by Sharon Olds

When my mom was like nine, she thought that clowns were born that way and she was scared that when she had kids they would be born clowns. Years after telling us this she now says that she was right all along and had three clowns. But anyway, she thought that clowns were born with the white faces and red noses and big feet or something. But what i just realized is how funny it would be if clowns were actually born that way. And then the payoff, after the doctor shows the baby to the mother saying, “Congratulations, you’ve had a clown!” the doctor starts pulling on the umbilical cord like a handkerchief out of the mother’s uterus. And it keeps going and going. I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m drunk.

Yuk yuk yuk.

so when talking to a friend on the phone and they say, “oh, your blog was funny when you said so and so.” it always makes me stumble. first i stammer and blink hard about ten times. then i realize there’s been probably a full minute of silence and that’s awkward. blink. reset. then i make things worse by rushing to fill the silence. “oh you read that? ha. ha.” then i blush. hard. like, as in, you could hold a ripe tomato up to my face and you wouldn’t know where i end and the tomato begins. doesn’t matter if the entry they read was embarrassing or not, i still go red. just because i prefer pretending i’m all alone over here. it makes it easier to write. but also? i write some embarrassing stuff on here! sometimes. i mean, not always. i’m not crazy or anything. not totally. but sometimes i indulge in some things i probably shouldn’t say.

doesn’t mean i’ll stop. i’m just sayin’.

annnnyway. i’m not going anywhere with this. just thinking me thinks. you know, in case i happen to say something really humiliating. you’ll know and understand. i think i’m all alone over here. and, oh yeah, bg, this is for you:

also while surfing i decided to hit some sites i used to visit frequently, but no longer do because i just don’t have the time. or they bore me. or whatever. here’s the thing that struck me about that. they still bore me. i still don’t have the time. i don’t really know what led me there in the first place, but one of the things that used to sort of interest me (for lack of good content, i guess) was the blogroll. i was fascinated by who they linked to and why. i would click their links, following the trail of breadcrumbs to their natural conclusion to see if the original weblog owner had anything in common with these people they had chosen to link to or if it was simply networking, vanity, whatever. look, when you suffer long bouts of insomnia you get pretty desperate for something to pass the time. now, going back after a long break i find a few sites that have drastic changes in their blogroll. this makes a curious sort of person like me wonder. maybe i’m suspicious. maybe i’m nosy. maybe my boredom causes me to create scintillating and scandalous scenarios to relieve the tepid banality of surfing sites i’m not really interested in. for instance? i can’t tell you that! they might be looking right now! they’d be all like, “gah! you wicked girl! how dare you spill all our dirty secrets on the internet? the dirty secrets you learned about…on…the…uh, internet.” admittedly, it doesn’t make sense for them to get angry at me, but this is the internet and there are crazies on here. i don’t know if you know that or not. crazies on the internet are the worst sort of crazies. they’ll eff your ess word up, man.

listen to me. i sound awfully egotistical. like they’re even reading this. crazies or not. they certainly didn’t count *me* as a member of their blogroll, so i can’t say why i would even think for one minute that they would be here now.

—

you’re not are you?

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(now, i’m kind of freaking out here. nobody move. i’ll tell you the truth: the internet scares me. lil bit.)

sorry. i get a little worked up sometimes. anyway, i’ve decided. i can’t give you specifics. but generally, i just wonder, you know?

like, maybe, generally speaking, say this guy had a pretty popular weblog. not like A-list, celebrity, self-indulgent, quit his day job and move to Hollywood popular, but, you know, a lot of hits a day and a minimum of fifty and as many as a hundred and fifty or more comments on each post; no matter how insipid and boring. big, long, healthy blogroll. say he was to meet a couple girls that were on his blogroll, a couple girls who had also linked to him from their sites. i’m not naming any names or anything. but say he did. and he blogged about it, the lead up to the meeting, how much he liked them, etc. and these girls also blogged about it and commented on his posts and vice versa until the cows come home. it was a great big tangled web of links and track backs and posts. everything seemed really, really, really h!a!p!p!y! for all of them. the guy, the girl, the other girl. they were all such great friends. according to the posts, the comments, the numbers. but NOW when i go to his site, both of their links are gone from his blogroll and his link is gone from theirs and his comments have dwindled to like, maybe ten. i don’t care. i mean, if i didn’t remember to check my stats once in a blue moon and went by comments alone you’d think anji was my only reader. so i know comments alone don’t mean anything. but still, something happened, yeah? if they aren’t going to tell me — and believe me, i looked. i realize i’ve not been to the site in probably a year so i had a LOT of archives to go through — then i’m simply going to have to fill in the blanks myself. and those blanks are not going to be pretty after i’m done filling them in, let me tell ya. because i likes me a good juicy scandal when i’m bored. i mean, generally speaking, of course. something happened at that meeting, i betcha. something went terribly awry that cause bad blood and now he’s odd man out. off the blogrolls. no longer the golden child of the interweb. no one will comment on you now, buddy! we’ll ruin you! it’s so seedy and delicious! too bad i don’t know the details. it would make his site so much more interesting.

btw, the people on my links list? they’re there because they interest me and i like reading them and i passionately feel as though the best way to live life is to force my preferences on people around me. it makes me happy. if one of those links should happen to disappear it’s probably because we had a mad, torrid love affair in which a lot of lube and probably a small animal or three was involved. also: drugs. and possibly a blade, masking tape, rope and some sort of vinyl. you can bet on that. it gets awkward after that. too awkward to maintain a “blog” relationship.

either that or they decided not to blog anymore so i was literally forced to remove their link. but that first thing sounds like so much more fun.

and finally: i have a confession to make: apparently, i’m quite stupid. and not very observant. but i won’t go backwards. i’ll own what i’ve done. something FINALLY dawned on me today. speaking of blogrolls on boring sites, i was looking at my own links list today and i visited Trouble‘s site again to see if he was back yet. i finally saw what i apparently missed for the last eight months. he posted back in freaking August saying he was moving house and i actually commented saying i wouldn’t help him because blahblahblah. i don’t know. i tried to say something clever. but okay, here’s the stupid thing. i thought he was being literal. i missed the line above that saying he was moving his site to WordPress. which, good for him. i’ve been using WP for a few years now and i love it. but i feel like the biggest moron on the planet because every time i went to check to see if he updated yet i saw that the post was the same and navigated away, still missing the link to his new site. i did wonder what was up. i wondered if he was ever coming back. i refused to take his link down. the last link i had to remove from my list didn’t come down until the 404 error message finally came up, assuring me that he wasn’t coming back to post. never, ever. there was no such message on trouble’s page. hope springs eternal.

it wasn’t until today that i actually paused half a second longer before closing the window that i saw it. so i admit it. i’m a maroon. but hooray! trouble is back! and he has a new site! sort of. i mean, he didn’t actually GO anywhere and the new site has been around since August. but it’s new to me. and now i have a LOT of reading to catch up on. and i should probably get my brain looked at it. it’s clearly leaking cells at an alarmingly rapid rate. : /

the men all have riding mowers or tractors. the heavy duty types because we’re not talking about sissy lawns here. i’ve got nearly three acres of land with grass so high i was afraid to let kaileb outside to play for fear of losing him. so two of my male neighbors decided what with me being a single mom and everything they were going to come over and “tend to that lawn” of mine today.

which, you know, was awfully nice. and i don’t mean that in a pervy way. the tending to the lawn thing. in case you were thinking that. because, when i reread it, that’s the first thing *i* thought of.

i’m just not used to all this country living yet, i guess. i still have a hard time just letting the boys run all over the countryside building forts in the backforty with all the neighbor’s kids. i can’t get used to the idea that sometimes they’ll be running around with a squirt gun and sometimes it’ll be a bow. as in a bow and arrow. with actual arrows. and they’ll be shooting bales of hay. did i mention they’ll be using actual arrows?

sometimes they’ll be riding their bikes around in circles in someone’s pasture. but sometimes they’ll be riding their bikes in someone’s pasture doing “mega-wicked cool” jumps and tricks off this mound of dirt someone just had delivered. this 9 million feet of dirt. and when they come home i have to hose them down with the garden hose to a) allow them to walk through the house to the shower and b) make sure i’ve got the right kid.

all this is well and good. i did the same kind of stuff when i was growing up in south carolina. i was a tomgirl who scraped my knees on a regular basis and shot cans off the fence with a twenty two. i can hardly expect two growing boys to sit at home and play with dolls. i wouldn’t want them to. it’s just that we went from a small two bedroom duplex in the city where no one ever spoke to us or even acknowledged our existence, to a spacious three bedroom on three acres in the country where the entire street knows our name. which is odd considering in the city we were all slammed right up against each other. you could throw a rock in any direction and hit someone’s front door. but out here you have to walk a good bit just to be able to see the front porch of your nearest neighbor. so the logic escapes me. it takes some getting used to, this familiarity.

so the guys come over today, unannounced with their tractor and their weedeater and their beer and they just proclaim that we will be doing some yard work. what could i do? the lawn was beginning to take on a life of its own and i had no other options. it was the first decent weather we had had in a while and they were offering to do it for free. so i put my back into it and started working. work, i don’t mind. we worked until the sun went down. the boys ran back and forth between our house and the neighbors and i adjusted to being told what to do by a sweaty man on a tractor who was neither my father nor my lover.

however.

as i was going through the yard picking up toys hidden in the grass discarded by poe and/or the boys my neighbor climbs off the tractor and goes over in between two trees, opens his fly, and PEES. (!!!!) he peed on my tree. what does THAT mean? was he marking his territory? did he just have to go really bad? was it the beer? was he sweaty and dirty and didn’t want to trouble me by asking to use my restroom? was he staking a claim? what the helen of troy was that all about?

it’s not that i’m a prude. i’m not. not by any stretch of the imagination. urinate all you want. urinate until the cows come home. i’m not even that concerned about a semi-strange man whipping his cock out in front of me. i’ve seen them before. they’re nothing to write home about. but come on. i tried to avert my eyes. i turned and starting walking the other way. i pretended to be looking for rocks and general what-have-you in the other direction. i know that he knows that i knew. he didn’t seem that fussed about it. just got back on his tractor and started mowing again.

okay. so this is the thing: i decided i don’t care. the three acres? they look great. all around the house is beautiful and back to being ship-shape and lush and green and i got some great tips for the garden. i could have paid someone to come out and do it for me. but it would have cost an arm and a leg and it feels like cheating. these guys came over and helped me do it for free and all it cost me was a …well i had to let him pee on my tree and do what they told me for a few hours. it’s my land, my responsibility. so i guess if i’m going to be a grown up i have to pick my battles.

to be sure this never would have happened in the city.

also: people kind of remind me of shiny new toys. when you first get them they’re all exciting and fun to look at and explore. but after you examine it a little further and discover the chips and tarnished surface, you’re horribly disappointed. and sometimes you love the toy anyway because it’s a wicked cool toy and it’s yours and you love it in spite of all its flaws.

but sometimes those flaws, when the rosey glow of newness wears off, when the chinks in the armor begin to manifest, those flaws make you think twice about that person toy and you just want to get as far away from it as you possibly can and never ever play with it again.

you know, just saying.