2001-05-17 || 10:53 a.m.

|| flying under the radar in spring of ninety-eight ||

one and a half months before i graduated from college i quit my job at the bakery

(the bakery on ocean ave: muffins and danishes and hot bread early in the morning, the heat from the oven making me wipe my forehead whenever i passed it, singing motown with the chinese bakers in the back room, getting in trouble for laughing too loud with customers in the store, inventing espresso drinks, ephemeral milk foam compacted in paper cups, coming home armed with bags of muffins and the smell of espresso in everything-my clothes my hair on my skin, giving out free mochas to aline and michael whenever they'd come by, learning russian from george, the old man who tinkered with the oven and poured generous amounts of rum into his morning coffee, sitting on muni with him after work, his repeating the word 'beautiful' over and over in russian until it became uncomfortable)

and i became terribly poor. i sold so many records, all of which deserve little vinyl headstones in some well-manicured garden on a grassy hill with speakers in the trees blasting music from spent and lois and scenic vermont and some velvet sidewalk and all those forgotten ska bands. michael and i only ate el farolito burritos and corn chips and oranges from the corner market. i packed up a suitcase and attached it to the back of the vespa with rope and m drove me to the haight where i stood at a counter as blue haired tattooed girls picked through my clothes with finicky fingertips, holding up my sweaters and dresses and cowboy shirts to the light

(i fell down a flight of stairs in that plaid shirt. i had sex on a couch with 'charlie and the chocolate factory' on the tv in the background with that skirt up around my waist. my mum bought that sweater. see that stain right there? that's when the hem of that dress got caught in my bike chain. but there's no tear. somebody would buy that.)

and it was all very humiliating, putting price tags on my things and selling them, asking my mum for money and picking the checks out of the mail with guilty fingers, not being able to pay for things, spending more and more time on mission street in those stores that sell alarm clocks and toilet paper and plastic purses and sponges all for under five dollars. but it was also very satisfying. purging so much of what weighed me down, putting the couch out on the street, ending up with extra packing boxes, white spots on the wall where pictures used to hang, feeling myself get lighter and lighter until it was time to float back down to southern california completely emptied and scoured clean.

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