what Mitch says by Mandy Iverson part 2 of 2 mustaches of all shapes and levels of bushiness. There were people snorting blue Adderall in the bedroom and someone decided that spin the bottle might be a good idea. I had just had my first essay published, was holding a cheap bottle of champagne-- three fourths empty--and so everything sounded like a good idea to me. We sat in a circle and the rules were laid out. Kiss who the bottle lands on. Easy enough. Kiss whomever the bottle lands on. And I was mostly okay with that, except for the married guy sitting two people over from me, with blue Adderall dust forgotten in his beard, but no one else seemed to be questioning his presence so I decided to play it cool. On my first spin it landed on Lissy Goralnik. Lissy Goralnik of long brown hair and pretty fiction lines. She was too drunk to look at me with two eyes, and she kinda swayed as she crawled to the middle of the circle. I think I said something creepy like, "I'm gonna rock your world, Lissy Goralnik," because it felt important to be into it. Other people in the circle said things like, "Ooh," and I was sure they must have thought I sweat pure sex. Mitch once warned me about girls who think it's hot to play gay, warned me about the lesbian-until-graduation phenomena, but I wasn't thinking about that then. I was thinking about breaking out of my shell and wobbling into a much sexier one. I was Mitch continued on page 28 Photo above: Mandy and Mitch pose August 16, 2008 while attending the wedding of a friend. Photo by John DiGilio. Part 2 CONTINUED from the November 2008 issue of Q View Northwest _______________________________ M itch has been trying to help me work through this for quite sometime--this condition of mine where I think I'd be more interesting if I were gay. I have been taking careful mental notes. Mitch knows I wouldn't be any better or worse if I dug chicks, but it's an idea I've had difficulty buying. The hoops I'm jumping through don't seem enough; I'm still at the center of the rat race. That's probably why when I met Lissy Goralnik, I hoped she could be that big one--the monster hoola hoop that would take me to the other side. 2 My first year out of college I was states and states away from my hometown and Mitch, in a graduate writing program that I dropped out of after a semester. Nobody really liked me, and I didn't really like anyone, but we were willing to party together a lot. Most of them liked to snort different things up their noses and get real wild. I was fresh out of college, fresh out of the Midwest, terrified of shooting things into my nasal cavity, and the youngest person in the program. One of the parties I went to was called the "Mustache Bash," where all of the guys, who had been growing out their facial hair for months, had shaved their faces into | December 2008 | Q View Northwest - Spokane Edition | www.qviewnorthwest.com