Category: hmmm

A man crossed the street in front of my car yesterday. Since I was hiding behind my windshield, I had a rare opportunity to stare at him without the possibility of awkward accidental eye contact. He had what some call a FUPA, or Fat Upper Pussy/Penis Area.  It was as if he had a monster truck tire strapped into his underwear, and he had to hobble across the street with a cane in order to carry all that extra weight. I stared without shame and followed his body from the very bottom of his ankles up. And at the top, I saw his face (Obviously. If his face weren’t there, I would have screamed). His huge bottom lip sagged down as if it were pulled by the extra weight of his FUPA. His mouth hung open, surely sloshing fellow pedestrians with uncontrollable drool.

I wanted to run out of my car and talk to this man. I wanted to know what it’s like to grow up with such a FUPA and such an uncontrollable bottom lip. Maybe one day I’ll have a bloated upper pussy area, but today I can frolic joyfully and cane-free through crosswalks and sprinklers. What’s it like not to be able to stand up at will or not drool while walking? What is it like to shop for huge underwear and not be able to go on roller coasters?

And then I thought: Holy shit. Humans are all so different. Here we are, all living these intertwining lives but experiencing such different existences. If I walked with this man around the city and stopped to buy a top hat and a croissant, we’d each come away with such unique experiences even though we bought the exact same hat.

I thought about this all day long.

And then I went to the Korean spa. It’s less of a spa and more of a haven for bodies. It’s where people go to rest their limbs and wash away their sins. Or maybe just their eczema.

The first step at the spa is: get nekked. All naked. Lots of naked.

I LOVE being naked. I prefer to sleep naked. I hate waistbands. I’ve spent entire meetings imagining how much better they would be if I were naked. One day, I will probably be a nudist. But, I wasn’t such a fan of the birthday suit until recently.  I spent plenty of my childhood hating my body and hiding it in sweatpants. I had bow-legged bird legs, but I thought I was fat. I just knew I had cellulite in places I couldn’t see. I wouldn’t say I had an eating disorder, BUT I did weigh my pasta and only eat fat-free devil’s food cakes from Healthy Choice. Remember those? 50 calories each! Maybe I had a slight eating disorder.

In junior high, I would never have imagined I’d be stripping down to prance around with my titties out in front of Korean strangers. I also would never have imagined I’d be living a life that didn’t require inch-long fake nails.

But there I was. Real nails, nude, and soaking in hot, bubbling water with other women whose tits were out– whose everything was out. I marveled at the variety of pubic hair. I marveled at the body sizes and shapes, not one like any body in any magazine. Just real beautiful bodies. Wide bodies. Skinny bodies. Dark bodies. Peachy bodies. Misshapen bodies. Bodies with random hairs in weird places. Bodies with scars. Bodies with boulder boobies. Bodies with crater titties.

A tiny older woman wearing granny panties and a bra (employees get to cover their vaginas) poked out of a hole in the wall and called my number.

My turn.

I lay naked on a padded slab while this woman put on abrasive gloves and scrubbed every inch of my body. Every inch. I’m talkin butt crack. Armpits. The strange unnamed area between my crotch and my leg. She got it. She scrubbed for a good forty minutes, occasionally dousing me with warm water to wash away the mounds of skin that had piled up on the table.

I cannot begin to describe my pride as I lay there with everything out for the world to see. I was proud that I have reached a point where I am not ashamed of my body. And I was proud of how relaxed I was. I could relax! Last year, I could get naked, but I would still have worried about whether or not the employee was judging my leg stubble or staring at the dirt in my bellybutton (I can’t get it out! Not my fault.). I have come a long way. This time, I was so relaxed that I scared myself. I thought it slightly dangerous to lie there so open, so naked, so loose. I imagined all of my organs  falling out through my vagina. Could that happen? Had anyone ever experienced this much naked relaxation before? Maybe I was the first and all my organs would plop right out onto the table. Would the woman just scrub them?

While she loofah-ed my one-day-FUPA area, I stared at all those ladies parading around in their personal glories. I realized that nudity is the great equalizer. I couldn’t tell anyone apart. That is not an Asian joke. Without clothes or phones or cars or ideas to define us, we all look the same. I couldn’t even tell if anyone had a FUPA. We all think our bodies are too fat or too thin or too weird, but when they’re all just chilling together, they’re all the damn same. We are all the same.

Perhaps we’re having slightly different experiences, but I’m pretty sure those experiences are mainly just variations of the same thing. We all want to be loved. We all spend our lives doing things we love and things we don’t love. We suffer. We laugh. We fear. We squeal with joy. We learn stuff, fail, hate ourselves, and hopefully one day learn to love ourselves no matter what. Whether we have a FUPA or a crater tit.

All the same.

 

[photo credit: Spencer Tunick]

I spent Valentine’s Day alone. Yeah, so? It was only because I had plans with Whitney Houston.

They suddenly fell through.

It is so strange that so many people think staying alone on Valentine’s Day is not cool. I got so many offers from friends who wanted to pull me out of my house and get me to not be depressed. Well, I wasn’t depressed. I was sipping wine in front of my space heater, writing and feeling pretty fucking great. Mostly. Maybe my womb is weeping, but I’m just dandy.

My favorite offer came a few days before V-Day from my Spanish tutor (yes, I have a Spanish tutor. I want to make sure I’m not writing the equivalent of the wrong ‘your’ in any other language.). She told me that she and her husband spent a lot of time figuring out which of their friends would be perfect for me. They analyzed them all and sweetly hand-picked one just for me. I didn’t ask for anybody. I’m TAKING A BREAK, dammit.

She interrupted my verb conjugating by showing me his picture on Facebook. Look! There he is sitting down at a party. Look! There he is sitting in a car! Look! There he is sitting in our old living room.

“That’s nice,” I said. “He’s cute.”

“Just one thing.”

“Okay.”

“He only has one leg.”

“Okay.”

“And he lives in Italy.”

Now, I’m not picky. I’m very open to new things. But, really? Am I really desperate enough to date someone who lives in Italy? I mean, REALLY? Of all the people in LA, she thinks the best person for me is someone who lives IN ITALY? Doesn’t she know how horrible it is over there (According to the cast of ‘The Jersey Shore.’)? And one leg? One leg could definitely be interesting and perhaps a new fetish I might enjoy. But she was suggesting that the BEST option for me is a peg-leg with whom I’ll have to have cybersex. Let’s make it a little harder and throw in some kids and an ex-wife.  And he should also have HIV too. And lupus. Anything AS LONG AS I’M NOT SINGLE.

She is the cutest human being I know and is obviously just looking out for me. As are all the others who offer me their nephews or their neighbors. But…

You guys. Seriously. Thanks. But, I’m cool. I am okay as a single woman! I am okay shaving my legs once a week and rarely washing my dishes. And it’s great not being left in restaurants. So, thanks but no thanks.

This has been an announcement.

 

LA is big. It’s all spread out, and some people refuse to go from one side to the other. It’s a maze of anonymity. I’m in a cafe right now surrounded by laptops. Clicking and more clicking. Nobody looks up. We’re all the same, but we don’t even notice each other. I did one of those asshole things today and noticed someone. I sat down at a table directly facing a woman at the table across. We keep making accidental eye contact. Sorry, lady. I broke the unwritten rule of ‘whoever sits second makes sure they’re out of the eye horizon of others.’

There are many secret LA cafe rules.

-Watch other peoples’ computers when they go to the bathroom

-Don’t take up the outlet for longer than you need.

-Don’t make loud phone calls about your Vitamin-selling business.

That last one gets broken quite often.

It’s easy for Angelenos to forget about humanity, remaining lost in their headphones.  We isolate in our cars and swim in this concrete pool of strangers and palm trees. So, when I got a call to go to Blackburg, Virginia for a job, I said YES! (with an exclamation point). It would be a week-long journey to work in an ad agency in a town with one movie theater and a few local restaurants. I accepted because I wanted to see a new town.

I also said yes because I love hotels.

Ok, and I also said yes because they promised there’d be a man standing at the airport waiting for me WITH A SIGN!

This is when I knew I had made it.
A MAN WITH A SIGN AT THE AIRPORT!!

Sure, he spelled my name wrong in two places, but STILLLLLL! I’ve made it! I’ve made it! Sure, I traveled in coach, but I still traveled on business. I made sure to tell all those in the US Airways waiting area that I was traveling on business.

“Excuse me, have they started boarding yet? I’m traveling ON BUSINESS.”

Ever since watching Working Girl in 1988, I’ve wanted a really business-y job that comes with an airport lounge membership, a briefcase, red nails, sneakers that I wear to work, and heels I change into at my desk.

Even though he spelled my name wrong, this man with the sign would have to do:

He drove my writing partner and I to our LUXURY hotel. I am capitalizing ‘luxury’ so you get an idea of how high-class this hotel was. No gym, room service, or pool, BUT my room had two TVs in it. AND a fridge. You might not understand the amount of luxury in this place until I tell you that they gave me a ‘thank you’ note at the end of my stay. MAN WITH SIGN. TWO TVs. THANK YOU NOTE. CAPITALS.

I will be signing autographs outside my apartment for the next three hours.

They gave my partner and me the keys to an annexed office where we were holed up and alone for seven days, taking breaks only to dine in the town’s local spots. There were lots of calzone restaurants. Virginians must love calzones.

It was day #2 when we ran out of ideas. We had to present our genius writings and prove we were worth all this luxury. We’d thought for two days in a row, and since we’re writers (and sensitive ‘artists’), we immediately hated all our ideas.

In an attempt to be funny, my partner wrote ‘HELP’ on the window in Post-It notes. We laughed. We scribbled some ideas on papers. We ate calzones.

By day four, we hadn’t met many locals. We tried to go to a frat party, but the Virginia Tech kids wouldn’t tell us where they were. We were too old and didn’t smell enough like Abercrombie. We had memorized every mole on each other’s faces and wanted to run away from each other. But we were TRAPPED in a vacant office. By Day Five, we really did need help.

And lucky us. Help came.

As we pulled up to our office, the cops were there. A tall one and a short one. A good and a bad one.

“We got a call about someone needing help in here?”

“Oh, we’re fine.” I told them. I froze up. Cops! I don’t know why I am always nervous around cops. They have the power to fine me and arrest me in a non-sexy way. AH! Cops. Rodney King. Cops.

“Who put this up? Who needs help?” They were pissed. They were gonna take us in and we’d surely be raped in a southern jail over Post-Its.

“Uh, sorry sir,” I said. “We, uh, we just needed help with ideas.”

“Well,” the short one said. He got closer to me. I saw a bead of sweat.

Ah! It’s all over. I’m going to be sent back to LA in a taxi without a man with a sign. I have ruined all my credibility.

“Next time,” he breathed. “Be sure to specify that. Write ‘HELP WITH IDEAS.’”

“Okay?”

“Have a good one.” They walked out.

I LOVE VIRGINIA!
In all caps.

Be more specific when faking emergencies? Sure, I can do that. Cops would never have even come in LA. Most of us are too busy to notice when someone needs help here. Unless they faint in a cafe or accidentally stop listening to their headphones, nobody notices. I just sneezed in this crowded cafe of 20 people, and nobody said a word. Why don’t I live in Virginia? They have calzones! And friendly police officers. Should I move? I think I need some ideas. HELP WITH IDEAS.

I fucking LOVE calzones.

Thanks to everyone who supported me last week in my existential crisis. My feelings had been boiling over, and I needed to write them all out. I feel much better now that I’ve pissed my feelings all over. On friends, on strangers and on possible job recruiters who will never ever call me. Aaaaahhhhh. Much, much better. I’m pretty sure this honesty is so freeing because I spent about 83% of my life NOT being honest.

1991
Mom: You want to Pizza or Chinese?
Me: I just want whatever you want.

1996
Friend: Let’s put these jeans on under our jeans in the dressing room and walk out. Nobody will know.
Me: I don’t think we should, but okay.

2000
Boyfriend: Let’s have sex in my car even though it’s 3am and you’re really tired and drunk and won’t enjoy it at all.
Me: I guess if you want to.

I want to go back to my younger self and shake her. It took me a while to figure out how to say ‘NO!’ or ‘I want THIS,’ but I guess that’s part of growing up. Right? We grow up and learn how to talk about where we are in life, stick up for ourselves, and share our emotions. Right? Once we hit thirty we reach a point where we say goodbye to codependence and know exactly what we want and how to ask for it. Right? RIGHT?

No.

The answer is no. Not everyone is comfortable talking about their feelings or communicating their needs. I have become acutely aware of this because, during this stint in psychology school, ALL I WANT TO DO IS TALK ABOUT MY FEELINGS AND NEEDS. So much so that I even annoy myself:

Me: I feel like walking to Subway for a Veggie Delight submarine sandwich.
Myself: Would you like to explore those feelings fully?
I: Yes, as this is bringing up some memories that need to be healed.

I’ve noticed that I’m annoying others too (read: I don’t have friends anymore). Especially men. I guess not all men. I don’t want to generalize here because that’s a cliché, and I hate when I’m a cliché because then I might as well just say ‘Don’t push your luck.’ or ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,’ which I would never say. So, I guess I just mean to say that this one man really hated everything about feelings.

We’re not dating anymore.

We had been romping it up since a wedding in October (Weddings. They ruin everything). And then December rolled around. That meant two whole months of doing that cute smiley stuff like holding hands and overlooking the fact that he used the same sponge to clean the dishes and the countertops.

I decided to have a talk with him about feelings. I swear it wasn’t meant to be the cliché ‘talk,’ because, as stated, I don’t like clichés and I might as well just say that ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ I naturally wanted to talk about my feelings because, as stated above, IT FEELS GOOD.  It’s nice to let someone know with words that being with them sparks your heart and your groin area. Okay, and I wanted to know if he felt the same way too, which I guess means it was supposed to be the cliché talk. DAMMIT.

We curled up at a dark restaurant and ordered some wine.

“I really like you,” I told him.

I don’t know what I said next. I think I tried so hard to not sound like the typical girl that I sounded exactly like the typical girl. (I never actually said that I was GOOD at communicating my feelings. I just said that I liked it.) So, I spit out some words, and they might have been filled with clichés. In fact, I might have accidentally said that curiosity killed the cat (read: Where do I stand with you?). Ugh.

But, STILL! I was happy that I had gotten out my feelings. There they were. Right on the table next to the hummus dip: I like you. It would make me happy to know if you like me.

His face went flush and twitched a bit.

“I can’t talk about this…. with food on the table.”

He gasped for air.

“I understand,” I pleaded. “It’s okay. I’m going to go to the restroom to give you some air.”

And so I went. And I waited in there for a bit, thinking about how I had just ruined our two months with my stupid rush to be in a stupid relationship. But I had been picking out curtains for our new place in my mind, and you kind of want to know where you stand if you’re picking out curtains in your mind. Or you kind of just want to know anything! Because, as evidenced EVERYWHERE IN THIS BLOG, being honest is oh so freeing.

And then I stepped back outside, ready to tell him we could wait until he was comfortable or go find a location with no food in sight.

But it seemed like he had already done that.

There was our table. It had been bussed and cleaned.

There was no man. Gone.

GONE!

Gone like the wind. Gone like poof!

I stayed calm. He must have been just getting air. He would be right outside the door.

But, NO. No, HE WASN’T just outside the door. And so I thought that he must be by the car because he was probably just excited to get to that new spot so we could talk in a place without food. Yes, that had to be it.

Nope. I got to the parking space and the car that we had both come in was gone.

GONE.

A MAN LEFT ME AT A RESTAURANT!
I stood alone in that empty parking space and laughed. I was trapped in my very own romantic comedy, only the guy who left me did not look at all like Hugh Grant or Matthew McConaughey.

I stayed calm and breathed through it. I called him. He came back. Then he dropped me off and went to a party.

This is the part where I failed: We dated for another month. Yeah, we did. Because I didn’t want to let go of those curtains. Fuck you, curtains.

When we finally broke up, my friend said, “I knew he wasn’t for you when he left you at the restaurant.”

Oh yeah. Me too. But sometimes you fall in love with the headlines: Reunited at a wedding! Guy who can’t explore feelings learns how! Imagined curtains come to life in cute new couple’s home!

Siiiiiigh.

I am taking a break from dating. I’m going to stick with psychology school and be a PROUD cliche who is “working on herself.” If I do ever date someone again, may it be a man willing to discuss feelings at length. It doesn’t have to be every day. It doesn’t have to be about everything. It just has to be in the same room.

A few weeks ago, I published an article on Tiny Buddha, an online magazine for spiritual enthusiasts. It was an old blog post that I sent in for fun. The editor edited out a few jokes (ugh, I hate when they do that), and put it up. Some people liked it. Some people didn’t. You can’t please everybody.

Those that didn’t like it sure were vociferous though. It was an article on how we learn from every relationship, even ones that end. Some people felt that they knew everything about me from that one article. They thought they had free reign to judge me:

“Sounds like you could use a break from dating. Break free from the codependent loops for a while and gain some perspective. That way on your death bed, if there isn’t a ring on your left ring finger, maybe you won’t feel like a failure.”

“There is a lot of sarcasm here to mask the bitterness that obviously wants to surface.”

“An article like this is more for yourself then any theoretical reader. By putting it ‘on paper’ you’re hoping to rationalize and justify your past failures.”

And my favorite: “You got serious issues.”

Of all the comments, only about ten were harsh. It’s funny that I’ve published things on the Huffington Post, KCET, here, and a in a few other online magazines, and the most judgmental reactions came from a ‘spiritual’ outlet. I would be totally judgmental if I said they were doing spirituality wrong, so I won’t say that.

It wasn’t the specific comments that bothered me. What they said wasn’t based on anything, and I don’t really care what these people hiding behind computer screens may think about my dating life.

But it did make me think: Why am I putting my personal life out there? Why am I being so honest so that other people can see? Why am I making myself so vulnerable? Why am I creating an environment that allows for people to judge my life? WHY AM I DOING THAT?!

That day, my professor of psychology asked me about a project I had chosen to do. She asked, “Are you doing it because you want to or because you feel like you’re supposed to?”

I began asking myself that question about everything. And thus began my existential crisis. Am I writing about my personal life because I feel obligated? Do I secretly feel not creative enough to invent fictional characters? Am I writing jokes about life because I want people to like me?

Then I got scared. We have all seen those Facebook status updates: “I’m doing everything I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. My life is the best.”

Nobody believes those posts. Everyone (well, me, I guess) thinks that those are just for show. Those super positive posts are there to make people think we’re perfect. (This is my way of judging, but since this is my post I allow it.).

Is this blog my way of showing some caricature of myself? Is it really me, or is this space right here just one HUGE annoying Facebook status update? Am I even being honest about myself at all? Was I so mean in high school (yes!) and drunk in my twenties (yes!) that I want to now prove that I SWEARIMNOTLIKETHAT anymore? Or, do I think I’m not a real writer since I haven’t published anything in print, so I have to prove that I’m a writer HERE, where I have the final say?

Is that what I’m doing?

And if this is true, have I been lying to myself since 2008? Have I been thinking that I enjoy writing when really I have been trying to prove myself?

Just then, I started to read a book required for school, Creativity Revealed. The first part talks about Plato’s description of perception: If a group of human beings grow up with their bodies and heads bound to face the back wall of a cave, they can’t see each other or what is behind them. They’ve never experienced life outside, but they see the shadows of people walking by projected onto the cave wall. And for them, that’s what life and humans are: shadows. Because that’s all they see. Their reality is shadows.

Then the book says: Could we, as human beings, be the ones bound and tied, observing the projections and considering them reality? For millennia, sages from all the great traditions have been telling us the answer is: YES!

Great. So, in the first few weeks of 2012, I have not only learned that my favorite thing to do is a lie, but MY WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE. Reality is not real. I am looking at a cave wall. I am a lying hack. I am stuck in a codependent loop. AND I HAVE SERIOUS ISSUES.

Full. Existential. Crisis. Mode.

This is when I stopped doing laundry and brushing my teeth. I have cried more in 2012 already than I did in the entirety of 1986 (and that was the year I rode my tricycle down the stairs and broke my collarbone). With those questions only came more questions: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THEN? WHAT IS REAL? ARE HUMANS EVEN REAL? AND IF NOT, CAN THEY BE FUNNY? WHO AM I IF I’M NOT A STRUGGLING WRITER? WHY CAN’T I PAY MY PHONE BILL ON TIME? WHY IS IT SO COLD IN LOS ANGELES? WHERE ARE MY PANTS?

I have ditched many friends lately. I have cried in my car, on my living room floor, and at the beach. I have not been able to stop eating butter. Yes, butter. Sometimes butter JUST HELPS OKAY. And underneath all the questions and anxiety is fear. FEAR. My dad killed himself, and as each day passed with more tears, my anxiety level rose: Will I ever get over this shit? Am I going to wallow in my apartment drinking alone until I die? Fuck. More butter.

And then yesterday I realized something: I haven’t been writing. Yesterday, I felt like I could not go a day longer without writing about these feelings. I’ve talked them out. I’ve scared my mom. I’ve made my friends take me to IHOP (they have good butter). But, it wasn’t enough. When my friend Mike DeStefano died, I HAD to write about it immediately. Writing is just how I think. Writing is how I breathe. Putting this shit on paper is how I figure it all out. And that’s when I realized: I’m not a faker! I am doing this for ME. BECAUSE I WANT TO. I NEED to write every day. Or else. It’s for my sanity. And I put it on here because why? I don’t know. To find people like me? To make others think? To create a community? Or is it because if I don’t, then I won’t write?

That’s what it is. (And I just figured this one out right this second through writing. Hallelujah).

If I don’t feel pressured to get something up here every week, I WONT DO IT. And if I don’t do it, I GO INSANE and eat butter. I’m like a tea kettle that’s screaming, and if I don’t pour out my stories, they boil over back inside me and wash away my organs.

So, there.
Ah.

Fuck, I feel better.

I still don’t know how I feel about the cave. Or the confused reality. Or the EVERYTHING ELSE. But one thing is clear, and that is that I MUST write.

So, that’s good. And also time consuming. But good. This crisis has had me questioning everything, but it has secured a few truths for me too: I don’t like the font ‘Arial.’ Sweatpants can be so comforting, but the moment they start to smell bad they are depressing. The beach feels and smells good. Crying alone in movies is the best. I LOVE CAPITALS. I love my mom. I’m fragile. I like butter better than cheese. Humans are definitely funny (If we are in fact humans. Not sure).

Through this whole thing, I’ve been so supported by so many people. Friends have let me talk their ears off (That’s a metaphor. Don’t worry. No ears actually fell off.). Even strangers on Twitter kept me company when I wasn’t sleeping but just laying in my bed staring out my window and wondering if what I was seeing was real. Relationships are so hard but so rewarding, and I guess if that’s all I get out of life, then I don’t fucking care if anything else is real.

Off to go STOP thinking for a while. And then eat some butter.