Jelly Donut

Someone brought in donuts today, and I scored the only jelly one in the box. It was pretty good, and went quite well with my diet coke. The only thing that would've made this breakfast more memorable would've been a cigarette, and I haven't done that in years. Ironically, in the days of a cigarette (or two. or three) and a diet coke for breakfast, I weighed about 20 pounds less than I weigh now. How does that work? Well, I was also about 7 or 8 years younger. I was working in Beverly Hills ("the land of milk and honey" - I was listening, non-stop, to Blind Melon and Radiohead, and reading Philip Roth's "The Human Stain" for the first time. I still had the Celica. Stewart Copeland was less old, and very good looking, as usual, of course) at Rizzoli Bookstore, for an inept manager who surrounded herself with staff who were quite possibly criminally insane. The one good thing about that job was the weekly trip to either Rite Aid for Thrifty ice cream, or 31 Flavors, with Bo, when we'd ditch everybody and disappear for a half hour or so. We did have fun, in spite of the manager and her posse of nutjobs.

Anyway, so I'm sitting there, eating my donut, which, by the way, the donut-to-jelly ratio was skewed in favor of donut - I was disappointed, but only just a little; when my co-worker stopped by my desk. She started telling me a long rambling story about the bagel she had the other day from this place called The Bagelry, which she bought in the morning but didn't eat until the evening (dry. She eats her bagels dry. Which, I must say, gives you quite an insight into this woman's hang-ups). It was a fascinating story full of rich color and vibrant characters. Anyway, her story reminded me of going to Dana Parmet's house after school in the 8th grade, and hanging out in her kitchen. In the 8th grade I possessed pretty much the same skills in the kitchen I have now: can opener, popcorn, etc., but I rarely had the need to make anything more complicated than a bologna and cheese sandwich (the thought of which grosses me out now. Let's not think of all the bologna I've eaten in my lifetime - !). Dana, on the other hand, had more experience in the kitchen. Her specialty was bagel pizzas. I think maybe I ate my very first bagel, ever, in her presence, in her kitchen, in the 8th grade, sitting there at the table waiting for her brother Barry (on whom I had a crush) to come home (another crush in the 8th grade: Eric Taylor, which had started the year before. Eric was tall and funny and blond and blue eyed and beautiful, and walked by my homeroom every day on his way to class. Informing me of Eric Taylor Sitings was a fun game for my friends, who claimed to see him everywhere. I was less lucky. Barry was short and brunette and funny and sarcastic and smart; he looked a little bit like Jason Bateman. Eric looked like my own personal Jesus).

Dana's bagel pizzas got us through quite a few afternoons. It was a weird relationship, mine and Dana's. She was a year younger than me, and sometimes kind of got on my nerves, but she could be a lot of fun, and really, she was a very nice person. I'm sure my crush on her brother wasn't her favorite part about me, either. She and her brother were in band, but Barry, a year older than me, was in high school. Dana played the flute, like me. She and I would work on stuff together, but I wasn't really qualified to be her tutor. I liked those moments, though. I think I did help her a little, but she didn't seem to be into it as much as I was. The playing, I mean. I think she liked the tutoring. Barry was quite a musician, and a bit of a sarcastic jerk, but as the years went on, we did become sort of friends. Unfortunately, I think I did to Dana in the 11th grade what my friend Shira did to me in the 6th, and I sort of stopped hanging out with her, for no good reason. While Shira ditched me to actually run with the actual popular kids, I think I thought my other friends and I were destined to "become" cool the minute we became seniors. I had a rather exalted view of seniors, before I actually became one. I'm not proud of this. I'm certainly not very cool now, and I definitely wasn't then, especially in the 11th grade. It surely didn't happen overnight when I stepped onto campus as a senior. Unless sleeping through class and ditching fifth period makes you "cool." If that's the case, well, then: maybe I was and I didn't know it. I do miss her, actually, and now I feel like a jerk. I would love to hear about her life now and her family, who, for a while there, I got to hang out with on a regular basis.