(On my BFF, Haviland
In Honor of Our Anniversary)

[Some names have been changed. I'd say that's to protect the innocent, but no one's really innocent, right? I mean, if they are, that's kinda boring. I changed names cause everyone's got a right to privacy. Except Haviland, and me, and whomever's targeted by the Patriot Act, obviously.]

"No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it. And yet between the one and the other there is a connection." -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

i. 4/7/2006. Brooklyn.

I've only just met Haviland and now she's on my bed reading out loud from a lesbian erotica anthology. The story's called "Twenty Minutes or Forever," I wrote it, and it's totally mediocre/terrible. If I was sober, this would not be happening. Haviland is always sober, and thus she's doing it up right, taking it to the next level--and that level is "campy-funny." Haviland reads a scene where the protagonist, fresh from a U-Hauled relationship with a total bitch, is seduced by the occupant of an apartment she's considering renting:

"I try not to think of Rebecca, of how she liked it, of when she first told me I'm sorry, hon, but it's hard to compete with Duracell, and I am charged when Vivian lights up like new batteries when I touch her...."

I'm laughing, blushing, hiding my face in my pillow. Rachel, who brought Haviland to my apartment, is at the foot of my bed, drunk, eating from a gigantic bag of organic popcorn as if Haviland is not a person but a movie screen. Hav reads, laughs, won't say the "c-word" [I love the c-word, like when Ani sings "my [c-word] is built like a wound that won't heal"] and I know, as she reads it, that I'll have to give her another piece of my writing for the road, 'cause this isn't my best work--it's intentionally hackneyed, dripping with dripping cliches--and I want to impress her.

"I can't believe you're reading this!" I say when she pauses to sip from her Dasani. "This is like, really bad. I swear, I'm really not this bad."

Drunkity-drunk Rachel bounces on the bed. I'm shocked she's still conscious: "Ohhhh--Marie you are soooo bad!"

"At writing, Rachel."

Haviland raises an eyebrow. "Oh, Rachel."

"Let's get this over with?" I say to Haviland. "Finish it before I die of humiliation or whatever?"

So we do, and when they leave Rachel takes the popcorn and Haviland--a copy of "My So-Called Lesbian Lover: Why Shane is the New Jordan Catalano," the essay I wrote to score my Nerve internship the year before.

Because this girl might be someone worth holding onto, I think; though I don't know what for yet, but I want to keep her around until I figure it out, and I think she'll like that essay cause she knows My So-Called Life and The L Word and a lot of the things I probably talk about too much.

Two days later, I'm in her kitchen, sitting on the floor eating Matzoh ball soup while she reads out loud:

We want to make love to these characters, slide underneath their smoky exteriors and watch them sleep. We want to extract tales of their troubled childhoods like organs, and then dress ourselves in them. We want to strut down the hallways of our mind-numbing public high school or through the trendy girl-clubs of West Hollywood with people so potent that you get wet just looking at them. Or, as Rickie from My So-Called Life would say: “You’re so beautiful, it hurts to look at you.”...

I'm just on the brink of this queer world, still doing straight girls, wrestling the ridiculousness of labels and the insanity of sexuality itself, and here I've got this beautiful Broadway actress girl who knows it all so well she's already over it, and so I don't know how to explain how little I know. My whole world starts changing, fantasy head-butts reality, lines are blurred, I'm meeting lots of stars who are just people, and girls are just girls...everything levels...everything is tangible. Everything is possible.

ii. 4/2006-fakespace

We text, we IM, we comment, we email. Words, words, words. For her--the actress--this is new. For me--the writer--this is my game.

Just knowing Haviland exists feels like a yellow bird is singing in my gut, that nervous-giddy feeling you get when you first meet someone you're fairly sure you could spend the rest of your life talking to and never get bored. Plus I'm seduced by her confidence--she's so good at all the things I'm unsure of, and, as it turns out, vice versa.

She beFriendsters me. She's just joined MySpace. We befriend there. That's a good space. I don't have to call Haviland and say "I really enjoyed meeting you the other night, we sure did click, didn't we? You're a great person, lets become better friends." I don't have to do ANYTHING! I can just sign online and wait for her to IM me, or virtually befriend her ... and wait to be top-8'd.

iii. 3/2005, 7/2005, 8/2005, 9/2005, 4/2006

I met Chase on Craigslist, Rachel met Chase on Craigslist, I met Chase through Rachel, Haviland met Rachel on Friendster, I met Haviland through Rachel.

iv.
I coincidentally started my blog, 'This Girl Called Automatic Win," on the same day I met Haviland. My roommate at the time had a blog and I was easily the star: especially when I'd get drunk, hump trees, and flash my Superman thong, or when we'd both get drunk, don underwear and fishnets and combat boots and go to a punk S/M party on a boat in the Chelsea piers. But we'd hit rocky waters. I needed a new star, and Haviland, who didn't even know she was auditioning, was perfect for the part. She began peppering our vocabulary with "blog-worthy" almost instantly. She plugged me, I plugged her.

SCENE: Important Event, e.g show opening or fancy dinner or r-family cruise that Haviland has kindly invited Riese to attend with her.

VIP: "So what do you do, Riese?"
Me: "Um, I go to the gym a lot."
[VIPs start looking vaguely uncomfortable]
Haviland: "She's a writer!"
Me: "Also, I like to go to Mandees and buy brightly colored bra-and-underwear sets. And I eat a lot of food. Like, all different kinds of food."
Haviland: "She has a blog, it's really good! Riese, give them your card."
Me: "Oh yeah, I have this blog."
VIP: "What's it about?"
Me: "Um, like, myself. Like, thoughts that I have about myself. Me."
Haviland: "It's totally about us! It's really funny! Like, us, and what we do, and how cool we are."
Me: "And it's also about Rite Aid."

Stars, stars, stars.
Stars of our own lives.

v.
The blog, MySpace, all of it:

We're now growing up in a world with so much media storytelling that we're deprived of the necessary sensation of pure discovery of sex, relationships, friendships, falling in love, losing our minds, breaking up, numb even to crime and self-destruction, death, violence, explosions [literal, emotional]...

we experience everything visually before we have the chance to experience it viscerally.

So, I think: as a reaction to that, we've created blogs, MySpace, OurChart, chat boards, chat rooms, blogger comments, user forums---we're adding to the other end.

I think this could be our revenge.

We're acquiring experiences wrought with holes: robbed by the millions of images just like it we've already memorized. We're de-sensitized because we see shootings in Iraq on the same screen where Donna Martin loses her virginity, then re-runs and 30-second ads. Well never know how these moments of our lives would've felt if we hadn't already seen an A&E documentary all about it.

We're filling them in on the other end by shouting our stories back into the void.

We're creating new context, novel storage space and meta-levels of experience for our so-lacking-in-actual-experience existence. Our group o' friends could feel like just another WB drama, but not if we make it into our OWN drama, and the internet is where we can. You know what I mean?

Writing this, for example, is likely doing exactly what I'm talking about.

vi. 2/2006: West Harlem

Our Story, The Cut Scene

Part "i" is only halfway-true, because it's not, in fact, the first time we met. So here's a new story, for this blog:

The first time we met was at Rachel and Chase's. Rachel, because she's Rachel, spent the better part of the evening creating an entire buffet of snack options shaped like breasts: mounds of angel cake crowned by Hershey Kisses, slivers of green apple topped with dollops of peanut butter and perky raisins, Ritz crackers with areolas of cheddar. I'm not kidding. This is one of many things that makes Rachel the amazing Sapphster she is.

Despite these intentions, however, it was an awkward evening and Hav and I--seated across from one another---didn't talk much. The couple who'd brought Haviland and I together in the spirit of watching movies and eating breast-themed snacks were hitting a rough patch in their relationship, tossing a burning parcel of anger back and forth and pretending it was a balloon.

It was dark, I could hardly see Haviland til she got up and started fast-forwarding through D.E.B.S to get to the sexy scenes. I liked her spirit, but I'm O.C.D. about watching things all the way through, so I was semi-annoyed.

Unlike Hav, who actually did go home early, I tried to drink and smoke until my mind was capable of leaving my body and sitting somewhere else where people weren't fighting. Like a warm meadow by a stream, or whatever. A place from which I could tell this story.

vii. 2006/2007: Eternal Yearbook

MySpace is eternal yearbook: a place for us to declare affections, form allegiances, announce desire--and maybe this makes me a wimp, but it gets the job done. In my blog, I can turn friendship into meta-friendship, remind people of their importance or their resonance simply by positioning them in my narrative. I've said things in my blog, just like I'm saying things here, that I could maybe never say to Haviland's face, because that kind of thing scares me, emotions--the raw kind--that you say to people...I like words on pages, I like a moment to decide, and then, I like a record of it.

I've gotten better at accepting declarations of sentiment. But twas not always the case:

v/a. May, 1996, yearbook signature, from Jake, who would become one of my best friends after I left for boarding school and my communication with him became limited to email and letters only:

"Marie: I guess the yearbook is a good place for me to write something meaningful because for once I'll be able to say something meaningful without you laughing at me and running away. I LOVE YOU. Our friendship means a lot to me. There, laugh and run away now. Even when you make fun of me, like when you dissed my beautiful dress pants, and called me dorkbutt, and called my prom date 'UGLY,' I still love you."

iix.

In Tomorrowland at Disneyworld, I learned about the future: hovercraft, gourmet food sprouting from microwavable boxes, video phones. But video-phones came out--and no-one bought 'em. People use i-cams and video-conferencing stuff, but I think there's something to be said for anonymity, for an extra second to sort out your feelings before your conversation partner has already noted and interpreted the expression on your face. You can cry, drink, be naked. Someone broke up with me on AIM once. I was all like "it's okay, I'm into someone else anyway," which was true, but I was also totes like, sobbing.

This may not be ideal, or evolved, but it's possibly not necessarily BAD, either?

Things that are: away messasges--the round-the-clock ability for people to track your movements. Hello, stalkers.

But just signing on, seeing who's around, talking to people---not worse, not better, but different. And when you're working through the rough stuff, it can be a blessing. We worked through the rough stuff. But back then, a year ago, in the beginning, there were other, more pressing matters to attend to.

HPS: so who was your first serious girlfriend? me: ha. i've never had a serious girlfriend.
HPS: no?
me: nope.
HPS: why's that?
me: um, well, you know, it's tough, being a rock star. i'm always on the road.
HPS: i'm serious.
me: i guess.....a lot of reasons. i suppose the easiest one is that i never met a lesbian-girl i wanted to date. and i dated boys.
HPS: you've never dated a girl?
me: nope.
HPS: oh!
me: haha
HPS: i never would have thought that.
me:really? AWESOME. i'm totally passing.
HPS: but you like girls, yes?
me: yes, very much.
HPS: and you've obviously slept with them
me: yes, very much.
HPS: wow.
me: i'm a girl-dating virgin
HPS: well, i would highly suggest you asking a girl out on a proper date sometime.
me: yeah, i don't know how to do that.

So I email her an essay I wrote about my formative girl-on-girl-experiences and she writes back: HOLY SHIT. GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER WRITTEN. I JUST READ THIS AND I F-ING LOVE IT. SERIOUSLY. And thus she becomes my guide. Though I could never say that, or ask that, of anyone, to their face.

To be continued.....