Let's talk about neurotic anxiety. According to Freud, neurotic anxiety is caused by a frustrated libido. That means the Id says, ""Let's DO this,"" and then the Superego says, ""Omigod, NO!"" and then the Ego says, ""You guys! Stop fighting! You're stressing me out!"" but the Id and the Superego don't stop fighting. The Ego hides in the corner and cries.
According to Freud, the best way to deal with neurotic anxiety is creativity. Thus, I wrote a sonnet about a dude sauntering away down train tracks in the fog. He's probably wearing his father's old Coast Guard pea coat, but I didn't mention that. I like sonnets because they have a lot of rules.
All throughout yesterday evening, my phone caught at the corner of my eye like a loose knit sweater on a nail. Oops, snagged! Then, I would look directly at my phone, which of course did nothing in response, so I pressed the little button under the screen. Then I felt sad, because I had no new text messages. I am one of those people who is attracted to men who abandon their phones in their coats at the doorway, and thus fail to respond to text messages in a timely manner.
Yesterday, I learned from my text messages that Bob Dylan's ""Shelter from the Storm"" is in a rare key. It does not require that clamp thingy (a ""capo,"" which sounds like the name of a drink or a Latin dance), but does require the retuning of ""four outta six strings.""
Wait a second. Couldn't a person just put the capo on and then retune only two strings? Why wouldn't that work? Whoops, there I go, sending a second text message before my interlocutor has responded to the first one. I'm such a loser.
I was thinking about this frickin' boy as I entered a certain bathroom stall. I saw inscribed on the wall therein, ""You deserve the BEST."" Why don't you tell that to my Id, you snot!
All my Id listens to is Lady Gaga's ""Love Game,"" over and over and over. The word ""ovaries"" just popped into my head. But ovaries have nothing to do with love.
Then I got a text, but it was from the wrong person.
""It's the wrong time and the wrong place./ Your face is charming, but it's the wrong face.""
Over the summer, I ended up at the first annual Betty Boop Festival, or ""Boop Fest"" for short. This event occurred in the endearing little town of Wisconsin Rapids. At Boop Fest, someone sang the song ""It's Alright With Me,"" which dates back to antiquity, that is, before God and I were born. A guy named Cole Porter wrote it. The lyrics:
""It's the wrong game with the wrong chips./Your lips are tempting but they're the wrong lips./They're not his lips, but they're such tempting lips, it's alright with me.""
I used to identify with this attitude, that any lovin' is good lovin', and I took what I could get. However, it is not, after all, that summer any more. It is also not October.
Now, I insist my love affairs epitomize courtly perfection. I think it's time to write another sonnet. Just kidding. What it's actually time for is me receiving a text message from the badass heartthrob of my college career.
The fucker.
Know what Angelica's talking about? Send any stories to aengel2@wisc.edu.
