The Haunting (or How I Learned to Love the Spookiness): A Guest Post! May 23, 2008

By Guest Postin’ Friend
  
For the past couple months, I’ve been haunted. Not by regrets nor by ex-boyfriends, as Carrie Bradshaw would have you believe, but by an actual (meta)physical ghost. A fabulous ghost, but a ghost just the same.
 
I’ll explain.
 
I moved into my apartment last summer after two years in a large apartment building located in a not-so-great neighborhood. Increasing rent and claustrophobia made me search out new digs in a better neighborhood (with trees!), in a new building where I couldn’t hear everyone’s everythings, in a unit that would provide me some sort of window/balcony/yard/exposure to the elements. I found what I was looking for with relatively minimal stress and moved in on a slow July day.
 
I was (and am still) enjoying being closer to work and restaurants and shops and things. The closest thing I’d had in my old neighborhood to shopping was a discount furniture store run by sub-Saharan immigrants who placed strobe lights in the windows and offered financing on unicorn patterned rugs. I had moved on up.
 
Finally I could replace lunch hour runs to Forever 21 with more relaxed trips during my leisure time to smaller boutiques and other stores that didn’t print Bible verses on their bags.* “Now, when bitchy girls at Streeters give me ‘compliments’ on my earrings,” I thought to myself**, “I can truly be smug.” My dreams had come true! I decided to run out and purchase a pair of said smug-enabling earrings and found a silver pair that I wore a total of one whole time before I lost one.
 
This may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but I don’t tend to lose things. After all, I’m an only child who was taught to Be Responsible For Your Things. After tearing apart my apartment and still unable to turn up my missing accessory, I decided to chalk it up to fate. “You can’t expect to never lose anything,” I told myself. “Besides, earrings are small and easy to lose. Totally not your fault, plus it’s totally an excuse to buy more. You were totally meant to have a more fabulous pair. Totally.” 
 
So I did, and the result was the same. One missing silver earring, more excuses and self assurances that I am responsible. After all, I managed to keep track of about 239042342 pairs of gold earrings, right? I decided to just ignore the doubts and the urges to search for my missing earrings (because, dammit if I learned anything in physics class, it’s that they CAN’T BE NOWHERE) and just go on with my life.
 
And when the door leading to my back stairwell was found opened - twice mind you, despite having been secured with a chain lock - I told myself it was some weird air pressure thing. My landlord had been hammering and compressing and power tooling in the stairwell, surely that was the answer. (I know it doesn’t make sense, just go with it).
 
When my boyfriend said he saw something move out of the corner of his eye while he was leaving the bathroom, I said “Well that’s what you get for buying me a life size cutout of Elvis for Christmas.” (Damsel note: I have seen it, and it is fabulous. Pardon me, he is fabulous.)
 
“No no no, I think you’ve got a ghost, what about that time, with your door?” he said.
 
“PSHHHH don’t you know about air pressure??” I said.
 
I had moved on up! Plus my lease specifically said I was the only one allowed to live there.
 
So on and so forth for the next couple months. Until the other day, when I realized I hadn’t seen my favorite (white gold) necklace for a while. I didn’t think much of it, assuming it would be on the third shelf in my medicine cabinet like always. I decided to look for it, just to assure myself I hadn’t lost it. Only when I went to check the cabinet… it wasn’t there.
 
I became obsessed: maybe it’s in the kitchen maybe it fell into a drawer maybe it’s under the radiator no that’s stupid I just cleaned the floors I should check my medicine cabinet again oh! MAYBE IT’S IN THE COUCH no maybe I didn’t check the bathroom hard enough maybe I’LL JUST TAKE MY ENTIRE BED FRAME APART AND PUT IT BACK TOGETHER it could be anywhere.
 
No luck.
 
I started racking my brain trying to remember where I’d been and where I’d last seen it. I couldn’t believe I’d gone from losing singular earrings to now losing my first actual family heirloom. From a manic state of searching, I entered a low wallowing depression. I sat back on my necklace-free couch and it hit me. Maybe I did have a ghost. Maybe instead of showing up in pictures or my bathroom mirror or on my TV this ghost just liked jewelry and pranks. Maybe this ghost just really liked shiny silver things and/or hide and seek.
 
I decided that I’d take a chance and (Ed. note: Don’t judge me) talk to my ghost. I told him (or her or them?) that he (or she or they?) could keep my two missing earrings as long as I got my necklace back. Exhausted from moving every piece of furniture I own, I decided to give up and call it a night.
 
Here is the part where I do not shit you.
 
Not but three minutes later (time approximate), I opened the medicine cabinet to get some toothpaste and there, on the third shelf, was my necklace.
 
Now, I’m not saying it’s definitely a ghost; there are perfectly reasonable explainations (save my air pressure door opening theorem) for everything. My logical mind says I just shuffled things around in my searching frenzy. I just couldn’t find it until I was calm and really looking.
 
But honestly, there’s something reassuring about having a ghost.*** And when you think about it, it’s like having the best roommate ever, providing our interactions stay in the playful zone and never ever ever veer into the scary zone. Someone to keep me company at home, but no dirty dishes, no unwelcome friends coming over, no one to leave the lights on, and no one to fight over bills with.
 
Because at the end of the day, I’d much rather be the crazy lady who talks to her ghost than, say, the crazy lady with all the cats.
 
 
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*I don’t HATE the Bible or anything, I just prefer my discount shopping (and regular shopping for that matter) to be a little more… secular.
**This is the beginning of a lot of talking to myself, which I don’t normally do (at least not outloud). I swear.
***Note to the universe/my ghost friend: please don’t take my publication of this story as any kind of invitation of insult/reason to start scaring the shit out of me.
 

She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Friend (A Guest Post) March 3, 2008

For some time now, I’d secretly been hoping the Damsel’s boyfriend would sweep her away on another spur of the moment vacation, leaving her to frantically figure out how she’d get out of work and what she would pack and what she would tell her parents when they called and heard surf/fiesta music/other festive background sounds that are clearly out of place in a Chicago winter.
 
My plan was to sit around on gchat, help brainstorm plausible excuses to tell her boss and use my expensive engineering degree to figure out the maximum number of shoes she could pack in a carry-on suitcase (advice that clearly would be ignored come packing time). Then, in the middle of the excitement… I’d say wait! I just thought of something! What about your blog, Damsel? What about your readers?? I’m just going to throw this out, but I’dbewillingtowriteforyouwhatdoyouthink???
  
Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wait until their next spontaneous voyage; the Damsel has asked me to write a reoccuring guest column. And just who am I, you ask? Why, I am Bess, to the Damsel’s Nancy Drew. I am the Dr. Phil to her Oprah, the pink wig to her Britney, the “hell yeah” to her “anyone need a second rum runner?”
  
However, due to illness (maybe it’s not a good idea to run outside of the bar for a cigarette without a coat? especially when it’s only eight degrees? even when it’s your birthday and you get to do whatever you want?), I have no cohesive plan for this. Nor do I really have a cohesive plan for this post, but I digress (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I figure I’ll just breeze in each month or so, rant about something, maybe answer some non-identity revealing questions you have about the Damsel, and then sneak back out until I get bored or something.
  
So in an attempt to both get to know each other a little better and exercise my self-indulgent tendencies (this is a blog after all), here are a few fun facts about me:
  
-I hate snakes more than anything but am FASCINATED by stories about snakes eating things when hilarity does not ensue (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23364108/).

-In high school, I received a medal for being the smartest girl in the county.

-In college, two girls and I drank an entire bottle of Everclear before going out for the night. This is my greatest/stupidest drinking achievement (I say achievement because none of us went to the hospital) and I’m pretty sure that killed whatever part of my brain made me the smartest girl in the county.

-I have an arch enemy.  He uses the same Red Line stop that I do. I’ve seen him eat an entire block of cheese in the morning for breakfast.  Sometimes the only thing that keeps me from pushing him onto the tracks is thinking about how late the subsequent train delay would make me for work.

-Sometimes I say hi and wave to dogs on the street.
  
The end!*

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*Remember in middle school and high school when teachers would force you to write a different kind of essay everyday? Because ”you’ll need to know the difference between expository and demonstrative writing when you get to college?” And your teacher would hand you back your essay with little notes in red ink saying “work on transitions?” Well, I don’t want to accuse them of lying (which, for the record, they were), but I didn’t need any of that once I got to college, and as such, I’m not so good at “conclusions” and the like.  So until I come up with a post summarizing my lab results or detailing my risk assessment, you’re probably going to have to put up with some awkward phrases.  Thanks in advance for your patience.