Eat the Damn Cake

I want to dress like a pirate queen. The urge hit me the other night after watching “Original Sin.” Halfway through the movie, Bear got up and left.

“Honey?” I called after him, my eyes glued to the screen.

“This is too disturbing,” came his voice from the other room. “You can watch it without me.”

Bear can watch horror movies and not be disturbed, but when someone’s wife has been abused (or a rape is implied), he cannot handle it.

It sounds terrible in a way to say that I can handle it, but honestly, I was kinda watching the movie for Angelina’s face and her clothes. And also her jewelry. The last image, of her face, with the red jewel and gold choker— above the floating, pure white dress– GOD. So beautiful. So graceful and mysterious and magical and otherworldly.

“Come on, honey,” I pleaded. “I’m skipping this scene where– oh, yeah, I think this is a brothel– I’m skipping it! We’re going to watch the ending, where they’re happy!”

Bear wasn’t interested. “There can be no happy ending to this story,” he said, refusing to come back to the couch.

I watched the last scene, which is mostly about her face, alone. And then I felt inspired. I wanted to wear gowns. I wanted to wear flowy things. I wanted to be mysterious and graceful and otherworldly. I went to the closet and started pulling dresses off of hangers and combining them with filmy scarves and gold hoops. The short hair didn’t seem to fit (I looked more like a servant girl than royalty) so I put it under a scarf. That didn’t work either. I decided I wasn’t going to be a princess– I was more of a pirate queen.

(that’s my sexy pose. sorry, parents! Being sexy on the internet! But I can’t help it– pirate queens are sexy)

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Every night, I lie in bed and read the New York Times on my phone. First I read some of the big headline pieces. Then I skip  over to the real estate section and read about a girl and a guy who really need a quieter apartment, since their last one was next to a construction site—will they find one? They look at a place in Harlem. They look at a place in Morningside Heights. Time is running out! At the last minute– they find something! Phew. I read about the new building with affordable luxury apartments that’s going up on the west side in midtown. I read about trends involving lamps and the story of a particular street sign.

“Why do you want to read that stuff?” asks Bear.

“Because,” I say, but then realize I’m not sure. I just do. Unimportant article after unimportant article. “Listen!” I say, excited, “Here’s one about big couches! The writer thinks couches have gotten too big.”

(source)

“Really?” says Bear, without looking up from the word game he is playing on his phone.*

Technology. It connects us to the world. It separates us from one another.

Actually, I don’t really care about that very much.

Recently, a lot of the headlines have been about Romney and Newt and Santorum. With some Huntsman and Perry sprinkled in, for reference. Of course, there’s plenty of Obama, but now it’s more about Obama as relates to Romney and Newt and Santorum. Opinion pieces, and full, serious articles.  Piece after piece after piece– they come faster every day– they grow thicker– like salmon spawning. It’s that time of year. It’s that part of our four-year news cycle. And it’s just getting started.

Already, I am tired. There is a dead, metallic taste in my mouth. I am experiencing tiny PTSD-like flashbacks.

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You know what I’m not? Cool. I care too much.

Being cool is all about not caring. It’s been that way since someone invented coolness, back in, like, the late fifties, I think. Wait– I feel like there were a few cool people in the Great Gatsby, so maybe it goes back a few decades farther.

There are a lot of variations on not caring. Kids are really obvious about it. They’re constantly standing around in mall parking lots rolling their eyes, going, “Whatever…” People in their twenties show how little they care mostly by wearing slouchy shoes. And then later on you prove your coolness by getting drunk the way you used to get drunk when you had less responsibilities.

I’m pretty sure.

(these should do it. source)

Sometimes I worry about myself, because I want to impress people. I want them to like me. It’s a little pathological. It’s a sign that I will not succeed at things. I am always hoping that I’ll grow out of it, and so far, that hasn’t happened, so I’m concerned that it might be permanent.

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Guys– not to bug you, but ETDC’s sneakpeeq giveaway is ending on the 13th, and since you get 20% off your next purchase just for entering, plus a chance at a $25 gift card, it’s definitely worth it. Also, this time there are lots of winners. Check it out here!

I noticed it when I was fourteen or so, and I started making a semi-regular effort. I had this great outfit, with a short skirt, and it perfectly matched the butterfly clips I wore in my hair. My mom was driving me to meet some friends, and there was this cute guy who distinguished himself by having a few muscles, and he was supposed to be there. So obviously I’d doubled the number of butterfly clips, and I’d shaved my legs immediately before leaving, so that they would be freshly smooth. I was hoping they might gleam a little.

Getting out of the car, and walking towards my friends, who were hanging out by an ice cream place in a strip mall (New Jersey!), I happened to glance down. I stopped in my tracks. Blood was trickling down my legs. It looked as though I had been shot, many times, by a tiny soldier– like one of those little guys from The Indian in the Cupboard. There were bloody tears all over my legs. It was a war zone. It was horrifying. I ducked for cover behind the car, licked my hands like a crazed animal, and began trying to rub the blood away. I got most of it, but my legs were left looking raw, agitated, and generally unfriendly. I hadn’t felt the cuts in the shower. I thought there was probably something wrong with me. Do I not feel pain? Am I superwoman? No, probably just a freak who will never have sexy legs. Yes. That’s the truth. I know because it’s the worst possibility.

I’d like to say I got a lot better at shaving my legs over the years, but that would be a lie, and I’m bad at lying (my mom caught me too many times in too many lies as a child, and I’m traumatized).

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I have a giant pimple on my face. It is on my chin, positioned above a slightly smaller pimple.

I have decided this is a blessing in disguise. Blessings in disguise are always decisions. It can go two ways: it’s a blessing in disguise or it sucks a lot. I’ve decided it doesn’t suck a lot.

It’s a blessing in disguise because when I got up and checked the weather report to decide how much clothing to wear, it said, “INCREDIBLY FRIGGIN’ COLD. YOU WILL PROBABLY DIE.” At least, that was my interpretation. And I still don’t have one of those giant down coats because I don’t like the way they look (this is a terrible reason not to have the only article of clothing guaranteed to save your life during a New York winter). So it was either look cute and die or put on every piece of clothing I own. I looked in the mirror.

“Goddamn it, that is the biggest, meanest pimple in the world.” It wasn’t even the popping kind. Those at least are satisfying. Nope. This is the deep-under-the-surface, angry-red-mountain-rising, will-take-weeks-to-subside, maximum-surface-area, painful kind. The worst. It occurred to me that no cute outfit could save my face. The pimple was too dominant. It was controlling the situation.

So whatever– I put on a million things and waddled out the door.

(I was wearing a little more than this much clothing. source)

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This is a guest post.  Sarah is a first-year graduate student, getting her PhD in philosophy. She and I have been writing back and forth for around a year now. When she talked with me about her hair, I begged her to write a guest post for me. Here it is (begging works). She is awesome: 

I am bald, I am 22, and I am female. Sometimes I think that this is an unfortunate combination of traits; but other times, I feel differently.

To make a very long and painful story rather shorter: I had just turned fourteen when my hair began to fall out. It was the beginning of eighth grade. It started innocently enough with a few extra strands left behind in my comb after I showered. At first, I thought nothing of it, but it quickly became very apparent that what was happening was something I needed to think seriously about. Because it was all gone before I turned fifteen.

The year my hair fell out was the worst year of my life. Maybe this is biased, but I contend that eighth graders are the cruelest creatures to inhabit that awkward chunk of life known as ‘adolescence’.  To be fair, it’s a tough time for everyone. We want people to acknowledge that we exist, but not as much as we want to blend inconspicuously into the background. To say that it is difficult for a rapidly balding female to go unnoticed in this environment is a laughable understatement. My middle school morphed into a freak-show and I was the main attraction. My classmates pointed and sneered and snickered and laughed; I tried my hardest to escape their piercing stares, but found myself trapped in a nightmare that had become my life.

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