48 Hour Film - Out of Order

http://ww2.48.tv/bin/index.cfm/id/9ebd8a4b-2e5c-44bf-9cf3-b62178301650

4:27 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Exchange of Crotchular Heat

This sounds like it may be about sex - but it's not. Well, not exactly. Maybe a little.

I got a text message from Oddo in NY the other day that read:  "You should write something about that exchange of crotch heat, its funny. I think about it when ever I sit down on the subway."

What he's talking about is something I told him a while back. It goes like this:

Let's say for example you are work, and something goes wrong with your computer and you call up the IT guy to come fix it. Let's say that the IT guy comes and sits in your chair to fix the problem. Let's say the IT guy weighs about 300 pounds, give or take. Doesn't matter - the weight really isn't the issue. It happens with anyone, fat or skinny. BUT - bigger people do give off more heat, more rapidly.  Let's say that said IT guy sits in your chair for a good twenty minutes - fixes your problem - then you sit in the chair to resume working.

Yet - something is a little disturbing. Your chair, when you sit, is not just a little "used" feeling. Not a little warm either. No. It's HOT. It's hot from stranger crotch. Well, in my case the guy isn't a stranger - but his crotch heat and my crotch have never had an exchange before, in any way, whatsoever. Until now. And it's disturbing.

In thermal physics, heat transfer is the passage of thermal energy from a hot to a colder body. Heat transfer always occurs from a hot body to a cold one, a result of the second law of thermodynamics.

This means MY slightly cool crotch  is ABSORBING the heat from his HOT crotch, thus now making MY crotch hot - and thus - severely fucking with my head.

Because welcome or not - the exchange is sexual - and there's no getting around it. It's weird and uncomfortable. You want to pull down your pants and fan yourself. Shake out the panties and remove all unwanted heat. You WANT to do this, but you can't. Because you're in your office and you have work to do. SO - you sit there and let physics run it's course and twinge and shudder at the unwanted thoughts that are creeping into your head because your crotch satisfied and comfy with it's newfound warm and coziness. "NO! Bad Crotch! No! No!" Then you pop out of your chair and go get a drink. Shudder and shake a leg. Yeaulllch!

Oddo says this happens to him on the Subway. When he told me this I imaged what it would be like if the person that was sitting there before me was attractive. This exchange never happened to me on the subway. What if I had been eyeballing some hot guy - then he got up and then I stole his seat - and then…

And then I was secretly, shamefully "comfortable". Yeah, we'll call it comfortable. Because "aroused" isn't the right word. It doesn't affect me to THAT level. It only affects me to the level of putting thoughts into my head - with a touch of added heat. A touch of realism to spice up the fantasy.

I imagine looking at me: Sitting there with a glazed look in my eye and a tarded smile. Crossing my legs back and forth with my private, pervy little secret…

I just screwed up all of you - for the rest of your chair-sharing lives. Enjoy!

7:30 PM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Something about a Sax

Today I grabbed Sedaris and went to Central Park. I found a nice spot on a hill that overlooked the carnival, a weeping willow tree and The Plaza in the distance. To my right was a tunnel where a man played the saxophone non-stop for over an hour. I was grateful for him. A teenager with blue hair and a foreign accent approached me and asked if I knew "where zee big wa-ter-fall was?" He had two cute blonde girls with him and all three looked at me wide-eyed and hopeful. I must have looked like someone who knew what she was doing here. I thought I had heard a water fall-ish sound as I was walking here, so I just pointed them in the direction of it. The blue haired boy confirmed, "Zee BIG one? Beeg?" Sure, whatever, dude. Go that way.

I tossed and turned for a while on my little sheet on the ground. I can never get comfortable when reading on the ground. If I sit indian-style I tend to slouch and read and that hurts my lower back. If I flip over and read on my tummy I think people walking by can see down my shirt. If I lay on my side and read then I look like I'm posing for a sexy photo and that makes me giggle so I try it out for a while. After a few minutes of this I see in the background behind my book a teenager with blue hair walking by and scowling at me the words, "Jhoo fack-ing li-ar!"

I decided that if I was going to get through a chapter I was going to have to suck it up and read while laying tummy-down. I was deep and giggling into one of the stories when I looked up for a second to catch something more interesting. There was a man and his two sons walking past me. The man had both of his legs. His sons did not.

At first I couldn't make sense of it. One of the sons was a teenager and the other was probably about ten. The teenager was wearing beige shorts and tennis shoes. Between the knee and the shoes were two metal rods. Behind him walked the younger one, also with metal lower legs, but his were different. His were black metal, and curved in a backwards half-circle and required no shoes. I'm sure people "in the know" know what to call these things. I do not. I stared. They looked bouncy and fun.

I noticed though, they were walking with a little uncertainty in their own balance - as if this was the first time they had worn these attachments. THIS - for a brief moment is where I got confused and thought, "Are they actually missing the bottoms of their legs - or did they just buy these to walk around the park in? Like, roller-skates or those crazy new twisty skateboard thingies some kids are riding now. Is this the new fun thing to do?"

Of course I backhanded my thoughts immediately. "No. No dumbass. Those aren't funny, toy stilts. THAT would mean they would actually be standing on those attachments and that would be obvious because their bodies would be un-proportioned and very tall. No - you are seeing what you think you are seeing. A man walking down the sidewalk with his two sons - both who have somehow lost their legs." And then I looked at the father and thought, "And just where were YOU when this happened?" And then I decided to mind my own business and get back to my book.

... and the saxophone continued to play.

I kept reading. I looked up once to find a little bird about a foot in front of my face with a three inch worm still alive and squirming around his beak. Not for long. The worm was chomped in half and gobbled down in sections. I got a twinge in my tummy and realized I was hungry too. It could wait though.

A few minutes later another animal was a foot away from my face. This time it was a dog.We made eye contact and I smiled. He was close enough for me to grab his face and kiss him on the nose. I wanted to. I thought about it. Almost did - but then the owner tugged the leash and away he went. Boooo. I loved him. I instantly fall in love with every dog I meet in this city. From the six inch Yorkie in the yarn sweater to the multi-colored mutt with the infected eyeball - I love them all. Whenever I see the dog walkers with fifteen dogs on multiple leashes I get the urge to dive into the pile and do the backstroke.

... and the saxophone still continued to play.

Rain clouds. Better go. Took the F train back to Park Slope. Stopped into Dizzy's to eat and get out of the rain before picking up my laundry. I recommend Dizzy's. Great oatmeal in the morning and awesome tuna mac for lunch. Ask for it "spicy". I knew the place was going to be good the first time I walked by and saw the JUMBO bottles of Cholula on the cook's counter. That's a sure sign that somebody back there knows what they're doing. Afterwards I walked home balancing fourteen pounds of laundry in a bag on my head. Every day I look at my neighborhood, my neighbors and think, "I may be leaving in a week, and I know I'm doing the right thing because there are things that have to happen at home.... things I have to do. I came here prematurely - but I stayed long enough to know that I will be back. I can't stay right now, but I'm pretty damn sure that sometime, somehow... I'll be back."

3:55 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

And Fuck your Slushies Too!
Category: Food and Restaurants

SO – the other day I forgot my lunch. I've been eating very healthy lately, so I had to find something healthy in all the nearby junk food restaurants. I needed something quick, and I figured every place had a salad option – so I drove through Sonic and got a salad. When I got back to my office I pulled all the stuff out of the bag, threw away the dressing (they hide fat in those) and opened the lid to my salad…and became very very angry.

What's wrong with Sonic? What the fuck is their problem? You know…I've always stayed away from Sonic because every extremely fat person I've ever met has had some strange addiction to Sonic. My grandmother was one. It's like – all they talk about. So I've always figured there's some kind of tasty-fat-crack-like substance in their food. I feared that I'd eat there thinking, "I'm only gonna try it once," like in those Meth commercials – then all the toothless Meth addicts laugh and look at each other like, yeah, right – but in my case it would be a bunch of fat people.

SO – I open my salad lid…and sitting right there on top of my salad is a huge, greasy, dripping onion ring.

They just HAD to fucking do it, didn't they?

I stood over my salad at my desk and loudly yelled the words, "MOTHER…..FUCKER."

I would never ever ever go through a drive-thru and order onion rings. Ever.

And not because I don't love them.

Because I do.

I am very very much in love with onion rings.

Sometimes when you love something that's so bad for you SO MUCH – it hurts to deny it – but you have to. You have to act like you don't feel a thing for it. When you see it staring at you in drive-thru menu's – you have to look away and pretend it's not there.

And sometimes the love is so strong – Destiny – (that must have been the food server's name) intervenes and places it in front of you. And then you have to make a choice whether to throw it away – or eat the shit out of it.


I ate the shit out of it.

It was just one.

But Sonic can't be trusted, ever, ever again

The End

4:02 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Soap Gets in your Eye

"Let's take a shot," said Mowbray, slapping his hand on the table then turning towards the bar.

 "No, I can't," I said. "I've already had enough and I have to go to work in the morning."

 "Ahhh" he scolded. "You'll never make it in business with that attitude, Cupps."

Ben Mowbray was teaching me more about comedy than the act itself. This kind of drinking took place every Monday night for most comedians. Open Mic would end around midnight and then everyone would trickle over to another bar and drink heavily until 2am. The excuse, "I have to work in the morning" didn't mean anything to most of them. This was a Monday night, Houston comedy ritual, so drink up, shut up and save the whining for Tuesday morning.

Well, I wasn't good at it yet. I was suffering. It was 8 months into my first professional Graphic Design job out of college when I started doing stand-up comedy regularly. My first time on stage was during college and I enjoyed it for a few months, but had to stop for it was affecting my school work. After graduating and establishing myself at a reputable firm, I started writing jokes again and hitting the open mics and doing small shows around town.

I was also newly single and living on my own for the first time and having a blast. Probably too much of a blast. An irresponsible kind of blast. I had not yet tamed the double life of professional by day, comedian by night. Actually, the comedian by night life was winning. I was writing and performing all the time and my actual graphic design work was suffering. It was hard to focus on a hangover.

"Don't go to work, tomorrow" says Mowbray. "Call in sick."

"I can't." I whined. "I've called in sick too much this year. I feel bad about it."

"Come on." He said. "We'll make tomorrow a fun day. We'll sleep off the hangovers and go find some fun in this stinking town. Think of something you want to do but never have time for. We'll can go to Frankel's and try on Halloween costumes. We can…"

"Ohhhh," I perked up, "You know what I want to do? I want to go to the Orange Show! I've been itching to go there forever and no one will go with me and…"

It didn't take much for me to change my mind. I told Mowbray to make that two jaegers and to help me make up an excuse to get out of work.

I needed a good one. No colds. I had already used the allotted two colds, cramps, "tummy issues" and dentist appointments' anyone should have in one year. This had to be serious, but not too serious.

 After ruling out stolen car, family death, and hysterical blindness we decided on something simple, yet powerful. The next morning I would wake up with Pink Eye.

Why? Because you don't have to disguise your voice for Pink Eye. You don't have to hold your nose so that you sound stopped-up like with a cold. You don't have to have whimper like an old man when you complain of all night "stomach/restroom" issues. With Pink Eye you just have to sound slightly annoyed and say you are going to the doctor. No one wants you in the office when you have Pink Eye because it is highly contagious. The same thing goes for leprosy and if that was a common overnight virus caught in America and cured with an inexpensive clinic visit and a prescription for drops, I would have used that instead.

After my morning phone call I slept until 10am. It was a beautiful October Tuesday. I called Mowbray and asked where we were going first. I made coffee, got dressed and waited for him to come pick me up.

The Orange Show was as strange as I hoped it would be. It's hard to describe. It's like an abandoned carnival attraction. It's free to the public, I think. We just walked right in and looked around. I know I'm being vague in describing it to those who have no idea what I'm talking about and I'm doing this on purpose. I never knew exactly what it was before I went and I don't want anyone else to either. We'll leave it at that. Trust me; it's not the important part of this story.

On the way to Frankel's to try on costumes I received a phone call from work. I didn't answer it. I was at the Doctor, right? I ignored it, but started to feel a little nervous in the stomach. I lowered myself in the seat of Mowbray's car. Surely, no one saw me. The fear of being busted is nauseating and I didn't want to think about it.

At the costume store, Mowbray bought a cheap, plastic cigarette holder. Think Audrey Hepburn. He began using it immediately. I think I bought fake skin make-up.

In the car again it was a little past noon and I think we were headed to a bar when I got another phone call from work. I decided to answer it.

It was Debbie, the receptionist. She told me that Jerry, my boss, needed me to come in today. It was very important. Our company had scheduled a photographer to come out and take pictures of us for a book that was being published about Graphic Designer's in Houston. This was the only day the photographer could be there and I had to be there for the photo.

I had completely forgotten about this.

I knew I couldn't get out of it. The Pink Eye wouldn't matter. Anyone at my company can use Photoshop to retouch a photo. I could be photographed at an angle that hid the eye. They just wanted me to show up and take the photo and then I could leave again.

I was in deep shit.

I was panicking, but calmly told her I was just leaving the Doctor's office and I needed to change clothes and put on make-up and that I'd be there in an hour.

I hung up the phone and turned to Mowbray with a look of fear. He was already on the phone and leaving a message for his friend, Mark Babbit, a well known previous owner of the Laff Stop. I won't say he's a bad man, but let's just say he was probably a good person to call in a situation like this.

"Babbit, this is Ben. I have 45 minutes to give Dianne Cupps Pink Eye. Call me back."

Click.

Babbit never called back. We made a quick stop at CVS where Mowbray ran inside the store looking on the backs of bottles for the words: Don't get near your eyes. I sat in the car thinking about resumes and job interviews. He came out with a small bottle of lotion.

We got to my house and I changed clothes. I didn't have much time and needed to work fast. Before squirting lotion into my eyes I decided to see what I could do with make-up. I dabbed pink blush around the lids of my eyes and it looked really great – except that the powder had shimmers and flakes that glistened in the light. I needed hospital Pink Eye, not Studio 54 Pink Eye. I washed it off.

Next, we stood on my front porch and Mowbray smoked an entire cigarette as I peeled back my top eyelid and made him blow the smoke directly into my eye.

This didn't do anything.

We went back inside and into the restroom to look for something else. I was looking inside my bathroom closet when he walked up close behind me. I turned around and stared right into the nozzle of a bottle of Lysol spray.

"NO!" I screamed, and ducked and hid my eyes. "You'll BLIND me!"

He put the bottle back.

We looked some more.

"Soap" he finally said. "You're going to have to rub soap in your eye."

I felt like crying.

We both stared at the bar of soap sitting on the sink. Mowbray turned on the water faucet and wet the tip of his middle finger.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He rubbed his wet finger over the bar of Dove a few times and said, "I can't let you do this alone."

And with that he looked in the mirror, stretched open his upper eyelid, looked down and smeared his soapy finger across the upper white part of his eyeball.

He dropped to his knees. I could tell he was holding in a scream. His entire palm was pressed to his eye and his face was turning inside itself. After a few deep breaths's he stood up, removed his hand and looked into the mirror. His trembling, wincing eye was dripping with tears. It was swollen…and it was pink.

"Fuck it, here I go." I said.

I had about 10 minutes to get to work. I followed his steps.

Wet the finger.
Run the finger on the soap.
Pull open the eyelid.
Rub the soap in the eye.

Scream.
Cup my hand under the faucet and fill it with water.
Tilt my head sideways and throw water in it.
Try to fit head under faucet to flush eye.

"STOP!" yells Mowbray. "You can't wash it out or it won't turn pink!"

"I can't!" I cried. "It burns too bad! I'm freaking out! I can't do it!"

I relaxed and tried again, but to no avail. I kept washing it out.

It was time to go and I felt defeated. My eye was a little poofy, but still no pink. I got into my car and drove to work thinking of another lie to add on top of this one. I decided on a pretty good one. I would tell them that I thought I had pink eye, but was wrong. I had been irresponsibly sleeping in my contacts and had woken up with a bacterial infection. The Doctor gave me some eye drops and it would clear up quickly. That was believable and that's what I would say.

 But I still made one last effort. In the two minute drive from my house to work I rubbed and poked and pulled on my eye like a crazy person convinced that the government had implanted a spy chip inside it. The closer I got to the office the harder I rubbed. I even allowed myself to scratch it a little with my finger nail. By the time I parked my car my eye felt swollen and sore.

I walked into the office and made sure to squint just slightly at everyone. I didn't overdo it. Just a pathetic little wink. One person told me my eye looked puffy and I told them my rehearsed lie about the bacterial infection. The photographer was set up and waiting for me. I turned my eye slightly away from the camera and we took the pictures.

I felt so busted. I knew in my heart that everyone knew I had lied. Maybe they didn't, but from that day forward I felt like the girl in the office that lied to get out of work and everyone knew it. What a loser.

I think it ruined me at that office. Seriously. I was already letting bad personal habits affect my work. For months they didn't trust me to take on any large projects of my own and I didn't blame them. I wasn't mentally focused at all. Then, on top of it all, I felt like the office liar. It eventually got better, I cleaned up my act and stopped partying late at night, but I ended up quitting a year later for a good reason.

It makes sense that something like that would happen to me. I think it "sums" me up. It makes sense that there's a hardbound book floating around Houston showcasing the top design firms in Houston and I'm in it.  Proud. Smiling and trying to look professional, but actually a little hungover with a bungeye filled with cigarette smoke, soap and lies.

This will be a testament to the duality of my character, set in ink, forever.

I miss you Ben Mowbray. Thank you for a great story

Currently reading : I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence By Amy Sedaris Release date: 16 October, 2006

4:05 PM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

I slapped a Mongolian

I woke up this morning angry at my boyfriend, Corban, for an argument that occurred in my dream. I know he's innocent, but I like to tell him how he wronged me and just how painful it was, (enough to wake me up in anger) as a warning for him to not dare do this to me in real life. Ever.

I'm privately annoyed that he doesn't apologize for his imaginary actions. Sane Dianne knows how ridiculous that sounds. He didn't do anything wrong. Crazy girlfriend Dianne wants the reassurance that he's not the asshole I make him out to be in my sleep.

Anyway, as I tell him the disconnected mess that was my dream, I realize the interesting part is not that he got a lap dance from a stripper after a fight we'd had because I called his best friend a homo. No. The amusing part is the loosely related side story where I assault a six foot tall, athletic Mongolian woman.

No, the Mongolian woman was not the stripper. Here's what happened:

I'm hanging out with Corban and all of his guy friends in an elevator as we are leaving some sort of high school reunion. Everyone is poking fun at his friend Joe about being gay. This is something that happens all the time in real life. Joe is clearly not gay. He's getting married in December. But the poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing nothing but a Speedo and flexing his giant 1980s muscles that hangs on Joe's refrigerator is just one of the daily fuelling for rapid-gay-fire shot it him daily by his peers. Joe usually takes the blows gracefully (pun maybe intended) and adds a funny statement that makes us all laugh. It's never serious, really.

Well, in my dream things are all the sudden different. I throw my two cent jab on the Joe-gay talk and the elevator goes cold. I've somehow gone too far and offended him. It was basically along the brotherly lines of, "We can make fun of him, but you can't" Corban gets angry with me and there is some sort of blurry fight.

The dream switches to me in front of the town-home where Corban and I live. He is still out with his friends and I am standing outside with one of mine, when a taxi pulls up and drops off a large Asian family. They are pulling out luggage and walking up to the door where I'm standing. They say that they have rented this town home for the week.

In real life, Corban's parents own the home we live in. In this dream, we rent the house from a landlord who lives very far away and whom we never speak to. When this family tells me this – I start to remember Corban ignoring cell phone calls from the landlord a while back and realize this is what he was trying to tell us.

I do not let the family inside. I make them stand in front of the door with their luggage as I call Corban to tell him what's going on.

This is the part of the dream that made me angry. When he answers the phone he's talking very low. I ask where he is and he explains that he's a titty-bar getting a lap dance.

Of course I'm furious.

I say, "We get into a little fight and you run to go get a lap dance?"

He says yes.

I ask, "Why are you doing this?"

He says, "Because it turns me on."

I hear him laugh; I hear a girl giggle and then I hear a dial tone.

BACK to the story. So now I'm standing there with this Mongolian family. I'm red-faced and fuming and they're annoyed with me because they want to go inside. There is an older daughter, about eighteen years old that speaks English. She's stands over six feet tall and around 200 pounds of muscle. I do not remember the details of our argument, but she says something that angers me, and for some reason I feel brave enough to slap the shit out of her.

I'm five foot tall. Barely. In real life I'd probably have to jump to reach the face of a girl this tall, but in my dream I throw a sharp, direct hit. It's a good slap, too. Lot's of palm/fat broad cheek connection. Loud pop. Hurts my hand.

I stand there growling and satisfied. I think I've made my point clear that she needs to shut the fuck up. I don't know why I thought she'd peacefully submit.

I don't know if I can accurately describe how disturbingly monstrously angry she gets with me or how badly I feared for my life. The face she makes after I slap her and the visible anger vibrating through her body causes a rumbling in the ground under my feet. It was a slow motion transformation from a girl into a beast. A beast that was surely, without a doubt, about hurt me, severely.

As she dropped her backpack and came towards me I let out a high-pitched, pitiful, whining cry. The only protection I had was a chair that I grabbed and pointed the legs at her, like a lion tamer, with trembling, heart-attack fear. She was showing NO mercy to the height/weight difference between us and all knew is that I could not let her get in arms length of me or I would die a painful, bone-breaking, nose-cracking, neck-snapping death.

This fear sat me straight up in bed and back into real life.

It was 6:30am. It was peaceful and quiet and I had the cozy warmth of my dog curled up next to me and snoring. I was alive and everything was okay.

It took about a minute to relax and come to my senses, and when I did – the first thought that came to my mind was not,

"Don't take out your boyfriend anger on large Mongolian teenage girls"

It was,

"Corban, you dick."

3:56 PM - 2 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Preserve my Chemicals!

It's true that too much of a good thing can only be bad.

Case in Point:
I had an irresistible urge to blow $85 at Whole Foods tonight.
It was a mistake.

I know WF is natural and good for you and that's great and all but something about that place infects my brain. Something very unnatural happens to me in the presence of patchouli, River Oaks money and young white cashiers with dread locks. I make bad decisions.

I almost spent $17.99/lb. on trail mix.

I caught myself almost buying a book on the benefits of drinking water.  A book… about water.

I stood in front of the organic hand soaps for 10 minutes debating whether or not I needed $7 bottle of herbal hand and face soap.

I thought a cereal made of brown rice sounded delicious.

I put the $40 purple yoga matt in and out of my double-tiered grocery cart about 7 times. I left it there.

They have teas you can drink and oils you can smell that can change your mood to Chill and Relaxed, or Energetic and Invigorated and I had my gullible little paws on every box. Reading and thinking. Luckily, I left them there.

What came home with me is as follows:
Organic non-fat Milk, Berries, Coconut (whole - without shell), Pico de Gallo, 1 lb. Chicken Enchiladas, Chipotle Peach Cilantro Salsa, Organic White Corn Chips, Veggie Chips, Gazpacho soup, Eucalyptus oil, Organic dog food, Rogue Chocolate Stout Beer, Dog Fish Head beer, a bottle of Chianti and one can of all natural, organic Lemon/Lime soda.

It must have been the peach chipotle thingy that upset my stomach. And it must have been the all natural dog food that made my dog puke on the floor and diarrhea on the balcony ….And it MUST have been the secret seepings of hippy juice in this Lime soda that seeped into my brain when I came home and watched an episode of Big Love and thought to myself… "I could do that. I could share a man with two other women. I could experience love on that level. It might be nice. There would be a period of adjustment at first of course, but I'd just have to forget everything I thought I knew about love and relationships and try to OH -MY-GOD… what the hell is wrong with me????!!"

I spit the dry, spongy coconut out of my mouth, tossed my fancy soda in the trash and marched myself upstairs to shave my legs and reflect on the pro's of monogamy.

I blame foods with no preservatives or chemicals. I've inhaled and absorbed too much health tonight. If I am to heal my thoughts I need to barbeque a steak directly on top of a pile of lighter-fuel-soaked coals immediately.

7:58 PM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

It all starts with an apple.

_{So – my car gets broken into about every other night. I say "broken into" – but it's more like I leave the doors unlocked and allow them to go through my shit. It's better this way. It saves me money. You'll understand shortly. You see, in my neighborhood it's an unwritten rule that if you leave your car parked out on the street, the covenant house street kids and/or the bums are going to break in. Their favorite approach is to bust out a window, thus I purposely leave my doors unlocked. This benefits both of us. I don't have to pay for a new window; they don't risk cutting themselves and getting skeeze blood inside my car. I guess it benefits me a little more. I don't leave anything in my car of any value. They aren't looking to steal the car – that's become obvious. Every other morning I find my glove compartment open and my maps and paper work scattered around my front seat. They help themselves to the change in my cup holder – well, only the silver stuff. They leave the pennies. I don't blame them. I'm not sure what they're hoping to find. A little money, wallet, maybe a gun, I don't know. But I'm always sure to disappoint and I feel bad about this. You see, I'd like to help them. I have 3 huge trash bags full of NICE clothes in the trunk of my car and every time I see one of those kids sitting on the side of Valero, dirty, sketching and smelling like vomit – I want to offer them some new clothes. At least a clean shirt. But I don't. Why? I'm chicken shit and I don't much trust a junkie. I also don't want to insult or piss them off. I get a flash phobic fear of one of them jumping up and throwing me against the wall, rubbing and dry humping me and yelling, "You don't like my clothes? You think I stink? Take that bitch! All over ya. Uh uh uh uh uh"}

_{Or I just get the feeling they wouldn't be as appreciative as I'd hope. You see, I find real joy in slipping on a fresh shirt smelling of Downy and it really brightens my day. But I don't think my idea of an uplifting moment has any comparison to the feeling of a fresh crack toke or heroin poke. They want money and I'm not giving them my goddamn money.}  

_{But I still want to help.}

_{SO, I've decided to start leaving "treats" for them in my glove compartment. My fantasy is that it's the same bum that continually rummages though my car. I want to help him. Maybe tomorrow night, he'll find a shiny apple in my glove compartment. Next night -  a banana. Add some vitamins (they like pills) and maybe a protein bar. He'll learn after a while that these gifts are for him. After a while he'll become healthier. Then I'll start leaving him clothes. Start off with a clean pair of socks. Undies. Work my way up to some collared shirts and so on. Toothbrush. Bar of soap. And when I think he's ready – I'll leave a few blank job applications. He'll fill out a few, brush his teeth, put on a clean shirt maybe drop them off at McDonalds or Burger King. Get's a job. Work hard. Eventually become Assistant Manager. Move out of the lot behind Mary's. Find an efficiency apartment and a girlfriend…}

_{And one day I find a note in my car that reads: Thank You.}      

_{And I'll feel good.}

_Hey…

_{shut up.}

_{I know how unrealistic this all is. But I like to dream. When I get inside my car in the morning and notice the missing apple – I'm going to smile and ignore the strange smell and put my fantasy into motion. In reality, know they're making crack bongs out of my apple and maybe using the bathroom in my seat. I know this. But I don't like reality. I like to live inside my head and make up stories. It gives me something to think about while stuck in traffic.}

11:31 AM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Sweet 'n' Sour

It used to drive me insane that my best friend Anita would mispronounce things.

When we were little girls, Anita didn't say her V's. She replaced them with B's. Thus, the Devil was the Debbil, and so on. And looking back at photos of her adorable smile and pigtails – I'm positive this only added to her cuteness. But in certain situations (when imitating my father) I was a stern and rule abiding child (sometimes scowling in my photos) and easily irritated by anything that broke the rules. I was the MVP my first year of tee-ball. I took sports seriously and played with a furrowed brow of concentration. I was the annoying brat that yelled at the four year old girl in the outfield picking flowers and tossing them into the air to "PAY ATTENTION!!" and turned back into my "ready position" to make the outstanding play of the game. I was a serious and studious child and it angered me when anyone, especially my best friend, did or said something the wrong way.

Anita would sing the tag line to a popular commercial, "Beautiful skin begins… with Noxinta"

"It's Noxema! Don't you listen to anything???"

As we grew older into Middle School – it changed to getting the lyrics of our favorite songs wrong. It's "LOOKING from a window above"…not "SITTING by the window above!!"

I scolded her and deemed her an unfit fan of the group and song. To me – the mispronunciations and lyric scrambling meant that she just wasn't paying attention – and that made me irritated. THE MEANING is in the details, didn't she GET IT???

Although it made me insane, in the back of my head I knew that she had an advantage over me. She sang her songs and pronounced her words with a smile on her face and happiness in her heart – not giving a shit about the correctness of the unimportant details whereas my grumpy ass beat her over the head with my notebook where I had clearly written down the correct lyrics and worshipped them as the path to holy truth and survival. My do-it-by-the-book message was "get it right" and hers was "get over it and get the hell out of my happy place you crappy little Nazi."

That's what angered me then.

Now what angers me is that everyone else "got it" but me. I didn't finally "get it" until my mid-twenties. And let me tell you…when I let go of things (like rules and boundaries and such… I let GO!) Rules still haunt me though. I use them as arm floaties to protect me from things that scare me. "But the sign clearly says… NO whatever the fun thing is that everyone wants to do but I'm afraid of…."

I don't make any sense. Some days I'm a Dare Debbil and will jump out of a plane or make a fool out of myself in public. Other days I'm too afraid to jump the curb on my bike for fear that I'll fall and break my neck and then have my head run over by a passing car. The older I get the more frequently I panic over nothing.

This whole panicking business is both carried up from childhood and inherited from my mother. I have the power to panic over absolutely nothing.

When I was little – I would get stressed out or cry if I didn't understand or get things perfect and right the FIRST TIME. If I had never done something before and didn't know the proper or common way to do it… I freaked out.

One time my dad asked me to go inside a convenient store and buy a pack of smokes for him.

I immediately got nervous and sweaty and started asking frantic questions in the front seat of his truck hoping he would recognize my fear and go do it himself.

"But I don't know HOW to buy them. I've never done it before"

"What KIND of cigarettes???"

"How do you spell that?"

"How much money are they??"

"Are you going to give me the exact right amount of money??"

"Well how much change should I expect to get back???"

My heart would be racing and my eyes watering.

Forced inside I would stare at the cashier in fear and not blink. I would say the words I was told to say in the exact order in which they were told to me.

"A pack of merit menthols – soft pack"…and then I'd hold the five dollar bill in the cashiers face so that he would know, right away and without a doubt - that I did not have exact change.

Math scared me and I feared that he wouldn't give me back the right amount of money and I wouldn't know it and I would get in trouble when I got back to the car. I hated math and any form of counting. It's not that I couldn't do it. I could. I just couldn't do it or learn it with lightening speed the way I did with everything else – and that scared me. It put up a block and a wall and made me lock up when forced to deal with it. Math made me panic my entire life. I cried every day in my 3^{rd grade math class when everyone seemed to understand fractions except me. I would cry and make up an excuse to go see the nurse every day at 11:00a.m..}

I still get like this. I still do stupid things and get nervous about little shit.

Like just now… I went through the McDonalds drive-thu. They had it set up where you paid at one window and got your food at the next. I gave my debit card to the guy at the first window. He was having a conversation with a fellow employee. After he swiped my card he handed it back to me and said something which I didn't hear. I thought he was still talking to his friend. A few seconds later I realized he was talking to me and although it wasn't clear – I think he said, "next window". It was either that or "nemindo" or "nekindo". Anyway – I figured he meant for me to drive forward and keep the line moving so I did. As I was stuck in-between the 2 windows I realized that he didn't give me a receipt. Then the fear set in. Oh no – he didn't say "next window" – he was still talking to his friend and I was supposed to stay there and wait to get my receipt. Now I drove up and it's too late. Why didn't I just ask him to repeat himself? Anyone else would have but noooo, not me. I have too much of a fear of looking dumb so I pretend to know what's going on and now any moment he's gonna yell out the window at my car saying, "Ma'am – your receipt!" And I won't know what to do other that try to open my door and walk back to the window – embarrassed – and then the car in front of me is going to drive away and everyone will be looking at me thinking, "What the hell is that stupid girl DOING?."

I was sweating.

When I got to the second window the woman handed me my lemonade and my receipt.

Oh. Okay.

When she handed me my bag I looked inside to see if she threw any dipping sauces in there. I ordered McNuggets and while panicking in my car a second ago – I slipped in the a quick thought that I wanted one of each of the dipping sauces. I was in the mood to taste a little bit of everything. There was none in the bag so I asked her if I could have some dipping sauce. She looked confused.

"Wha?"

Her English was not very good.

"DIPPING Sauce… for my nuggets," I said.

I made the appropriate hand gestures – holding the invisible sauce in one hand and dipping nothing into it with the other. She stared at me blankly.

"Dipping sauce!" I repeated.

She reached down and picked up some sweet 'n' sour sauce and held it up.

"YES! That!"

She nodded – understanding but still looking confused.

"ONE OF EACH!" I yelled.

She grabbed two more sweet 'n' sours and handed them to me.
….Sigh… fuck it. That'll do.

I drove away thinking… that whole ordeal would have gone smoothly had it been anyone else but me. What the hell is my problem? I was reaching for french fries in my bag and became extremely irritated because after a good 30 seconds of fumbling I still hadn't successfully grabbed any. "Goddammit-shit, what the fuckinghell?" I finally caught hold two of them between my index and middle fingers. I didn't have the best grip and had to ease the fries to my mouth, palm facing outward and hands shaking.

I missed my mouth.

Well, one fry fell into my lap before I got it to my mouth and the other one… well I don't know what happened. I just missed. My hands were shaking. I was pissed. I blamed the coffee and tried again. I was really very hungry.

I had eaten most of the fries by the time I got back to my office. I sat at my desk and calmly pulled out the 3 sweet and sour sauces. I had envisioned opening 4 different kinds of sauces and arranging them neatly in a buffet row for nugget dipping. But, oh well – I had only one flavor and that would have to do.

Oh, but guess what?

My nugget box didn't have nuggets in it.

Know why?

Because it wasn't a nugget box – it was a fish sandwich box. Yeah. Had a fish sandwich in it. They messed up my order. I didn't know they still MADE fish sandwiches.

Yeahhh, okay lady – I get it now. Who dips a fish sandwich into 3 packets of sweet 'n' sour sauce?

Gross

yeah,

me.

I do.

I'm done talking about all this.

3:53 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

smell stains, love and bar funk

I haven't been able to write in a while seeing that my new job has blocked myspace -soooo here are some thoughts that have been accumulating in my head over the past few weeks.

Body Denial
I'm constantly sucking in my stomach. It's something I trained myself to do at a young age. I don't think it's very healthy. I was stuck in traffic on the way home from work the other day and I was beginning to feel sick. I couldn't pin point what was wrong. After checking my pulse and feeling my forehead for fever I realized the discomfort was coming from my stomach. Did I have gas? (push) No. What was the problem?

Then I realized that I had been sucking in my gut. For how many hours? Who knows?

So I decided that was my problem and I tried to release it and it really took some effort. Deprogramming is hard. I don't know why I was doing it. I was in my car. No one could see me. And more importantly - I'm really not very fat in the tummy area. I don't know why I still try to suck it in. Now my ass on the other hand…if I could figure out how to suck that in…

The only ass help you get is wearing high-heeled shoes. When you have legs that are 2 feet long and the ass of a bonafide Brooklyn Puerto Rican… high heeled shoes gives you the leg lengthening, butt perk you need to not look like a moving stump. Flip-flops are not my friend.

Every time I look at myself in the mirror in the morning before I leave for work I put on my heels and suck in my stomach. I convince myself that this is how I look all the time. Then I see a photo that someone took of me - casually talking to a friend while sitting on a bar stool - drunk and relaxed - with a small belly roll over my the top of my jeans and my thighs spilling over the top of the tiny bar stool - very mushroom-esque… and I AM SHOCKED! Like - oh no…that can't be right. So I rush to the restroom mirror to review this mistake (while sucking in my gut and standing on my tip toes) and realize - yes - bad photo - bad angle - and return to the table and finish off my chicken fried steak and beer.

Denial. I like it.

Relationships
I think relationships are weird, yet I always find myself comfortably trapped in them. (Corban - I love you). Sometimes I find myself shaking the cage - but if someone were to open the door I would growl and kick it shut. I bitch and moan sometimes and someone will say - well, why don't you just break up? And I'm like what? Why? I'm in love and I'm happy - haven't you been listening?

It doesn't make sense.

But I'm a mess when I'm single. Sure it's FUN. But not so good for my health. So I always come back to relationships. What it boils down to is that when I am single - I'm like a wild animal in need of training and boundaries.

Remember when your dog would run away? And then a few days later he would come back. Or limp back. He was okay. Maybe hungry. Tired. Covered in mud. May have gotten hurt. But you could tell - that overall - he had a really good time. …

That's me when I'm single. Staying out late - even on work nights - drinking, smoking, going to work (late) hung over, smelling like bar funk and promiscuous sex - ya know…FUN!

But I know - just like that dog knows - that it was not good for my health and for my own safety - I neeeeeded some boundaries. I crawl back into my cage and shut the door. Happily.

Smelling like bar funk…

I'm surprised I never got fired for that. Once - I actually thought I could get away with wearing the same slacks I had worn to Rudyards the night before to WORK the next morning. I thought I was in the clear - because when you're in the vortex of your own stink - you don't know the havoc you reek upon other noses.

That morning I collapsed into my office chair and stared at my computer screen for about an hour. Then I got up to go puke in the restroom. Upon returning to my office I stopped…and sniffed… and was like - WHAT FUCKING STINKS IN HERE???

Yeah. Me. My own stench had made small stains all over my office. Absorbed into the walls and chairs.

That was over a year ago. I'm happy to say that I now get 8 hours of sleep - at least - and arrive to my job smelling fresh and clean - wide-eyed and satisfied. My clothes are unwrinkled and smelling of downy. There are groceries in the cupboard and a bank account that isn't drained from spending every single night at the bar with my friends. And thank GOD Carissa got a boyfriend the same time I did. Jesus - was she a FANTASTIC partner in vodka crimes. I have a normal, fantastic sex life - not one of tequila and confusion. I'm in love and I'm happy.

I've also downed a bottle of wine while typing this so I'm ready to post it and go rape my boyfriend.

Toodles.

3:19 AM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment