My Friend, My Sister, My Partner in Crime

Gayle Jane Winfrey** is something else. Technically for a while there, she really was my sister, albeit a sorority one. I don't know if I can still call her my sorority sister because after I dropped out because my Dad stopped paying, they stripped me of all my affiliations like I never even existed. Harumph! Thanks, ladies - I would say "sisters" but you'd probably charge me. But, I digress.

I first met this lady, like I said, in the sorority house on the University of Missouri- Columbia's campus. She was drunk and funny. I was new and weary of everyone from the start, but the mischievous sparkle in her eyes and slurring of her words told me that this was the start of a dear and beautiful friendship, though, years later, Gayle Jane would come to deny that this event ever took place, after explaining that she was blacked out a good majority of her junior year. Me too. College was a dream. A drunken, ambiguous, glorious dream.

Since that first meeting, Gayle has held a special place in my heart. We had an American Lit class together (my junior year, her senior) and our Emily Dickinson loving professor did not like Gayle because she always came in late, drunk/hungover, and one day spilt a gallon of coffee all over the floor... after coming in late, but for me, she kept things entertaining in a room full of scared stupid or pretentious practicing kids.

Gayle graduated, she slept in my roommate's bed for a week and then she moved to Chicago. An inspiration if there ever was one, and I promised her that I would join her in the wind upon my graduation. She struggled, Starbucksed, interned, socialized/networked, and drank her time away while I cried in final math exams. Then, finally, in March, we were reunited and it felt so good. Until she stepped in dog poo while she was helping me move into my apartment, and mashed it all in the stairs. I think I just made that up. I probably shouldn't have said anything, because now you think I'm a liar. But, I'm not... all the time.

We like to make up songs and sing them to each other. I made up a song about her when we were at the Lincoln Park Conservatory, when I came for a visit in October '07:

Gayle Winfrey, you're an Earth Star -
Twirling your ribbon in the moon-light -
Cause Gayle Winfrey you're an Earth Star.

She then made a song about me:

Penny Sumner, you're a Strawberry Tree,

Grew up in the woods of gentry.

Play your guitar like a demon,

When people say you're bad you don't believe 'em,
Because Penny Sumner, you're a Strawberry Tree.

I've never really liked this song, ever, because it claims that I am bad at my guitar. I am NOT. I just haven't been playing that long, that's all. And Strawberry Trees don't even exist; it's all a complete lie. So, needless to say, I've always been a little sore. So a couple weeks ago, when she told me that she wasn't happy that her song only had 3 lines while mine had 5, [Note: Strawberry Trees are real, I'm a liar] I made up this song:

Gayle Winfrey, you're an Earth Star,

Twirling your ribbon in the moonlight.

People yell at you, and say,

Stop dancing like an idiot in the street, I'm trying to drive,

And they splash muddy water on you as they pass by,

Cause, Gayle Winfrey, you're an Earth Star.

She then got mad at me because she thought I was being moody, and then I said, SHUT UP, sister.

But, back to before then.... we like going on adventures together, whether or not they involve booze or Ann Sather's cinnamon rolls. We were orphans together for Thanksgiving '08. She was the only person I told I sucked on lava rocks as a child... until you, just now, but when she retells the story she says I ate the rocks... hardening my digestive system and my heart. We're both really loud, and tell stories (though hers are more elaborate - I won't say better, per se - than mine), and have brown hair. So, duh. We're sisters. When she was a kid, she had a pot bellied pig named Hillary Pigton, and she and her siblings would push it down the tile stairs in the morning when their secret agent FBI Dad told them to let H.P. out, and they all thought it was really funny because her little hooves clicked and clacked all the way down (because it was during the Clinton era, and her family is Republican) -- why anyone would want to own one of these, and keep it in their home, is beyond me. She let me stay on her couch when I didn't have heat last March, and because her furnace roared continuously, she promised that I would get so hot it would make me mad... and it did. Sometimes I punch her or push her into walls, then deflect anything she tries back at me, while she curses that she'll get me when I least suspect it under her breath, in a British accent. We help each other keep it real, and cool, or she'll convince me that it's a good idea for me to take my antibiotics after drinking whiskey for 6+ hours and I'll wake up shirtless, confused, on a towel covering up my vomit. Good times. More songs, stories, and laughs to be made - and I sure hope we'll drunkenly slur our Earth Star/Strawberry Tree songs at each other's weddings through hiccups and tears.

I love her, though, I do. She makes life in the big, exciting, but sometimes lonely city a lot more fun!!

--OOOH!! And we also bough rollerblades together, last summer, but it didn't really work out after she fell down a couple times she decided it wasn't for her, at least, not that day... I like rollerblading, but not stopping, not so much.

**Not her real name.... she just said she wanted to be called Jacqueline Irene, but I think that name is ugly. Gayle Jane?, you wonder aloud with a look of disgust on your face? Eff you.