I’m struck in particular by how much my posts are like Vixxin’s. Vixxin is a 15-year-old goth girl from Florida. I forget which town. She was always talking about getting drunk and boys and doing things she shouldn’t, like doing witchy hexes she found on the Internet.

It was funny at first how often I would check her blog. Especially at production time at the magazine, when the art director was dragging his ass on something or another and I couldn’t go home until the fucking text was frozen. But then I remember having a minor epiphany at about two in the morning: despite her poetry and her spelling mistakes I related more to this girl than I did to almost anyone I worked with. What did that say about me, when I was twice her age?

I remember turning to the exception, a graphic designer who I did like. “Do you consider yourself young, Jake?”

He barked a laugh. “I’ve been old since I knocked up my old lady at 21.”

I twirled a pencil. “Well, you’re in your thirties. You’re still young. Forties is old.”

A copy editor came in and made a hurt noise at that. (It was freaky that it was a bustling office at 2am in the fucking morning. Management, who were to blame, were tucked in at home.) After she left I continued more quietly.

“Although I figure by 36 you’re fooling yourself if you say you’re not in your late thirties. And late thirties is just a euphemism for 40.”

He shrugged. “We’ll see what you say when the old three six comes along. We can have an oldie party for you here. Pool our money and buy you a walker.”

“Heh,” I said, but the idea made me a little anxious for some reason. I guess because I could imagine it. I’d already been at this job for longer than I’d planned: when I turned thirty they’d gotten me a cake, and the boss had made this ridiculous speech. “You know I’m quitting once I’ve been here for five years.”

Jake pursed his lips and nodded, the old sure-sure kind of thing.

I grit my teeth and went back to reading Vixxin’s blog.

But I did quit. In a less spectacular way, admittedly, than Vixxin quit her Wal-Mart job. I didn’t run screaming and crying from the place. Or come back with a new boyfriend a week later and whip an empty mickey of vodka at the window and run home to blog about it. Jake and I did get drunk together, for the first time, and something stupid almost happened but then thankfully didn’t.

See? Almost happened is not nearly as exciting as frantic worrying that the parking lot might have had security cameras. And would they be able to lift prints from the broken glass? And OMG, should she even be writing this on the Internet?!?

That’s why this blog is about Lilith, not me. I’m pretty sure that last night she went out and did something dangerous, or at least risky, like go home with some man she didn’t know. I didn’t hear her come home, and I didn’t see her boots at the door today. Maybe she was too annoyed at me for walking in on her to come home. Or maybe it was related to the ritual somehow.

I better get some work done here.

Posted at 4:02pm