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The defining mark of literary journalism is the personality of the writer, the individual and intimate voice of a whole, candid person not representing, defending, or speaking on behalf of any institution, not a newspaper, corporation, government, ideology, field of study, chamber of commerce, or travel destination. It is the voice of someone naked, without bureaucratic shelter, speaking simply in his or her own right, someone who has illuminated experience with private reflection, but who has not transcended crankiness, wryness, doubtfulness, and who doesn’t blank out emotional realities of sadness, glee, excitement, fury, love. The genre’s power is the strength of this voice.

– Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists“

Returning to school my second semester of college, I took the train from Minneapolis to Poughkeepsie. I took the train a lot that year; visiting / occasionally kissing friends in New York City, wailing at concerts, stalking the streets all night to pass the time until the first morning departure from Central Station. Back then, every trip changed you. It was perpetually exciting; but it also tended to make one feel transparent, stretched out, uncomfortably impressionable. What’s next? I’d sit alone on the Metro North on the way up, looking out the window at the passing Hudson, cheap foam Discman headphones crooning Thom Yorke or Frank Black or Tori Amos into my ears, because I liked Tori Amos once. I wore a lot of my mother’s old clothes then; I’d put her tapestry bag on my lap, tie a worry-stone around my neck, feel the wooden buttons on her pigskin coat. It was comforting to look like her in photographs. I needed to feel predestined in some way to a certain future, tied to some tangible past.

The train ride from Boston to Portland, I realized the only previously-owned-by-a-loved-one article of clothing I had was my ex-boyfriend’s belt. And I didn’t wear it, because — completely unsymbolically — it didn’t happen to go with the rest of my outfit that day. I sat and looked out the window, and when the meaningful music became too much, I put on La Bouche’s “Another Night Another Dream” and closed my eyes.

It took us a while to get around to it, but The Slutcracker cast party finally exploded on the Oberon dance floor last Thursday. Ammon DJ’d for us; there was improvisational pole dancing, a slutty award ceremony, pink panther/cop burlesque, and I finally got to wear that mustache I’ve had laying around forever (alas, unpictured).

Erik licks my boot (Larger)

I love you (Larger)

Full album: (somewhat unsafe-for-work, especially if you’ve got your Flickr preferences set correctly) here.

1.) Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays. These are the ideal evenings for a first date. Thursdays may also be permitted if we’ve been eyeballing each other longingly for years and are essentially already in love with each other.

Fridays and Saturdays, however, are completely unacceptable choices. No one can live up to that expectation on a first date; why even try? I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be dancing.

And on the seventh day we rest. (I need groceries.)

2.) Sweatshirts. I will wear a sweatshirt on my first date with you. Don’t get me wrong: it’ll be clean, I’ll smell nice, I’ll pair it with some tiny pants and tall boots. It’s not even that I don’t mostly own fancier clothing. I could really bust out the big guns and pair a blouse with some pearl earrings and I could sit across from you at the candlelit dinner table all glowingly and hyperventilate all night!

But let’s be clear on this right away: I hate static, cold, and itchiness. Nice outfits are for job interviews; performances; Friday/Saturday nights. I own and often wear sweatshirts.

3.) Make-up. Man, I used to feel really unattractive without make-up. But now I don’t! Isn’t that great?

4.) Eating. I have never understood why first dates so often involve dinner. For one, it’s expensive, and if we’re dating you’re probably poor too. For another, eating is intimate. And not like . . . fun-intimate. It’s weird-intimate. There are all these squelchy and crunch sounds, and sometimes slurping is required. Slurping, for Christ’s sake! Sometimes said slurping splashes stuff. If there’s bread beforehand it’s all up in your chapstick and the crumbs make little dandruffy piles on your lap. Personally, I have poor motor skills and tend to miss my mouth if I’m not concentrating.

So, I propose we do anything but eat together on our first date.

5.) F-bombs. This is something I can do very little about. I will curse like a motherfucker on our first date, especially if we’re around your friends.

This hot chocolate is fucking delicious! Man I love this fucking weather, it’s abso-fucking ridiculous, let’s build the fuck out of a snowman, what do you say? (Cue: fuck yes!)

Four months ago I thought I’d rent a car and disappear into the night: pack my things and drug the cat and drive halfway across the country to my home city, where I belonged. There’d be no need to tell anyone, I thought, retarded with the novelty of grief. Not my friends. Not my recently-exed. I would just show up at my parents’ door, sleepless and insane. Knock knock. Hello. I just had to come.

It seemed like the most immediate and appropriately drastic solution at the time, and its potential reality — the fact that every day, any day, I could just do it — allowed me to stay, breathe, deliberate, for one month.

Three months ago I went to our first Slutcracker cast meeting, where everyone was smiling and excited and giving high fives. And in retrospect, if I hadn’t been open to staying, why would I have subjected myself to that? Could I have possibly thought “the people here will convince me to leave”?

I said “okay. So I’ll stay through December.” and I dragged my Aerobed to a third floor I couldn’t really afford as a sort of promise: I will eventually leave you.

Two months ago my friend Sara visited for a few nights with her baby. They slept on my air mattress, and I slept on a different air mattress, because when you want to keep your options open and live in the moment it usually involves lots of uncomfortable sleeping arrangements.

Anyway, so in this fashion a child was temporarily in my life. Days spent with a parent and child are different from the four-hour babysitting stints I’d once known so well. In a matter of days, things start repeating themselves. Baby goes to sleep. Baby wakes up. Baby crawls around. Feed the baby. Baby goes to sleep. Baby wakes up.

And I know they grow up so quickly or whatever, but in a couple of days a child’s existence and needs acquire a sense of cyclical endlessness. That was fun for a while, but. What, we can’t party now? You want to go see some movie about murder or something? And with this re-evaluation of what it meant to be a parent, I began to re-evaluate a lot of the presumptions I had about my alleged future.

“I’m going to wash Miriam’s hands,” Sara said. “I’ll be right back.”

I sat down at my computer. Sara re-entered the room, baby cooing. “You know what I’ve always meant to do,” I said, “is apply to Salt. And I just decided that I’m going to do it today.”

“Sheesh Adrianne,” Sara said. “I was gone for like one minute.”

One month ago, I wrote you a letter. I love you in the most casual sense of the word. I love you so that if there were a tornado coming, I would usher you into a basement. I love you if it would cheer you up.

We clarified, this doesn’t change anything.

Three weeks ago, I got the acceptance letter from Salt.

I cried, “Hurraaaaay!” Then, “Ahhhhhhhhggghhh!”

Last Friday, after I’d convinced myself Wells Fargo would make this entirely fiscally irresponsible/impossible, and I’d come to terms with what now seemed a gloomy return to Minneapolis — another loan suddenly worked out. My dad called at eleven at night to let me know. I went to Portland the next day to sign a lease.

I asked my new landlady, “so while I live here, can I borrow one of your 14 cats?”

“We used to just include a cat with the apartment, actually.”

“Yessss.”

On the ride home, I turned to you. “Visit me?” I asked.

Yesterday, I mailed in a check for my full tuition. I move at the end of the month, and start classes as a photography student (!) one week later.