READ ME!

---

READ ME ... yeah, right. Right?

What is this all about? Maybe you should read the READ ME READ ME.

february 5, 1997:

the
deadly
game

"How do you think this feels? When do you think it stops?" (Lou Reed)

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Things were going well. I was getting too many assignments. I could not keep up with the level of work. I was getting paid. I was having hopes. I was feeling good.

The phone would ring. I would answer. "Yes. Hello."

"Rebecca?"

"Yes. Yes?"

"Hey"

"Oh, hey! How are you? Oh, gosh, I really can't talk now. I'm under deadline and totally distracted. Can we talk Saturday?"

"Yeah, I was just calling to see if you've managed to reach ML yet."

"No, oh, shit. No. But she's okay, Elizabeth. She's taking care of herself. She's being watched. She's safe."

"Yeah, I'm just worried."

"Yes, but I am less worried now than I was before she checked herself in. She'll be okay. She'll be okay. Let's talk Saturday. Okay?"

"Um, okay."

And the emails would come. But my life was fine, and so was everyone else's. Things can wait. Everything can wait. She'll be okay. Everyone will be okay.

What is that buzzing noise?

---

Life is a set of geometrical blocks. And life battles are putting those blocks into their spaces. Sometimes they don't fit. Sometimes they fit and then pop out again. They had never fit.

And nothing about the puzzle makes sense. Why put the fucking blocks in their spaces anyway? Keep them outside; I like them outside. All, everything outside right there in the open there.

But it is the maniacal drive away from disorder, towards comfort, consistency, predictability, logical beautiful meaningful order.

And we cannot put the drive on hold. We cannot put the game on hold. It keeps going.

---

I learned today that my friend from law school, Elizabeth, took her own life.

And I would hate her, but she is gone. And I would scream at her, but I cannot. And I want to get down to LA and fucking kick her ass. But her ass is somewhere I do not understand.

She could have made it through. I know she could have. She always made it through. She was tough as nails. She was smart as satan. She did things first. She took action. She had this future.

She was writing a book. The female 1L. There is no doubt in my mind that what she has written is brilliant. What she wrote was always brilliant. When she wrote about the Hebrew National it was brilliant. Everyone thought it was brilliant. We told her it was brilliant. I think we told her it was brilliant.

We were friends; we were competitors. She once accused me of stealing her material for my stand-up comedy routines. I almost killed her then. I was mad for weeks. She was mad too. We had both stolen from Gloria Steinem, or something. It is all in the delivery.

I left law; I became a freelance writer. She was a writer who had loan debt of over $1500/month and could not quit. She told me this at Colette's when she took notes and I glared at her. Trapped animals are unpredictable. Bite, claw, chew, shoot their way out. I keep myself going by imagining a key.

It is so fucking unfair. I hate Harvard Law School, and I hate the fact that this is the second lawyer friend I have had to bury in 16 months. This is not a humane profession. This is not a humane life. And this is not a humane story.

She was a leader I did not acknowledge. What the fuck happened to our bitchchick careers, our eventual victory spit-off at the hegemony she kept harassing, our ultimate turn at the Senate Judiciary Hearings to pull down our jeans and piss in public? Our fuck-you-I-don't-need-a-man-or-your-corporate-suckup-job-I-have-my-rabbit? Fuck her for giving up without finishing. Fuck her for not seeing the fruits of her labor. And now who is going to bitch at me about my Madonna thing? Or my Courtney thing; or my Tupac thing. Or do it as well. Fuck the world for not letting her complain all the time, as much as it made me so very jealous. Fuck her for not letting me save her.

God I wish she could have quit instead. Christi quit. Orly quit and moved to LA. Of course, they both were sexually harassed out the door of their firms. ML barely made it to a place she paid to save her.

She put her pets in boarding first. She left a note. She arranged; planned; researched. It is not like her not to get it right the first time.

I hate the fucking angst-wanna-be's who joke at crack and act oppressed. I hate the fucking Trainspotters who glibly cheer on the death aesthetic. I hate the fucking white kids who act like college is some fucking prison when their parents are paying for it and they have never been abused by their fathers. I hate the fucking editors and bosses and directors and managers and payors and powertrippers who are under "s o m u c h p r e s s u r e." I hate the people who have the freedom to quit but only complain. Because some people do not have the freedom.

Because it is all just one shot.

And don't tell me you understand because you don't.

Do not tell me you are sorry. Do something. Make this stop. If not for my sake, or Yale's sake or Elizabeth's sake then for your own sake.

Because with one shot

it
is
too
late

And then there is no fucking tomorrow.

---

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