TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Dear Twenty Twenty,

I’ve been reading your blog for a few months and I want to know if your stories are true and you’re crazy or if you’re stories aren’t true and you’re a good liar.  If you are crazy, you make it seem fun.

—Linz in Alberta

———-

Funny you should ask, Linz.  I’m a little of both, actually.

It won’t be surprise anyone who knows me in real, tangible, barstool, and dinner date life that I’m a bit rockerless at times.  Actually, it probably won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog, come to think of it.  I’m not run-down-the-street-screaming-that-I’m-Gordon-Brown cray.  And I’m certainly not catatonic-piss-on-myself-depressed cray.  I like to think of myself as a precious blend of the two.  I’m fun crazy!  Mostly.

But let’s get serious for moment, shall we, LIA?

I suspect that most people don’t know they are a cracked until someone (your twin, maybe, or your girlfriend) tells you that you that you are.  At that point, you might say something along the lines of, “Fuck you, you’re crazy.”  But a few months after the friend/family diagnosis, you might wake up in your tub one morning wrapped in a sopping wet towel with a really short, really patchy haircut, which seemed like a good and even necessary idea at midnight last night, but in the light of day you see that a) this is going to be a problem at the salon where you work, and b) you have more in common with B. Spears that you ever thought possible.

Maybe it’s at point that you decide to Get Help.

So you get help.  You see a series of therapists who are like, “Whoa, nice haircut, Britney,” and tell you that you definitely need a hat and probably need drugs.  You get both.  The hat is about as effective as the drugs, but taking that little prescription diamond every morning makes you feel pro-active about Fixing Yourself. 

Feeling pro-active is really, really important when you think that the bathroom at the co-op is a time machine and if only you can get there at the right time you could go back and decide not to steal those red tube socks from your friend’s drawer when you were ten and also decide not lead the entire lunchroom in chanting “Kill LaWhore” in honor of your fifth teacher Mrs. LaTore?  And the Chuck Bass shit? The time you slept with the painter who was house-sitting for the fag upstairs while your girlfriend was visiting her family back in North Carolina, and, by the by, said painter was, of all things, a dude? You hope the time machine hasn’t closed yet.

Another part of being pro-active might be to go to therapy every week.  This has the benefit of making you feel like you’re not wasting your insurance money and you may also get some pretty interesting names for what’s wrong with you (OCD?  Sure!  PTSD?  Why not!? Hyber-Sensitivity Disorder?  Never heard of it, but whatevs!).

But, Linz, therapy also makes people incredibly fucking boring.  You start to think about yourself all the time. You wake up questioning your mental state and appraise it all day long.  Are you in a manic episode? Are you depressed?  Can you even tell the difference?  It’s seriously fucking dull.

At some point, you and your therapist might reach an impasse.  You like talking about yourself for an hour each week and getting something out of your insurance is pretty neat, but you sure as fuck aren’t going to tap on your forehead while repeating “I exist.  I exist.  I exist.”  So maybe you break up with the therapist.

Or maybe your therapist thinks that your antics just aren’t funny anymore.  That you aren’t actually trying to change.  That you’re still doing shit just because it’ll make a good story to tell your pals over eggs Benedict.  Maybe you tell her that she’s being too judgmental about your sex life, that even though the last girl who left her earrings in your house was young, she was very mature for her age. You might also argue that rehab is an absolutely ridiculous idea because you only drink on weekends and birthdays, for fucks sake.

At that point, you may say something that sounds good in your head but with an unintentionally vociferous tone that exacerbates an already unpleasant situation: Bitch, please, you might say. You don’t know me.

And then, your therapist fires you.

When this happens, LIA, you think about what therapy actually is.  It’s humans listening to other humans talk about their problems.  Your therapist may have a box of tissues in her office and your psychiatrist may have the white coat, but they are still human, and when they tell you that disregarding their advice will led to more bad haircuts and possibly even STDs, think about what they say and then go shopping.

I’m not trying to be cavalier about mental health.  I know brain baggage is a Really Big Deal.  My point is that you need to have a healthy degree of skepticism about this shit.  A friend’s therapist once told her that her cutting herself was a good release.  No joke.  See someone, but not blindly.

We all gots shit to deal with.

I actually wrote this a long time ago, but my left shoulder’s burning from all the fanger-tapping I’ve done today and my eyes feel like that time I used my roommate’s hard contact saline solution (the one with the bright red DO NOT PUT IN YOUR EYE label) because I was stoned and wanted to clear my cloudy peepers before my college graduation dinner with my family. Lesson: don’t put other peoples’ shit in your eyes.

But, back to the subject at hand, I began pondering the under-40 obsession with Portland again after I saw this mixed tape compliments Bitch magazine. Granted, some of the songs are better than medium, but calling your own city a “mecca of greatness” is a little like telling people your GPA.

———-

December 17, 2007

Several recent New York Times pieces present Portland as a utopia of fashion/cycling/food/coffee/art/music/queers/etc., but it’s LIES, all LIES.

The Truth About Portland (in bullets):

• Bike lanes are great, yes, but apparently the Times hasn’t seen the scars on my knees or been to any of the quite touching funerals I’ve held to honor the lives and deaths of every single one of my favorite pairs of jeans. Did the Times feel the costs (financial and mental) of repeat visits to the Community Cycling Center, where the mechanic with a pink cycling cap and full-sleeve aquatic tattoos told me to get a one-speed with fat tires or stop riding home from the bars? Did the Times get scrapped off Alberta Street by a bum after running into a stop sign at three in the morning? I didn’t think so.
• I think the Times might also have missed out on the four months of unemployment I collected between jobs six and seven of 2006. And while the Times and I probably agree that there’s absolutely nothing wrong and there may even be a little right with collecting unemployment, $416 a month doesn’t go very far when your rent is $400 a month. That’s right—a twelver of PBR and a pack of Camel Lights for an entire month’s work trolling Craigslist.
• And I wonder what the Times would think of the Portland art scene after getting stuck in the Portland Art Museum when a caterer burnt a piece of toast in the basement and fire alarms went off and huge metal doors lowered from the ceiling to protect the art but also trapped you and your girlfriend and some tourists on the top floor with nothing to look at beyond each others’ increasingly panicked faces?
• Speaking of art, what kind of strip clubs don’t take passports? The kind in Portland.
• Gays are great if you are single, but moving to a city populated almost entirely by hot, progressive, poly-whatever queer folk with your beautiful but preoccupied girlfriend is the last thing a monogamous relationship needs. Maybe the Times has self-control, but for some of us, PDX is a 24 hour Eden of cute, tattooed apples. NOT COOL.
• And who the fuck decided that it’s acceptable for an entire city to start drinking at three o’clock in the afternoon Monday through Thursday and before noon on the inevitable three day weekend? (Seriously, try to get brunch on Friday and you’ll be standing in line for your Bloody Mary with half the city because nobody in Portland works on Fridays.) Where was I? Oh, right, happy hour. I forgot what I was talking due to happy hour-induced brain damage.
• Is NYT aware of what constant rain does to people? Let’s hear how much you love the city after you’ve walked under an umbrella for 120 days in a row. Actually, you would be under an umbrella, but Portlanders are too tough for that shit so you’re just wet.
• According to some “reputable” news sources, Portland is full up with celebrities, or at least quasi-famous artist types. But when was the last time Carrie Brownstein came caroling at your door? And Beth Ditto? Way too busy being an actual celebrity on that little island Madonna owns to hang with you at the Nest. Same goes for Chuck Palahniuk—doesn’t leave the West Hills, despite repeated invites to what ended up being some very good dinner parties. In fact, the only famous person I saw was Mirah and her ass crack as she bent down to pick up some produce at the farmers market. Sure, maybe Tegan and Sara recorded their album in the neighborhood but how many times did you actually see them, despite casually dropping by the coffee shop/grocery store/tattoo studio you heard they patronized? That’s right—NONE. And who did you see a mere six months later walking down the street your new neighborhood after your beautiful but preoccupied girlfriend became less preoccupied and noticed that you weren’t really resisting the hot, progressive, tattooed queer girls at all, and, upon noticing, followed you to work (job number seven) and punched you in the face and then threw all of your shit (including the teddy bear you’ve had like forever and the art project you’d been working on for six months) out of the house and into the endless rain? SARA FUCKING QUIN, that’s who. A famous person. Not in beloved Portland, Oregon—in North Goddamned Carolina.
• So, New York Times, why don’t you go to Portland for longer than an afternoon in August when everyone is hot and naked and slightly buzzed? If you still like it after seven jobs and constant rain and having to find a new place after the bathtub in your apartment filled up with the entire building’s raw sewage (true story), you’ll at least have earned it. In the meantime, please find somewhere else to write about every once in a while. I hear Madison has a great arts scene.

I did this Q & A thing with a DC blogger yesterday. It brought up up some unpleasant memories (No. 6) and forced me to contemplate my cultural identity (No. 3) as well as our crisis du jour (No. 1)….

Small Talk!

A recent NYT article on female sexuality, What Women Want, has been getting mad attention on the blessed WWW. The piece centers around a study of male versus female arousal.

When viewing gay or straight pornography (as well as footage of bonobos doing it), both straight and gay men self-reported the levels of arousal you would predict: het dudes got hot and bothered by women and fags by men. No one got off on monkey porn. Cockrings (um, sort of) measuring blood flow around their junk corroborated these self-reports.

The women in the study, however, fucking lied. According to the moisture monitors stuck betwixt their legs, ladies get sweaty for basically anything, monkey porn included. But contrary to the physical response, bitches LIE LIE LIE when self-reporting: straight women say their dicks get wet for dicks and pecs, dykes go cray cray for vajayjay, and everyone said the National Geographic shit was like watching ice melt.

So what do women want? In honor of this study, Ima lightbulb this one for you.

But first, Why I Am An Expert On The Subject….

There are very few men in my life. Wait, I take that back. There are very few men in my life outside of bartenders and/or the bar patrons beside me. I like men fine, but I’m only close with a couple and one of them is so femme I don’t think he really counts. In my phone, for instance, only 34 of the 214 numbers I have stored belong to men, and one of those is Google and another is a pizza place. Out of those 34 numbers, the only one I dial on a semi-regular basis is my dad’s. Honestly, I don’t think about men that often and when I do it’s sort of anthropological, like, “Hmmm. Do men have feelings? Do they cry? When do their balls drop? I should wiki this.” And now that Omar Little is gone, I essentially spend all of my time with women. Also, I’m bonafide queer bait. This enough for you? Whatevs. I know women. Believe.

So what do women want? Drugs.

Because my life is so lady-centric, I spend a fair amount of time engaged in discussions about the curious sensation of the uterine wall shedding its linens.

Last night, for instance, a few of us were talking about how even when you’re a grown woman and you’ve been bleeding for many unwilling, uncomfortable years, you are still completely unable to attribute the bottomless depression you feel every month to hormones. Every month, a friend said, she feels like this is finally it; it’s finally time for the lobotomy. The loss of cognitive function? Worth it. And then as soon as she starts to bleed she has that “Ah ha!” moment: Oh, riiiiight. It’s just my hormones beating my capacity to reason into submission.

I get it too. A few days before my period starts, I feel like everyone I’ve ever made out with has left me at the altar. At these times, I forget that I’m single because the thought of another person’s DNA on my pillow case gives me hives. I forget that I’m a self-acknowledged terrible girlfriend and become convinced that I’m the victim, I’m the one who’s been wronged time and time again. I believe that I’m shit at my job, shit at school, shit at life. Dear Abby makes me seize. Hugh Grants brings me to the depths of despair normally felt with the death of a puppy. And then, miraculously, I realize that I’ve ruined another pair underwear, cotton up, and get on with it.

Not to get all victim on you, but I’m pretty sure perioding is a little more hateful for those of with a sausage allergy. My ex-girlfriend and I spent four years trying to alpha each other on the blood train, but the sync never happened and we essentially spent half of our relationship with a hot water bottle in our bed. There was the time I walked from the bed to the kitchen minus drawers. My ex got out of the shower and stepped in a puddle of menses. And there was the mattress we borrowed from a (male) friend that we returned a year later with a large burnt sienna stain in the shape of South America. It’s even worse for those of us whose chance of reproducing is about as good as Spencer Pratt replacing Blagojevich as governor. We can’t get married but we do get to suffer the same bloody mess as our straight counterparts. NOT FAIR.

There is the occasional fool who will tell you her monthly is a blessing from the moon goddess, that she loves spending the week taking long raspberry leaf baths, finger painting with her blood, and communing with her sisters in her backyard menstrual hut, but she is FULL OF SHIT. The reason you don’t see this type during her week of red is because she is too busy popping pills and sitting on her toilet like the rest of us because shitting is the only way to mute the scream emitting from your internal organs.

The only advantage of the devil period is convincing your fiance that you’re a virgin if you time the wedding right.

So what do women want? PILLS. Pills to ease the cramps and pills to quiet the hyena in your brain and pills to make it just. fucking. stop.

Colorado was so nice that I almost disregarded the proliferation of Uggs walking the streets and stopped noticing when my sister repeatedly used words like “magical,” “heavenly,” and “magnificent” to describe her new landscape.

It was even so nice I can’t even think of anything hateful to say. Wait, that’s not true—Aspen is a rich man’s moonwalk. So much fur, so much wealth, so little regard for anything but Marc by Marc Jacobs handbags (sorry, KFF!). Also, snowboarders wear their pants below their ass cracks, which is ridiculous when you’re walking, much less when you’re shreddin’ the pow, brah. Also, I almost brought the beat down on three pre-ado boys yesterday who thought it was fun to pretend to slip under our car. I had the door open and was ready get all dirty south on those young’uns when Betsy restrained me.  I did like their high tops though.  Oh, and I got lost snowshoeing and had an unfortunate encounter with a vicious yellow lab that left me in tears and with urine running down my leg.  Long story.

Look at that!  I can sip of the haterade even in delicious town!  Regardless, I assigned my sister the task of acquiring a minimum of one dozen gays/gayelles.  If she succeeds, I’m totes giving my Carrboro papers and hitting the Rockies.

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever written to an advice column as well as the best advice I’ve ever received. BUT, before you read any further, note that the following is ENTIRELY FICTION.  I do not have a perpetual yeast infection and I certainly don’t drink Hamm’s.  Got it?  IT’S A JOKE.  Now read on….

Dear Nicole,

My vagina itches. Really itches. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to take a Brillo pad to my dearly betrayed lady parts. And who’s responsible for this? Me, its sad, itchy owner. Seems that the food the rest of my body craves turn my junk into a sourdough factory. It’s not like I have a terrible diet–I don’t eat meat or many processed foods. I’m sweet on leafy greens and legumes. I chew spelt on the regular. Shit, I go on double dates with keifir and yogurt.

Despite this not-so-terrible diet of mine, it turns out that the food I’m most romantical with–sweet, cold Hamm’s in a can–is just the food that make my mons all itchy-scratchy. Not cool, Hamm’s, especially when I’ve been so loyal to you. All your other friends have either switched to microbrews or left you for jobs and families and shit. But I’m still here, listening to you bitch about Pabst.

So my drink of choice makes my vag itch, yes, but the remedies aren’t all that heinous. I mean, shit, there are worse things in life than shoving raw garlic in your hole and douching with yogurt, right? Things like sobriety. So, my question: how many cloves is it cool to shove into the darkness at once? And once at capacity, how long do I keep that shit marinating? Also, is there any substance I could substitute for my beloved Hamm’s that would lessen the yeast effect? Please don’t say water.

Love,
Itchy in NC

P.s.
I forgot to mention that I wear really tight pants and don’t want change that either.

——

Dear Itchy,
So you want something in your life to change, BUT you don’t want to make changes…. Interesting Perspective!

Get ready for an onslaught of hippie yeast infection recipes on the comment board (spare me,Portland );

BUT here is MY advice:
go to the store and get some Monistat.
there is nothing worse than a yeast infection. NOTHING WORSE. (except for a UTI i guess…)

If walking around with the dental floss leashes for twelve pieces of garlic in your junk isn’t doing the trick and is getting tiresome, there is nothing wrong with going to the pharmacy and getting some medicine from modern times.
It’s cool to be Of The Earth, but it is not cool to feel irritated 24/7 because you have cheese coming out of your vagina. seriously!

After this is cleared up, you need to make some changes, lest it come back with a vengeance!

You have to drink something with less yeasty sugar.
If you need something with less sugar, try vodka like Monopolowa.
It is delicious.
If you need to look punk, drink whiskey. Get a flask. Very Punk.
You’ll need less to get drunk (which your body will appreciate) and you will look very hard.
Wear cotton underwear.
As for your pants? i don’t know what your gender deal is, but could you sacrifice and wear a short skirt for a while? Just a few days. You can wear it with some cotton leggings or something.
If that is too womanly for your tastes, I say invest in a onesie. That being a one piece outfit, sort of like a mechanic would wear. One that is loose enough that it doesn’t further infect your crotch. Not only will you look cute and be a walking conversation-starter (do NOT tell people you’re wearing it for yeast prevention), but you’ll be giving your crotch a break.

when you’re at home, chill out in pajama pants. Put on your skin tight outfits only when you leave the house.

That’s my advice.
The doctor has spoken.

My pal Shannon and I met for a taste at our local watering hole a few days ago–just a taste, you know, post-work style.  Five hours later, we finally managed to escape the PBR and red wine blackhole and retire to our separate abodes for nourishment, hydration, and peaceful sleep.  The next morning Shannon told me that when she got home from the bar she burnt a baguette in the oven.  She didn’t want the smoke alarm to go off and disturb her neighbors so she ran to her door and threw the baguette outside but the baguette hit her neighbor’s car and the car alarm went off.

In other news, it’s Christmas, which means I’m going to embrace my inner Jew tomorrow and eat take-out Chinese and go to the movies.

I am also, however, fixing to do something very important to my mental health: GET THE FUCK OUT OF CARRBORO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DECADES.  And that’s only slight hyperbole–I haven’t been out of the state since moving here.  It’s a problem that needs correcting so Ima go to Colorado to fight with my sis and build sexy snowmen and make it with cowgirls.  In light of this exciting development, I need a ride.  Actually, I need two rides.  I’m leaving from RDU on Monday Jan. 5 at 11:35 and returning the following Saturday evening.  Any volunteers will be handsomely compensated with PBR (or, for the classier among you, OCSC’s finest Italian red, a case of Alcion, a water bottle of Grey Goose, or whatever your pleasure).

HAPPY BIRTH OF THE BABY JEBUS, EVERYONE.  I’m parking my ass at the bar tomorrow at 8 if any of ya’ll want to celebrate orphan Christmas together.