THE 2K15 VMSLAYS

I feel like I’ve been writing nonstop for the last three days, so this post is going to be a goddamn WALK IN THE PARK.

The VMAs were last night. I literally gagged on her eleganza when I saw on Tumblr that Violet Chachki—the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7—was there, and she is now the background picture of my laptop. To pay homage to other idols of mine, my lock screen is Gigi Gorgeous and my home screen is my husband Nick Jonas. They’re all so beautiful I could die.

Later on, when Miley Cyrus performed with a coterie of drag queens—

Side bar, I love the word “coterie.”

—I kept pausing to scan the faces and find my favorite drag queens. Pearl was there. And I saw Willam Belli’s full-on asscheeks. It was such a moment for the whole community. AND the Happy Hippie campaign people introduced Miley, which makes Gigi’s presence there a lot more understandable, but also Brendan Jordan was there in a stunning off-the-shoulder top.

I really enjoyed the drag queens and the Happy Hippie people, but I felt like they were used as props a little bit by Miley. Her performance was weird as hell, and not in a good way. I almost would’ve preferred—actually, definitely—if the drag queens just performed by themselves. Like, they just acted as jumped-up backup dancers for her. They are titans of performance. The whole thing just seemed like a victory lap for Miley, who has been very problematic lately.

Before and during the release of the Bangerz album, which I loved, Miley amped up the sexuality and the nudity, but it seemed to have a purpose. She was making a statement about how we view women and how we view artists. She was pointing out the underlying misogyny in her industry. It all made sense, in a roundabout way.

But right now I don’t really know what Miley is doing. On Jimmy Kimmel, when he was blushing like a fourteen-year-old as she was only wearing a cape and pasties, she made the point that boobs were okay to show on television but the female nipples were something to be censored. It’s a really interesting point and shows how we still sexualize women’s bodies and take away their autonomy while also expecting them to police themselves so as to avoid stirring men’s lusts.

She’s smart and aware, but I can’t understand the dreadlocks. I don’t know the full history of dreadlocks, and I’m white, so I can’t speak fully about it, but it seems like cultural appropriation at its finest. And when Nicki called her out during her time at the mike—I died—Miley answered with a blasé tone about her.

And it goes right back to the Amandla Stenberg—Kylie Jenner situation. White women appropriating black culture are seen as “hip” and “on-trend,” but black women are penalized for utilizing the same aesthetics. And even as I’m googling Nicki’s name, all of the photos for the articles are Nicki growling, face contorted, at a ditzy, smiling Miley.

Black women who speak out, like Amandla and Nicki, are painted as the Angry Black Woman, which then allows media to brush them aside as “overreacting.” Even as I Googled Amandla’s name to find an appropriate article to link, there was an article about Amandla’s “feud” with Kylie Jenner. Amandla was pointing out Kylie’s cultural appropriation; she wasn’t slinging mud in the middle school playground. She is eloquent and aware, but classified as “feuding” and “angry” and a “jackhole,” according to Andy Cohen (who has since apologized, but it still happened).

I don’t know everything about Nicki and Miley and Taylor, but I feel like Miley is not understanding fundamental things about why Nicki Minaj might be upset. The reason Nicki lashed out at Miley is because Miley believed Nicki was wrong in the great Nicki-Taylor Twitter-feud, and was “Nicki should be more polite. It’s all about openness and love,” and that is so fucking frustrating because, I’m not black, but I can imagine that it must be frustrating to be a woman of color in the entertainment industry who is sexualized and demeaned and forced to watch as a white woman gathers laureates of praise continuously, when you’re both equally successful.

Miley’s answer betrays her privilege because she was born in a world where she was given the option of being nice and polite and open. Nicki had to fight for her place in the industry, and she’s allowed to be angry at the system that continually puts her down. Ugh, I don’t understand enough of this to really be eloquent but it just sucks and Miley is really annoying me right now.

This post wasn’t meant to be a rant about Miley Cyrus, so I’m going to change topics.

Because I’ve been stockpiling posts that will be scheduled to post for the first few weeks I’m in London, I’ve been writing a lot and it’s very emotionally draining. Firstly, it’s hard to think of things to write about because I’m always inside my house—so zero inspiration—and my life is not that interesting. But I’m trying to get the first month—ish—done so that I have regular content for Mondays and Thursdays and I can feel unencumbered to write about London when I want, without scrambling for a full-fleshed post.

tumblr_m24p4ovuQJ1qc487lo2_4001

Also I have been saving this gif for three days because it very much describes my life right now. Also because Diane Keaton!

That is all—omg, Meryl Streep.

Humor, Life

SISTERS, NOT TWINS

I just plucked my eyebrows and as per usual, I don’t know if I’ve done well or made a horrible mistake. I just kept repeating to myself in front of the mirror, “They’re sisters, not twins. Sisters, not twins.” So hopefully my eyebrows end up being Kendall and Kylie, rather than Jan and Marcia.

I’m officially twenty now, and I say “officially” because for the last month before my birthday I always lie about my age. It’s not a vanity thing; it’s just easier to say, “I’m twenty” rather than “I’m nineteen but I’m not a new nineteen, I’m an old nineteen because I’m about to be twenty, if you get my drift.”

I also went to the dentist this morning, so my teeth ache. I have no cavities, but my dentist really goes to town with the scraper, and now my teeth feel like they’ve been stripped of a layer. Also, the idea of “teeth” is kind of weird. Like, you have these parts of your skeleton that stick out of a hole in your head, fall out, then grow back stronger. It’s very “Alien v. Predator.”

I had a Skype interview with a potential internship this morning, so obviously from the waist up, I was casual-cute, and from the waist down, I was in the gym shorts I’ve been sleeping in all week. It ended up that I didn’t even need to wear clothes because it ended up being an interview sans video, but I wanted to check the lighting of my room before the interview, so I opened up the Photo Booth on my Mac and took a photo. This is that photo.

As per usual, I look manic.

But then I scrolled through the photos that I’ve taken in the Photo Booth, and there’s not a lot. But one of the first photos was this gem:

Is this fedora a fedo or fedon’t?

And all I can say is that I’m sorry and I understand that this is painful for everyone to look at. I don’t know the exact age I was when this was taken, but I’m going to hazard a guess and say that I was probably around fourteen or fifteen. There are probably a number of questions you have for me, so I’ll just go ahead and answer before you even say it. Yeah, I’m that good at anticipating other people’s needs.

Yes, I still have that fedora.

Yes, I thought I looked good.

No, I did not get any dates that year.

Sometimes I just look at old photos of myself and it makes me want to rock back and forth and say, “I’m not that person anymore. I have blossomed,” because that kid was wannabe-scene and wore AVIATORS. I’m sorry, but he didn’t understand that WAYFARERS SUIT HIS BONE STRUCTURE MUCH BETTER. I can’t. I’m too emotional. I can’t do it.

I would write more but I honestly forgot that A) it was almost six o’clock, B) it was Thursday, and C) that I was human. Also my mouth feels really weird still from the dentist and I have Part 2 of the Real Housewives of New York City Reunion to watch. And my sister says I don’t have anything going on in my life!

P.S. I’ve realized that I’ll want to have some posts waiting in the wings for when I’m getting settled in London, but fuck all if I’ve started writing those things. So text me if you have any post inspirations or ideas for me. Thanks.

Humor, Rambles

THIS POST IS OAKY

I can’t really think of anything to write. I briefly contemplated not posting at all, but I’ve been doing a really great streak of having something up every Monday and Thursday and I know that I’ll feel bad if I don’t.

So here are a random string of paragraphs based on things that I’m thinking with my brain.

Someone went to the urinal next to mine in an otherwise empty bathroom. I don’t understand why people do this. Like, I get weirded out if someone parks next to my car in a mostly empty parking lot, but this involves my privates. I also have a shy bladder so if I had not already been peeing when he sidled up next to me, I would’ve done the urine version of a deer in headlights.

All of my friends are starting to go back to school and I’m going abroad so I leave like two weeks later than everyone else, and it’s not that I don’t want to go abroad, it’s just that for this brief amount of time when I’m stuck at home and they’ll all be with each other, before I go off on my Big Gay European Adventure—title pending—and do a bunch of stuff that’ll make them jealous, I’m the one that’s jealous. Some would say that this is a psychologically revealing moment for me where I come to terms with jealousy and blah blah blah, whatever, I’m a sociopath, get over it.

Can I have an open conversation with whoever designs menswear for J.Crew? Because we seriously need to talk about how there are no options for men, but the women have chic as fuck things year round. If I buy another cute flannel, I think my head might explode. Give me bold patterns, give me rips. Give me glamour, give me ass, give me love.

I’m seriously wondering if London has Panda Express. Like I know that there are better restaurants with better food that won’t do terrible things to my insides, but what will I do when the craving strikes across the pond if there’s no Panda Express? Like, I guess I could Google the answer but I prefer to live in ignorance.

I really miss Game of Thrones.

I have nothing else to say. I’m in the weird limbo of wanting to simultaneously be in Boston and be in London. I think once I get to London I’ll be better because I’ll be all British and hot as fuck and living my dream and walking around in Hyde Park. But it’s still rough. I hope I meet some cute boys there. And people who aren’t interested in partying until our brains leak out of our ears. Sometimes that’s fun, but I also need someone to veg with me. Who will be the carrot to my broccoli?

This blog is weird. That’s okay. I misspelt “okay” as “oaky” and that makes me think of how people use the weirdest adjectives to describe wines. BYE.

Rambles

GO-GURT

Sometimes not every post gets to live a full, fleshed-out existence. This is one of them. These are their stories, *Law and Order SUV dun-dun*.

The other day I was getting a yogurt and I suddenly thought of Go-gurt and why on Earth would anyone ever think of it as an idea?

Like, it’s amazing and I cherish all of my memories involving Go-gurt but I wonder who was the first person to pitch “portable dairy products” and how was it received? And oh my god, I just reread “portable dairy products” and realized that there are so many portable dairy products. Cheese sticks. Go-gurt. Mini Babybels. Tiny coffee creamers. Why is the ~government~ so eager to make sure that we can have dairy on the go?

OH MY GOD ICE CREAM CONES ARE PORTABLE DAIRY PRODUCTS. There is literally no escape.

I just did some research on Go-Gurt, a.k.a. portable Antichrist yogurt, and apparently it’s known as “Yoplait tubes” in Canada and “Frubes” in the United Kingdom. Go-gurt is a clever name, the other two are not. Yoplait tubes is a little too on the nose. And I can’t even begin to deal with Frubes.

I don’t really have a broader point with this blog post, I just have the question: “Why Go-gurt?” Why was yogurt something that people decided that we needed to have on the go?

I tried to think of other foods that I would want to be portable-ized, but most of the things I love are already portable. Pizza becomes Totino’s—also, like pizza—I’m sure that there are some sort of waffle sticks on the market, and pudding comes in cups now. So this might be the pinnacle of humanity. It wasn’t the Space Race. It’s Go-gurt.

Oh my god, I just Googled “Who invented Go-gurt?” and found a Go-gurt hate forum. It’s literally just these endless messages of “Oh look at me, I’m yogurt in a tube!” Like, I thought I was weird for just thinking ambivalently about portable yogurt, but I guess it’s weirder to be thinking malevolently about portable yogurt? Is that the line?

I’m not gonna post the link to the Go-gurt hate forum, because they don’t deserve my promo, but if you’re really curious, you’ll find it. And you’ll definitely know it when you see it.

*****

I hope you enjoyed this little bonus post!

Essay, Humor

CHICKEN WINGIN’ IT

“If anyone asks, we all ate these wings,” I say to the table as my hand hovers over a plate covered with the bony remains of twelve chicken wings.

I’m sweating profusely from eating twelve chicken wings by myself, and I swipe the back of my hand against my forehead. Around the table, there are four other plates piled with chicken bones.

An actual gif of me.

*****

This post was basically decided for me, thanks to two of my coworkers/friends—let’s call them Melody and Aerin, you know who you bitches are—so, like, know that I was basically forced to write this like some kind of journalistic prostitute.

I had a post all about Go-gurt half-written for today, Thursday, but I switched to this because last night I—strong of body and narcissistic of mind—went out on a WEEKDAY like a goddamn Carrie Bradshaw.

Side bar, I wrote “Carrie Bradshaw” because she’s the only modern working-going out woman I know of, and I couldn’t remember what Samantha’s last name was in Sex and the City.

Wait, also side bar. Is it Sex In the City?

*****

Before going out to the local bar—and by “local” I mean the bar close to my work, which is forty minutes away for me—we went to a camp variety show, where I got a damp ass from sitting on moist benches. It was…a lot.

“Are you serious?” my coworker—hmmm, Evan (?)—says. He stands up and motions a hand down his front, pointing out his outfit. White t-shirt, olive chino shorts.

“Are you FUCKING serious?” I say. I look down at myself. White t-shirt, olive chino shorts. A few weeks ago, we went to a party and wore the same outfit as each other—black t-shirt and khaki chino shorts—yeah I’m not original. I don’t have a lot of non-gym short options, especially because I’ve gotten fatter but not gotten richer.

The fact that I’m apparently subconsciously psychically linked to this sixteen-year-old is a complete and utter waste of psychic abilities. Either that or God has a rude sense of humor.

Me.

Warren, in his raspy, young Walter Cronkite voice, laughs.

Every one of my friends—I guess I can call them friends instead of just “coworkers—is looking beautiful. But, frankly, I see them in very worn conditions, so just not have sweat stains larger than the rings of Saturn is an improvement.

We order our wings, after the waitress coming over multiple times, and after a quick but heated debate over the appropriate number of wings for Evan to order, it’s settled. I ordered six sesame and ginger and six tossed in a mixture of barbeque and buffalo.

Side bar, if I ever create a TV show, it will be a sitcom about a redhead, played by me, and an Asian, Sandra Oh, I’m assuming, who are best friends and chefs and I’m calling it Sesame and Ginger because I’m culturally insensitive and also hilarious.

*****

“White was not a good option to wear,” I joke. “You can probably see all of my sweat.”

No, you can’t see my sweat, but Melody points to my shirt, at a spot directly underneath my left collarbone. My stomach drops through the soles of my feet and burrows about six feet into the ground.

“What?” I ask, my voice cracking into a thousand pieces. “What?”

She doesn’t say anything, but keeps pointing. I tug at my shirt, tucking my chin down. And on my shirt is a glob of that fucking barbeque-buffalo sauce. On my WHITE, UNIQLO T-SHIRT.

I waddle—again, I’ve just consumed twelve chicken wings within a fifteen-minute stretch—to the bathroom and wring my hands on the doorknob. It’s locked, so I have to pretend to be a normal, functioning human being instead of a psychotic human volcano. The bathroom’s occupant eventually leaves, and I rush in.

First I wash my hands of any treacherous chicken residue and then examine the spot. In the mirror, the spot looks much smaller, but I imagine I can feel deliciousness soaking through the pearly fibers. I dampen it with a soaked paper towel and spend five minutes just batting at it like a kitten with a toy.

Halfway through the process, I look up at the mirror. Oh damn, I look hot. My shoulders look broad and muscular in the white t-shirt, and my hair lays thickly across my head, with the perfect amount of swoop. Not crazy enough to be a swish but not flat enough to be a flop. Sometimes I forget that I’m a broad person. I still think I’m the scrawny beanpole—with a 10/10 face, of course—but I’ve become…wide—in good ways. I look, like, really hot. Fuck yeah.

Eventually, the glob has diminished into a slight smear, that keeps taunting, but I know have another issue. My shirt is a thin, silky-feeling material, i.e. I now have a wet circle of fabric beneath my collarbone that has all the subtlety of a gunshot wound.

I press my hand neatly against the wet, very “Southern belle,” as I leave the bathroom because A) my last-minute frantic attempts to dry it off have not gone well and B) there’s a very small window where you can be in the bathroom without people thinking you’re shitting.

*****

The whole point of the night was to hang out with coworkers at the bar late into the night until everyone realizes that they’re in love with me. They are, they just need to figure it out. But the bar is so often frequented by fetuses—sixteen-year-olds—that the owner of the bar flips on the lights at 10:30.

Everyone hisses like vampires.

“All right, everyone without an ID get out,” he says. My friends—cool fetuses, not lame fetuses—decide to leave before they’re kicked out. So suddenly our friend group is fractioned off.

Then, later in the night, I spotted a hot British guy, one that Melody and Aerin frequently obsess over. I’m standing five feet away, his back is turned to me, so I say to Evan and another coworker—Miles—“Oh my god, it would kill them if I got a picture of him.”

We debate several different ways to take his photo. I say that I should go with the classic “walk up and take the photo over his shoulder and then change my name and join the Witness Protection Program” but that doesn’t go over so well. Miles and Evan spend a hot second trying to take secret swiping shots of him.

I, in my infinite wisdom, say, “Or we could just do this,” and lift up my phone in clear view, zoom in and hit the button. All of a sudden, my flash goes off. I narrowly avoid smashing my phone on the ground and double over, pressing the flash into the fabric of my shirt as the camera goes off. Serves me right for playacting paparazzi.

Also a real gif of me.

Eventually my friends and I “leave”—decide to vacate the premises before we are thrown out—and I hiss “Fuck you”s to all of the people my age or younger that I pass on the way out of the door who are being ballsy as shit and staying in the bar.

*****

We hang out a park—no stabbings—for a while, discussing various tidbits of gossip, before splitting up to go home.

I guess, as a college student, the night was a technical fail because we got “kicked out” but I ate twelve chicken wings, so I’m counting last night as a win. And that’s all that really matters.

*****

Side bar, should I publish the Go-gurt post? It’s just essentially 400 words of portable dairy conspiracies. I think I just answered my own question: FUCK YES.

P. FUCKING S. I’m so sorry Marco, but I put Sandra Oh down because I figured in between us traveling the world as a pop duo, our burgeoning organic pudding shop and our podcast, we might need a little space. Mistake rectified; Sandrah Oh is OUT.

Essay, Humor, Life

DANCES WITH WHITE BOYS

“I already picked my outfit, but let’s go back through this journey,” I say to my little sister, flipping through the photos of possible outfits.

“No. No. No,” she says, rejecting three of the possibilities. We land—communally—on the outfit I’m already wearing: a light white short-sleeve button-down with neat, cubed stripes and medium brown tapered chinos.

I close my iPhone, making the screen go black on the coterie of headless photos, each angled in a way to showcase the outfits, variations on short-sleeved button-downs and narrow pants—in pairs of black and blue, blue and brown, and pastels.

The outfit is flattering, broadening my shoulders, slimming my waist and just generally creating that V that drives the boys wild. But, in boat shoes and a watch, the outfit feels a little vanilla. A little preppy. It’s a little white bread for me. I like dark, sleek colors, or muted patterns. The Ralph Lauren—oops, just let me pick up the brand name I dropped—shirt and chinos are all fine and dandy, and I know that I’d rather look good than weird and misshapen, but I just feel like a little non-me.

I spent roughly forty minutes curating outfits, trying them on, taking pictures, and getting multiple opinions before arriving at the White Bread option.

Tonight’s our staff banquet. It’s kind of the social event of the season, when the norm is getting sunscreen stains on my gym shorts and a crick in my neck from talking to seven-year-olds. Basically, we needed this, y’all.

My little sister—let’s call her Poppy—is looking chic in a deep blue sleeveless dress with a scalloped hem. I straightened her hair for her, her sitting doing her makeup and me haphazardly taking great swatches of dark brown hair and running it through the scalding clamps. Ten minutes into it, and I’ve already put more effort into her hair than I’ve ever put into my own.

*****

“Omg, look at him,” my coworker—sixteen years old—salivates over a boy, tanned, muscular and coiffed—the epitome of the Abercrombie Zombie.

“I don’t really like his shirt,” I say sharply, drawing her attention back to me. Just as the sentence escapes my mouth, someone else whispers, “Oh my god, I like his shirt.” I lean across the table and pat her hand. “No you don’t, honey. He’s just hot.”

*****

The lights are down and everyone is a pulsing mass on the dance floor. I’m in the middle of the mass, dancing with my friends. We’re being jostled by the people dancing around us.

The dance floor becomes a colony of microcosmic communities. There are constantly shifting dance circles, which vary in size, people dancing in the center, transferring across the expanse with others. There are small clumps drifting in between. The sixteen-year-olds cling together like lampreys on a whale, bobbing in unison. My group forms a loose oval, people stepping in and out.

The dance floor becomes an ocean, rippling and mutating. It ebbs and flows. It undulates with a liquid quickness. The sixteen-year-olds are a darting school of fish. My friends and I are jellyfish, languid and sleek in our motions, playing off each other. The lifeguards are seals, clamoring barks that go up into the pulsating air that’s already filled with deep bass and synthetic notes. The sports specialists—a motely crew of soccer, tennis, baseball—are penguins, muscular and lithe and slick and bobbing against each other. And in the center of the ocean are the Straight White Boys, slamming against each other and dashing up and down in the crowds like dolphins diving through crested waves.

I am a White Boy, so I move with the awkwardness that comes from long, gangly limbs and jarring hip-drops. But the Straight White Boys seem to leap above the awkwardness, and treat the dance floor with a tribal hunger, a clannish mob mentality. They crash against each other, fists in the air, screaming the words. Unabashed. Fearless.

*****

I wish I could dance like they do, unabashed. Unafraid. I wonder what it’s like to claim something without any hesitation. Without any forethought. The SWBs claim their method of dancing as assuredly as their predecessors claimed things like late night television and the Presidency. My predecessors, the Gays, claimed the margins, the outskirts. They sometimes even claimed the skirts.

*****

I have a chronic problem with living in the moment. I’m always too aware of my hands, the stilted movement in my legs. I consciously loosen my muscles, whip my hair out of its neatly, American Crew-ed coif and try to have fun.

I don’t know how many more summers I have of languidly hot days spent walking across the green fields of our camp. I don’t know how many more summers I have before I commit to a job, a field, a career. I don’t know these things.

So I decide to throw up my chin, glint my teeth and have fun. My body slips unconsciously into rhythm, and it syncs up with everyone else, until the ocean glides in beat and the dolphins appear to stop breaking against each other and everything else and start to move in harmony with the current. The seals bring out the laughter in everyone else. The fish dart and tickle and lighten. And the jellyfish, we bob faster, happier, funnier.

*****

I only have so many moments on this craggy, smooth, mountainous, oceanic planet. I only have so many milliseconds with friends. I only have so many shared gazes with cute boys across the room. We only have so many…fill in the blank.

So I stop analyzing things in the moment. I stop placing meanings on the people, stop subconsciously dividing them into genii to make it easier for filing later. I stop noticing the patterns and the movements and start dancing.

Because sometimes that’s all we can do. Throw up our hands, toss back our heads, giggle and act like dummies and the real dorks we are.

THE END

Rambles

TRADE

I’m clickety-clackety-writing fervently away because today is Thursday and my blog goes up on a Thursday and usually I write my blogs a day in advance to do the whole “Oh, is this shit?” thing that writers do—do they?—but I don’t have time because last night—Wednesday—I went out with my coworkers for a coworker dinner and that takes precedence.

MY SISTER: Why didn’t you write it on Tuesday then?

ME: *shoves her*

So don’t judge me for posting this late. But honestly this blog is free and you guys are vultures. Just kidding.

I keep having weird dreams. Last night, I had a dream that I hit on a guy who ended up being a girl and then we started dating and she started getting too clingy but I was friends with her friends who made me feel guilty for wanting to break it off, so I just hid under a bed. Literally. My dream-self is not great at breaking things off.

My coworker just got a tattoo and it’s interesting because I feel like this week has been all about tattoos for me. Like, Tyler Oakley—YouTuber and gay icon—just posted a video about getting his first tattoo and then I was talking to my best friend—Marco—while on my way to a pedicure with my other best friend—Spencer, let’s call him, because once when we were like sixteen, I wrote the beginning of a young adult novel with characters based off the two of us and I think that his character’s name was Spencer—and we discussed Harry Potter tattoos.

And I’ve told my parents that once I’m 22, I’m getting a tattoo, because they technically won’t be paying for my schooling anymore, but they have enough emotional baggage to manipulate me until my late forties at least…so, unclear. I lost my train of thought.

I found it again.

So I’m going to try to convince them to let me get a tattoo at 21 instead of 22 so I can get one with Marco. I’ve known what I’ve wanted for over a year, and I feel like they should trust me enough to allow me to get one? I mean, they trust me to leave the house every day.

I also may have discovered my perfect drag name. A drag name is a name for a drag queen, and while I am not a drag queen, I have been building up an arsenal of mental tricks of the trade—

Side bar, a “trade” is a masculine-looking gay guy, and now I can’t stop thinking of trade. Also it makes me think of my old AP Macroeconomics class.

—and have been brainstorming drag names. Brainstorming drag names is possibly the most fun thing ever. It can be a clever mix of dirty puns and double entendres. Here are a few of the names I have thought of:

Anya Cox, Tatya Well, Tux Titely, Rita Prescription, and Misty Meaner.

I’m not going to say the drag name because like the thing with the tattoo, I don’t need copycats. Or anyone digging up this old blog post when I’m rich and famous.

Oh! Nadia Head!

Anyway, this blog has gone on as long as it really possibly could for just me rambling, like really rambling. Like, you guys, normally, I just sort of rambling, but this time it was—well, how do I say this—like that video of the Gloucestershire cheese rolling competition? Have you ever seen that?

Life

I WANT TO BE DIANE KEATON

I’ve been feeling hypersensitive about my body, so I went on a run.

Back up a few years to understand why this is a big deal. I hate running. I ran essentially year-round for four years straight—cross country, indoor track & field, outdoor track & field, summer runs—in high school. By the end of senior year, running was gag-inducing. I exchanged it for other modes of cardio in college, and slowly lost the tolerance for longer runs I had built up—through literally blood, sweat and tears—throughout high school.

This photo has no relevance to the post. I just hope it becomes the thumbnail.

So yeah, I guess long story short, I hate running. But there is nothing to make me feel simultaneously better and worse than running. Better because running triggers my already overactive sweat glands like nobody’s business, tricking me into thinking I’m burning a shit ton of calories. And since my body image issues are mainly in my tricky head, tricking is more benevolent than malevolent. Worse because running fucking sucks. My chest cramps up and I swear I start coughing up blood.

I went to the gym this morning—I’m writing this on Saturday—but I vegged the rest of the day, so I decided to go on a run before dinner. I’ve been feeling pasty and doughy and wholly unattractive these past few days. Partially it’s because I’m sick and that always throws me through a loop. Plus, my skin has been erupting like the Hindenburg.

But mostly it’s because I have to get shirtless in front of a bunch of muscled, athletic, tanned Abercrombie & Fitch wannabes at work.

And for someone who’s more in the American Apparel aesthetic—just visually, I can’t actually shop there unless I take the five-finger discount (stealing)—Abercrombie & Fitch wannabes make me as uncomfortable as an actual Abercrombie & Fitch store. Why do they have to be so loud? And so dark? And does that cologne they spray everywhere have some sort of horse tranquilizer in it?

I got lost in that tangent and I’m slightly confused. But that might just be the horse tranquilizers.

*****

I slip my earbuds up through the neck of my shirt, popping them into my ears. My phone is wedged in between the consecutive waistlines of my gym shorts and my boxers. Later, the phone will be wedged between my bare hip and the waistlines because the previous position caused a little too much slippage for the owner of the phone to be comfortable with.

I turn right out of my street, forgoing the hill straight ahead and following along the squat suburban streets, dipping down the hills, up by the library, down by the church.

I’m playing Spotify and trying to stretch my clomping gait into something more graceful. Flipping through my head like a Rolodex or a pinball machine are thoughts of how much I would like to be sitting down, thoughts of my burning esophagus, and thoughts of inadequacy.

This might come as a shocker, but feeling unconfident about your body is not fun. Truly, I’m working wonders here. I’m Mother Theresa, with a better haircut and a desperate need for an attitude adjustment.

There’s an antiquated phrase—and by “antiquated,” I mean 2006—“in need of an attitude adjustment.” I feel like that’s the kind of thing my mom would say about me when I was acting super bitchy and listening to Green Day—I was 11, give me a break. And the collection of words makes me conjure up images of crowbars, men in helmets and fluorescent orange breaker vests descending to the subterranean, ironclad depths of my psyche, finding my “attitude” and clobbering it with crowbars, cranking the cogs this way and that way, repainting the hull and hammering out any dents.

I wish changing your thought process was as tactile as fixing, like, I don’t know, a shelf? I’m not good at DIY, so I really don’t know what to say for this. Whatever, you get my point.

Changing your negative thought processes should be easier because…because it just should be. Like, I wish that I had the confidence and poise of a young Diane Keaton—I have no fucking clue where that came from, but she is CON. FI. DENT. So I guess I’ll stick with that?—but I don’t. And I wish I could say that I’m secure in my body and my heart and my mind and my soul, but I can’t. And that’s really frustrating. I’m a fixer. I aggressively and unwarrantedly take control of situations. I would rather do group projects by myself to have all the parts under my grip.

But we can’t control our minds. We can work at diverting downward spirals, but that’s hard. I want it to be easy. I want to flip a switch and be confident. I want to be Diane Keaton, rocking menswear and gray hair.

Da phresh cut.

Anyway, after the run—which was preceded by an impromptu, impulse haircut—I felt better-ish. But I hate that these material things—getting a haircut, going on a run, sacrifing a virgin and bathing in her blood—made me feel good about myself in a way that I wasn’t able to. Like, even though on the surface they don’t sound like bad ways to cheer yourself up, I want to be able to break myself out of the cycle of negging on my appearance.

I wish this was one of those blog posts where at the end I’m like, “And that’s how I discovered the secret to success, self-love, and body-positivity!” But it’s not because I really don’t have any answers.

Sometimes we’re all just Kathryn Hahns living in a world of Kate Hudsons—How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days, duh—but Kathryn Hahn ends up with that guy at the end, so we should all hope to be so lucky. Until then, just help your prettier, blonder friend try to ditch the perfect man for the sake of writing a good article.

Essay, Humor

RUINING CHRISTMAS

I’m cringing a little bit as I realize that I’m about to write about this. I don’t think I truly have anything to lose—my flickering scraps of dignity are scattering day by day—so maybe it’s empowering and freeing? Mom, never read this.

Red alert, I’m not going to be naming the thing that this essay is about because some of those flickering scraps of dignity came floating back, so I will be referring to it as a “Christmas present.” Sorry, Christians? You’re welcome, Jews?

*****

“Did you do it yet?”

I’m inside the bathroom stall, angling the camera high to capture the best the fluorescent light has to offer. Trying to make it look big but not too big, trying to make my Christmas present look natural, casual and effortless.

“I can’t do it with you guys right outside,” I hiss back, pulling up my gym shorts and opening the bathroom stall. My friends are standing—two of them—outside of the bathroom stall. I’m the first of us to send a Christmas present to a stranger, so this is a communal experience.

But sending a Christmas present while your friends stand two feet away is about as sexy as blowing your nose in a stranger’s jacket at Whole Food’s. It’s also not very conducive for getting the deed done quickly and efficiently.

“I can’t get it…wrapped…if you guys are right outside,” I tell them, retreating back into the stall. Trying to keep everything looking presentable, while getting the lighting and angle right, this is more pressure than it’s worth.

My friends quiet down and exit our dorm bathroom. I breathe deeply, my brain narrowing down to a fine focal point.

Calm. Zen. Don’t think too hard about it. Don’t say the word “hard.” Don’t make yourself laugh. Laughing isn’t sexy, or sexy-adjacent. Oh god, now I’m thinking about laughing. I can’t focus.

My muscles are practically in spasm from maintaining the position for so long. Should I use the Grindr app? Should I do it on my camera? Do I have Photostream on? Oh my god, I hope not. Oh my god, is my iCloud on? Should I do a Polaroid?

The bathroom door—the main one, not the stall—swings open, and my nerves are aflame, camera app open. Soft footfalls.

“Did you do it yet?”

“FUCK.” I yank up my pants, even though there’s a good inch of solid metal—hanging slightly wonkily—between us. “GET OUT.”

Ten minutes, two pep talks and one Zen meditation later, I emerge victorious and mentally exhausted.

*****

“Can you send me one?” my friend Luna asks, a year later when I’m telling her the story. I stop short.

“Um, I guess?”

Sending a platonic Christmas present to a friend is like having someone grade me on private blog posts. I mean, it’s good to have an outside opinion but some things are like just for personal lil ole me so don’t crush my soul, maybe?

Sending Luna a platonic Christmas present was literally the hardest—don’t—thing I’ve ever had to do. Nothing is as unsexy as sending something like that platonically purely for curiosity.

“Delete it RIGHT AFTER,” I text her alongside the present.

“For sure!” she texts back.

She doesn’t delete it, and I don’t even feel betrayed because I ending up showing the Christmas present to all of my friends—sans Marco, because we’re trying to not destroy our friendship—on the last night of sophomore year. At this point, we’re so close that it’s not even weird. These are the people I’ve mooned multiple times in semi-public places and countless times in private places.

The girls of our friend groups send “Chanukah menorahs”—omg, sorry Judaism!—and the boys send Christmas presents and afterwards everyone has been thoroughly desexualized.

*****

*peers around from behind closed door*

Hey y’all! Do I have any readers left? Just the pervs and the serial killers? Great, my target demographic. I’m glad we’ve weeded out the weaklings.

But seriously guys, let’s not pretend that none of us have done something stupid or rash or something stupid that ended up giving us a rash.

I like showing my friends Christmas presents because I think it takes both the stigma and the nerves out of it. Like, I’m not a fucking nudist, but why do we take things so seriously? Note, this is not an invitation to send me platonic Christmas presents. Please, I’m not a heathen. Just some side-boob. I’m elegant.

Oh my god I’m literally laughing to myself because this post was such a fucking mistake but I’m gonna publish it anyway because I’m too lazy to think of something else. You guys, oh my god.

But more importantly, did they use to send Christmas presents on Polaroids? Or, even more importantly, something older? Those cameras where you had to duck underneath the curtain? Or an etching, a la Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre etching of 1770? Am I seriously making this into a history lesson?

The only things my “Christmas present” and Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre etching have in common are the fact that both were made in Boston and both portray British people in a bad light.

This post has gone as far as it possibly can. Bye!

Humor, Life, Rambles

AN ASS LIKE A THROW PILLOW

I have this theory that I only look truly hot in my bathroom mirror.

And if proven to be true, this theory is quite unfair to the other (seven billion minus one, I can’t even begin to do that math) people on this Earth because (seven billion minus one) people cannot fit into my bathroom all at the same time to witness me looking hot. And even if we scheduled out a time to get roughly six people into my bathroom to witness me looking hot, it would take a billion (is that right?) trips to show everyone how hot I looked.

How much “more info” could I possibly want?

Adding in the time required for each person to adequately drink in my beauty, and I’m looking at 32 years—at least—of being in a bathroom with six other strangers, and that’s just if each group gets a one-second viewing, which is unlikely and—frankly—unfair to them. But by even doubling the viewing time—64 years—or tripling it—96 years—it still seems impossible to do.

So the moral of the story is that you’ll have to just take my word for it that I’m hot.

End of post.

Just kidding. Could you imagine? That was basically a math class.

Side bar, I was lying on my front lawn with my laptop—to be artsy, obviously—and I had to give up because I was getting uncomfortably moist. Which got me thinking, is that redundant? Is there a way to be “comfortably moist?” It doesn’t seem like it.

I’ve been wearing a lot of short bathing suits and watching a lot of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which obviously has led me to thinking about my ass a lot. I’m long and lean—with a 10/10 face, in my bathroom mirror—so while my butt is cute and perky, it doesn’t pack a punch.

So today—Sunday, today, not Monday, today, when you’ll be reading this—I did squats and lunges. I put on “The Night Is Still Young” for some Nicki Minaj inspiration. And while doing that, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror—the mirrors at my Planet Fitness gym might be a solid second for how hot I look—and saw my profile. And my little tush wasn’t Kardashian-esque but it was cute in profile.

I was listening to Ross Mathews’ podcast Straight Talk With Ross—

Minute—minute as in “very small” and not as in “a measurement of 60 seconds”—side bar, I never know when to italicize and when to put things in quotes. Like, if it’s apart of a greater piece of work, you put in quotes, I think, but what is a podcast? Very unclear.

—and one of his cohosts was giving advice to a caller. She was nervous about bringing a guy back to her house because it wasn’t all Pinterested out and she was worried he wouldn’t be (P)interested in her if her house was subpar. And the cohost said that most people don’t notice the décor if the ambience and the host are warm and inviting.

“He’s not going to notice your throw pillows,” she—the cohost—said. “He’s going to notice you.”

And so, in a roundabout—“rounded butt” more like it—way, my ass is like a throw pillow. It’s nice that it’s there, but it’s not crucial to the party. But then, also, in a later episode, Ross said that he has roughly forty throw pillows in his house and he rotates and swaps them out, so maybe throw pillows are important? I’m getting very mixed signals here. What does that mean about my butt?

I’ve been reading a lot of BuzzFeed articles about how to “dress for your curvy body,” and while that sounds odd, because I’m not a voluptuous woman, I’ve discovered a ton of curvy women role models who totally embrace their body. Add that in to Ross Mathews, who is the poster child (man?) for loving your body, and that’s really what I want to get into. Loving my body. Living for it. Thinking that it slays. Because body confidence is sexy and refreshing and wholly too uncommon.

I have a small but perky butt. I have long eyelashes. I have good hair. I have nice lips. I have shoulders that have potential, a little tummy poof. But I have killer thighs and calves. That can be enough for now. I still slay. I’m still making people gag on my eleganza, live for me, die for me.

P.S. I saw this commercial for a medicine that combats foot fungas and it had an anthropomorphized foot playing tennis. This is not Don Draper’s dream.

There are no words. This is pedi-ful. Get it? Like “pitiful” but “pedi” because of foot.

The Wunderkindof

Too good-looking to be this funny. Politics. Pop Culture. Millennial Ramblings.

Monthly Archives: August 2015

THE 2K15 VMSLAYS

SISTERS, NOT TWINS

THIS POST IS OAKY

GO-GURT

CHICKEN WINGIN’ IT

DANCES WITH WHITE BOYS

TRADE

I WANT TO BE DIANE KEATON

RUINING CHRISTMAS

AN ASS LIKE A THROW PILLOW