Make Me Love You:
Public, Part One
Public, Part Two
Private

So.

How is everyone?

Good...good.

I think I'm a little less sleepy...now I'm just searching for gainful employment again. Which is always fun. Actually, I got really good at it before signing on with the whole Olympics gig, that is, good at it if you don't count how damned long it took me to get a job. But I had the whole resume/cover letter/places to look/how to apply/what to do in an interview thing down, man.

I got offers and turned them down. Because I was young and foolish. But now, now I know better. Take it, bucko. No time to be picky in a soft economy and besides, working is always better than not working, I don't care what anyone says.

If you don't work, not working isn't nearly as interesting as it seems it would be.

I wanted to tell all of you that:

I am no longer afraid to drive. Nope. I just get in my little automobile and go. Need a ride? Cause I can give you one.

Also, during the Olympics, there was this one day that I got really frustrated and I ran like hell. It was just stressful. You know. Anyway, I decided I had to get out of the trailer with fake wood pine paneling which was really all I saw for the duration of the games, with my radio constantly bleating out my name.

No, I am not bitter.

Again, anyway, I went for a little walk, around the Olympic Square (which was really not very interesting) and then up to the shopping district that's up there, and I laughed in a holier-than-thou way at the people lined up outside of Roots to buy those berets, and I was just generally having a good time because it was finally warm and because I didn't have my radio.

As I was coming down a little alley just on the outside of the square, there was this man coming toward me who was carrying something very, very large on his back. I have dicussed before how my eyes should, by rights, just be little glass orbs in my face for all the help they give me, so I squinted at him to try to figure out what was going on there, and that's when I realized that everyone around me was moving away from him and sort of looking away and stuff.

But me, I still couldn't tell what was going on, so I watched him until he got close enough and I realized it was a cross. An enormous cross. And he was carrying it over his shoulder, up the street toward Olympic Square.

My first thought was, They're never going to let him in with that thing, and then I realized I, too, should probably look away, mainly because he looked all red and sweaty and something about him just made me uncomfortable. When you see somebody carrying stuff and being all sweaty and stuff, generally your first reaction is to offer some help. "Dude, man, can I help you with that?"

And in this instance, it hardly seemed appropriate. And really, I don't think that's what he was going for.

He was going at a fairly good clip, though, and when he'd gotten pretty close to me I glanced over again and realized that he had attached wheels to the bottom of the cross.

I won't get into why I found this to be simultaneously offensive and ridiculous, but I will say this: he may have hit the tree, but babies, he entirely missed the mark.

Up until this point he had just been walking along, rolling his load up toward the security point, sort of looking around at everyone but not really doing anything.

Let me just say here that I inherited some sort of really bizarre magnetic field from my mother, this force that is irrestable to freaks, weirdos, degenerates, what-have-you. I don't know why, I only know that these people are drawn to me like nobody's business. They will pick me out of a crowd of a thousand to latch onto. This man said nothing to anyone else in his entire trip up the alley, but as soon as he was about a foot away from me, he whirled suddenly - which made me pee just a little - and shouted in a half-angry, half-hysterical tone (sort of like the voice mothers use when their children are about to wander too close to large, slathering animals): "Jesus loves you! You're special to him!"

I half expected him to tack onto the end, "Ahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!"

I didn't respond, but I did look at him. I think I must have looked really put out. I mean, I was already irritated with him, and then he had to go and yell at me. It doesn't matter how I feel or what I think of what he actually had to say, the point is somehow, I didn't think the contents of his message quite fit with the way he delivered it.

He looked back at me with this really weird, smug look on his face, like, nya nya nya. Jesus loves you, nanny nanny boo boo.

I wanted to deck a lot of people during the Games, and believe me, he was one of them.

The rest of the day I kept hoping the guards searched him really, really hard going through security. And that they took away his stupid, fake, offensive cross-on-wheels.

But I'm not bitter any more. Now I hope they let him keep it. Just so long as he doesn't yell any more.

Because I'm much more benevolent than I used to be.

Try me. I'm super packed with benevolence. And I taste like honey, too.

Okay babies, I'll talk to you later. I'm going to take a bash at some cover letters.

Wish me all kinds of luck, because I'll probably need it,

-Mlle R