I'm standing in the middle of a market, wearing my dress slacks and fancy sweater when she drops the bomb on me:

"There's just no way, Jon," Caitlin says frankly.

My world stops.



"Oh."


"I just don't have the money," she speaks quickly, but I'm not hearing so well.


"Oh."


"I want to.. I really do," her voice begins to trail off in my head. My friend, Stefan, who accompanied me to a fundraiser dinner begins to call out my name. I stand still.


"Yeah."


"My dad said he could help me out at the end of March, but that would be too late by then...," she tells me. She's worried. I can hear it in her voice.


"Oh."


"Jon? Are you alright?"


" ... " I don't answer.


"...?" She lets the question hang in the air.

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"... What about the people? How do they compare --- here, and there?"

"They're different. I remember when a day that I went to the store when my mom and I first came here. People would just start smiling at us and say hello--- that stuff doesn't happen in California; people aren't as friendly"

The more I thought about her words, the more I agreed. Granted, there are some Texans that have been mean to me, and some westerners that I hope to see in the midnight hour(anyonecatchthat?), but the majority of the people I've met down here are generally sweet people.

Kathleen, the woman with whom I conversed, grew up in both Austin and the Bay Area. I saw her sitting outside beneath on a stone slab beneath a tree, watching people go by.

"I love my state," I tell her with my eyes fixated on the sunny blue sky above. "Maybe I should just stay here..."







I remained silent. She says that people are friendly here, they smile at you and thought it was weird. in california people keep to themselves. A conversation I had with Camille and Jessica about ne wyork made them seem worse.


Maybe I should stick to the Great State of Texas.

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"What do you want to do?" Benjamin asks from the backseat of Vee's car. I'm riding shotgun beside the woman with whom I spent the night before.

"I wan--.. " I paused and turned my head to look at him. Then at her. Then out the window.

I turned into DMX and yelled at the two of them: "How many times do I have to tell you cats I have no friends!!!" I opened the door, then slammed it shut when I got out and walked home...






okay, not really.

"..That's personal," I say while staring straight ahead.
"Fair enough," he says before changing the subject..

I'm close to them. I'm closer to Ben than I am any other man, outside of my roomie Mattyoo, in this town. Ienjoy his co mpany and we hang out on a regular basis.

Vee... I love the woman. We had another dinner date a few nights ago that was followed by hours of laying in her car and watching the stars.




And yet...
... yeah ...



I've been never one to buckle under pressure--- mostly because I've never felt any. As a wise, dilated individual named Jon would coyly state, "Hard to feel peer pressure when you have no peers."

But now... I'm feeling it. Heavily.


This road I've chosen is not fueled by my own avarice. I'm not driven by the glory, nor fame.. yet.. I fear that I'll have to see things even more in black and white than I already do. Right and wrong, good and bad, nutang and facebook/myspace/everyotheronlinething..

Maybe she's right. Perhaps I should just write..

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"You're one in a million, Jonathan," she confesses while we lay in my car.


Vee was in the middle of one of her anti-capitalism/anti-american/ i wish I were still living in Canada-rants when I heard my name escape from between her lips. I looked to her and studied her profile in the starlight before speaking.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean..."

She's under the impression that I'm an intellectual and that I'm nice to people. She even told me that she likes spending time with me and enjoys the hours on end we spend laying in my car together. She thinks I'm talented --- admirable, even.



She doesn't know me that well.

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http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1690170_1692420,00.html

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�Let me warn you, Jonathan,� the woman who taught me how to write began. �This path you�re going down� it has a high burn-out rate. Many people can�t handle the emotional toll it takes---� She stopped.

Moments before, I poured out my heart to this woman whom I barely know. I revealed that I�ve always wanted to write literature excerpts for standardized tests and that those authors were my childhood heroes. Then I told her why I wanted to be a lawyer.

Wait.. No I didn�t. Few people know why I want to be a lawyer.. But I told her what I wanted to do with my law degree: prosecute child molesters and rapists.

�People can�t do that sort of thing for too long.. And don�t expect to make a lot of money off of it either---�

�Thanks,� I interrupt with a faint smile. She turns to me and, shrugs her shoulders, and continues.

�Having said that� it�s a job that someone has to do and I�m glad that you want to--- but.. Why?�

� . . . If not me, then who?�

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I forgot how to write.


Well.

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As the four people who read this blog can probably attest to, I am a tutor.

Kind of.

I'm actually a "Supplemental Instructor." I conduct tri-weekly study sessions for roughly an hour for a specific course that I've previously taken. This semester I'm an "SI" for a Geology class... but this entry is about last semester. About ..


Actually, I'm going to write this entry another day. If I remember. Maybe later tonight.

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