Its like I've grown my own beret

Hair.

I don't know if you've noticed. But my hair is getting GIGANTIC!!! This ranks as a big deal in my world! I've had this androgen thing going on upstairs since I was 15. And it has served me rather well. In fact, like being a cigarette fiend, it was sort of "my thing." Growing it out has been as emotionally loaded for me as (evidenced by the "Make-over Episode" every cycle of Top Model) cutting it all off is for most women. Something about having this obvious, feminizing signifier growing right out of the top of my head, feels like a lot to handle for me. Its like saying "Hey, here's my gender! I'm a FEMALE, take that!" Not that I've ever been one to leave the house on a Friday night in a hijab or anything. Usually my sartorial choices are influenced by the notion that someday I'm going to be old and everything is going to inevitably head south, both figuratively and literally, so might as well enjoy the fruits of my (relative) youth before they become crasins.

Being hirsute is like a whole new world though. It really really is.

• Its warm! Yes, I'm here to report, having a shit load of hair keeps your head warm in the cold. Lovin' it. Especially this winter because the "new economy" is making it unlikely I can afford a nice hat.

• Its gray. Not lovin' it so much. I knew I had a few coming in on the sides, but crop kind of kept them undercover. [Actually, I'm lying. I sort of love that it's turning gray and I love being able to be like "awww it's turning gray." I think I'm actually getting a streak! And how can I become the grand dame I envision myself as at 60 without a streak!?]
  

• I still want to have it in front of my face all the time, just like middle school. It's great, it's like being in your own little cave.

• Also like middle school, sometimes I go to sleep with it wet, get up and don't brush it. Unlike middle school this generally happens if I come home late and am trying to shower the drunk away (it's a preventative hangover balm.)
  

• I've adopted this ridiculous hair flipping move that involves me shaking my head a lot. It sort of looks like headbanging, except on a horizontal axis, or as if I have to say "no no no" to something, fast. And yes, it means I am flirting with you. I know I know...it probably looks like I have Tourettes.

• No one ever tells me I look like Liza Minnelli!

• "You look like that SNL chick from the 70s...uhh.. guggg...Gilll"

"Gilda Radner?"

"haha oh YEA, you TOTALLY DO"

I THINK THAT'S AWESOME.

I do think Gilda is out-hairing me by a mile. I'm never really going to be able to attain the heights of a brushed out jew fro but, It's something to aspire to.

I liked having short hair, but after a decade, I'm tired of it. When I chopped it off I was fifteen and it has never been longer than ear length till now (I'm 26). I so badly wanted to prove to the world my consummate singularity and being quite the observant little pet when I was 15, I noticed not a single girl in my high school had hair like Mia Farrow. Most had bad dye jobs and ponytails and wore bows. Yes, 16, 17 year old young women with hair bows. It just struck me as the silliest, most infantilizing thing. How, as a woman could you ever hope to be taken seriously having once worn a BOW.

Also, I was not entirely confident that my singularity was really all that consummate, but I was hoping to get the ball rolling in that direction. I was also kind of emo. Get it? I wanted how I looked on the OUTSIDE to be what like what I felt I was (or wanted to be) on the INSIDE.

Now I want to be

This guy.

Wellll maybe; despite their rather battle-ready image, male lions generally lie around all day mating and looking awesome while the less majestic looking ladies do all the heavy lifting, i.e. jungle business of catching stuff, pulling it apart, ingesting it.

(hahah EXACTLY)


In a year I'm going to be

YEA!

AIR RAID.

I feel the hair on the back of my neck exploding in split ends as soon as I see my mother reach for the handle on the refrigerator door.

And as she cheerily announces through her teeny, slightly-clenched, WASP'y teeth "It looks like someone threw up in here," my vertebrae curl together, pulling me in towards myself like an armadillo in a loosing battle.

Why do I care? At this point in my life I know my apartments will never be clean enough, ever. They've seen them all (except that China Town place with the crumbling tile and glue traps THANK GOD), I know the drill. After every apartment inspection I always have code violations. During the last visit, I had postponed the meet-and-greet with Clinton Hill. I knew it had to happen this trip. Resistance was futile, I just wanted to be ready, you know? I wanted to be the Department of Domestic Preparedness Affairs, armed with one god-damned acceptable apartment!!

As I sat there waiting for the door buzzer to ring, impressed with my anticipatory cheese, hummus, and crudites plate, NPR a-blazin', feeling as ready and properly contained as a tin full of tea biscuits - I noticed the 4 inch bike grease smudge on the wall. That will get a shout out, of this you can be sure, Ms. NPR and Cracker Tray. Before I could get to the paper towels, of course the buzzer went "ZAAANNNG."

"What happened there?"

I don't' know mom. Perhaps a bacteria-ridden Mongoloid threw up on the wall before he made it to the fridge since clearly I was too busy smoking opium with Madame Tang or whatever you suppose I do which causes me to be imprudent about my wall scrubbing duties. I can see her little brain ticking away, evaluating, logging, reorganizing, assessing the condition of this place I work very hard to live in. She settles in, imperfections duly noted but "its not that bad."

Well thanks.

Why on earth do I care this much? I'm the 26 year old adult child of a clean freak! Big deal! Some people got hit or fed meth in their Cheerios! I have perspective! I understand "Theory of Mind"! MY thoughts are different from OTHER PEOPLE'S thoughts! So how could I really be so fragile? So easily rattled by every silly little thing, my silly little mother says? I should be able to knowingly chuckle "Oh mom" without hearing the air raid sirens go off in my ego, my mature intelligence necessitates it!

DUCK AND COVER.

I was already 2.5 glasses of wine in anyway (so much for containment), why not make it four shall we?

And the soft focus moroseness sets in. There I am.

Ready to face the rest of my evening with my parents. Dinner discussion ranges from why I "look so unhealthy" (Grazie, Don Lipitor) to how Dad keeps getting "blown off" by other family members, and of course the ever popular "why don't I teach?"

Because I do not like kids and it interests me not at all. That's why I don't teach. I don't like children. Not small children, not middle schoolers, not high school kids. The thought of being the sweater-dress wearing, chain-smoking drama teacher for a bunch of school children makes me feel like somehow kicking my own ass. Really, it makes me want to get into a fist fight with myself.

I DO NT WANT TO.

AT ALL. NOR HAVE I EVER EXPRESSED ANY INTEREST IN DOING IT EVER IN MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE.

PLEASE STOP SUGGESTING IT EVERY TIME I SEE YOU I CANT THINK OF ANYTHING I WOULD LIKE TO DO LESS.

I also have fond memories from years 85 to 95 of how much mother dear JUST LOVED teaching kindergartners and used to fairly frequently come home from work crying throughout my youth so YEA, TEACHING, SEEMS TO SUCK.

Oh man. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausting myself.

Upon returning home, I looked at the remnants of my attempt at hors d'oeuvres on what passes for a kitchen table, and right there, right in the eye line of the bowl of mini carrots, leaning jauntily on the windowsill:

"The Smart Girl's Guide to Porn"

ITS PAIGE'S, REALLY! NO, Really it really is Paige's, I'm like, I don't know, porn? Just not really that into it really. NO REALLY.

I mean...I'm reading it but it's my roommates!! REALLY.

At least nobody said anything.

House Guests

It's like herpes bedbugs in Brooklyn, everybody gets them.

Houseguests

I kid.

Everyone coming to stay with me in the next couple of weeks I luv. And I am looking forward to sleepovers, jumping around in our underwear, making blender drinks and then subsequently dancing circles around the kitchen table while singing joyful tunes that serve to celebrate our respective self-hoods. Especially with my friend Erin's "band" of people I've never met.

Ha I don't know why I quoted "band" - they really are a band, they are here for CMJ. And a good band at that. They are more then welcome to go all Motley Crue on my living room.

Also coming to stay we have the incomparable Jesse. My household kingdom (me and Paige) rejoices.

Thirdly....we have... my parents. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I'm not the, sleeping-in-the-same-bed-with-mom type, nor am I the allow-mom-and-dad-to-sleep-on-the-floor-in-my-"cozy"-two-bed-room-rail-road type. So mom and dad have had to find other sleeping arrangements. (I'm also not the give-up-your-bed-and-sleep-on-the-couch-type.) Hey, I have to work in the morning here people.

Mental Fitness.

So during the time I was away, not writing this blog, I happened to discover that


I've got brain problems.

And when my room mate (who is like my wife at this point) upon returning home finds me, yet again, by myself during daylight hours making a sizable dent in a bottle of gin and chain-smoking on the couch, joylessly watching Tyra Show reruns (such woe!!) while feeling really really bad for myself - suggested what my mom has been saying for years

"you should go to therapy."

(Its harder to be all like "OH WHATEVER MOM" when your friends say it...)

I decided, yea, maybe I should. And I mean, unlike sopping up whiskey with your cerebellum, its not going to kill me. Furthermore since I am one of the lucky few who actually have health insurance, I can get my brain worked on, like, for free!

No wait, wait..

I can work on my own brain.

Right?

I shouldn't be so flip about it...I just find something about the whole idea of therapy fucking annoying. Well its not so mysterious. What I find annoying is that NYC offers up a myriad of ways for its inhabitants to display shockingly unpleasant levels self-involvement. So you strive to avoid being completely overtaken by your own ego (or risk becoming a frightening species of gorgon only found in New York), and then the first thing that comes to mind as a sure-fire panacea when you start seeing red doors and wanting to paint them black, is spending your money to essentially force someone to listen to you talk about yourself.

It just annoys me. About me. And I'm going to talk further about it, on this blog, which I write, about me.

Perhaps I am loosing this battle.

So battle lost, I have started "seeing someone."

Everyone says it's important to have "reasonable expectations". I guess that means, for example if I were a lunatic who was seeing gigantic hob goblins with fangs on fire everywhere, I shouldn't hope to eradicate the hob goblins entirely, but perhaps turn them into more petite, benign goblins. Fiery goblins you can live with. Goblins not on fire.

But I'm having a hard time continuing this venture. I don't think I'm really all that interested in not being upset. And some part of me thinks the whole thing is a big snake oil wholesale operation. I don't know...I'm just trying not become Artax in the Swamps of Sadness...you know what I mean.

Autumnal, Clinton Hill.

Well,

I wish I could report a reason I have written nothing since June.

Let's make one up.

So I applied for this uhhh... grant.....which I got....and I went to Istanbul...no...Constantinople.

They love me there. I'm huge there.

So after a long summer in Persia - or some other evocative name which was once a place, such as the USSR or Gaul - I am facing another fall, in yet another borough of our fair, fair, city.

Let me introduce you to Clinton Hill.

I am making friends in my neighborhood. And doing more laundry. Well actually I am doing less laundry because now it involves carrying a cart down the stairs and wheeling a panda-sized bag of it, old lady style, down the block. But things are always hopping at the laundromat on Dekalb avenue. By things, I mean fights involving cars and dogs and everybody having a generally harmless, innocuous time screaming at each other in front of their friends and neighbors.

As my darks and whites were tumbling and I was outside further distancing myself from my resolve to quit smoking, a very high dude came up to me and asked to try on my sunglasses.

Hey, they are awesome, I agree - so of course I obliged. He kept yelling "who do I look like, I think I look like T - I" , at his cousin, who he told me was Israeli. I kind of doubt it but OK.

anyway...I didn't know it at the time
but in fact he did look like TI!!!

not this TI



Then he asked me to hold his dixie cup of orange juice and feel his hands, which were soft because "he'd never worked a day in his life." ( FYI - They weren't that soft. Furthermore, Scarlett O'Hara, the term "soft hands" is creepy, don't say that to girls.)

Then he kindly offered to marry me and told me I'd never work a day in my life.

How's that gonna work bro?

Neither of us working any days in this new life together, which we are starting right now, on the street outside the laudromat drinking OJ (or methadone) from a dixie cup? And I get the feeling, well, because you told me so, high guy, that you'd like to get me pregnant pretty fucking fast, so their would be another 3 or 4 mouths to feed. I mean, I'm down for the no-working thing, really...I REALLY REALLY am...but uh, I'm going to need to see some proof before we head down to city hall, a bank statement...a sack of gold doubloons. Something.


A lady can dream though can't she? Especially now, cause the lady is BROKE, and I like living off dreams, fairy dust, and magic beans that come from the sky.

I am a professional mover

I've moved again.

it took me 5 months.

hence no posts.

That's a lie, it took me literally 3 hours with the hearty help of two of my strongest-armed friends and a uhaul.

However it many ways it has taken me five months. Maybe longer. New, on layers of new.

as I parse it all out i will be posting more.

Chinese Laundromat

I'm in that part of a transition where everything rubs up against the memory of how I did it "before". It leaves a little static cling in my brain.
I did my first load of china town laundry yesterday. I stood awkwardly in the Laundromat for a few minutes, not quite sure if I should stay and wait or go. Normally I would never sit in the Laundromat waiting for laundry, even in the old place I went to which was fully equipped for a human to live out his or her lifespan in comfort: Multiple TV's, a machine that dispensed gourmet cookies, both juice and soda vending machines, some machine that you stick your finger in and tells you how hot you are, one of those cruel contraptions with the janky claw on the end that you pay a dollar to watch it futilely grab at a stuffed animal, internet access, and, I kid you not, massage chairs. Next time you are in Williamsburg, stop by the Lavanderia on powers and kick back for 20.
I'm standing there, staring at my clothes, looking at a stack of 3 plastic deck chairs in a corner wondering if I should just sit in them. I didn't want the laundry ladies to find me somehow inappropriate. I'm very attached to protocol.
I deposited myself in the stack of chairs and listened to the Chinese radio. Snacking on wasabi peas (that I had bought because I was too uncomfortable to ask the girl the deli to give me matches without buying anything) gave me momentary anxiety because I remembered the rape of Nanking and is it offensive to eat Japanese snack products in a Chinese Laundromat? The depth of my capacity to worry about everything shocked me out of my chair and onto the street to smoke a cigarette from the stress pack I had bought 3 days before. And my laundry tumbled away.