Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Ever since I finally made my Real World Seattle gif, which you can see here, people have been encouraging me to reminisce about other seasons of the Real World –– the prime ones, mostly, like San Francisco and New Orleans, which was an excellent one, what with Julie the Mormon and Kelly who ended up marrying SCOTT WOLF OMG and that enormous beautiful mansion they lived in.  Oo-wee!  And as my friend JW pointed out this morning, they mostly got along, too, which is far more interesting to watch than the squabbles and bathroom hook-ups and declarations of murderous hatred.  Anyway, JW was telling me all about his obsession with Melissa, about whom I had completely forgotten, and about how he reads her blog, so I Googled it and I just spent basically the past thirty minutes blacking out on the Tumblr of that tiny Filipino princess, who apparently has converted to Judaism (mazel tov!) and is married to the guitarist from Glassjaw and was super super pissed about Casey Anthony getting exonerated.  And guess what?  She’s also hilarious.

A very young person on Twitter just said he’d like to start “a blog or something with just words.” I instantly felt old as shit recalling the days I’d sit in my studio apartment in LA putting up “web entries” before I knew it was even called “web logging,” then shortened to just “blogging.” In the year 2000, y’all. I kept that blog going into 2009. Just words. One place. Old school PrincessMelissa. It had exactly three looks in nine years. There were the icons of my paintings on the original. Then there was the splash page where you click on the sofa to come in, like “Have a seat and read with me.” And then there was the tiny PrincessMelissa logo all over with the tag line “Them chickens is ash and I’m lotion.” People really liked that last one because it had font control! Make this bigger, wow!

I want the old school PrincessMelissa!  I could read that shit for years.  Also, at one point she says she heard that JWoww and Snooki were looking to buy a house in Long Island so she tweeted at them that her house was for sale and would be perfect for them, which sounds like something I would do (except replace Tweet with “write long missive in microscopic handwriting and send via messenger pigeon.”)

Today, I received an email invite to a fancy party to sponsor a ballet school.  I received this invite because once, in college, when I thought for about 5 seconds that I might end up being a socialite, I went to a similar party for this ballet school, which is known for attracting chichi patronage.  I also went to the party in college because I was attracted to ballet and ballerinas because of the delicate, graceful aspect of the dance, which I thought maybe I would be able to develop by simple proximity.  (It didn’t work.)

Anyway, this invite, like all the others, listed at the side of the page the names of the people on the junior committee.  What this is, exactly, or what being on the junior committee of any philanthropic organization entails, I’ve never been able to figure out.  Still, though, I always scan the names to see if I recognize any.  Why I do this, I’m not entirely sure.  It could be that if I recognize one, it makes me feel somewhat closer to that fancy version of New York I once believed in –– the one in which lithe women lift up their gowns to hail cabs and the soundtrack is always fluttering laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses –– or it could be that I like to test exactly how entrenched I am in this city by seeing if I can pick out someone I know in any given situation.  It could be both.

On this invitation, I immediately recognized one of the names listed.  EC and I were in a group therapy together when I was in college and she was in high school.  This has to be almost nine or ten years ago.  I think we only overlapped by a few sessions, as my attendance at this group was sporadic over the five years or so I participated, so while I don’t have many memories of her, what I do have is crystalline.  She was Turkish, with a deep blond hair and a touch of olive in her skin.  Her disposition was sweet.  I remember the therapist mentioned that her father had recently died, and when I said I was sorry, her eyes welled up with tears.  I remember her saying that she drank Frappuccinos often because it was easier for her to get calories in that way.  I think she may have gone to a rehab program in Arizona, but I’m not 100% sure on that.

If I were to see this girl on the street, I would probably recognize her, but I doubt she would even give me a second glance, and why should she?  We met a handful of times almost a decade ago.  Since then, I learned from Googling her, she’s been to college and gotten her MFA.  She has a job at a big deal real estate firm.  She’s involved in high profile philanthropy projects.  There’s a picture of her on Patrick McMullan’s website.  In short, she’s had a life, a real one, so it seems, and probably, hopefully, any space that I took up in her brain has been taken over by someone or something more important, some relic of a better time.  If the situations were reversed and she saw my name on a list or an invite somewhere, would she spend 20 minutes writing about me in a kind of quasi-memorial?  Or would she just glance over my nomenclature and think, “Just another girl on a board somewhere?”

Normally an invite like this I’d just toss in my e-trash can, but I’ve left it so far in my inbox.  I considered using her real name here, in hopes that maybe she has a Google Alert out on herself and would find this and get in touch, but I figured that might not be nice as everyone deserves to keep their pasts private if they so choose.  Maybe she doesn’t want to think about the time she spent sitting on floor cushions in a therapist’s office crying to a group of girls about the horrors of consumption.  I even thought about paying the $85 –– throwing the money away, essentially –– and going alone to the party and watching everyone air-kiss.  I’d just stand by myself, scanning the crowd for her.  When I spotted her, I’d linger in her line of vision to see if she recognized me.  If she didn’t, maybe I’d rush up and ask, “Do you remember me?  Tell me: are you okay now?  Are you happy?  Because I’ve been worried.”