Balls!

Balls!
Originally uploaded by Rebecca June.

More and more, I'm confronted with weddings and engagements and the like, and more and more I'm finding the whole thing weird.

More than anything, I'm thinking it's the wedding thing that is the oddest bit. I'm down with lifelong commitment and partnership. I mean, you've got to have someone to share the mortgage and pick the kids up from soccer practice. And I get the idea of making a promise, maybe even making it legally binding, like a business decision, so there are reprecussions if someone doesn't hold up his or her end of the bargain.

And, no doubt, I'm totally down with the party part. I'm all about events that are all about drinking and dancing. And eating. And did I mention drinking?

The whole ceremony thing slightly creeps me out. The purposeful public declaration of undying love, people staring at you while you lay that whole thing bare in a way that is sort of uncharacteristic in our modern lives. I mean, how often do you really perform ceremonies? Especially if you don't church it that much. Everyone all decked out and crying about your love while babies scream in the pews. . .

But the true evil of the wedding thing is what brides do -- make all their girlfriends wear identical ugly outfits -- that is at the crux of the creepiness. A parade of differently-shaped bodies all attempting to look identical in some sort of heinous purple strapless crepe piece of ill-fitting crap. Holy shit, that's evil. Inevitably, one of the bridesmaids looks like she's smuggling watermelons and has to have tape applied to her underarms while her counterpart is forced to stick socks in her bra. They usually look angry or as if they were weeping not five minutes ago in front of a mirror as they walk down the aisle. Usually, the hairstyles inflicted upon them are similarly cruel -- and are applied with enough hairspray to ensure that it will talk many, many applications of shampoo before their hair has retained its original consistency.

All with the priveledge of having to spend $300 to do it.

Why must women be so very cruel to one another? WHY?

Happy BIRTHDAY TO ME! WITH BUTTERCREAM!

Happy BIRTHDAY TO ME! WITH BUTTERCREAM!
Originally uploaded by Rebecca June.

moments from my birthday party

- The Socialist copped to owning a copy of Kelly Clarkson's CD.
- Attempting to start a rumor that Todd was once on The Real World Seattle.
- Not being successful, since pretty much everyone there knows Todd was never on The Real World Seattle.
- Except Val. Who somehow believed it.
- Select random Todd overheard moments, including, ". . . so, as it turns out, she was only dressing like a slut so she could get laid!" and, "Man, JP, so much has happened since you've been on vacation. . . I banged, like, six girls.
- Laughing about the beautiful people convention at my party with Sarah. How did that happen?
- Having to threaten Johnny so he'd get his ass to the party.
- Playing 50 cent and Justin Timberlake at a notorious hipster bar. Pissing off the hipsters, who don't like being confronted with music they like but claim to hate.
- Buttercream cupcakes. Fucking yum.
- The afterparty at my house, me, Mark, Jason, Ellen, Sus, and C1, Tivo, Real Sex, and plenty of snark and giggles. And pizza. And beer. And passing out.

Let's Play Us Weekly!

This makes me tremble with white hot desire.

I must have it.

Because, honestly, it is not enough to amass a weekly barrage of celebrity gossip on my coffee table (if I had a coffee table, but, that's a different story). I want to be able to play out the fabulous, gucci-soaked dramas of celebrity lives. I want to load up Linday's SUV party limo with MK and Ashley, send them off to some hott club opening, and perhaps see what happens if they happen to run into Hillary Duff or Paris*.

Ah, to crouch around a tiny red carpet, marching plastic starlets up and down, seeing them eye each other jealously, trade snide remarks, stumble a little from too much xanex or pre-premier champagne. Fabulous.

Would any woman not secretly long to have a mini closet full of miniature coture gowns, perhaps a few fashion mistakes to sneer at? If the powers that be at toy companies would listen to me, I would suggest that they partner with Us Weekly or Star Magazine in order to create an Amazing Celebrity Empire -- not just settling for soothing the masses with celebrity antics, they would be able to raise children completely dependent upon the celebrity machine for entertainment -- picture it:

- Create a line of children's toys branded with your gossip source of choice -- in this example, I will be using Us Weekly. The dolls will be created in the likeness of the stars of the day -- each week's cover story would bring on another drama to be enacted by little plastic Jessica Simpsons or Nicole Richies (In the case of Nicole, I would suggest some sort of inflatable version that could be plumped up or emaciated easily).

- The Us weekly web site and print version would feature the dolls for easy ordering on a weekly basis -- as new celebrities rise in fashion, so do the profits for the toymaker.

- Us Weekly would print a toy companion -- much like a sleazy version of the ever-popular American Girl Dolls. Little magazines would proclaim, "THIS WEEK, SOURCES SAY, LINSAY LOHAN HAD A PUBLIC CAT FIGHT WITH NEMISIS HILLARY DUFF!" They would include instructions for recreating the scene in playrooms across America. Children across the countr would seize up their Aaron Carter dolls to sneer on the sidelines as Hillary and Lindsay dolls grabbed at their plastic hair with little manicured plastic hands.

- As these children grow up, steeped in the sweet brew of Celebrity Culture, they will be primed for voracious consumption as adults.

My plan is totally brilliant and completely fun! Some desparately needed accessories include:

- Paparazzi, of course, complete with real digital cameras! Take shots of your scene and load them on to the Us Weekly web site! Share with your friends!
- Sources. As in this week's Star Magazine's screaming headline -- "JESSICA SIMPSON PREGNANT! - sources say." These would be shady, homely dolls that would ride on the sidelines and report back to the magazine all about the inside story -- is there really trouble in Brangelina land? Sources say yes.
- Feather Boas. Because, d'uh. Sequins, too.
- Little coke mirrors. Tiny 10 Carat diamonds. Little celebrity gift baskets full of Keihl's products and certificates for elaborate vacations.
- Blackberries, sidekicks, and little pink flip phones that really ring! (or vibrate).
- Hulking bodygaurds with real bat-swinging action arms!
- Tiny oversized Dior sunglasses! Itty bitty Hermes Birkin Bags!

I am hoping to develop this plan into a cross merchandising orgy. Perhaps this can morph into entire cable channels full of stop-action cartoons, miniture coture during fashion week, entire warehouses of tiny limosines just waiting to act out this week's excursion to Nobu.

Sigh. . . until next time, I'll be dreaming of tiny Sushi, tiny bottles of Crystal, and little, itty bitty toilets for regurgitation.


* Note that Google didn't turn up any mass marketed Paris Hilton collectible dolls.
There are plenty of sad, dirty-minded alternatives. I do admit to finding the barbie version of the Paris Hilton Sex video pretty effing hilarious. I love the details -- bed, infared, creepy reflections in the eyes. Is it sad to be Paris, so scandalous that no one will fashion a plastic doll out of you in order to cash in on vast amounts of whining kid money?

This post is just your imagination.

This just made me cry a little -- partly, given, this is because I am currently a cheerfully bubbling pot of emotion stew these days. However, it hits home. I'm a fat girl. I've always been a fat girl, even when I was a skinny girl (which, when you're really a fat girl, can be an incredibly confusing thing).

Fat girls know that the very last thing a fat girl wants to do is call attention to her fat. However, it is pretty much the predominant thing in her life. As a fat girl, you are preoccupied with trying to simultaneously hide and prove your worth. That's why fat girls tend to be very funny. We tend to be pretty competent, and, unlike the imaginary fat girls, we're usually not lazy.

At least not in front of other people.

We are always watching these images of the "imaginary fat people." I don't know anyone else who would talk about it, but I think we're all thinking the same thing. "I'm not like that." And, as an inevitable subext, "Why do they think I'm like that?"

As I've changed my body over the years, back and forth, the world has changed the way it treats me. I have a theory, formed at my fattest, that people don't want to look at me when I'm fat.

The mere existence of the "imaginary fat people" makes me think -- they don't see me, after all.

Of course, sad but true, the fat girl in me is a little relieved.

The Art Of Paranoia

1. Assume everyone is talking about you. Strain to hear them. Pretend you have business by the copier or at your mailbox or at the waterfountain so you can surrepticiously eavesdrop to your colleagues.

2. Be especially suspicious of closed doors. Find reasons to walk past offices with closed doors in order to find out who is behind them. Peer inside, scan faces, imagine reasons the individuals in question could possibly be discussing you. Sweat.

3. Assume They Know. They Know you are writing on your blog right now. They are monitoring your keystrokes and have found ways to intercept your thoughts.

4. You are in deep shit.

Good for What Ails Ya

So, what to do when you've humiliated yourself professionally, when you're feeling about as unattractive as you ever have felt, when you're too lazy or overwhelmed to do the dishes piling up in the sink?

Well, yes, drinking an entire bottle of wine (or two) by yourself is always a good option.

However, I chose to take it to the next level.

The answer, my friends, lies in the contacts menu of your cell phone -- that's right, people, it's time for the old booty call.

Ex boyfriend to the rescue!

I've spent the last 20 or so hours rubbing bodies with the ex, stirring up a host of conveniently distracting emotions, drinking copious amounts of wine, eating crappy delivery pizza, and having bone-shaking (no pun intended) orgasms.

Do I regret it yet?

Nah. Let's wait a few weeks, perhaps tease out some kind of fantasy that we'll get back together -- AGAIN -- perhaps send out a few green tendrils of possibility. Let's be lovers and friends and then we'll set ourselves up for yet another spectacularly devestating breakup. THIS is what I choose.

I choose life.

Unless, god forbid, I end up pregnant. . .

The Sands of Mine

I have a theory. It is about denying my own shame.

I cultivate these crystals of negative thought. These little self-contained notions -- hard and possibly sharp-edged, tiny but numerous. They have gathered, throughout my life, into a sediment that cushions the bottom of my conscious. They are sublty building themselves into an undeniable majority.

Sometimes I have fantasies, as I lie in bed in the dark, that I can carve a hole in my skull and pour them out into a pile of white on the living room floor, I can watch them skitter away, little pieces of self loathing, under the couch, under the chair, let them be ground into the weave of the carpet. Hold them up in handfuls, watch them pour through my fingers.

Maybe vaccuum them up, perhaps using one of those long thin attachments designed to help you suck dirt from small places.

They'd still be there, though.

The specific chemical makeup inside my head would still combine to precipitate them, filtering like snow until I am a shuddering, capital-a-anxiety-filled mess again.

Hence, the therapist.

His name is Dan but I call him DeeP. This has to do with my own personal amusement -- a shortening of his initials (DP) into a little jibe at his chosen profession.

He accepts this with little comment. I believe he is secretly pleased at garnering a nickname. One of the sick, sick aspects of therapy is how therapists love to vivisect your relationship with them as part of "the process." You are constantly forced to analyze your own analysis of the situation, creating a sort of MC Escher effect that, occassionally, I consider to be fucking annoying.

Of course, when I say, "DeeP, you are being FUCKING ANNOYING," He seizes upon this moment to say something like, "I seem to have hit a nerve." He usually does this while arching an eyebrow in a coy manner.

Well, I like the guy, anyway. Trust him, even. Which makes me, I suppose, a very lucky girl. There is a possibility he can help me manage my in-scull beach situation.

He is not the first therapist I've tried. Only the first I liked.

About four years ago, I was having trouble keeping my sand-filled head above water, and a friend refered me to her therapist.

This woman, I'll call her Dr. Friend, (ironically, this really is her name. Don't tell anyone, okay?) shares a huge modern loft space with her husband, who is also a therapist. They had a receptionist who sat at a massive oak desk with a phone, a lamp, a rolodex, and a vacant smile.

Dr. Friend came out and ushered me into her office, which contained a desk, a couple of large, overstuffed chairs, and massive bookcases filled with books. During my first and last appointment with Dr. Friend, she peered at me over her stern half-glasses, underneath her perfectly coiffed hair helmet, and nodded silently over her notebook as I articulated my pain -- recent suicide in the family, fucked up divorce, fucked up relationships, etc. and on and on.

At the end of the session she cut me off mid-rant. "Well, we're out of time," She said, closing her notebook and tucking the pencil into a drawer. "I want to say that you definitely need therapy. But I can't be your therapist."

That's right, people. I was rejected by the therapist.

Turns out, my friend was too close of a friend for me to see Dr. Friend. She might have had some sort of conflict inherent.

She said, "I will connect you with my husband."

Dr. Friend is married to a man I simply refer to as Dr. Chuckles. Dr. Chuckles had an office full of objet d'art behind glass, artfully lit. He would sit in his uncomfortable wooden chairs and chat. Dr. Chuckles would sit at a slouch, his long legs sprawled in front of him, and slide his sock-clad feet in and out of his tasseled loafers. Dr. Chuckles and I didn't have too much chemistry, but, in the end, it was his loafers that drove me away. I just couldn't take the way he would slide his feet in and out of his shoes while I paid him to do just that.

Next, I was referred to a severe older jewish woman in a ritzy neighborhood. She had an office filled with piles. Piles of books, piles of papers, piles of magazines, piles of files. She had a space carved out of the piles for a couch and a lamp, where we would sit together during our sessions.

At first, I felt like I might be able to handle this one, the pile lady.

But then I noticed she had a tendency to forget what I would tell her from session to session -- I would have to fill her in again and again on the most basic of details. Then, I noticed that she began to make strange, sweeping diagnoses -- on the fourth visit, she suggested that, perhaps, was I a compulsive, chronic masturbator?

What?

Lady, I hardly know you.

Now, good people, I may, on ocassion, enjoy a nice release now and again. Not that I particularly want to share this with anyone, even, sometimes, my own lovers. It's, well, kinda private.

Point being, I wasn't sure pile lady even remembered my name. Why on earth was she making me wonder if my self-pleasure was an unhealthy indulgence?

Nonetheless, I persevered. Over the next several weeks, I:
-was told to go out and buy this book. Yes, I am easily distracted, I am an American Child of MTV. People, yes, I have my moments. But, as I read this book, I knew that this was absolutely not me. Strike two, pile lady.

The final strike, the eventual out, happened at my final session -- I was describing a situation with a friend. Now, there is no denying that my friendship with Johnny is, at times, somewhat unhealthy. But, ultimately, he is like my brother. He's with me to the end. Some other time I'll tell some stories about Johnny -- in the meantime, I cannot get driven to distraction -- as I wound down my description, she eyed me with alarm. "I think this friendship is unhealthy," she said, after hearing me describe it for exactly 50 minutes. "You must cut off this friendship altogether. Until you do this, I suggest you don't come back here."

Now, to me, this seemed somewhat irresponsible of pile lady.

I'm still friends with Johnny, but I didn't go back.

I found DeeP when, in a apopolectic depression, I dialed one of those 1-800 lifelines you always have as part of your benefits package. I dialed the lifeline at 3AM on a Saturday morning, weeping uncontrollably.

They sent me to DeeP.

Ah, DeeP, with your smart mouth and sweet mannerisms. Thank goodness for you.

Conde Nast Wedding in Paradise and other Hellish Outings

I just returned from here. Where I was to attend a conference for beautiful people. I mean, my friends' wedding.

These are my beautiful friends. The type of shining, flawless people you stare at when they are sitting in restaurants because, wait, are those people famous? Are they emitting some sort of ethereal light? The type of people who you really anticipate that you'll thoroughly dislike, because, people that pretty are incapable of identifying with those of us who get pimples and could never wear a bikini. The type of people who shock you by being sweet and kind and flawed and overall fabulous.

This wedding, it was on the beach. I mean, it was literally on a cliff surrounded by a cove of splashing surf under a blue sky awash with sunlight. His mother married them. Then she gave a speech that made everyone weep into their napkins.

They had tables on a ledge over the water.

We ate gourmet food and drank thousands of pina coladas.

I asked my friend Susan -- do weddings like this sometimes make you feel lonely?

She said, "Oh, no! They mostly just make me glad it's not me!"

I got home and my best friend ccalled to tell me she's engaged.

I told my mother. She said, "Oh, well, that's a low blow."

That woman gets me.

Babies!

I am having a seriously attention deficit disorder riddled day, one that produces extensive internet surfing and a sense of general mailase. During today's adventure, I googled "single parent adoption." But, um, not because I have any particular desire to take on the burdens of childcare without a partner, but because sometimes, when you are shopping for onsies for the layettes of pregnant friends who are sure to have the cutiest pudgy toed children who will smell good and giggle, you indulge in wacky fantasies.

But, that's not the point.

The point is this. I found the page from the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

This is the official government resource. Of our government. Online. Like, they wrote it after the invention of the Internet. I cannot believe this stuff. Example paragraph:

The adoption picture has also changed. The number of healthy Caucasian infants
available for adoption has decreased dramatically due to birth control,
legalized abortion, and the decision of unwed mothers to keep their babies.
Therefore, agencies have a shortage of babies to offer couples who are
interested in adoption. Most of the children who are available for adoption are
older or have disabilities. As the adoption agencies struggle to find homes for
these children, single parent applicants have become more widely accepted.

Okay, let's recap:

1. Whitey has birth control. There are therefore fewer white babies for adoption. Therefore, there is a shortage of babies, period. It's not just that you can't adopt a non-white baby, it's that the government assumes that's not even an option.
2. Before, when there was a surplus of slutty white teenage mommas who did not have access to birth control, we would not have considered giving one of them to a mutant single person. Times have changed, folks! Now that we have plenty of crippled, non-white non babies, we're looking for somebody, andybody to foist them off onto!
   

From the Q and A portion, under, "Why would a single person adopt?" (Emphasis in bold mine)

Often a single person finds life incomplete, as one single woman expressed, "I
had a stable job and could give a child many benefits. And I had love that
needed to be given and a need to be needed. I wanted some purpose to my life
other than my work and my cat." Because many women have pursued careers and put
off marriage and having children until they are older, they find that they have
reached their thirties, without a husband, but with a compelling desire for a
child. Adoption becomes a viable option for single women who feel that having a
child out-of-wedlock is unacceptable or who find that they are infertile.

From here, it goes straight into narratives about lonely single women, and not once mentions men. It also says that you shouldn't adopt a child just because you're lonely. How very condescending. I can accept that it is possible that mainstream culture might be getting sick of the single girl's rants ("When do I get showered for gifts for being me," "I can be complete without a husband," "Pay me as much as you pay your male coworkers, motherfuckers,") but painting a picture of the desperate lonely single gal as part of the informational Q & A is, in my humble opinion, beyond the pale. Anyway, if this woman would just start drinking, she'd maybe find more time for her cat.


Some other choice nuggets:

You may have a good idea of the type of child you are
interested in adopting. Or you may still be open to considering a variety of
children.

the screening process for singles is so exhaustive that only the
most persistent survive

Just as in life, only the most stubborn bastards get a baby. Oh, way. Actually, the screening process for natural birth is nowhere near this discriminating. Apparently, neither is the screening process for government Web copywriters.

It's ALIVE!

the hipster pit lives.

Thanks to Sarah, who, in a moment of pure exhaustion, glanced around at the young men in rolled up jeans, unwashed hair, and vintage sweatbands and the young women in neon pumps, torn vintage tshirts and oversized sunglasses and said, "Let's get out of this hipster pit."

Here's to an escape. Someday. . .