From the category archives:
I dyed my hair. I’ve never dyed my hair.
I’ve also never had a breakup as painful as the one I’ve been going through for the past month or more. Or lived alone. Or been this scared. Or lost. Or inarticulate.
But one day, I’ll be okay. I know that much.
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On Wednesday, I was on my way to getting a sandwich (avocado, chicken, bacon, BBQ sauce and provolone on sourdough if you want to make me one or something). That shouldn’t surprise you because I’m always on my way to getting a sandwich, aside from when I’m on my way to getting frozen yogurt. But what should surprise you (or a least me, anyway) is that on my way there, I got an email that simply said ‘jobs – are you still looking for one?’
Okay. Two things went through my head almost immediately.
1. This guy wants me to come over to his studio (house with bedsheets for curtains) and take photos of me covered in latex paint, pay me $25 and then at the end, dig through his pockets and only come up with $22.
2. This guy is asking me out of curiosity because he wants to commiserate with me about how he doesn’t have a job either and maybe we can go job hunting together and I can meet his photographer friend who does these awesome nudes with body paint.
I wasn’t really interested in either of those scenarios. But of course I responded anyway with “YES DEFINITELY WHEN DO I START?’ because there was a slight chance that the offer was actually real.
Turns out, it was. Because two hours later, I was illegally parking at Costco and walking to my interview. And I really shouldn’t call it an interview – mostly because I suggested that maybe I could titty fuck one of my future co-workers, but at any rate, they liked me and hired me on the spot. And that’s the best part about this whole thing – they like me (also, income). They know that I choose to be partially known on the internet as ‘Vagina Drum’ and they still like me.
I think.
So, I would like to sincerely (no, really) thank every place that turned me down or otherwise ignored me. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have landed such an amazing opportunity with such an amazing group of people:
I still have PTSD just from saying that I love children but I have medical insurance now so there’s no reason to worry about that or anything else.
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One time, I read a quote popularly attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I was around 14 at the time and thought it would ensure lots of dates somehow, or at the very least, get people to stop thinking I was a foreign exchange student from Eastern Europe.
But for the most part, it’s a guidepost that has worked well for me. Mostly because everything aside from television scares me, so I’d otherwise lead a life solely dedicated to figuring out which Desperate Housewife has had the most plastic surgery (Teri Hatcher) or why that chick from those Olive Garden commercials seems familiar (Haley from Modern Family).
In addition to my ‘Hell yeah I’ll try that cinnamon roll frozen yogurt’ attitude is the fact that I am brutally honest. Now, when I say that I’m brutally honest, what I really mean is that I probably have some sort of social anxiety disorder where I say things I shouldn’t and then get the urge to eat a lot of french fries.
So, given that information, here’s where I expertly set myself on fire with my brain playing the part of the kerosene soaked blankets and technology as the torch.
Saturday night, I went to a comedy show put on by a group of very nice guys who wear neat hats, make fresh juice and use their apartment (specifically, attic) as a venue for intimate events. My friend* curated a group of comedians from San Francisco and LA to perform and took it upon himself to host.
I was taking somewhat of a risk, since I hadn’t technically met him in person and there was a possibility that he could be completely unfunny. Then I’d have to be one of those assholes who, in response to something utterly humorless, says, “That’s funny” instead of actually laughing. I didn’t want that. But, as it happens, I did want something else.
When the show started, he got up on stage (two rugs stacked on top of each other) and did his warm up. He was actually really funny. And most of his material had to do with his dick or sex or a combination of both. Those three things together, for reasons most likely related to my late night viewings of Shipmates, really turned me on.
And I thought, “I’d fuck him. No wait, I’d totally fuck him.” So that’s what I told him. In an email. I know. But the show was in progress and he was hosting and there was this Serbian guy next to me who kept asking, “What do you like to be doing in the city of San Francisco” and I couldn’t find his phone number so I could do the right thing and call him to whisper it into the phone so I’M SORRY but I emailed him.
He didn’t email me back immediately, but I was okay with that. What kind of freak would do that, right? We talked after the show and I kept thinking, “Does he know about how I want to see his penis and maybe hug it with my mouth a little? Does he? I mean, I thought I saw that he had a smart phone but maybe he has one of those older flip phones that can’t receive email. Yeah, that’s it – he just hasn’t seen it yet. OH BUT WHEN HE DOES, IT’S FUCK CITY FOR ME.”
And anyway, I couldn’t further embarrass myself by asking him something like, “So…did you get that email I sent? You know, the one about how I said I would fuck you and then HA HA I joked about being sweaty? I mean I swear I wasn’t actually sweating because that’s not sexy but I guess this is technically an attic so it wouldn’t be completely unheard of. Anyway, what’d you think?”
An hour or so later, I got my answer. He texted me and said, “Nice to meet you. Have a good night.” Allow me to translate what that actually means:
“Wow so I just got your email and what the fuck is wrong with you? First of all, you’re too tall and I bet your boobs are kind of saggy, too. That bra isn’t fooling anyone. Beyond that, I don’t even know you. Also, you look like the kind of person who listens to Hootie & the Blowfish and that alone makes my penis want to tunnel inside of me and press itself up against my belly button until you move to another state. So, thanks but no thanks. Have a good night.”
In hindsight, I guess I understand that he didn’t directly address the email. If I got an email like that from a creepy internet half-stranger who I had just met, I’d probably run home, put my phone underneath six pillows and then not look at it again until I got the urge to take a picture of my cat sleeping in a really cute position like this:
Either way, I’m pretty sure that when Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do one thing every day that scares you” she didn’t mean, “Offer your body to someone you hardly know just because he is funny and talks about his dick.” It’s not like that’s going to stop me though. I mean, she was probably a lesbian anyway.
*We follow each other on Twitter
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There are two things you need to know about me before I tell this story – two things that, in one way or another, dictate everything I do.
1. I can turn anything into a joke.
2. I am just as scared as you are.
My mom is an alcoholic. Those words are incredibly hard for me to type since, for 19 years, I’ve taken it upon myself to keep her secret. I’d rather tell you about the diarrhea I had earlier today or that I sometimes like to watch porn where the guy jerks off while wearing heels and stockings. And see, now, hopefully you’ll forget that my mom is an alcoholic.
But I won’t. I can’t. My mom’s alcoholism is as much a part of me as my tooth enamel. Life with an alcoholic parent is a lot like wearing sundress a during December. You’re incredibly cold but still pretending that everything is okay. And for the most part, I think, I did a decent job at pretending. If friends wanted to come over, I’d advertise my house as ‘boring’ or avoid social situations altogether. If someone did manage to make it through our well-worn, creaky screen door, I’d try to keep my mom as far away as I could. I usually failed, as she would either dominate the conversation entirely or unsuccessfully eavesdrop outside my bedroom door. Only now do I realize that while I was trying to save my mom from embarrassing herself and my friends from being embarrassed for her, the only person I wasn’t trying to save was myself.
But I did have my own coping mechanisms, I tried to stay away from the house as much as possible, since that meant fewer opportunities for conflict. Movies were a safe bet since two hours were usually ample time for her to pass out. Zoos, museums and malls also fell safely within the category of activities that afforded enough time to polish off a six pack. Unfortunately though, escaping into a Wonkian existence where I didn’t have to cope with the fact that my only comfort at home was when my dad would rub my back at night until I fell asleep, doesn’t work as well into adulthood. From the moment I left the house at 17 up until now, at 24, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Most of them have been forged from a craving for stability and at the very least, a life where I didn’t have to go to buy beer at 8 am. I tied myself down to a guy I didn’t truly have romantic feelings for. I had what I knew was an unhealthy relationship with a married man. I spent time with people who only seemed to care about Cheetos and drinking. Given my past, I was only there for the Cheetos.
But then I met Danilo. He was kind and decent and would notice when I changed my hair even the slightest bit. He talked to me for hours, went out of his way to see me and, knowing what little he did about my past of tainted birthdays and holidays, did his absolute best to make everything special. I regret to say that many days have passed without him knowing that he is my hero – the one place where I really think I got it right.
It seems as if we packed 20 years of living in the three that we were together. We moved from Orlando to Bend and now, to San Francisco. We went to Asia, Europe and everywhere in between. We dealt with our respective ugliness and learned how hard it is to glue together the broken pieces of two former children who deserved so much more. And now, it seems, the only piece left on the board is my reluctance to deal with growing up with an alcoholic. To be clear – this is not a reluctance of skepticism, but more a reluctance of ignorance. I’m very good at making things okay for others, but when it comes to myself, I may as well be a red wine stain on white carpet. And, I speak from experience, those are impossible to deal with. So, inelegant as he can be sometimes, Danilo suggested therapy for me. I know he wants me to be happy and to finally be okay. I want that too. But my immediate response is to interpret it as an attack on my mom – the person I’ve been trying to protect for so long. Still, this is something I have to do for myself, no matter how much it hurts to know that I am in someway broken and unable to save my mom from her own demons.
As for Danilo, he will always be my hero – no matter how abrasive he can be when it comes to problem solving. I know that he just doesn’t want me to be cold anymore.
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A few months ago, I bought black jeans. They were the first I’d owned as an adult and as such, I didn’t plan on pairing them with a tucked in Daffy Duck t-shirt. Straight leg, 7 For All Mankind, size 8. The only problem was that, when I tried them on minutes after having them delivered, they didn’t fit. I mean, technically I could get them zipped but they made my waist look like an overflowing bowl of oatmeal and turned my ass into an innie.
I was crestfallen. I don’t obsess over how much I weigh, but at the same time, I love being a size 8. It’s the ideal size for me but when I couldn’t fit into these, I reluctantly accepted it and put them back in the box to be returned.
Around the same time, my boyfriend and I were at Target for another one of our routine visits to pick up one specific thing but leave with 11 things that are completely unrelated. So, since we were there for paper towels, we ended up bringing home two copies of Starcraft II. Even though I do really enjoy a good self-sabotage, I was completely against buying the game. The conversation went something like this:
HIM: Let’s get Starcraft, we had so much fun with the last one.
ME: No. I don’t want to have to be cut out of our apartment just so I can be weighed on a livestock scale and then watch them throw away my Pringles.
HIM: It won’t be that bad.
ME: Define “that bad.”
HIM: I’ll make sure you get to keep your Pringles.
ME: Not helping.
HIM: We’ll be responsible with it.
ME: Last time we played Starcraft, we never had sex, we only left the apartment to get pizza and I think you developed lower back problems.
HIM: So is that a no?
Starcraft, for those of you don’t know, is a real time strategy game made by Blizzard – the same people responsible for World of Warcraft. This means that, like WoW, Starcraft’s main objective is to make you fat beyond your wildest dreams. And if it doesn’t make you fat, it will give you acne in places never thought possible, social anxiety and/or an unnatural attraction to Funyuns.
It looks like this:
The objective: collect more resources than your opponents and then kill them with race-specific units (Protoss, Zerg and Terran). Kind of like Monopoly but with more blood and fewer beauty contests.
I don’t deny that Starcraft is a highly compelling game, despite the fact that 80% of the build order is the same every single time. But the independent variables are just ample enough that you keep coming back without gaining much, other than new methods for your opponent to call you a ‘cunt fag.’ And the slice of hope that 20% of your game – what, on average, amounts to maybe seven minutes – will be marginally different is what motivates a two hour time suck.
But, as you can tell, I’m playing it anyway. And as I’ve already revealed – one of the reasons for that is because I’m actually lose weight doing it. It’s simple, really, and I don’t even have to do butt clenches in my computer chair. The secret comes down to delayed gratification – which can be applied to anything. Before agreeing to buy Starcraft together, my boyfriend and I made a promise to each other that if we wanted to play, we would have to take a walk around the neighborhood for approximately 30 minutes.
Sadly, since installing this rule, I’ve probably never been in better shape. After a while, we stopped associating walking with Starcraft and began exercising on our own initiative. On the surface I thought it was great to kind of cheat the expectation that participating in online gaming meant that you were destined for a lifetime of elastic waist jeans.
Not only am I at least five years away from that reality, but I’m now regularly wearing the black jeans that previously looked like compression stockings. Recently, I took the opportunity to try them on again and not only do they fit, but there’s enough room for me to be three months pregnant without even knowing it.
But, seriously, I hope it doesn’t come to that because I don’t know how to walk that off.
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