College, careless, lavish college. Do you remember that infinitely precious and precocious time when the gears of your young mind were whirling and spinning at top speed? uh, yeah, I have trouble remembering that time. Welcome to college dropoutland; take a good long look at the wasteland. alcoholics, clutching some remnant of a sociology book, puzzled and passed out, and the kids with high expectations that were knocked over and away, and I'm in there too, somewhere, someone who simply blew off finals because of three thousand things I have to do instead of finals, and now I'm a college dropout, wonderful, amazing, endless superlatives. Actually I'm apprehensive. There are dim corners of my mind where atramentous memories of my parents live, memories where my parents' faces were animated and cheerful, and their expectations were palpable. Sometimes I feel objectively piteous for them, and sorry that I couldn't yank some substitute daughter swathed in sweater vests for them, someone with bright cheeks that would have gone to johns hopkins while I stapled my boss' pants to the floor and slept in libraries. my father wanted me to be a perky, ponytailed intern for the governor of some upstanding state in new england while my mother simply wanted me to be Tipper Gore's spiritual advisor. But while they shuttled me to and fro piano and dance and voice and soccer I guess that in my teens I was always been more concerned about being forever mired in the human condition, a life of perfunctory showing up, more concerned about being a fake than being a college graduate, and now at 21 I feel lifted, isolated, inhuman, and this is better to me than fetching lattes for Craig Benson.

AND YET apprehension is lurking. I also have memories of my father looking at me with acute dissapointment and total incomprehension until our relationship deteriorated to a state of stale arm-pats and empty words. I hadn't seen him for months when he died. all of these words are just some attempt to express that while I recognize to what degree of severity I would dissapoint them if they could see me, I'm not remorseful about my life, I'm mostly satisfied and devoid of regret and the solar system is still spinning and the world is still twirling, it's all gravy, et cetera and so on.

Lately whenever I see anyone that I don't know very well and they try to talk to me, I quickly stop them and say 'I don't mean to embarrass you or anything, but I'm not the person you think I am. I'm actually Christian's twin sister, Audrey. It's okay, it happens a lot. You'll learn to tell the difference some day.' and most people are seriously okay with this. I swear I'm not making this up.

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