I met this girl through a job, awhile back. She was brought on as a replacement for one of our regular crewmembers. We were all friendly and welcoming, and she was all smiles and giggles, and it seemed we were off to a winning start. I would inquire about her in efforts at conversation, no smiles, no giggles. The Director and the Producer would come into the office and smiles and giggles would pour out of every orifice. Ooooooohhh. I get it.

For the most part our conversations started when I would ask her something about herself, and ended when she would answer with a few short words. One day, she initiated a conversation with me during lunch. She wanted to talk about how hard dating was for her. She said she just couldn’t see herself dating a PA, even though she was one, but was it appropriate for her to date a Director? (Smiles, giggles) OOHH! Now I really get it. OK, do your thang girl; and she did.

She showed up to work in daisy dukes, always wearing smiles and giggles for the boys, and sometimes for me if anyone was watching. I had never used this word before, but my mind kept involuntarily whispering “Beware of this frenemy.”  I watched her act play out, and it got me feeling really sad. Did this shit work? Is that what people wanted? The job ended, and she left, and when she did they called her rubbish. I was relieved to see that manipulators don’t always get the upper hand, and people could see through bullshit.

Months later I got a call from her. She wanted to recommend me for a job. Well gee, that’s pretty nice. Maybe I was wrong about her. I replied in kind and gave her number to a few people, and we had this occasional interaction going. This occasional thing turned into meeting up for lunch and then suddenly we were friends.

I’m wrong a lot. I like being wrong, especially when it means someone is way cooler than I gave credit for. I liked her. She was funny; but I still had this odd feeling about her that I couldn’t quite place. I started to pay closer attention.

I would share personal things with her, as friends tend to do, but she wasn’t giving much back. She seemed uncomfortable with one on one interaction, and if we had plans she would invite someone else, usually a guy. Then I started noticing she would almost never relate with me as part of the group. When I was talking, she wouldn’t participate. She would address and respond to the others, but almost never to me. Then I would get home to find these really sweet emails saying how funny she thought I was and what a great friend I was, and I would think how weird, because not once during the evening did I get the sense that she liked having me around. Memories from our first meeting, a year prior, started to come back to me, and it all clicked. She didn’t view me as a friend, she saw me as her competitor.

I didn’t want to be too hasty, so I stuck around a bit longer, hoping maybe I had misunderstood. I observed a bit more. Everything seemed to be done in the service of gaining the attention of guys, at any cost. I would see her flirting with someone, and when I asked her if she liked them she’d always say no, only to then run her fingers through their hair, drape her arm over their leg, and laugh coquettishly at their every utterance.

The grossest part of it is that it wasn’t enough for her just to have their attention; she needed to feel like she had won it. That’s where I came in. Her intended role for me was that of the loser. Every woman is obviously fighting for the eyes of a man, right? So when eyes were on her, she was clearly the victor, in her own mind.

So I sat, and I watched. I watched her act and I got sad again, because this time her act was working, and she was hurting people’s feelings, my own included. I distanced myself from her. It was a good thing for me, but she’s still tangentially involved in my life. This morning I woke up thinking about her. I got out of bed and checked my email, and there was this quote included in one of the emails:

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at them.

In truth, we were never in competition, because you need at least two willing participants to play a game, and I had no intentions to participate. I know if she had to consider all of this, she would probably be totally unaware that this is her M.O., which makes her even more dangerous, because she has no idea she’s hurling bricks at people’s heads.

I caught every brick she threw at me, and I took them all and built a strong and sturdy home. It’s only me in there, but I have everything I need. My wish for her is that she will save some of those bricks for herself. Once the cuteness wears off, and people have tuned in their bullshit meters, she’s going to need those walls to protect that naked insecurity that no amount of external validation can cloak.

Photo Location: Paris, France. Outside Hôtel de Ville.

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Today I am too hungry to think of a story to tell, so instead; a note about grammar and punctuation:

I am either completely lazy or absolutely overzealous with my comma usage. I can never seem to find the in between. I use colons and semicolons on a whim, and essentially have no idea what purpose they are actually suppose to serve. My New Year’s resolution is to really clean up my punctuation. If I were feeling a bit more ambitious I would also tackle parentheses and who vs whom (which I’ve read the rules for on many occasions and cannot seem to retain them for more than 15 minutes). I am not feeling ambitious, so let’s start small. If you are a literary wizard and hold these things very dear to your heart, I will ask you to abandon all hope now, because I know I will only disappoint you.

Photo Location: Los Angeles, CA. Aroma Golf Range in Korea Town.

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Let’s talk about cooking: Have you ever considered taking cheese and a pie crust, adding some hair to it, and then putting it in the oven? Yeah, me neither.

My friend, Paul, and I were heading to a little party; It’s always nice to show up with something when attending a party. A book I read by a Buddhist monk said you should always bring something when visiting a person’s house, even if it’s only a flower. I thought that was a nice idea. This time we were bringing pie. 

We were young, cheap, and not very creative, so we went to Denny’s in search of our pie. We inquired with the waitress about their selection. They had a whole bunch, so we sat there, patiently listening to the lengthy list. 

“We have Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Coconut Cream Pie, Hair Cheese Pie, Pecan Pie…”

Uhhhhhh… The list was flying by rapidly and there was a mounting tension between me and Paul, that the waitress seemed oblivious to. I was unable to get my wits about me, but Paul kept his cool. He extended his hand politely, to interrupt the woman’s pie listing.

“Wait, wait… Hair Cheese Pie?”

She paused only briefly for his interjection.

“Yes, Hair Cheese Pie. Lemon Meringue Pie, Vanilla Custard Pie…”

I kept trying to think back to what we had eaten earlier, and was it possible that someone had managed to dose us, because life as I knew it was not making sense anymore. I was trying to imagine a world in which people took hair and baked it into a pie with cheese. Did they harvest this hair, or collect it from bathroom drains and beauty salon floors? Was it strictly human, or were there pet hair varieties of Hair Cheese Pie? I didn’t have the answers to any of these questions, and I didn’t like the casual manner in which our server regarded the topic. The only thing I could be absolutely certain certain of was; I would not be buying any Hair Cheese Pie. 

We did end up leaving with some kind of pie, which seems gross in retrospect, but we were young, cheap, and not very creative. This must have been a contributing factor to our return to Denny’s, once again for a pie. This time we had a different server, but to my utter dismay, Hair Cheese Pie was still being served. It was a total flashback. The scene played out just as it had the last time, right down to Paul interrupting to clarify the ingredients in this ugly beast posing as a dessert. Except this time, the server mercifully pulled out a menu with pictures and pointed to a lovely looking Hershey’s chocolate pie. 

Gringos in the barrio. Life is rich with possibilities. 

Photo Location: Los Angeles, CA, Universal Studios.

This photo has nothing to do with this story, and it’s also out of focus, but as long as I’m the one making the rules on this blog, anything goes.

A Search For Heartbreaking Beauty

This is a photo taken back in the days when I still had curtains. I’m not complaining. I actually love it. The apartment is near to empty. When I’m on the phone, my words echo and boom through space, like the voice of God. I feel so majestic. 

I was walking through the grocery store last night, hunting for some bananas that weren’t so stridently green. I looked over towards the meat section and saw this guy, doing what I could only describe as, ogling, not the bananas. A voice in my head immediately said “Ooooooh, checking out a blond in the supermarket, what a cliché!” I tried this same scenario on with a brunette substituting for me. It seemed more serious, less sleazy, like “This guy has a legitimate attraction to that nice looking brunette over there by the bananas.” That’s when I realized, I am fucked.

I’m blond by birth, and have not been to a hair salon in well over 5 years. This is not an esthetic choice I’ve made, it’s a choice that genetics has made for me. My point being that I think I may identify with blondness differently than someone who has made a conscious choice to be that. My hair is more of an appendage than a fashion statement, therefore, I probably hold a lot of the same stereotypical views about blonds that everyone else does. 

So let’s break it down, but before I do, let me preface by saying: I am not saying these are truths, I am saying these are knee jerk reactions to culturally contextualized ideas that we allow to spread around virtually unchecked. Now let’s get on with the generalizations…

This is what I think we tend to believe on sort of a subconscious level: Most blonds are bottle blonds, which would suggest a propensity towards vanity and falseness, lots of makeup, false eyelashes, stiletto heels, big purses, fake boobs, all useful tools in the hunt for a sugar daddy. (I’m glad no one reads this blog, blonds everywhere would be sending me death threats.) So the kind of guys that are attracted to them are, obviously, douchebags. Duh.

This is a problem. If I actually have this voice in my head that is saying those kinds of things, it’s saying it about every guy that expresses an interest in me. So on some deep and not so completely obvious level, I think every guy who is attracted to me is a douchebag. Suddenly a lot of things are making sense…

If my socially assigned role is that of a Budweiser Babe, eternally single and carrying beers around to distract men from staring at my breasts, I can, at least, take solace in the fact that, underneath it all I am now the voice of god.

Photo Location: My living room in Los Angeles.

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I’ve decided that leaving the house and pursuing a social life are both highly overrated activities. Ironically enough, after making this decision, I’ve run out of toilet paper. I suppose concessions will have to be made.

So what happens when you like someone but they’re a huge bossy pain in the ass? Ha! As I write this I can think of a gaggle of people who would probably say the same thing about me.

Well shit. I suppose that’s why I like animals so much. I don’t have to listen to their opinions about me and they don’t give a damn about mine. It’s a perfect set up.

Photo Location: Puerto Maldonado, Peru

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The demise of my car has been a contributing factor in the ever growing mountain of laundry piling up in my closet. Yesterday, I finally scrapped the bottom of the underwear drawer. A laundry adventure was in order. I packed all my dirty clothes and sheets into some rolling luggage and a backpack, and hiked a mile to the big Laundromat by the frozen yogurt store I like. I must have looked freshly homeless because quite a few people pulled over and asked if I needed a place to stay. ha.

I read about 10 different celebrity gossip magazines at the laundromat. An ex-boyfriend used to stockpile them in the bathroom and he got me hooked. They’re great because you can read one page to page in about 5 minutes, and they have no substance so you don’t have to worry about any troublesome thoughts clogging up your mind space. I took a small hiatus from reading them. I’ve missed a lot. Lots of people getting married. Lots of people having babies. It seems the small dog is no longer the hip accessory, now you have to have a fashion forward baby to stand out in the crowd, or maybe even a gaggle of them. 

So what am I talking about, really? Nothing, I guess. I hope that’s OK. How do you suppose a person should feel when someone says to them “I really miss you! I didn’t think I would miss you!” Ahhh… hhhmmmm…Thank you…??? A compliment so unsexy it’s got me wanting to buy many small dogs and have many small and stylish children to shield me from the unfashionable shame of it all.

Photo Location: Los Angeles, California, In the Laundromat, yo

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Two things:

1. Earlier I was doing some light cleaning with windex. In a stroke of absolute genius I held the bottle in the wrong direction and dosed myself with a long stream of it. Is this because, unbeknownst to me, I exist in a cartoon universe? Next I will be slipping on a banana peel and donning visible stars over my head when I crash to the floor? I squirted myself, sat there thinking how idiotic I was, while toweling off, then stupidly proceeded to do it a second time. These are moments I enjoy sharing with the cats. They sit there looking unimpressed, with their hooded eyes staring evenly at me, as if to say “Your idiocy is of no interest to me.” Then it’s all been put into perspective. I’m glad they have their paws so evenly placed on the ground. It keeps me humble.

2. On my walk yesterday I saw an Asian B-Boy in baggy jeans and a tilted cap, carrying a leash attached to a 2 pound chihuahua wearing a hooded, fur lined parka. The B-Boy looked me straight in the eyes and silently said “What.” The chihuahua looked me straight in the eyes and silently said “Help!” I wish I could have.

Photo Location: Los Angeles, California. The temperature was 110 degrees that day. Skeeter was hottttttttt.

A Search For Heartbreaking Beauty

When I was living in Paris I was kind of a chicken when it came to speaking French. At the time I was working from my apartment as a Graphic Designer. This provided me with unlimited opportunity to hide from the scariness that is a French person when they wrinkle their brow at you in disgust and say “Comment? Quoi?” after you’ve slowly and carefully chosen your words, that end up not being words at all, but rather a string of mumblings with nasal inflections. I became a little bit of a shut in.

Then one day my friend, Catherine, lent me a French language CD by Michael Thomas. (This is not a plug for him.) He explained this one fact that changed my French speaking career forever: All words (except 3) in English ending in tion are the same in French!!!! 1,200 words!!!! GeeeeSus. Why had no one told me?

I was excited to test it out, and as luck would have it, I had an errand to run that had been frightening me. I needed to get some birth control pills from the pharmacy, not for any fun reason, only boring reasons that I won’t bore you with. I didn’t know the word for birth control, so I used this new trick to try to explain it.

J’ai besoin de contraception pour la prevention de la conception d’un bébé. J’ai besoin d’un prescription?

It was amazing!

Well, in reality it didn’t actually go that smoothly. There was a lot of gesticulating and motions suggesting a large belly with a baby in it. That’s just because I’m a panicking fool, but every time I used one of my new words they totally got it!! I would have been so lost.

That was only half the battle. Then the American medical people needed to talk to the French pharmaceutical people and see if they could understand each other. I wanted to call up the Americans and teach them my new, mind blowing, technique, but I didn’t know if it would give them the same confidence it had given me. I told an Irish bartender in a Paris pub about the rule, and he didn’t seem too impressed. Hmm ~sniff~ To each his own. I, personally, felt like a new woman!

Photo Location: Paris, France

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This photo is from my first ever solo camping trip. I had gotten tired of waiting for schedules to coincide properly to the point that planning a trip with other people was a possibility, so I found inspiration for going alone from an old, favorite tradition of mine; The One Girl Slumber Party.

I started this tradition when I was 21, and living in Madison, Wisconsin. I was overcome by my newly acquired ability to buy beer, and was looking to revel in it. The celebration consisted of a 6 pack, a few movies, all of my own choosing (an additional celebration of being single and autonomous), as many cheeseburgers as I cared to buy and/or eat, as many chocolate desserts as I cared to buy and/or eat, my dog, Martini, and my two cats, Tigger and Garbonzo, to snuggle. These slumber parties were always a huge success.

Last night my One Girl Slumber Party consisted of; working on my laptop in front of the television with the sound turned down, while listening to podcasts of This American Life, Radio Lab, and A Prairie Home Companion, getting hungry and eating a handful of almonds, remembering there was a bottle of wine in the house, and snuggling with my two cats, Olive and Skeeter. Martini and Garbonzo are all still alive (RIP Tigger). Please don’t worry. They just now pee at my parent’s and sister’s houses, respectively, instead of mine.

Times change. I guess I’m all growed up.

P.S. I lit this fire with just one match! A talent given to me by my father. He made me a good little camper.

A Search For Heartbreaking Beauty

Ooooh, sad. There is a hole forming below the left butt cheek of my favorite jeans. I guess that makes my decisions about what to pack one item lighter. Why is it always the left cheek? I was hoping these jeans would stick around forever, even though they were not my “Destiny Jeans” as defined by my friend, Andrew. I loved them anyway, because I always felt skinny in them, which every woman knows is one of the most important factors in buying jeans. Even when I was packing a few extra pounds, I still felt nice. They allowed me to think about myself differently, so in a way, they actually changed who I am. Clearly, I have a profound connection with these pants.

It would appear that they will soon retire, but not their noteworthy contribution to my personal evolution, and because I have nothing better to do than over analyze the minutiae of every thought that pops into my head, I can’t help but compare, and use my emotions regarding these jeans as a metaphor for my feelings about people. (Metaphors are great. It’s like puppet therapy for children.)

Awhile back, I was talking with a friend about someone they were interested in, but had proven to be inconsistent. They were wondering if they should distance themselves from that person, and I was surprised to find myself suggesting they should ride it out. If I’m curious about a person, I’ve never been able to diminish that curiosity with any amount of reasonable argument in favor of doing so. I’ve gotten tons of great advice from friends and self-help books, mapping out the ways in which you can detect red flags, and get the hell out of an emotional connection before shit gets messy. All of these sage observations have been totally wasted on me. 

In the past, I would look for ways to find people who would stick around, so I could avoid the distress of loss and disappointment, and maintain the illusion that I have the ability to control the unpredictable details of life, in vain. Lately, I’ve found that the path of least resistance is, in fact, to allow myself to take some wrong turns in the pursuit of understanding attraction, and to know all kinds of people, even people who may ultimately go away and leave me feeling sad.

I’ve come to a place where I don’t find it necessary to avoid pain at all costs. I no longer hold the belief that something has to last forever, and always feel satisfying, in order for it to be “good” or “true.” I don’t decide not to prepare dinner because it will soon be eaten and I’ll be left sitting in front of an empty plate. It’s an imperfect process, but these days I strive to find a place where I can allow things to be as they are; transient, unreliable, confusing, edifying, and transformative, all experiences worthy of having. I’m going to miss those jeans, but I still love them and the way they changed my life, and I will continue to do so in their absence.

A Search For Heartbreaking Beauty