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In This Issue

• DeLovely? DeLorean.
• What Would Future You Do?
• What Are Your Plans For That Junk?
• Letters to the Editors
• The Adventures of Young Boy and Park Girl in 4-D
• Hipsters Remember Awkward Tweens at Brooklyn Bar
• You Can Call Me Ishmael Anytime
• Oh, Take Me Over Awkwardly
• People Know Me. Cool People.
• Not Even Time Thwarts Yo Mama
• I Plan To Own The Future
• How to Write Love Poems for Girls Who Can Read
• Lies My Robots Told Me
• My Ears Are Bleeding! Wait, That's Just My Vagina.
• Veritas Forum Takes Stand Against Death
• Too Jewish to Play Ska?
• Damned Interface Technology!
• The Church of Timeology
• THEY WATCH
• The Staff of 21.5

Mike Bredin

Perrie with Greg, who was much uglier in fifth grade.

The author in her "beardless Jerry Garcia" phase.

If you manage to not lose your diary while clubbing downtown (I’m talking to you Ms. Lohan), take the receptacle of your deepest, darkest secrets over to Cringe. Cringe Night is the name given to the first Wednesday of every month at Freddy’s, a proto-hipster bar in Brooklyn; volunteers step up to the microphone and read excerpts from old diaries, offering up their most embarrassing and passionate adolescent moments to eager listeners.  Over time, the night has expanded to include notes passed in homeroom, poetry of unrequited love, and letters brimming with teenage angst.

    On the Cringe Night in question, one poor guy read the audience some song lyrics he had written when he was sixteen years old.  He began, “Her touch, her body up against mine, made me shiver with excitement,” and quickly interjected, “I just want to make clear that at this point in my life, I had never been touched, by anyone.”  A woman read a rousing account of her sophomore homecoming dance.  “First we fast-danced, and then we slow-danced.  It was sooo sweaty.  I would give my life for one more sweaty slow-dance to GunsN’Roses ‘Don’t Cry.’”   To end the night, another woman read a letter from an ex-lover, who wrote at the tender age of 16, “I just want sex sex sex sex sex. Dirty, violent, unprotected sex!!”

    An avid diary keeper since age seven, I was excited to participate at Cringe. Though when sifting through the box of journals my mom had sent me, it quickly became obvious that reading anything I had written in high school was out of the question.  It seemed way too soon, at only twenty-one years-old, to reveal my sixteen-year-old self.  Most of the Cringe participants were at least in their mid-twenties and so, I assume, better able to distance themselves from their teenage experience.  I opted instead to read from earlier journals, entries I wrote around my time in the third, fourth, and fifth grades.  Below are some bona fide excerpts that made their debut at Cringe last week:

Monday, February 13, 1995

The best part of today was P.E.  See, we played baseball but instead of using a bat we used a tennis racket.  Well, anyways, Ryan Safnick and another boy who I forgot who he was picked teams.  Brett, Garrett, and I were on the same team!! **NOTE: I had a crush on Brett and Garrett throughout fifth grade** The only other girls that were on our team were Jamie, Kristina, and Victoria **NOTE: More specifically, girls that did not pose a threat to my plan to make both Brett and Garrett mine.** So I got to talk to Brett and Garrett all by myself with no other girls on our team to butt into our conversation!  I found out that Brian and Greg have a crush on me.  Brian is nice but ugly.  Greg is ugly and tries to be funny when he’s not.  **NOTE: I went on to have a massive crush on Greg in eighth grade and was brutally rejected.  We eventually dated senior year, went to senior prom together, and are still very close.**  Ryan Stevens also got a pink slip yesterday.  See his mom is my teacher.  She’s a real bich! **NOTE: I am notorious in these early entries for misspelled cussing, i.e. calling this same teacher in another entry a huge fuccer.**

Monday, March 20, 1995

I hate Brett.  I don’t like him anymore.  I don’t have a crush on any boy.  I met this really nice 14 year boy on AOL (America On-Line).  Well I asked him his real name and he said Jack.  At the end of our conversation he said to E mail him wich means to write a letter to him through the computer.  Anyway, I wrote to him and asked him When are you on AOL?  He responded and said “I am on AOL at 6:00” his time.  He also said “my name is not Jack…..” and that is all he wrote.  I thought our conversation was all true.  Now it is probably a joke he was playing on me.  I wrote him back asking him what his real name is.  I am so confused about that 14 year old boy.  

    Though a bit nervous, and not reading anything half as juicy as the others, my reading got a fairly positive response at Cringe.  Going back next month is a certainty.  I think this time I’ll throw caution–and when I say caution, I mean vulnerability, utter embarrassment, and mortification–to the wind and make the leap to high school diaries.  In the meantime, below is another excerpt, this time from eighth grade.  I see this as a step towards one day, conjuring up the confidence to read from my high school diaries.

January 22, 1998

**NOTE: To set the scene, my friend Ashley has just told me that according to a conversation she overheard in Science, Greg officially does not like me, despite my massive crush.** I guess I knew for a long time that Greg did not like me.  I daydreamed so much about him and me together as boyfriend and girlfriend that I never really realized how horrible his true personality really is.  I was just, also, denying it to myself.  It does make me mad that even though he thinks I am annoying he still calls me for stuff.  Now I am totally onto C.J.  **NOTE: This was a very unoriginal and impractical crush choice.  Everyone and their mother thought C.J. was hot in eighth grade.** I think he is the sweetest guy!  All I wish for Greg is that he goes to hell and fucks himself. **NOTE: At least I learned somewhere between ’95 and ’98 to spell fuck properly.**  May I add that Greg had a crush on me in 5th grade.  I found this out by reading my old diary.  Now I realize how important it is to keep one.  You will look back on them and laugh many years from now.  *NOTE: Ooo, how right you were little Perrie, how right you were.*