The other day, I googled myself. Yeah I do that.
Since someone like me only really has a chance of being indexed through high school accomplishments, I usually come up with nothing. Mostly because my high school was the kind that felt it was acceptable to appropriate the Anheuser-Busch logo and somehow make it about ‘meeting new challenges every day’ instead of…beer. Which, oddly enough, the only challenge my high school faced was teenage alcoholism so I guess in retrospect, they were pulling off one fucking poignant piece of performance art.
Failed public education aside, my query is usually fruitless. But yesterday, when I searched for myself hoping to ensure that I can’t be contacted in any way by family members who should’ve been committed years ago, I found a public profile claiming I live in Nigeria. After confirming that my credit cards hadn’t been used to buy twelve XBox 360s, I noticed a link on the page, relevant of course because it was one of the few that included my name. I cringed when I saw it, but was sadistically delighted to know that it still existed. It was something my boyfriend at the time had written about me – proof that someone, somewhere loved me long enough to manufacture a few thoughts into functioning sentences:
I am with a woman so smart that she makes Annie Dillard seem like a fruit tart, so beautiful she grounds Poe’s Helen into dust, and so wonderful she makes grown men weep in her presence and women take their own lives in a fit of pure jealousy. I’m talking about CHEETOS*, the one who has single handedly has made my life more meaningful than the past 20 years combined. She’s trilingual, has amazing taste in music, and seems to be able to make me laugh no matter what. Even in an emergency room for 9 hours where we had fun playing “I Spy” and laughing at a guy with a c-cup. She’s wonderful and I just want to let you know that.
*name has been changed
A few things come to mind here – most glaring of which is that I can’t believe my pussy has put me in so much peril as to require a nine-hour emergency room visit for a urinary tract infection. Also, yes I’m an asshole for making fun of the guy with moobs. Sorry. I’m (kind of) different now. Oh, and the trilingual thing? My German and French language skills would land me in an assisted living facility for the developmentally disabled because my vocabulary boils down to, ‘Bathroom please and then we’ll see about ham.’ But, if I may brag for a moment, my grasp of English could definitely land me a position cleaning bed pans. While I’m at it, I’ll debunk the music thing too because well, come on.
I can’t vouch for the rest because it was based solely on an opinion that wasn’t mine and has since expired. But, for the sake of the authenticity of the twelve minutes taken to write it, I’ll assume that these feelings weren’t devised under false pretenses. Years ago, I would’ve tried to find a way to salt the earth and bury the page in order to dispel the idea that I am incompetent because I demolished the relationship in which these feelings existed. Because, after all, it is better to be loved without dilution than admit to everyone that you fucked it all up by not realizing that you were even loved in the first place.
Now I celebrate it. Not because the message has changed – the subtext of failure is still very present. But now, the failure is no longer the swelling tide that buries me beneath a carpet of sand and is instead the 7-11 from which I can safely eat my Funyuns while I carefully map out every ripple and finally realize what went wrong. I misdiagnosed the failure. My inability to adequately love this person was merely a symptom of the reality that I knew there was no good reason to, other than the fact that we both escaped from Budweiser High.
I still fail, and have no doubt that I always will. But I am learning how to be better at it – starting with skipping the Funyuns because they’re…just really gross.
Kimberly-Clarke, manufacturers of Depends adult diapers, have recently added to the pot of men vs women, dogs vs cats, bacon vs tampons bullshit with a new ad campaign for their line of adult diapers specifically designed for women and men. Since I’m not quite kinky enough to claim that I’ve ever used adult diapers, I assume that this is good news for those who do. However, the commercials possess a Miss Arizona-esque brand of what the fuck. While I realize that they probably came to life with some consideration of the audience they’re targeting, it’s insulting to assume that everyone over 60 has this idea that women are only good for making Apple Brown Betty and men are good for drinking Cognac and talking about WWII.
So far, there’s one commercial featuring white people, and one featuring…everyone else, or “coloreds”, if I’m to assume Kimberly-Clarke’s stance on how people over 60 think. One focuses on who rules the world, the other, driving. They both share this strand of totally wacky and endearing banter between one self assured man and one expectedly passive woman and you’re just like, “Aww, old people…is there anything they won’t say?” It’s really not even necessary for me to sum them up based on the embarrassingly predictable topics, but it suffices to say that the men are adamant that men rule the world and are better drivers while the women are kind of loosely committed to the idea of anything not involving grandchildren.
Somehow, these subjects exceed at being both painfully irrelevant and socially damaging. It’s kind of like when Billy Baldwin is allowed on TV–no one really cares, but you know it can’t be good.
It’s possible, however, that I’m over thinking things and missing the point that it doesn’t really matter if men or women rule the world or know how to effectively merge, as long as whoever is in charge is wearing a cable knit sweater. Regardless, why am I going to take the opinion of someone who can’t even keep their urine under control? Talk to me when you have tips on how to blame your soaked crotch on faulty plumbing.
I’ve peed on a lot of different things. The beach, the street, and right next to the “Welcome to Colorado” sign (which has unfortunately been documented in photos). In each case, I had to pull my pants as far forward as I could, hope that I wouldn’t wet myself, and deal with the inevitable disappointment upon realizing that I had…wet myself.
Luckily, GoGirl recently sent me a sample of their product, which means that my pants are now free from the threat of being soaked with urine.
Continue reading…
I recently woke up in the middle of the night with an all too familiar “I’m fucked” feeling. After peeing, I confirmed my status while thinking about how I needed to delete the porn off of my computer before hanging myself with the shower curtain. Burning during urination is fairly routine for me, but I could tell immediately that this was definitely not a routine burn. It was more like the kind of burn Michael Jackson went through when his Jheri curl went up in flames while he was filming that Pepsi commercial. Only this time, my vagina was the Jheri curl.
I tried to remain calm and forge on by myself, but when I realized I was out of AZO, I broke down harder than Dawson did that one time Joey…well, who the fuck knows.
So there I am at 3am, naked and crying in the hallway when my boyfriend comes out, wondering why I look like I just gave myself an abortion. I try to explain myself, but luckily his deductive skills are better than most, so he was able to translate “it h-h-huurts to p-p-aaaaay” into “I need some AZO now.”
Unfortunately, AZO couldn’t help me this time. After two days of wishful thinking I went to the doctor and once again, explained how my pussy had betrayed me.
Which brings me to my point: I’ve been sucking a lot of dick lately. My boyfriend refuses to touch my vagina in fear that he will anger the tyrant who controls the army of bacteria in my urethra. I even tried bargaining with him, asking if I could use my magic wand while I suck him off. No deal. Ultimately, I knew he was right but part of me hoped that he would be really irresponsible and fuck me, then let me eat ice cream for dinner. So, this means that I have been sucking his dick, because at least it will result in one hell of a deposit for the ole spank bank.
I hope this never happens to me again, but if it does, I now know to cry silently to myself.
I don’t hate many things. I don’t hate the fact that, until I was 16, I considered Space Jam to be the best movie I had ever seen, I don’t hate Bret Michaels for having his own show, and I don’t even hate seeing testicles on trucks (Ok, fine I do).
My lack of day to day outrage and contempt could be because I watch the Don’t Worry Be Happy video on loop, which tends to put me under the impression that I’m on acid. However, a much more probable explanation is that I just don’t have any hate left to dispense. This is because I reserve it for my Urinary Tract Infection. Yeah, I talk about it like it’s Diabetes or Herpes, which isn’t entirely fair because it’s worse.
My UTI came with the first dick I fucked, and really isn’t much different from the stomach ache I get after eating at Olive Garden. Dick and Olive Garden are two things I can’t really stay away from, but they come with consequences. Fucking 6 times in a day may seem cool, but when you use condoms with spermicidal lube and neglect to pee afterward, the numbers begin to mock you. Since I chose to lose my virginity in my shitty freshman year dorm, I didn’t have the best resources available. I usually had to kick my roommate out of the bathroom so I could sit in a tub of warm water and resist thoughts of the most strategic way to bite dicks off with my teeth.
After cursing myself for not listening to all of those Jesus freaks about the flames of passion that had officially made themselves at home in my urinary tract, I sought medical help. The doctors I went to were usually fairly blasé about the fact that I was pissing blood, so I would get a pat on the head, a prescription for antibiotics, and as a bonus, a look that, to me, seemed to say, “You dumb ass”. Most of these antibiotics were effective enough to lead me to believe that I wouldn’t have to sew up my vagina and call it a day, which means I was optimistic until I found myself writhing around in another waiting room.
Today, my survival kit includes cranberry pills, water, AZO, and lots of Nancy Kerrigan-esque “WHY”s and as simple as that sounds, it’s taken me years to hone my methods. I used to heat water to temperatures hotter than the center of a Hot Pocket, so that I could dip a baby wipe in it and apply it to my urethra. Painful, but oddly effective. Of course, this ultimately exacerbated the situation, so I stopped doing it. I also don’t drink anything with caffeine because it turns my urethra into a lighter, which admittedly makes smoking cigars with my vagina a lot more interesting, but it’s ultimately fucking painful.
I have accepted the fact that I will probably have a UTI for the rest of my life. It’s been with me for years, but I have found ways to work around it. I still lead an active sex life and have torn up all of the suicide notes I’ve written to my vagina where I quote Linkin Park songs. I think my body has somehow adapted to the pain, and I can only hope that my digestive tract will follow suit, because those Olive Garden breadsticks are calling my name.
