Taking the high road

I went running today. Yay cardio! Boo my poor post-soccer injured knee. Boo-hoo “big” men who pull their cars over to intimidate women who are half their size.

It started like this, I’m running, I come to stop light that is green but doesn’t have a walk sign on. Instead the red hand, that indicates walkers should halt is flashing before me. The car to my left has stopped an is inching forward to make a right-turn, I take a step into the road, realize he wants to go and then bounce back onto the curb. He honks. OK, I think, I’ll go. I cross the street.

Then the 200-lb “man” (man, being a term that can be used loosely for some of those who are of the male gender) who is driving a monster, beat up Cadillac decides to pull up next to me and scream, “YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RED AND GREEN DON”T YOU, GIRL?”

I don’t take kindly to intimidation. But being ever the lady, I gather myself, maintain a dignified, head-held-high position and respond with a raised middle finger and a “GET OUT OF MY FACE YOU FAT FUCK!”

And then I ran…quite a bit faster than I had been.

We all have issues.

But some issues are ok to have, while others are not.

OK:

-Being “lost,” existentially speaking,  is super-hip until you turn, oh, 30.

Not OK:

-Not having a job at 25 and calling your ex-girlfriend WHOM YOU CHEATED ON for money.

Sigh.

Me no likey.

One night a while ago I was out at Estelle’s lounge with some girlfriends. It was late and it was the last bar of the evening. My girlfriends and I were, needless to say, tired and gone. I was of the sort of mindset that I was becoming a little bored, since at Estelle’s things had quieted down a bit. (The evening had consisted of many cocktails, reunions with old college chums, witnessing a failed cocaine deal and trying on firefighters uniforms outside of the fire station. We told them we were a bachelorette party. They’ll let you do anything if you tell them that.)

I was growing restless and had little interest in the drunk men who kept coming up to us. So, I decided that I would pretend I didn’t know English. I would pretend to be Swedish. After this decision was made, my conversations with men began to go something like this:

Him: *holding a miller lite* WANT ONE?

Me: *shakes head* I no know English.

That’s really all it took. I also mindlessly threw my hands up in the air whenever someone began talking to me. After I left, my friend Carol was approached by some men who asked, “Did she really not speak a word of English?”

To which Carol replied, “Nope. Not a peep. She’s really nice. But I had to pantomime all night. Geez.”

“Oh,” said one of the men, “she knows pantomime?”

I’m here to remind you; and other musings

Currently, I’m resisting the urge to post the lyrics to Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.”

Sometimes I forget that this isn’t a teenager’s dairy.

In other news, I’ve started writing a book. It’s called TBD.

Poems of yesteryear

While searching through my old notebooks I found several poems that I’d written in high school about, sigh, love.   You can get the gist from the titles:

 

“Don’t break my heart, I’ve only got one”

“YOU’VE CRUSHED MY DELICATE SOUL”

“My heart is encased in cement and I won’t let it out again because the last time I encased it in ice and that didn’t work but I think cement is a stronger substance”

“I’m walking in a cherry blossom field, the cherry blossoms look like they are bleeding, like my heart.”

“If you crush me I won’t come back to you.  Well…maybe I will.”

“Love is a superhighway and I’m stuck in a Volvo”

“If I give you pizza will you love me?”

 

 

The only one that still holds any legitimacy whatsoever is the one about Pizza.  Men love pizza.

Cinderelley

Like a lot of people, I window shop when I’m bored.

 

Yesterday, I was in Wicker Park when I came across a new boutique that sells Fairy Tale- inspired lingerie. Intended, let me iterate, for adults. As in “adults who need to put the spice back in their marriage” adults.

 

Inside, a girl of about five years old was modeling a blue lace number that appeared to be in the style of Cinderella’s classic Disney princess gown circa 1959. It was sort of hanging on her and her mother was “oohing” and “ahing” like the girl was wearing a polka dot rain coat with oversized boots or holding a wet kitten or something along those lines.

 

Here might be the appropriate place to enter into a diatribe about girls and sexuality and growing up to fast and the like. But, alas, I’ve said all that before and there is no point to winding on and on about premature promiscuity again.

 

All I’m going to say is, little girl, I wanted the Cinderella number. And you took it. And now I’ve gotta settle for that lame Sleeping Beauty get up.

 

And that’s not fair at all. I mean, after all, I pay my own taxes, thank you very much.

 

I’ll meet you on the play ground.

I read you. God, I’m good at it.

I have psychic powers. Do I use these powers for good? Do I heal the sick with my touch? Predict world disasters? Stop the deaths and complete emotional destruction of others like that guy in Quantum Leap?

 

No.

 

But I can detect when someone stops being interested in me. Exactly, that is, the precise second, when they decide that they will dump me. It’s not really a gift so much as a curse.

 

In college I dated a boy who I was really in to for a few months. H and I were getting along fabulously. He took me places, told everyone how much he liked me, and was completely and utterly fantastic to me.

 

One day while we were having lunch I said something trivial like, “Pass the butter.” And as he did it, there was some look that passed over his face, some twitch of the eye or curl of the lip that told me: I’m going to dump you. Lunch continued normally, with engaging conversation etc.

 

It seemed ridiculous for me to think that. We hadn’t fought. He hadn’t been elusive or “absent” over the last few days. It seemed as though it was a completely irrational thought that had come out of nowhere.

 

After lunch I went home to my dorm room. When my roommate came home she raised and eyebrow and said, “Why are you listening to Wicked Game?”

 

I said, “I have no idea. I think H is going to dump me.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, “He’s crazy about you.”

 

The next day he dumped me, citing; space, time and a blond with really long legs.

 

It’s a curse really. No one should have to listen to Wicked Game before they get dumped.

Why must I always fall for the talented, charismatic ones?

Though I may in my private conversations refer to him affectionately as “that guy who I dated who I suspect doesn’t have a soul,” and he in turn most likely refers to me as “the histrionic psycho bitch,” J.’s brilliance and talent cannot be discounted.

 

Check him out here:

 

bergwithfries^®*

 

*All rights reserved for J. All underlying implications of neurosis, mild OCD and chronic funniness, also courtesy of J.

 

Hexes, curses and bindings.

I am talking to my friend B. about a recent breakup:

 

Me: He told me he’d never felt this way before, that he wanted to know everything about me, that he couldn’t get enough of me, then one day he called me and said, “Sorry, I changed my mind. I pretended to like you, but I don’t.”

 

B: Wow, do you want me to give his name to the NSA as someone to watch for terrorist activity? Do you want me to drive up to Chicago and beat him up? I can do that, you know.

 

Me: I might not be able to live with that. I’m kinda against the NSA right now.

 

B: Like I said, I can beat him up. I have lots of pent-up aggression, and I’ve been looking for someone to take it out on.

 

Me: Unfortunately, I also draw the line at physical violence. I wish I didn’t, but I do (Sigh in defeat).

 

B: Well, what can I do?

 

I remember that B. used to dapple in magic I bit in high school. I once caught him dancing naked in his back yard. Long story. Begins with the faerie incantation spell of the crescent moon; ends with my eyesight never quite being the same.

 

Me: (Desperate, really really desperate, because I am a (somewhat) rational, unspiritual person) Well, do you have any spells I could borrow? Like, ones that will make him love me so I can spurn him?

 

B: (Somewhat taken aback) I suppose, I still have some on my hard drive…I could forward them to you…

 

Me: Yes, do that. I’ll look at them.

 

B: Do you really want these?

 

Me: No, I’m just really desperate. Maybe you should beat him up.