Goddammogram

I wrote this yesterday:

Just the fucking other day, I wrote, “I wish something bad would happen so that I could manage to stop fretting about stupid shit. I don’t want to lose my good looks or anyone who truly matters to me. Maybe just a coworker or a frenemy…”

Perhaps I was not specific enough.

Today I went to Dr. W to get drugged, drained, shot, smeared, felt up and fingered. I trusted I would enjoy this experience. No, seriously. I committed to this Beverly Frills doctor on the basis of enjoyability.

For many years, I went to Dr. S in Santa Monica. I first went to Dr. S when I turned sixteen and happened to not have taken drugs or dicks. Dr. S commended my sinlessness. “You’re such a good kid,” she told me. She implored me to save the sex for someone I loved. Then she prescribed me Yasmin. So, naturally, as the next five years splooged by and – much like the slattern in Dr. S’s cautionary tale whose vagina allegedly exploded as a result of venereal disease – my number of sexual partners came to exceed my number of years on the planet, I hadn’t the heart nor the ovum to give the doc the real talk. Luckily, I never had to because Dr. S took a medical leave (that apparently still has not ended) and her answering machine referred me to a Dr. W in Beverly Hills.

On the assumption that I would only once visit Dr. W, I wrote on my ‘About Medical Me’ form that I had experimented with Mary Jane and cocaine and had just returned from a semester abroad and thus needed to be tested for AIDS, herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia and HPV. I found Dr. W refreshingly businesslike and non-judgmental. She burdened me not with whorror stories; she simply inquired as to whether I would also like to test for the increasingly hip Hep C. I did. Upon eyeing my little self summary, she informed me that Mary Jane could safely be used in moderation, particularly if one employed a vaporizer. She deemed cocaine somewhat more harmful: “You know how a sink pipe can get a little leak, and years down the line it will explode?” she asked. I supposed I did. “That can happen to your coronary artery if you do enough cocaine.” I had only tried cocaine once, and then only because it seemed terribly boring to pass up the chance to try a fairly hard drug with one’s middle school teacher. I hadn’t particularly planned to try it again, as its effects seemed easily simulated with a large cup of coffee and some sawdust. But I felt I might as well feel like a badass drug user and record it on my form. And I am glad I did, because it prompted the doctor to give me some important information. Maybe. Maybe it’s all bullshit. Anyway. Dr. W had many selling points; but the one that sold me might very well have been her fabulously sassy nurse, who said things like, “That dress is so fuckin’ cute! I hate you, girl.”

Today’s visit, which marked my fourth year with Dr. W, proved something less enjoyable than visits past. Sassy nurse appeared to have taken her business elsewhere, leaving me to give my blood to a woman who only found me mildly amusing.

Moments after I had donned my robe (which was not a real robe, but a makeshift robe constructed from two large paper towels because the real robes had run out), the doctor knocked on the door and immediately entered, sans “Who’s there?” She asked if I approved of an undergraduate shadow witnessing the exam.

Not one to leave a shadow in the dark, I said, “The more the merrier!” A regular red cross of pussy am I.

Apparently the nurse took this remark to heart, as she remained in the room throughout the physical. Or maybe the nurse always sticks around to prepare the instruments for invasion. In any case, it felt like a big old pap party this afternoon in the examining room.

“See the cervix?” the doctor said to her shadow as she pried my vagina open with her flash-lit plastic duck-lip device.

“Mm,” responded the shadow, an attractive but cold young Asianish woman, who looked like the hate child of the bitch from “Bridesmaids” and the 10-year-old who no longer wants singing lessons from me. “It looks like a donut with a little hole in it.”

Some sweeping/scraping of cervical samples and two fingers later, it came time for the breast exam. “Why don’t you dress yourself from the bottom up?” Dr. W asked. This proposal perplexed me as I had worn a dress to the appointment. I looked in mild bewilderment to my little dress, which hung on a nearby chair.

“Oh, you wore a dress…” the doctor noted. “Underwear?”

“Oh, yeah…” I started, knowing well where I would have to finish. “Didn’t wear any today.”

“No underwear…” the doctor said with a smile that failed to fully form.

So I simply kept on my paper towels, which the doctor tore through to get at my breasts. She circled around the right one and seemed to find no problem. Then she moved onto the left. “Have we ever noted a lump here before?” she asked.

“No…” I replied, horror mounting. I immediately thought back to a comment a male friend made as we watched an episode of “Bridalplasty” that focused on a breast cancer victim’s quest for funbags: “You had cancer – now you’re ugly!”

As the doctor firmed her feel, she offered, “Well, it could very well be your rib.” From there, she launched into a hastily recited, well-rehearsed spiel about all of the harmeless things a lump on the breast could be. I missed most of it because I had entered Stage 1 of Freaking the Fuck Out. I eventually tuned back in to hear, “You might have bumped your chest in a car accident and caused some trauma, and some cartilage might have moved.” As I had not bumped my chest in any car accident, her words offered me little comfort.

The doctor and her shadow left the room and my ears began to ring. I thought to myself, “Wow, I could faint right now. I now understand how people enter shock and then faint, like in the movies, namely ‘Wish Upon a Star,’ starring a young Katherine Heigl. If I fainted, that would be kind of badass. It would also doubtlessly earn me much sympathy from my coworkers.” But I did not really want to faint. So I put my feet over my head and willed myself to breathe deeply. I did not faint.

Dr. W reentered the room and instructed me to go downstairs to get my tit x-rayed — but oh, wait! Didn’t I first want to get that shot for whooping cough that probably cost two-hundred fucking dollars that I held off on last year? I thought to tell the doc, “Doc, don’t you think we should hold off on the whooping cough shot as I have only ever heard of whooping cough happening in the book, ‘Walk Two Moons,’ which I’m pretty sure is a work of fiction? Shouldn’t we see if this lump under my boob is going to kill me first?” But no, I got the shot, which brought my bill to $790 and made my arm feel like someone punched it.

When I reached the office of x-ray, a distinctly unfriendly woman handed me an adhesive that looked like a blister band-aid with a blackhead in the middle of it. She instructed me to “put it where it hurts.” I informed her in oversensitive bitch tones that it did not hurt anywhere; I probably just had a large left rib. “Okay,” she replied. “When you’ve put it on you can wait over there on the black couch.”

I waited on the godforsaken black couch for about fifteen minutes until a man invited me into a room full of machines and guided me through a ritual best summarized as Modeling Meets Riflery Meets Hell. Before diving into the ritual, the man asked, “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”

I thought to reply, “Well if I am, I certainly don’t plan to keep it, so feel free to do your thing,” but instead I said, “Eh…no.”

The man instructed me to face the machine and put my titties on the plastic so he could catch some rays. I took up various poses upon his instruction, some quite glamorous, such as the hand on the head with the side boob firmly pressed against the machine. “Deep breath in. Hold it…” he said before each shot. “Now let it out.”

“Okay, we’ll call you,” the man said the the shoot reached its end.

Feeling cheated, I asked, “Wait, do you have anything I can see?”

“Sure,” the man said, pulling up a ray of my ribs.

“Those are my ribs,” I said.

“Yes,” said the man.

“Well, do you see anything horribly wrong?”

“I don’t see anything, no. We’ll have a radiologist look at it, but I don’t see anything abnormal.”

That’s good, I suppose. So now I wait.

‘Tis a funny feeling, having a lump in your lefty (under your lefty, to be precise). I don’t want to touch the potentially poison-filled puff, and yet I feel horrible for not fully taking advantage of what time we have left together – assuming the worst, which I apparently enjoy assuming.

When, three hours after my appointment time, I finally emerged from the doctor’s office, I treated myself to a lone linner at the fucking delicious Italian restaurant across the street. I ordered spaghetti fontina wrapped in thin slices of eggplant like a divine trio of little Italian burritos. I used my fingers to lick the plate clean, just like everyone hates. Then I ordered an apple pie-esque torte.

Then I went to a comedy show, the tickets to which had supposedly sold out. As I looked upon the smug faces of the forces behind the ticket table, I thought to pull the card I have been given to test-drive for the “few days” until the insufficiently sassy nurse phones to reveal my fate. I thought to say, “Would you stamp my fucking hand and allow me to sit on my friend/coworker who is inside’s lap if I told you that my doctor found a potentially deadly lump on my left tit today? Or that it was my birthday? Or that I am willing to pay you twice as much as what you would charge me?” But I refrained.

Luckily, I got into the show anyway. During the show, I actually found myself getting slightly uncomfortable whenever anyone said “melanoma” or “the afterlife,” which made me feel like a depressed douche.

Following the show, I told my friend/coworker about the day’s lumpy discovery. (For the record, God, Jesus, Satan and/or Joe Pesci, I did not and do not wish death-for-perspective upon this particular coworker.)

“Well, it’s kind of a win-win,” she said. “If you’re not going to die, you live. But if you are going to die, you can quit this fucking job.” She sounded genuinely excited and envious at the possibility.

“True,” I replied. “And I will quit in the most obnoxious way possible.”

“You should take a shit on your boss’s desk.”

“I’ve got a better idea. I’ll take a shit in his desk so that it takes him awhile to realize he’s working in close proximity to a shit.”

We both agreed this was a terrific idea.

I must admit, I feel a strange sense of calm now the universe has heard my prayer and put my left boob put in jeopardy. I have largely ceased fretting over stupid shit. I can now savor the weekend as a person who might be terminally ill. I can hold out on freaking out until the next business day.

I also can’t help but find my situation terribly romantic. Oh, the people who will miss me if I suffer death by tit. What will my obituary say, assuming I get one? “Promising filth blogger dies of poisonous tit. Possible cause: too many calcium gummy chews from Trader Joes.”

I will end with a prayer: God, the biggest bitch of them all, I beg of you: Leave me my tit. I will most certainly become intolerably, mercilessly, eternally, self-righteously whiny if I must have the thing removed. Surely you would not wish such whining upon your children. Surely you have better things to smite. You needn’t ruin my life. The neurotic brain I inherited from my mother will take care of that. My doctor even said that my brain might explode someday, given that I get migraines that make me forget how to talk for an hour. Let that be enough. Leave lefty. Lefty has done no wrong. Lefty takes not your name in vain. Lefty still has much joy to bring to humanity, particularly the ladies, who have by and large been missing out on its rewards. Let me live to be an old, two-titted vulgar bitch. It will be fun, I promise.

In the name of the God, the Satan, the Jesus and the Joe Pesci,

Amen.

Now I know I was not specific enough, because Amy Winehouse is dead. She seems to have died immediately after I posted this entry. While it’s good to know that God is listening/I am magic, I do not appreciate this turn of fate. I rather liked Amy Winehouse, and am not enjoying the endless puns emitting from my family members. Said my brother: “She dead. Hair dead, nails dead, everything dead.” Said my father, “She should have gone to rehab, I said yeah, yeah, yeah.” Well, at least I earned her a spot in the 27 Club. Hopefully this means lefty will live.

The Golf Ball

One recent summer’s eve, over a seemingly guilt trip-free family dinner, my father brought up “The Golf Ball.” Be not mistaken, friends, for the ball to which my father referred was not the pocked, tumor-sized sphere that rich whites hit with various sticks. Rather, t’was the virtual middle school dance for the middle aged members of my father’s golf club that celebrated the end of “the most prestigious golf tournament in the world” (or so its participants proudly called it). My father, club head of hipness, promised he had done everything in his power to ensure that the ball would be “really kind of cool this year – not old farty.” Through numerous talks and texts, he besought me to attend. And, ever the good sport, I did.

And it was upon attending The Golf Ball that I remembered just how much wasps love their rules. Having graduated from my horrifyingly strict episcopal middle school over a decade ago, I had almost forgotten the scrutinizing conditions that made me the compulsive scandal seeker I am today. My father likes to say that an episcopal situation offers “the same great faith – with only a third of the guilt.” Perhaps. Then again, they supplant the guilt with paranoia of rule breaking. I had thought that the rules existed to prevent middle schoolers from blowing each other in bathrooms. But apparently wasps just fucking like rules.

I casually picked up on a number of the golf club’s rules well before I stepped through its doors and seared my eyes on its carpet, which swirled with remarkably unfortunate shades of yellow and brown. On the drive over, my mother informed me that my brother had spent nearly two hours waiting outside the club in his car earlier that evening. He had thought that my uncle and cousin would be done golfing at 5:00. He did not anticipate that they would not be done until 6:30, and thus neglected to don the long pants required to enter the club and conduct a search. He also could not hope to reach the boys by phone, for the club strictly forbade the use of cellphones.

Once in the club, I discovered more rules – the first being that only men could wear colorful clothing. The male clubbers wore bright red bowties and burgundy velvet jackets, pale pink pants and brightly striped polos, collars a-pop. Meanwhile, the ladies (save for yours truly, yours truly’s mom and a lone guidette, all of whom wore neon) wore white. The dresses were white. The skirts were white. The sport coats (which served to say, “I actually play golf, I’m not just a plus-one”) were white. The sweaters were white. The hair, whether deep-fried or left to its own devices, was white. The fuck-you pumps were white.

I did not easily endure Part I of The Golf Ball – the cocktail hour. I found the air entirely too cold to drink anything. So, when then I found myself miserably failing to produce a fauxner in a circle of fragrant, overripe blondes, I looked to the heavens in gratitude when my cell phone vibrated and presented the name of my gay husband in New York. Naturally, several clubbers happily seized the opportunity to inform me that I could not take calls at the club. Nor could I text. A peculiar and intriguing hell, this place. It was not enough that I had to spend my evening amongst loud, drunken fat men who blew cigar smoke in my face and women who congregated on the bathroom couch around particularly sparkly six-inch heels and said, “But the Christians, the Christians are comfortable, don’t you think?” I actually had to take them in.

Following cocktail hour, the herd gathered in the dining room for the big meal. Dinner went well for a couple reasons: First, it occurred to me to fake “severe stomach issues,” which led to extended periods of time BBMing in the bathroom. Second, I had my mother teach me how to say things in French for almost the entirety of my table time, making for a very productive dining experience indeed. Toward the end of the meal, Mother leaned in and whispered, “This is the part where everybody gets drunk.” I had a feeling circumstances would only continue to improve from there. The Black Eyed Peas did as well, for shortly after the crowd got loud, there mystically appeared a dance floor, the DJ presiding over which blasted, “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night.”

Before long, neckties found their way around heads and elderly couples waltzed to Fergie and Usher. Meanwhile, I leapt about the floor, snapping as many photos as possible. Unfortunately, my father advised against posting such photos on the internet as, “rich white men live to fuck people up.” But as consolation, I offer the following:

Chief Discoveries from the Disco:

1. Only young people know all the words to modern pop hits: False. A disconcerting number of rich old people knew every word of “Empire State of Mind,” “Firework,” “Rude Boy” and “Glamorous.”

2. Slave songs became blues, which became rock and roll, which became pop, which became mandatory to blast in otherwise enjoyable restaurants and bars. Through an equally fascinating journey, dance moves that seem to have originated on the Jersey shore devolved into flaccid but unmistakeable derivations on the dance floor of The Golf Ball. While the guidos fist pumped, the ballers either fist flapped or fist poked. None of said ballers comprehended, much less committed to, the full pump, so distorted it had become on its journey from the shore to their repertoire. But they certainly did what they could, and I’ve got the pictures that I’m not allowed to post on the internet to prove it.

3. My father and I share a similar style of dance. Untrained and unrestrained, we flail until we throw out our necks and lower backs. We don’t particularly do well dancing with other people. But we like to dance next to other people so we don’t feel like losers. Mutual flailing works well in extended father/daughter dance situations as it makes eye contact near impossible.

4. Go to a club for young people, and your hair will leave smelling like cigarettes. Go to a club for old people and your hair will leave smelling like an old man’s ass. As God may have it, you really can’t take the old fart out of the country club. While my father made a valiant attempt to make the disco dance “not old farty,” he did not anticipate that a mystery boogier would provide a constant stream of sulfuric old farts through its three-hour duration.

Is that a fauxner in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

I regret to inform you that the gods of the English language have expressed great displeasure with the lingo of today – LOL, OMG, effing, cuz, cum (as a verb)… As assistant angel of the accuracy wing, I think I speak for everyone on linguistic high when I say that I am particularly troubled by the OMNIPRESENT OVERSTATEMENT. Yo bitches. You know who you are.

My Facebook wall bleeds with OVERSTATEMENTS. While I am pleased to say that it no longer hemorrhages as in college years, one still notes regular instances of rusty spotting. (Be warned: the vagina references do not end here.) Consider the following recent declarations:

ON SATURDAY I WILL BE IN YOU!!!!! OH MY GOOD GRAVY!!!!!!

I am totally infatuated with you.

Why are you not in my life?

I pine for you.

Get inside me.

I need you NOW!

ahhhhhhhhhh where are you in my life

IIICCCAAANNNN’TwaittoSEEYOUUUUUUUGETINMYLIIIIIIIFE!

Can you please just be my girlfriend?

INTO MY BED

It should come as little surprise that each of these posters possesses a pussy. For those who do not in some way possess a pussy or are over thirty and thus unfamiliar with the phenomenon of walling to say I love you (and often neglecting to express such supposed love in any other capacity), I have decoded/decoked the above-mentioned declarations to the best of my abilities:

ON SATURDAY I WILL BE IN YOU!!!!! OH MY GOOD GRAVY!!!!!!

I will see you on Saturday.

I am totally infatuated with you.

You seem cool.

Why are you not in my life?

You are not in my life because I never return your calls. But I am going to pretend I have no idea why we haven’t spoken in months.

I pine for you.

I would now like you to write, “No, I pine for you!” on my Facebook wall, and I will “like” this. I will not, however, respond to a private message inquiring about my general life.

Get inside me.

I want other people on Facebook to think that we have hot lesbian sex. I cannot, however, be bothered to return your calls, texts or Facebook messages that others cannot see.

I need you NOW!

If you attend the large, very-far-away party I throw six months from now, I will lick your ass for a few moments. The next morning I will loudly bring up that slutty thing you did three years ago at brunch with my girls.

ahhhhhhhhhh where are you in my life

We clearly have nothing in common at this point. But please, let’s stay together for the Facebook.

IIICCCAAANNNN’TwaittoSEEYOUUUUUUUGETINMYLIIIIIIIFE!

I have gone off my meds.

Can you please just be my girlfriend? / INTO MY BED

…

I know not what to make of these last two. I know that the lady who wrote “Get inside me” does not particularly want me inside her. For following her last public proclamation, I honestly inquired, via private message, as to her true feelings on me getting inside her, and have yet to receive a reply. I realize the volatile veracity of the posted profession of lady lust. However, I also realize that my fickle friend fancies “lesbian” porn; thus, I find it reasonable to ask whether there might be any truth in her demand for lesbientry.

I wonder whether I ought to similarly single out the other solicitors. A recent comment of a forty-year-old coworker comes to mind:

“If you have something to say to me, call me. Don’t write me a message on fucking Facebook.”

It sounds logical enough. And it is, if you’re forty or don’t work at a desk. But there is nary a lady under twenty-five on my wall, and if these ladies have the time – which, clearly, they do – to regularly visit my wall for the purpose of titillating voyeurs, then they have the time to set the record straight (so to speak) with a private message. And I really prefer to handle these matters with my fingers, while pretending to work, rather than over the phone in my leisure time.

In the interest of fair play, I confess to those I besmirch – yeah, I said it, besmirch – that the unfeeling slutball sexpert persona I carefully cultivated out of laziness and – I just learned from an online quiz – Borderline Personality Disorder* probably invited this type of response. But Jesus Cunt-Licking Christ. I don’t demand that people get inside me and then refuse to take their calls. Grow up, bitches. Walk the walk or shut your holes.

At times I almost want to get rid of Facebook. Then again, at times, namely last weekend when I watched “Never Say Never,” I almost want to rid of all 12-year-old girls. Really, I find the fauxners that smear their dribble across my Facebook wall far preferable to the fauxners I encounter in the work place. Here are some memorably soul-shriveling OVERSTATEMENTS from the cube farm:

“That was my Nine-Eleven.” That was a short-lived crisis that ultimately cost the company nothing. But my boss takes a lot of adderall.

“Hilarious!” A cliche complaint, I know. But I recently heard the term employed three resounding times, and not once accompanied by so much as a giggle. The offender, a smarmy man from the chain smoking division (my company has a division proven to only employ chain smokers), declared it three-times hilarious that my boss went to the premiere of The Hangover Part II.

“EPIC FAIL!” This hip catchphrase, typed in this way, always to un-sarcastically describe a minor error, such as neglecting to include a certain douchebaguette on an email she didn’t really need to be included on, has become something I must endure on a monthly, if not weekly, basis.

“That’s awesome!” A “newbie” uttered these words after her boss said, “I’m going to need you to stay until seven to finish up that powerpoint presentation.”

“You’re a rock star!” More than one person in my office finds “rock star” an appropriate title for someone who labels files in a timely fashion.

“LMAO” (Laughing My Ass Off, to the AIMless). Based on the number of times a day my East coast counterpart sends this abbreviation my way, I can only assume that he spends most of his business hours re-adhering his ass to whatever an ass detaches from when it’s laughed off.

” / ” A poorly placed emoticon is a particularly base manifestation of a fauxner. Let us begin with the winky face. I have found that the ruthlessness with which one abuses the winky corresponds directly to the degree to which one believes passion has a place in office work. While a workplace winky is terrible under any circumstances, it becomes particularly offensive when combined with “lol jk” to form ” lol jk,” the tritone chord of the computer keyboard.

Now let us proceed to the standard smiley. My boss utilizes this emo exclusively for passive aggressive purposes. I’ve taken a few examples from my inbox:

“I thought I could trust you to handle this “

“This is not going to look good to clients “

“I understand that you want your weekend to begin. But this is one of those days when I have been working since 8am and will probably be here till midnight “

I asked my dad if he’d ever encountered such a smiley.

“God. No. That’s so gay or so British or both. No, it’s gay. Brits don’t smile at all.”

I pray you’ll take the following away from this entry:

1. Say what you mean. I’m getting old.
2. If you must titillate have the balls – the ovum – to set the record straight. (I should be a rapper.)
3. No one will fire you if you opt not to call a job that clearly sucks “awesome.” Unless you work at a sleep-away camp or Sur La Table.
4. Don’t see the Justin Bieber movie if you already have urges to wipe out the ‘tween race.

*Yes, the same as Susanna Kaysen, played by a young and lusty Winona Ryder.

Excuses are like…awesome

Faithful readers,

I tender my sincerest apologies for neglecting to update this blog as often as I would have liked. Between the long work weeks, the trying social obligations and the severe cold I for several days mistook for sinus cancer, I haven’t had so much as a moment to debrief. Not to mention my spaniel attempted suicide when her seventh birthday party proved insufficiently elaborate. I promise I will never abandon you again. In the immortal words of Diana Ross, “On that you can depend and never worry.”

I’m a big fan of excuses. I’d like to say I was born this way. (And I think I can, because Lady Gaga insists that she was born platinum blonde, super skinny, horned and waxed to the max into a lesbian orgy, and people seem to believe her.) I take issue with the narrow-minded attitude many have toward excuses. Consider, for example, the following adage:

“Excuses are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink.”

One cannot be sure whether by “asshole,” the creator of this saying means anus or rectum. If he means anus, he is sorely mistaken, for a showered anus never stinks. If he means rectum, he has apparently failed to consider that many enema fetishists and santorum-phobes douche their asses until they shit clear water, so clearly all rectums don’t stink all the time. (Though I’ll have to stick my head in a thoroughly douched one to confirm.) The inventor of this myopic motto also ignores the fact that, when used properly, both the excuse and the asshole do far more good than harm. Each possesses the ability to change shape at crucial moments to promote entry or release. Each plays a critical role in eliminating toxic waste.

I therefore request that we ammend the adage to say, “Excuses are like assholes. They stink sometimes, but without them you’d drown in your own shit.”

My undying desire to be excused first came to my attention in the eighth grade when my English teacher said to me, “It’s a given that you have an excuse for everything.” My response, which I may or may not have said aloud, was, “Well, there is an excuse for everything.” Indeed, as far as everything I got in trouble (but not too much trouble for my parents had already donated to the new school gym) for in eighth grade (initiating a tampon fight in front of fifth graders, frenching my boyfriend at a Buca di Beppo birthday party and removing my bikini top – along with not a few others – at the latter, all-girls pool portion of the same party) went, I had excuses I deemed – and still deem – perfectly acceptable. Respectively: tampons, now that pretty much everyone is unembarrassed about using them, should be inserted into boys’ ears at lunch time; making out is my reason for living, therefore when a willing and able (or at least willing) hottie avails his mouth, I must take advantage; and naked (particularly at an all-girls pool party) is free. Unfortunately, these excuses were not well received by the headmaster, who informed my parents that I was the “most at-risk child” he’d ever encountered.

Seeing as I have neglected to die – either physically or metaphorically – from drinking, drugs or dicks, which is more than I can say for several of my grade school alumni, perhaps my headmaster slapped the “most at-risk” label on my overexposed episcopalian thigh a little hastily. However, my English teacher seemed to have pegged me right (no pun intended). In the Year of our Lord 2000, after the straw – rather, the strings (the tampon string, the string of spit between my boyfriend’s mouth and mine and the many strings of my discarded bikini top) – broke the camel’s back, and with it my ability to get away with any mischief whatsoever, my speed of excuse generation went from 60 to 160, where it stayed for the next decade. Here are some notable excuses from those naughty aughts. Mr. Q, these are for you.

Year: 2001

Excuse: “I hit her in my sleep!”

Meaning: I hit her when I conceivably could have been asleep. Actually, I climbed down the ladder of my bunk bed, slapped her as hard as I could, then climbed back up the ladder and went to sleep.

Outcome: I received the benefit of the doubt.

Year: 2002

Excuse: “I wasn’t able to study for this test as much as I was planning to. My cat died unexpectedly last night.”

Meaning: I forgot we had a test and spent last night playing solitaire and downloading porn from Kazaa.

Outcome: The teacher, who wore a “Go Vegan!” t-shirt, allowed me to take the test at a later date.

Year: 2003

Excuse (delivered in tears to a woman behind a counter at the DMV): “This is bullshit! My instructor barely spoke English!”

Meaning: It can’t be entirely my fault that I drove into oncoming traffic.

Outcome: I failed the driving test for a fourth time and received a reckless driving charge.

Year: 2003

Excuse: “I got in a car accident.”

Meaning: I was napping and forgot we had a swim meet.

Outcome: I might have the only one on the swim team ever to receive a hug from the coach, who everyone agreed was seriously hot.

Year: 2004

Excuse: “You don’t understand. I’m in love with you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”

Meaning: Camp only lasts five weeks, and I’d like to fuck you/control you until I go home.

Outcome: I got to fuck/control him until I went home.

Year: 2005

Excuse: “Well, we run into each other so often accidentally, why ruin it with a planned interaction?”

Meaning: Thanks for asking me out, but the mere idea that you possess a functioning penis makes me ill.

Outcome: This particular suitor quite literally ran in the other direction the next time he saw me.

Year: 2006

Excuse: “I don’t want to kiss you because you’ve been eating stinky meat.”

Meaning: In addition to not wanting to kiss you because you’ve been eating stinky meat, I’m embarrassed to kiss you in front of the other counselors because on our last day off you wrapped cheese in a napkin and ate it like a burrito.

Outcome: I don’t remember. This was the summer I worked with children, so I drank heavily (meaning two bitch beers) whenever off duty.

Year: 2007

Excuse: “Wouldn’t it be weird for us to date since I met you through Karen? I never date. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, but I never really have, so I’d probably be bad at it. I also haven’t had a pap smear in over a year. Not that I’m a completely dirty slut.”

Meaning: I think you have a cool personality, and you’re not hideous, but I have a distinct feeling you will not be sexually up to snuff, so please just stay my friend who wants to be my boyfriend. Also, let my lack of recent smear deter you from my orifices, but don’t think me tainted love.

Outcome: Two week pity relationship.

Year: 2008

Excuse (as transcribed from a job application): “Fashion is my passion. I have loved this store for as long as I can remember. I’ve never seen a collection so practical and yet so fabulous. All my life I’ve dreamed of a career in retail. Please help me make that dream come true.”

Meaning: This store’s okay. I’ve never worked in retail, nor do I particularly want to, but I’m desperate for work.

Outcome: I received a phone call from the store manager who called my application “excellent” and promised to hire me the moment a position availed itself. (Sadly, due to economic troubles, that day never came.)

Year: 2008

Excuse:

Hey Dad!

First of all I hope you and sister are having a wonderful time in Europe.

All is well here. I’ve been keeping really busy with my internship (which is going great; the people I work with are super creative and friendly and flexible with my hours) and I’m babysitting for the neighbors four hours every day next week. I start at Sur La Table this week too.

Last night I had a few high school friends and my camp friend Jenna (!) come over for a BBQ and fireworks. One of our high school teachers made it over too. It was really good to see everyone and catch up and sip some beers and do some dancing. It got pretty late and I had everyone who had been drinking sleep over. I figured PCH was a dangerous way to go given the occasion.

I thought Carlotta had the weekend off and hadn’t finished cleaning up when she arrived. My friend Sarah also left through the garage really early in the AM and didn’t close it. She tried to call Amy to close it, but Amy’s phone was dead. I felt awful because Carlotta came by this morning and freaked out. I explained the situation but I think she was overwhelmed to find both people in the house and the garage door open. I know she didn’t expect to clean up. I think she assumed the party was much bigger than it was. It wasn’t huge; twelve people at the very most. We all helped clean.

I’m sorry I didn’t foresee any problems. I hope you can understand that I was doing the best I could to have a good fourth of July and be safe and responsible. I just wanted to have some fun with my friends whom I never get to see anymore. Everything stayed under control and I thought that you guys wouldn’t mind if I just had a few people over to BBQ. I should have asked first but it was kind of spur of the moment.

I feel horrible that I worried Carlotta and I don’t want to ruin your trip. I’m sorry. I can’t wait to see you!

Love

Meaning: I had a party that no fewer than thirty people attended. Carlotta the cleaning lady and trained nark arrived on a Saturday morning to find the following:

1. The garage door open.
2. My father’s car keys in the backyard.
3. Cigarette butts in the house.
4. A cup of tobacco chew and spit on the balcony.
5. A dining table coated with ultra-sticky nastiness.
6. A ten-pound rock that had somehow made its way onto the already degraded dining table.
7. Four broken wine glasses.
8. A recycling bin brimming with empty vodka bottles and dixie cup.
9. A dog barfing up green shit.
10. A couple on the family room couch.
11. A couple in the guest room.
12. A couple in my sister’s room.
13. A couple in my brother’s room.
14. A couple in my parents’ room.
15. A couple in my room.

Outcome: Amazingly, for two months, I heard nothing of the party from either parent. Then, one September afternoon back at school, there arrived the following email from my mother:

I found your photo disc by the mail. I don’t know the despicable woman who posed nude, but I cannot believe you would allow such a vile act to take place in my home! I’m not giving you anymore spending money.

The despicable woman who “posed nude” did so on my family room couch. Coked up and pubeless, she lay one finger on her clit while another pried her mouth open like a tongue depressor. My then-boyfriend and I sat on either side of her, fully clothed, each with a hand on one of her inner thighs and a look that said, “Who cares? It’s only pussy.” The disposable camera that sacrificed the last of its exposures to freeze this vile moment first served to document a trip to Universal Studios. My mother likely sorted through twenty-six couple-at-the-amusement-park photos before arriving finally at the image that stole, if not my soul, then at least my spending money. Later that evening, she defriended me on Facebook. We have yet to patch up that friendship.

Year: 2009

Excuse: “Fine, I’m a virgin.”

Meaning: I don’t want to fuck with you because my vagina is already sore from fucking someone else this morning, and I don’t trust that you’re graceful enough not to destroy it further.

Outcome: Vagina narrowly escaped further destruction.

Year: 2009

Excuse: “My computer crashed, so I lost the first draft of my thesis [which is on Beyonce].”

Meaning: I need at least another month to craft the draft.

Outcome: At least another month.

Year: 2010

Excuse: “I wasn’t able to submit my application on time because my friend tried to commit suicide.”

Meaning: I wasn’t able to submit my application on time because I wanted to wait until it was perfect.

Outcome: I got the job.

I don’t really believe there is an excuse for everything, at least not now. I realize that some of my past actions, along with the excuses that excused them, did not deserve to be excused. For the record, I also find the following inexcusable:

1. The fact that haircuts for men cost less than haircuts for women at every salon I’ve visited. Apparently if a man and I went to one of these salons and got the same haircut, I would rack up a higher bill.
2. Unduly braggy Facebook stati.
3. Songs with meaningless lyrics that do not sufficiently engage the cultured or the common but that I am somehow supposed to find cool.
4. Osama Bin Beards.
5. Bruno Mars.
6. Fake tits without cancer or a sex change.
7. Anal bleaching.
8. Catholicism.
9. Bad head.
10. Emoticon abuse. Regrettably, emoticons are about as easy to abuse as heroin.

Excuses, like assholes, can only be abused for so long before a serious injury occurs. Nevertheless, I won’t deny that even fucked up excuses, when properly executed, can improve the lives of their creators as well as the lives of those who fall for them. I probably made my swim coach grateful to be alive. I probably made my tenth grade teacher grateful that her cat was alive. I got a job. I gave at least two people the great life experience of having loved and lost. I gave a woman confidence that people were able to find inspiration in her stupid line of work.

But in the interest of reserving a spot in one of hell’s swankier regions, I made a vow at the start of 2011 to excuse myself exclusively in non-fucked-up terms. True to my vow, I have not in several months used an excuse that involved death, near-death, sleep violence or an interest in retail. I now only use excuses in order to work slightly less and put time limits on those activities that tend to hog my alone time. Without further ado, I proudly present you with the righteous excuses of 2011. Like anal lube, I encourage you to apply the following liberally.

1. “I have an appointment I have to leave early to make.”
2. “I have food poisoning[/a migraine/a cold]. I’d better stay home.”
3. “I have to leave a little early fetch my grandmother from the airport.”
4. “I have to leave a little early to fetch my sister from girl scouts.”
5. “I have a flat tire – again! I’ll be in as soon as possible.”
6. “The plumber is coming today. I have to stay home and wait for him.”
7. “I only have a couple of hours to hang out. I have a date with my mom.”

Addendum to the Lesbientry

After posting the lesbientry, I realized I had neglected to discuss two highly influential sources of sapphic secretions:

The first: “Henry and June,” a 1990 film based on the unexpurgated diary of Anaïs Nin and starring a less-than-persuasively-bald Fred Ward, a Christina Ricci-esque actress I’d never heard of named Maria de Medeiros (and you know how I like the Christina Ricci-esque) and a young, supple Uma Thurman with a deep, deep voice. This first-to-be-rated-NC-17 film details the relations between Henry and June, Henry and Anais, and, of course, June and Anais. There comes a time not so long into the lengthy story when June and Anais make for a lezbar and, after a few drinks, end up cheek-to-cheek on the dance floor. Then ’tis only a matter of romantic remarks before the two share a long, luscious kiss. Nothing like lipstick lesbianism for the sake of lipstick lesbianism makes so tingly the twat and so envious the ego of this, your cock-sucking lesbian correspondent. June and Anais each have their own relationship with Henry, and neither seems to mind ‘sharing’ him (it also probably helps that Anais already has a husband and June spends much of her time in shuttling between New York and Gay Paris, where we lay our scene). And then they have their own perfectly lovely relationship, because even in the ’30s, it was clear the cock wasn’t everything.

The second fantastic piece of lesbiotica would be LiandraDahl.com, to which I purchased a month-long membership for $15 at the enthusiastic recommendation of a trusted perv. This website, founded by of-course-Australian Liandra, features a variety of videos, my favorite of which features one Australian lesbo reading aloud a particularly sexy excerpt from “American Psycho” while another Australian lesbo caresses her down. As a books on tape kind of person, I find Liandra’s dedication to making reading fun quite inspiring. Another scene, for rape-ier amongst you, is entitled “Secure (Part I)” by Ju and Emily Dickinisde. (I can’t help but think Liandra meant to type “Emily Dickinside,” but it’s crucial never to underestimate the degree to which an Australian who loves her Cunt is willing to toy with your idea of appropriate spelling.) This scene, while extreme at times for my taste (namely when the impressively manly butch dyke rapist hits several times the tongue of hir victim), contains some lovely visuals – like a plump, reddened ass framed by a torn-at-the-crotch pair of fishnets – and some inspiring ideas – like duct-taping one’s legs into two helpless nubs and using a …[I don't know what the name of this device is, but it is often used to securely link ski lift tickets to one's pant zipper]… to bind one’s hands. I imagine you’ll find viewing “Secure (Part I)” a lot like listening to “Party in the USA”: You feel raped, but you definitely came a little bit. Another noteworthy scene is one in which a gorgeous golden-brown stallion of a woman and a skinny blonde boy fuck each other in every possible way – why yes, that includes a double ended dildo in each of their pussies. Think what you will of LiandraDahl.com; but whether sweet, interesting, rapey or Requiem-for-a-Dream-with-a-twist-y, only an Australian woman could ever have created such a site for whore eyes.

(I’ve also been told I should mention that the very day I posted the lesbientry I reunited with my long-lost lady lover for some hot ass sex. And such shows no sign of stopping.)

The Closer to Gay, The Closer to Fine

The option of fucking a female did not truly occur to me until my twenty first year, when at a drunken cabana party my childhood BFF/dry-humping partner informed me that she had dated not one, but two ladies in college. This struck me as terribly badass. I decided there and then that I too would lay a lady or two.

Yes, I’d never felt an overwhelming urge to get with a girl. But I had plenty of lez cred: I’d majored in gender studies, I’d subscribed to “Bitch” magazine since I was sixteen and, at musical theatre camp, my vocal performance teacher assigned me “Graham’s Kiss,” a mid-tempo selection from “But I’m A Cheerleader,” the musical, which occurs after the titular (so to speak) cheerleader receives her first, surprisingly hot lesbian kiss.

And flipping the gay (rather, the bi, but I prefer the stronger word) switch seemed fairly easy. It seemed like all you had to do was watch enough episodes of The L Word. I had first devised this theory after a conversation with my friend Bridgette.

“I’ve been having so many lesbian dreams lately!” she gushed as we sat atop her childhood bed, where so many high school boys had diddled her in our early years as friends. “The L Word has brainwashed me into thinking I’m a lesbian.”

Bridgette was not the only one to make such a claim. Indeed several of my female friends have testified to the premium program’s uncanny ability to implant hot lesbian fantasies into the minds and loins of so-far-straight females.

So, with The L Word as my first stop, I decided to embark on a journey, a journey that would last many moons. In the interest of making myself as gay as possible, I would consume as much hot lesbian media as possible.

You might want to know, in more specific terms, why I would want to make myself gayer. And if you don’t, you can suck my cock. …ah, cock. Far be it from me to deny that it can be a breathtakingly beautiful thing. I loved the cock when I discovered it in a Ford Focus when I was sixteen and proclaimed, “What an amazing device!” and I will love it always. But these days, I live by a new mantra: The closer to gay, the closer to fine. When I think lesbian, I think agency. I think efficiency. I think mystery. I think sexy, punky hair. I think taste (when I think of art and night spots rather than the rabid wrestling matches on kink.com). I think winning. A metropolitan lesbian has not only achieved the covetable status of “trendy as fuck,” but is also free to wear less makeup, waste less time and rock suspenders often. She has to work really hard to get AIDS from sex. Because her lesbian lover not only washes her hands but also refrains from violently jamming them into her vagina within the first minute of making out (assuming such a thing has not been specifically called for), she needn’t waste nearly as much time as her straight counterpart pissing razor blades or inserting suppositories. Best of all, she effortlessly reduces boners to sperm tubes.

In my quest to go as gay as possible (51% being the estimated maximum), I sought to both reap the above-mentioned benefits and discover options beyond these:

A) Find – rather, be found by – an attractive-enough, kind-enough, age-appropriate male with whom to have everlasting mind-blowing sex and babies

F) Dry up and die, miserable and alone

Unfortunately, my psyche was not one spared by “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Notebook” or “Sex and the City”  (and God knows those big-screen bastardizations of the small-screen SATC failed to provide any viable alternatives to the bleak binary presented by every rom-com known to man). I thus went through most of life believing it would be complete only when some dude introduced me to the transcendent, stupefying romantic love I had never witnessed between actual people. Since I suppose I cannot entirely blame the media for the fact that I arrived at college and promptly became known as that-psycho-who-hyperventilates-after-a-dude-she-only-fucked-a-few-times-loses-interest and later became known as that-cheating-slut, I’ll blame my mother.

“I was obsessed with you when you were a baby,” she gaily recalled in the kitchen last week. “Spoiled doesn’t begin to cover it. Daddy was always away and it was just you and me. Every time you made the tiniest sound, I ran over to you and gave you whatever you wanted.”

This treatment is pretty much what I’ve always wanted out of a relationship.

Of course, there came the inevitable time when my mother eased off the extreme doting and even went so far as to breed again, which resulted in several attempts to flush the new life down the toilet. Between failed homicides, I followed my mother where’er she went. She could not take so much as a dump without me tagging along. “Abandonment issues” is a term my parents fondly throw around when recalling my early years to dinner guests.

I think these “abandonment issues” are what made me so susceptible to movie love (an inclusive term, which also accomodates the young love found on the WB and networks that played reruns of “The Wonder Years”). Movie love seemed the natural successor to mommy love – it was intense and intimate and allowed for the frequent tantrums I subjected my mother to and the mind-blowing makeouts I longed to experience with a person for once. Movie love meant nobody got abandoned. And, of course, movie love happened between a boy and a girl. In the growing-boobs-and-pubes years, I desperately wanted a Kevin Arnold to my Winnie Cooper (though I was a lot more like Becky Slater). In high school, I desperately wanted a Jake Ryan to my Samantha Baker or a Noah to my Allie or a Dawson (or Pacey, or even Jack who turned out to be gay) to my Joey. After that, it was simply a matter of not ending up alone and ovulating sand.*

But more recently I became a real woman (with curves) and I tired of studying for an F. So, just as the middle-aged former ballerina from my gym explored the new avenue of salsa dancing to avoid comparing her current ballet abilities to her former, I explored the new avenue of being attracted to chicks to avoid comparing myself to Sleeping Beauty, Allie Whats-Her-Fuck** and Carrie Bradshaw.

I found the following pieces of media most helpful:

1. The L Word. Everything they say is true. Nowhere will you find a sexier, hipper, more heart-warming collection of lesbos.

2. Black Swan. Best viewed on the largest screen available. I can imagine nothing more satisfying than a clone bone. The moment when Natalie and Mila/Natalie explode into making out both made me gayer and this otherwise excruciating film of cuticle cutting and collarbones worth the time and money.

3. Vicky Cristina Bacelona (frequently shown on Showtime Women HD, arguably the best channel of all time). Cristina, Maria Elena and Juan Antonio offer a lovely alternative to a tedious marriage with a douche who wears the wrong shorts. While a typical married western woman would not have humored a long-term, vaginaed third (if any third of any sexual variation), Maria Elena views Cristina as “the tint that, added to a palette, makes the color beautiful.” And the tripod could have knocked countless doucheballs out of the park if only Cristina didn’t have “chronic dissatisfaction” (no doubt a result of her unrealizable hetero fantasies). While I must admit that it seems unfair that Juan Antonio serves as the common denominator in all instances of life-altering Spanish sexiness, I must also admit that it makes mathetmatical sense: for every three hot, interesting women, there is one man worth being made love to by (Juan Antonio’s term, not mine). And three to one, given my experience, is a fairly optimistic stat. If I’d only spent my adolescence fucking chicks instead of douchebags, the world would doubtlessly be a more appreciative, less inflamed place. Women’s sexuality is fluid, and we might as well drink were there’s a stream.

4. Stealing issues of Vanity Fair that feature Lindsay Lohan on the cover. After lifting the October issue from PDX, a great truth dawned on me: I would totally blow Lindsay Lohan (assuming she’s clean – not only of STDs but also cocaine, collagen and peroxide). It was a strange realization, but it came in loud and clear from the depths of my increasingly lesbiatic soul. I would overtake her firecrotch, even if it flamed with self-tanner as well as pubes. I imagine it would taste like a Katy Perry song: disgustingly delicious, something to hate yourself for loving to get lost in. Upon discovering my hunger for a shitshow’s orangina, I felt like Charlotte York, when in her rocky conversion to Judaism, she says her first “Oy!” and marvels at her ability to evolve. Back in the “Life Size” days – and hell, anything between “The Parent Trap” and my revelation at the Portland airport – I found Lilo, in all her raging gingerness, grotesque. Who could ever like a thing so freckly? And that day in PDX I learned. And I was proud. And so began my obsession with the redheaded celebs. (When you locate the rare hot redhead, it is oh-so-special. On any given Sunday, I spend hours google imaging LiLo, Julianne Moore, Isla Fisher… I nearly gave up on Amy Adams and Emma Stone when I read that they are natural blondes, but they so persuasively fakes gingerdom that they remain members of the FCC – Fire Crotch Club. I could really use some more genuine ginger celebs though, God. Make me a ginger that flies from Montgomery.)

5. “Chloe.” Quite creepy, of course. Perhaps this kind of lesbo love is not to be emulated. But the lesbo sex is. And Julianne Moore is a highly special ginger.

6. “Gia.” Young, supple, fierce, lesbian Angelina Jolie. I needn’t say more. But I will include a quote, fabulously stated after a horny male friend asks Gia what she thought about the one time she fucked a man: “I could have done that with a German Shepard.”

7. IFeelMyself.com: hot Australian ladies who believe in tasteful angles and picturesque lighting and say things like, “I am more than a little crazy but I think of it as a super power and I put it to good use to see things in unusual ways and harness it for playful hedonism and fighting conformity, bigotry and prejudice. Other than that, all you need to know is I like to fuck, suck and wank on film and I love my Cunt; my motto is ‘question everything’ and my war cry is ‘freedom, fucking and feminism.’”

8. “But I’m A Cheerleader.” If I had only given this film the proper attention back in the “Titanic”-obsessed days, I might have realized that there was virtually no difference between Leo DiCaprio and Clea DuVall. Both had that carefully calculated androgynous appeal that made the tweens tingle – too femme to frighten you and just butch enough to save you from the evil men who look like men. If only I’d known how fine the line.

9. Getting wasted on New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. I made out with a lady friend from college whom I would definitely date if I could go back three years in time and be decidedly more badass. My makeout with this lady friend inspired another lady, whose name I never did catch, to plant a sensual kiss on my lips. Which then inspired me to suck someone named Coco’s toes. These events were pretty deal-sealing.

10. Actually having sex with a woman. While I will say that it felt, to paraphrase Louis CK, not morally, but geometircally wrong, I would mostly refer to it as refreshing. It was refreshing not to have to be a slave to a boner. It was refreshing not to have to deal with the prematurely plunging finger issue (and subsequent sourdough). It was refreshing to spend hours making out. It was refreshing to spend hours with my head between a sanitary woman’s legs, giving back to the community. It was refreshing to put my hands around a small waist. It was refreshing not to worry about the prospect of a 5:00 shadow causing my labia minora to quadruple in size. It was refreshing to shake, slap, grab and suck some titties, generally in that order. (I feel disgusting for having just typed the phrase “suck some titties” but if I have to live with it, so must you.) It was refreshing to pretend to be a man, as I often feel like a man and have been called a man by loving lady friends and latent homosexual menemies since I was 13. As I’m told this is a man’s world, I’ve never particularly taken “man” as an insult. (It probably also helps that I don’t look like a man, at least not any more than Leo circa 1997 looks like a man, which is enough for me.) And by pretend to be a man, I mean take charge. I mean decide when the pussies come out. I mean pin down some arms and deliver some stern-enough slaps. I mean strap-on a phallus the color of a My Little Pony and administer some fucking (if you will) in the traditional sense of the word. And without causing an identity crisis. (Also, I’ve recently been informed that some men don’t like a woman who knows what she’s doing in bed. To these men: you are leotarded, and another fine reason to go gay. I’ve never met a chick who looks down on skill.)

In conclusion, I have most certainly succeeded in making myself gayer. While it’s difficult to say by what percent, I feel I’ve earned the authority to say, as the bisexuals say, “I like people more than genitals.” (Although this is not necessarily true. There have been times when I’ve definitely preferred genitals to their owners.) Since I first began my journey into increased gayness, I have discovered plausible new lesbiatic options, such as Option B) Have a boyfriend, but get some puss on the side – or in the middle – to take care of those urges for novelty (at least until you’ve built up enough trust to introduce a new wiener, should you desire one). Or Option B+) Engage in a “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” – and potentially three-parent (slash two-parent plus extra special live-in auntie) – situation. Make the pallet beautiful and the babysitters less necessary. And let us not forget Option C) Find a female BFF/GF/life partner a la “The Kids Are All Right” (but who permits cock a la carte). I should probably hit up the pink taco stand a few more times before I get too balls-deep in Option C. As for Options D and E, we shall have to see.

For this entry, I thank my friend Alannis, the spoon to my word vomit. Weeks ago she wondered just how to go down on a female neighbor and suggested that I craft an entry entitled, “The Straight Girl’s Guide to Going Down” (namely on other straight girls). While this entry is not exactly Chowing Box For Dummies (as “The Big Bang,” penned by the ever-clever Nerve adeptly filled that void******), I nevertheless owe its existence – and with it, the realization that my rigorous reconditioning has yielded my desired result – to Alannis’s request for tutelage. I would also like to thank my mother’s acidic environment, which favored the x sperm, without which I might never have been born a malleable female, easily molded by sexy film.

 

*Thanks for that one, Margaret Cho.

**IMDB provided no last name, forcing me to create my own.

******Alannis, just so you didn’t read this entire entry in vain, here is a choice selection from “The Big Bang,” located in the chapter entitled, “Heading South: The Art of Oral Sex.”

“You may be an eager beaver, but don’t dive right in . . . Be a merciless tease. Beat around the bush. You don’t even have to remove her underwear right away; just work around it or over it. You want her on the edge of her seat, not fast asleep, so mix it up . . . [When you whip your tongue out] you should still be in tease mode. Point your tongue and swirl it between her thighs and outer lips, gradually moving in toward her inner lips. Once there, run your tongue up and down in the grooves between the lips, starting gently and gradually increasing the pressure. Flatten your tongue and deliver a big slow lick from her perineum to her pubic bone. Suck on the lips, first one side, then the other. Kiss her like you’re kissing her mouth. Nibble gently (we said gently). Get the whole area wet with saliva, and keep it that way.” (51)

Missing Diary Report

When I was 11-years-old, I filled my first diary. I jam-packed 200 college-ruled pages with juvenile juice — romantic and sexual fantasies about young, pretty actors who looked like chicks, death wishes upon family members and classmates, and obsessively detailed accounts of interactions with the first person I could ever picture myself fucking.* In roughly that order. I remember the first page well. It went a lot like this:

“Hey, waz ^? (In case you’re stupid, waz ^? means, ‘What’s up?’)** I am 11-years-old and in the fifth grade. My parents are pretty cool, but my dad embarrasses the crap out of me when he tries to outlaw R-rated movies at parent/teacher conferences. I have a sister who is in third grade. She is pretty cool, but can be a real bitch sometimes. I have a kitty who is fat and really soft. He’s the best kitty in the whole world. I also have a brother in pre-school who is cute. But let’s talk about what’s really up: I am in love with Leonardo DiCaprio. What I wouldn’t give to marry him and fuck him. I practice on my large stuffed animals every night.***”

I remember the entry so well because it spawned one of the more horrifying talks of my childhood. It wasn’t long after I recorded it that Mother interrupted my Sunday night viewing of Aladdin to let me know that she had stumbled upon my diary (hidden in a cupboard in my room) and “saw a word in there” that merited serious discussion. The word, naturally, was “fuck,” the verb. Due to my use of “fuck,” the verb, even though the words that preceded it rather indicated that I did not plan to fuck Leonardo DiCaprio until after I married him, Mother reckoned I needed to spend the rest of my Sunday night hearing about AIDS. The details of AIDS proved adequately disturbing.**** But perhaps more disturbing was frequency with which my mother employed the term, “sexual intercourse.”

Unfortunately, the snoopage did not end there. My sister proved an avid reader, as did the despicable cunts I called friends. (For the record, I too am a despicable cunt – or at least I was when I was twelve. But we’ll delve into that later.) And one day, circa the turn of the millennium, the diary disappeared. I have not seen it since. I always figured that Mother stumbled upon it again, post-completion, and, tickled that her 12-year-old not only filled a hefty journal but covered it in pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Cameron Diaz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Dawson’s river kids (and willing to overlook its alarming contents), stowed it for safe keeping.

But my world was rocked upon last Sunday’s family dinner discussion. The topic of Mother throwing away sentimental shit came up, and, after years of shutting the fuck up, I nutted the fuck up. Rather than opting for the old, “Some of my valuable shit has disappeared” (“valuable shit,” of course, being code for “the diary that made us talk about AIDS”), I said, “The first diary I ever filled disappeared awhile ago and I haven’t seen it since. Did you put it somewhere?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never touch your diaries,” Mother replied. “They’re all in your diary drawer.”

I must admit. The other nine diaries I filled and still possess (one is floating around in New England somewhere, another in Washington) are indeed in the diary drawer. It seems odd that my first and most special diary disappeared, particularly because I never dared remove it from my room, even when I went to camp for a month. It also so happens that my first and most perhaps most incriminating (even now) diary disappeared right around the time my friends and I were at our ugliest and our bitchiest. Which brings me to my inevitable conclusion: One of my friends stole my diary and never gave it back.

Ok, so it’s not particularly a conclusion, as the diary could be in the infamous storage unit in Anaheim with the rest of Feng Shui victims. (My mother “Feng Shui”s the house (i.e. clears out half its contents) every summer, usually without anyone’s consent.) But it’s a fun possibility and it kept me awake last night: What if, instead of being in Anaheim in a box with the rest of my childhood memorabilia, my original masterpiece is in someone else’s childhood bedroom? Or in the trash?

The final piece of evidence that brings me to the possibility that a then-friend stole the diary is the fact that the fellow with the then-perfect complexion regards me as an utter psycho to this day. This causes me to wonder if, rather than paraphrasing the deal-breaking diaretical (word I made up) details, my then-friend abducted the diary subjected him to some actual passages.

He certainly got the gist, anyway. In seventh grade, he agreed to date me (i.e. ask me to go to a movie, which we never did see). Apparently he agreed to date me because he thought I had a nice ass. “Does it bother you that he only likes you for your ass?” classmates often asked. And honestly, it did not bother me. Whatever got the fucking job done. Unfortunately the cunt(s) proved more persuasive than the ass, a discovery I made upon the inevitable break-up chat (which transpired over AOL instant messenger) when my boyfriend of two weeks cited an “unbalanced relationship.” When I asked him why he considered our relationship unbalanced, he asked, “Does a diary with me in it ring a bell?” Apparently, he had officially been informed that I was obsessed with him, or, if not him (and probably not him), then the idea of having a classmate with a perfect complexion to maybe make out with. If I’d only had a grain of self-esteem then. I could have delivered some due bitch slaps. But no. I said that the diary with him in it did not ring a bell. No! What the fuck was he talking about??? And I never brought it up again.

Until now.

Anyway, my point is this. Rather, my points are these:

1. Middle schoolers are fucking mean, wasps especially. And the internet could not have come at scarier time than sixth grade. Being a cunt could not have been more convenient. You could ruin five lives in five minutes without opening your mouth – and you could always say that your anonymous friend or sibling had hijacked your account if you didn’t feel like dealing with the consequences. As far as my contemporaries were concerned, 1999 was the year of the cunty IM conversation. In fact, it was in a 1999 IM conversation that I first heard – rather, read – the word cunt. LadyB130, a poor soul I located in a chat room and used for target practice, was the first to call me what my babysitter later informed me was “a really bad word for vagina.” (Such target practice was necessary because I was bad at being mean. I don’t mean to say that I was nice; I just never seemed to have any comebacks that weren’t either weak or hate crime-esque, and I luckily knew better than to whip out the latter. For the most part. So I devoted several hours a day testing insults on virtual strangers in hopes of one day making a frenemy cry.)

2. If you have my diary, please give it back. It means a lot to me. I am prepared to offer you a reward. I think that after all I’ve endured, I at least deserve to possess it. Keep the celebrity-coated cover if you insist.

*The first picture came to me on the first day of middle school math class, shortly after I realized that the new kid sitting across from me had a perfect complexion, which I then regarded as the most appealing trait possible — I was resting my head on his chest in a post-coital pose, the covers were forest green…so I actually only pictured us post-fucking, but the picturing was nevertheless a milestone.

**Good to know I’m still smart.

***The large stuffed animals I deemed best-for-making-out-with sat in chairs along my Leo-lined wall. I came up with marvelous names for them. The line-up was as follows: “Big Guy,” a giant Fievel Mousekewitz doll my father brought home one fateful night; “Tweety,” a giant Tweety Bird doll my father won in a quarter toss at Six Flags (I am noticing an uncomfortable pattern); “Taz,” a giant Tasmanian devil of unknown origin; “Whaley,” a giant killer whale I coerced my mother into buying me at a town fair after my prize ticket-budgeting shortcomings rendered me unable to procure him for myself; and “Beary,” a giant white bear I won at Knott’s Berry Farm in the toss-softballs-at-cloth-bags-with-Indians-painted-on-them game. I considered Big Guy my primary partner as he arrived first and was of ideal proportions, though Tweety, with her kissable lips that opened and closed, certainly had her share of warm nights.

****Or did they?

NY, NY: An Updated Opinion

I have a conflicted relationship with New York City. My earliest memories of the place are nothing short of magical, probably because my parents, who conceived me in the city, were wise enough to take me there only in May or October. On those rare warm-but-not-disgusting vacay days, my grandmother took me to see the empire state building, the statue of liberty, the Rockettes, FAO Shwartz, the Jeckyl and Hyde restaurant and the gigantic Christmas tree, all the while proferring me ritz crackers. Back when I was wee and even more afraid of heights than I am now, I thrilled at the skyscrapers surrounding the sunny streets. Back then, New York City seemed like the land of endless adventure. Now, with its crowds, carcinogens, cost of living and 80% rate of shit weather, it seems more like a gigantic pain in the ass. Nevertheless, I was quite excited to visit on business, particularly because everyone I fucking know moved there after college (and will hopefully/probably all be back within the next year). While on my recent trip I found that the big apple had spoiled considerably, I discovered some perks I hadn’t recognized when upon my childhood visits.

Perk #1: Fags:

On Sunday night, I arrived – as you might have guessed – a bit later than anticipated. I got to my hotel at around 12:30 AM and, since Dom, my BFF (best fag forever), happened to be at a gay bar a block away, I couldn’t possibly resist the opportunity to leap into his arms and loudly fake fuck in the street (our standard reuniting ritual). Post-ritual, Dom led me into the bar, where I was immediately reinitiated into queentown, a forgotten bubble of shameless shrieks and unrestrained divaciousness that I’d forgotten in my years since musical theatre camp. I met Dom’s ex-roommate, an aspiring pop star who could just barely stand at this crunken point in the evening. I also met Noelle, a friend from the gym who I’d assumed was a woman upon Dom’s initial, over-the-phone mention, but turned out to be Andrew Keegan beaten with a gay stick (assuming Andrew Keegan wasn’t beaten with a gay stick to begin with, in which case, a gayer stick). Noelle took an immediate liking to me because I found it funny that he liked to loudly declare things like, “Oh my god, we have been looking up pictures of asshole tattoos all night!” and “God, I just love to take bareback loads in my ass!” I arrived just on time to get on stage with Dom and sing/rap “Let’s Talk About Sex.” As it happened, neither of us particularly knew the song, but the tranny running the show was able to provide some lovely harmonies on the choruses. (I had arrived on cross-dressing karaoke night, naturally.)

After a very amusing, very exhausting hour, Dom and I retired to my hotel room for a much-anticipated sleepover. Once behind closed doors, Dom offered to show me his naked body. Much to my dismay, he quickly revoked his offer, claiming that today was a fat day, and promised to give me a comprehensive view later in the week after another trip to the gym. My consolation prize arrived when Dom decided to don my tiny mother’s pajama bottoms, tightly adhering an assortment of pastel roses to his all-meat ass. We spent hours lying together in bed, singing songs and recalling the desperate dorm days of yore when we lied on our respective beds, moaning for days in hopes that our dominating future lovers would hear us (much to the confusion of our World of Warcraft-oriented suite mates). I copped several feels, which were each met with a squeal. Little sleep was had.

Perk #2: Cab Drivers (these also can be viewed as a con if you’re not easily amused):

There came a time when I shared a cab with my boss and my boss’s boss. We landed the best kind of cab driver: the kind that annoyed my bosses and amused me. Almost immediately, in a bellowing voice that sounded like Raffiki’s from “The Lion King,”* the driver started talking about how the songs someone sings tells you where that someone has been. If you learn songs from New York and take them home with you, then you have taken NY home with you. Then began the Frere Jacques-athon:

“Where are you from?” the cabby asked BB who was riding shotgun.

“Paris,” replied BB.

“Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.“

He sang the song slowly and all the way through. He explained that the song asks whether someone is sleeping and, apparently, by the end of the song, whoever is sleeping has been woken up. He sang the song again in precisely the same manner:

“Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.“

He then explained that, in Spanish, the same melody has two sets of lyrics:

“Buenos dias, buenos dias,
Como estas? Como estas?
Muy bien, gracias, muy bien gracias,
Y usted? Y usted?“

and

“Lunes Martes, Lunes Martes,
Miercoles, Miercoles,
Jueves, Viernes, Sabado, Jueves, Viernes Sabado,
Domingo, Domingo.“

I especially liked the second version, so I softly began to repeat it. “You are good! You understand it. You are a singer! Go on, go on!” he exclaimed. He chimed in and we finished round two of the days-of-the-week Spanish version.

Then he sang a German version. Then another German version. Then an African version. Keeping a steady pace, he sang each version from start to finish in his resounding, high-pitched voice. BGB looked utterly unamused. Then the driver mentioned that Chinese children use the melody to memorize the Chinese dynasties. “It is a very long song,” he informed us. We were all a bit nervous that we would have to endure the very long song, but the Frere Jacque-athon ended there, after a solid eight rounds. We spent the remainder of our ride talking about “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (which has the same melody as the ABCs). We learned that it came from an early 19th Century English nursery rhyme and apparently appeared in a piece by Mozart. We all agreed (including the bosses, who were beginning to enjoy themselves by this point) that the writers of “Frere Jacques” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” were musical and mathematical geniuses. Everyone and their mother knows these songs.

There also came a time when I caught a cab to the airport. My cab driver was basically bat shit crazy. Which is not to say that he was not awesome. Halfway through the ride after some friendly, energetic conversation, we got around to the subject of my generation. We talked about how people in my generation fuck and do drugs in eighth grade and play video games all day. It was around this time that he asked me if I thought about the meaning of life much. “I try to,” I responded. “I try to think about how I’m going to die so that I can live the way I really want to live.” “Do you believe in God?” he asked. I hesitated. “Not particularly.”

It was then that he went off. Not in a crazy Christian way. But in a crazy something way. Or an enlightened misunderstood way. It’s hard to say which. In any case, I attempted to record what he said with my cell phone, but my video camera wouldn’t work for some ungodly reason…no pun intended. “You hesitated a bit,” he said. “You thought a bit before you responded. You said you didn’t particularly believe in God. That just blows me away!” His basic argument was that it was ignorant to say that there was no God. Because how the fuck did we know? We can only comprehend things within the small box that is our intellect. And our intellect is only a tool that we can use to enrich our soul. He talked a lot about the soul, the part of us that never dies, the part that truly is us rather than our ego, the part that flourishes not from material gain but from being intimate with God. Intellect can’t possibly provide all the answers. We comprehend so little of the universe. We are so small. Without God, how could anything exist?

I told the cab driver that it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in some kind of a god; I just didn’t believe in the kind of god who tells people to kill their sons or kill the gays or kill the whores or kill the brown people or kill the people in the World Trade Center.

“If you have an image of what God is, you don’t know what God is,” the driver insisted. (Well, this much I can get behind.) He denied evolution. He said that by saying we come out of monkeys we are denying and disrespecting our creator. There are so many amazing things about human beings (take the intricacy of the human voice, for example). And look how the world caters to us. There are so many electrons flying around at once and they never collide. Our species was created to experience pleasure. We can breathe air (he said a bunch of stuff about hemoglobin and cell membranes and other scientific terms I, who am paid far better than him, am not entirely familiar with). Men are visual creatures, and women are beautiful, and so men desire them, and that desire makes women desire men (perhaps a bit of a generalization, but I’ll take it). Fruit grows on trees and fruit is pleasurable for us to bite into and provides us with nutrients. You think no one created that? He told me to look at the moon, which was golden and huge and full and low in the sky. The moon is the perfect calendar. And the earth rotates on its axis and our days are 24 hours and we rest each day. He was beginning to lose me, mostly because our witty conversation had evolved into him yelling at me, but I insisted that I wasn’t lost. You can’t say that you don’t believe in God, because you don’t know. If you say you don’t know, that’s an honest answer. “Fair enough,” I told him at the end of our ride. “I don’t know.”

Perk #3: Opportunities for Public Anger:

There really is something to be said for the angry aspect of New York. I rather like being angry. I’m articulate and full of purpose when angry. I liked that by the end of my most crazed, sleep-deprived business travel day, I had reached a state of anger and exhaustion where I felt completely comfortable loudly speaking to myself and singing “Teardrops on My Guitar” in the street. I also like how important and business-like being angry makes me feel. And I get to shove people, which is obviously awesome.

Perk #4: Musical Theatre:

On my first day of freedom, my grandma and her cousins took me to see a show at Carnegie Hall, a place every bit as magical as Dave from Alvin and the Chipmunks made it out to be. It was white and red and gold and just big enough and felt like home and Christmas and heaven. The cousins had scored free tix to hear the New York Pops play Sondheim. Being the musical theatre fag that I am, I spent most of the event trying not to embarass my hardass grandmother by weeping conspicuously, particularly at the moment when a full chorus magically appeared behind the principle singers and officially filled the room with classically trained magic.

Perk #4: Friends:

The moment the business part of my trip yielded to the pleasure part, I went to a restaurant in Greenwich Village (a highly cute area indeed) called Lupa with Dom and our mutual friend Alannis. We spent my per diem on gnocci, spaghetti with clams and a major appetizer that involved olives, kale, beets and things that I can remember by taste but not by name. At one point we held hands and tried to feel each other’s energies, like in Vada Sultenfuss’s adult writing class. The meal was a major success.

*Racist? Probably. Accurate? Fosh.

A Business Woman’s Special

I recently travelled to New York City on Buiness. Many people, namely my mother and myself, find this hilarious. I suppose it isn’t entirely difficult to see why.

The trip got off to a bit of a rough start: This time I got as far as the airplane before disaster struck.

I had packed a duffle back full of mother’s fabulous businesswear from the brief period in the ’90′s when she worked an office job – high-waisted slacks, jumpers, above-the-knee socks, cashmere sweaters, pearls, loafers that sold for $800 fifteen years ago. We had spent three hours selecting and neatly packaging the clothing in clear travel bags that we stacked inside the rolly bag. I convinced her I was no longer too retarded not to lose her nice things. I went to bed early the night before my departure. I awoke and ate a balanced breakfast. I arrived at the airport on time. The fact that a moronic travel agent ghettoed my name up with a Y and that the name on my ID didn’t match the name on my boarding pass turned out not to be a problem. I arrived at the gate with all of my luggage.

Then I went to the fucking Hudson News store, which I usually rob, but decided not to on this occasion as I wanted to buy nail files, q-tips, a sewing kit, cough drops and Benadryl in addition to a mag with LiLo on the cover, and this seemed like entirely too much shit to lift discretely. And it was there, at Hudson news, than I abandoned the rolly bag.

I returned to the boarding area and got in a non-moving line before what I presumed was my gate, curious as to why I happened to be in a sea of Japanese people. When, at long last, the Japanese mass finally began to move, I heard a woman paging me on the intercom. “That is me!” I yelled, rushing over to her. She informed me that I had been waiting to board a plane to Japan and then I’d better get on my flight because it was about to leave. I thanked her and told her that she was my guardian angel. Grateful and glorious, I boarded my flight. The plane was rather crowded. I approached my row. “9E, I’m afraid,” I said to a fellow with a beard and a beanie who grew progressively less attractive as we interacted. I should have seen this for the omen it was.

In the middle of taking my seat, I realized that i was without the rolly bag. “Fuck!” I loudly declared. I alerted the closest flight attendant, a sinister-looking woman with bad highlights. I had a feeling she would break my heart. She firmly informed me that I could not get off the plane if I planned on getting back on. She agreed to send a dude into the boarding area to see if he could locate my “Bel Air rolly bag.” I relaxed for a second before I remembered that I might not have even left the bag in the boarding area. It could have been at Hudson News. Or it was at motherfucking security, where I had already almost lost it after I forgot to put it through the X-ray machine. As I feared, the dude returned empty handed and, assuming the consequences of losing a suitcase full of overpriced business staples to be far worse than arriving in NYC at 8 PM instead of 11 PM, I got off the plane.

I first made for Hudson News and quickly located my bag by the check-out counter, where I had asked the cashier to watch it when I decided that I definitely needed smart water and Trident White in addition to my other items. I grabbed the rolly bag by the handle and ran. As I dramatically departed, I failed to get the bag on its wheels and dragged it like a dead dog through a massive shelf of packaged snacks. I didn’t look back to see what I’d knocked over, opting instead to whisper-yell “Sorry!” and sprint with all my might back to gate 69 (not a code number). When I could see the gate, I dropped my bag and yelled, “I got it!” Unfortunately, my “guardian angel,” that devil in disguise, had just closed the door.

And so I doubled over and cried. I cried like a six-year-old bitch in the center of the floor. It had been awhile since my last public tantrum, but it was like riding a bike: a sorry stance in a wide open space, a few dry wails to get the tears running, and off I went. A kind man approached and asked me if I was alright. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I found the fact that I would be getting into NY at 8 PM rather than 11 PM worthy of a full-fledged tantrum, so I ignored him and continued to heave like my life was over. After about five minutes of sobbing in the fetal position, I stood and approached the counter once more. The devil in disguise informed me that missing a flight was not the end of the world and that I had a good chance of making the 3:10 flight.

And so I returned to my seat in the waiting area, forced to live amongst the people who endured my tantrum for the next several hours. I tried to think happy thoughts like, “Well, maybe I’ll meet my soul mate while I’m waiting and the fact that I missed the 11 AM flight will make my life so much more rich and beautiful” or “Maybe the 11 AM flight will explode in the sky.” While I’m fairly sure neither of these things occurred, I did meet a friend, a computer programmer from New York, who was kind enough to watch my luggage while I went to fetch my lunch of a smoothie from Starbucks and a Luna Bar and take a big, cow pie of a shit.

God Bless “PMS”

This maybe-biologically-legitimate, maybe-fictional-and-sexist pre-period grace period grants me the freedom to act like a total fucking psycho for a few days each month. The problem is that I act like a total fucking psycho all the time. Within the past few months, there have been several occasions upon which I’ve turned to PMS to excuse a particularly melodramatic episode before realizing that my monthly visitor (as my gay boss calls it) was nowhere near due. I’m trying to figure out just why my rate of tantrum has grown so humiliatingly high:

Possibilities:

1. Party and bullshit have been taking up too much of my time. I realized yesterday that my brother, my mother and I all have one big thing in common: We would generally rather be at home.

My mom and dad went to a party at a country club last night.

Dad’s response: “It was great! We made some new friends. Just great.”
Mom’s response: “I just couldn’t wait to get home! I just want to be in my bed.”

And, when I arrived at home yesterday for the first time in days to find Frank chilling in front of the tube, I finally began to believe there was some logic behind the fact that he virtually never leaves the house. “Well, yeah, I usually would much rather watch TV and relax than go anywhere,” he told me.

It seems that I am finally secure enough to feel the same way. Yes, occasionally I crave the company of folks other than my brother, my best friend and my dog, but not incredibly often. I mostly just want to hang with my main mofos, or go to yoga and take a shower and shea-butter myself and put my mom’s intense pink zit paint all over my face and remain naked and drink tea with raw milk and read or play piano or write in my Live Journal that nobody reads. If I go too many days without a night of next-to-nothing at home, I begin to seriously lose it. People are fucking exhausting and clubs are fucking loud and alcoholic beverages are fucking overrated.* In college I never felt this way, perhaps because all of the work I had to do was the work I chose to do and paid to do in order to make myself more interesting. And I had plenty of time to accomplish this work, so I had plenty of time to party and kill time when the work was done (or, as was often the case, not done). Alas, now I struggle to find the time to do this make-myself-more-interesting work because the work that I must do for money is a tedious time-suck. So my ability to be ok depends on my ability to forgo the arguably funner things in the interest of getting good enough at something to quit my day job. Therefore I have very little time or desire to drive to some hipster fest in East LA because the dude my friend fucks every two weeks but is too afraid to text might be there. But I’ve been doing this anyway.

2. An extremely beautiful person recently became a close friend. She has all the tools necessary to inspire awe and desire and obsession in the people who ignore me: impossibly long legs, blonde hair, an innately killer fashion sense and the foreign card (she recently arrived from another continent). And suddenly I started to feel like these tools are extremely important and that I suck balls for not having them at my disposal. Looking in the mirror has been high-school painful lately. For the first time since I was 14 and got the fuck over it, I hate myself for being short – and I’m not even that fuckin’ short; I’m a quarter of an inch below average.

3. Work. Work blows. Granted, it only blows by my spoiled definition, as it’s by far the best work I’ve ever had and probably the best work I could ever hope for as a 23-year-old. It pays me fairly well and allows me to sit at a computer and access the internet all day. As far as typical entry level jobs go, it’s the bees knees. But I’m accustomed to high school and college and camp, and work certainly blows compared to those. I spend all day sitting on my ass, performing irksome, all-around unrewarding tasks. I stuck with it for this long because I was promised a promotion – oh, and because I can’t think of anything better to do other than update this blog and hope that it ends up in the hands that will make it famous and rich. And I’d rather work an eternity in front of an Excel spreadsheet than work another week at Sur La Twat tending to horrifying queens and their chipped crock pots with the likes of hardcore Christians who act like working in kitchenware is the equivalent of joining the best fraternity ever. Anyway.

I finally got promoted today. I thought I would be stoked. I thought I would feast and frolic and fuck to celebrate. Instead, I found out that I would be moving up two positions and being paid virtually nothing more, so I spent the rest of the day with that just-cried feeling, without even reaping the benefit a good cry as I’d taken my lunch break prior to receiving the news. For months I’d been salivating over the salary I thought I would be granted, the salary I waited five months past my promised promotion date to be granted. And now I get a tiny raise. Getting a tiny raise is like having a stupid, ugly child. You waited months. You dreamed big. You might have birthed the next Britney or Barack, but instead you birthed a pathetic turd just functional enough that you’re obligated to call it your own. And, clearly, it’s all you deserved, you assuming, egomaniacal gasbag. You want to burn the measly result of your labor, and at the same time you feel horribly ungrateful because this stupid, ugly child is happy and physically healthy and will surely bring about some joy, and there are infertile people out there who would kill to be in your shoes. In my mind my tiny raise, my stupid, ugly child is a troll-like creature the size of a puppy that arrived at my desk with an ear-to-ear smile and the expectation that I would love it when really I feel compelled to shove it up my ass and forget it ever arrived. I feel terribly sorry for this troll-like creature, the embodiment of all the little things I fail to appreciate, staring me helplessly in the face. It didn’t do anything wrong. It just wanted to make me happy. And I want to kill it because I’m spoiled. And I want to cry because I want to kill it.

I am overcome with that all-too-familiar, bratty breed of disappointment: I wanted a pony and I got a board game. I wanted a car and I got a computer. A promising, online love affair has resulted in a date with an adoring ogre. I shaved my balls for a prince, but only a poodle has arrived to lick them. This sounds like an Alannis Morrissette song. And it’s sad, because people put effort into buying board games and computers and creating attractive online personas…and taking poodles to the poodle spa for a bath and a teeth-cleaning in anticipation of a ball-licking. And they thought you would be happy. Why aren’t you happy? I guess I just really wanted to be able to brag about being rich.

And that’s the end of that story. I realize I might have been a little redundant, but I hope you enjoyed it, because it was my day’s work. And if you didn’t, consider this:

As far as self-perception goes, I’m beginning to find the middle ground between the shit and shit. Up until this point, there have been two settings:

1. I am destined to be the most successful person in the world.
2. I am useless and should find a creative/tragic/melodramatic way to die.

I think I’m getting slightly better at finding my middle gears, as Nastyman calls them. I took the liberty of taking a sick day this week, which decreased the work-induced insanity by 20% and allowed me some quality time at home. And my friend DD told me something of great value the other day: He said, “You will never be gorgeous. But you’re attractive.” Thank you, DD. It needed to be said. Honestly, I hadn’t ever seriously considered that gorgeous isn’t necessarily the greatest. “A lot of gorgeous people have zero sex appeal,” argued DD. “They just look like dolls. You don’t need to be gorgeous to get laid.” It really is an excellent point. I don’t need to be a doll. I just need to get laid. Yeah, I suppose it would be sweet if my legs were three inches longer, but whatfuckin’ever. I’m consistently the hottest one at the great equalizers (the DMV, the security line at the airport, Disneyland), and that’s good enough.

These days I’m blogging at least once a week rather than once a month, because I have convinced myself to be less picky with what I post. Instead of waiting for the next French masterpiece, I will write about worms and how I proud to be an old fart.

Stay tewned, folks.

*But necessary where worms are consumed.