The Spanish Metro

         Where am I? Ah, yes, Madrid, Spain. I find myself repeating this in my head on a daily basis because it doesn’t feel much different than my home. Sure, people speak a different language here, a language that I am learning with impeccable speed which is absolutely mind boggling because it’s almost like the three years of Spanish in high school were for nothing, I could have just drove to Mexico, but everything feels the same. Or it feels different… I feel like I’m in a time warp. I don’t feel like I’m living six hours in the future, I feel like I am in a sock in someone’s drawer, but I got pushed back into the crevice of the drawer and the dresser and the drawer won’t close right, but it doesn’t bother the owner of the sock. And for some reason I am okay with this. I feel like I am in a sock mostly because I have had to smell more body odor here than I have ever before in my twenty years. When you’re forced to press your body against a strangers because a stranger is pressing their body against yours because there are too many bodies on the car you have to tell yourself not to decode. Don’t decode the smell. Even if you are positive that you smell someone’s unwashed underarm you need to promise yourself never to decode it. It’s better this way. Sometimes, an elderly woman will smile at me on the metro when I almost fall and it melts my heart. I almost fall on the metro every day.

         I’m falling in love here. I can’t tell if it is because I’m in a different place and I’m grasping at the air around me for something real, something English and tangible, but I am falling in love. You think that you know people from afar. I always think that I know people. I don’t know people.

         I’m starting to plan trips and I’m nervous that every single new place that I go will be the same. It will be different, but it will not give me what is visible in my mind. I want to feel like I’m across an ocean, but I keep forgetting that this is one world with people that are all people. I keep forgetting that an ocean doesn’t separate a world. Everything is more similar than I think it is. Everything is more connected.

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." --Albert Einstein 

International House of Pancakes/Sex

     Last night I was surrounded by a lot of sex. Like, everyone around me was having sex and I could hear it. It was kind of the worst. 

     My friend's parents were gone and so she decided that it'd be the perfect weekend to have a bunch of our friends spend the night and get drunk off of Franzia and Mike's Hard Lemonade because we're tough.  We arrived at around 6:30 pm and immediately started drinking, our first mistake. We grilled out and ate the juiciest bratwurst I've ever had. People got sloppy quickly.

     I started feeling sick so I got into a bed and ate crackers. 

     At around 11:30 pm I started hearing my friend moaning and then a lot of sex. Just a lot of sex. I just wanted it to end because I was hearing it like it was happening next to me. I don't understand. Maybe the house had a vent that connected to the room I was in and the room they were in. It was just really, really uncomfortable. 

     It's fine, though, we went to IHOP for breakfast.

A Woman of Intrigue Pees with the Door Closed

     I was talking to my friend recently about when it is acceptable to poop at your boyfriends house.  She told me about the order that apparently everyone besides me knows:
     First, you enjoy their company. Then, you love them. It's only after you love the person and you're sure that they love you that you can poop at their house.
     I never knew that there were rules to things like this...
     My other friend, Abigail, told me that she believes that you have to fart in front of the person first to be able to poop at their house. "Baby steps," she said. Maybe it's just me, but I would much rather go to the bathroom behind a closed door at my boyfriends house than fart in front of him. Ladies have so many rules... The only rule that I truly stand by is:
     Always hit on a wingman.

     Just think about it.

Quirky H&R Block Commercials Cause Me Distress

     It's 12:57 am and everyone I live with is out getting drunk while I am curled up in a ball on my bed scaring myself. Some thoughts that I am having are:
     "Will I be able to pay for gas/electricity one day?"
     "Is insurance expensive?"
     "What's with health insurance anyway?"
     "Ugh, money."
     "I don't actually have to do taxes, right?"
     Okay, so I've seen those commercials for H&R block... You know, the ones with the people in black and white who are "everyday people" and so quirky like they're trying to be Zooey Deschanel's character, Jess, from New Girl. They are laughing and joking and so excited about doing your taxes for you and this has got me thinking... Are there really people out there who would be that excited to do my taxes? 'Cause I'm not excited about taxes.

I was called a whore by protestors in my cat sweatshirt before noon.

    On March 15, 2013, I walked onto my small liberal art school's campus wearing my celebrated cat sweatshirt. I walked down the red brick road to the entrance of the library only to be stopped by two protestors holding up signs reading, "YOU WILL GO TO HELL," and, "SINNERS WILL BURN!" The younger of the two, a woman who couldn't have been much older than me, yelled at me, "sinner!" I was absolutely dumbfounded. "I didn't say anything. You don't know me," I responded. That was my first mistake. "Don't make contact. Just don't speak to them," I was often told by fellow students. The woman and her sidekick went on to ask me questions:

     "Are you a christian?"

     -"I was raised Catholic." (This one stumped them!)

     "Are you a virgin?"

     -"I don't know, man."

     "Ah-ha! Then you're a whore!"

     I walked away and into the library. I immediately got into line and ordered a $5 coffee drink because I deserved it, right? I checked my phone. It was 11:56 am. I was called a whore on March 15, 2013 by protestors protesting something, although I don't understand what. I was called a whore on this day before noon whilst wearing a sweater with a cat's face on it. 

Who run the world? Cats.