The Musical

 

 

They had drawn a large “V” on my forehead with Candy Apple Red lipstick and had me bent over on stage while a man dressed as old cripple tightly grabbed my hips and dry humped me from behind.  The audience was shouting, “Virgin!  Virgin!” and I shut my eyes desperately hoping I’d wake up in my bed with the comfort of an electric blanket around me and the relief in knowing it was all a dream. 

            I opened my eyes, but there was no such luck. 

The entire cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was still behind me, licking their palms and slapping my ass while making me repeat an oath to “lose all inhibitions and give over to absolute pleasure,” a rite of passage for first-time audience members.

“Pleasure?  Does that mean I get can get off stage now?”

            I ran back to my seat after they finished reciting some limerick about sexual ambiguity while trying to readjust myself back into the oversized negligee I had borrowed for the evening.  The boa-trimmed baby doll kept drooping in the front and it hardly helped that some clasps had come undone while I was thrusted upon by the old man. 

As I fussed to re-clothe myself, my friend Mike was trapped on stage stripping to exchange outfits with a female audience member as a part of the “Drag Races.”  When I saw his predicament, I debated with myself for only a moment before I pulled out my camera.

Anything’s funny as long as it’s not happening to you . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devine’s Anatomy

 

            “Mom, you have to be more careful with your drug rep schwag.  How bad would this look to Brooke if I hadn’t found it first?”  My brother held up a sticky note on which my mother had written “T.J.” and had used to label which bath towel he would be using during his stay with us over the holidays.  These particular sticky notes were given to my mother by a pharmaceutical company peddling HIV drugs so what the note really read was, “T.J., Get Tested Today!  HIV Kills!”  Not the sort of thing you want to have to explain to your girlfriend.

            “Hm,” she replied, cocking her head for a better look at the note.  “I guess that would sort of look bad.”

            Since we were kids, the nonchalant nature of Nurse Mom’s regard for the human body, ungodly diseases, and implicitly disgusting medical procedures had left us with occupational hazards leaking into the house from every angle, seeping under doors and through window cracks in the form of “AIDS Weekly” magazines that had to be stashed under armchair cushions before being picked up on a date or “Viagra” ballpoint pens that one would absentmindedly bring to a class or job interview.  “I’m not impotent, I swear,” Dan once tried to explain to an inquisitive peer.  “It’s sort of my mother’s thing.”

            Being raised by a self-proclaimed “W-O-M-A-N!” in the healthcare industry, my brothers and I grew up with an abnormally accurate understanding of the human body and all of its various functions.  In our house, there was no slang, baby talk, or euphemistic substitute for our anatomical parts.  Our mother would pick our crushed bikes and bleeding bodies out of the streets consoling us, “It’s just your epidermis, Honey.  Let’s put a Band-Aid on that.”  Her lexicon was contagious and before long the three of us had begun to sound like the smallest little doctors-in-training— a profession we later rejected in light of becoming the newest Ninja Turtles, instead.

            It was one thing to be anatomically correct at home, it was other while attending play dates.  As a child, play dates are the training wheels on the bike of “public persona,” providing kids a time and place to learn how to tailor their habits and personalities for social acceptance and advancement.  These lessons often start small, like learning the importance of discovering a new curse word before everyone else or getting bad grades to prove you’re “too cool” to care.  When the training wheels come off (usually in our late teens or early 20s) we find ourselves preaching about professional ambitions we’ve never had and rough childhoods we’ve never experienced in an attempt to get hired or at least laid.  Some of us won’t even need handlebars to ride this bike; it’ll just naturally steer itself up corporate ladders and into indiscriminate bedrooms.

            But my brothers and I got a late start adhering to social standard given the fact that words like “fart” and “butt,” the most hilarious words for our age group, weren’t even in our vocabulary.  As a result, we were the odd little kids at neighborhood birthday parties who withstood befuddled looks from our playmates and their parents when we announced we had to “have a bowel movement.” 

         “You mean, ‘Poop’?” they’d reply with appalled disbelief.

          “‘Poop’?” we’d repeat.  “What’s ‘poop’?”

 

          Flash forward to puberty and we have a whole other problem in that there wasn’t a problem and everyone else had a problem and god forbid we be different and problem-less and in turn, it was a big problem.

Puberty is awkward for everyone, and we were no exception.  Looking around my 7^th grade classroom, everyone was clad in green plaid and agonizing nervousness.  And no, we didn’t want to talk about it.  Girls would silently bleed onto their mother’s maxi pads and boys would walk around the classroom holding textbooks in front of themselves to hide unexpected erections because, let’s face it, this was a Catholic school and any evidence of one’s sexuality was shameful.

            My mother, on the other hand, was very in tune with our embarrassing changes in the proudest way a mother could be.  To her, puberty was anything but a problem but rather a means of amusement and festivity.  She once came wandering in my brothers’ and my bathroom upstairs with a goofy grin and oversized video camera trying to capture Dan’s first razor stroke along his baby-fine hair speckled chin.

         “Mom, get out!” he shouted after a deer-in-the-headlights moment at being caught on camera with a towel draped around his neck and shaving cream drawn along his face.

          T.J., who was there coaching his little brother, vouched for him while trying to block the entrance of the door. “Seriously, Mom, not cool!  Just leave him alone.”

         My mother still persisted—half-laughing, half-offended as she pushed her way further in the bathroom.

         “Oh, whatever, you guys.  Dan, you’re totally going to want to remember this when you’re older, I promise.  Just smile for the camera!”

        “Geez, are you going to film everything?!” he replied.  “Are you going to film Stephanie starting her period or shaving her legs?”

          “Hey!” I interjected, having witnessed the whole debacle from the hallway.  “You’re not supposed to know about that stuff!”

          “Well, I do,” he shot back.  “Hope puberty goes better for you, Sis.” 

           Ah, sarcasm. 

           Puberty did go better for me with relation to my mom, actually.  I was still beat-red embarrassed when she drew me a sketch of a penis and bought me a bouquet of flowers to celebrate my “beautiful womanly changes,” but at least none of it was caught on camera.  Looking back, I’m very grateful for her support.  I would probably do my own daughter far worse, mailing out menstrual announcements to family and friends like a wedding’s “Save the Date” notice or throwing a ritualistic party in accordance to the traditions of the Ghanaians.  Either way, her period would be a huge deal and she would surely hate me for it.

          No longer occupying her time documenting pubescence, my mother got her masters and is now a nurse practitioner in Infectious Disease, working mostly with AIDS patients and others suffering from ghastly STDs.  In fact, I believe that the best form of birth control is asking my mother how her day went.

         “God, you’ll never want to have sex if you only saw what I was working with today,” she’ll respond and go off into details more disturbing than one of the Saw movies.

          “Oh, that’s um . . . interesting,” you’ll politely mumble just as the phantom itches and burns start to kick in.  Sometimes it sounds like you’re getting an abstinence lecture, but she really just wants to tell you about her work.  I can vouch for this because I’d hear similar horror stories when she was regularly giving colonoscopies.

           “It’s so fun!  It’s like driving a car through someone’s intestines!  I mean, not fun for the patients, though.  We tell them the camera up their anus is the size of their thumb, but it’s really the size of their wrist.  Yeeee-ouch!”

         My brothers turned out way less paranoid than I did as a result of all my mom’s medical talk.  I’m the only one who spends way too much time at the doctor’s office getting tested for everything I possibly can.  Cut my leg shaving with a friend’s razor?  I want an HIV test.  Tonsillitis?  Take ’em out!  Discolored freckle?  Biopsy, please!  I refuse to be like one of my mom’s patients who don’t know they have diabetes until they have to have a foot amputated.  If my body turns on me, I want to know it within the week. 

          I’d rather not be so perpetually paranoid, but it beats being unhealthy.  Besides, if mother accidentally scrawls my name on a drug rep’s sticky note that implies I need to get tested for whatever disease she’s working with at the time, I’ll have the pleasure of crumpling it up and chuckling to myself, “No worries, Mom.  Already have.  That and much, much more.”

 

Valentine’s Day 2009

Valentine’s Day 2009

 

“Oh! She’s attractive. Gretchen, when you told me your daughter didn’t have a boyfriend I was expecting a shipwreck, to be honest. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Stephanie. Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Such is my life. The last Valentine’s Day I spent with my parents was when I was in the sixth grade, which is fine—nobody actually expects you to have a significant other in the sixth grade. Occasionally, you might get a nosey adult who’ll bend down to your level with their hands on their knees asking you in a baby voice if you have a boyfriend because it would be so adorable if you did, but they’re never judgmental when you shyly look at your feet and mumble, “No, Ma’am.” In fact, your embarrassment is nothing less than cute.

At age twenty-two, however, these questions are thrown at you like a prosecutor giving his cross-examination: “Stephanie Devine, we have witnesses that place you in the company of your parents on the fourteenth of February. Do you deny or confirm these testimonies?”

“I confirm, but in my defense I did date a lot of men this summer and . . .”

“Enough!” cuts in the judge. “You think you can keep living your life like this? You’re on your way to spinsterhood, Little Missy. You think the dating game’s rough at this age? You don’t even know what you’re in for when you’re thirty. I’m sentencing you with life . . . as an Old Maid.”

Bam! The mallet slams on the bench and I am taken away in a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, never to be used in their proper fashion. Figures.

Valentine’s Day didn’t use to bother me so much but that was back when all of my friends were single and we’d either celebrate the holiday with a raucous girls’ night, consuming all the red wine and chocolate we could get our hands on, or an exuberant singles’ party packed with the free, the fun, and the irresponsible. Both traditions were something to look forward to and actually made the vomitous Hallmark Holiday a fun one.

But this year, I was the last of the single people—a species slowly growing extinct—and lamented the loss of my fun, single companions. Bent on getting me out of the house, my mother insisted I come to a dinner party thrown by one of her patients, Kenny. “If Kenny who is HIV positive, bi-polar, a methamphetamine addict, alcoholic, just got out of prison and is on parole, and had the worst case of syphilis I’ve ever seen can find joy in Valentine’s Day, so can you,” she told me about a week before D-Day.

“Sounds like a fun party,” my brother, Dan, grinningly replied while nudging me in the ribs. “Especially the part where he dresses up in your skin and dances around his house singing ‘Jeepers Creepers.’” My mother rolled her eyes.

I went, of course. As a connoisseur of eccentricities, I really couldn’t say, “No.” We were greeted at the door of his Laguna Beach house by a number of overweight, older ladies dressed in the most ostentatious, holiday thematic outfits I had ever seen. I couldn’t help but note the large disparity between the bulky red sweaters and sequined dresses of my present, and the skimpy lingerie of my Valentine’s Day parties’ past. I somehow went from frat houses packed with hormonal straight men to a small living room peppered with old ladies and gay men in only a year. My future life as a single fag hag, I thought.

Kenny eventually came out from the kitchen and greeted us with a wide grin, standing in a sort of fifth position as he passed around his delicate hand for shaking. He wore a well-pressed button-down shirt with a beaded heart necklace draped around his neck and was quick to crown me with a plastic tiara that held a red, blinking heart in the middle of its intricate design. Feeling like someone had placed a makeshift Star of Bethlehem above my head so the world knew where to find “the single girl” tonight, I passed the crown on to my mother. “Every party needs a queen!” she said as she donned the headpiece, only to hear muffled giggles from the flamboyant party guests sitting nearby.

Kenny’s house unto itself was a form of entertainment. Making his living off of dipsy dumpster diving, he had a knack for turning one man’s trash into his own treasure. His entire house was covered in deep red fabrics, mosaic candleholders, a number of different water fountains, and a plethora of odd figurines. He had two tree trunks sectioning off his living room, movie theater carpet garnishing the backyard, and somehow actually made it all work. The atmosphere was comfortable and homey and after enjoying the lovely buffet, my parents and I took our wine outside to sit by the fire, being handed raffle tickets along the way.

The three of us started making pleasant conversation with the women in the backyard when we heard, “Twelve! Who has twelve?!” The guests started pulling out their ticket stubs, frowning with disappointment. I check mine. One. Two.

“Twelve! I have twelve!”

“Oh my God! My daughter just won the sex basket,” I heard my mother exclaim.

As far as presentation goes, Kenny’s deliverance was nothing short of theatrical. With a flourish, he brought out a huge gold basket filled every assortment of erotic toys you could imagine: edible condoms, male thongs, two sets of handcuffs, flavored body paint, and “Penis Pokey” flip book, and the list goes on.

“The lube, alone, cost $40. Best stuff on the market. You could have anal sex with an elephant using this,” Kenny said as my step-dad took custody of the heavy basket.

“Thanks, Kenny. Good to know.”

“I can’t believe my daughter just won the sex basket,” my mother repeated, red with laughter.

“Well, with this basket and can’t see how I could be single next Valentine’s Day!” I cried out to the party that was watching in audience.

“Oh, Honey,” one of the older women calmly replied. “I bet there are enough toys in the basket that you won’t need a boyfriend next Valentine’s Day.”

As we were leaving the party and saying our farewells, my mother found a piece of stationary to write a Thank You note to Kenny in.

“He’s so sweet and I know he doesn’t have the money for all of this,” she said, slipping $40 into the improvised card.

“Mom, did you just essentially pay for my elephant-sex lube?”

“Happy Valentine’s day, Honey,” she replied. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

 

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Men (But Mostly Boys): Beachside No-Show

            It took three months of me being “unavailable” before I finally agreed to hang out with L.A. Guy #2763.

            “How about coffee?” I suggested.

            “Okay.  And then maybe we could get something to eat, as well,” he countered.

            I paused.

            “How about just coffee?”

 

            In my experience, designating an activity with the opposite sex is a delicate task and not one to be taken lightly.  All evidence of your expectations with this person rests in the seemingly simple selection of consumable item around which your encounter revolves.  “Drinks,” for instance, imply liquor, implies inebriation, implies lack of inhibitions, implies sex, implies someone waiting by the phone for a week with a box of tissues and a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s.  “Dinner” implies talking, implies dating, implies relationship, implies sex, implies someone waiting by the phone for a week with a box of tissues and a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s.  “Coffee,” however, is an infallible arrangement.  It is the pause button of any acquaintanceship, allowing some breathing room and much needed time for deciding if this person is worth the inevitable drowning in semi-frozen sweet cream.  It is the foolproof, non-date beverage of choice and an essential tool for filtering out the pestilent dead mosquitoes floating around in your dating pool. 

Yes, coffee is a brilliant lifeline.  I find it’s even better when had in the afternoon and best when I’m “already going to be at the café to get some work done, anyway.”

I am far too cool to go out of my way.

 

I sat with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a cup of joe for an hour before our arranged meeting time, at which point I received a phone call informing me that my non-date-to-be was running late.  Every half-hour after that, in fact, he called to let me know he was running even later . . . just a little later . . . well, maybe even a little later than that (I didn’t mind, did I?) until I realized I had spent three hours sucking down coffee by myself in a beachside café while slowly being stood up by a guy I really had no genuine wish to see.

Although his absence should’ve pleased me, I was irked by the fact that I had gone so out of my way to cautiously craft the perfect non-date for someone who was so persistent to meet with me but apparently not interested enough to show.  My years of flippant regard from L.A. men had come to an infuriating head, and I knew this would be my last attempt at extricating an ounce of good testosterone from the general Southern California area.

L.A. Guy tried to compensate for his tardiness by pushing our pre-arranged coffee into a dinner date, but I just so happened to already have dinner date planned for that evening.

And you know what?  He wasn’t from Los Angeles, and he showed up on time. 

Pregnant

I got a call from my OBGYN’s assistant the other day.  “Hello, Miss Devine?  This is Cathy calling from Kaiser Permanente.  I’m happy to let you know that we’ve received your test results from last week and both you and your baby are looking perfectly healthy!”

Silence.

“Whoa,” I mumbled, jolting out of my confused stupor.  “I’m sorry, I think I misheard that.  Come again?”

“From your checkup, last Tuesday?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, both you and your baby’s tests came back negative.  Everything’s looking perfect!”

“Your baby”?  I shuddered.  Oh man, it is way too soon for any of that.

“Um.  I think there’s been a mistake.  See, I’m not pregnant.”

“Are you Stephanie Devine?”

“Yes.”

“And were you here to see Carol Justise last Tuesday?”

“Well, yeah. . .”

“And you’re telling me you’re not pregnant?” she sarcastically repeats.

“No!  No-o-o-o,” I defensively assert.  “I’m like really not pregnant.  No bun in the oven.  No fruit in the womb.  None of that craziness.  I mean, like total kudos to the procreator of this healthy baby and all, but that’s not me.”

“Hmmmmm,” she paused.  I could feel her doubting me like a judge might when listening to a criminal’s defense.  “Are you sure about that, Stephanie?”

Is this woman serious?

“Not unless you know something I don’t,” I replied.

“Well. . . okay. . . ,” she said hesitatingly.  “We’ll be in touch soon.”

After I quietly hung up the phone, I remained seated at my vanity—my brow misted by the conversation.  I knew it was just an error in documentation, but I was heated all the same.  In pensive silence, I put my hands on my lower abdomen.

Good god, waaaaaaaay too soon for any of that.

An Esoteric Entry for Those Who Love Words

My friend Alex shares my affinity for words.  “I have a new one for you,” he told me one day as we drove to our choice Starbucks.

“Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.”

I stared blankly.

“It means fear of long words.”

He glanced over at me, his dark curly hair framing a face that awaited my reaction with anticipation, but I could say nothing in response.  Rather, my eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning, and a solitary tear rolled down my cheek into the crevasse of my smile.  I put my hand on his, gripping him tightly in gratitude.

It was the best thing that had happened to me since pedantic.

 

 

                Much to the dismay of my family and friends who are tired of being corrected for their misuse of “good” v. “well,” I have always held the proper and sophisticated use of language in high respect.  For this, it is common knowledge that along with my stunning looks and exceptional eye for fashion, I am of a well-cultured background and am vastly more intelligent than the lesser beings that look up to me with envy and admiration. 

In order to maintain this highly advanced status, it is important that I search for the same superior attributes in my male partners, keeping an ear open for deliberate use of rhetorical strategies and consistent grammatical accuracy while they court me at elegant fusion cuisine restaurants or under-represented modern art museums.  Some girls go for men with fast cars and an eye for Tiffany’s jewelry.  I go for eloquent diction.

A man with a flare for syntax, metaphors, cautiously crafted cacophonies—this is what I desire.  “Heart Metaphor” men need not apply as I couldn’t possibly risk compromising my reputation by associating with advocates of the all-time most annoying cliché— the derivative “heart” imagery that plagues the scripts of cheesy romantic comedies, pop music, and bad poetry.  For some reason, I cannot help but read the heart metaphor in its most literal form, leading me to interpret songs like “You’ll Be in My Heart” and “My Heart Will Go On” as morbid refrains packed with Japanese anime-like visuals.  Last thing I need is a man telling me I hold the key to his heart only to find much to my disappointment and his throbbing pain that his chest is not, in fact, a music box.

However, between the fact that the articulate breed of male is a rare breed indeed and that there was once a time in my life I had no puppy to call my own, my drive for companionship in combination with my love of words lead to my eventually naming of, well, everything.  Like most normal people who have ever named an inanimate object, it started innocently enough with my first car, Oscar.  Oscar was a bulky Buick Skylark and much like the grouch he was named after, he was green.  When others learned the name of my car they took to showering me with Sesame Street paraphernalia in light-hearted jest and also began naming their own cars after quirky yet endearing fictional characters.  Oscar was anything but attractive, but his name and thus insinuated personality made him a beloved vehicle in my high school’s parking lot.  He was a hit.  A commendable automobile with an owner to be recognized.  And in getting all this attention over a silly name, I was addicted.

 Next, I named my stomach.  Duke was a beast with an appetite of five cavemen so I found his name suiting.  “Duke” was dominating, “Duke” was manly, and “Duke” justified the “feedings” that my young, growing body demanded after a laborious cheer practice.  I swear I don’t even like eating this much, I would insist to my friends. I just don’t want to piss off Duke.  When I quit cheer, Duke still demanded a lot from me.  He must have been feeling rather chilly to insist that so much fat grow around him.  He never listened to the facts I spouted from my Nutrition textbook nor would he head to my plea for moderation.  As a result, Duke and I grew to be on uneasy terms. 

In my spite towards Duke, I named the rest of my body and even new appliances.  Chloe was my salvaged right ovary.  My intricate (yet sometime holey) brain was dubbed Lacy.  Jacque and Pacino were my lungs.  Zeus, my laptop.  And Marcus, my cell phone.  It became so that not everything could have a name, but everything had to have a name provided it was an entity I valued and had a connection with.  As a result of this epiphany, I developed a hesitation to refer to the men I date by name.  It seemed emotionally easier to refer to them by profession, location of birth, or a significant physical attribute—after all, you don’t want to name the puppy unless you plan on keeping it. 

             Naming is about establishing a closeness, and as it is harder to let go of something one has named, I was absolutely devastated when my Oscar crashed on the 91 Freeway one fateful Easter Sunday.  It felt like a family member had died.  My baby! I lamented.  I’m so sorry!  After I begrudgingly sold him for $42 as scrap metal, I began to feel the effects of the naming power I had so blatantly abused.  How would I feel had I lost Chloe or developed cancer of the Jacque and Pacino?  Would Marcus ever forgive me if I traded him in for an upgrade?  Having taken it too far, I cut back drastically on my impulsive naming.  I had learned my lesson.  Though my backyard doesn’t have enough space to bury and properly recognize all named objects of my past, that doesn’t mean I’ll ever forget that they once existed.  I see them in the waking eyes of a child and in every rose’s bloom.  And sometimes, just sometimes, when Duke growls loudly enough, I can hear the rumble of Oscar’s engine, eager and ready to take me on the ride of my life.

God Damn It

I changed my clothes in the closet for two months after our pastor gave a homily themed “God is Always Watching.”  It seemed perverted to me that God would be interested in spying on a seven-year-old girl dancing around her room in the nude, but since I was the one putting it all out there in the first place, it was obvious I was going to hell.

               God was infused into my life “Catholic-style,” meaning I spent my innocent childhood enduring chronic pangs of guilt.  Everything from neglecting my chores to accidentally eating meat on a Friday during Lent had me running into the church confessional gasping for breath between sobs and tightly gripping on to the priest’s stole while lamenting, “It was I!  I was the one that killed Jesus!  With my messy room and bologna sandwich, I killed the Son of God, himself, and do not deserve to live!”

                Though the priest would inevitably talk me down from my suicide (“My child, that, too, is a sin”), nobody actually tried to make me feel good about my existence—I was, after all, born a sinner.  The Catholic faith destroyed my morale like a dawdling bass singer ruins the Happy Birthday Song—both turning a moment intended for joy and celebration into a dismal funeral march.  In my youth, I could no longer feel like the little princess I had so yearned to be.  Rather, I believed myself to be the devil incarnate and seeing as how my whole family was suspiciously active in our parish, I knew they felt the same.

               While my mother occupied her time in Mass with the Eucharistic ministry, my brothers and I were forced into alter servitude.  Garbed in wilting Franciscan robes the color of dirt and hustled out into the aisle as the choir stuck up a chorus of “Here I Am Lord,” we were commanded to march before God and hundreds of parishioners that were surely betting on which of us three would trip first.  The redhead’s going down any minute—just look at how he carries that top-heavy crucifix.  Bastard doesn’t stand a chance.

                This was our penance.

                Though our family was loyal to our fourth row pew at the 10am mass every Sunday for years, our initial blind acceptance of the faith slowly began diminishing sometime during my parents’ divorce.  We no longer had the façade of being perfect and our discomfort at Deacon Doug’s take on divorce as a reprehensible sin against God had us noticeably shifting with discomfort on our shared, wooden seat.  Our experience had shown a new light on the concept of “sin”—a concept that exhibited no regard for subjectivity simply because it was easier to grasp the socially constructed idea of morality with a mere list of rules.  And it was due to these shortsighted rules that the “Devine Family” could no longer uphold its once-acclaimed title in the eyes of the Church.  The notion was jarring.

                When we left the Church for good, we ended up taking a bit of it with us—Fr. Bill was officially ours and we refused to give him back.  Ironically, his title “Father” hit a little closer to home for my brothers and me considering he would eventually slip a ring on my mother’s finger and become a part of our family.  More ironic still was that fact that we had asked him to testify against our real father in court, and it was both his emotional and “on record” support throughout a three-year custody battle that was responsible for establishing his closeness with our family.

                At first it was weird having a priest become such a close family friend.  Everyone knew these guys were not human.  They did not watch T.V., did not laugh at improper jokes, nor did they ever wear anything but their black-on-black uniform with a white collar peeping beneath the shirt’s lapel.  Their ability to absolve sins granted them the right to open the gates of heaven to others—or to keep them shut forever; as a result, it just didn’t seem right to wake up to find the moral guardian of my soul mowing our back lawn in a “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Fishing” T-shirt. 

                As his presence around our house became more commonplace, we started calling him just “Bill,” embraced his gardening skills and talent with a barbeque pit, and eventually started taking vacations together.  Though our moments of normalcy on these vacations to Palm Spring or Big Bear would often be interrupted by an impromptu mass held in the middle of the kitchen (“Hey, Bill!  How about blessing some chicken for Eucharist tonight, eh?”), I imagine we were like every other family with a single and dating mother.  My brothers and I would joke about Bill and my mom’s obvious relationship seeing him massage sunscreen onto her back or her gripping his waist ever so tightly while riding tandem on a Sea-Doo, and yet their dating status was never made official (even after he left the priesthood) until they got engaged.

                Needless to say, it wouldn’t have been most appropriate for the pair to get married in same Church that blatantly insulted and shunned Bill when he made his decision to leave his ministry which was particularly fine by my brother T.J. and me who had grown to embrace agnosticism sometime ago and could barely hold down our inappropriate chuckles during the liturgy.  Instead, the wedding was held in out backyard on the same grass that Bill had been tending to for the past nine years, and what a lovely wedding it was.  Unlike the heightened pretension of religious dogma, the wedding was honest and humble. Nobody was pretending to be better than the rest and nobody was finger pointing at the imperfections of my own family.  Rather, amidst the union of my divorced mother and an Ex- Roman Catholic priest without the blessing of the Church and a subsequent beer pong tournament during the reception, there was no judgment.  There was no sin.  There was only love, and it was beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Quit

Not enough tales are told about History’s greatest quitters—which is unfortunate given that the life of a quitter is far more interesting and compelling than that of someone who, say, spends their whole life trying to lick their elbow.  No, it is the quitter, rather, that is free from dwelling on one trivial thing.  The quitter that says, “If they fire me for taking a beach day, they weren’t worth working for anyway.”  The quitter that embraces the end of something as a comma, not a period.  The quitter that not only lives, but thrives.

Though social stigma would like us to believe that quitting is a sign of failure and a compulsory attribute of “losers” and “dead-beats,” I argue that quitting is really more of an under-appreciated art—an art of purging life’s less-than-enjoyable elements and damning an existence blocked into a series of life-or-death decisions.  It is the “dressing room” side of life, where you know you’re going to try on more for size because you don’t have to buy it all.

However, one must not be hasty when tempted to embrace the gloriously ubiquitous exit strategy, “I quit,” considering the life of a quitter is only respectable when done tactfully.  For instance, one must know when to quit.  It doesn’t count if you don’t really try in the first place.  That would make you a quitting cheater.  Illegitimate.  A wannabe.  You really have to give it your all before you give it up.  For example, I, myself, will grant a book thirty pages to prove its own worth and men are permitted two dates to do the same.

See, I try.

 

I’d like to believe I am a quitter today’s youth can look up to considering quitting is a talent I have perfected beyond my years.  Ever since I was a little girl, I have taken it upon myself to quit everything and feel my life is all the more rich because of it.  I’ve quit ballet, tap, soccer, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, singing, acting, cheer, twirling, break-dancing, and jazz.  I’ve quit sorority, internships, collegiate clubs, and a plethora of side-jobs.  I’ve left paintings half-completed, stories partially written, new languages un-learned, and instruments barely played.  I love quitting.

 

I quit my first job after Linda, the cake lady, locked me in the back freezer for fifteen minutes.  She never told me about the coat and gloves provided for the employees either, so I was trapped in the freezing cold wearing only my flimsy Baskin Robin’s T-Shirt while 30-pound tubs of ice cream continued to fall on me – my teeth chattering with distain as I blindly groped for the door handle in the dark.

The job just wasn’t working out.

 

I quit Naz when he told me he loved me.  We had been officially dating for two weeks and had about as much in common as a fichus and a French poodle.  I told him I wanted space.  He told me he wanted babies.

 

I quit my university’s Korean club because I didn’t know I had joined it until I received their online newsletter. 

I also quit drinking at Club Fairs. 

 

I quit Bluewater Sailing when they asked me never to come back to the office again.  It’s not that they actually fired me from renting sailboats in Marina Del Rey, it’s just that they caught on to the fact that I had quit on them sometime ago.  Although, I don’t know whether it was because they found out I postponed all of my daily tasks by two months and then tacked my co-workers’ names to them, was dating one of the captains and often left to hangout on his yacht, took two hour lunch breaks, locked up the office a half hour before closing, or because I would occasionally work half a shift while still drunk from the night before.  Eh, whatever.

 

So I guess what I’m trying to say is if it doesn’t make you happy, just give up on it!  Don’t be scared—it’s okay!  Go ahead, embrace the liberating art of quitting and make every moment count.  Not quitting parts of life that make you unhappy is essentially quitting on yourself—and that is one kind of cop-out that this little quitting professional will never endorse.

Kiss Me, I’m German!

 

Story now available at bakpakguide.com

 

Breaking Face

When I was four, in an act of defiance against my mother, I broke my face open on the footboard of my bed.

Tantrums, you see, were my best weapon against my mother in the epic battle forged between us.  Mother v. daughter.  Blood v. Blood.  Authority v. Insubordinate. My resources for such a war were limited considering I had such few years of experience raging domestic combat and she had so many, but innovation and unrelenting perseverance had held by my side.  War paint was drawn in sticky tear stains streaking across my face and my sheath enclosed the unrivaled, unrelenting “no”—a weapon that all children find themselves rightfully acquiring some time during their terrible two’s. 

Much to the dismay of my mother, however, my terrible two’s lasted through my three’s and four’s.  Over the years, I had slowly disheartened my parental figure, finally breaking her shield of patience in two one fateful morning during an argument over my attire for the day.  

Though I have now learned to channel my wayward tendencies a bit more passive aggressively, my youthful flare for the dramatic (possibly inspired by one too many Disney movies) had me flinging myself onto all corners of my bed in a fitful shriek of torment and lamentation when my mother selected this particular outfit.

Woe is me for having to put on that jumper.

In my defense, the aforementioned jumper was hideous.  It was cut like a potato sack with two elasticized puff-sleeves sewn on each shoulder and adorned with a tacky, red apple stitched on its cumbersome, butterfly collar.

There was just no way in hell.

                My mother stood by my closet holding up the dress of doom—her face discolored from incessant yelling.

                “You WILL put this on, and you WILL put it on NOW!”

                She was going to hit me.  I had aggravated my mother to the point that she was going to hit me.  I knew it and I could see that she knew it, too.

                I’d like to believe I was clever enough to have intentionally beaten her to the punch (pardon the pun) as to teach her a lesson about child abuse, but I remember being just as surprised as my mother when I threw myself forward and the contact between the white, antique, wooden bed-frame and my forehead created a heart-stopping thud.

                The garment fell to the floor.

                A beat of silence penetrated throughout my bedroom’s cathedral ceiling.  My mother and I locked eyes for only a second before the shock wore off and my crying resumed.  But this time, it was a different kind of cry—a cry not of hate, but of fear and shock.  Warm blood was pouring over my lashes and down my flushed cheek and the white of my brow bone protruded through the slices of flesh just above the eyelid.

Pools of thick redness collected in the buttoned divots of my comforter.

 

My mother gave me a Little Mermaid doll on the way home from the hospital.  I was so good when the doctor gave me my stitches, she said.  All thirteen of them!

I smirked as I shifted in the passenger seat. 

I had won.

It was the end of my “terribles” as there no longer seemed to be a need to be so difficult.  I now had full clothing rights and a premature birthday present.  Victory was mine.  Though hard earned and bloody, it was mine. 

My mother says that moment was the start of a life long friendship between us, but I still say she has to be kidding herself.  We fought all throughout high school and during the summers when I’d come home from college, but considering the diminished magnitude of our disputes in comparison to those of my juvenile days, I’ll wear my triumph modestly and take this new deal as a blessed miracle. 

               

A Time for Yoga

                Last summer I lived in something of a cardboard box.

It was actually insulation cardboard and the two thick sheets of it that were hung in the dinning room of my university’s unofficial Alpha Phi house were the only markers that defined my personal space.  Not only am I not an Alpha Phi, but I am not a bum and so I was a little pissed when the only living situation that opened up for me after finals week held a close resemblance to the makeshift cardboard houses one might find behind an intercity Costco.  Between the fact that my “room” blocked out sound like a cocktail’s mini-umbrella might protect against UV-rays and the faux-walls collapsed as regularly as the French army, my room provided the same amount of privacy as drawing a large chalk square around oneself and stating, “This space is mine!  You don’t see me!”

The landlord charged $800 a month for this space. 

Welcome to Los Angeles.

Though it was sublet to me for $500 a month, when you add utilities, food, gas, the ever-expensive liquor bill, and the fact that I was working full-time for mere pennies, twine, and the occasional shared piece of gum from a fellow office worker, it was no wonder I was broke.  Brokitty, broke-broke.

I kept my lifestyle modest, an effort marked by the single mattress slumped against my one good wall, the set of plastic drawers I doubled as a nightstand, and the bookcase that propped up my full-length mirror.  My clothes were folded inside an open suitcase, and all other items were contained in the adjacent Heineken box.  This was how I lived for three months—that is until I got kicked out and took residency in my Honda Civic.  Glad to see that English major was already working out for me.

But finances and aesthetics aside, it was a pretty fun summer.  I had some good friends stay in the area and was able to maintain my traditions with them including Taco Tuesdays, cooking while watching America’s Next Top Model, and traditional late-night runs to 50’s Diner for these chocolate and peanut butter milkshakes so delicious we refused to call them anything but their pet names—which always confused the waitresses when we ordered them.  But considering all these activities now, for the first time, corresponded with a sedentary, office lifestyle, I noticed I had started packing on some weight.

“Maybe we should start doing yoga,” I suggested to my friend, Elissa, as we cooked the Italian sausage for our pasta one night. 

Within the hour we had found a yoga center called Exhale in Venice Beach that offered free yoga classes on the beach. 

Sold.

 

               It’s amazing how the dynamics of L.A. can make something like getting to a yoga class a stressful event.  Between waiting for Elissa’s roommate, Caroline, to find out if her breast augmentation surgeon would allow her to exercise this soon after getting her implants, sitting in traffic, and then carefully parallel parking into a long-awaited spot opening between a Lexus and a new Mercedes, Elissa and I were about 10 minutes late for the class and arrived sprinting onto the beach—panting and dabbing sweat off our foreheads with beach towels.

                My brother, Dan, has made a habit out of teasing my for my hippee-esque tendencies—probably just because I happen to be a fan of Bohemian skirts.  But I’ll tell you what, I have never felt more like a flower child than the evening I took to stretching on the shores of Southern California with about forty other strangers all being told to “breath in as the tide rises up to greet you and breath out as is ebbs away” and to “huggle up” around our instructor when receiving new directions. 

We stretched and bent ourselves into awkward poses as the sun slowly set behind the mountains of Malibu.  Just before the sun fully dropped out of sight, we twisted out of our yogic positions to watch it, breaking out into applause once we could finally no longer see its glistening circle.

From there, we were instructed to go for a short walk along the shore and upon return, a small band had set up on the part of the sand that flatted out up near the lifeguard tower.  Forming a circle with them, we were handed a variety of small percussion instruments and lyrics that soon had us singing:

 

Devakinandana Gopala

Devakinandana Gopala

 

Gopala Govinda Govinda Gopala

Gopala Govinda Govinda Gopala

 

Yes, it was a sing-a-long event succeeding an evening of yoga and a celebration of the sun having watched over us for a full day.  Once the singing was over, I struck up a conversation with Evan, the guy next to me who was playing the symbols and the drums.  He told me he had spent most of his life as a lawyer, but once he took some time off to take care of his back problems, he got hooked on yoga and playing in a Zen-inspired band.  “Never went back or looked back,” he said.

What a beautiful thing to have going for oneself—a peaceful mindset, a supportive yogic community, and probably fewer back problems on account of living a less stressful lifestyle. 

I don’t think I really burned many calories during my yoga adventure, but I did learn a thing or two about how I hope to approach the world in my day-to-day living.  No day is certain and I’ll never know where my future will lead me—but I’ll always know that every day at dusk, I can say, “Farewell,” and, “Thank you,” to the sun.

 

Election Aid

               Bureaucratic offices have the worst coffee.  It’s always the sharp, bitter, industrial stuff that comes in those huge urn-like cans and leaves you with the same acrid breath of your 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Prabu—and will probably stain your teeth just the same.

                I had just finished my third cup when my manager, supervisor, and HR representative walked into the mailroom and began craning their necks to inspect our faces.

                “That one over there’s Stephanie,” my manager whispered to my supervisor, Derek, nodding her head to my corner of the room,

                “Hi, Stephanie,” spoke Derek walking up to my table.  I put down the handful of voter registration forms I had been working with and peeled bits of tape off my blood-encrusted paper cuts before looking up at him.  “We would like you to come with us.  You’ll need to gather your things.”

I had only been working with the Orange County Registrar of Voters for a few days and was thus far not terribly impressed.  Aside from my two self-proclaimed “Ballot Buddies,” Jarred and David (the only temp workers I seemed to click with), the people there had about as much personality as a cardboard cutout.  And as someone who spent years assembling cinematic standees for her local movie theater, I longed to work with more than just two-dimensional shapes.

                But it was work and being that I had been unemployed for five months, I was grateful for the chance to earn some cash and was thus far from okay with losing this job.

                There’s no fucking way I’m being fired already, I thought as I tossed my Styrofoam cup in the trash and collected my purse.

                I followed Derek and friends out of the securely locked Vote-By-Mail room and through the large, adjacent warehouse filled with polling equipment, unsent absentee ballots, and a gang of wisecracking Mexican men talking shit to each other while loading heavy boxes.  From there, I was directed outside and into a portable building crammed with people on phones.  Though the noise was overwhelming, I was more distracted by the fact that each person was divided solely by a thin partition reminiscent of the kind they use in grade school to stop you from cheating on exams.  My guilty thoughts of looking onto my neighbors’ spelling tests in Junior High were interrupted by Derek’s voice.

                “Stephanie.  Stephanie?  Okay, we’ll be leaving you here.  Please hand over your badge.  Chris is your new supervisor.  Here’s the binder regarding your new position, and Zach will be here next to you if you have any questions.  Take care!”

                “Wait!” I called out.  But he was already gone.

                Concerned and confused, I took a seat at my quasi-cubicle.

                “Hey, I’m Zach,” said the young, blond-haired fellow next to me.  “So why’d you get moved into the phone bank?”

                “No clue.  I think I just got fired and then circumstantially re-hired.” I really had no idea what had  just happened.  I didn’t know if I’d be in the phone bank for good, what the hours were, or if I’ll be working this job for a week, a month, or more. 

                “Well if you stay here you get paid $5 an hour more than you did at your old job.  Maybe you were promoted, not fired.”

                I pursed my face.  “I never thought I’d encounter a time when I couldn’t tell the difference between the two.”

                Zach chuckled and I began reading the contents of the binder: Commonly Asked Questions:  If I am not registered, can I vote?  What is the Electoral College?  I’m a closed-minded, Christian idiot with four divorces—so how to I make sure those damn gays that love each other aren’t given the right to marry?

                Fifteen minutes later I felt a tap on my shoulder.

                “Hi, I’m Janine, head of Human Resources.  Can I talk with you?”

                Janine escorted me outside and began explaining my sudden removal from the mailroom with phrases like “nose to the grindstone,” “overly-bubbly personality,” and “needed cohesion of personalities for productive success.”

After pausing a moment to interpret the euphemistic HR jargon, I looked up at Janine.  “So I talk too much and my managers think that’s distracting others from opening the mail?”

                Janine hesitantly nodded.

                “Even though we were just opening the mail—not even filing or proofing the ballots?”

                She nodded.

                “Just insert-letter-opener-into-envelope-and-pull kind of work and my talking was getting in the way of that?”

                “It just wasn’t working out with you there,” she calmly replied.

                “Uhhhhh huhhhhh,” I retorted unsure whether or not I had been royally insulted.  Long ago were the days when I had to raise my hand before speaking—I didn’t know such rules could leak into the real world. 

“Well at least my big mouth got me a $5 pay raise, right?”

                “I’m going to go fix that with Payroll right now.”

                “Yeah.  You do that.”

 

                Being moved into the phones ended up being the best thing that could’ve happened to me at the registrar.  Janine had been right, I worked better in an environment where I could talk and be social as a part of the job.  I mean, I wasn’t dealing with the brightest people on the phones (I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s just not legal for us to let you vote twice.  We hope you understand) but at least I was helping people.

                Most notably, however, was the change in personalities of the people that worked besides me given that they were all (gasp) talkers!  So much so that when one of my co-workers loudly inquired why HR had relocated me, the whole bungalow was roaring with laughter when I told them.  “If that were the case for us, we’d all be fucked!” bellowed Jessica.

                Jessica was a vivacious, young blonde to whom I took to right away mostly because of her self-expressive audacity.  I had passed her in the warehouse earlier that day and locked eyes with her gaudy sundress—a compilation of large fabric squares featuring the Virgin Mary on each of them.  She wore red, clucky, wedge sandals and had tied her hair at the top of her head with a dainty red ribbon.  Not my style at all, but girlie got balls.  Kudos, woman.  Kudos.

                Jessica’s bubbly personality as well as her tacky, Catholic art fetish drew her much attention from the registrar’s Latino population, but her social nature in general made her apt to know everyone there, anyways.  Before I knew it, she and I had made a habit of taking our lunch breaks together and had grown close with our fellow phone bankers Nessa and Sandy.  Every time our little foursome met up to proof ballots or compile registration packets during our overtime work, my gut would hurt so badly from cracking up—which was great for my abs considering we often worked 12 hour days and I no longer had time for the gym. 

We would sing songs, talk about how amazing baseball players’ asses are (“Professional Baseball is like the Costco of nice asses—they come in bulk!”), and exchange stories about the variety of peculiar people we had calling us on the phones.  One man, after engaging in a 15 minute altercation with Jessica, broke out into yelling, “THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN NOT VOTING IS DEATH!” and Nessa faced the challenge of trying to assist a woman that was obviously having sex on the other end of the phone (“I was trying to explain to her how to apply for an absentee ballot when she started breathing all heavily and then there was this rhythmic pounding noise. . .”).

Oh yes, our time at the county office was quite entertaining.  The work was long and tedious but on Election Day all of our hard work came to fruition—Barack Obama would be our next president. 

We were working that day from 6am to 1am but at 8 o’clock the results had been determined.  Upon hearing the news, a bunch of us phone bankers ran from the warehouse back into our office and launched the live-feed from MSNBC.com to watch Obama’s speech.  We huddled around the computer all silent and teary-eyed as we listened to the future hope of our county speak—moving only to applaud and grab at each other’s hands at the appropriate moments.

The end of the election meant the end of our temporary job, but it also meant the end of an 8-year reign of terror and a beginning for change.  Real change.  The kind of change that will once again make our country a role model for the world.  The kind of change that encourages Americans to think outside themselves and turn to help their fellow neighbors.  And hopefully, the kind of change that will someday help my broke-ass find a real job.

Check!

I have this somewhat over-blown dread about what will happen to my capricious lifestyle once I don the nylon stockings and shoulder-padded pantsuits of the corporate world– fearing that life will slip away from me like a convict must fear that soap will slip out of his hands in the shower.  This idea that I someday might find myself wet, crying, and taking it from behind by my once idealistic dreams was why I created my “To Do List O’ Life.”

                My ever-growing list is written on the first page of a pink, floral journal I had once purchased at Target with ambitions of writing in it every night before I go to bed.  A “New Year’s Resolution” sort of thing.  My forefront list, however, ended up only being succeeded by a melodramatic entry about this guy I was seeing sophomore year of college, three years after I had purchased the journal.  Funny thing is, that little breakup story I don’t give two shits about anymore is blocking the growth of the list I initially only allotted two pages for.  I probably have 100 blank pages in that journal that will never be touched because that would require my list to hurdle the embarrassment of my pathetic adolescent boy problems.

                But I digress.

                My list contains my life goals from the serious to the obscure:

-                      Travel Europe

-                      Fall in love

-                      Pee in a urinal

-                      Learn a foreign language

-                      Cock an eyebrow

-                      Drive stick shift

-                      Try some drugs and stuff

-                      Ride an elephant

Being as my rules for this list are, “Once it’s on the list, I have to do it,”

and, “I have until my end of days to get it done,” I was near panic after I impulsively jotted down the elephant thing.  Where the hell was I going to find an elephant?  Luckily my friend, Lindsay, found out about a month later that our county fair happened to be having elephant rides that year.  She even volunteered to sit in front of me as we rode atop Ella herself, knowing that I was going through a skirt phase that summer.  It’s so nice to know that I have friends always at my back…or in this case, my front.

                Much of my list includes places I long to travel to and things to do by myself, so while I was in Chicago this summer crossing that particular city off from my goals, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and eat dinner at a restaurant by myself.  Some things should be on my list, but I never think of them until they are happening—which is why I found it ironic that Erik handed me a whole new “To Do” when he called me during my solo dinner.

                Erik was a fella I met my second night in Chicago when I was out at the Kingston Mines blues club with my cousin, Sarah.  I hadn’t been in the bar for more than 5 minutes before this man walked up to me, took my hand, and continued to dance with me all night.

                We had planned on meeting up that following Wednesday, but at 6 o’clock I got a call saying there had been a delay.

                “I have to work late tonight, but since you’re in the city alone, why don’t I give you the number of a friend of mine?  You guys can hang out for a few hours, and I’ll meet up with you later.”

                I briefly considered this proposal as I hovered over my four-cheese pasta.

“Um, Sure!”

                “Great!  His name’s Razor.  Are you ready to take down his number. . . ?”

 

                I always think about my mother when I’m about to do something incredibly stupid.  It’s like when people have a near-death experience and say their life flashed before their eyes, but in my case, all I see is my mother.  I see her glaring at me standing akimbo sarcastically stating things like, “I’m so glad to see my years of teaching safety to my children have finally paid off,” and, “At least you’re putting the expensive education that I paid for to good use.”

                Though her image is never actually a deterrent, it is a speed bump in my decision-making.  So after my 15-minute chat with Razor was abruptly interrupted by his hasty declaration, “Hey, I gotta snort some lines and hit a bong, but can I call you back?” I really did consider not going.

                Maybe I’ll just wait until Erik gets off work.

                Well, I could just take a cab and make sure to stay in well- lit areas.

                I was still debating on the issue while straightening my hair at the loft I was staying at when Razor called me back.

                “We’re outside your place.  Pluck and State, right?”

                I had told him my cross-streets so we could gage our geographical location to each other.  Not so he could pick me up.

                Shit.

                My mind was still ping pong-ing between the do’s and do-not’s of my predicament as I buttoned my jean shorts while hurrying down the stairwell of my building.  I figured my best bet was texting Lindsay a phone number in case something happened. 

                “His name’s Erik Smits. (XXX) XXX-XXXX U don’t hear from me in 24hrs, do something,” I text.

                “Oh shit. What r u up 2 now? B careful!” I get in response.

                As I run out to the curb, I see two men of a larger stature with prickly facial hair waving out to me from their car.  It wasn’t a friendly “smile-and-wave” kind of deal but more of a gesture that spoke, “Yeah, we’re over here and so should you be.”  I worked my way around the passenger side of the car as Razor lazily pushed the door open from the inside.

                There was no, “Hello. How ya doin’?” sort of greeting or anything.  He just checked me out for a second then said, “It’s a two-seater so you’ll have to sit on my lap.”

                So there I was, being driven around city I didn’t know by Razor’s intoxicated brother while sitting on the lap of a man apparently named after either a devise to cut lines of coke or a weapon notorious for being hidden in the slides of children’s playgrounds.

                Mother would be proud.

                The night ended up with me back a Erik’s place wearing nothing but the leather cowboy hat this Ethiopian taxi driver named Osa gave me after I was down four dirty martinis and playing the guy a game of pool (“It looks so good on you, you keep it!). 

                I got back to my loft the next morning with a goofy grin and a missing bra contemplating how I could include random evenings like that in my To Do List O’ Life.  I guess that it’s the ambiguities of my list that open up avenues for these kinds of adventures. My goal for that summer might have been “See Chicago” but it’s just because I know that getting out of my element can lead to so many unprecedented things.  But all the same, I’ll go ahead and sneak the events of that night onto my list so I can cross it off. . . like I had planned it all along.

 

Article

United We Read

Finding Humor in My Job Search

               As I sit, it is three o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday and I’m wearing something that looks a little too similar to pajamas.  I mean, I’m wearing underwear underneath them and that’s really the only difference.

I still shower but I have considered otherwise.

“Stephanie, don’t be ridiculous,” my mother once told me while she sprayed for ants in the family room.  “You’re not a bum and you certainly shouldn’t feel like you have to end up smelling like one.  A lot of kids that graduate college end up back at their parents’ house, so stop moping.  It’s normal!”

All I heard, however, was a bunch of static and the word “kids.”

Shame on me for almost forgetting that when you move back home you’re fifteen-years-old again—like you accidentally drank from the Fountain of Youth and are forever beating yourself up about it.  It’s not as bad now as it was my first summer home from college.  After being imprisoned in an all-girl, Catholic high school for four years, I had my somewhat stereotypical freshman-gone-crazy kind of year.  And though I championed my freedom with a 3.9 G.P.A. and an S.T.D.-free body, I still somehow ended up back at home in May with a curfew. 

And here I am again, four years later, finally curfew free (not like it matters now as I have no money to go out), dressed like the bum I am and looking for a job.  Pamphlets on unemployment tell you to get professionally dressed every morning and take to your job search like it’s your job, but that just seems silly to me.  Not just because the only people who see me regularly have already once witnessed me covered in placenta, but because when I feel that I look really good, I spend all my time dancing in front of my mirror. 

And that would just be a waste of precious employment-searchin’ time.

Oh, employment.  W-2 forms.  Coffee breaks.  Memos.  Larry, the token annoying office guy notorious for his inappropriate jokes.

                I’ve never had a full-time job but if it’s worse than the application period, I don’t want any of it. 

Job posting. Cover letter. Resume. Repeat.  

Silence.

A deep, nauseating silence that is only broken with the curse words that sprint out of my mouth every time I check my empty mailbox online.

If there’s any perk to my search, however, it is the entertainment value in learning the do’s and do-not’s of applying for jobs.

For instance, the other day I applied to a Craigslist job post from a father looking for someone to tutor his two kids.  I sent a heart-felt cover letter and resume to the man with my subject heading as “You’re Search for a Tutor is Over!”  To which he responded:

               

Hi Stephanie,

 

I appreciate you enthusiasm, but unfortunately your subject line is prophetic. 

We have filled the position already. 

 

Russ

               

                I’d like to believe I’m not the only unemployed spaz out there.  I’d like to think that other people have also spent hours and hours sending out dozens of resumes only to find out after the fact that they had just proclaimed themselves to be a qualified “manger” rather than “manager.”  But until somebody else confesses their blunders, I’ll just sit here in my black sweats and hot pink tank top awaiting my B.A. to start its motor and drive me out of this town.