She wrote a mass email to alert folks to her new email address, and to the fact that she's moving to San Fransisco. I replied with a "GAH! NIKKI! BACK THE TRUCK UP! AND SHUT THE FUCK UP! AND SOMETHING ELSE THE 'UCK UP'! AND HOW THE HELL ARE YOU? AND I MISS YOU AND THINK OF YOU ABSURDLY OFTEN!" sort of response.

Last I had talked to her, she was planning to be working with the Peace Corps in Russia for the next couple of years, so ... San Fransisco? Wha?

Very, very soon after I wrote her, I received a lenghty, happy, very Nikki-like response, entitled "WHEE! DWHEEE! DWEEZIL ZAPPA!"

Yeah.

I was so excited to hear from her that I flailed and smashed my Santa Claus coffee mug against my desk, then watched it rain to the ground in teeny little holly-decked pieces.

Mazel tov!*

So. Nikki.

I'm about to gush, like, all over your shoes.

Nikki was my best friend in high school. She's a hilarious, bizarre, brilliant, creative, fierce, kind-hearted, free-spirited, passionate, amazing human being. Nikki don't take no shit no way no how, but she is tender and loyal to her friends, and far prefers adventure to sameness, even at risk of heartbreak. My kind of person.

In high school, she came to all of my shows, beamed with thrilled, speechless pride after each performance, and was always willing to smack me upside the head whenever I argued that I was invisible or "generic."

Neither of us have ever let the other one entertain the notion that we couldn't do anything we wanted to do, or that we weren't every bit as incredible as we wanted to be. Nikki was my confidante, supporter, and overall partner in ebullience and overreaction, both elated and despondent. She was a beautiful, pink-haired poet with big, soft eyes, and was probably the only person I've ever known who rivalled me in terms of Amount of Random Shit Carried from Place to Place. We and our overstuffed shoulder-bags were a strange, messy, compatible pair.

Nikki and I have always been completely fascinated and delighted by each other, and by ourselves as a unit. Even when we haven't spoken in over a year, I know she thinks of me as often as I think of her, and I know we miss each other all the time. God, friends like her make me so proud.

Wait ... OK, here's a little snippet of the email she sent me, courtesy of cut-n-paste.

"Well hello there, lady miss! I'M SO EXCITED TO HEAR FROM YOU. I seriously almost peed my pants, jumped into the air, yelled 'HOOTIE HOO, BUT NOT LIKE HOOTIE AND THE BLOWFISH, JUST CELEBRATORY "HOOTIE!"', hugged a puppy and turned into an omelet."

Oh, my God, I had forgotten about Nikki's obsession with puppies, and her random jokes incorporating food. Seriously, this has been an ongoing theme. She once had a dream that Britney Spears was chasing her around, blowing puppy-filled bubbles and then popping them cruelly. (Fucking puppy-popping Britney Spears!)

Nikki also did this doodle once, that I think I still have, of a long-lashed hamburger with arms and a face, singing "I'm just a hamburger" to the tune of "I'm Just a Gigolo." Anyway, more lame cut-n-paste ...

"...But, like you said, I think about you all the time and when I set this [email account] up today, I thought, 'I can't wait to write to Kelly and I hope she doesn't hate me for writing her out of the blue like this,'...

Seriously, though, 'absurdly often' is at least the frequency at which I think about you. My friend and I are working on a few small publications involving visual art and creative writing and I keep saying things like, 'I should call/e-mail/send carrier pigeon to Kelly, she's the most amazingly creative person, it'd be so rad.'

I can't wait to hear from you, but seriously, even if you only can/want to write back something like, 'Here's my favorite recipe for cobbler,' I'd be thrilled to hear it.

I'm just so happy whenever we get to talk again."

I blatantly included the above paragraphs out of concern that showing you bits of my super-fascinating personal email wasn't masturbatory enough, and thus I should also exhibit some evidence that this person who is way more interesting than I am thinks I'm cool. (Sorry.)

I'M SOMEBODY!

("These cans! He hates these cans!"

Name it, bitches. Today, I'm expanding the Song-for-Nipple-Hair Sweepstakes to include movie quotes, because I'm in a pretty great mood.)

Right. So, anyway, Nikki continues ...

"Yes, I am moving to San Francisco---it's all pretty hysterical and random. I had a huge holdup in the Peace Corps, and still am in the program and ready to go, only the delay is going to be substantial enough that I can shelve it for a year or more while I get things together. While I was finding all of this out, I met this crazy ex-professional skateboarder and visual artist man and we fell in love like a bunch of idiot kids.

He lives in San Francisco, and so he flew me out to visit him. And then I fell in love with San Francisco like a bunch of...idiot...kid? There I was, on an 11-day trip, hanging out with this guy I was crazy about and some of my best pals from Antioch, when someone said, 'Hey, we've got a room opening up in our apartment on July 1. Want it?' And I thought,'Why the hell not?' and said yes.

So, 6 weeks later, I'm on my way to San Francisco. And all this other crazy stuff happened, and I could just drone on and on ad nauseum, but what it amounts to is I feel all reckless and wild and tumbleweedy. Kelly, I'm going to dress in an animal suit and dance onstage with The F1aming Lips at Lo1lapalooza in San Francisco! Really! Because [the boy] knows all these freaking artist types who need idiots like me to do things like that! And when I was out there we broke into a deserted military base and had a picnic on a watertower! Viva la France!"

I KNOW! I'm all "CAN I HAVE YOUR FUCKING LIFE, PLEASE?????" Oh, God. I need another dose of craziness soon, there's too much rinse and not enough spin-cycle to my recent days.

But, honest to God, it's never too late, and that thought makes my brain whirl with color and the dreamy thrill of irresponsibility. I'm such a dork. DORK!

NIKKI MEMORIES!

This one time ...

1. We were, I think, seventeen, walking on Main Street in our hometown, when we passed some random dude who gave each of us a daffodill. It was a grey day. Nikki wore her baggy jeans and a black sweater, I wore a flowy skirt and that crappy black military shirt that my mom hated and subsequently confiscated, and I had a green scarf tied in my hair. We were roaming through the supermarket parking lot (swingin' town we grew up in, I tell you,) and passed a 16-wheeler. The driver leaned out the door and said, "Hey, girls! Wanna go to Florida?" We declined, and we and our daffodills went to the head shop, where Nikki bought a hideous knapsack embroidered with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles design.

2. One of our friends found a creepy-looking rubber puppet, which Nikki named "Prague." (Pronounced to rhyme with "vague.") She would make Prague appear over the shelves in the school library, where he stage-whispering the words "Left! Ventrical!" at passers-by. The rest of us would collapse into hysterics. I have no idea where that joke came from, or why it was so funny. It was so fucking surreal.

3. I, Nikki, and some of our other girlfriends made cookies at Nikki's house, crudely stirring the ingredients together with a fork and hoping everything would melt together properly in the oven. (The cookies were always fine.) We blasted "I Got A Girl," (the only remotely decent song ever recorded by "Tripping Daisy,) and marched around her house stomping to the rhythm of the song.

4. Nikki and I were skipping school* the day Jeff Buckley's body washed up on the shore of the Mississippi River. We heard the news on the radio in her mom's blue minivan.

5. The summer after our first year of college, she and I both lived in Boston. We were planning to go to a free They Might Be Giants concert, and jumped on the T to head to the Hat Shell on Boston Common. On our way, I had this weird pseudo-hallucination of a kid getting on the train with an accordion. I told Nikki, "I swear, I thought that kid was carrying an accordion." At the next stop, a young man carrying an accordion boarded the train with his girlfriend.

We talked to them for a while. Turns out, they had just come from the TMBG concert, which Nikki and I (a) completely missed, and (b) had apparently boarded the entirely wrong train to get to. Typical of us.

6. Much later that same summer, Nikki and I took a walk aaaallllll the way down Commonwealth Avenue to Newbury Street. Along the way, we reminisced about our encounter with Accordion Boy and his girlfriend. "Wouldn't it be weird if we ran into them again?" I said.

Around the next corner, we saw them coming towards us. The street was completely empty, save for us four. Nikki and I freaked out upon seeing them, and they looked at us like we were aliens and slowly inched away. Ha.

There are so many Nikki stories, several of which are sad tales of very difficult times. But, Christ, how we laughed.

One more thing.

In my email to Nikki, I asked her a stream of questions, e.g. "Howareyou? Whatareyoudoing? Howhaveyoubeen?" and ended with "Why is the sky blue?" Nikki's answer made me laugh:

"My theory is that the sky is blue because his woman done left him. And that makes one blue. BAD JOKE ATTACK! Did you duck?"

Ha. Still killin' me after all these years.

Getting back in touch with a good friend is a bit like spotting a rescue plane after being stranded on a desert island.

Not that I've ever been stranded on a desert island.

* "Mazel tov" is in referrence to the emphatic glass-breaking, not in reference to the Santa Claus shards. I mean, duh.

Also, I think I should start saying "Mazel tov!" whenever I break something. I've mentioned my renowned klutziness before, and I swear to you, I'm not exaggerating. Anyone who has spent a good deal of time with me can attest to that.

A not-uncommon scene:

*CRASH! SHATTER! (tinkletinkletinkle) ...*

(Pause)

"Kelly?"

"NOTHING!"

(Pause)

"Kelly, did you break ...?"

"NOTHING! I'M OK! EVERYTHING'S GREAT!"

(Pause)

"Kelly?"

"Okay, fine. I'm sorry."

MAZEL TOV! Is much more suave. And it celebrates diversity and all that shit.

** This makes me sound like some kind of badass, but I have to admit this was the only time I skipped school. I seriously just didn't know how to do it.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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