kitewithfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kitewithfish) wrote2008-06-24 04:12 pm
kitewithfish) wrote2008-06-24 04:12 pm
Entry tags:
365 Days: Day One- The mighty herds of Salami
Day 1
The walls of the room look pretty damn bare, when Grace thinks about it. It’s that faintly textured non-concrete crap that makes up all the visible walls inside the building- staring at it for prolonged periods brings about the sensation of falling into a void without moving.
Freaking Magic-Eye wallpaper, Grace thinks, and then snorts.
Still it’s getting to the point where it bothers her. Her roomie, the actual factual local girl, has not put anything up on her side of the room, but then she’s hardly been there since moving her stuff in. She’d been sleeping either at her boyfriend’s room across campus or at Ashley’s (her best friend since kindergarten, apparently). But she still showed up regularly around three in the afternoon to shower and nap before heading off to one of the few classes she attended. Just as well she was hardly here: Grace imagined her as being one of those girls who put up several thousand photographic variations on the theme of “This is me and my high school friends and our mutual friend, booze!”
Still, Grace was going to be living there for a year. It might be nice to get something to put up and make the room prettier.
The next day, she was meandering around a store in town and found a veritable mountain of out of date calendars. Geez, you’d think they’d have thrown them out by the end of February, at least. But Prose before Hos’ loss was Grace’s profit. The guy at the cashier was amenable to her just taking them, after a little chat about an art project and a little half-serious teasing about how much he could bench-press. She left the store with her booty to see him standing visibly taller than when she’d entered. She mused pleasantly about the occasional powers of the vaguely attractive girl, and went to find some tape.
She’d decided, in the end, on a strategy that was half papers dolls and half landscapes. A Year in Trout Fishing, after some careful snipping-out of the principle actors, gave her some lovely wilderness landscapes that she slowly populated with a growing cast of elegant pale figures from Ukiyo-e: Seasons of the Floating World and a small herd of dachshunds from The Far Side Desk Calendar. With the generous application of a crayola “fuzzy wuzzy brown” and “atomic tangerine”, she’d colored the amassed wiener dogs and positioned them flooding down the side of a canyon in to a deep lake: the last of the great American salami herds, displaced by post-war housing developments, finally sought a noble end in the pristine waters. She was certain it would disrupt the local trout for years. The geisha plucked a last ode on a shamisen to the passing of these tasty beasts, but did not weep for fear of smudging their make-up.
Grace was standing back from the longest wall in her room, pondering the placement of her masterpiece, when Corral (“It’s ‘Coral,’ only with two R’s”) slammed into the room.
“Men are shit, Grace. Honestly! I wish I were gay. You should be glad you don’t have to deal with them.”
If only words could make it so, Grace thought, and then mentally kicked herself for not standing up for the gender for her brothers’ sakes, if not Ghandi’s or Vin Diesel’s. She'd already given up on trying to explain that bisexual was not the same as lesbian.
Corral was not done. She plopped herself down on Grace’s bed.
“I just… He’s such a shit! Again, ya know? You’d think he’s stop, that once was a mistake, but no. Again. And we’ve only been here a month.”
“If he makes you so unhappy, break up with him. You’d at least not have to see him anymore.”
Corral scowled. “I can’t. They’re all his friends. And we all came here so we could go to school together. They’d stay with him.” She grabbed a pillow and snarled into it soft and hurt. “They’d all stick with him, and leave me all alone.” Corral hunched.
“Hey,” Grace started. Maybe there was a reason why Corral’s side of the room was so bare, after all.
“What?”
On an impulse, Grace said, “Can you help me put this thing up? It’s too big for me to do it alone, and I want to stick up where it will catch the light in the morning.”
Corral put aside the pillow and looked down at the massive paper construction on the desk with open suspicion. “Did you color those with crayons? Who still uses crayons in college? It looks like a five year old colored this.”
Grace reminded herself that Corral’d had a bad day, and that anyways, she was the bigger person here. “I do- they’re cheaper than colored markers. And you can see when you need to buy a new set before they dry up on you. Here, you take this end.”
They stuck it slowly and gingerly to the wall with scotch tape. Corral ended up holding most of it, since Grace couldn’t get it up to the right height. She stood back afterwards to see the effect. The room looked broader somehow- it was almost like adding a window.
“Hey,” said Carrol. “One of your sausage dogs fell off.” She scooped it up and as Grace watched, taped it with an oddly touching precision back amongst its fellows. She looked back at Grace again and smiled as if laughing at her own concern about a paper dog, and patted the prodigal creature “Can’t let you get lost, huh?”
The walls of the room look pretty damn bare, when Grace thinks about it. It’s that faintly textured non-concrete crap that makes up all the visible walls inside the building- staring at it for prolonged periods brings about the sensation of falling into a void without moving.
Freaking Magic-Eye wallpaper, Grace thinks, and then snorts.
Still it’s getting to the point where it bothers her. Her roomie, the actual factual local girl, has not put anything up on her side of the room, but then she’s hardly been there since moving her stuff in. She’d been sleeping either at her boyfriend’s room across campus or at Ashley’s (her best friend since kindergarten, apparently). But she still showed up regularly around three in the afternoon to shower and nap before heading off to one of the few classes she attended. Just as well she was hardly here: Grace imagined her as being one of those girls who put up several thousand photographic variations on the theme of “This is me and my high school friends and our mutual friend, booze!”
Still, Grace was going to be living there for a year. It might be nice to get something to put up and make the room prettier.
The next day, she was meandering around a store in town and found a veritable mountain of out of date calendars. Geez, you’d think they’d have thrown them out by the end of February, at least. But Prose before Hos’ loss was Grace’s profit. The guy at the cashier was amenable to her just taking them, after a little chat about an art project and a little half-serious teasing about how much he could bench-press. She left the store with her booty to see him standing visibly taller than when she’d entered. She mused pleasantly about the occasional powers of the vaguely attractive girl, and went to find some tape.
She’d decided, in the end, on a strategy that was half papers dolls and half landscapes. A Year in Trout Fishing, after some careful snipping-out of the principle actors, gave her some lovely wilderness landscapes that she slowly populated with a growing cast of elegant pale figures from Ukiyo-e: Seasons of the Floating World and a small herd of dachshunds from The Far Side Desk Calendar. With the generous application of a crayola “fuzzy wuzzy brown” and “atomic tangerine”, she’d colored the amassed wiener dogs and positioned them flooding down the side of a canyon in to a deep lake: the last of the great American salami herds, displaced by post-war housing developments, finally sought a noble end in the pristine waters. She was certain it would disrupt the local trout for years. The geisha plucked a last ode on a shamisen to the passing of these tasty beasts, but did not weep for fear of smudging their make-up.
Grace was standing back from the longest wall in her room, pondering the placement of her masterpiece, when Corral (“It’s ‘Coral,’ only with two R’s”) slammed into the room.
“Men are shit, Grace. Honestly! I wish I were gay. You should be glad you don’t have to deal with them.”
If only words could make it so, Grace thought, and then mentally kicked herself for not standing up for the gender for her brothers’ sakes, if not Ghandi’s or Vin Diesel’s. She'd already given up on trying to explain that bisexual was not the same as lesbian.
Corral was not done. She plopped herself down on Grace’s bed.
“I just… He’s such a shit! Again, ya know? You’d think he’s stop, that once was a mistake, but no. Again. And we’ve only been here a month.”
“If he makes you so unhappy, break up with him. You’d at least not have to see him anymore.”
Corral scowled. “I can’t. They’re all his friends. And we all came here so we could go to school together. They’d stay with him.” She grabbed a pillow and snarled into it soft and hurt. “They’d all stick with him, and leave me all alone.” Corral hunched.
“Hey,” Grace started. Maybe there was a reason why Corral’s side of the room was so bare, after all.
“What?”
On an impulse, Grace said, “Can you help me put this thing up? It’s too big for me to do it alone, and I want to stick up where it will catch the light in the morning.”
Corral put aside the pillow and looked down at the massive paper construction on the desk with open suspicion. “Did you color those with crayons? Who still uses crayons in college? It looks like a five year old colored this.”
Grace reminded herself that Corral’d had a bad day, and that anyways, she was the bigger person here. “I do- they’re cheaper than colored markers. And you can see when you need to buy a new set before they dry up on you. Here, you take this end.”
They stuck it slowly and gingerly to the wall with scotch tape. Corral ended up holding most of it, since Grace couldn’t get it up to the right height. She stood back afterwards to see the effect. The room looked broader somehow- it was almost like adding a window.
“Hey,” said Carrol. “One of your sausage dogs fell off.” She scooped it up and as Grace watched, taped it with an oddly touching precision back amongst its fellows. She looked back at Grace again and smiled as if laughing at her own concern about a paper dog, and patted the prodigal creature “Can’t let you get lost, huh?”