Author: laurenne

Regardless of religion or politics, I think we can all agree that humans are animals. I’m not saying we evolved from chimps. I’m simply saying we are alive. We have to eat and shit to stay alive. We have body hair. Sometimes we don’t smell good. When we strip away our brand names, electronic devices, and double ovens… we’re not that different from dogs. Or monkeys. Or llamas. We are animals. We just happened to have been the first ones to grow attached to a telephone or a toilet or living under roofs. Still, we are animals.

Humans are animals.
And animals have sex.

Dogs do it so much in front of humans that we’ve copied them. I’ve seen frogs do it. I’ve seen flies do it mid-air. And it’s often acceptable for humans IN MOVIES to have sex. But when it comes to regular people, it has become part of our culture to deny our sexual endeavors.

I felt compelled to write about fucking when I opened the news the other day. It was filled with articles whose subtexts were brimming with sex. The pope has told nuns they can’t support women who’ve fucked. Some fella with a microphone called women who want birth control sluts. Catholic organizations are pissed they need to give birth control to their employees, who they assure us are not fucking before marriage. Parents don’t want to give the HPV vaccine to their non-fucking teens. A man who wants to be the president of our country will end aid to Planned Parenthood because only bad people who fuck need help with sexual health. And everyone is up in arms because some secret service agents got fucked in Colombia (I’m only upset about the haggling. Come on, dude. Just pay the lady.).

If aliens read our news, they’d think we were really repressed and using news outlets as the only way to talk about sex.

And maybe we are. The majority of people in the news are claiming that nobody is having sex, and if they are, it’s only once in a while to procreate normally with their beloved partners. They’re saying that only bad people really need birth control or HPV vaccines or prostitutes or to help anyone who has ever had an unwed penis near their vaginal cavity (or vice versa, but the news really seems to hate on women).

I just want to remind everyone here once again: WE ARE ANIMALS.
Sex is part of our animal instinct. We’ve been able to push down our natural instinct to walk around naked, but we haven’t gotten rid of our urge to fuck. And we won’t. Because it’s part of our animal lives. It is in our DNA. Our basic skills. Our natural body makeup. We are supposed to fuck. That’s just how it is. Of course sex was originally meant for procreation, but extra bedrooms have grown expensive and nobody really wants 18 babies anymore. Still, the animal urge is there and we all want to fuck. And that’s okay.

I don’t recommend we all just go fuck willy nilly, get pregnant, and have the government pay for our abortions. I’m simply saying that sex is a natural instinct, and we shouldn’t be looked down upon or called sluts just because we’re acting like the animals that we are.

Sometimes, Mr. Pope, I wish we weren’t so animalistic. I wish we weren’t programmed to pro-create so much. I’d like less traffic on the 405. I’d like to not want to fuck every Starbuck’s employee during my monthly hormonal tidal wave. I wish we were all easily programmed to have really passionate sex just once a year like those turtles that lay eggs on a beach like clockwork. That way we could plan for the special night. We’d only have to remove leg hair once a year, and pregnancy scares would happen all together. But we’re not that kind of animal. WE ARE THE OTHER KIND. We’re like lions and tigers. We roar. We scratch (depending). We even do some other weird shit we pick up from our childhoods that we would never tell anyone about. It’s because we are programmed to do so. We are programmed to get horny, see another person, and want to fuck them. It is a natural part of life. What I’m saying is: IT’S OKAY TO FUCK. And everybody is doing it.

Yes, Mr. Pope, I’m sorry to break it to you: WE ARE ALL FUCKING.
Women are fucking. Gay people are fucking. Secret service agents are fucking. People who aren’t married are fucking. Teens are fucking. Our parents are fucking. Teachers are fucking. Even Republicans are fucking. (note: okay, some people aren’t fucking, but that’s because they’re on depression meds, adhere to strict religious code, secretly hate their husbands, have lost their libidos, are old and sick of fucking, or are just waiting for the ‘right guy’ and dying inside [someone I know])

Don’t be alarmed. It’s okay. We were born to hump. I see what you conservative people are doing. Denying is meant to be coy. But look what happens when you deny: Larry Craig. Priests. Anthony Wiener (and the many other texting wieners). It is not working to pretend we’re not having sex. It doesn’t make us seem cute. It makes us seem like liars. It makes us look naive. And prude. The more we deny, the more people assume we’re hiding something. Most people probably think the Santorums have a sex den full of minors in their basement.

Let it out. It’s okay. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO FUCK. Because we are animals. It’s okay to have a sexual appetite. It’s okay to want to have sex before marriage. It’s okay to masturbate, fantasize, do it like dogs, and take birth control pills. Get over it. Stop being so prude. Enjoy an orgasm once in a while.

Be an animal.

(before)

I haven’t spent more than twenty dollars on an item of clothing since 2008. Or even before that. Or pretty much ever. I think my prom dress was $300, and I still feel guilty about it (Sorry, Mom). I’m not thrifty because I’m writing a clever book on saving money. I don’t have a secret blog about my money diet. I just have problems spending money.

I wouldn’t say I’m cheap. I’ll donate to your cause if you ask me. I’ll buy you dinner if we go out (if we’re at Sizzler or Portillo’s). I love splurging on Christmas gifts. But when it comes to myself, I do not spend money. I save on underwear by not wearing any. I never get my hair cut. I eat Subway a lot for dinner. I know how to sacrifice. I must have spent a previous life as a Holocaust victim (Surely forgoing brand name denim is just like what the Jews went through).

One of my courses in psychology school is about self-nurturing. We’re supposed learn how to love ourselves and shit. So, we HAVE to do nice things. Just for ourselves! It’s a requirement. I haven’t yet bought any good clothes (because gross. I hate shopping), but I did splurge on something.

I hired a maid.

I felt guilty about it at first. I mean, who can’t take a few minutes every week to wipe up the bathroom? ME! I can’t take a few minutes every week to wipe up the bathroom. Or fold my clothes after I do laundry. It’s ME! I come home late from my freelance job where I do important things like coin soon-to-be famous phrases on infomercials. Then I go to my flamenco class. Then I write jokes for Taboo Tales. Then I bla bla bla. And all of a sudden, my entire apartment looks like it’s my high school room minus the Kirk Cameron poster. In 2012 alone, I’ve uttered the phrases “I can’t live like this.” and “How do they do it?” over two zillion times.

And so I broke through my guilt and mentioned to a friend that I was shamefully thinking of hiring someone to clean my place, a one-bedroom apartment that can probably fit in your apartment.

That opened the floodgates. That day, I learned that everyone in LA has a maid. THAT is how they do it. I will probably be shot for this because the rule here is: DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR MAID unless you are sure you’re talking to someone else who has a maid.

Everyone has a maid (except people who don’t yet know that everyone has a maid). Everyone is really good at not talking about their maids. As soon as I expressed interest, I was invited into the secret maid society. I got tips from maid pros:

“Before you take someone’s maid recommendation,” one friend said, “go to their house and slide your finger along the base of the toilet. Ya know. Just to see.”

“Your maid will go through a peacock phase and then start to get lazy,” another friend said. “After a year, she won’t clean any better than you do.”

“Don’t pay more than fifty. You can get a maid for thirty bucks on Craigslist.”

Thirty bucks! To wipe up the base of my toilet? Isn’t that illegal?
It turns out, YES, it is illegal. Still, everyone has a maid.

I never went to my friend’s house to check his toilet, but I used his recommendation. And in a jiffy, Pati was at my house. I thought she’d be impressed because I’d already cleaned. I made my bed to show her who was boss. I shoved a rag around my bathtub to convince her I’d cleaned it more than that one time. I had an inkling she might just show up and tell me not to waste my money on her.

Nope. She showed up and let out a squeal when she saw the tub. It turns out, the bathtub is not supposed to be lined with black mold. What I thought might be an hour-long session lasted SIX HOURS. She made love to my apartment. She caressed it with foams and bleaches. She vacuumed my toaster. She soaked the shelves of my refrigerator. SHE VACUUMED MY TOASTER.

She charged me eighty dollars to clean for six hours. I wanted to pay her my soul.

My apartment is once again reminiscent of my adolescent hovel, but for those few days that followed, I felt wonderful. I felt free to frolic in the germless wonder of my one-bedroom. I spread out on the floor. I rolled around in my sparkly tub. I toasted several clean breads. And I realized that it does feel good to do things for myself. It feels really good. I’m pretty sure it’s all downhill from here. Be warned. I’m going to be a person who has a maid and talks about that maid. Because I fucking deserve it. But, please, if I start bragging about my new Prada bag, do something.

There’s something weird about mother-daughter relationships. Daughters often say they don’t want to be like their mothers. Mothers often cultivate an obsession with buying their daughters clothing from Kohl’s.

There are usually fights. Sometimes eye rolls. Plenty of complaining.
My theory is that both moms and daughters live on the fence: Daughters want their moms to both leave them alone and take care of them. Mothers want their daughters to be both autonomous and do what they say.

It usually ends up in some outburst on a major holiday.

My mom and I have been through that.
In high school, I convinced myself that the main problem in our relationship was that my mom had low self-esteem. So, I did what you should always do to a person with low-self-esteem: I told her every day how embarrassed she should be about having low self-esteem. I hadn’t yet learned about projections, which is when you see in others what you really feel about yourself (Thanks, psych school). I guess I had low self-esteem. I’m not sure how I didn’t realize that as I stuffed my bras and gave away my lunch money to popular kids (Nick Pope, you owe me at least twenty-three dollars in quarters).

It’s been a ride, this whole relationship thing. But we magically got to a place where I’m not judging her anymore. And she no longer answers the phone, “Didn’t I already talk to you this week?”
It took a while though! Junior high and high school weren’t the best, as my self-esteem got lower and my judgments of my mother got more abundant. That’s why it was a big deal that I wrote her an ode last year for Father’s Day. It’s RIGHT HERE! You know how you do something one day and you like it, but you look back at it another day and you think it could be so much better? That’s how I feel about that ode. There are so many other things to say about my mom besides that she taught me to think farts are funny. Still… out of this entire blog (which is pretty damn huge since I started it in 2008 [first post ever here, which mentions my mom. AH! Am I the kind of person that always talks about my mom?]), the live theater show, Blogologues, chose that entry to perform ON STAGE in NY right now. They’re doing a run IN NYC from now until May 5th. An ode to my momma ON STAGE! How cool is that? Mom, does this make up for that self-esteem thing?

Who wants to come see it with me?!!! I’ll be there April 28th at 8pm. Tickets and info are here: Blogologues! YAY!!!!!! Happy early Mothers Day.

I don’t know how a writer knows when she’s reached the pinnacle of her career, but I’m pretty sure I have. I have written what some might call an opus, what others might call an embarrassment, and what most might call…

an infomercial.

Yeah.
I have.

At my current place of freelance work, I was tasked with the assignment to sell a workout plan. They disguised it as an “informational promo video,” but I knew what they meant. We all knew what they meant as we stared at the floor and twiddled our pens. Some people nodded and pretended to think of a creative way to sell a workout plan. I started thinking of what phrases I could use. “Real results,” “Melt off the weight,” “Menu options.” I’m proud to admit the client bought MY script. You guys, I sold a script in Hollywood. It happens to be an infomercial script, but STILL. It includes some women talking about how they’ve lost 25 pounds. AND… a new term that nobody has ever heard before that I totally made up: red carpet body.

Have the women in my video lost twenty-five pounds? I don’t know. I don’t even know if any women have ever tried such a workout plan. But there they are in my script wearing tank tops and showing off their red carpet bodies.

Am I going to hell? Maybe.

Am I simply on the path to ‘real writer’ and taking any assignment necessary so that I don’t feel like a liar when I say I’m a writer even though an infomercial script is hardly considered ‘writing?’ Yes.

In other news, there’s a show in NY called Blogologues, and it brings ‘stuff from the interwebs’ to the stage. They chose THIS HERE BLOG to be showcased on their stage! IN NEW YORK (where Broadway is!)! Two talented actresses acted out this entry of my blog in New York. I’d like to point out that there are no menu plans or red carpets in that entry. That kind of makes me a real writer, right? Write? (Am I a real writer if I use ‘write’ instead of ‘right’ for dramatic effect?)

In more other news, I have a BOOK COMING OUT. Kinda. Not really a book of my own, but a book that my words are in! It’s an anthology called Dancing at the Shame Prom, and it’s a collection of stories from women who’ve learned that talking about our issues releases them. The back of the book says, “Shame is a powerful thing. It can weigh on your heart and mind, diminish your sense of self-worth, and impact the way you live in the world. But what happens when you share that secret burden?”

You can pre-order it on Amazon and everything! They don’t list me as a writer on Amazon because I don’t have a big enough ‘name.’ But STILL. That kinda means I’m a real writer. RIGHT? WRITE?

In even OTHER news, I went to a writers’ conference where I met with a bunch of agents and editors. I shook hands powerfully, made eye contact, and tried hard to make self-deprecating jokes that made me seem humble yet full of self-worth. Some very important people read my words and told me how to get published in a way that Amazon might credit me for my words. I did not tell them about my “promotional video.” At the end of the conference, I won the editor’s choice award from an agent at Simon and Schuster. She called my writing ‘gorgeous and poignant.’ Huzzah.

I saw her afterward and gave her a hug. She said something like, “You won because the quality of writing at this year’s conference was pretty low.”

But STILL! I will take it. I will take it because it makes writing about red carpet bodies seem irrelevant.

In even OTHER news, I wrote a Taboo Tale with some girls. I’m pretty proud of it:

Writing is what I most love to do. I can sometimes only think with my hands. Trying to get someone to believe that I’m a good writer is the pits though. It shouldn’t matter what others think, but if I ever want to stop writing about red carpet bodies, it’s a necessity. Dangit.

People ask me why I’m busy all the time. It’s because I’m over here TRYING! Man alive. I am trying and trying and trying. And sometimes not sleeping. And many times forgetting where I am or to change my clothes or to breathe. And in the meantime, I’m grasping onto the patience that is only slightly balanced atop the dream of giving up, moving to the suburbs, and popping out a kid in a station wagon (I’m a fan of alternative births). All while I’m writing about weight loss. But I am sure the day will come. That’s what happens when you don’t give up. Right? WRITE?

You better not change the channel when you see my information promo video!
See you in hell.