Let me say a few things about Boston. For one, no one realizes that pedestrians have similar traffic rules to automobiles. The left lane is for passing. For two, there aren't any trains after 12:30am. This is actually rather convenient for me, as it's a reasonable excuse to have no nightlife. And for three, some artist has deemed it artistic to put funny shoes on all the historic statues in the common.

Founding Father, Furry Legwarmers, Ballet Shoes

Okay, so they're not legwarmers exactly. More like boot covers? But I swear to God, they're purple tapestry with black fur trim.

I'm going to be honest with you. I have a really disgusting infection on my left leg. There doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.

"Oh ho!" said the medical intern. "Well look at that!"

I've been wearing pants for the past two months, when it's been the most unsightly. It took me a while to work up the courage to try and find a doctor, since I don't have health insurance yet and I was terrified of how much it would cost me to even walk in the clinic door. My roommate very solemnly informed me that I should never, ever go to the emergency room. "How much would that cost, anyway?" I asked her jovially. "Hundreds?"

"I don't know. Maybe thousands."

It turns out healthcare professionals can rarely give you an estimate of how much their treatment will cost you. I called six different clinics, none of which could even book me until November (two told me to call back in March), and no one could give me a price for getting seen by a doctor. "I'm not expecting an exact number," I'd explain to them. "But you see, I'll be paying for this myself, and I need to figure out how I should prioritize this. Can you give me a general range?"

No. We don't have that information.

"But the thing is, I don't want to come in if it's going to make me completely bankrupt. Can you at least give me a ballpark? How many digits will be involved?"

Sorry ma'am. We don't know anything about that at all.

What they could tell me was that they don't turn anyone away for any reason. You don't have to worry about being treated or not - they'll take care of you first, and then bill you. A generous offer, if ever I heard one. And so it was that I went over three months with a black lump-thing on my calf, keeping it clean and hoping for the best. The whole experience really just guaranteed that I would remain politically left of center for life. If you don't think we need to do something about healthcare in this country, I'm sorry, but we just can't be friends any more.

Finally, last week my roommate got grossed out. I rolled up my pant leg and we both gagged. "I think you need that lanced," she said. "Sooner rather than later."

"Sir Lancelot!" I didn't exclaim, but might have. "Whee!"

Lancing is no laughing matter.

I'd never been to a private doctor before, and I assumed it would cost me approximately one million dollars, but it turned out that a family practice was the only place (besides the emergency room) that could see me within the month, and I took the appointment. Two doctors, an intern, and a nurse peered at my calf in friendly curiousity. I laid on my stomach, self-consciously watching them over my shoulder. It felt like an episode of candid camera. Or maybe an accidental pornnography. Hey guys! Whatcha doin' down there? That light's kind of bright, huh?

"Any idea what that is?" one of them asked.
"Well it's clearly infected," the other responded.
"Maybe we could drain it with a needle?"

"Oh, I already tried that," I quipped.

What?

"I stuck a pin about a centimeter in, hoping it'd drain, but it didn't. Sucks, right?"

"Jesus," one of the doctors said. They drained it, wrote me a prescription, and charged me "the no-insurance rate" of twenty-five dollars. "Come back," they said.

I got really excited when I found this website devoted to other people's stories. "Sweet!" I cried, "they're coming back in September! As soon as they get their act together, I'm totally writing a post!"

I love posts that are contingent upon other people getting their act together. Regardless, it struck me today (as I checked back for the twentieth or so time) that this notice had been posted a year ago.

Photo by Trine Sondergaard

The concept is one I am apparently becoming obsessed with. If the radio show Nick and I had last semester were to be reborn into a website, I feel like this is about as close as it could get. They ask for contributions of stories: anything you've heard from another person, something interesting that you can put into words well, and in a format they can easily post online.

Every story on OPS is a story a contributor heard from someone else. These stories have been overheard and misheard, told and re-told and sometimes refined over time. They do not shy from hearsay, gossip, myth or guys we knew in high school. OPS is dedicated to the time-honored tradition of stealing other people's material.

Stories of particular interest: Elizabeth Gilbert remembers the worst wedding toast ever, John Hodgman's Three Stories Girls Told Me and Emily Firetog on a night in the woods. I have to say, if I could redo college, I'd have taken more oral history and historiography courses. I have way too many links to send to former professors these days.

Oh hey wow. Are you guys ready for this? Look for such gems as "The modern American female is an empty shell of a human being, and apparently there are few exceptions" and "Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."

Did you know that it's cheaper to hire a decent whore twice a week than to get married?

You learn something new every day. Now let's go shoot these people.

For the first time, tonight I feel at home in Boston.

Things have been nice lately. The other night I heated up some pita bread and baba ghannouj, and got tipsy off red wine while watching Blue. Turns out, I should really drink and watch foreign films by myself more often. My internship has turned into a full-time job offer, which I still don't really believe (oh shit!). Tonight I changed into a skirt and walked to the market across the street to buy vegetables: on my way there, a man leaned out of his car and yelled in spanish that I was his love.

Pumpkins lined the grocery store window. There are few things I look forward to more than autumn sweaters.

First things first: I never run out of tampons. I simply don't. I've never been stranded helpless in a bus station bathroom that didn't even have a sanitary napkin dispenser, never stepped outside in the middle of a city to see not a single store in sight, and I've never had to ask strange women if I could borrow their feminine hygiene products. But yesterday, I did.

I had just spent an entire T ride, incidentally, hating other girls. It was a particularly crowded train, and for statistics' sake in an infinite universe scenario, my car was filled with only beautiful, well-dressed girls my age. They flipped their impossibly beautiful girl-hair and made exaggerated, wide-eyed facial expressions to each other, screaming sterotypical sitcom girl lines like "Oooohmigahd!" and "no, but like, seriously, I'm not saying she's like, a slut, or anything? Like, I admire her?" "Totally, totally." The girls sitting across from me proceeded to empty their bags and compare different tubs of lip gloss, each container embossed with a different tropical fruit.

I had to sit in that mess for twenty minutes. The real downer was when I realized that I would have hated them more if they were having intelligent conversation: my annoyance wasn't actually with the running inane commentary, but with how damn pretty they all were. It was one of those unfortunate interruptions to self-righteous superiority that you'd rather forget later when retelling the story, but it must be said.

We arrived at South Station and my bag was weighed down with self-doubt. "God," I thought. "Why can't I handle competition? Why is it competition anyway? Why can't I relate to other women? What is my problem?" and it was then that I realized that the mythically infinite case of tampons in my bag was, in fact, empty.

"Oh hell no." I said.

"Nooooo!" I cried.

After a brief attempt to find a drug store outside the station - which consisted of me opening the door, stepping outside, and a violent downpour immediately striking my entire body - I realized there was no other choice. I asked an entire group of twelve girls to see if any of them had an extra tampon. It pained me to do it. Who were these people? What if they hated me? Weren't these some of the girls from the T? "Ohhhmigod! I totally know how you feel! Sorry, none of us have any! We totally know how to feel, though! Good luck! Good luck!" It was a chorus of bizarre kindness. Somewhat assuaged, I went to the cleaning woman in the bathroom, who was leaning on her elbows against the sink counter and popping bubblegum into the mirror.

"Excuse me, do you know -"

She turned her head slowly, to emphasize every inch of hostility. "No."

"Is there a drug store, or -"

"There is nothing here."

Holy crap. I ran away.

In the next bathroom I froze, watching all the manicured, high-heeled women stream in and out of the stalls. "Who am I kidding," I thought to myself. "Clearly, no one menstruates any more. I should just give in to my fate: I'll lay down in the middle of the station, a pool of blood will eventually form around my still body, and someone will call an ambulance. They're bound to have tampons at a hospital."

Things had gotten pretty desperate, when I saw a girl who looked a lot like me. She was a bit dishelved, with dyed hair falling out of her ponytail, and was attempting to apply lipstick in front of the mirror. I shuffled embarrassedly over to her with a high-pitched, quiet voice. Did she have . . . and she burst into a whole story of how she had had the same problem the other day. She had just bought tampons back at home, because yesterday she couldn't find any when she was taking the bus, and there aren't any drug stores, and isn't everyone weird and kind of mean around here?

We decided to "go out" Saturday night: which meant, in our language, to go to a very trendy and noisy gay coffeeshop down the block wearing sweatshirts and windbreakers, and to spend our time in a booth watching people play pool and trying to write a proof for the angles of triangles necessarily adding up to 180 degrees. If you think we weren't having fun, you are a fool.

After I'd finished enjoying my chamomile tea, I proceeded to draw the saddest face in the world on my paper cup.

Fruits of our Labor

"The problem with my proofs," I said at some point, "is that they're circular logic. Triangles can only add up to 180 degrees because they can only take up half a circle if one of its sides is the diameter. They can only take up half a circle because they have to add up to 180 degrees. Damnation."

"Triangles add up to 180 degrees because you believe it." Michael said fondly, and added the caption. We watched the lonely single guys tapping at their laptops, and ate a peanut butter cookie while he finished figuring it out.

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's life changes: the diploma shoved into my bookcase, the forty-hour work weeks and vague feeling of importance, the "check, please" muttered by my dinner partner at the sushi restaurant a few nights ago. Honestly, I never thought I'd be the kind of person to cry in a restaurant. Things must be changing.

When I was little, my sister and I would systematically go through my mom's jewelry boxes and declare which pieces would go to who when she passed away. My mom, who could have easily freaked out over this morbid ritual, took the whole thing with remarkable aplomb, and would casually watch us lay the necklaces and rings out on her bedspread in two distinct sets. Art pin, Adrianne. Sapphire ring, Paige. "I just want my gravestone to be covered in rhinestones," she said. "Can you guys remember that? Rhinestones."

We promised.

I haven't had anyone close to me die yet. Maybe that's another factor adding to my heartless analyzation. I know it's bound to happen soon, and I need to start thinking about how I'm going to deal with that; my grandparents are getting older, and I just know more people now. One of them is likely to pass away sooner or later.

I do remember being young, and a friend of my mom's dying. I didn't go to the funeral. I don't think there was one. According to what she told me (or what I remember her telling me), he was cremated, and she and his few other friends snuck to a lake in the middle of the night and scattered his ashes into it.

"Why'd you go in the middle of the night?"
"Well, because that's illegal."
"Why?"
"Honey, you can't just go throwing people's ashes in public parks."

Well, why not? As much as I enjoy cemeteries, and peering into crypts, and reading inscriptions on tombstones - it's more for the abundance of trees and untold stories than it is an attempt to actually remember anyone. I don't really see the point of these things. Can you really say goodbye to someone who's been stamped forever into solid rock? Doesn't it strike you as unhealthy that the human species is so concerned with remaining? With owning a piece of land, even when we're no longer around to enjoy it? With preserving ourselves as long as possible? As I ranted this morning over our scrambled eggs, Michael suggested that this obsession had something to do with our culture's preoccupation with youth. We die and we're pumped full of preservatives for the open wake, and placed into sealed coffins - as if to say to our friends and family, "don't worry, this body isn't going anywhere." Don't look old. Don't start to grey. And for God's sake, don't let on that at any point in time you plan on decaying.

Weird!

If I'm not in that body any more, I want it the hell out of here.

No engravings into marble or granite. No elaborate polyester-lined eternal beds. If you're feeling adventurous, disobey the law in my name. If you've got the money for it, donate a bench in a park or my books to the library - but a healthy flame, or a cedar box and a small wooden marker is fine. Whatever happens, I want it to disintegrate and disappear, as I have.

When you buy a pocket comb, what do you plan to use it for? Getting rid of tangles? Straightening those curls? Lookin' fancy?

Such as cleaning appliances, fried chicken leftovers, two-by-fours

Good thing I have this comb.

I decided that I love taking the Greyhound. I took it late at night to get from Boston to Albany, and after some trauma at the Amtrak station, I took it back from Albany to Boston. Greyhound buses are clean, quiet, and sparsely populated, with twenty-somethings crying from leaving their significant-others. I have found my people.

Today, our bus driver was named Henry. Henry was huge, and looked like he was five years older than some character off The Sandlot, with a goatee I didn't notice until I'd studied him for some time. He talked on his cell phone for most of the trip, and when my iPod ran out of batteries I was lucky enough to overhear his jolly dialogue.

"Dude, I don't think they're going to suspend me. They can't. I know, right? They were supposed to suspend me for three days! But my boss hasn't given me any papers to sign . . . so I think I'm in the clear. Cha ching! Work is money, my friend!" He waved at every Fung Wah and Peter Pan we passed. I half-expected him to cry "Wooo! College!"

I tried to enjoy the passing scenery, which was gorgeous, and focus on my book - which, incidentally, was not about divorce.

It's hard to pick books. There are so many. You really have to come up with a system, or risk spending your entire life reading mediocrity. Or - worse yet - not finishing books you start, so that they pile up next to your bed as a weighty visual representation of everything in your life important enough to begin, but whose completion depends upon a terrible car crash (preferably paralyzing everything in your body but your hands and eyes). "I should finish that," you think "so that I can at least say that I read it. Ugggghhhh."

Personally, in choosing which book to borrow from the library or buy from the bookstore, I very rarely read the back of the book. I don't read the cover flap on hardcovers. Summaries are useless: I look at the title, I judge the cover art, and I read the first page - if it grabs me, I'm sold. If it doesn't - and some books don't even make it past the first sentence - bam. Rejected. For the most part this method seems to work pretty well, but for the past couple of years it's begun to feel a little spooky. I think it's saying more about me than I would like.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike. Runaway, the short story collection by Alice Munro. And today, How to be Good, by Nick Hornby.

If I'm not reading summaries, and I go into a book knowing nothing of the plot or characters, why do I keep choosing books that are primarily about failed marriages?

Someone call my therapist. Or call the therapists for all the authors out there in the world, who can find nothing better to write about than divorce. Someone's therapist clearly needs to be called.

I packed my bag tonight to travel to New York tomorrow. For the first time in my life I have labor day off, and I'm using the three-day weekend to hop a bus and visit Michael.

Hurray!

While the romance of the situation certainly does not escape me, it felt a little strange. I only just said goodbye to that place a few months ago. Returning feels suspiciously like making out with an ex-significant-other might: comfortable, but in a way no one really approves of. I should be growing up! I should be on my way! I shouldn't return until the ten-year reunion!

It turns out, some rules are made to be avoided. I put things in the bag that I thought would impress Bard students. Lacy tank tops, big beads. I put in my journal and the book I've always meant to finish. I folded it all neatly and put it all in the tapestry bag I snuck from my mom, back when I was packing to leave home for my freshman year and needed something to cram all of the miscellaneous extras into. It was later thrown into the back of the Subaru and my dad and I headed East, listening to David Sedaris tapes and considering Niagra Falls. I used that bag again when I took the Metro North to New York City freshman year, all by myself in a leather jacket and beat-up sneakers. "I am so grown-up," I remember thinking, staring somewhere beyond my translucent reflection at the rushing Hudson and jagged cliffs. Everything made sense. I saw patterns throughout my life. Here I was, just as I thought I'd be.

The bag has strappy gold lamee handles, and flakes of blackened glamour fall onto my right arm every time I hoist it onto my shoulder. I've only used it as a laundry bag since that first trip into the city. It seems overly potent to me, as if it embodied my id: a short-haired girl who'd chuck herself onto trains and just hope the whole thing worked out in the end. A person without a cell phone. A girl without quarters. Whatever, right?

"I have this problem," I confessed to Michael last night. "I don't really know who I am right now. Also, I'm not sure what I look like."

Ah, the twenties. Student or working member of society? Young person or adult? Can you switch between the two on long weekends? What's up with my hair? And honestly, three more years until I can rent a car?

I thought of the image I once associated with identity, and put it all in that crazy bag. Just in case that would make sense.