s going to be okay.” This girl is literally clutching at me. She seemed really scared. Which then made me realize that maybe I should be scared too.

“Are you here for drugs?” (Couldn’t remember the “street” way to ask that.)

My life flashed before my eyes. This girl was here for some kind of drug deal, and it went bad, she got pushed down the steps, and I was involved now. Someone was going to come out with a gun and I was going to die and how would my parents know that I was never involved? Should I write a quick email to them letting them know that I love them and that I wasn’t involved in any kind of drug deal because I’m a good girl, and maybe I should leave a note for the police so that they know how I got into this situation, you know just save them some foot work….

“No, no, I’d never do that. I’m scared. Please help me.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No, I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I’m not that kind of person, please don’t leave me.”

Okay. The situation is getting to be a bit much. I still don’t know how she got into the building (you’d need a key) and I am still not convinced she’s not somehow high. In fact, she’s kind of groping me, the way I’d imagine one does on drugs, or a lesbian high on life. Either way, this girl was really taking advantage of me being braless. Her fake eyelashes were coming off, and her makeup was all over her face and shirt. Paris had had a really rough night.

After a series of questions, I did find out that she’d come home with a couple of guys from a club and that she just wanted to go home. Perfect. Paris, I’m going to call you a cab. Where do you live? She gave me the name of two major streets in Baltimore that do indeed intersect. Perfect. Let me call her a cab.

Side note: apparently, in Baltimore, if you need a cab, you have to give them the exact address of your destination or they will HANG UP ON YOU. So I had to look up the cross-streets and pick an address as close as possible in that vicinity to get a cab to come. (You suck, Yellow Cab of Baltimore.)

Right as I’m calling the cab though, two men come downstairs, and it’s clear that these are the men that brought Paris into our building. Nice looking well adjusted guys who clearly don’t need a hooker like this. (Look, I know she said she’s not a hooker, but dude, she was a hooker.)

Some words are exchanged, quite peacefully actually, and one guy leaves while the remaining guy tries to talk some sense into her. He tells me that they tried to call her a cab but she refused and was ripping up their apartment so he had to kick her out. He suggests that we go out for a smoke while he tells me the whole story. Awesome. Let me just put on jeans and a sweatshirt.

I run inside, grab my nearest jeans and my Ohio State fleece and when I come back Paris has vomited all over the floor. Oh. Back in for paper towels. Are you serious? I’m helping to clean up this girl’s puke? Wtf, sisterhood? You suck.

After some more tense words about us leaving her, my neighbor (who is still kind of drunk) and I get outside. His name is Charles. Great, thanks Charles, now can you please tell me what the fuck is going on here?

Charles and his friend met a rich guy at a bar who invited them back to his penthouse a few blocks away for a party. At said party, they were told there was an after party club they should all go to, which means it’s a place that has found a loophole around state laws prohibiting the service of alcohol after 2:00am. This girl was supposedly super drunk and kept getting kicked out, but was hanging on both of them outside and when they got in their car she just got in saying she was going to fuck both of them, and she was so drunk they just brought her home.

Real casually I was like “Oh did you guys fuck her?”, hoping that my nonchalant way of asking would garner the truth.

“No fucking way. I have standards.”

Fine, Charles, you didn’t fuck her, gold star, anyway so she trashed your apartment and so you kicked her out?

Yeah, that was the story. Fine.

“Oh, are you from Ohio?” (Referencing OHIO STATE across my chest, yeah, he was looking at my boobs, so what?)

“Yep.”

“Neat, I’m from Cincinnati, I just moved here last year.”

“Oh really? That’s cool. What do you do?”

“I’m a mortician.”

...what?

Paris figured out how a door works. She came outside and asked him for a cigarette, which she then waved in my face and nearly caught me on fire, and then right in time the cab showed up. The cab driver was pissed and insisted that she paid up front. What a fucking ordeal.

“I have cash, I’m not that kind of girl, I just need to go home.” She is crying and falling all over the car. The cab driver gets out to talk to Charles while I try to figure out if Paris has any cash, she only needs $15, but I only find $6 in her purse. Paris keeps trying to attack the cab driver and I pull her off. We all want her to just get home. None of us want any sort of alternative ending to the story, so we empathize with the cab driver and try to get the cash from Paris. 

I am literally standing barefoot on the streets of Baltimore with two people I've just met and a cab driver trying to physically find cash on the person of this drunk girl, all while promising her that I don't judge her and I know she's not "that kind of girl" but please, Paris, do you have the $15 for the driver?

After a while of this back and forth of Paris feeling judged and telling the cab driver that she has money but that she didn’t do anything illegal to get the cash, (The $6? Really??) Charles goes inside and brings out a ten. (Yeah buddy, I know she’s off her rocker but you got her into this mess, that’s a small price to pay to get her home.)

After some quintessential “I love you guys, no really, you guys, you don’t even know, I love you so much” drunk goodbyes, we get her in the car and it drives away. Great. Good deed done. Night is over. Bedtime? Oh. No.

Charles and I stand around talking a little more.

“Do you want to see pictures of dead people?”

“Sure!”

We went up to his apartment and looked at his embalming textbooks. None of that phases me and we discussed different embalming techniques and procedures as well as the art of being a funeral director. I talked about my work in tobacco control while he lit another cigarette and we talked a little about Ohio. That’s when I noticed an urn on his shelf.

“Whose cremains are in there?” (He was totes impressed with my use of the word cremains.)

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You have some random person’s ashes on your shelf?”

“Yeah. Wanna see?”

“….sure.” I mean I know what ashes look like, but he seemed excited to show me.

So you know how in TV and movies the perpetual joke is when someone opens the urn and ashes get everywhere? Well, Charles opens the urn, and the cremains are in a bag. As he’s opening it, ashes fall all over his shirt, all over the table, and all onto his futon. I mean, he didn’t empty it out or anything, just a little bit, probably like a couple fingers worth or whatever, but holy fucking crap. All like it’s no big freaking deal. No, that’s cool Charles. Just a dead body all over your apartment, that’s chill. God.

Seriously though. I can now say I’ve taken my hand and cleaned some dead person’s ashes off of a futon. As if I’d spilled some Cheeto’s crumbs and brushed them onto the floor. Something about this is just not normal.

The sun was coming up, it was basically daylight at this point. We actually ended up jamming a little bit, he has a band and I messed around on his keyboard while he played bass, and while we’re not the next big thing, it was fun. I went back to bed and slept for another hour and a half.

So that was that. I hope that Paris got home okay. I still think there’s more to the story of why she ended up in his apartment. (Really? Drunk girl jumps in your car so you just bring her home? I don’t know about that….) Maybe she was raped and I was an accomplice. Likely though, they had the intention of fucking her but she was genuinely too drunk and being belligerent. Who knows. Paris doesn’t even know.

i am like the cool teacher

Okay guys, it's not really that bad. Sometimes a girl just needs to whine, right? Things are actually pretty good. An adjustment, sure, but good. :)

I have a kind of more relatable post coming up soon, I just need a little time to myself to finish it. :)

and cheese

I just need to whine for a minute.

I can't control the heat in my apartment, and it is always either too cold or too hot. My kitchen doesn't have room for my pots and pans. There's too much light in my bedroom in the morning. My modem only has one ethernet port so I can't watch movies and use my computer at the same time. Parking is ridiculously hard and I don't like Mo being out in the weather when he's used to being under a carport. I don't completely feel safe in my neighborhood. I am not a city girl, and I know this after a week. It's a long complicated story but I was sick last week and due to that I'm losing 6 days of pay because I have a job without sick pay and with an unachievable standard for vacation pay. Because of this I went a whole year without a dental cleaning and without having cavities filled.

I miss my husband and this is really hard, on both of us, and because it's hard on both of us, it's even harder on us individually. Every single person who has said anything about my divorce has said the wrong thing. It's possible that there isn't anything right to say, but every person has made me feel worse. Even my closest friends. I both can't handle people being excited for me or people being sad for me. My boss makes me want to scream. I don't like my life right now. I want to take a vacation and come back and have it all make sense.

you're way too beautiful girl

I used to think that marriage was putting my feminist ideals to the test. I now realize that being single is going to put my feminist ideals to the test. Don't get me wrong, I'm not like, on the market or anything, but I could be if I wanted to. It feels way too soon to be dating, and in fact, my goal is to spend some time intensely focusing on myself instead of focusing on relationships, but I can't lie, the world around me looks so different. When you've been attached for your entire adult life your outlook on other people is different than your outlook when you're single. And this, somehow, is how my feminist ideals are being tested. The comfort and security to be myself while married makes me wonder just how much of my identity was wrapped up in being "taken" instead of my identity just being my own. It's not a scary time, it's an adventurous time, but that doesn't mean I'm not nervous. Nervous to be a feminist out there, not looking, but not not looking, and discovering how to manage this new person I'm going to become.

not fire, not ice

I'm dumbstruck by how easy it was to get a marriage license, and yet how difficult it is to dissolve a marriage in the state of Maryland. The law requires that we be separated for one year before we officially divorce, which isn't a huge problem, but it's just dumb. I think that we both feel in our hearts that if we'd anticipated that year's wait we might have done this some time sooner. Not that there's a rush to be official, but once you've decided, it seems weird to wait. It's like we're engaged to be divorced.

Things have been kind of hot and cold. Well, they've been neither too hot nor too cold, but enough that it's been frustrating. Being dedicated to keeping things civil is actually a lot of work. Other people like to stick their nose in our business and give us advice on how to "get back" at each other. We don't want that. We are better than that. We want to walk away with our heads held high knowing that we didn't sling mud. And for God's sake, we want to keep some of our dignity intact.

That being said, civility is hard to come by in the middle of a divorce. We both want to protect ourselves and neither one of us wants to feel like we're getting the short end of the stick. We're generally angry that this is happening to us.

On Monday I get the key to my new apartment. The key to my new life. I don't mean to disparrage the many happy memories and no-regrets marriage I had to my husband by constantly referring to this as my new life and my fresh start, but we all know that's what it is. We mistakingly trapped each other in marriage and now we have fresh starts. Packing is ridiculously overwhelming for me, but I know it will all be worth it once I'm in my new place.

But you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable,
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand.
and breathe, just breathe
oh breathe, just breathe.

dark sacred night

Soon, there will be a long thoughtful post about the state of my life. But not yet, my dears, not yet. This needs a little more time for reflection.

My emotional and mental abilities to handle life and stress are at maximum capacity and yet, seriously, I'm so fine. I know people say that. I'm fine. But I really mean it. Nothing about any of this surprises me. I know it surprised some of you, but for me this is just the normal progression of my life. Like graduation. I've graduated from marriage. And it's bitter because the memories were good, but a sweet and joyous occasion because now my real life begins.

I will always love you, but you are free now.

quit this crazy scene

"It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on."


~River