My boss has her computer volume on "high" and she's singing along to a
Mariah Carey CD right now.
Just one song.
On repeat.
It's 9:08 in the morning.
At what point can I completely fucking freak out?
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Relationships: Where Honesty Can Be Rubbed In With Over-the-Counter Poison. And Purel.NOW! With More Waves On The Sides!
I met a gorgeous friend of mine at the bar after work Friday before last. This was a first, because regardless of all of the "LET'S GO OUT WE SHOULD GO OUT LET'S TOTALLY GO OUT IT'S ON IT'S ON IT'S ON" bullshit that she sputters, what she
really means is, "I would love to go out, and would have loved to go out
any time--
one time-- during the last nine years, but unfortunately I married a man who I trust exactly enough to go to work in the morning, sometimes, and he trusts me even less, and so I'm going to continue to
pretend like you and I are going to go out drinking at some point, like normal humans, but the truth is that I'm always going to have to be home within eight minutes of five o'clock or there will be hell to pay and time-mapped spreadsheets that he can't read and enthusiastic cock sucking (to make up for the spreadsheets, i.e., my brain) required in order to justify where I was and who I wasn't fucking in a gas station bathroom."
How surprising then to find her
and the mook husband waiting at the bar. Long story short, she spent the entire two hours asking him what was wrong, and he spent it watching the baseball game over her head and mumbling into his cell phone. Which she kept trying to grab. Good times. She
did have a pack of cigarettes, though, which had somehow survived the pre-bar body cavity search, and which I furiously descended on with all of the self-control of a
The Jake around some chicken insides. Or a narcissistic blogger with access to her own archives.
So I'm on the road home at nine, about 45 minutes away from my house, and R calls my cell phone from
his Friday night bar activities. Where, god willing, his friends' wives aren't slumped over at the bar, leering possessively at their husbands and threatening to beat the shit out of the female bartender who keeps fucking LOOKING AT YOU.
"Hey you," I scream into the phone. I've got the top down on the freeway at about 90, and now my "hair holding" hand is engaged with phone holding. The steering wheel sort of mandates its own hand (diva), so now I'm squinty. It's a hot look, I'm sure. And, you know. Safe.
"What? Where are you?" R answers back.
"I'm in the tunnel," I yell. Which is nice, with the top down. On a straight-away I momentarily free my wheel hand and tousle my hair with it, part of my elaborate "Let's Destroy The Cigarette Evidence" plan.
"You're done? Already?" he asks. So I loudly explain the whole lame-shadow-husband situation, which results in a conversation in which we very self-righteously lambast couples who insist on stalking each other.
"I know," I scream, leaning my head out ever so slightly into the 90 mile an hour wind. Ow. "How can people live like that? No trust, no backbone... I can't imagine."
R agreed. "I'm about done, too," he says. "I'll meet you at the house."
I spend the rest of the drive flapping my shirt in the wind and reflecting on how nice it is to be in a worry-free relationship. Chock full of freedom and honesty.
"Everyone else's relationship sucks," I think to myself as I pull into a Circle K. "I'm lucky to be so highly evolved." I set the gas pump and go inside where I purchase a travel toothbrush, a tube of Colgate, a purse-sized bottle of Purel and a Slim Jim. Extra spicy.
"I can't imagine having to answer to someone else," I ponder, gagging on the toothbrush in the gas station parking lot. I lean against the pump and re-paste. "Bend to someone else's idea of what's acceptable? Someone else's demands? NO THANK YOU." I eat some of the Colgate.
I stop at a light, casually munching my Jim and waiting for the ether gel to evaporate off my palms. After a test sniff I decide that Purel is only good for poisoning people and I morph into a genius and rub the Slim Jim all over my hands. And neck. Processed animal sausage chard is sort of my natural scent, so now I'll blend like a motherfucker.
My phone rings again.
"Hey, it's me," says R. "Hey, I think I'm going to hang out a little while."
"That's great!" I gush, trying to shift gears through four layers of alcohol-based lubricant and pork. "Have fun!" And my voice is full of the kind of love that only a secure relationship-- and the knowledge that I won't have to sneak around back and splash myself with paint thinner again-- can bring.
"I love you!" he sings.
"I love you, too!" And when you get home I will celebrate our honest and forthright relationship by doing manic laundry and not using my nasal passages or my mouth to breathe! I will be cleaner than you've ever seen me, and tomorrow I will probably be a little hoarse and I'm going to guess somewhat nauseated ON ACCOUNT OF ALL OF THIS GREAT NO SECRETS TOTALLY SECURE RELATIONSHIP ACTION WE'VE GOT GOING ON HERE.
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No Seriously, Come See. COME SEE!!
When you come flying in seven minutes late for a "first thing" conference
call with the General Office, no one really cares what time it is in your
car.
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"Can I Sign In The Blood Of The Damned?"
I was in Mexico over the weekend. It was fantab. I took a lot of shitty pictures of the same wave over and over again. I'll show you later. You'll love it. Them.
Hey, Happy Boss's Day! In the spirit of Rampant and Obligatory Overtime, allow me to share that pretending to be the boss on Boss's Day tends to wear really painfully thin after you knock the (actual) boss's keyboard off the desk during your encore kick-and-slide "Everybody Loves A Gentle Captain" musical number.
At least it does here.
More later.
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For years I've worn these two titanium rings, one on either hand. One is slightly larger than the other, so I wear one on my right ring finger and the other on my left middle finger. They're engraved, each of them: one with, "time yet for a hundred indecisions, And," and the other with, "for a hundred visions and revisions," from Eliot's
Prufrock.
The purchase was facilitated in the fervor of the obsessed, and my original design, of course, was that one of these rings would be worn by someone else. This is very much like me. I have always been full of grand romantic gestures that are sadly destined to never leave my head/heart/checking account. And as such, I still have both rings, and I wear them both. Not all the time, but sometimes. Because I like to see them, one on each hand, and remember that I'm capable of turning myself inside out like that with a stop-minute physical impulse, even if I never tell anyone. And because I can feel the words etched inside the rings, growing more frothy and faint, right, because it's been a long time now. But still. It's this nostalgic, wistful, thankful, private secret "what if" thing all at once, those rings. And it's sad, too, because I did this for someone. This grand, passionate gift that at the time was going to forge a closeness, almost an ownership, certainly a constant beacon between two people. So when I wear them there's a part of me, a sad part, that can't help but acknowledge that no one ever once (not even one time) has given me a ring like one of these rings.
"What's your point, you completely ridiculous bitch?" you ask.
Nothing. Really. Except that a few days ago (when I got all teary-eyed and crappy-girly, passive-aggressive over, what, GUM or something) when I peered inside Ring A looking for passive-aggressive answers, I noticed for the first time that the the engraver misspelled "indecisions". All of this bullshit self-absorbed angst has been wasted on "indecidions".
Which could be the most fitting fuck up in the universe.
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Rule, Bitch, But Don't Forget Who Made You.
I've been meaning to write about
Reverse Survivor. The best game in the world. I've played RS for what, three seasons? Or two? Or eleven? I've decided that my life would be significantly more profitable if only I could land a job that sternly required me to create a back cover blurb for my new imaginary novel. And then payed me handsomely for it. Double time and a half for watching TNT "Prime Time In The Daytime". Don't mock me.
So anyway. I've been meaning to link to RS this season, but what with all if the work that I do that doesn't involve limericks and the flu and the flu and the flu, I just didn't have a chance to get there before I went ahead and JUST WON THE FUCKING GAME.
AGAIN.
That's what I thought you said. Limerick Head.
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Points Akimbo.
On Saturday my brother's new girlfriend casually mentioned to my devout mother that my brother doesn't believe in God.
I learned this tidbit over the phone at work this morning... the boss offered an "Eight Minute Personal Phone Call" truce in lieu of the birthday.
"A little too much information," my mom sniffed. Eyes no doubt raised heavenward.
"Maybe next she'll clue you in to what kind of porn he likes," I snorted, office phone tucked under my chin, body hunched around the Business Inkjet 1100 that was furiously spitting out color copies of my updated resume.
"Please," she snorted back. "Like I don't know that he likes it on the cob."
How many times do you think I dry-gagged into my trash can before I realized that we were talking about two totally different things?
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So tomorrow's my 30th birthday. I'm posting this via email or I'd direct
you to my birthday post from LAST year, the 29th birthday. You can probably
find it, what with the timing of birthdays being constant and all. Please
note the self-involved, devil-may-care, "remember when you threw a $19
martini in my face to slap me out of that three day Vegas bender?"
attitude. Please compare the amount of time I allotted to squatting in the
bathroom sink evaluating my neck skin in the mirror (0% of the time)
compared to the amount of time I allotted to being awesome (all the % of
the time). Even when I sort of forgot which day was my birthday, it was
forgivable thanks to the inherent awesomeness of 29. I'm pretty sure that
kind of lazy brain slacker atrophy doesn't fly at thirty. Now I'm just a
dumbass. A thirty-year-old dumbass with her legs crumpled in the sink
staring at her pores, getting her days wrong and shit. Not going on any benders.
So how am I going to celebrate, you ask? Well, I think I'll start the day
by getting my cholesterol checked... it's been a bit high lately, so let's
see if maybe that's come down, oh, forty points. Last night's cheeseburger
and cabernet agree that no. It hasn't. Maybe it will have gone up another
twenty points and I'll get to take enormous clear yellow old people pills
every day! And I can put them in a plastic daily pill organizer and take
them with my tar pitch coffee when I get up at 3:30 every morning to watch
the birds and squirrels and shit. I can have breakfast at like 4 and lunch
around 10:30 and supper can be at 3:15 and then I CAN WATCH THE EVENING
NEWS AND CALL IT A DAY.
I have to go. Store #87 needs me to send them some paperclips, and apparently it's really, really important.
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