Last night while we were watching Seinfeld and munching on Cape Cod salt and vinegar potato chips Brent said something about hearing me chew and it reminded me how comforting I used to find the sound of my mother chewing. I used to fall asleep in my parents� bed to the human white noise sound of the Yankee game, my mother crunching chips and turning pages of a book, and the earthy/powdery smell of her Erno Laszlo facial products while she tickled my back�my dad inevitably asleep downstairs in his chair in front of the TV�with a couple crumbly pieces of super-sharp super-aged white cheddar cheese and proscuitto on a plate on the snacktray next to him. Those were the good nights. Then there were the nights when my mom would watch the news and read the newspaper and tell me whatever horrible thing happened to whatever girl happened to be my age. I think this is when I started to inherit her panic a little. It�s taken me years to keep it at bay. Part of the reason I would spend so many nights in my parents� room is because it was just absolutely impossible for me to fall asleep in my own room as I was convinced someone was going to come through the window at any moment and kidnap me. I used to have nightmare upon nightmare of these scenarios�at the supermarket, on the way home from school, out of the car� always paralyzing me with a sharp finger in the back. I also used to have nightmares that I was at the beach and the waves kept coming higher, threatening to take me out to sea. The odd thing is that my sister Mary used to have dreams that she was saving me from the sea coming up too high. We�ve always had a sort of psychic bond, I think. When you�re really not supposed to communicate your true feelings of anger, fear and injustice, I supposed you find other ways. That�s not to say we don�t verbally bitch to each other every chance we get. But no one can take away the psychic thing. It�s nice. I have lost the psychic bond before, though�my sophomore year at BU my friend Heath and I shared the weirdest rarest bond. We had known each other for a week and already were finishing each other�s sentences and having the same dreams. Sometimes I didn�t know where my thoughts ended and his began. I would send him thoughts in my sleep and he would get them.

Me: Did you hear me last night?

Him: Yeah, I heard you wanted me to come out in the hallway and I was going to but I was sleeping and so tired� also, I thought maybe it was my own thought�that I wanted you to want me to come out in the hallway.

Me: Yeah, I thought that too.

And then he dreamt I was sitting at the end of his bed and I dreamt the same about him. There were even a couple weeks where for some reason, after never having nosebleeds our whole lives, the two of us would have nosebleeds at the same time. That whole year was weird and psychic and fun and scary. Heath was trying to get started on a new book, having a hard time with it and one evening, as we were walking down Newbury Street to see Sunny Day Real Estate play, a homeless guy stands up and says to him, �When are you gonna write the book, man?� So anyway, we had this psychic thing until we decided we should date each other. It seemed natural enough, right? I mean, I didn�t really like him that way but I trusted his judgement so much (stupid stupid! Of course he wants to get together�he�s a lonely Jack Kerouac reading college boy!) that I thought I must be deluding myself. This was Trust Your Own Instincts 101 for Jenn and the lessons came hard� loss of wonderful friendship in the process. So when I started to get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that said, �you really don�t want him to be your boyfriend,� things got bad. He didn�t want to accept it. I can�t say I blame him. But that psychic bond we had was ripped out from underneath like warm soft rabbit fur on a cement floor on the coldest day in February. It didn�t help that we lived on the same floor and he would come ask me to talk to him constantly. The �talking to� consisted mainly of him pleading, �why? Why would you do this?� And I didn�t have a suitable answer. I just didn�t know who he was anymore and he didn�t know who I was. I think I remember the day I knew it was a bad bad situation�I could see in his brain that he really didn�t like it there. He wanted to be in my brain with me and called me an angel. At first I thought this was a good thing until I realized it meant he wanted me to be Tinkerbell, drinking the poison for him��If you love me you�ll do this. That�s what people who love each other do�save each other.� I wanted to know who would save me. I would, of course! I would save him and myself! Yeah! It sounds callous now but it was really a slippery situation. I will love and love and give and give until I feel stifled by someone... until I feel it's expected of me. Friendship is a gift. And I HATE being pushed. Push me... buh-bye. Something that�s always amazed me about many academic, seemingly progressive guys my age� see, they really love the beat poets, right? So the beats were certainly revolutionaries. But they were still just as misogynic as most other men during that time period were. Jack Kerouac wrote the character of Tristessa so that he could capture her, in a sense. Watch out for these writer-boys! This happens more often than I care to accept! As soon as Tristessa does something out of character� as in the 2-dimensional character old Jack has created, he gets good and angry, �who does she think she is,� he is mad he can�t have her, �who is she, so high and mighty to deny me her body.� I�m paraphrasing, but you get the gist. That�s why Kerouac�s work (I think) is so brilliant. In the process of �free writing� that so many find so tedious and careless, we have a perfect chronicle of this man�s psyche, in a sense. I don�t think he even realized that�s what he was doing in Tristessa. His poetry is another story. Lovely and well-thought out, I believe. I also highly recommend any spoken word you can find. I have a box set on cassette and it�s made for many fun answering machine messages.

Jack wrote, �My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.� Ah, so dramatic. I�ve had so many boyfriends who use falling at my feet for forgiveness as an excuse to do really crappy things to me. Saying, �I know, I�m the BIGGEST asshole in the world� is not a progressive, mature thing to say. Saying that means, �I�m going to do shitty things to you and it�s your choice to stay with me or not. If you stay with me it�s your fault if I do shitty things to you. It�s all your choice.� And you know what girls? It is totally our choice.

Oh, I�ve written quite enough.