The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

I’ve been carbo-loading for days (maybe weeks), so I think I’m finally ready for the big soccer game tomorrow. A steady diet of mashed potatoes, macaroni, pizza, beer, and cookies always serves me well in competitive situations. However there has been a fingernail or an almond or something stuck in my throat for 24 hours now, and it’s throwing me off. Every time I swallow it’s like getting bitten by a little bug on my esophagus. Perhaps during play tomorrow I won’t swallow; I will spit. There’s nothing that symbolizes victory more than a ponytailed, spitting girl who likes to run around and kick people in the nuts.

Wistar’s nightly news:

1. My cousin Mimi just got engaged.

2. My fiction class thinks I’m gross. I took the criticism very well in the classroom tonight, but now I want to curl up and die. Sometimes words take a while to sink in. Words like “Wistar, I felt like your story was bludgeoning me.”

3. I am going to become an expert on amputation. Does anyone have a friend or relative who has had something amputated recently? I am specifically looking for information about transtibial prostheses.

4. I booked a hotel room in Williamsburg for Homecoming weekend. I hope there is more going on at W&M than the usual football game, a capella group reunions, and pancake-eating. Please come hang out with me at the back of the Green Leafe. It has been five years since graduation and my alcohol tolerance has gone way down. You might glean some slurred wisdom about what life has taught me in the intervening years about failure, suffering, and the proper way to apply makeup.

I thank everyone who wrote to ask about my grandmother’s health. I thank everyone who commented on my blog, even though I did not respond. I am thankful that my grandma was on the rehab hall of the nursing facility, and not the feces hall, where old men groaned in wheelchairs and ran into my shins from time to time when they wanted me to take them back to their rooms. I was looking at the phone book and the old man crashed into me with his desperate request. “You can’t take him,” said the nurse. “If he’s in his room, he will try to get into his bed and hurt himself.” I asked him where he lived and he emphatically spelled out his last name, like I had a Rolodex that would tell me everything. I wish I did. I knew nothing about the Alzheimer’s, the senility. I knew nothing about my grandmother’s roommate, who had to be fed by a nurse and who frequently sent her oatmeal back for being too cold. I am excited because my friends Jason and Jessie are getting married this weekend. Life seems to be picking up again. I started a class tonight with a young teacher who has funny stories to tell. She also inspires me because she is a writer and a waitress. I am less than a waitress. I aspire to be a waitress. If only someone would support me in this dream. I like to bring people food. I am planning my trip back to Williamsburg for my five-year Homecoming. I hope to run into people, and to show them that I am no longer a wreck. I hope to watch some bad football while drunk. Maybe football will be my new sport, after doing laundry. I hope that ex-boyfriends will be amazed by me. I am putting sea algae on my nails to grow them. I am thinking of condensing my entire novel to 50 pages so I can figure out what’s important in it. I wonder if I am getting too wide for striped shirts. I will not put any more poetry on my blog for a while. I didn’t really mean it as poetry; I meant it as the transcription of a dream. It’s scary putting yourself out there. I am starting a bridge club for my grandmother, to replace her weekly group of card-playing widows in Georgia. Darren and I watched some soccer tonight at Zinc - Barcelona versus Lyon. There were some loud French persons sitting across from us at the bar but I didn’t get up the courage to ask them my carefully rehearsed questions in French. I told myself I didn’t want to distract them from the athletics, but in actuality I was afraid because I didn’t know how to apologize for speaking terrible French in French. I ate some of Darren’s mashed potatoes though. Good night.

Shit, maybe I should have gone out tonight after all.

There is always microwave popcorn to put an end to all of this jibber jabber. Put something in the microwave and I will be distracted forever. Same goes for ice in a glass. I am going to sign out. This is enough for tonight.

Does everyone hate me? Is this a mistake? Should I be doing this? Am I being paranoid? Is this one too many? I’m not talking about the drinks. I’m talking about the revelations. Is this going to lead to divorce? Disownment? Amputation? I worry sometimes. Isn’t that what bloggers do?

She knelt down beside his chair and asked him about Anne Carson. “Do you want to go to the bathroom with me?”

“No,” he said.

“Oh my God,” she said, when I was paying her check by the bar. “Is he afraid? Did I scare him?”

“Yes,” I said. “Next time, less makeup, less poetry.”

I know that when you are in the water for a long time, your body’s soft spots get all wrinkly. For instance, if you soak in a pool for an hour, your toes look like Jabba the Hutt’s. BUT. Here I am, only a few drinks into the night, and I look at my knuckles and they are OLD. Like crow’s feet and cow udder old. Is that because I have been soaking so long in stupid conversations? What is it? I feel like I have come back home much prettier and smoother than this. I hope this wrinkly blood doesn’t flow into my face.

The short nights out are the best. You’re still lucid enough to blog, but you’re drunk enough to be blogtarded. I passed up the after-party. The guys retreated to play video games, the girls didn’t know they were done drinking (which means they’ll be hooking up tonight), and I was all white & rose’d out at the French bar, looking for my next entry. On my way out the door to Boheme, I almost ran back inside because the outdoors smelled like peanut butter. It was the first time I’d been outside today. “Peanut butter!” I thought. “I have to blog about this.” It was all I could do to put myself in my little car and tear my brains away from the internet. I wonder if I’m going to link my family. That’s the big question. I am already holding back, and I just got my blog today. I have a picture of my mom taped to my hard drive, and she says, “Don’t write about that. Don’t write about the gross stuff. Your grandmother will read this.” She is better than all the other moms. She hasn’t had the Botox like them, even though she’s naturally prettier. Tonight I was talking to the proprietor of the bar. “I pictured your boyfriend as more flamboyant,” he said. What does that mean? Does that mean Darren should be wearing leather pants and riding a motorcycle? I only used that example because of the overload of Wild Hogs DVD commercials of late. By the way, my older brother just rode a motorcycle to Nova Scotia. This is a good opportunity to tell you about my brothers and sisters:

Brad: 28. Motorcyle enthusiast. In medical school. Handsome. I’m actively looking for his future wife.

Jack: 24. Lives in Jackson, Wyoming, which means he smokes a lot of pot. He also runs a radio show. His DJ name is “The Body.”

Margaret: 21. Manages awesome bands. Her first just signed to Mercury Records. She is the Big Time.

Stephen: 18. Recruited by Loyola to play D1 lacrosse. The ultimate sweetheart jock and my baby brother. Cuddly as a kitten.

Fan letters accepted here.

My parents will get their own blog entry, God bless them.

He went to a guy movie with some guys, and I am taking this opportunity to write about intestines. I realize this is not a great introduction to me, the chief blogger of my blogosphere. I am home on a Friday night, geeking out, fascinated by being published in the wilds of the internet. I get disappointed a lot because my mind leaps ahead. This blog is my big break. People are going to write me love letters. How do I stop myself from doing this? I’ve watched two special interest movies in the past month. The first was Carmen Electra’s Striptease Workout. I have never felt less sexy in my life. I had to push the coffee table aside, crowded with all its New Yorkers, Discover Magazines, Wired Magazines, Chinese takeout debris, and nonstick coasters, in order to prance around on the living room rug in workout gear, not realizing that every girl in the video was wearing an outfit. Who works out in knee-highs? Who works out with her finger in her mouth? I gave up when I realized Carmen couldn’t do anything in one take. There were more cuts in that video than ___blah blah funny metaphor__. But this brings me in a roundabout way to my point. The second special interest video that I watched this month was The Secret. This movie was forced on me by two women in my writer’s group as well as my college friend who writes a sex advice column in Barcelona. The Secret is basically the new god of good parking places and cash money. You envision what you want and the universe provides you with it. So from The Secret’s point of view, I am not being ridiculous by believing this blog will provide me with love letters. But from my boyfriend’s POV (to use writerspeak), The movie was decent and dudes are cooler than chicks and you did what with your evening? So I’m going to quit lusting for a blog audience and envision myself leaving the house and finding wine and friends, and not having a hangover tomorrow. It’s better to start with small, manageable goals, not with winning the lottery. And I have to write lots of entries on top of this so no one will be lazy or bored enough to skip all the way back. The fresher stuff will be better, I promise.