Tag Archives: school

2018, Life, Things Happening RN

TRYING TO BE HOT AT MY FIVE-YEAR REUNION

On Saturday, I had my five-year high school reunion.

I went in with low expectations, and by that I mean that I went in with the highest expectations and fully expected to be disappointed.

I regularly make jokes about the kind of person I was in high school; “I looked like a thumb with eyes” is a common one, given the fact that I had red, horrible skin, didn’t figure out a haircut that worked for me and I plucked my light eyebrows into impossibly high, thin arches that rendered them completely invisible in photos.

Embarrassingly (although everyone is guilty of this) I was obsessed with maintaining a façade even more than I was obsessed with maintaining a severe eyebrow arch. I probably even loved saying the word “façade” in high school. Difficult pronunciation and a squiggly accent mark? Chic! Essentially, I was kind of geeky and not-chic, except that I thought I was the most chic. Animal-print? Yes please. Neon? Why not! I was also perhaps most famous in high school for having a blog, and by that I mean, I was gay and literate and wrote about it.

Going into this reunion, I had one main goal: make everyone want to kill themselves with jealousy.

I assumed that this goal was very much attainable and also very much in the bag. However, things started to unravel very quickly. A tussle with a sheet mask ended up with me having a slight allergic reaction. A haircut ended up looking a little too egghead. My skin, which has been on a journey not dissimilar to Arya Stark trying to find her way back to Winterfell, decided to have a flare-up! Everything was coming up rosacea!

For reasons that I discuss extensively in therapy but will not disclose here, I feel a powerful need to prove myself to everyone, but particularly people who dislike me. Given the fact that I went to an all-boys Catholic prep school and was gay/wore leopard-print, I was not wanting for enemies or bullies!

I showed up to cocktail hour an hour late and dressed fucking cute, and immediately realized that I would not get through this night without alcohol. I was sucked into a conversation with a former classmate about his career track. He does something client-facing, and wears ties, and honestly that’s all I could remember because I was too busy scanning the faces of other classmates and making mental notes of everyone who got hot.

As I mentioned, I went to a prep school, whose main exports are insecurity complexes and people who work in square professions – finance, real estate, anything that has you start as an “analyst.” I was one of maybe four people who was in a creative industry, and reminder, I barely have a job! I was back in an environment that both fostered trust-fund fist bumps and discouraged me making any sort of “anal-yst” jokes! It was tough!

To overcompensate, when people asked me what I did, I formulated a square and safe response. “I’m a writer, and I’m going to grad school in July.”

Over the course of the evening, I got progressively looser and more annoying. “I’m a writer” became “I’m a freelancer writer,” which became “I’m a freelancer writer and I work at Trader Joe’s,” which somehow devolved into “I write about gay stuff!” and then completely deteriorated into just “Gay!”

To be fair, it always ends up that way.

But sometimes I realized, as my answers about “What I’m Doing” became sillier and more honest, is that people responded in kind. I got an accountant to admit that if I don’t pay taxes, there’s a possibility that nothing will happen (don’t do this though, pay your taxes). I asked a civil engineer if he got inspiration from that underground cavern in Marvel’s The Defenders. He did not laugh!

When I was saying hi to somebody, the person next to him saw me and made to do the “How are you doing!” facial shift.

The problem with this was that we never had a conversation in high school. I knew who he was because he’s hot, and he knew who I was because I’m gay, but no words passed betwixt us. So when he said, “How’ve you been?” I responded with “I’m good – I’m excited to have our first conversation ever!” And all he could do was laugh because literally it’s true.

And once we got over the truth, we actually had a conversation. We talked about high school, his work, my work, marijuana dispensaries and being hot.

I detest small talk because it kind of defeats the purpose – it’s meant to facilitate conversation, but it actually becomes a barrier against having real conversation. It becomes “Where did you go to college again?” and “What have you been doing?” instead of “Did you love college?” and “What do you think of Cardi B?”

By the way, people have high praise for Cardi!

I understand the impulse to put your best foot forward – I’m the fucking mayor of Putting Your Best Foot Forward – so I’m not sure exactly what snapped in me, but I’m glad it did. Because instead of exchanging meaningless pleasantries, I actually dug into real conversation with both old friends and people that I had never connected with in high school.

High school was messy in roughly eight thousand ways, and these all made going back into the Vineyard Vines viper’s pit quite stressful, which is probably why I became acutely obsessed with my appearance. A classic redirect to avoid confronting past trauma, sis!

But despite it all, I’m glad I went. I got a chance to look hot in suede boots, call everybody “hon” and “handsome” and snag an alumni baseball cap. And at the end of the day, that’s really all I could ask for.

Standard
Life, Rambles, Things Happening RN

IS MERCURY IN RETROGRADE?

I was going to try to write something funny; I mean, I’m always funny, but I was going to try to be purposefully funny. This post will be funny because I can’t not be funny/handsome, but that’s not the attempt. I guess this was a disclaimer? Omg, btw, isn’t is so weird when people put the emphasis on the first syllable in disclaimer, saying it as “disclaimer” rather than the regular, human “disclaimer” or at least putting a similar emphasis on each of the first two syllables (dis-claim-er)? God, I could make an entire blog post about syllabic emphasis but that would actually be torture for everyone.

I, and everyone I know (aka everyone in the whole world basically), have been in a real funk lately. Maybe it’s the complex tornado of Midterms and the impending Graduation and Jobs and Parents and Expectations. Maybe we all just have Mono and none of us realize it yet. Both, frankly, are equally possible.

Is Mercury in retrograde? Has anyone checked?

I’m doing Big Life Things—not jobs, things, mom, so don’t text me—but it’s weird and enterprising and scary.

I just saw Someone and I feel the vibrations ripple up my spine and tingle into my teeth. I swear to god, my body is breaking, because I feel emotions in the weirdest ways and also my left eyelid—it’s the top (omg such a Top™ thing to do to be so demanding)—has been intermittently twitching for the last week and a half. The possible motives for this Twitching© are: 1). Lack of sleep; 2). Too much caffeine; 3). My body is trying to throw off the shackles of a demon possession and my mind hasn’t realized it yet; 3b). My demon is trying to take control of my body to help me improve my grades and job prospects and my mind is self-sabotaging itself. End of list.

I’ve also been walking around campus and noticing people that I always viewed as single suddenly start to pair up, like there’s some sort of biblical flood that no one warned me about. I’m not…I’m not “bitter,” but my friend Nina had the right word: “Embittered.” Like these fucking nobodies are shacking up for the winter season?? YOU DON’T NEED A BOYFRIEND FOR THE WINTER, YOU JUST NEED A FUCKING BOYFRIEND PILLOW.

I think the world just needs to collectively decide to just date itself for a while, and be single!! Mother Gaia, ur too hot to settle down!

Also, I’ve decided that I’m wearing too much gray/not enough gay. Remember how I mentioned that my friend Nina—ugh this bitch is popping up twice in one post? She’s gonna get such an ego—said that I cockblock her because everyone assumes that I’m her boyfriend. Well APPARENTLY THAT’S LEGIT AND I’M DRESSING TOO STRAIGHT. I’ll admit, I’ve been wearing a lot of baggy, boyfriend-style jeans lately—DOESN’T THE FACT THAT I JUST CALLED THEM BOYFRIEND JEANS IMPLY THAT I’M SO ABSOLUTELY HOMOSEXUAL—and dad t-shirts, so I’m going to switch it up.

From now on, to let everyone know that I’m gay before I even speak—Nina: “Once people hear you, they know you’re gay.”—I’ve got a new uniform: acid-washed jeggings, a Legalize Gay American Apparel crop top, UGG boots and a clip-in side-ponytail. Yes, I’ll look like a mental patient, but I look like a gay mental patient, and that’s all I wanted.

The weather is becoming more wintry, so maybe that’s the reason for my more melancholic—if a collie become depressed, is it then technically a melan-collie?—meandering musings, or it might just be g*ddamn fucking Mercury. I should disclose that I do not know what “retrograde” means, but I like to picture it as meaning “when you get really into the ‘70s disco scene”. I don’t think that’s what it means, but I’m not giving up hope. Yet.

Also I changed the fonts for my titles and text. Do you like them? I’m trying to make the whole look a little cleaner, a little more “aesthetic.” I haven’t succeeded, but I feel one step closer. LMK WHAT U THINK.

Standard
Life, Rambles, Things Happening RN

I’M HOT ENOUGH TO COCKBLOCK AND YOU KNOW ME, TIFFANY

Written after seeing a bunch of “If”s—you know. I saw a “Bulbasaur if he was, like, the hottest guy at CrossFit” and “Prince Harry if he was a Science teacher in The Breakfast Club or Robin Williams in Flubber.”  

I really don’t have a lot to write about today. I know it’s hard to judge my blogs when they have veritable content versus when they don’t, because everything is relative and eventually we’re all going to swirl into a black hole or be consumed by a supernova, but I have really no content today.

I’ve been basically out of the house from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and I went to the gym before that, so that’s about eight more hours of work than I’m used to. Usually I do one twenty-minute activity before taking a twelve-hour nap, and then repeating the cycle. I don’t get very much done in my day. I had two English classes, a meeting with a professor, a quick nip downtown to request court records because I’m a journalist and enterprising as fuck, and then a coffee hang with my friend. Then I just laid in bed for an hour and a half and now I’m cooking a shepherd’s pie. Wait, actually my day has been so eventful.

Since I don’t have, like, a cohesive blog, but things have been happening to me l8ly, I figured I could just do a stream of consciousness because WHO CARES, THE BAR IS SET SO LOW.

1). I went over to Nina’s house Sunday afternoon, recuperating from a long weekend, and we got underneath her covers in her bed—it’s cold and we’re college students—Grey Gardens-style, and did homework. I wrote a piece about Taylor Swift and listened to Frank Ocean, she read some law book (idfuckingk) and passive-aggressively requested that we change it to something without words.

There’s something about being fully clothed but snuggled in bed that’s actually the most intimate. Like, I’ve slept in the same bed with people but that’s when it’s like actually for sleeping. I don’t generally lounge in bed with friends, but this was super enjoyable. I brought sweatpants and lounging socks to really overstay my welcome.

2). Nina says that I cockblock her when we hang out. At first I was like, “Get over yourself,” until I realized that that meant that I’m hot/tall/masc/cute enough to appear to be her boyfriend. I try to remind her that if I were straight, she wouldn’t be attractive enough to date me (I’m a 9), but I think I’ve insulted her so much that she’s developed some sort of emotional callus to avoid my harsh words from sinking in. I need to start varying up my behavior towards her, so that—much like the Tasmanian Devil—you can never anticipate my moods.

3). I was talking with some friends about how annoying it is when people pretend not to recognize me. It’s happened twice in the same week, where someone has been like, “I feel like I recognize you,” and I have to scream, “YOU KNOW ME, TIFFANY.” It was no one named Tiffany, but I can’t—for legal reasons (?)—say who’s been doing it to me. My logic is that, even though we go to a school of 16,000 undergrad, I’m very distinctive. I’m 6’3, redheaded, and loud as fuck, so there’s no way you can avoid seeing me. And even if you don’t recognize my face, I scream enough in public that my voice has probably haunted your dreams on numerous occasions. So let’s not play these games, TIFFANY.

4). Today in my Pre-1860 American Lit class, I called Taylor Swift “petty as fuck, but not in a bad way.” I think it was probably as well-received as you would imagine a polarizing statement such as that could be. Previous things I have said in that class: “Sex and the City is an example of an epistolary novel” and “Have you guys ever seen Reign?” I don’t know if I’m doing well in that class.

5). I’m listening to Joanne, and enjoying it probably as much as one can with a high-concept album such as this. My favorite songs are “Diamond Heart,” “Grigio Girls,” “John Wayne,” and “Sinner’s Prayer.”

6). I was screaming about avocadoes in a coffee shop today, and how guacamole doesn’t give me the firmness I require from avocadoes for enjoyment, and I looked up to see a former classmate staring at me in shock/horror/amusement. SEE, I’M DISTINCTIVE.

Okay, nothing else has ever happened in my life, or anyone else’s, so I’m going to end the article here. Do I even have the right to call this, or any writing I’ve done, an article? God, that’s so demeaning to all of journalism. Whatever, I’m already the Kim Zolciak-Biermann of journalism.

Standard