magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

shredding is really the best part of my job at academic affairs. not that i get to read anything terribly interesting and confidential before destroying it, relieving it of a physical presence and relegating it to the vague and impermanent memories of those who may have once read it. but just the release of being able to be destructive, without doing any real damage. feeding three or four streams of connected sheets of dot-matrix printouts into the shredder simultaneously from different angles. paper being pulled passed me, crumpled into the feeding slot, and spit out in crinkled strands. i would be okay with nothing but shredding all day. but the machine can only be run in fifteen minute blocks or it will overheat and seize.

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left work at three. typed up some more past days. read some stories from a book i found in the street a month or two ago. waited for stef to call. called her around six. she called back a little later, but the phone had gone dead (it must not have been securely in its charger) and i couldn't find my old phone in time. listened to her voicemail, called her back.

she tells me that she's planning on staying in with the girls. watching a movie. moving her stuff into a different room that is empty for the rest of the month. she says that she hasn't had a night off to just rest and spend with her friends in a long time. i want to say that i understand, but that every night is a night off for me. that she doesn't have to go out drinking every night that she does work. that i'm only here for another two and a half weeks. she tells me she'll call me later.

the boys weren't planning on making dinner. box of pasta for one. i stopped by the liquor store to buy a few powerball tickets and picked up a case of corona. made angel hair. watched tv. drank beer.

stef called about eight-thirty. "what are you up to?" i was half way through my fifth beer. it had been just over an hour since i started.

"watching tv. drinking beer."

"nooo."

"no?"

"you can't. not without me. are you drowning yr sorrows?"

"something like that."

"do you want to come all the way over here?"

i wished that i had stopped at three. that i hadn't had anything to drink at all. just the tv would have been enough to numb the brain for a bit. the walk wasn't bad. the air helped and i probably sweated some of the alcohol out.

and i was spinning some when i got to stef's. but it had pretty much worn off by eleven. we watched the powerball numbers. none of us came close to winning anything.

and then they started the movie. interview with the vampire, which i didn't much care for the first time around, but sat through about half of again until stef and greer both decided that they couldn't stay up any longer.

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just lying in bed with stef tonight, in a (fairly) big bed, in a big room was amazing. "i don't think i've ever had a room this big."

"you will. and you have this room, tonight," she said. "i wish it always feels this wonderful," she said. and, "skin is pretty much all the same, but there's something about touching you." and there was.