February 17, 1995

The week draws to a close soon; I like to think that week & weekend are completely separate entities, that the weekend isn't even part of the week which begins on Monday and ends on Friday. Then, we have a little break & then a week again. It's one of those things -- like if I go up to someone & make mention of something school-related I did "last year" -- it is not assumed I mean 1994. I could very well, for example, be referring to the fall of 93, which was last year -- that is, I am a junior now & I was a sophomore then. Sophomores are always so nice. It's a good grade level because -- well, once you come in as freshmen, you don't know what the hell you're doing, you haven't quite carved out that niche for yourself yet, you're making new friends -- but as a sophomore, you've found all that, but you're still young. I am so glad that, with our new yearbooks, which came on Tuesday (and which I got through some ... what some would call "complaining" ... and I guess that would be right, because they didn't have my name on the list of yearbook orderers, even though I dutifully paid my fee... Mr Paskiewicz¹ was feeling generous -- or something) there are some faces below us to stare at, last year's freshman crop -- the sophomores of which I speak of now. Yearbooks are great reference books, more than anything, to just get lost in & while away the hours. Stacie & I have picked up the old 1993 edition quite a bit in our times together & conversed on the phone about such oddities as the double-photos of Cathy Mey3r (the strange young evil twin "Casly Never")² & Bernice Weg3rich, whom you may remember as the German "teacher"/choir accompanist/knitting fiend/victim of a box falling on her head... that was a staff member at the high school last year. It was a cold October morning³ when Ryan started talking to her about The Nightmare Before Christmas and its animation techniques -- like any of us cared or had the effrontery to talk to the old lady. Anyhow, Ryan did finally break his month-long silence: "Excuse me, I was talking" and "Bye, asshole" on Wednesday. I am doubting the chances for repairing this feud⁴ (bridging the chasm sounds better) at all, though, given how worked up he is about it, i.e. all the trouble has gone toward blatantly ignoring me & the like. It seems childish, really. And how the hell did we get to Ryan? Via Mrs Weg3rich? Mmmm... ("Everything tastes good to you..." -- Dan (?) to Adam Gri3ve⁵) I think the reason I mention any of this, the sole purpose for why I picked up this pen off the living-room carpet (other than the fact that one should never leave pens on the carpet⁶), is that Stacie is off in Missouri to visit her dear grandmother for the weekend & who knows -- maybe we might have been on the phone all this time. Because we sure have been the last two weeks. Talking very late, I mean, about anything & everything. Some things are much more comfortable after four hours, I think. And these past few days have been enjoyable: The opera yesterday was a pleasant diversion if anything, marred only by my sleepiness & feeling a bit under the weather, as I like to say. Those damn Sudafeds didn't do me a bit of good. Damn them. I guess things like the AHSME math test & the Sunrise trip to Hubert H. Humphrey (my alma mater, of course -- see Vol. 1 (!)) serve to break the awful monotony of school schedules -- and it was a balmy 52° today at 3 o'clock. It was downright gorgeous. I remarked yesterday that whenever I leave school on a field trip, I get a sense of freedom, of having escaped from that routine, that while everyone else is sitting through lectures, I've slipped through their watchful eyes -- such privilege. And the temperature gave it the feel of all of us taking a Sunday drive in the country, enjoying the open air. The new is what keeps us going [...]
--JMC 11:39 PM

1 "Mr. P" was the yearbook advisor and the boys' soccer coach, and also had a bit role as a gambler in Guys and Dolls my senior year. He died in 2004.

3 Okay, so check this out: on p. 120, there's a photo of Cathy Mey3r: she has straight brown hair, bangs over her eyebrows, staring at the camera with her mouth slightly open, not quite smiling. Four rows down, in the same vertical column, there's a photo captioned "Casly Never," and apart from the fact her mouth's closed and she's looking off to the side (and holy shit, I just noticed this, is she even wearing a different shirt?), it's the exact same girl.

3 On the bus on the way to Northern Illinois University for a choir field trip.

4 I honestly don't even remember anymore what triggered the falling out between Ryan and me, except that he had suddenly, a few months before, become distrustful and accusatory toward me, and the fact that I found his behavior ridiculous only exacerbated his sense that I didn't support him. It later came out that he was jealous of my friendship with Stacie, which had lately grown closer and more exclusive. Because the three of us had once hung out together, Ryan understandably felt left behind. In general, though, he wasn't the most stable dude, especially if there was any truth to the stories he told about his family.

5 Adam had this somewhat affected habit of saying "mmmmm," sometimes with a raised eyebrow, which gave the impression of a gay man with a delicious secret. (And despite much speculation, Adam never admitted he was anything but straight.)

6 I'd been admonished enough by my dad.