Sunday, February 25, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Not in This Lifetime
The fact that I read too many trashy novels, mostly targeted at the 13-to-17-year-old age group, has made me a little overly angsty. Sometimes I record events as they're happening to me in cleverly compact catch phrases, mentally adding punctuation and quotation marks. Then I begin to imagine the rest of the story, just to make things fit a little better. If I actually start out the day by inadvertently straightening my bangs in such a way that they stick out at a 90 degree angle from my forehead, I mentally jump in the shower and dry my hair again, perfectly this time, which makes me late for class. I can't find a parking spot in my usual place and have to park in the commuter lot, which is halfway across campus from my class. As I'm hurrying, I trip and get mud all over myself (it's been raining, although not on me), but it looks cute on me, and as I'm getting back up onto my feet, a tall shadow blocks the scorching sun and a gorgeous guy with long eyelashes and a penchant for Polo's reaches down to help me.
In reality I flipped out at the idea of being less than 10 minutes early, grabbed a headband and forgot my umbrella.
It's not really the idea of the gorgeous guy that does it for me in that scenario. What's more appealing is imagining that I'm a different kind of girl; one who is relaxed and confident and has bouncy, shiny hair. Other girls see me and think ooh, look at her! I have to know where she bought that cute top. But when they ask me, I can't remember. It's not the shirt they want, it's my effortless style. But that's not on sale yet at the Gap, so there can only be one of me. Suckers.
Another daydream takes over as I'm walking from one class to another. The bell tower on campus is ringing out a melody I vaguely recognize and label as classical. The temperature is biting (for someone born in Miami), and as I breathe in the cold air burns me, but in a good way. I'm wearing a wool sweater, and the other native Floridians around me are wearing boots and heavy jackets. I'm walking through a beautiful part of campus, filled with red brick buildings and thick trees, and it's easy for the context of the situation to wash out of my mind. I'm walking through Boston. No, somewhere more collegial. Pennsylvania? I have only postcard notions of what these places are really like, but that seems like enough. I'm on a northern college campus, somewhere busy, and I'm speed walking to meet a professor in his office, who wants my input on an important medical -- no, psychological -- study he is conducting. Sure, maybe I am only 21-years-old, but it's obvious to everyone that I have a brilliant mind and a keen sense of observation, not to mention a killer body and a perfected aura of aloofness. I wish I had time to listen to the a Capella group that's taken up on the quad, but as anyone can see, I'm running a bit late.
Why do I constantly fantasize about being late? Is it because I want someone to cry out, flooded with relief as I try to enter unobtrusively through the back door, Oh thank god you're here!
Fifteen minutes early for my next class, I sit on a bench, rub my right foot and inevitably begin to fantasize about the obvious: what if I weren't disabled?
You probably wouldn't notice my slight limp and sturdy footwear, much less the tension held in the stiff second joint of my right middle finger, or in my slightly raised eyebrows. But often, faking small talk with a friend, the intermittent searing pain in my foot is the only thing about which I can think.
Sometimes the pain takes my thoughts in a more vindictive direction, and I send bitter mental messages to passing girls. Your boots look like you borrowed them from your prostitute mother... I didn't know bondage was in this season. Ugh. Why would you choose to wear sneakers? Yours look more orthopedic than mine. Ooh, those shoes are cute. Too bad they still don't detract from your face! I can't sustain it though, and I begin to imagine what I would be like had my fall merely broken a bone rather than shattering my life.
Shoe shopping would be an indulgence rather than an exercise in damage control. I wouldn't see older women and empathize with their careful steps. I'm unburdened by the periodic depression that accompanies the realization that I have no control over my own body. I might be casually doing anything -- planning a night out with friends without worrying about how far away the parking is or letting my sister guilt me into playing racquetball with her. All of the things that were once merely details have worked themselves into unattainable fantasies. Like calorie-free ice cream or my being a famous actress: it's just not going to happen. And sure maybe there is some disappointment, but what's the big fuss? Right?
It's maybe 10 years in the future and I'm looking at old pictures with my mother. There's one of me in my sophomore year at my sorority's formal, wearing a baby pink dress and a lime green knee-high cast.
"Oh Amy, remember when you broke your foot? That cast was so cute."
"Haha, I know! Everything was pink and green for a month."
Feeling uneasy about my self-involvement, I sometimes force my thoughts in the opposite direction. Picturing myself in a wheelchair, I imagine trying to afford a New York City apartment in a building that has an elevator and the way clients would try to avoid staring at me when I greet them at the glamorous public relations firm that has hired me in an effort to appear non-discriminatory.
Then I might see a person who really is in a wheelchair and I realize that I have no concept of what their life is like.
The thing about fantasies is that they don't have to intersect with reality. Isn't escape the point? Who wants to imagine something that's worse? If I wanted to appreciate what I have, I'd maybe go to temple or do community service.
In my mind, I am doing these things. But the inescapable reality is that I'm destined to be myself.
In reality I flipped out at the idea of being less than 10 minutes early, grabbed a headband and forgot my umbrella.
It's not really the idea of the gorgeous guy that does it for me in that scenario. What's more appealing is imagining that I'm a different kind of girl; one who is relaxed and confident and has bouncy, shiny hair. Other girls see me and think ooh, look at her! I have to know where she bought that cute top. But when they ask me, I can't remember. It's not the shirt they want, it's my effortless style. But that's not on sale yet at the Gap, so there can only be one of me. Suckers.
Another daydream takes over as I'm walking from one class to another. The bell tower on campus is ringing out a melody I vaguely recognize and label as classical. The temperature is biting (for someone born in Miami), and as I breathe in the cold air burns me, but in a good way. I'm wearing a wool sweater, and the other native Floridians around me are wearing boots and heavy jackets. I'm walking through a beautiful part of campus, filled with red brick buildings and thick trees, and it's easy for the context of the situation to wash out of my mind. I'm walking through Boston. No, somewhere more collegial. Pennsylvania? I have only postcard notions of what these places are really like, but that seems like enough. I'm on a northern college campus, somewhere busy, and I'm speed walking to meet a professor in his office, who wants my input on an important medical -- no, psychological -- study he is conducting. Sure, maybe I am only 21-years-old, but it's obvious to everyone that I have a brilliant mind and a keen sense of observation, not to mention a killer body and a perfected aura of aloofness. I wish I had time to listen to the a Capella group that's taken up on the quad, but as anyone can see, I'm running a bit late.
Why do I constantly fantasize about being late? Is it because I want someone to cry out, flooded with relief as I try to enter unobtrusively through the back door, Oh thank god you're here!
Fifteen minutes early for my next class, I sit on a bench, rub my right foot and inevitably begin to fantasize about the obvious: what if I weren't disabled?
You probably wouldn't notice my slight limp and sturdy footwear, much less the tension held in the stiff second joint of my right middle finger, or in my slightly raised eyebrows. But often, faking small talk with a friend, the intermittent searing pain in my foot is the only thing about which I can think.
Sometimes the pain takes my thoughts in a more vindictive direction, and I send bitter mental messages to passing girls. Your boots look like you borrowed them from your prostitute mother... I didn't know bondage was in this season. Ugh. Why would you choose to wear sneakers? Yours look more orthopedic than mine. Ooh, those shoes are cute. Too bad they still don't detract from your face! I can't sustain it though, and I begin to imagine what I would be like had my fall merely broken a bone rather than shattering my life.
Shoe shopping would be an indulgence rather than an exercise in damage control. I wouldn't see older women and empathize with their careful steps. I'm unburdened by the periodic depression that accompanies the realization that I have no control over my own body. I might be casually doing anything -- planning a night out with friends without worrying about how far away the parking is or letting my sister guilt me into playing racquetball with her. All of the things that were once merely details have worked themselves into unattainable fantasies. Like calorie-free ice cream or my being a famous actress: it's just not going to happen. And sure maybe there is some disappointment, but what's the big fuss? Right?
It's maybe 10 years in the future and I'm looking at old pictures with my mother. There's one of me in my sophomore year at my sorority's formal, wearing a baby pink dress and a lime green knee-high cast.
"Oh Amy, remember when you broke your foot? That cast was so cute."
"Haha, I know! Everything was pink and green for a month."
Feeling uneasy about my self-involvement, I sometimes force my thoughts in the opposite direction. Picturing myself in a wheelchair, I imagine trying to afford a New York City apartment in a building that has an elevator and the way clients would try to avoid staring at me when I greet them at the glamorous public relations firm that has hired me in an effort to appear non-discriminatory.
Then I might see a person who really is in a wheelchair and I realize that I have no concept of what their life is like.
The thing about fantasies is that they don't have to intersect with reality. Isn't escape the point? Who wants to imagine something that's worse? If I wanted to appreciate what I have, I'd maybe go to temple or do community service.
In my mind, I am doing these things. But the inescapable reality is that I'm destined to be myself.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Photoshop
I absolutely despise this video, and I can't believe I had to watch it in one of my classes... even if we are learning Photoshop:
This one is much, much better:
This one is much, much better:
Monday, February 5, 2007
Mr. One Night Standing-Room-Only: Part 2
(part one is here)
Twenty minutes after tipping the shady valet, we roll up to Pleasure Emporium and K directs me to a vacant parking lot right next to the entrance.
I hesitate.
"I don't think we should park here."
"What?"
"I just don't think we should park here."
"Amy, there are tons of spaces here. There's no one around."
"Yeah, and why not?"
"I don't know. Maybe because it's 3 a.m. and we're at a porn store."
"Are you kidding? These are peak hours." K looks at me suspiciously, but I plough on. "There has to be another reason. I don't wanna get towed."
"Don't be so paranoid. There's no towing sign. You'd rather park down the dark alleyway?" (It's exactly like the one my mother always warned me about.) "It will be fine."
Inside is a little different than I expected. The few times I'd been to similar places in Gainesville, it was always accompanied by two or three giggling girls, trying to find the perfect gag gift for a prudish friend. Or once, accompanied by drunk frat boys, who high-fived each other by the lesbian porn while a friend and I decided to wait outside before being piled into someone's truck and mercifully driven home.
The interior of Pleasure Emporium in Miami Beach lacks all pretense. As the sole nervously giggling girl, I stick out in a way that makes the other customers eye me with annoyance.
Oh no, real live girls, a tubby middle-aged man grasping a video garishly emblazoned with "Barely Legal" is panicked-ly thinking as he hurriedly directs himself towards the cash register, his pallid skin glowing beneath the florescent lights.
Near a rack of painful-looking fetish videos, a young couple smile at each other and confusingly exude normality. Suddenly the man's hand slides down from his girlfriend's waist and slaps her hard on the ass. Moderately alarmed, I scamper to the back of the store where K, standing before a wall of vibrators, starts firing questions at me.
"This is so small, how can it do anything? I don't understand, what is the remote control for? Is more power better? Do they sell batteries here? This one looks like an electric toothbrush. The woman on this box is hideously ugly. Is that supposed to get me in the mood? Why are they so expensive, isn't there any other way?"
"Um... your cell phone has a vibrate setting. You'd have to have someone continuously calling you though... um... I guess I can stay up late on Tuesday nights, I have no classes on Wednesdays. My fingers would get pretty tired from dialing though... maybe you could just dial yourself from another phone? Then your fingers would get tired, and that would sort of defeat the purpose of a vibrator... ummm..."
"Amy," K and I are both laughing, and continue to do so until an overly helpful Pleasure Emporium employee strides over to us, brandishing what looks like a key chain.
"Hello ladies." Trying to be slick, but looking straight out of a cheesy night club, complete with a shiny shirt, too much hair gel and acne. "I was wondering if I could offer you some help."
He seems like a nice enough guy, but one has to wonder why he has this job. K starts directing her questions at him, and as he demonstrates the disproportionate power of what I thought was a small key chain, I wander away and try to look inconspicuous.
It's hard to look inconspicuous in a porn store.
Bold and liberated as I like to think I am, the harsh lighting and direct gaze of this guy is making me blush. Maybe I'm only bold when other people are shy? I don't want to think about it, so I reluctantly turn back to K, by herself now, and ready to go.
She pays, and we step outside.
Oh, fuck.
"Hmmm... look at that. My car's gone." As if casually observing.
K sways on her heels a bit and looks from me to where my car was parked, as if waiting for the punch line. I give up on the punch line and start harshly laughing, which then segues into whining. Am I cursed?
The last time I visited K in Miami, she was living in a notably safe area of Coral Gables. Parking my car in front of her house, we went out to dinner, and when we got back at around 1 a.m., I found the front window of my car smashed and a tote bag stolen. It was a cute bag, but I imagined, with satisfaction, the thief's disappointment; it contained a bikini and Vera Bradley make-up bag. Calling my then-boyfriend, with whom I was supposed to spend the night, I discovered that he had fallen asleep and I was stuck. The morning after included pricey towing and a bitter argument; we broke-up about a week later.
A few days before our visit to Pleasure Emporium, I had been showing my friend R around Delray Beach. Spotting a parking space, I decided to make a left turn and put my blinker on, pausing for a gap in the traffic. Angry, urgent honking came from behind me. Whoa, who's the asshole? I just want to turn, I thought to myself. Upon turning and facing glaring headlights and more honking, it came to me: oh wait, I'm the asshole. It was a one-way street. Luckily, I was able to turn into a parking lot before being hit - or arrested - where I was greeted by an hysterically laughing restaurant employee taking out the trash.
"Hey, remember that time I visited you in Florida and you almost killed us?" My friend would ask me later.
"Which time?" I'm not exactly the best driver, but standing outside the porn store, I can't really blame myself.
"God damn it!" K, having progressed from denial, is shouting. "We were only in there for fucking 20 minutes."
We trudge back inside and are once again greeted by the overly helpful employee. Immediately ascertaining what's happened, he's so nice I really regret my previous silent snickering at him. He even offers to let one of us drive his car to the towing lot, but it's out of the question, as neither K nor I can drive stick, and we don't have enough cash.
"Two hundred dollars if we get it tonight?" K breathes into the phone after dialing the towing company. "And $250 if we get it tomorrow?"
Seeing no other options, we call a cab, and while waiting for it, make conversation with the employee.
"Where were we supposed to park?" K muses.
"There's like this sketchy looking alleyway." It figures.
"So what do you do all night?" I ask. He gestures at a television screen showing anime porn with the sound turned off. Ew.
"So do you girls toke up?" Why do people ask me this question so often? Just because I'm with a friend who is buying a vibrator at 3 a.m. doesn't mean I'm high.
"Oh, you're Jewish? You must toke up a lot."
"You listen to ska? Hah. You toke up?"
I'm never sure what the appropriate response is to this question. Yes, I have smoked marijuana in the past, but I really wouldn't consider myself a regular user, and I've never used the phrase 'toke up.' I give my standard answer.
"Umm....." Awkward. It's always taken for an affirmative, and the following sentence is typically either an offer or a request.
A horn blares outside, and thanking our new best friend, K and I exit and slide into the taxi. I'm admittedly a little too paranoid about things, but being picked up from a porn store and riding in a taxi at 3:30 a.m. for half an hour with my female friend while wearing a revealing outfit is not quite relaxing. Being directionally challenged and unfamiliar with Miami roads, I'm convinced that the driver, who is blaring rap music, is driving us into the middle of nowhere.
'Nowhere' isn't a gated community though, and as we arrive back at K's apartment, the whole thing suddenly seems hysterical.
"I could make my own porno, and sell it at Pleasure Emporium." K's the one who's going to be paying for the towing, and we're trying to think of quick money-making schemes to avoid wasting that much money on something that's not clothes.
"Ooh, I have an idea! I could call up Mr. OneNightStand, tell him I'm pregnant, and need $300 for an abortion!"
"Amy, that is the perfect solution! Seriously, it solves everything. I mean, he can afford it. We can even ask for more!"
"Um... I was actually kidding..."
Twenty minutes later I'm halfway into dreaming when K's voice calls me back.
"This turned out to be one expensive vibrator. It better be worth it."
"Hmm... 'I still jerk off manually,' " quoting "The Big Lebowski," but K misses the reference. She shakes her head and repeats what has become my favorite of her catch phrases.
"I keep trumping myself."
Twenty minutes after tipping the shady valet, we roll up to Pleasure Emporium and K directs me to a vacant parking lot right next to the entrance.
I hesitate.
"I don't think we should park here."
"What?"
"I just don't think we should park here."
"Amy, there are tons of spaces here. There's no one around."
"Yeah, and why not?"
"I don't know. Maybe because it's 3 a.m. and we're at a porn store."
"Are you kidding? These are peak hours." K looks at me suspiciously, but I plough on. "There has to be another reason. I don't wanna get towed."
"Don't be so paranoid. There's no towing sign. You'd rather park down the dark alleyway?" (It's exactly like the one my mother always warned me about.) "It will be fine."
Inside is a little different than I expected. The few times I'd been to similar places in Gainesville, it was always accompanied by two or three giggling girls, trying to find the perfect gag gift for a prudish friend. Or once, accompanied by drunk frat boys, who high-fived each other by the lesbian porn while a friend and I decided to wait outside before being piled into someone's truck and mercifully driven home.
The interior of Pleasure Emporium in Miami Beach lacks all pretense. As the sole nervously giggling girl, I stick out in a way that makes the other customers eye me with annoyance.
Oh no, real live girls, a tubby middle-aged man grasping a video garishly emblazoned with "Barely Legal" is panicked-ly thinking as he hurriedly directs himself towards the cash register, his pallid skin glowing beneath the florescent lights.
Near a rack of painful-looking fetish videos, a young couple smile at each other and confusingly exude normality. Suddenly the man's hand slides down from his girlfriend's waist and slaps her hard on the ass. Moderately alarmed, I scamper to the back of the store where K, standing before a wall of vibrators, starts firing questions at me.
"This is so small, how can it do anything? I don't understand, what is the remote control for? Is more power better? Do they sell batteries here? This one looks like an electric toothbrush. The woman on this box is hideously ugly. Is that supposed to get me in the mood? Why are they so expensive, isn't there any other way?"
"Um... your cell phone has a vibrate setting. You'd have to have someone continuously calling you though... um... I guess I can stay up late on Tuesday nights, I have no classes on Wednesdays. My fingers would get pretty tired from dialing though... maybe you could just dial yourself from another phone? Then your fingers would get tired, and that would sort of defeat the purpose of a vibrator... ummm..."
"Amy," K and I are both laughing, and continue to do so until an overly helpful Pleasure Emporium employee strides over to us, brandishing what looks like a key chain.
"Hello ladies." Trying to be slick, but looking straight out of a cheesy night club, complete with a shiny shirt, too much hair gel and acne. "I was wondering if I could offer you some help."
He seems like a nice enough guy, but one has to wonder why he has this job. K starts directing her questions at him, and as he demonstrates the disproportionate power of what I thought was a small key chain, I wander away and try to look inconspicuous.
It's hard to look inconspicuous in a porn store.
Bold and liberated as I like to think I am, the harsh lighting and direct gaze of this guy is making me blush. Maybe I'm only bold when other people are shy? I don't want to think about it, so I reluctantly turn back to K, by herself now, and ready to go.
She pays, and we step outside.
Oh, fuck.
"Hmmm... look at that. My car's gone." As if casually observing.
K sways on her heels a bit and looks from me to where my car was parked, as if waiting for the punch line. I give up on the punch line and start harshly laughing, which then segues into whining. Am I cursed?
The last time I visited K in Miami, she was living in a notably safe area of Coral Gables. Parking my car in front of her house, we went out to dinner, and when we got back at around 1 a.m., I found the front window of my car smashed and a tote bag stolen. It was a cute bag, but I imagined, with satisfaction, the thief's disappointment; it contained a bikini and Vera Bradley make-up bag. Calling my then-boyfriend, with whom I was supposed to spend the night, I discovered that he had fallen asleep and I was stuck. The morning after included pricey towing and a bitter argument; we broke-up about a week later.
A few days before our visit to Pleasure Emporium, I had been showing my friend R around Delray Beach. Spotting a parking space, I decided to make a left turn and put my blinker on, pausing for a gap in the traffic. Angry, urgent honking came from behind me. Whoa, who's the asshole? I just want to turn, I thought to myself. Upon turning and facing glaring headlights and more honking, it came to me: oh wait, I'm the asshole. It was a one-way street. Luckily, I was able to turn into a parking lot before being hit - or arrested - where I was greeted by an hysterically laughing restaurant employee taking out the trash.
"Hey, remember that time I visited you in Florida and you almost killed us?" My friend would ask me later.
"Which time?" I'm not exactly the best driver, but standing outside the porn store, I can't really blame myself.
"God damn it!" K, having progressed from denial, is shouting. "We were only in there for fucking 20 minutes."
We trudge back inside and are once again greeted by the overly helpful employee. Immediately ascertaining what's happened, he's so nice I really regret my previous silent snickering at him. He even offers to let one of us drive his car to the towing lot, but it's out of the question, as neither K nor I can drive stick, and we don't have enough cash.
"Two hundred dollars if we get it tonight?" K breathes into the phone after dialing the towing company. "And $250 if we get it tomorrow?"
Seeing no other options, we call a cab, and while waiting for it, make conversation with the employee.
"Where were we supposed to park?" K muses.
"There's like this sketchy looking alleyway." It figures.
"So what do you do all night?" I ask. He gestures at a television screen showing anime porn with the sound turned off. Ew.
"So do you girls toke up?" Why do people ask me this question so often? Just because I'm with a friend who is buying a vibrator at 3 a.m. doesn't mean I'm high.
"Oh, you're Jewish? You must toke up a lot."
"You listen to ska? Hah. You toke up?"
I'm never sure what the appropriate response is to this question. Yes, I have smoked marijuana in the past, but I really wouldn't consider myself a regular user, and I've never used the phrase 'toke up.' I give my standard answer.
"Umm....." Awkward. It's always taken for an affirmative, and the following sentence is typically either an offer or a request.
A horn blares outside, and thanking our new best friend, K and I exit and slide into the taxi. I'm admittedly a little too paranoid about things, but being picked up from a porn store and riding in a taxi at 3:30 a.m. for half an hour with my female friend while wearing a revealing outfit is not quite relaxing. Being directionally challenged and unfamiliar with Miami roads, I'm convinced that the driver, who is blaring rap music, is driving us into the middle of nowhere.
'Nowhere' isn't a gated community though, and as we arrive back at K's apartment, the whole thing suddenly seems hysterical.
"I could make my own porno, and sell it at Pleasure Emporium." K's the one who's going to be paying for the towing, and we're trying to think of quick money-making schemes to avoid wasting that much money on something that's not clothes.
"Ooh, I have an idea! I could call up Mr. OneNightStand, tell him I'm pregnant, and need $300 for an abortion!"
"Amy, that is the perfect solution! Seriously, it solves everything. I mean, he can afford it. We can even ask for more!"
"Um... I was actually kidding..."
Twenty minutes later I'm halfway into dreaming when K's voice calls me back.
"This turned out to be one expensive vibrator. It better be worth it."
"Hmm... 'I still jerk off manually,' " quoting "The Big Lebowski," but K misses the reference. She shakes her head and repeats what has become my favorite of her catch phrases.
"I keep trumping myself."
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