humans are funny

Category: acceptance

  • Hair today. Gone tomorrow.

    I wouldn’t say my mom is a hoarder. She’s more of a connoisseur of collecting. She’s organized about it. And there aren’t boxes obstructing the walkways in our house. But if I tell her that I really wish I could find the pink spandex outfit I wore in the fourth grade talent show or if I asked her if she still has that mug she got from the restaurant where she worked in 1978, the answer would be the same: it’s in the garage. Our garage has been home to old lawnmowers, bike pumps that don’t work, hoes (the garden kind), rusty tools (the garden kind), things seen on TV that only work on TV, sometimes a car, and thousands upon thousands of nostalgic relics.

    Since my mom is trying to sell the house, she’s been cleaning out the garage and saying goodbye to the past. Therefore, I’ve been the lucky receiver of several boxes full of stuff. The most recent box housed a book we read together in third grade, a manuscript she wrote in 1983 (It’s amazing, written on a typewriter, and totally publishable.), and a HUSTLER magazine from 1976.

    I know what you’re thinking: What kind of articles are in that 1976 HUSTLER magazine? Well, there’s a profile on Doyle Brunson, the world’s greatest poker player at the time. There’s a story called ‘The Fiend’ by Charles Bukowski. And there are jokes like, “The HUSTLER dictionary defines a cheap loser as a guy who fucks an old whore, turns the rubber inside out, fucks her again, and catches the clap.”

    Man, after the seventies, clap jokes really fell off.

    I cannot get over the sex pots of this magazine. Of course their makeup and shoes contrast the recent, but the actual bodies look almost alien compared to those of today. Because they’re real. There are no implants or photoshop in this HUSTLER and, actually, there don’t seem to be any razors either. It’s just a real celebration of the female body. The real, natural female body. I just happened to have a HUSTLER from 2011 in my possession (the articles!), so I compared. Photoshop plus the melange of treatments we give our bodies to remove our hair or bleach our assholes or tighten our vaginas or re-size our nipples or lift our faces just make us seem so… fake. I bet if a Hustler model from today walked onto a HUSTLER shoot from 1976, people would scream, poke at her boobs in fear, and then fuck her (because, come on… It’s a HUSTLER shoot).

    I vowed recently to stop writing about vaginas because I am more than a mere vagina writer, but there’s no way to look at a HUSTLER without commenting on the vag-er-oos. The ones from 1976 are basically nests of hair with a tiny bit of pink poking through. It’s a hair parade. In fact, I thought for a minute this was a magazine you get at the hair salon to showcase all the new styles. Hair. And it’s not even pruned around the edges for easy swimsuit wear. We’ve been convinced in the last few decades to think that hair is bad, but these women don’t seem to mind it. It’s natural. It’s part of the human body. While the vaginas of today are completely bald, they’re also so unnaturally monochrome that they look like plastic copies of pre-pubescent vaginas. They’ve been so photoshopped or bleached or chopped that even real fourteen-year-old girls probably think these vaginas look young.

    I’ve known for a while that we’ve been creating this unattainable ideal, but putting these magazines side by side actually scared me. We have trained society to beat off to something that doesn’t even exist naturally. There is so much plastic and fakery in these HUSTLER bodies that I barely see a difference between jerking off to them or a mailbox. Or a set of forks. Or a Conair 1800-watt blowdryer with retractible cord. I not only fear for women who see this stuff and feel like beauty is unattainable, I fear a constant disappointment. This and every other magazine is teaching men to be attracted to something other than the natural female body, which seems a bit counterproductive to procreation.  Eve: Let’s fill the earth with the fruit of our loins. Adam: I’m actually not really feeling it. But maybe if you shove some plastic bags filled with silicone under your nipples, get laser hair removal, and cut an inch off your labia minora.

    Oh, humans are funny. I hope this is just a phase and we can all soon go back to appreciating what we already have. I am oddly okay with a good wax though. Just to better see the goods. Show the goods! The real ones.

  • Dirty Ponytails and Mint Leaves


    I’m in San Francisco this weekend, and it makes me wonder: Why don’t I live in San Francisco? I’m in a café sitting on a ratted couch while a lady in a tie-dyed shirt strums a guitar. The place is packed with patrons straight out of Reality Bites. There are a few dogs, lots of laptops, and plenty of fancy coffee brewed one cup at a time. The tables are communal, and strangers make eyes at one another while pretending to study. All the furniture is from the Salvation Army and as dirty as the baristas’ ponytails. I can’t help feeling that I really fit in here. Not that I’m dirty. It’s just that everyone fits in here. Nobody’s propped against the wall asking ‘Who the hell are you?’ with their eyes like they do at my favorite café in Venice. Nobody in here is wearing make-up. And people are actually reading books and not scripts.

    It is so refreshing to eavesdrop on people who aren’t talking about The Bachelor and their recent failed audition. Although, that’s not fair. They could very well be talking about that here, but I can’t tell because the tie-dyed lady is going to town on her vocal chords with her rendition of “On Broadway.”

    I’m clapping and tearing up at the beauty of her ability to just do what she loves in a cafe all day without the anxiety of making money from it. I’m imagining a life here, a Victorian walk-up down the street with wood floors and lots of windows. The parties I’d have. The books I’d write from this very cafe. The dirty ponytail I’d wear. The cool hipster glasses I’d get.

    Uh oh.
    I just saw a barista pull a mint leaf from a real plant and put it in a tea. Maybe this place is actually too hip for me.

    It seems like I do this with every place I visit. It’s so much more fun to imagine how great life could be if only I moved. If only I had more money. If only I could get a better job. If only I lived in Bali or Laos or Mumbai. If only. Everywhere I go I imagine a life there that would be so perfect and so much better than whatever setup I have at home. I compare.
    But I think my goal is to be happy with what I already have. Imagine that.

    For most of my life that’s been a scary thought. That would be settling. That would be deciding that what I have is enough. And how could a shitty apartment with a popcorn ceiling be enough? How could adult acne and a job I don’t want and a coffee addiction be enough?
    Fear!
    I’ve finally realized that I’m always waiting for the calm to come. Waiting, waiting, waiting. As soon as I have my dream house and my dream job and a relationship all sorted out, THEN I can settle down to the thought that I am enough.
    But how long is that going to take? If I keep waiting, I’ll finally feel whole right about the time my tits are rounding the corner to my knees.

    Instead, I have to trust the process. If I know I’m on the right path, then every part about it is enough. We don’t buy puzzles already put together. We buy them because the act of putting them together is fun. (When I say ‘we,’ I mean me and my nerdy friends who have been known to delight in matching sky colors to form the outline of a Tuscan landscape. Ok, it was just me and no friends were involved.)

    For now, my puzzle piece is a cute little apartment in Venice that, yes, has a popcorn ceiling and I love it anyway even though it’s not in San Francisco or India or Bali.

    Uh oh.

    Tie-dyed just sang ‘Landslide’ and some other man/woman (80% sure she’s a woman) sang along from across the cafe. This is riveting entertainment. Nobody is that confident in Venice unless they’re homeless.
    I really love it here. So, maybe… maybe just this one time, everything I just wrote is bullshit and I do have to move. Just this one time.

    *Note: This mural sits in a random alley in SF. There’s a baby exiting the vagina of a woman who seems to have had her face darkened and ruined by pregnancy. This is why I fit in in San Francisco. This is why I’m never having babies.

  • You would see the biggest gift would be from me…


    For my entire childhood, I lived on the wrong side of town. In hindsight I can see that the invisible dividing line through our town was a bunch of bologna, but in junior high I was obsessed with being the coolest and therefore mortified by the location of our house and its general design. Now, I see our house as the beautiful hard work of a single mother, but at the time it disgusted me. Our appliances were old. Our carpeting was brown. And our bathtub had stains in it.

    My friends had nicer houses, and I idolized them for it. They all seemed so normal– they passed friendship notebooks around and had really stylish bangs and parents that were still together and not gay. They all lived in close proximity on the OTHER side of town so they could get together more often without me. And Lawrence, my ego who totally lacks self-esteem, just KNEW they were gossiping all about my shitty house and my weird dad who wore leather vests.

    Acceptance from these girls meant more to me than my Beanie Baby collection. So, one day I convinced the entire clique to come over for a slumber party. I rejoiced when they all agreed. Even Tammy came; she was the prettiest one who had boobs first. We talked about boys and our vaginas. We gossiped about everyone at school.

    Then, things took a bad turn. One girl thought she saw a doggie toy on the floor and, when she picked it up, found that it was actually dog diarrhea. If that wasn’t bad enough, we awoke at daybreak, excited to start the day with pancakes. And there it was… a dead, rotting mouse next to Tammy’s perfectly perky head.

    A dead mouse.
    It scurried under us in the night and keeled over right next to the most popular girl’s head. Great.

    I already lived on the trashy side of town, and I had forced my friends to come over, touch dog poo, and sleep on mice.

    Horrifying.

    Worst slumber party ever.

    But it’s not because my house wasn’t perfect that my slumber party failed. It’s mainly because my friends weren’t really friends. They were judgmental and mean and not at all nurturing. I don’t blame the actual people for acting this way. For spreading rumors about my nipples or tricking me into sitting in chocolate pudding at lunch. I blame the age. All girls seem to go through this horrible time period of feeling ugly and treating people uglier. This time period alone is the main reason for my indecision about having kids. Ah! So scary.

    I’m proud to say that my friends today would have no problem waking up on a mouse at my slumber party. I mean, they might not be happy about it. But I wouldn’t fear that they’d go talk about me behind my back. I wouldn’t think they’d condemn me from hosting slumber parties. They would simply think it hilarious, and it would be a funny story to be told at any gathering and most assuredly at my wedding. Because true friends don’t really care if you have mice or if you buy all your clothes at TJ Maxx or if you stick your hand in your pants at the movies or if you live on the wrong side of town. Real friends accept you no matter what. NO MATTER WHAT. Even if you don’t have good bangs, which I still don’t.

    It took me a long time to find them, but I finally did. In college. At work. In random classes. On this very blog. I finally have those real friends who love me even after knowing me really really well… even after knowing I talk about poo and never clean out my trunk and don’t own underwear. My self-esteem changed and so did my friends. To mirror Ellen and the rest: it does get better.
    Phew.
    Seriously.

    Being a writer can be a lonely road. I am often holed up in my apartment for weeks. My friends get it. Once something gets published, it’s like I have my own PR system, as my Facebook friends distribute it like confetti. What support! They’re proud of me. And I’m proud of them too. And it feels so good. Love feels like swimming in a bowl of whip cream. Even the friends I have never met, who stop by here every week, bring me such inspiration and motivation with their own gifts that I love and accept. I feel so lucky to have all kinds of friends who color my life with so much love. So, thank you. For you, I am so so so grateful. I can’t imagine what life would be like if I still had to watch what I said or keep secrets or worry about what rumors you were cooking up.

    Please come have a slumber party any time (sans mice). You’re always invited (but give me some notice. I know you love me anyway, but still I’d like to be wearing clothes when you come).

    Thank you for being there. And being here. And being you. And being amazing.

  • Dead Dad Part 2: acceptance, leftovers, and magic wands


    This week was shocking. So many friends and strangers and bloggers and dads reached out to me to let me know how much they related to my Fathers Day tribute. Or how much they cried. Or how much it made them feel (It’s here if you haven’t seen it).
    And hearing all this is really the most wonderful thing to hear. Knowing that my words have moved someone to tears is astounding. And unreal. And feels so fucking good. That’s really my life’s goal– to make people feel something.

    But I have a confession to make. I feel an obligation to tell you that that post took me 14 years to write. Not literally. I wasn’t sitting at a desk for fourteen years with a pen poised over paper. Then you would have probably never met me, and I would either be really fat or malnourished. But writing that piece required that I accept everything about my dad, which took a while. Accepting everything about someone is like inviting everyone on the entire street to your party. And being okay with the homeless people who show up and raid your vegetable crisper. You have to truly accept things that you may not like. Or things that scare you. And the hardest part is that you have to admit to yourself that your way is not the only way. TOUGH stuff. For me, it’s easier with dead people. I have yet to accept any boyfriend without requesting minor changes in personality and character. Yes, honey, I swear I love you but really you should be more motivated and also like the things I like.

    Parents are even harder to accept. You have an idea of who you want them to be, and when they don’t turn out like that, you have to just swallow it. I didn’t imagine my dad would be gay. But I accepted it. And just when things were cool, he up and committed suicide. Great. Hadn’t imagined that either.
    I gotta hand it to him– the man was an ace at surprises.

    When someone commits suicide, your entire perception of him is stained. Every good memory is accompanied by flashes of death or guilt or panic. For a long time, I would see a size 15 New Balance sneaker, and I would remember my father. And I would smile. And then immediately my brain’s channel would flip to him dead on his bed waiting for someone to find him. And then I’d undoubtedly remember his neighbor saying that he only knew my father was upstairs decomposing after he’d cleaned out his refrigerator and realized that the horrible odor was indeed not Korean leftovers. Yep, my decomposing father smelled like old kimchi.
    It’s gross. And perhaps horrifying. So I was positive those good memories were stained forever.
    I thought his goodness was gone. I thought I could never get the good back without a slap in the face with the bad.

    And then 14 years went by.
    And it’s finally happened. I’m at the point where I can imagine his brown slippers and see only 3-year-old me pretending they were boats. And then smile. And then move on.
    Only now can I listen to tapes of him playing the piano and simply remember his long fingers and how they swept across the keys like magic wands.

    14 years is so long. So so long. It could have been sooner. All I had to do was make the choice.
    But it’s hard to make that choice when you don’t understand there’s a choice to be made.
    My dad had a choice. He had life right there asking him to decide. He could have said ‘This is hard, but I’m learning how to get through it.’ Instead he said, ‘This sucks. I’m outtee.’

    Life’s all about those decisions. I have been choosing for years to say, ‘I grew up with a dead dad. That sucks. Whatever. I’m not going to think about it.’ And now I’m finally choosing to say, ‘This gives me a different perspective, and I’m going to learn what I can.’

    Once I made that decision, things became clearer. I figured out that my pops was just a man. Like any other man. He had problems and fears and traumas and delights. And he spent his life winging it. Just like all of us do. We’re guessing right now. And that’s all we can do. In 1996, he felt hopeless and helpless. And he guessed wrong. He made the only kind of mistake from which he couldn’t learn. Before, I used to wonder what he was thinking in those minutes before death, completely conscious about his decision and his imminent demise. Did he think about me? Did it take long? Was he gasping for air? Was he thrashing around? Did he change his mind? Did he regret it? Did he regret anything? Did he wonder if he’d left the iron on? Did he know he’d end up smelling like Korean leftovers?

    I’ll never know. But I have finally decided that I don’t need to know. I know that he was great when he was great. And I don’t need to spend any more time asking questions I can’t answer. Questions nobody can answer.
    I have chosen to finally move on. To finally forgive this man and see him as just that: A man. A man who made a mistake. A man who would undoubtedly take back that mistake. A man who would be here with me right now if he could.

    That’s why that tribute was so important to me. And that it means so much that other people got something from my years of work. 14 years in the making. 14 years to this moment where I can finally see our picture together and remember only the man whose feet I climbed onto. The guy who would dance me around the living room. That was my dad. That guy. That’s the guy I miss. That’s the guy who made everyone feel. Thanks again, Pops. You’re still teaching me lessons every day.

    Now… on to the difficult task of accepting the people who are alive.

    Me: Dad, I can’t believe you let Mom cut my hair this short. It’s hideous.
    Dad: You look fine. I’m the one with this horrible beard. It really itches.
    Me: Your beard is great. And those glasses. Just wait til 2010, and you’ll fit in with the hipsters in LA.
    Dad: Nah, I think I’ll head out in 1996 instead.
    Me: All righty then. It’s been fun. I shall remember this time we had together. Peace out.

  • A day for all fathers. Even dead ones.




    People with dead dads don’t usually love Fathers’ Day. It sort of says loudly, ‘Hey! Look at how everyone has a dad except you!’ However, since ads for toolboxes and necktie sales are blowing up, we might as well take the day to remember our dads and acknowledge them even if they’re not around.

    I especially would like to pay homage to my pops, the weirdest and coolest dad I ever had. Here ya go, Daddy-O:

    As a three-year-old, I thought you were a giant. I could sit in your size fifteen slippers. And when you came to pick me up at pre-school, I would wait for the top of your head to bob around the glass above the lockers. You were the tallest dad, and of that I was proud.

    You had the driest sense of humor. I barely understood you back then, but now I think we’d crack each other up. Now I’d get your jokes. I wish you were here to discuss the state of Saturday Night Live. And politics. I bet we’d have drinks until late and laugh, laugh, laugh.

    You always loved a nice scotch. And after a few, there was no doubt I’d find you sleeping in a chaise at any given family party. You had a snore like nobody I’ve ever known. Silent yet never unnoticed.

    I bet if you were alive, I would call you up and ask you to read the newspaper in an accent. You should have made a living out of your impersonations. You could imitate any stereotypical twang, from ‘ghetto black dude’ to ‘Harvard scholar’ to ‘Indian 7-ll owner.’ I can’t believe you didn’t harness that. Or maybe if you had, someone would have shot you.

    I think by now I would have persuaded you to go on Jeopardy. You were considered a genius by Mensa standards, and I’m sure you could have won us millions of quarters from Alex Trebek. By now I would have appreciated your intelligence. Back then I just thought you talked too much. But seriously, Dad. I asked you if unicorns existed and you spent two hours talking about all the different horse species and where the myth of the unicorn came from. Thanks, though.

    You know what else you were good at? Wrapping presents. I used to think divorce was the way to go because of the silent competition between you and my mom on who would give better gifts. Yours always looked like they were wrapped by fairies. Ha. HA!
    That just came out on accident. I wasn’t purposely calling you a fairy.
    But let’s get that out in the open.
    You were gay.
    How cool is that? I love that you were gay. I love the fact that you had the courage to say it and live it. I’m so proud that you didn’t stifle yourself, even if it meant divorce.

    Unlike many at the time, I thought nothing less of you. You were my dad. That’s it. My big and tall gay dad. I know you knew I supported you. I know you knew I stood proudly in the audience watching you sing in the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. I really was proud. I wish I had made that more clear.
    But I was thirteen. I didn’t really know how to talk about my feelings so much. Now I’m much better. I bet now we would have long conversations about how it felt to finally be your real self or your first experiences frolicking with men. I would love to know.

    But thirteen was bad timing for me. I was insecure, ugly, and trying my hardest with padded bras to be popular. ‘Faggot’ was the most common insult in junior high. So I told you to tone it down when you came to the suburbs to watch me lead cheers.

    This has been one of my only regrets. You built up so much courage to let your real self out after so many years, and here I was asking you to put it back in once in a while for the sake of my popularity.

    I sometimes close my eyes and wish that had never happened. But time never lets me change it. If it did, I’d have completely erased the whole Hammer pants trend (You, by the way, were the first to tell me that those were out of style and that I should stop doing my bangs. You were right! Sorry I didn’t listen. You were gay; I should have known.).

    Now that I see this whole life thing from a different point of you, I would have treated the entire situation differently. I would have told you every day how proud I was of you for finally shedding the weight of your lifelong secret. I would have talked to you about everything. I would have asked more questions and given more hugs. I would have screamed to all the cheerleaders that I had the hippest, coolest, gayest dad around. I would have made shirts that said MY DAD IS A FAGGOT AND I LOVE HIM. I would have gotten NBC news to do a story on us and how cool we were together. I would have bought us matching earrings. I would have made all my clothes out of rainbow flags and worn them every day.

    But I didn’t. So I’m doing it now.

    I’m saying it here: Dad, I’m grateful that you ever existed. And that you were a bizarre quirky soul. You were silly and neurotic and cynical and hilarious. And I learned from each and every little piece of you. And I keep learning from the short time I got to experience life with you. Because you are half of me, and I happen to really like that half. I wish you were here so I could hug you harder than ever and tell you that you mean a lot to me. And tell you that I accept you just as you are. And wear your shoes.

    James R Sala, original hipster 1948-1996