Friday, September 10, 2010

Jaime Goes To The Hospital: Part One

"What are you so worried about, Scully? It's just a nice little trip to the forest."
- Mulder, The X-Files


For those of you who don't know (any of of the 9 of you reading this blog), I was hospitalized for two weeks - with an ailment the doctors still don't quite understand because... it only half exists? Or doesn't really exist at all? I don't know, they don't know -it's all very reassuring. What I DO know is after almost a month and a half of tests and MRIs and bloodwork up the proverbial wazoo, I'm still being pieced together, much like an episode of House. Or maybe Humpty Dumpty - just without the shell and the wall and the king's horses. At one point, I even accompanied my neurologist to his monthly conference to help present my case, for which my biggest contribution was springing out of my seat and insisting, to a room filled with neurologists, "I promise you I don't have Herpes."

So. Basically, that's the end of the Great Story Of The Crazy Illness. That said, there's a beginning to it as well - and I've been told by my doctors that I should keep a record of everything that happened - from start to finish - you know, "just in case" (always a phrase you wanna hear from people paid thousands of dollars to keep you from dying.) So in an effort to follow medical advice, I'm gonna begin with the beginning and take you guys on a ride from there - a great blog ride. A great big illness blogocoaster, if you will. Kosher?

Okay then.
To start at the beginning would be to start with all the blame placed squarely on Coney Island. Why? Because objects and places are inanimate and thus easy targets who can't argue that the only person to blame is yourself (shut up world! I blame Coney Island!)


But to go back even further, and to spread the blame around in as convoluted a way as possible, especially seeing as I can't blame anyone but myself (see above) or God (already sick of my blaming shit on him) we can also blame this on my love/hate relationship with amusement parks in general. For instance, on the one hand, my love for them is a bit unnatural - as in, I went to college in Orlando mainly for Disney World, where I played Mickey Mouse for two years - both for the joyful absurdity AND the free passes. But on the other hand, I hate them, too - the ticket cost, the commute, the lines, the aimless wandering, the constant odor of stale candy and moldy children, and the inevitable sunburn/stomach ache/brain ache that follows... And here in New York, the freaking commute is the worst part - as in, the subway ride to Coney Island will be long enough to age you at least ten years by the end of it. So ever since moving here, I have always, proudly, been all, 'thanks but no thanks, Coney Island!'

And yet...

(Undoubtedly, "and yet..." will be the quote carved on my headstone - with a skull and crossbones directly beneath it, and another quote: "Forever made of awesome" and then maybe a famous Dana Scully quote, too - although according to my mother, the headstone has to fend for itself as we tattooed Jewish freaks are chosen in life, but not in death: we're banned from all Jewish cemetaries. Which means if I DO eventually die of Meningitis + Mystery illness, it'll just be me and the Gentiles for all eternity. Can you say Interfaith Post-Death Par-tay?? BYOB, undead friends!)

Where was I?

Anyway.

And yet there was my sister, quietly counting down her last few months in the city, still living in the crawl-space behind my sofa, still eager to do NYC shit she'd never done... And of course there was also the boardwalk I'd never seen, the endless Coney Island funnel cakes I'd never tasted, and the Whack a Moles and the brand new Luna Park I'd had yet to try...

SO MUCH STUFF, GUYS!!!

(DAMN IT.)

So finally, the week before July 4th, during one of the worst heat-waves since the great brownout of 03 - when electrical wires under the streets in Queens actually melted - the two of us made it out to the boardwalk - just two Coney Island virgins getting our cherries popped.

(Except you know how some of us lose our virginity and afterwards shamefully gather our clothes and regret losing it to THAT guy?)

(Yeah.)

The first half hour we spent outside the train on the Boardwalk, excitedly snapping photos of the giant hotdog countdown clock like those tourists who take 100 pictures of the Airtrain subway platform like it's the Statue of Liberty.

Then we rode the tallest, oldest Ferris Wheel in the US and joked that I would be the first accident in 100 years. (Oh, irony. I fucking hate your bullshit.)

Afterward, we wandered out to the crowded beach, where we set up camp not far from a couple of drunk chicks slurring over their giant, $14 Cyclone collectors margaritas: "I'msooooooooover himstooooopidbooooyzzz," which of course prompted a few mock drunken slurs of our own: "Imsoooohotwhydoesn'thewanttooohiiiittthiiiiisss...." until, bored, we got up and walked along the shore, where a lovely - if not utterly stoned - older couple took our photos against the backdrop of the beach and ocean. "You guys should check out The Grateful Dead concert," they suggested. "The ampitheater's right behind you."

"Ooh, Grateful Dead," said my sister. "I love them."

"Sure," I said, "Old people in tie dye is always fun."

"You're old, too, Jaime."

"Shut the hell up, Lindsay."

So the two of us stumbled willingly into a tailgating flea market melee - vegan food, tie-dyed dresses, homemade jewelry, giant homemade glass bongs, old stoners and alcohol galore; Party in the USA, man! Here my sister bought herself a sterling silver ring and I bought myself a burritto. Not too bad for a stoner flea market par-tay in the middle of summer.

On our way out, I was given a free, mostly untouched beer - by a girl who I swear was an extra from Dazed and Confused. A few sips later and the sky had opened up; our meteorological alarm clock - time to head back to the city.

Honestly, it was just a totally fun, lazy time, y'all; Nothing special or unexpected happened; the afternoon passed as pleasantly as most summer days pass - slowly and outside of time, like a drive down the Florida Turnpike on a cloudless, sunny morning - until you realize you've been lulled into a daydream, and actually you've just zoned out for sixteen miles and missed your fucking exit - and also, you've lost an entire half hour of your life now; how the fuck did that shit happen? How do you turn this car around? Holy shi -

CRASH!

So the day after Coney Island, I woke up with a sunburn - not unusual for post-beach; admittedly, I knew should not have used my sister's tanning oil - every time I spray that crap on myself I swear to God I end up grilled like hamburger; FYI: for us translucent people, tanning oil is the kiss of death - like that coating you put on charcoal. Fire up the grill, boys! And this is exactly what I attributed the pain to - a weirdass sunburn.

"It's just all over," I told my sister, and proceeded to pace the length of the living room with arms and legs akimbo like a walking gingerbread man. "My feet are pretty fucked up. Is it possible to cook your feet inside your own shoes? And my hands, too. Like I've scraped them across a dozen feet of concrete. Like I fell off my horse something. Is that normal? I don't think that's normal."

"What now? You fell off your horse?" My sister looked up from her computer, pulled out her headphones. "You don't look burned."

I gave my still-pasty skin a cursory glance. "You're right. I don't."

"Maybe you have an invisible sunburn."

"Yeah? Maybe." I examined myself again. "Hold up. Do those actually exist?"

She put her headphones back on, answering, "No."

Fantastic.




Post-Coney-Island, Week Two:

A new sensation blossomed in my legs; a weird ache - as if I'd been on an elliptical machine for a day - and then carried it through miles of desert. For ten straight years. Much like my Jewish ancestors in Egypt with the matzoh. (Which is where the matzoh comes from, yes? No? See - THIS is why I shouldn't be buried in a Jewish cemetary. Not because I have a tattoo, but because I am Jewish-illiterate.)

So July 4th came and went (happy Independence Day!) and I managed to find my way to Brooklyn for a rooftop party - beneath the blazing hot sun, in a second round of heat wave, of course. There I spent most of the afternoon huddled in the shadows created by the four foot ledge, legs crossed awkwardly, drinking, merry-making, and explaining to my friends about my extended sunburn affliction - also apologizing for flashes of my underwear in my teeny skirt.

"It's killing me. It's fucking killing me."

"How long now?" asked my friend Corey.

"I don't know, a week?"

"You've been sunburned for a week?"

"Yeah. I know. That's a thing, right? That's normal?"

"Sure."

"Really?"

He shook his head and threw back a beer. "No."


Fantastic squared.

At this point in Sunburn Land there was really only one thought circling round my head: Clearly I'm going crazy. As in, there is a physical process involved with a Trip To Crazytown and this is the tollbooth to get on that highway.

"Everything hurts now," I told Lindsay - on that lovely July 4th evening - as a pleasant breeze coming in through the opened window hit my skin like a wall of angry glass shards, and I winced. "It's like I have the sunburn of death. It's like I set myself on fire. Except I'm not red at all. Am I going crazy?"

What I needed was validation, just anything from anyone to reassure myself that my brain had not somehow melted into my eyeballs.

"Yes," she said. "You are."

"Helpful. Thanks a lot."




Post-Coney-Island, week three.

By now the Sunburn of All Things Weird had turned into The Sunburn of Death. So I finally did what anyone would do about two and a half weeks prior to when I actually did it (shut up, world! It's not my fault! Coney Island, I SHAKE MY ANGRY FIST AT YOU!); I finally went to the doctor.

At least I'll have some answers, at least I'll find out I'm not crazy, I thought, as I sat in the waiting room - valiantly trying not to touch my own skin - for fear of screaming out in white-hot pain like a prisoner being beaten in a shower stall with a wrench.

"The good news is there's nothing wrong with you," said the doctor.

I cocked my head to one side and perched on the edge of the exam table; my organs were cooking themselves inside my skin like marinated Shishkebob, like the cartoon chicken from the Cluckin Chicken sketch on SNL, roasting itself. There were tears in my eyes and I suddenly had a precious, fantastic vision of bashing my doctor's head into the blood pressure reader.

"How can there be nothing wrong?" I snapped. "I feel like burnt hair. I feel like when my best friend pushed me into a cactus in the 9th grade. Something's got to be wrong!"

"Well," said the doctor absently, as he typed information onto my online chart, "Muscle ailments are rare but not uncommon. Have you been exercising excessively?"

"No."

"Lifting anything heavy?"

"Seriously? With my entire body including the bottoms of my feet?"
"Well, it could be something like Lupus."

"Lupus!" My eyes went wide. "What the hell is Lupus?"

"A degenerative disease of the skin. Forget I said it."

"What?" Now my brain hurt, too. "Why the hell would you say it if you wanted me to immediately forget that you said it?"

"You wanted ideas."

I blinked in disbelief.

He cheerfully handed me a printed presciption and said, "Naproxen. Once every four hours. It's just like Aleve."

My teeth were grinding. "If it's just like Aleve why do I need a prescription? Can't I just buy some goddamn Aleve?"

"Sure you could," he said, as if talking to a small, stupid child, "But you wanted prescriptions."

Fantastic cubed.


Later that night, as I lay on the couch with my feet perched at a level above my head, painfully munching on a Naproxen cocktail and desperately telling myself that I was fine, perfectly fine, that I just needed some Aloe, that I should listen to the advice of the idiot doctor, I somehow lost the functioning of most everything below the waist. And I realized I needed not just one idiot doctor but a whole slew of idiot doctors, namely an idiot hospital - right as my lower half just shut down altogether, which in English language form I imagine would roughly translate to: "Fuck you, Jaime - fuck you and all your asshole vital organs. Fuck you in your stupid faces and/or nucleotides. Why the hell didn't you go to the ER two weeks ago?"

(CONEY ISLAND'S FAULT!)

Moving on.

The ER was a flurry of doctors and nurses and wide-eyed, frightened, wandering triage patients. As I had come in via ambulance and in howling, obnoxious pain, I had been given top priority, although not everyone moved through the system as fast. Occasionally, waiting patients would be given a bed or a room, although mostly they just wandered around like battered soldiers, stopping only to pester doctors and/or cough hysterically into the faces of other patients, until a nurse would finally come up and beg them: "Please sit, sir. Please cough into your hands, sir. Please, I'm begging you, stay away from the computers, sir." It was unsanitary, but in an ironic way; the Alanis Morrisette of Hospitals.

The beds were parked side by side, like the Citifield parking lot, and seperated by curtain. They faced flatscreen TVs bolted into the ceiling, and mostly, the flatscreens played snow - unless they played silent, snow-covered sports and news. Here is where I channeled all my nervous energy - into a fuzzy screen playing MLB scores over and over - and where I spent most of my Saturday afternoon's focus when I wasn't being rolled into one test or another; chained to the bed by IV, hooked up to a Foley, doped up on something magical called 'Dilaudin,' and desperately trying to read Keith Hernandez' lips through TV snow to see if the Mets had won.

"So when do I get to leave?" I asked the nurse.

"You have a lowgrade fever and an elevated white blood cell count,"she said. "We're not sure what's going on. We have to keep you here awhile. Run some tests."

"Well, it better not be AIDS," I joked. (Trying as I often do to allieviate seriousness with ill-timed and completely awful quips.)

"I'm sorry?"

"AIDS," I repeated.

"Do you want us to run an AIDS test, ma'am?"

"No. I was mostly kidding. I don't think I've slept with enough assholes yet to really get AIDS. But if you think it's AIDS, run the test. Just add it to my queue. Like a line at a theme park? Get it? Say, that'd be fun news to deliver to the last asshole I slept with, right? Hey, douchebag, guess what - I have AIDS! Except I don't. But we covered that already. Have you slept with many assholes? You know how it is with them. Shit, do you really think I could have AIDS?"

"What?"

"AIDS," I repeated louder, realizing I had only managed to sucessfully scare the shit out of myself.

"Ma'am, I just need to change your IV."

"But now I can't get AIDS out of my head. What if I have that? Why do I joke about these goddamn things?" She pushed the new IV into my arm and I sighed. "Jesus Christ, Diludad is amazing."

"It's Dilaudin, Ma'am."

"Whatever." I picked at my new IV. "It better not be AIDS."

About a thousand tests later and my sister finally returned to the hospital to check on me. She stood over me for the final test, a spinal tap, and afterwards, gave me her own diagnosis via text message: "Coney Island Fever Virus."

My (new) doctor's only slightly more informed diagnosis: "Meningitis." Except she had a look - kind of like the befuddled expression my dog gets when we sit together on the couch and I rant about Fox News. "It's Meningitis for sure, just... we don't understand the burning, and we can't tell where you got it from. And you've got something else, too. Or you must. Your symptoms are too weird otherwise. And if not, then we don't know what it is." And then: "Don't worry, you're not dying." Then a tiny laugh - as if terrifying me with vagueness was the joke. Ha ha? Suddenly I wished for Shannon, my improv teacher, to leap up and yell, "No! Where's the justification? Do it again, but this time don't be an asshole with your scene partner."

"Meningitis?" I said, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Don't worry, ma'am, it's viral, not bacterial."

"Meningitis?" I repeated. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"No, Ma'am."

"Meningitis?! What the shit? Motherfucker. Shit. Shit shit. I need to call work. I won't be in on Monday. What else? Is it possible to get some dinner soon? I'm fucking starving." Then, hocked up on drugs, I promptly passed out. This was two am on July 10th. I would not see the outside world again until the 22nd.


The next day, my sister sat beside me in my isolation (sorry- PRIVATE) room wearing the blue decontamination gown my doctors had ordered her to wear - as if she had entered the underground medical bay in Independence Day ("there can be no peace between us! nooooo peeeeeeaaaaaaace!" Man I love that movie) - although I was reassured that I was not contagious. Even though my room had several specialty anti-bacterial scrub-down stations. Even though it practically had an airlock. Not contagious! Nonetheless. I was now an anomaly. A medical mystery. Someone you'd see on Gray's Anatomy, just without the deep dark secret from my past and Katherine Heigl being annoying and Dr. Bailey shooting witty insults at me. And as a result, I had a team of doctors working on me - all with no ideas.

My sister offered up more of her own theories - although hers hadn't changed much since the less fun version of Spinal Tap had offered me Meningitis instead of pithy 70s rock music:

"Who knows what was wandering around that Grateful Dead concert, Jaime. I bet you that chick with the beer was just passing shit out, just handing people beers and drugs and Meningitis. That'll teach you - never accept a beer from a stranger. Now you have Coney Island Meningitis."

(SEE?? IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, CONEY ISLAND!)

Which brought to mind an image of - not rollercoasters or Luna Park - but the adorable monkey from Outbreak, who, with one accidental scratch, killed his nameless poacher and then 3/4ths of an entire California town. What if my desperate need to never be left out of the theme park fun had finally KILLED ME?

Fantastic to the fourth power.

One nice little trip and now I was that bikini clad idiot who'd poached a beer and as a result was the first to be afflicted with a mystery condition - and thus I wouldn't even get an awesome death scene like Kevin Spacey - I'd just get some gruesome cut-away before they incinerated my body and brought in Renee Russo. Fucking great. Thanks for the memories, Meningitis Island! See if I ever come back and ride your hundred year old roller coaster!

Le Sigh.

This we'll just call ground zero: the beginning: an innocent little trip to Coney Island that ended in HORROR. (So head on over to Coney Island, kids: where Meningitis will infect you and kill you. You hear me? IT WILL INFECT YOU AND KILL YOU.

Insert cheerful commercial for Coney Island.)

More Meningitis fun to come in Part Two...

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

How to Get a Boyfriend

This weekend, my sister and I watched Fake Fiance on Lifetime (mostly because neither of us could find the remote and... you know) - and like all Lifetime movies in which the title gives away the plot (I don't want to ruin it, but there's a fake fiance involved) here's a valuable lesson I learned about us single women in our 30s: if you're still looking for true love, first become a crazy bitchface (men love being treated badly! It reminds them of football!) until the wedding day, when your ex-teen 90s heartthrob/fake-boyfriend you hired from the internet will realize it's YOU he's been looking for this whole time. And then...true love abounds! Hurrah! Marriage! Babies! Golden Anniversary! This plan is flawless!

Okay. So in all seriousness guys, here's the really sad thing about this God-awful TV romp starring Middle Aged Version of Clarissa Explains It All and Distinguished Version of Blossom's Older Brother Joey (Remember how ripped his jeans were and how floppy his hair? Oh Joey Lawerence, you beautiful, aged, sitcom Adonis...) Anyway. The Bad Idea portion of my brain actually at one point said to itself, "Dude, why are you not all over this?? You should be taking out an ad on Craigslist! You should buy a husband! You can afford it - maybe not a good one, but at the very least a workable model that requires little maintenance."

(FYI: the bad idea portion of my brain is sort of like the 13 year old version of me -just with poor hand-eye coordination, no patience at all, and extreme ADHD, and also prone to things like driving her best friend's station wagon without a license into a neighbor's front yard, and/or stealing SHARP CURVE road signs from the embankment by the canal, all the while insisting, "nothing bad will come of this!")

(True stories, all.)

So what does this mean to me, given my long history of pulling batshit crazy ideas from the people inside my TV? Well, on the one hand, pop culture has taught me that there are many creative (i.e: unusually degrading and stupid) ways to ensure that men will rain over me, like the great Donna Summer once sang about.

For instance, I could become the accident prone but beautiful assistant to a wealthy, insufferable buisnessman, or maybe the accident prone but beautiful maid for a prestigious NY Hotel - but that's only if I'm looking for Hugh Grant. Or Jennifer Lopez. Or just a scathing review from Roger Ebert. But on the other hand, while I am naturally quite accident prone (a plus in the romantic comedy world!), I am not quite at the Danger Zone Level of Desperate Retard - yet. But on the third hand (some people have these) I'm also spending my Sunday nights couch-hugging with my sister, earnestly watching Lifetime. So who am I to say what strategies work or don't work? Maybe the fake fiance plan IS flawless. Maybe I'm the idiot for not having thought of it myself. (As otherwise I've become one of Marge Simpson's spinster older sisters.) But whatever the case, bottomline is most of the lessons I've learned about love I've learned from the fictional world of TV and movies - and all have been super helpful.

So. Here's a selection of those lessons about how to find True Love (or The One!), courtesy of Time Warner Cable, insomnia, a random selection of movies I feel compelled to watch every single time they're on - usually around 3 in the morning - and the advice lady in my brain, who I imagine looks like Lily Tomlin:


If you want to fall in love, first go to a Southern barbeque and wear a low-cut bodice and giant hoop-skirt and flirt like a whore with every man in sight. Sure, being an unfair cocktease is way hard- pun totally intended! - but it does serve a purpose in the end - especially with a war on and men dying before you can get your flirting on. But of course, the most important thing is to make sure the hottest, douchiest guy in the room (i.e: the one you really want) catches you doing something endearing but retarded - like wearing fancy, low-cut curtains to jail to extort money, for instance, or selling yourself in marriage to anyone for any reason, good or bad. (After all, a woman's greatest weapon is her heaving bosom.) So. After your many husbands eventually die tragically for reasons that will mostly be blamed on you, your one true love (not one of your husbands, but this douchebag dude) will be so desperate to catch you before you hooker yourself again, he'll ask for your hand in marriage. Score!

SCORECARD: Total Fail. War just changes people, yo. Also, Rhett leaves Scarlett on the stairs, and the last line of the movie is "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (Which in my book really just tends to mean, "Chase after me because I know rejecting you in a douchy way only makes you want me more!" but again... my track record with men is like -5, not including the guys who were straight before they dated me.)


If you want to fall in love, first become a hooker. (This totally works! Ask anyone!) Flash your shit somewhat half-heartedly - or until a luxury car pulls up and a ruggedly handsome rich dude invites you to his hotel room for approximately 5-7 fully paid days - or until he catches you doing something endearing but retarded: singing Prince in a bathtub, telling old people at the Opera you peed your pants (adorable), doing the Arsenio whoop at a Polo match (adorable squared), or just having sex with a lot of men for money (adorable cubed). All of these (including the paid blow jobs) are acceptable methods of wooing. And besides, what rich handsome millionaire wouldn't want to 'save' his nerdy, doofy hooker? (Don't answer that, Tiger Woods.) BOOM! Happily ever after!


SCORECARD: FAIL - hooker is redeemed but man notices burning sensation when he pees. Herpes medication needed for sustainability.


If you want to fall in love, first find yourself a tiny farm where you can treat your dreamy British farm assistant like assface (remember: men love being treated badly!) until you're kidnapped by a prince and a six-fingered man. But more specifically - just imperil yourself on a daily basis until you manage something endearing but really retarded - like selling yourself in marriage to a REALLY rich dude, because again, a woman's only weapon is her body. What you'll eventually realize is that men like you best when you're just a pretty vessel for bejewled gowns. Also, that true love means coming back from the dead and jumping out of a window onto a horse. Seriously. Or else it's needing men to come to your rescue every fifteen seconds. Or something. (Men love rescuing damsels! It reminds them of their childhood obsession with Superman!)

SCORECARD: FAIL. Repetitive piracy and kidnapping needed for sustainability.


(Sidenote: The Princess Bride is otherwise awesome. Period and end of sentence. "Never mess with a Sicilian! Especially when death is on the line!" "ROUSes? Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist." "I have a kingdom to run, a wedding to plan, a wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I'm swamped." Go watch it NOW, guys. And then learn from it and find a swarthy farmhand with a kick-ass British accent to treat badly and fuck your brains out.)


If you want to fall in love, first move into a high-rise posessed by a fifteenth century demon so you can mack on the first charming doofy idiot with a bulging proton pack who breezes through your front door. Play aggressive and hard to get with him. If that doesn't work, play the Posessed by a Fifteenth Century Doberman Pincher card. This will be your big chance to let him catch you doing something endearing but retarded - like having returned to the very same apartment where eggs fried themselves on the counter and sinister demons beckoned from the fridge (FYI: men love saving you from demons and your own stupidity! It makes them feel like they're in a video game!) This is how you'll get him to rescue you on the first date (women always need rescuing! We can't fall in love otherwise!) and carry you down 120 flights of stairs into a ticker-tape parade. And by the way - not at all lofty to expect a ticker tape parade. We women expect unwieldy pomp and circumstance. Also, shiny things and men who will save us from giant marshmallow men.

SCORECARD: FAIL. Demons and kidnapping needed on date night for sustainability. Case in point: are Dana and Peter together at the beginning of Ghostbusters 2? No? Exactly.

(Sidenote: Ghostbusters 1? And Ghostbusters 2? Awesome squared. "That's right, your honor. This man has no dick." "It's a river of slime!" "Being miserable and treating other people like shit is every New Yorker's God given right!" FYI: I refuse to believe it's so wrong to put myself out there and expect Peter Venkman to show up. As in, sometimes I sit in the NY Public Library and wait for him to come busting in. ONE DAY HE WILL, GUYS.)


If you want to fall in love, first lose the bra, super-glue Cinnabons to your head, and move to a galaxy far far away. This for sure always works, you guys. And while you're at it, you'll want to spend some time kidnapped - because while you are a badass space renegade, you are first and foremost a lovely damsel with interesting, dessert-shaped hair. So. Now all you have to do is insult the guy who comes to save you (Remember: men love girls who insult them and shoot at them! It reminds them of playing paintball!) until finally you've been rescued and imperiled so much you're exhausted, and you realize it's time to play the Super-Slutty Gold Bikini card, and.... so, okay, any time you whip out your tits, that'll do it. For men in space or anywhere else.

SCORECARD: FAIL - Intergallactic war, cinnabon stylists and the perpetual perky breasts of a twenty-five year old needed for sustainability.

(Sidenote: All implied misogyny aside, if any of you out there in cyberland have still not seen Star Wars, you are dead to me.)


If you want to fall in love, spend at least one summer frolicking on a California beach where all the gayishly handsome and vocally promising gang members like to hang. Work your wiles on just one of them and follow him everywhere - like from your home in Australia to a hip American high school where you can express your love in the style of 50s pop (or what the 70s is sure 50s pop sounds like.) Eventually you can go insane and your harmonious gang member will catch you doing something endearing but retarded - like changing every single thing about yourself to suit whatever you think he wants. In the end he'll be so enchanted by your crazy leather pants, the two of you will fly off into the sunset together.

SCORECARD: Total Fail. High school romances never work for various reasons - usually youthful stupidity. In this case, death by flying car. (Or a little from column A and a little from column B.) It's always something. Still. Go Grease Lightning!


If you want to fall in love, become a hooker and find yourself another mother-effing hooker. (Duh, mofos. DUH.) But seriously - go ahead and become a hooker. There's a reason this one's in here twice, ladies - IT WORKS. So go nuts! Throw crazy parties in your swank Upper East Side apartment, wear awesome clothes bought for you by skeevy pervs, and spend your days as a completely irresponsible, money-grubbing slutbag. Eventually a male hooker/writer will come along and hear you doing something endearing yet retarded - like playing an adorable banjo on a windowsill. Or, I don't know, lying about your past, ripping up your apartment in a blind psychotic break, or scheming to wed royalty from Mexico (Men love obvious mental instability! It reminds them of their moms!) In the end he'll be so taken with your slutty insanity he'll help you chase after your pussy (cat) in the rain. (And who doesn't love a wet pussy[cat])?

Scorecard: FAIL. Too many dueling STDs; non-hookerish behavior required on behalf of both hookers for sustainability.

(sidenote: if I looked like Audrey Hepburn and could pull off Givenchy, my career path would have taken a whole other turn. Or so says the Bad Idea portion of my brain. Who needs to contribute to society in any meaningful way when your legs are that long and you look that good in expensive hats?)

So in the end, all I'm saying is I'm romantically screwed, you guys. And not in a good way either. Romantically SCREWED.


(Upside: Hot Tub Time Machine is coming in the mail any day now. I.e: Time travel love! Hurrah!)


That's all.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Facebook Intervention Needed

I'd like to begin by saying I am an admitted Facebook addict - sometimes, to the point where I'm literally refreshing like a dude waiting for a 15 minute gang bang on Xtube to load. But don't get me wrong - I totally understand that this is ludicrous. That in another era, this would have been considered visual and emotional torture. ("Jaimala, come look at photos of Grandma's trip to Seminole Bingo in Tallhassee. There are six rolls and two hours of video footage, one of which may or may not have been shot with the lens cap on - you know how your grandfather is retarded.")

But sometimes, in between obsessively spying on my friends' walls and photos and event invitations, it just strikes me - how the internet has somehow turned eavesdropping, voyuerism and torturous trips through photo albums into something not unlike an out of control Heroin binge.

I don't even know what it is about Facebook - if maybe it's the sheer volume of useless updates, that when added all together form a social networking algebraic principal similar to when you add all negative numbers to create a positive, and perhaps this somehow releases specific social-networking endorphins in the brain - and thus in the end going through some old middle school acquaintance's photo album feels like you've just come all over the place and need a cigarette.

Whatever the case, I do have enough self awareness to worry that I will eventually end up on one of those A&E shows about addiction. That I will give an incoherent, on-camera interview about Facebook while desperately surfing Facebook, and then a substance abuse counselor will somberly gather all my friends and family in some remote motel which I will know nothing about until the "lunch with Mom/exit interview," at which time they will all sob and clutch letters that begin with, "Jaime, we worry that Facebook is becoming like a family member to you. Please X out of your Status Feed and graciously accept this gift of rehabilitation today..."

So. Having said that, I was surfing Ye Olde (or Ye New) Facebook today and noticed a bunch of interesting quirks which I would like to now share with you, my blogland friends. (Sidenote: Do you see how even when I'm blogging I immediately turn to Facebook? As if I'm just dying for an excuse to uselessly roam around the internet for another wasteful two hours? Because I'm at work and my God how did people do that all day without Facebook?)

(See? Obsession. Boredom is partly to blame, but still.)

Anyhow.

Please feel free to chime in if you have any Facebook observations of your own:

What I've Learned From Facebook:

1. Some women live their entire lives in string bikinis. Their days are filled with coolers of beer, illegal fishing off the side of a boat, and many shades and hues and styles of ass-crack. Sometimes ass-crack against a spectacular sunset. Sometimes ass-crack against a lovely meadow. Sometimes ass-crack against the backdrop of another ass-crack. Sometimes a slide-show of ass-crack against a cacophony of breast-crack. And of course, mojitos. Part of me wants to be one of these women, but alas, I do not have a boat.

2. Profile photos allow for dramatic transformations - either into celebrities, toddlers or infants, or else what is either an ultrasound or an epic sea monkey battle (or maybe a combination of both - a fetus fighting a sea monkey army? Maybe with lightsabers? Wouldn't that be totally awesome?) I keep meaning to ask these friends how their transformations actually took place - if only because I wouldn't mind living for a week as either an infant or a sea monkey. Or Paris Hilton. Mostly because you get to poop wherever and whenever you want, and you also get to be carried around all day in a colorful traveling accessory. And who doesn't want to live like that?

Speaking of which...

3. Some people celebrate their poop - sometimes, more than 3 times a day. My poop, by comparison, goes relatively uncelebrated.

4. Lots of people have moved to share-cropping compounds called FarmVille, where every day they tend to livestock, cultivate iguanas, discover mystery eggs, raise cattle, and build stables. Here, everyone is considered equal and all material items and workloads are distributed evenly amongst the villagers. Nobody is richer or poorer than anyone else, and there is always enough healthcare and magic dragon eggs to go around. Which I guess begs the question: was FarmVille created by Obama as part of a secret government plot to rename the United States The Socialist Farmville Republic of That Lesser Country Underneath Canada? (because we all know how you really feel about us, Canada - WE ALL KNOW!) I suppose only time will tell.

5. Actual clubs (Drama! Key Club! Future Homemakers of America!) are now a thing of the past. On Facebook, people mostly join clubs to promote something they hate, which they may simultaneously also LIKE. (i.e: the organizations known as I Hate When You Stop In the Middle of the Street To Take a Picture, Are You Freaking Retarded?; Stop Bragging About Your Honors Student Because Nobody Cares And You Are Dumber Than He Is; If Your Child Screams In A Crowded Movie Theater I Will Physically Beat Him With This Icee - and so on and so forth.) Confusing? Nah. Communities have always been built upon everyone's shared (beloved?) hatred of a common enemy. You think the United States was formed because we so loved the British and their scones?

Okay, so I know there's a lot I'm leaving out here, but I've gonna cut out of this blog post early to surf my news feed. It's been nearly an hour since I've refreshed. Surely you understand.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Grandma's Mojo is the Best!

For those of you who don't know, my grandmother (who made MANY guest appearances in my comedy monologues) passed away a few weeks ago. So what you're about to read is my occasionally rambling, always inappropriate online tribute to her - to be followed immediately by the picture of an adorable puppy (what assuages grief better than baby animals? NOTHING. Except maybe baby animals in costume.)


Commence tribute:


My grandma was an old-school broad - seemingly unsinkable, like Molly Brown. Back in the day, she took care of (what seemed like) an impossible number of Morrises - whether cooking daily meals filled with love and chicken ("everyday with the goddamn Chicken!") and far too much Paprika, providing those homeless among us with lodging, or perhaps issuing unwanted social commentary - she was always the family gate-keeper (which I suppose makes my grandfather the family Key Master? Minus the coming of Gozer and turning into a Doberman thing? Or do I just relate way too many unrelated situations to Ivan Reitman films?) Or, actually, perhaps a better analogy is Grandma as ring-master - or that creepy guy who runs the sideshow at the traveling carnival - minus the handlebar moustache and tophat. You get what I'm saying.


That she's gone now is bizarre to me - as if Bev could be susceptible to something as pedestrian as cancer; that's like Chuck Norris dying in his sleep instead of in an underwater boxing match with Satan, God and eight killer sharks like the prophecy of course always promised. (Or like how Lost turned out to be a bad metaphor trapped beneath an ancient wine cork. Really, Lost? The island is just a bottle of Sutter Home? THERE'S A REASON NOBODY BUYS THAT CRAP AT WHOLE FOODS, LINDELOFF!)

(Tribute-interuptus!:)

(Dear Lost, You shredded my heart like so much emotional pornography and then you answered none of my questions, and then, tragically, you died. Yet, I still love you. So. Please bring back Sayid's naked chest and Sawyer's wind-swept floppy hair. Maybe in a spinoff? Sayid and Sawyer: Wet, Half-Naked and Awesome. Okay? Call me, Lindeloff!)

(Finis-tribute-interuptus! - sorry, dudes. A shit ton happened in the past month and I am all over the place trying to catch up.)

Anyway.

My grandma was supposed to live forever (no offense to all of you out there with mere mortal grandparents) - after 88 years of perfect health, a smoker's Brooklyn accent (somewhere between Coffee Talk's Linda Richman and The Exorcist's Linda Blair), not to mention 6 packs of Marlboros a day since the mid 1930s. Seriously, you guys? Anyone who consumes that much nicotine and makes it to 88 should outlive the Earth.


Beyond this, my grandma was always the shit to hang out with - even during those painful months before she died - mainly because she never once felt sorry for herself, never once made apologies, and had an excellent memory and an endless capacity for stories about everyone else's fucked up, retarded bullshit. (Sidenote: "fucked up retarded bullshit" is, I believe, a phrase I first learned from her when I was two.) Basically, you could ask her what she ate for breakfast and instead of an answer, she'd give you every assinine offense any Morris had ever perpetrated against the act of breakfast over a span of at least forty years.

Once, right after I joined J-date (a Jewish dating disaster deserving of its own entry) I called her up and asked her what she thought about romantic relationships. What makes them work, what compells folks to stay together, that sort of thing. And instead of giving me the usual grandmotherly speech about love and all its nauseating granduer, she launched into a seemingly unrelated diatribe about how, to save a bit of money right before the war, my grandfather bought himself a car with no floor; literally, it was just seats and cardboard on a metal foundation - what she called his "quaintly stupid piece of shit."

"Sure, nobody had money during the Depression, but who buys a goddamn floorless car? I was Wilma Flintstone for a year, and I swear, we might as well have been driving a cardboard box with a windshield. And god forbid it rained. I just... can't. even. tell you. But that idiot was adorable in his Navy uniform with his short little legs and those awful jokes. And God, that assinine car. But he made me laugh. If he hadn't, I would have smacked him in the face and gone off in search of Frank Sinatra and been done with it."

we were both adorable in the 80s...

After the war, my grandparents moved to the subburbs and bought a card store - and put my Dad to work at the register as soon as he was old enough, and then my cousins and I as soon as we were old enough - and by old enough, I mean potty-trained and able to form simple sentences. Actually, my cousins and I were (I am proud to say) the best employees no paycheck could buy: by the time we were six we ran the register and the lotto machine; we also sold ugly fake jewelry to anyone stupid enough to buy it, and peddled homemade goods from my grandmother's beloved assembly line of inappropriate nonsense - a random assortment of homemade bags, screened t-shirts with sayings like "I found the keys now where the fuck is the car?!" and chocolate molded candies - Valentines hearts, birthday lollies, Christmas wreaths, naked breasts and assorted novelty penises (which also meant we frequently nibbled on chocolate pornsicles as we rode our bikes around Hewlett Harbor. Of course, years later, when I brought up the weirdness of that - admittedly a source of both pain and hilarity - my grandma, instead of directly answering the question, extended to me a traditional Jewish Guilt Branch - an offering of homemade noodle kugle, matzoh ball soup, and/or barbeque brisket. This is how Jewish grandmothers get away with everything, guys:)

"You used to ask me, 'Grandma, can I do the boobies? Please can I do the boobies?' and it was adorable, Jaimala, and a little weird, except I kept thinking maybe you were really trying to say 'Bubbulah,' like you were confusing a sentiment, but then I realized you only had a smartass mouth. Where you picked that shit up from, I'll never know. But it's not like you had anything else going on at the time anyway... But you know Grandma loves you. Now, eat this kugel I made before it gets cold - I put in extra golden raisins. I know you love those."

(That's really how they get away with it, guys - offerings of delicious golden raisins.)

Nevertheless.

My Grandma was just a bad-ass broad; she took care of the books for the store, she sold her own erotic candy, she ran the family business as if it were both business and day care - and, awesomely enough, every once in awhile, she sold cards and assorted novelties to the entire Long Island mafia (one of her many, many stories - that the mob met in the office building across the street and we were their sole chocolate supplier - for what exactly, I have no idea. But can you imagine that meeting?)

"Tony, thank you for the comprehensive power-point on cement shoes vs. red hot pokers. I admit I was unaware of our extensive Instrument Of Death expenditures. But now, before Vinny goes over our quarterly budget by cracking open the wall safe behind the trick bookcase and disabling the array of protective security lasers, please enjoy some tea and sandwiches and some milk chocolate genitals on a stick, courtesy of Bev from Carl's Cards across the street."

(Grandma's special story cocktail: 1/2 gross exaggeration mixed with 1/4th shit learned from old timey movies, spritzed with 1/4th actual truth, but always served to us with such commitment. The more I think on it the more I realize she would have made one hell of a long-form improviser.)

I hear mob bosses are suckers for chicks in bathing suits...

Fast forward about twenty-five years.

Although it had been (I'm almost embarrassed to admit) several years since I'd asked my Grandma for anything - we Morris women are known for our pigheadedness, also for our creative use of both English and Yiddish curse words - I called her up a few months before she died, needing some advice - either her hard-nosed opinion or an old-school kick in the ass - whichever she was willing to offer. I was broken hearted and feeling sort of helpless - like a kid painting chocolate testicles only half-heartedly, wondering if this was all there would ever be to life (remember when y'all were six and wistfully painting pubes on chocolate penis molds? No?)

Basically, I was having what I've since lovingly (or frustratingly) nicknamed "The Old Maid Freakout" - paranoia that my window to find a non-crazy, non-gay, non-asshole had closed. And then who the hell would I have to make bad jokes with and push a floorless car with? Surely you single women out there know what I'm talking about - usually, it ends with a pint of Phish Food, six glasses of wine, an incoherent rant directed at the dog, and mispelled drunken sexts to every retarded horndog guy in my iphone address book.


"Love doesn't fucking exist," I'd said. "And who wants to be repeatedly hurt in some fruitless, crazy, Moby Dick search for something that doesn't fucking exist? That's like I might as well go looking for Jon Hamm to give me an engagement ring - or leprechauns with Lucky Charms or talking Pound Puppies or babies who can break-dance and do you see where I'm going with this? It's all make-believe, Grandma! Everyone goes on and on about how love is just like magic but you know what? Magic isn't real. So how can love be real when magic's not? It's all an illusion! Or a paradox! Maybe? I don't know, but it's something goddamn similar!"


Then, after I took a much-needed breath from Ye Old Maid Freakout, this is what my 88 year old Grandmother had to say - in a voice strained from chemo, and for once forgoing a story in favor of actual advice:


"Don't act retarded, Jaimala. Love isn't magic - it's just hard to find. And you have plenty of time. So I think I speak for both your Poppy and myself when I say that we were worried you might be a lesbian - not that you can't be whatever you want - but really, for years we thought you were a lesbian. At least it's a relief to know you'll be able to have babies someday. Not before I die, but someday. So make yourself happy now but then, definitely, have babies. Okay? Just look at it this way: if Grandma can quit smoking, surely you can marry this Jon Hamm you love so much. I can't imagine he wouldn't want to marry you, Jaimala. What's not to like? You're my granddaughter. Just don't worry so much - you'll be fine. You have plenty of time. Everything ends up the way it's supposed to."

Oh, Grandma. Wherever am I supposed to get these pearls of wisdom without you here?

So wherever she is now, and perhaps it is outside of space and time (where a shirtless Sawyer and a shirtless Sayid are undoubtedly shuttling her around the Ever After - and come on, let's be serious - even Grandma appreciates the hottness of Sawyer and Sayid in their groovy VW van - and why can't that be the pilot of the spinoff, Lindeloff??) I hope she's watching over me. And I hope there are endless, heavenly cartons of cigarettes, and secret mob meetings, and inappropriate chocolate candy pornsicles, and of course, hot cars WITH floors (Cadillacs!) and lots of laughter (as there always was). But most of all, I hope she knows I'm grateful for all the bizarre experiences she contributed, which ultimately helped make me the awesome lunatic I am today. Thank you for everything, Grandma. I miss you.

And now, as promised, here's an adorable puppy. In costume. (That's right. I went there.)

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Frenemies

So there I was, randomly clicking on the profiles of old classmates (as you do at work when the only other option is work) and I came across my former middle-school nemesis - *Mindy Ruddy - Mindy "Let's Chase The Short Chick With The Weird Accent And the Poufy Clothes Down Wellington Trace And Into A Tree" Ruddy - with a hyphen now in her name. Also? An adorable photo of two adorable children and one adorable husband playing with adorable pumpkins on a bale of hay against the background of an explosive South Florida sunset and blah blah blah - what the fuck?

Seriously. Are you for real with this shit, Karma? On the list of Things That Cannot Possibly Be Right With The World (war, famine, disease, global warming, violence, yeah yeah I know) a prosperous Mindy Ruddy has got to be in there somewhere. Because seriously guys? She was a BITCH.

But here's the thing: back in the day, I was told that all bullies suffer from terrible self-esteem ("they hate themselves more than they hate you!") and while this may in fact be true, I was also promised that all bullies would eventually end up hating themselves so much they'd drop off the face of the Earth to become meth-heads and/or prostitutes; this was the Great Nerd Liferaft offered to me by well-meaning adults in the middle of my Secondary School Shitstorm - that one day, when we both grew up, Mindy Ruddy would go crazy on smack and lose all that pretty blonde hair in a prison license-plate accident, and I would finally lose the glasses and the gumby legs and the propensity for vomiting on my sneakers EVERY FUCKING TIME we ran the mile (finally I just forged a DR's note that said I had my period), and I'd get married to a hot guy worth seven figures who thought of me as his trophy wife. In my head it was a completely plausible nerd fairy tale....

...Except the truth is Mindy does not have a prison record and I do not have a hot husband, and this means I was inadvertently mindfucked by some well-meaning adults and some supposedly well-meaning fiction. And now I want to jump in my Delorian and go back to 1996 and be all, "NOOOO! Don't believe the lies, young JLM! That hot Asshat is gonna grow up and marry another hot asshat! You might as well get your jollies in now and embrace your weirdness and for crying out loud quit doing your hair like that!" (Permed and framed by bangs that were modeled after high-tide rolling in. ugh - I KNOW - it's like I never even had a chance.)

But this is exactly the problem with fairy tales, isn't it? We go around perpetuating these stories about girls who have narcoleptic fits only to wake up to a hot guy on a horse totally macking on them. Or girls who leave their glass shoes just lying around at parties and get a ring out of the first guy who accidentally trips over one and brings it back. (Why do you think we spend our entire adult lives fucking obsessed with shoes?) Or mean girls (who once made me trace my own face on the sidewalk with chalk!) by virtue of karma, growing old and fat and ugly and prison-like and addicted to drugs. These are LIES, people - and yet we continue to tell them anyway - as if fantasy is some great heirloom to be passed down. Or maybe for adults it's some Shadenfraude thing. Either way, I would have been much better served if someone had just said to me, "Look, Jaime. It's very likely Mindy will be 'bitchy-hot' long into her childbearing years, so just continue to be asmartass and don't apologize to assholes. Eventually your weirdness will serve you - either as a writer or an improviser who performs in the basements beneath old abandoned Chinese restaurants. Either way, chill the fuck out. And by God in heaven, vests with plastic flowers on them are NOT COOL!"

(PS: my mother and I fought over this vest from Contempo Casuals for days, and although I won it was ultimately a win for NOONE. Just picture Holiday Inn Express lobby flowers hot-glued to polyester. I actually have a class photo in it - I promise you blogland, I WILL find this photo...)

Anyway.

From now on, why don't we just tell kids the dead-ass truth?

"And then she kissed the frog and realized that certain frogs are highly poisonous and most are unwilling to commit."

"After pricking her finger on the spindel, the princess was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital where she was diagnosed with lock-jaw and tetanus. Following the four hour wait in Triage, the prince ditched her after royally proclaiming, 'Fuck this, where's that bitch with the seven midgets?' meanwhile the princess blew an entire royal paycheck on antibiotics because Health Care for Princesses and Magical Creatures offers shitty coverage and no prescription co-pay."

(Ugh, seriously, guys? Mindy's kids are so adorable it's unnecessary. Damn you, Karma. This is all your stupid fault.)

In the end I suppose it's not nearly as appetizing to tell the truth - even if it sure would save us a lot of heartache. Also, I guess discovering what is true and hideous in the world is actually how you become an adult - like someone kicking out all your baby teeth and replacing them with Broken Dream Invisiline.

But really, Karma, would it be so terrible if you could just make all of Mindy's pretty, pretty blonde hair fall out? Like in The Craft when Neve Campbell does that kickass glamour on Christine Taylor and she goes totally bald and starts bawling in the locker room shower? (Remember how that movie was awesome?) Or maybe just make sure one of Mindy's adorable little girls ends up glasses-ridden, obsessed with Mel Brooks and super fucking bad at running the mile. Pretty please, Karma?

(Also, a money tree and David Duchovny circa 1998 would be good, too - for me. Not for Mindy. Clearly.)

* names changed to protect... well, me.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Change is Good For Spring (Spare Change or Otherwise)

It's finally Spring, bitches!

This means it's time for new beginnings - also Cadbury Eggs, bunny-shaped Pez, chocolate baby chicks and delicious Marshmallow Peeps (and what is the word for those Kosher jelly rings? They're like tiny raspberry-candy donuts covered in chocolate? Just delightful. How is it I've been Jewish this long and don't know? That's like not knowing foil-covered chocolate coins are Gelt. Blasphemous.) Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. So Spring is the season of delicious change. And this year, in the spirit of really starting new, I've decided to change some long-held bad behaviors of mine.

But for the sake of thoroughly explaining all this, let's map out my bad behavior like an algebra equation. Which means if Highly Suggestible is "X" and Remarkably Low Impulse Control is "Y," then X+Y=Lifelong Social Retard.

To elaborate further: I am not exactly the queen of containing myself when an idea is put in my head. Like if you were to suggest to me how wonderful a donut might be, I would last maybe a minute before running out to buy half a dozen donuts (chocolate frosted with sprinkles, Bavarian-creme-kruller, devil's food, strawberry frosted, black-and-white marble and Boston Creme - shut your mouth blogland; my philosophy is always have a gameplan in a Dunkin Donuts - otherwise it's baked good anarchy.) Of course, fast-forward five hours and I'm lying on the couch in a state of either pre or post-vomitness - then fastforward nine more hours and I'm consuming donuts like nothing happened - or doodling on a steno pad what is essentially a giant donut with arms and legs exclaiming, "You know you wanna eat the crap out of me!" (Sometimes I pin these to the wall of my cubicle.)

Anyway.

The point is, I am constantly far too tempted by the donut. And by tempted I mean in a way that knocks out logic and will-power and normal reasoning skills - like when I run the air conditioner and vacuum at the same time and it knocks out the whole fucking apartment because god forbid the super should replace copper wiring laid out in the frakking 1970s. (Is it possible the Super in my brain is also a lazy son of a bitch? Now that I think about it, other things never seem to work right either. Damn you, Lazy Building Super In My Brain! Why must you be so inept and at the same time, so imaginary?)

Moving on.

It's probably no great shock that my Algebra Equation of Bad Behavior has long been a source of trouble for me. For instance, when I was a senior in college and my friend Laura, at a house party, suggested to me that our combined lack of idiotic college badassedness might be a thing to regret after graduation, I immediately tossed back about half a gallon of 151 (that's rum with a flame-retardant barrier over the lip - literally one step from sucking gasoline out of a hose) and then I selected from the crowd a drunk boy who I thought might be game to - shall we say - mack on my awesomeness.

"Hey you hey hey you yeah you hey no not you not you yes YOU wanna make out with me?" was what I slurred to pretty much the entire room before I finally grabbed my friend James, yanked him into a corner and climbed him like a spider-monkey; literally, I wrapped one leg around his legs, knocked both of us into a side table, and then, after a half-assed drunken display which involved my mouth and a stuck zipper (it's better I not describe that part in more detail), I excused myself to the porch to vomit into a houseplant.

From that point forward, many post-college-football parties seemed to end this way - with my drinking until wicked-retarded and then striking out (spectacularly) with some guy until I eventually excused myself to go vomit off, over, into, or at something. (Once, after six Goldshlaggers at Club Cairo and a boy-wistful conversation with my roommate Tiff, I drunkenly hit on my friend Brian - who immediately reminded me that he already had a girlfriend - and then I vomited over the railing of the roof deck. Another time, after a shot contest in which I downed more than 10 Red Eyed Sluts because it was suggested by my friend Renee that women should not be afraid to out-shoot [out-shot?] the men they want, I made a pass at Brian - who STILL had a girlfriend - and crawled into Tiff's bathroom, where for the next hour I pushed tissues into her sink, named all of them "Brian" and then vomited into the cat's litter box.)

So to build upon the original equation:

X+Y=Social Retard
WHEN
Social Retard= Substance + Want To Mack On Hot Guy
OR
Value of X is bad idea
Value of Y is well-meaning friend

Of course, now I'm older and wiser (whatever that means) and sure I've stopped going to college football parties, sure instead of complaining about my lack of badassedness I now complain about the pain in my legs and back and how that untalented fetus Miley Cyrus is ruining music for everyone (because she is), and sure I'm "so mature and so over it all," but really, 20 year old retard me has been floating around inside mature 30 year old adult me for awhile now.

So as much as I hate wake-up calls (emotional, metaphorical, iphone alarm, that guy who delivers packages to my desk at 9am and fails to grasp that it's 9am and nobody should be like a Skittles rainbow, dude!) I'm also of the mind that change is good. And eventually, change is absolutely necessary. Like when you reach that point in life where you realize you don't need to think or try so hard. Or when you realize that - hey - my own instincts are pretty good when I just trust myself - and not someone else. And so what if it took me 30 years and several hundred vomits into plants and litter boxes to realize this; the important thing is I can now be like Scrooge McDuck in Mickey's Christmas Carol: "There's still time! I haven't missed it! I can still change!" (Merry Easter and God bless us, everyone!)

Which means Spring is totally the season of my spiritual and emotional growth (as I say this, I'm bending paper-clips into animals and murdering them by hurling them over the wall of my cubicle - great start!!) But the truth is, I'm already learning. As in - from every experience and person and situation. (Craziness!) Also, I've learned that I don't need to eat every donut in front of me just because it is the donut in front of me. Furthermore, I deserve better than some thirty-five cent fast food desert. Like some Cadbury Egg with luscuious creme filling and rich milk chocolate- who needs that? I CAN and WILL wait for something better.

(Oh god but I love Cadbury eggs so much....)

Why must everything I want always have to be so crazy unhealthy despite its shiny deliciousness? That just feels like punishment from the Heavens, yo.

Ugh. Change is hard. Wish me luck, blogland.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Boys, Boys, Boys: The Things I Tell My Dog

Nothing like snowmageddon 2.0 locking me inside with my yappy dog for three straight days to encourage a bit of productive (painful?) introspection. And nothing like a bit of hot chocolate and some bad 80s pop (still synthesizer-filled but still oddly satisfying) to accompany the resultant brain-spill/writing exercise on the subject of boys - specifically, my very first boyfriend, Matt.* (Hold on to your hats- this one is filled with tales of epic high-school loserdom.)

Oh, the disasters of youth.

(Beware: re-creation of youth ahead.)

To begin with:

Having always been the smallest and goofiest, uprooted from Long Island to South Florida at the age of thirteen - probably the worst age ever for anyone, even without a transplant to the land where your grandparents literally go to die - I suffered through years of incessant bullying; everything from prank-calls to prank-dates to being chased into public restrooms while being barked at, literally, like a dog - my adolescence, no joke, was John Hughes epic; it was Oprah prime-time special epic.

So eventually, seeing no other way out, I clung to my best friend Jane*, who was adorable and blonde and had lots of admirers and pageant crowns and trophies and sequined dresses, like a Madame Alexander doll with a baton. Which meant that when she joined the marching band I eagerly joined with her - even though I lacked things like experience and musicality and talent... also I occasionally had problems, you know, not injuring myself when I walked. Still. I actually learned to play the clarinet and spin a six-foot flag (and even in my old age can still toss a mean quad - look out, boys!); I also developed a slightly mean-spirited wit and an oversized wardrobe that often made me look like an angry midget basketball player. I read a lot of Edith Wharton and Star Trek novels. I kept Mulder and Scully collector's barbies on a shelf next to Princess Leia from A New Hope. I was always prepared for any occasion with a Mel Brooks reference. (Actually, that's still true.) I was admittedly a little defensive and mean.

I was, in short, a nerd.

Thus it came as a huge shock, my senior year, when the captain of the drumline - that's the bandnerd equivalent of the captain of the football team, for you non bandnerd laymen - inexplicably began showing up wherever I was; before first period, after practice, in the bandroom, after school - there he was like some nerd groupie - this tall guy whom everyone liked, who was so talented and charming you couldn't help but crush on him, even if my go-to move was to ignore him and/or tease the shit out of him like some retarded asshole. Me in my baggy jeans and huge t-shirts and my thick wool socks from Target, my horribly awkward jokes, my obliviousness when it came to guys; I'd see him and immediately say something like, "Why the lopsided new haircut, LaSalle*? Did your blind grandmother shave your head?"

Yeah.

Nevertheless, he'd call and we'd talk about silly things - moving to Europe after high school, hopping on a jet plane and taking off to Amsterdam, where I would take a World War II tour around the city and Matt would smoke weed at bars and get "European drunk" with hot Dutch girls. That he even talked to me about such things, that as a result I knew which bra size he found most fascinating (34-C - oh god, I hope he's not reading this) was seriously the coolest thing ever.

Then one Saturday, at the Auxillary car wash, when the other twirlers and I were busy scrubbing down Ford Expeditions in our inappropriate bikinis, getting tipped by middle-aged rednecks who would watch us and dirtily ask us to please pay special attention to the mud flaps, Matt showed up out of the blue and brought me lunch - a Number Four Combo from Checkers - a "move" I of course missed, thanks to the double-cheeseburger.

After about ten minutes of me silently shoveling fries into my mouth like a fry dispenser, he finally made his big move:

"I like you," he said. "I think you should be my girlfriend."

Around a mouthful of cheeseburger: "I'm sorry, what?"

"Go out with me," said Matt. "You're weird, but it's cool. I like you."

Still waiting for the punch-line of this bizarre joke, I repeated, "I'm sorry, what?"

"Look, I don't think anyone else has asked you out. They haven't, have they?"

"Not really." I shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't matter that the furthest I had ever been with any boy was when I'd let the foreign exchange student see up my skirt in the teacher's lounge at the ninth grade dance (he'd told me I was pretty and then he let me eat his chocolate bar). "Well," I babbled, "There was this one guy in this AOL role-playing chat-room that Nik* and I like - The Pub in the Lake? His name's HanSolo25. Well, that's not his NAME name, but you get what I mean. I think he lives in Michigan. He typed a rose at me last time we talked - well, before I got kicked off. Dial-up ruins everything."

Sheepish, I shoveled a few more fries into my mouth.

Matt's left eyebrow shot up. "Whatever," he said. "Just go out with me, okay? Why not? We march together and we talk all the time anyway, and you're cool when you're not saying something completely retarded. Let's go out. Sound good? I'm stealing some of your fries."

And so it went - the first time I got asked out, for real, by a boy who wasn't gay.

I turned my head and mouthed "YES!" to myself. This was all going to be totally great, I thought. Totally, totally great.

I turned back around and nodded my head, yes.

Jubilant, Mike gave me a nuggie - it was a done deal. We were boyfriend/girlfriend! (In the gutter outside of a Checkers - right before he donated a whole $1.00 to our bucket for me to wash his dirty-ass car.)

It was a stunning romantic moment.


Later that week, after convincing myself that having a boyfriend would probably be just like working really hard on the Algebra II homework I never understood either, I got up each morning at 6am, tried on nine different unfortunate skirts from 5-7-9, and posed in front of the bathroom mirror, testing out equally unfortunate turns of phrase. Absurd things like, "Hi, can I reserve this seat next to the Snares? I'm Matt's girlfriend." Or, "Hi, can you scooch a bit? I'm dating the drum captain, thanks." Or, "What's up, single losers? See that hot guy over there? We totally make out. Totally share saliva. Bet you didn't see that one coming - BAM!"

(Oh, seventeen year old me - why can't I go back and slap you?)

Matt, meanwhile, was just confident enough to pass for slightly arrogant, also no less than eighteen feet tall, while I was shy and quiet and just tall enough to legally sit in the front seat without a booster (missing the limit in Florida by about two inches - holler!) Matt was known for being talented on Snare Drum and I was known for having thrown up on the bus on the way to Medieval Times - twice. The world I had come from was one in which I'd once waited by the fountain at the Wellington movie theater for hours, not realizing that I had been asked out as a joke. Matt, meanwhile, had already gone through plenty of girlfriends, and as a single guy, he constantly swam in a sea of stupid and flirt. My world was not Matt's world at all. Nevertheless, I liked him and it didn't matter - after all, Jack and Rose had made it work in Titanic, right? (until the Titanic sunk and Jack froze to death - why wouldn't you get on the damn lifeboat, Rose?? -and then Leonardo DiCaprio didn't even get nominated for a goddamn Oscar... oh shut up all of you, you know you saw this movie 17 times when you were in high school, too.)

Fast-forward a week.

After what ended up being our first real date - not actually a date at all per-say but a group of band dorks hanging out in front of the Winn Dixie on a Friday night - Matt pulled into my driveway, killed the engine and turned to me, his face expectant. For a second, I thought of my grandmother's matzoh ball soup and that moment right before digging in. Being both Jewish and a late bloomer, I'd only ever looked at food with that same expression of primal anticipation. If someone had told me that eventually I'd want to put anything other than food in my mouth, I'd have laughed in their face - unless they meant Leonardo DiCaprio (delicious) or David Duchovny (also delicious); at that point, I'd only ever seen kissing on TV or from a non-creepy distance; I'd only ever hung out with my gays and the other nerds and a few couples who'd once used my study group to make out - ultimately, I was the brainy, clueless Velma to Daphne and Fred's obvious fucking around in the back of the Mystery Machine.

"I wanna take you home and I wanna cook for you," was the first thing Matt said - in a slightly creepy voice. He still had that look in his eye - like he was thinking which condiment might make me taste better.

"What?" I said, hugely nervous. "Okay, yeah. Okay."

(Was he going to kiss me, I wondered? Is that how this worked?)

Matt took off his leather band-jacket - with a flourish that nearly resulted in injury - and added,"I'm Italian. We're very passionate about our food. We're just very passionate in general. About everything. You know?"

"What?" I repeated, and flattened myself against the car door.

(Now? Was it going to happen now??)

"I make some amazing ziti," Matt added, waggling his eyebrows.

"Huh?" I managed, growing increasingly frantic that I had somehow missed the euphemism and thus ran through my mental rolodex of well-known and lesser-known sex words - could a piece of ziti possibly resemble anything dirty? A penis, maybe? A very tiny penis?

No, that couldn't be right.

"You're gonna love real Italian cooking," Matt went on. "It's so good - so much better than Olive Garden. That's poser food. Real Italian makes your mouth water until you're hungry for more. And then I'll give you more. You know?"

Another eyebrow waggle.

And suddenly I absolutely couldn't wrap my brain around this weird version of Matt - with his spaghetti-talk in the creepy voice with the waggly eyebrows. Had I missed something? Had I missed my moment? Was this kiss supposed to happen before or after the Italian sex metaphors?

At this point my brain was working so hard I accidentally smacked the back of my head against the passenger-side window.

"Oh, shit. You okay, J?"

"Um," I said. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. No, I am. No worries. No worries!" Then, in a heart-pounding daze: "My mom makes pretty good meatballs - they're so awesome. Like just round and juicy and... with like, tomatoes. Uh. I should really try them sometime. I mean, no - you should try them sometime. I mean we like latkes and kosher things too. Because we're Jewish. Um. That's not what I meant."

Which of course garnered only one possible response: "You have a concussion, Morris?"

"No," I said, my eardrums ringing. "Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I don't have a concussion."

I shifted into what I thought was a sexier position - still smooshed against the window, but now with my palm upturned by my cheek.

(When was this going to happen? Now?)

(NOW?)

Matt shrugged and moved in ever closer.

(NOW???)

"You like meatballs?" he asked, his hands pressed to the window on either side of my head. "Because let me tell you, I could put them in your mouth..."

And finally, finally grateful to have latched onto one thing I DID understand - a bad dick joke - I managed, "Is that your big line, LaSalle? You're gonna put a meatball in my mouth?"

Which is when he FINALLY moved in to kiss me - my first kiss ever ever EVER- and being both petrified and excited and at the same time somehow picturing my mother's meatballs, I kissed him back with what I had convinced myself was the passion of Kate kissing Jack (shut up people, it was a cool movie back in 1997 and you know exactly how many times you replayed that stupid Celine Dion song.) In reality, so much effort went into this kiss that I accidentally leaned onto the horn - BEEEEEEEEEEEP - scaring the shit out of both of us, and then - in the midst of my panic - biting him in the tongue and throwing him forward into the dashboard, where he hit his head.

Commence nerd freakout:

"Oh, God," I managed. "I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry! I was thinking...I don't know what...meatballs?"

(Why I said that out loud I'll never know.)

Matt rubbed at the side of his face, now imprinted with radio buttons, and backed away.

"I'm so, so sorry," I repeated, my embarrassment now a live, nuclear thing. "I'm so sorry. I'm just, I'm so new at this, like I haven't kissed any, I mean at all, no - not at ALL, of course I've kissed guys, um, you don't know him, the guy I kissed I mean, you don't know him, and I...I mean we could still be, um..." I struggled for a word, and after a few blank, panic-filled seconds, I landed somehow on "Juicy?"

And buried my head in my hands.

Another stellar first.

"You are fucking weird," Matt finally declared. "Really weird. I just don't get it. Sometimes you're awesome and sometimes it's a shame. You'd be hot under other circumstances." And off my horrified expression: "Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that. I bought your ticket tonight, didn't I? That shit cost me eight dollars."

BAM! ROMANCE!

Not long after this First Kiss Of Disaster, Matt and I decided to go back to being friends - ah, how short young love can be. On the one hand, I'd crushed on him for so long and he'd actually liked me back - the first boy to ever really like me or want to kiss me - and man I wanted to hang onto that. On the other hand, we were completely inept as a couple, he kept wanting me to be someone less weird and I kept wanting to be myself - also, could have lived without him demanding I pay for his prom ticket and tux. Oh, high school - you crazy bastard.

And thus, I let him go.

It was a bittersweet end to an awkward first experience.

As an adult, I'd like to believe that the awkwardness of my first experiences will be directly proportional to the greatness of what will happen when it all goes right. Or at least, that's what I tell the dog as I stare into the endless avalanche of snow blocking my front door.

And even if cute boys still, to this very day, make me so nervous I occasionally turn back into that overgrown SuperNerd who babbled about tomatoes in a parked car, I suppose I also have to remember that one of these days, I'll meet that guy who digs SuperNerds and is into all of me, and not just pieces.

(Which is gonna happen before I'm eighty, right?)

(Right?)

Sometimes, I wish my dog had a few answers.

(And not just because I want life's answers, but because a dog that could talk would make me so much money.)

* real names omitted to protect the old and not-so-innocent