Train pain

August 31, 2005


Dear Ugly Lady on the N Train,


You may remember me, I'm the guy in the yellow shirt sitting across from you on the train this morning. The one quietly minding his own business, lost in his own grumpiness, with the white things in his ears? The one who, when you couldn't get his attention, you had the three other people sitting around him physically touch in order to do so? Leading him to believe there was some sort of emergency, or he'd dropped his wallet, or you were choking on a chicken bone? And then, when he did look up, you were still waving your paper in his face and rolling your eyes? And then he took the little white things out of his ears so you could ask him, with all due urgency, if this train was stopping at Ditmars? And he said he didn't know, so then you asked the guy sitting directly next to you, who had the answer all along?

Yeah, well, that guy was me. And you raised my 6-on-a-scale-of-10 pissy mood to a 10.5. So here are some suggestions for the future:

a) if you need to know where a train stops, get off your big ugly ass and look at the map behind you;

b) it may not make sense, but New York has now become a place where people with white things in their ears are immune from any sort of social interaction, be it conversation, directions, or a speeding meat truck barreling down 8th Avenue. Because they can't hear you. Because there's this funny thing called music coming out of the white things;

c) the next time you want to prove a point regarding your obvious anger or frustration about people with little white things in their ears - or, perhaps, merely your anger and frustration about your own ugly ass face, or ass - please recall that you have already selected my morning to ruin once, and kindly move along to the next victim.

Here's to a good September!


Sincerely,
Groomzilla

Thanksgiving

Given the State of Things Down South, this is a time when we should all pause to give thanks for all the blessings in our lives.

I, for one, am thankful to be blessed with a boyfriend who, when I come home from work and change out of my Big Boy clothes, can point out that my underwear has been on backwards all day.

I am also thankful for people who read this blog and give their two cents re: the To Invite or Not To Invite dilemma. I think I have my answer. Any more takers?

My dilemma

I was on the phone with my mom last night, telling her how M. and I are going to come up to the Cape the weekend of the 16th to check out some of the caterers.

Groomzilla: So we'll drive up Friday morning and hang out at home for the day, then drive to Provincetown on Saturday, spend the night there, and meet with some caterers on Sunday.

Momzilla: (pause, as though she is finishing a crossword puzzle or picking out the right shade of nude nail polish)

G: Does that sound good? So we'll spend the day with you, and then go to Provincetown the next day, just to get an idea, meet some of the caterers...?

M: So...you don't need me to go with you......to help...?

G: Well, I just think that at least for the first time maybe we'll just go, just the two of us, especially since M.'s mom won't be there and I don't want it to be unfair or for anyone to get there feelings hurt...

M: (laughs) Well....I don't think anyone's going to have their feelings hurt....(pause pause pause)....

G: Heh, right...yeah...but...I dunno, I just figured it would make sense for the two of us to go. Plus we want to spend the night in Provincetown...but we're definitely gonna need your input and your advice....(pause pause pause)....so....would that be okay with you?

M: (voice rising a subtle octave) Yes, that's fine....(pause) (paaaaause)

G: Okay....

After that it was mostly her talking about how she's renting a room with two double beds, because she would assume that by that time, my father will have decided to come to the wedding....and me asking, incredulously, if the wedding really hasn't come up in conversation since Dadzilla ruled it Off-Limits....and her saying, "No, I don't think we need to rock that boat until we have to...."


Anyways...my dilemma is, do I invite my mother to meet us on Sunday, or no? On the one hand, I'm excited and touched and happy that she is taking such an active interest and wanting to participate. On the other hand, I feel like M. and I are adults and that maybe this is something we should/could do on our own. But on the third hand, I don't want mom to feel like we're just taking her money, and not wanting her input. And on the fourth hand, I don't want to feel like just because we are taking her money, that we lose creative control of the whole thing. Mainly, though, on the fifth hand, I feel like I might be acting a little bit like an ambivalent teenager who can't decide if he wants to be an adult or crawl into bed at night with mummy. Because, really, she does know what she's talking about. And it is sweet that she's being so gung-ho, and I don't want to send her mixed messages and send her running. But I also don't want to end up with my sister's wedding, or to have M. feel like this is turning into my mother's wedding. We talked about it over dinner, and he's pretty much given the go-ahead to invite her, citing all of the above reasons, which is sweet of him. I just can't decide.

Is this the way it's always going to go? This wanting to have as much QT with my mother as I possibly can, and wanting to have her be involved in my life, and wanting the attention and love and concern, but at the same time pushing her away and being scared that the walls are caving in a little too much and that I'm falling prey to the Guilt Thing again? Wasn't this supposed to fade away with the pimples and awkward posture and hormone imbalances?

What to do what to do what to do.

I won something I won something!

I won the what-do-you-call-your-"friends"-who-write-other-blogs contest over at One Child Left Behind. And there is an actual cash prize. Which, now that I have won, I of course feel more than a little bit funny accepting. Like the time I beat my niece at Candyland and walked away with her Barbie collection.

Just the feeling of being a champion is enough, really.

In other news, M. and I went to Fire Island yesterday with RJ and Lance and Aunt Sassy, and it was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. Even the usual Chelsea Muscle Puffs weren't so so bad.

Ah, summer.....how ye flee.

Addenda

By the way? In case I haven't mentioned it yet? My novel sucks. Like, garbage. Like, I took all the good and cool and funny ideas I had and wrapped them in trivial, precious poop. But Anne Lamott says I have to finish what I started, which means I will have to spend the next sixteen years writing the world's worst novel ever.

Also, that photo down there makes my teeth look anything but freshly-cleaned. But they were, I swear. They're not nearly that yellow in person. I hope.

Why aren't I in bed yet?

And where'd my mental health go?

I Feel Good

Nothing beats taking a mental health day and spending it by sitting in the park near your house, bronzing in the sun, getting two more sentences (literally) of the novelette written, and generally enjoying the pleasantly breezy 75 degree weather.

Nothing, that is, except for your hot yoga teacher pulling up on his bike fifty yards away and shirtless, where he proceeds to taunt you with his hot yoga moves, which you secretly watch from the crook of your elbow as you pretend to shield your eyes from the sun while you sleep, and which are perfectly choreographable to Samantha Fox's "Touch Me (I Want to Feel Your Body)," which just so happens to come onto your iPod right then.

Until his lame but equally hot and shirtless friend interrupts his Private Dancing, and they proceed to do some sort of crazy jujitsu/capoeira moves which you've never seen and which therefore make you feel nervous and insecure, at which point you spend five minutes trying to suck in your tummy so that the three of you look just like triplets - except they have cute jeans and hot bodies, while you have a funny bathing suit and, well, a body - but then you get tired and then you actually are asleep.

But not before you manage to snap some pictures with your cell phone like a giant pervert.








Tarnished dignity aside, I did manage to improve my tan line,

get my teeth cleaned by my new scary Eastern European dentist who wears grape-scented rubber gloves,






and improve my mental health tenfold.

*cough cough*

Last night I burst into tears for no reason.

And I've been feeling tired and listless and cranky and stagnant for the past two weeks.

All of which leads me to believe that I am just a little bit burnt out.

Solution: mental health day!

When I go back tomorrow, I'll just have to pass off my glowing, spent-my-sick-day-outside-in-the-park suntan as fever, or flush, or the croop, or too much foundation.

Quiz time

Discuss:

Christopher Cross' Sailing - if it were not about, well....sailing - would be the perfect wedding song.


Bonus question (choose one):

Christopher Cross' Sailing:
a) is mysteriously addictive;
b) is an effective way to combat Times Square commuter malaise;
c) can be played exactly fifteen and one-half times between Mosholu Parkway and 49th&Broadway;
d) is the perfect wedding song, if one is getting married on the ocean, and to a sailboat;
e) all of the above.

A nice night, a bad dream, and a forgettable film; or Nothing to do with my wedding

If my life in Manhattan could consist solely of nights like last night, when M. and I and my friend Miriam and her boyfriend Willy* took some pillows and candles and sat up on our roof and drank beer and ate Thai food in the lovely cool summer air.........then I might consider staying here.

In other news, I had a dream last night that there was this scary wolf in the backyard of the house where I grew up, and it looked like it had been caught in an oil slick and it was all skinny and kind of writhing around on the ground. And then there was a smaller animal in the same predicament, and the wolf was eating it, and then there was a bear who was again in the same predicamant, and he was eating the wolf, and then they all dragged each other into a cave that didn't exist in my backyard. I'm still at a loss for an interpretation, except that maybe too much Pad See Eil and Sapporo and swedish fish leads to some crazy ass dreams.

Also, we finally watched Alexander the other night, which is one of the three Netflix DVDs that have been sitting on our TV for the past month (making them about 7 bucks per DVD and negating the purported financial benefits of Netflix), and did you know that people used to ride camels into battle like they do horses? Other than that, the movie was....uhh...well...errr....did I mention the battle camels? Oh, and Colin Farrel's tee-tees?

*NOTE: in the interest of originality, or rebellion, or boredom, you will notice that friends and others will now be referred to by monikers rather than initials. I hope to find that by putting a name with the face, I will stop hiding them in my basement well while Precious and I size them up for a slipcover.

So Sue Me

Well those resolutions didn't go very well.

I did manage to Swiffer(TM) the living room, and got through half of the front section of the New York Times, but didn't even have a chance to sort through any tawdriness, when our friends RJ and Lance called and then Lance wanted to go sit outside on the Christopher Street piers, and I'm never one to turn down an opportunity for that Bearfest - - still muggier than I'd hoped it would be out there today, but Lance did make me feel better by asserting that most of the really muscley guys were Steroid-enhanced - - and then by the time I got home it was 4:30, and then I opened up an email from one of our caterers quoting our reception at $18K and our casual Friday night BBQ at $5K, so of course M. and I had to drop everything and ruminate about it for two hours and knock off the figs stuffed with goat cheese and the nicoise salad and come up with an Excel spreadsheet for beer, wine and liquor, and then it was time to run downtown to RJ and Lance's for Thai food, and when we got home we had to watch the DVR of the series finale of Six Feet Under (still crying), and now I'm anxious about the wedding budget and sad about the Fisher family and tired from all the sun and the Brooklyn lager, and the FUCKING NOVELLETTE IS JUST GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEKEND.

Unless we go to Fire Island.

My Second Big Fat NY Times Rejection, hold the half&half

It's official, the Sunday New York Times hates me, it (they?) really hates me. I was so excited to read my Letter to the Editor in the NYT Magazine that I bought the paper last night, leaving the door wide open for terrible and important world events to occur and end up on an updated front page that I would never see. I hadn't even paid for it yet when I discovered, standing right there at the dirty deli counter, that my letter had not made the cut. Nor had the letter from the CEO, which was to have been the glorious result of my Great Act of Self-Sacrifice, in which she was to have extolled the virtues of social workers everywhere - - instead, just a bunch of sappy and precious letters from people who had read the article and thought about their dead grandmother, or been reminded of the perpetual imminence of death. So now, the world will never know What I Really Needed Them To Know, which is that My Job Matters. Because I must glean a moral from every moment, this whole thing has made me aware of the issues of pride and ego. In other words, sure, I wanted the world to know about social work, but didn't a little part of me just want to get my name in lights in the New York Times and be the Big Social Work Hero?

I swear, sometimes I'd like to back my moralistic conscience into a corner and hack him to pieces with a bouillion spoon.

Anyways, bygones. I am sitting here drinking my iced coffee - - in true Irish Catholic Martyr Mother fashion, because we have been out of half&half for over a week now, I have learned to adjust to drinking it black - - and trying to figure out What I Will Do With My Day. Here's a short list of resolutions:

1. I will not go over to the other computer and sort through all the illegally downloaded tawdriness that came through my Limewire overnight. Or, if I do, I will limit myself to thirty minutes, or forty if the computer is acting up.

2. I will make progress on my novelette, allowing myself the choice of either a) continuing to transcribe what I've already written from notebook- to electronic-format or b) picking up where I last left off (I think it was June of '03) and writing more new, creative, hilaaaarious material. Or maybe even both a) and b).

3. I will also, since I went and paid for it, drudge my way through the Groomzilla-less New York Times, and I will allow myself to attempt the crossword as a respite from the novelette.

4. I will Swiffer(TM) the living room, which has begun to look like hundreds of exotic dust bunny islands adrift on a parquet ocean.


In closing, I would also like to provide another Lesson For The Day, which is this: even when one has been in a committed relationship for more than several years, and yeah yeah yeah you know you really really Love The One You're With, it is still extremely important to go on dates with your Beloved.

M. reminded me of this when he suggested that we go on a date last night. We went to see a funny movie and then had seafood lasagna and sea bass and stuffed clams and pinot grigio at a really really good Italian place in the East Village which everyone should try, even though I think it has been there for a while, and then we took a walk and got (soggy) cannolis, and then came home and watched illegally downloaded episodes of Weeds (no more Showtime here since the big cable bill cutback of July '05). And it was really great - the whole night, not the show, although the show was good too - and made me stop to appreciate how great my BF is and why I love being with him and why I will enjoy being married to him.

But this is Groomzilla, not Lovezilla or Hallmarkzilla or Sapzilla, so I will now stop with the mush and spank you all soundly and send you to bed, while I go through the NYT Magazine one more time to make sure they didn't set aside an entire section or something for my very important letter.

Hunk-asana; or Cloudy and Humid with a Chance of Legal Sanctioning

The good thing about a gray and muggy Saturday is that it gives you - or, rather, me - an excuse to sit inside and do nothing.

The intention was to spend the afternoon working on my "novel," which I am considering rebranding as a "novella", or better yet "ten pages of precious, terribly contrived hoo-hah," either of which would be more in keeping with the writing pace I've established for myself. But there are always emails to catch up on, and new episodes of My Super Sweet 16 on the DVR, and computer folders filled with frenziedly downloaded caca to sort through.......and then M. and I needed to go eat delicious ham-cheese-&-pineapple empanadas, and then take a walk, and then get Green Tea Frappucinnos (TM) - which M. correctly identified as tasting a little bit like a delicous and fattening variety of dirt - and then take more walk.......and then before you (I) know it, it's 5pm and you (we) have to leave in half an hour to run downtown for the 6:15 showing of The 40 Year Old Virgin, so really, why bother writing the novella when all you really have time for is an illegally downloaded episode of Weeds?

I did go to 9am yoga this morning, though, although I continue to be plagued by the fact that my 9am yoga teacher is H-O-T-T, and I somehow - somehow - always manage to sit myself right next to him, and before I know it he's demonstrating poses and his feet are on my mat and his firm yoga buttocks are taunting me and his shirt is riding up his taut yoga belly and he's using words like downward dog and cobra and coming over to adjust me and I'm forgetting to breath, let alone lift my mula banda. He is, of course, 110% straight, which relieves me of any guilt, karmic or otherwise. Still, I couldn't help but hope that he saw me - but not the terrified and surprised look on my face - when I did my first ever wall-less hand stand.

The second exciting piece of news, perhaps even more exciting than my hand stand, is my recent discovery that M. and I may be able to Make It Legal after all, as another gayly-wedded blogger (The Malcontent) writes:

After renting bikes, it was off to begin the process of having
an honest man made of me. The first thing that greets you in the town
clerk's office is a prominently displayed sign noting the "impediments" to
marriage. You are duly informed that, if the (sinful) marriage you are
about to enter into is not legal in your state of residence, then you had better
intend to reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We attested to that
very thing with an entirely straight face. Good thing Eliot Spitzer is on our side (Either way, it seems almost a foregone conclusion that the fact that Mitt Romney decided to start enforcing an arcane residency law once gay people started to marry would indicate that the lawsuit against the state charging discrimination will ultimately prove successful.) There were a number of simple forms to fill
out, and after paying a $30 fee, we walked out of the office prepared to make
our union completely legal four days hence.

So I suppose the lesson to be gleaned from this gray, gray day is that - despite the the fact that they may not enhance one's rapidly fading tan line which one might have been proudly cultivating this summer - gray days can also be good days.

Hoo-ray

I



AM



VERY



VERY



EXCITED.

(thanks to Pink is the New Blog)

This and That

Last night in therapy, I was reminded of the Very Important Fact that "verbally (as opposed to psychically) communicating my needs to M." is not, in fact, the same thing as "handing M. a script detailing what I want him to say and do, and how I want it said and done." Oops.

This morning, via emails from two of my bus-gaga friends, Miriam and Reenie, I was reminded of why it is important to trust one's instincts when one's instincts scream into one's inner ear, "STOP TAKING THE BUS."

Finally, I am pleased to announce that I have officially discovered my new favorite show, My Super Sweet 16, which is all about spoiled little girls planning their Sweet 16 birthday parties. My hope is that it will provide this spoiled little girl with some guidance in planning his own party. Case in point: at the end of last night's episode, Ava said, with a sigh, "My parents [spending over $200K on my party] shows me that they really love me." I agree, Ava, which is why I will now counter any attempts at scrimping or saving by my parents with accusations that they do not really love me.

Also, we have potentially narrowed our caterers down to four choices, which we will attempt to finalize one long weekend after Labor Day. I also went fishing for a DJ on Craigslist, and this tuna is all I've caught thus far. Oh, and I like these. But NOT these.

I'm Burnin' Up

Imagine my boundless joy to start my morning with not only a humidity-free atmosphere, but twenty NYFD fire fighters hanging around outside my apartment, all of whom were exceedingly hot and humpy and chiseled as NYC fire fighters apparantly tend to be.







The guy trapped in the burning crack house next door, or lying on the kitchen floor with a heart attack, or a gaping knife wound, was probably happy to see them for an entirely different reason, but still....? They're fucking hot.

My mistake

On a somewhat gloomy and overcast day, when you wake up feeling like you've had maybe thirty minutes of sleep, and then run out of half and half for your iced coffee that you make yourself at home to save a dollar a day, and then miss every WALK sign you could possibly miss on the way to the train, and then see the train pulling away right when you finally get there, it feels really nice to see people staring at you, unable to take their eyes off you or resist turning their heads or craning their necks to see you, going out of their way to take a mental snapshot of you, and at first you think Well, maybe they're just checking out my cool iced coffee travel cup, but then it becomes clear that, no, it's just you they came to see, with your good hair and your bronze skin and your white teeth and your bright eyes and your...(pause)...

glaringly,...

distractingly,...

bordering-on-inappropriately...

pink...



pink...

shirt.

Multiple Choice(s)

Another weekend out of the city, another weekend spent bemoaning life in the city and trying to figure out a way to buy that $400K row house in Philadelphia. Or Boston. Or DC. No, strike that, we can't afford DC and Virginia, according to last month's Advocate, hates the gays.

The bus ride ended up being Not So Bad, other than the fact that we had to get off the Henry Hudson last night because of an accident, and only made it back to Port Authority through the sheer luck of having someone on the bus who knew his way around the Bronx. It did feel kind of exciting, in a field trippy kind of way, to see my hospital and, later, our apartment from a bus! And even though I didn't get the chance to complete or even make any dent at all in My Novel - like not even a sentence - at least we got to sit next to each other both coming and going, and there was no Book of Revelations being read.

And now we're back and, in addition to planning this wedding, we also have the task of determining Where We Will Be in a Year. Which will depend in large part on Where M. Finds a Job, which will hopefully be Somewhere That We Can Afford a House, or At Least Buy a Cute Apartment. Or even Temporarily Rent an Apartment With A Tree Outside and Maybe a Little Patch of Lawn.

Because I have got a serious case of Home Ownership Ants in my pants.

Speaking of ants...is it a bad sign that, when our pet cockroach ran behind his coffee maker hideaway this morning, I had only the faintest hint of surprise and dismay before rationalizing it away to the fact that, if we lived in our Dream House with a tree outside, and it was a spider or an ant that lived behind our Dream House coffee maker, I would totally just let it live..and really, is there such a big difference between spiders and cockroaches, other than the fact that one eats flies and generally just hangs out in its web, while the other eats feces and dead animals and stray coffee grounds and infects my countertop with its dirty cockroach feet?

Good news Bad news

The good news is, my Great Big Social Work Brouhaha has resulted in a letter to the editor which should be published in this week's NY Times magazine, in which a Very Important Person covers her ass mends her ways and pontificates on the glories of social workers in end-of-life care. The bad news is, I have developed severe bowel obstruction and hives during the last two days. The better news is, the bowels are clearing up and the hives are now only in my throat. Seriously, I can feel them.

The second good news is that M. finally has an I-Pod, which I gave him last night after months of feeling badly that I Had One and He Did Not. It feels good to give surprise presents. The bad news is that, immediately upon purchasing said I-Pod, I began to wonder when M. would get mugged for it on the subway, or hit by a meat-truck while crossing 8th Avenue listening to Kelly Clarkson at full volume.

The final good news is that I am taking Friday off - - only my second day off in five months - - and we are going up to New Hampshire tomorrow night to see M.'s family. The bad news is...Peter Pan/Greyhound...which I vowed never to take again after some nut stood up in the front of the bus on my way down to DC for Y2K and started reading from the Book of Revelations and I really thought our bus was going to explode or fly off a bridge or get sucked into the fiery pits of Hell. At which point I switched to Fung Wah, but then there was last Columbus Day weekend when we waited for three hours in the pouring rain and the crazy bus people starting fighting and pushing and shoving and screaming, and then took their wet socks off when we finally got on the bus, and then opened up their stinky Columbus Day Cookout leftovers. At which point I vowed never to take any bus ever again...and yet, here I am, taking the bus. Again.

The Circle of Life

How the fuck am I supposed to go to yoga and forget about all the annoying people I hate, when everytime I go to yoga, my class is full of annoying people I hate?

Invalidation, Non-precipitation, and Anxiety Alleviation

My thoughts today have been consumed - - CONSUMED! - - by my anger over yesterday's Sunday NY Times magazine cover story, which I was at first very excited to read because it deals directly with What I Do Professionally, but which then perturbed me greatly because it completely invalidated What I, Specifically, Do Professionally. It put a great big cloud over my already-partly-cloudy day at Jones Beach yesterday (a day saved only by the company I was keeping, the lack of expected rain and thunderstorms, and the fact that the water was wicked wahm), and has prevented me from Doing My Job Well today. It has also Given Me An Excuse to Sit At My Desk All Day, Emailing About How Angry I Am.

Here is the perturbed-yet-professional letter to the editor I wrote:

To the Editor:

While I am always glad to see End-of-Life care making it into the news, I was disappointed at this article's failure to at least touch upon the critical role played by social work in achieving a quality end of life experience. Clinical social workers are specially trained to provide patients and families with psychosocial and emotional supports; to educate patients and families about end-of-life options and create advance care plans; to advocate for quality end-of-life care and facilitate patient and family communication with other health care providers; and to help tease apart and rectify the complicated inter- and intrapersonal dynamics that often impede an optimal dying experience. For the CEO of a major NYC hospice to suggest that emotional and/or psychological pain is best managed by a "chaplain, a massage therapist, a pet therapist, a doctor, [or] a volunteer [playing] the harp'' - with no mention of, let alone emphasis on, the role of the social worker - is saddening, frustrating and worrisome.

Groom Zilla, LMSW


What does any of this have to do with getting married to another man, you may ask? Nothing at all, I might reply. Except that M. and I sat down and had a much-needed and amply-relieving conversation about What We Want on our wedding day. We narrowed down the food choices and vendors, knocked a bunch of dollars off the tent company invoice - Good bye, bouillion spoons! See ya, salad plates! Hasta luego, eight hundred dollars worth of crappy little lantern lights! - and made some more headway into Who Will Be Sleeping Where. All in all, major relief for this worried soul.

I also threw my back (halfway) out right after yoga on Saturday morning - - which is ironic, given that I practice yoga to keep my muscles limber so that I don't throw my back out - so I can't decide if I should go to yoga after work today, or if my time would better be spent ruminating.

Addenda

Two items:

1. "Annie's Song" came on my I-Pod this afternoon on the way home from work and I had totally forgotten that I had kind of considered incorporating it into the wedding somehow, because I find it to be an incredibly romantic song and it always makes me a little verklempt and wistful. I listened to it three times, and got misty at the same point each time. My enthusiasm is only mitigated by the fact(s) that:

a) it is a John Denver song, and therefore carries an automatic hippy dippy lovechild I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing vibe with it;

b) our friends the K-R's got married last Fall and one of their friends sang Annie's Song at their pre-wedding talent show...as a spoof...and everyone laughed...because...how insane to have Annie's Song at a wedding;

c) it may push my FabuLash(TM) mascara past the breaking point.


2. My mother and M. are now both of the mindset that lobsters do not a clean and enjoyable wedding reception make. My first reaction was to decompensate and revert to my inner child and suggest to my mother that, since she and M. are in such agreement about so many aspects of this wedding (no lobsters, no small children), perhaps they should plan it together. But really, once I remembered my earlier decision to be conscious about my relationships, I started to see the logic. My mother also threw out the tantalizing detail that it would lop $120 worth of lobster crackers off the $6000 tent bill.

Oh and also,

3. Ever since I wrote about back acne, I am obsessed with the fear that people will conjure up all these horrific images of my back. It's not that bad, really, just a few blemishes, and it's only because of the heat and my baseline level of heightened stress and anxiety. I swear. I can feel it clearing up even as I write this. There, *poof* - - gone!

A Pox on Them

Whichever marketing demon came up with the new FabuLash(TM) mascara campaign - - or, better yet, the product itself - - should be taken out back, dolled up like a FabuLash(TM)ed dimestore jezebel, and beaten to death with tubes of FabuLash(TM).

This commercial invaded my morning routine and I am now unable to get Halle Berry and her be-ponytailed mug out of my head, as she says it, over and over and over again: FabuLash. FabuLash. FABULASH.

Watch it, I dare you. And then watch your soul shrivel up and die.

I Can See Clearly Now

Last night, I learned - or, perhaps, was reminded of - two important lessons from my therapist:

1. It's never good to pigeonhole, especially in a relationship. In other words, just because [loved one] is often quite [descriptor], this does not mean that [loved one] is always [descriptor]; in fact, there are probably many times when [loved one] is not being at all [descriptor], but you've got it in your head that [loved one] is always [descriptor] to such an unfair degree that you never even give [loved one] a chance to not be [descriptor], which really just makes you a huge [insult].

2. My therapist brought out a book called Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, which he suggested I might like enough to purchase myself, but I think I would sooner purchase a book on football or hedgefunds or How To Be a Better Nazi than a book with this title. Far be it from me to pigeonhole, however, because in actuality this unfortunately-titled book has a lot of insightful points to offer. The most significant of which being the suggestion that in a truly conscious relationship, one must put aside the childlike expectation that one's caregiver/partner will automatically know one's needs/thoughts/desires, and instead communicate those thoughts/needs/desires clearly. Hearing this made me realize Crap, I'm usually totally childlike when it comes to this one. And being childlike brings with it a certain preliminary satisfaction, but really, it mostly just lands me on the floor, kicking and screaming and crying like a....child. A long, sweaty, awkward child, with two days worth of stubble and a case of back acne and a vague odor of carne asada and stale pinot grigio.

Wah. Self-insight is haaawd.

Separated at Birth?

Is it possible that I passed Charo as I was exiting the uptown N/R station at 49th Street tonight after therapy? More importantly, is it possible that Charo has let her hair go a little grey, wears cakey fuschia lipstick, and dresses in linen capris and earth-tone cardigans?

I swear, though, it was so Charo.

Her, or maybe Lonnie Anderson.

Just an Illusion

Sometimes? When you're walking home from the train, listening to your fave Janet Jackson walking-home-from-the-train song? And imagining that you are a) walking down a catwalk in some sort of super-hip fashion show or b) walking towards the camera in some sort of super-hip music video? You stop to pause and think and wonder if the two post-work beers you just drank on an empty stomach, plus the twenty-pound work-bag slung across your chest and over your back that is now whapping you awkwardly in the ass with every step, plus your swishy synthetic-fiber pants that keep getting stuck on the tongues of your brown slip-on loafers, are somehow making you look much less like something out of the MTV Milan Fashion Shows and more like some sort of awkward, stumbling albatross with an overly active set of forehead sweat glands, a head tick, and a silent case of Tourette's.