...of Epic Proportions

The Year of Living Vicariously, Part I

2011-09-26T21:16:00.002-05:00

Friends, meet Rachel.

Is she just damn adorable? Just look at her. I decided that, as a segue back into blogging again after...ahem, 17 months..I will be doing a short series using Rachel as my inspiration. She has given me the thumbs-up, so here we go!

I have been fortunate to work with Rachel every day for the past year, but I’ve actually known her since our days at the aforementioned Mean and Palooka. That was six long years ago, and of course in those days, we all had to wear The Uniform; black pants and shoes, chef whites, and the infamous little penis hat.

Never mind that, except for switching to a bitchin’ Christopher Elbow ball cap, I’m pretty much in that same ensemble today. While one could argue that this need for headwear speaks to a serious vocational error somewhere along the line, I posit that I would happily sport a propeller beanie if they asked me, rather than work in some horrid toxic office where I could dress to the nines while having the very soul crushed out of me. Call me silly; one must have one’s priorities.

Wearing a uniform means I really only need a small wardrobe, although, for reasons I will explain forthwith, I am really pushing the envelope on the definition of “small”, and not in a positive way. Having no social life whatsofuckingever just exacerbates the problem. I am rarely required to go many places that don’t end in “_ostco” or “_arget” , which is kind of handy, really, as those tend to be the places I buy whatever sad excuse for attire I actually do wear.

It wasn’t always this way, let me assure you. There was a time, before children, before the Bush Administration, that I had superfluous income; no, really! Enough to bankroll a very nice closet, let us say. That era happened to coincide with my physical peak, too, so not only could I afford to shop at the stores that I now just have to walk past, but I actually fit into something in the single digits in those places. It’s an odd memory; not like it actually happened to me, but like I remember seeing it on tv or something. Such a long time ago that I’m starting to think I just imagined the whole episode. Or maybe, I’m blocking those thoughts out so I don’t get so dejected I drive into a bridge abutment on my way home from work.

No, at this stage of my life, I have to focus on something other than my own badgering narcissism, and concentrate on getting the bills paid, cultivating the character of the little person who calls me Mama, and being head cheerleader for my Better Half. I can’t allow my ego-bashing to get in the way of finishing science projects and laundry and shit.

Which is why I wanted to tell you, finally, about Rachel. She is the retail manager, not an Oompah Loompah in need of a hat like myself, so she can wear whatever she feels like wearing on any given day. And let me tell you; the girl is something to behold.

First of all, she’s a dancer, and all those years of hard work, all that stretching, all that sweat has paid off in a big way. Her waist is, like, thissmall, her posture is positively bloody imperial, her legs are carved out of soapstone. Anything she wears looks like it was made bespoke, and she walks with such a regal bearing. I can look through the glass partition wall that separates the production kitchen from the retail storefront, and I see the effect her presence has on people, strangers. I don’t know if she even knows how beautiful she is.

I feel an anomalous connection with Rachel that at first I wasn’t able to positively classify. Of course, she is a super-cool girl, and would be even if she looked different. I’d be her fan if I was blind, honestly. But it occurred to me one day at work, maybe 6 months ago, why exactly I was so interested in her. It hit me like an apple on the head; she’s me.

When I look at her, it’s a little like looking into a telescope, looking far out into space and a long way back in time, to when I was at the pinnacle of my physical potential. I’ve told her many times, while I relied on the weight room and the Rollerblades instead of the dance studio, her body type is so like mine naturally, that I get all weirdly wistful sometimes. She’s had my former hair several times, too, and I have pictures to prove it. I wonder sometimes if I’m creeping her out; wouldn‘t be the first time, I suppose.

There’s something I call The Curse of Woman, and while I’ve never mentioned it by name, I have spoken at length on the general notion: that we as women do not know our own corporeal power up close. We are farsighted but not far-seeing, able to see beauty in others, but unable to recognize it in our own mirror. Only when it has faded, and drifted too far away to grasp at and pull back, do we see the truth.

Working around many young women, in their twenties or younger yet, I have been privy to many conversations about the horrors of being too something: fat (to which I am always tempted to add the following thought: “don’t count your money in front of the poor”), or ugly, or whatever way imperfect, and I want to grab these girls by the shoulders and shake them until their heads come off. Not because I’m jealous. Not because I think I know better, or because I don’t want to hear it.

Someone needs to make them know: You have everything going for you, right now. You have time, metabolism, gravity, energy, collagen, all of nature on your side. You will never be in this place again.

Wallow in it.

You will just have to trust me on this one. And in the meantime, I hope you don't mind if I live vicariously through you for a little while, Rach.

...to be continued...

By the way, thanks, friends. It's good to be back.

The Physics of Fat

2010-04-25T13:25:00.005-05:00

Alright, class, please consider the following equation, and solve for n:

patience ≤ n ÷ hormones – time of day

Anyone? Anyone? Before we get to the answer, let’s think about the elements we do know.

The first variable we must account for is PATIENCE.

I had my first (and only. I think…) baby at 36 years old, and while I’m glad in many ways that it turned out that way, it is no joke that poppin’ ‘em out young has its advantages, and not doing so, its drawbacks. The first thing people say when the subject comes up is invariably some riff on “but you have more patience as an older parent,” to which I reply “BULLFUCKINGSHIT.”

Let us not kid ourselves; getting older is a contract with the devil for which there is no opt-out clause. While part of me is diggin’ part of it, most of the process sorely tries my tolerance for folly. Where I once had the patience of, if not exactly Job, at least one of your minor saints (here’s a list for you to choose from; my favorite: St. Maurice, Patron Saint of Cramps), as the years rack up ever more swiftly, I find myself inching perilously close to Granny Clampettville. If I had a vegetable garden, I’d be out there right now with a shotgun chasing chickens out of it, with my hair in a bun. I do not suffer fools gladly, especially when the rhuematis’ is worrying me.

The second variable is HORMONES, a very dodgy business in general, but particularly as it pertains to the question at hand. I have been one very fortunate individual in this regard, at least up until the last few years; my husband still can’t tell when , um…how shall I put this…the Red Sox are in town? We need a clean-up in aisle one? Miss Scarlett's come home to Tara? It’s officially hummer week?

Yes, hard as it may be to believe, I, Robyn, am a bit squeamish myself about such matters. Suffice to say that other than bleeding like a Tarantino movie, I don’t display many outward symptoms of, uh… uterine jihad. So hormonal concerns never played much of a role in my daily affairs, that is, until I became someone’s Mommy, when Nature decided to play a funny joke and twiddle all the little dials on my internal mixing board. Now, the mix is all muddy and the bass is WAAAY too loud. Some days, I am less able to conceal my utter exasperation than on others, and suffice to say that much of this has to do with where Aunt Flo is in relation to my house.

Lastly, we must account for TIME OF DAY. Since my ass is still unemployed, it’s less a matter of being tired from a long day in the mines than just being strung out from going to the library and the bank in the same day. While fat. Without a nap. It’s no mystery that mornings can be a stressful period for families with school-age children, but I propose that contrary to logic, the internal pressure actually increases exponentially until bedtime, due to various tenets of quantum mechanics I will not bore you with at this time. It is not unusual for me to have crossed the event horizon irrevocably by 9 pm, in which case I am unable to watch The Daily Show/Colbert Report with both eyes open. So you see my urge to find the answer to this equation.

Alright, then; anyone want to venture a guess what our missing variable might be? No?

Energy, class. The answer to my problem is energy. Let’s look at it again, with n solved:

patience ≤ energy ÷ hormones – time of day

My patience is less than or equal to (but never, ever >) my energy level, which is divided by my hormone level minus the time of day the measurement takes place. Does this make sense?
Mathematics may be as good a place as any to look for an explanation of my zombie tendencies. Here’s a golden energy oldie you all know and love:

E=mc²

Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Do you know what the speed of light is??? Like, fast, yo! And times itself, even! If Einstein is correct, I should have enough energy stored in my own personal mass to equal a handful of hydrogen bombs. Why the hell can’t I have a couple of beers without needing a nap, then? Whatever, Albert…

I have relied many times on medical science to bridge the gap between the force required to execute all the necessary tasks in any given day and my natural state of body at rest, and found that while this may be an effective short-term solution, it doesn’t do much to allay the problem in the long term. When the bottle of Twinlab Ripped Fuel is finally gone, when the Phentermine prescription runs out, when the CVS energy-shot freebies ultimately run dry, the clock is ticking on my energy stockpile.

Yeah, yeah, yeah; I fully get that eating properly and staying in shape trigger an increase in energy. But what does one do if one cannot muster the necessary inertia to put the chain reaction in motion in the first place?

Who out there finds themselves lacking the element of energy more than they used to? How does this manifest itself for you? What’s your solution?

Class?

The Old Gray Mule

2010-04-12T13:43:00.003-05:00

The other night, as I performed the Dreaded Bedtime Ritual in the attempt to persuade the offspring to lie down and actually sleep, we hit a little snag. In between the part when she puts her pajamas on backward, and the final “no more goofiness!” threat, we added an extra element; an explanation of why we don’t go to sleep with gum in our mouths.

Everyone addresses this eventually, and I’m sure for most it’s a sentence or two at the longest, and then on with the routine. For my kid, a simple explanation rarely sticks. A back-story is required to drive the point home, and while I will cop to fabricating them from time to time when I don’t have a good one at hand, I had a bona fide personal anecdote waiting for just such an occasion.

As a little girl, my hair was exactly like my daughter’s is now, other than the length; she likes hers in an old-fashioned bob with bangs, and I wore mine like a damn dirty hippie, long and disobedient. Texture-wise, though, she’s a total throwback; for both of us, no amount of brushing or conditioner could make up for the follicular insurgency factor. Despite the care with which I brush out every snaggle each morning, by the time I arrive to pick her up in the afternoon, that hair has declared anarchy and somehow converted to Rastafarianism at the same time. I well recall my mother cursing like the merchant marine under her breath as she yanked and jerked a brush through my gorgon-caliber dreads each night before bath time; I have, regrettably, passed on the rebel hair gene. Sorry, kid.

I managed to hang onto that unruly pelt until 4th grade, until the night I broke the rule and didn’t throw out the gum I’d been masticating all evening, which was the reason that the next day, I was on my way to the salon for my first-ever haircut. Unplanned, but not negotiable, unless I wanted to spend the next year growing out the bald spot that corresponded to the place I’d found the contraband wad of grape Bubblicious that morning.

In every life, there are defining moments. Some are smaller than others. Some aren’t even recognized until much later. I can recall the exact words of the woman who first took scissors to my mutinous mane, and they clearly delineate the beginning of the end of those carefree days with no thought whatsoever about my hair.

“Oh my God, this little girl has gray hair!”

It did not matter that my new cut was a jaunty Wedge, the very height of elementary chic in 1977. It mattered a little that I went from looking like the feral child of Ted Nugent to looking like Dorothy Hamill, and in the process lost about a quarter of my total mass and weight. It mattered mightily that I was suddenly and for the first time aware of my own mortality, if only peripherally. Children don’t have gray hair. Old people have gray hair, and then they die. Even my scalp liked to break rules, it seemed.

In all candor, at the time I was just mostly annoyed. Every stylist in the large salon crowded around my chair to see my abnormality for themselves, up close. Once I left the scene of my mortification, life went on, and I swear I was able to run faster without all that fur on my head. No one else knew I was a senior citizen masquerading as a 4th grader, so I readily forgot, too. But from that day onward, I saw the specter of my own eventual decline and demise, from afar, in the rearview mirror.

Not that I’m obsessed with death; quite the contrary. I’ve never been afraid of it, truly, unless it involves a tractor-trailer or a pitchfork-wielding maniac with a hard-on. But knowing that the clock of your youth is ticking is a strange sort of awareness, and it helped make me an even weirder kid.

I was probably doomed from the get-go. My father was totally white-headed by the time I was a toddler; I don’t recall him ever having a color on his head, despite all the Grecian Formula he was using (now I realize this stuff is like self-tanner for the hair; I am definitely my father’s child). I was apparently not sharp enough to grasp that my mom colored her hair regularly; I just thought she had dark brown hair that grew fast enough to need a cut once every three weeks. And her sister, my Aunt Myrtle, had lost all her color by the time she was 25, according to family legend (although I will totally take that genetic bequest, if it’s part of a package deal; Myrtle is 100 years old and still drinks Guinness, loves candy and watches sports nonstop).

By the time I was in my early twenties, my natural chestnut-brown had begun to fade, and for a brief, shining moment, this worked for me; all of the colors within the spectrum of human hair color lived together in peace on my cranium at once. I remember a trip to Worlds of Fun with a boy I was goo-goo over, and him sitting behind me on the Viking’s Voyager and telling me how beautiful my hair was; “It’s every color in the world!”

This lasted, like, a year. Tops.

Then, it was a matter of coming to terms with the idea of coloring it every 4-6 weeks for the rest of my life. No problem. Except it costs how much? Okay, I’ll learn to do it myself. And don’t forget not to dye it green by accident, the day before being a bridesmaid! Or get busy and go a couple weeks too long between dye jobs, unless I feel like rocking a skunk ‘do. And forget about having long hair anymore; soaking it in chemicals that regularly is not exactly conducive to glorious long locks, I do not care what Sarah Jessica Parker says to the contrary. And God help you if you want to flat-iron or curl it.

Face it, sad sack; you got one option. Short and wavy. Shut up and deal.

I love it when I tell people how gray I am naturally; it serves to find out lots of interesting information about them that I may or may not have cared to know.

Like, how out of touch with reality are they? JD’s father once told me he likes “the natural look, with that streak of gray in front.” This from the man who told JD “You’re such a talented singer; why don’t you just get a record contract?”

Oh, how I wish it were that simple, like growing a silver racing stripe framing my face, a la Stacy London. No, no, no. It’s like this:

Only with gray Play-Doh. And slightly less facial hair.

Listen, if I were lucky enough to have been born with olive skin and brown eyes, I might be okay with letting go and letting it do its thing. Or if it grew in all luminous and silver. But alas; as y'all should know by now, I am completely devoid of natural coloring of any kind. If the hair were white, too, I'm afraid I might look like the Headless Horseman. I'm already scary enough to children, aren't I?

So let the old girl have her last few years of vanity, please? I'll look like Ed Asner soon enough.

I'm interested to know what my readers plan on doing with the impending gray? Are you ballsy enough to go for the full monty?

I'm Not Black and I'm Not All That Proud

2010-04-05T21:38:00.011-05:00

Throughout the 90s, my then-boyfriend/now-husbo and I lived an urban-bohemian lifestyle in midtown Kansas City, right down in the funky belly of the beast, and I look back on those days with equal parts nostalgia and dismay. It was such a formative epoch for both of us, where we did what twenty-somethings are supposed to do; work hard, play hard, come just a smidgen shy of leaving a pretty corpse. Yes, we escaped death and/or dismemberment on a few occasions, thanks to the establishment who held his employ; a monument to all that OSHA fights to put an end to, known as Antonio’s Pizza.

Among the many, many notable characters who made their way through those skuzzy doors were a rotating collection of Countergirls with names like Peaches, Tootie, and my personal favorites, the Three Horsewomen of the Apocalypse; Olanda, Yolanda, and Yalonda, who managed to defy the odds and be employed at the same place at the same time.

Yolanda, the one with the normal name, fascinated me. She looked for all the world like a hardcore prison dyke; a black girl with no makeup, no outlandish fingernail art, and a severe ponytail, with a wardrobe consisting mainly of t-shirts, sweats and camouflage pants, in men’s sizes. She was not what one might call petite, either; my guess is that she wore a man’s size large without too much superfluous space.

She looked a little like the character Mo’nique just won an Oscar portraying, and she was a little menacing, but I didn’t fear a beat-down. Her nature was belligerent, but not, thankfully, toward me. I always, always, always make friends with that kind of girl; they must see a little outlaw in my eyes, too.

Yolanda, ass-kicking carpet-muncher that she appeared to be, wanted one thing and one thing only; a crack at my man. I’d show up most nights at some point to pay a quick visit on the way home from work or the gym, and she’d smile broadly and say “There’s that Robyn. I’m gonna take your man. Just wait and see.”

Born without a Jealous Bone, I never let that kind of threat bother me, even if it comes from a more legitimate source. I trust my guy, not to mention that the mere suggestion of Yolanda’s aspiration caused him to visibly cringe. There was virtually zero chance that would actually go down. But I think I actually almost admired her for believing, nonetheless.

At that time, I was in the best physical shape I ever was, or ever will be in. I had two male training partners, each of whom I would compete against in the gym as if Arnold himself might be watching. I was working in the fitness industry, had just gotten my personal trainer certification, and walked the bloody walk. I sucked down a gallon of water a day, survived predominantly on Met-Rx, and wore my heart rate monitor 24/7 so I could upload the data and see exactly what the fuck my cardiovascular system did all day.

And yet.

In retrospect, I realize that despite all of that, I was still preoccupied with being pretty enough, thin enough, fit enough. Most of my day, back in the pre-mommy era, was spent in pursuit of an ideal that I’d erected out of the raw materials of the leftover neuroses from childhood. I’d managed to get past the whole problem of being the World’s Whitest White Girl, but right behind that stood the reflection of another issue, and another, like some hellish funhouse mirror, seemingly to infinity. Perhaps self-acceptance is just a matter of sequentially knocking down the naïve archetypes in your own mind’s eye, like a byzantine pattern of dominoes, and each fallen piece is necessary on the way to the denouement.

Which is, I think, why Yolanda and all girls like her earn my regard. Looking like she looked, she didn’t doubt for a moment her potency as a woman, and if some man failed to grasp that fact, her sense of self never wavered. She was a self-contained, self-sustaining unit, and had no need of the endorsement of any other individual.

What is it about black women that gives them, ostensibly from birth, this authority over their own body, like I’ve only just begun to acquire at my age? This acceptance of the totality of who they are, good parts, not-as-good parts, all of it as a single piece, instead of the cobbled-together hodgepodge of components that most white women I know see themselves as, at least until they get a little older and have worked through a good chunk of their own issues.

A confession: last week, I did something I’ve never before done; I watched “Dancing with the Stars.” Look, don’t start; I promise never to do it again. I have no idea how we ended up on that channel in the first place; I rarely get out of the History Channel/Bravo/Comedy Central groove, unless it’s for my beloved Science Channel, so how we ended up in just-barely-double-digit territory is beyond me. I came upstairs with a basketful of laundry, and there it was. My daughter wouldn’t let me turn off a show with so many sparkly dresses! Who the hell did I think I was, anyway?

Amid all the abysmal ”dancing” and unspeakable slaughter of innocent cover tunes, I was pleased to see a lone bright spot, in the person of one Niecy Nash. This is a woman who has no shame about her body.

That makes me so happy I want to cry, honestly. Granted, she’s no longer in need of the same size police uniform pants as she once was in the guise of Officer Rayneisha Williams, and I’m sure all that hoofing is going to do for her what it did for Marie Osmond, but would you have had the huevos to show off all your everything on the red carpet, for cryin’ out loud? I’m pretty ballsy, but dang. I’m even willing to bet this was her idea. Lady’s got some serious coolness…

Unless you are part bear and were in hibernation for the last 6 months or so, you know Gabourey Sidibe not only from her role in “Precious” but from the perpetual string of personal appearances promoting said film. Oprah, Ellen, Conan (God rest his soul), she hit ‘em all; for a big girl, she’s got no shortage of stamina, for realz. Despite the extraordinary acting skills she displayed, her Oscar nomination, and her surprising standing as a first-time actress with no training, the main thing on most interviewers’ agendas had to do with her size, in spite of which she possesses actual, no-shit self-respect. That, to me, is a revelation, and more impressive by far than the ability to act like someone she’s not. She’s fully herself, and that’s a much more challenging role to master.

Now that I think of it, maybe the “in spite of which” bit is off the mark. Like, entirely. It’s quite possible she got that big extra helping of confidence because she’s had to grow up in that package, and she decided somewhere down the line, maybe totally subconsciously, that her very survival depended on her power to love and value herself as she was. Maybe girls like me, with a relatively easy row to hoe, who haven’t been forced to have that come-to-Jesus meeting with the mirror that she must have had, cannot possess the gravitas of one who has looked not just herself but all of womankind right smack in the eyes and wrested control of her psyche out of the hands of those who would do it wrong.

Being born a member of a group who've been marginalized for centuries must do things to a person that those who weren't in that position cannot begin to imagine. I mean, I get it a little; John Lennon called woman "the nigger of the world," right? I wouldn't presume to know exactly what you're up against if you're black, female, and not Halle Berry.

I wish I’d had that command of my own fundamental nature 30 years ago. Good lord, it’d have made my teenage wasteland a little bit easier to traverse. Am I just an idiot? What other reason could I come up with to explain my lifelong free-for-all with insecurity, while girls like Gabourey, Niecy, and Yolanda flaunt their self-assurance like their God-given best feature?

Listen, don’t worry about me; I’m got it almost all sussed out now (with a few exasperating exceptions); I’m 43, I fucking better. Just feeling a little humbled by the black women ahead of the curve. Hats off to you, ladies.

How do they do it?

Boys Like Me

2010-03-25T14:27:00.004-05:00

The older I get, the more I realize; boys like me. They really, really like me. I don’t even mean that in a narcissistic, look-they-all-want-it kinda way. ‘Cause that’s not it, really. I just get boys, and they get me. Let me explain.

Sisters? I never had any (that I know of!). Not really sure I would have wanted any, in all honesty. My friend Molly had two sisters, an older and a younger. Visits to her house were filled with screaming matches, fights over borrowed pants, thrown tubes of mascara, disproportionate use of the word “bitch”, and stress. Great, heaping helpings of it. It was a huge relief just to walk out the door and go home.

Home, on the other hand, was remarkably free from such drama. At my house, there was more arm-punching than screaming, more fights over stolen albums, and disproportionate use of the word “dick.” I am so glad that it was so.

No, I come from a male-dominated domestic state of affairs, one where my dad and my brothers set the tone, and my mom and I just had to get onboard or miss the train entirely. That’s how I learned the way of the world; like a hobo hopping the man-train. Is it any wonder I turned out the way I have?

Lest you think my mother was a haus-frau kow-towing to the needs of her menfolk, I must take the time to assure you otherwise. Yes, she did all the things required to run the household properly, she cooked and kept the house clean and taught us to read and took us to swimming lessons. But she had a bit of the warrior in her, too; I can remember many times she came out swinging on our behalf. She was no pushover.

Perhaps there was a family meeting, sometime before I came straggling in, where she just decided that as the only double-X chromosome owner in the joint, that adopting the masculine viewpoint as a family unit would just make life a whole lot easier. And I hope I’m living proof that she made the right conclusion.

Both my father and my oldest brother were huge personalities, virtually forces of nature. There wasn’t a field in which they hadn’t, at least one of them, expertise to rival anyone I ever met, to this very day. As dual gurus, they indoctrinated me as the baby sister in the Brotherhood of the Manly Trinity of cars, sports, and guitars, with a liberal dose of dirty and/or bad jokes. Made of thus am I.

Dad was a car buff of absurd magnitude; we weren’t able to park the family cars in the 2-car garage at our house for years, because he was forever rebuilding some classic car in it. He collected them like other people collect stamps. He taught me to drive before most kids were allowed to go to the mall by themselves, in a Mercedes, a ’57 Thunderbird, a racing Porsche, a snowmobile, a midget racer, and a dune buggy. I tagged along while he dug through barns and garages looking for forgotten treasures to charm some old lady out of, and lay on the garage floor beside him and handed him tools as he brought them back to life. I spent long hours sitting beside them on display at the car shows, and learned to wash them like a mother washes her baby.

My brother could not have cared less about cars; his gig was music. He was a professional musician before I was even born. I had the great good fortune to be surrounded by the culture of music virtually from the day I was born. It got into me somehow, right into my cells, via osmosis, perhaps. Or maybe my membranes leak, I can’t be sure. You can put me in a room with musicians of any stripe, and I will never be uncomfortable. I get them, they get me.

I recall a manager I once had who I couldn’t seem to get a read on; he didn’t seem like the average retail regional manager and I couldn’t figure out exactly why. One day he showed up unannounced at my store, and I had something other than the required Muzak on the sound system. He stopped, cocked his head, and asked “Bela Fleck? I’ve played with Bela Fleck.” We just looked at each other. From that moment forward, I knew how to talk to him to get exactly what I wanted out of that job. He was my patron saint ever after.

As a little girl, all this male influence came off like tomboyism, as I’ve previously illustrated. Overhearing Molly’s mother ask another lady in the neighborhood “I wonder when Robyn will decide she wants to be a girl?” made it clear to me that no one got me at all. I never wanted to be a boy, I just wanted to be as close to them as possible, at all times, and the best way to do that, to be allowed into the huddle, was to speak their language. I understood the male mind, even then.

In high school, I was what one of my friends calls “a dude-chick”. I could hang with the boys all night long, which confused some of them, and most everybody else; the girls thought I was a slut, some of the guys probably thought I was gay. I even heard from a classmate who has since come out of the closet that even she thought I was gay. I couldn’t fucking win.

Aging seems to be doing great things for me, at least in this arena. Where I perplexed the world as a dude-chick, I have now settled into my persona as a ballsy broad. So, like I said, no matter where I go, boys dig me. Love me, I tell you. Old, young, it doesn’t matter. They eat out of my hand. Here is why:

1. I cannot be offended. The more penile references in any given conversation, the more relaxed I am. A man never need worry that I will cry “sexual harassment” in a crowded workplace; I look for the most perverted man in the joint, and egg him on. The more randy back-and-forth banter at work, the better I like it. Better that than the bitching and backbiting that goes on in an all-female office. In fact, I don’t really feel at home unless I can slag on somebody and get slagged in return.

2. I’m a cheap date. Not impressed by money or material excess. Wanna make an impression on me? Make me laugh.

3. I don’t like jewelry much. I still wear the same 5 pairs of earrings I bought 15 years ago. I couldn’t possibly give less of a damn about diamond jewelry, either. Never set foot in a Helzberg in my life. I wouldn’t dream of asking my man to buy me jewelry, either. I paid for our entire wedding out of my own pocket. Not Daddy’s, MINE. Bought both rings, custom-made by a silversmith for less than $150.00.

4. To me, the whole world is a dick joke waiting to happen. While my reading list runs more to the classics and things more esoteric, nothing makes me happier than Beavis and Butthead, really. In that same vein…

5. …I’m funny. I can make a joke out of anything, and I will. I’m rather Hawkeye Pierce in that way. And I will laugh really loudly and in a very inappropriate manner at my own jokes, and yours. If you’re funny. See #s 2 and 4.

6. I’m nice. Really. Just not being a bitch goes a long way with the fellas. They like a nice smile, and I sort of can’t help but do it all day long. Shit’s funny to me.

7. I’m outspoken. I think maybe men might want to marry a nice quiet girl, but they want to hang out with me. And lastly…

8. …Boobs. I believe that goes without saying, for those who know me.

Most of my favorite jobs in the past have been heavy on the testosterone, and that’s where I still feel most at ease. My last job was 100% female, and it was a pit of vipers, with a couple of pleasant exceptions (talkin’ about you, Anne.) Give me a good old-fashioned sausage fest over that nonsense any day. It’s only really been in the last five or six years that I’ve been able to appreciate women much at all, really.

As much of a surprise as it is to me, some women turn out to be pretty cool, too. I have more female friends now than at any time in my life. Maybe as I grow up, and become self-possessed and surer of where I myself stand, I can see that women aren’t necessarily my rivals after all. They are my compatriots. We’re really on the same side, aren’t we?

Maybe I’m the ultimate double-agent in the war of the sexes; I’ll never tell. I can tell you, I may come along to your wine-tasting party, ladies. Thanks for the invite. Just don’t get mad when I spend the evening drinking beer with your men.

Any other dude-chicks out there? How do you deal?

Sucka For a Pretty Face

2010-03-23T10:54:00.011-05:00

For those actually paying attention, I mentioned in a previous post that I would devote some virtual ink in the future to a little character flaw I can’t seem to get past; I am a terrible Looksist. I capitalize that because I’m hoping it might appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and thereby get me off the hook for my manifold transgressions. Hey, maybe there’s a pill! I’m always on the lookout for new and exciting adventures in pharmacology!

Actually, if you haven’t figured out my M.O. by now, that’s called a joke. I am so not that girl. I feel weird taking anything that requires getting someone else’s permission. I’m down with OTC, though; my life was forever changed by the introduction of Nyquil softgels; I’d have drank that shit for breakfast except that I would have had to actually drink that shit for breakfast . Very unpleasant. Now, thanks to the geniuses in R & D, I can slam a couple of those flavorless babies without so much as a grimace and take a little nap on the kitchen floor any time I damn well please. Onward, science!

No, my ugly little secret is that I don’t do ugly. Isn’t that, I don’t know…ugly of me? Me, the girl who grew up playing the “homely best friend” role? Me, who would argue passionately against judging a book by its cover? Seems a little disingenuous, doesn’t it? But I can’t seem to break the habit, despite making efforts to do so for something like 30 years, so I’m seriously hoping there’s some chemical imbalance I can blame it on. Hey, if “shopping addiction” gets a designation, “beauty addiction” should at least be a disorder or a syndrome or something. Or am I the only one with this ailment? Maybe I’ll get my picture in the newest edition of the DSM, plus a lifetime supply of Turtle Wax (which, just for the record, is ONE jar.)

Since I can remember, I have always gravitated to the most beautiful face in any room, irrespective of age, gender, or lack of reciprocal interest. I was always best friends with the prettiest girl in school, and always pining after the cutest boy, from kindergarten up through...well, now, actually. While I became aware of this tendency before I left elementary school, I didn’t attempt to change it at that point, mostly because it seemed like a relatively benign defect. It didn’t cause me to be cruel or negligent to my less-attractive friends, and it seemed to be imperceptible to anyone but me. I even thought for awhile that I’d invented the problem in my head, just to nit-pick at myself. But the more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that I do indeed discriminate on the basis of physical splendor. Does this make me wicked? Or just candid? Or just like everyone else?

This is only compounded by the fact that I was born with a horrible case of the boy-crazy. There’s enough there for a couple posts at the very least, and I’ll have to get to that eventually, but relative to this particular subject, I can tell you that they are indeed separate issues, although each exacerbates the other. I think they call that “dual diagnosis.”

Let me offer some examples of how this manifests itself.

My best friend in junior high was a girl named Kim, although not the Kim I have previously spoken about; I seem to also gravitate to girls named Kim, although I’m guessing there’s no meds available for that, regrettably. She was a premature sex kitten in every sense, with an hourglass figure, the perfect head of feathered dirty-blondeness , and pouty, Angelina -quality lips. Boys and grown men alike just fell over when she walked by, and I watched it happen again and again. I cannot tell you how many times she snagged the boy I had my eye on, and even at that nascent age, she could be a mind-boggling bitch, but I loved being around her. Why, you’re wondering?

Was it to bask in her reflected glow? Was it for the indispensable beauty tips she bequeathed (how to use your teeth to pop the little plastic ball out of the applicator and pour on the Bonne Bell lip-gloss; porn-tastic!)? Or maybe to get to actually speak to the cute guys, even if only in that “Hey, tell me about your friend Kim” kinda way?

Maybe. Doubtless that each of these elements came into play, but I submit to you that in the end, I just liked looking at her. Not in any sort of Sapphic sense; I assure you I am strictly dickly (sorry, ladies!). It was easier and more agreeable to look at a pretty face all day than it would have been a less-than-pretty one. I think it’s as simple as that. How or why she put up with me is another matter.

As skeptical as I am of all that hogwashy horoscope twaddle, I am not above quoting an astrology website when it suits my purpose.

"Another one of the general characteristics of Librans is their concept and constant need of beauty, and the entire beautification process first begins with them. Whether a Libran male or female, these individuals take their time to make sure that they are freshly showered and appropriately coiffed. (I can confirm, I take 2-3 showers a day. Cleanliness is next to Godliness!) From there, this beauty radiates outwards in almost concentric circles. Beauty to Libra is like oxygen to others; they need it because it helps them feel balanced. After all, the world is full of ugly injustices, and if Libra’s house is not beautiful, where is the balance to all that pettiness and greed?" (With thanks to Love to Know; Horoscopes.)

It’s like that, really. I neeeeed it. Although, warning: Do not come to my house. You will be deeply disappointed. There is no beauty in a rental. Plus, I will pretend not to hear the doorbell.

I do hasten to remind you that I cannot abide by beautiful-but-brain-dead, or stunning-but-stupid, or astonishing-yet-asshole-ish. I do think beauty has to go all the way through to be worth any damn thing at all. And like I’ve said before, literal perfection without any flaws doesn’t do anything for me. Ya gotta be human, at least.

Another example:

I sincerely worried, while great with child, that I might end up with a homely baby, and was more than a little concerned that I would not be able to love it. My great-niece Claudia was born heart-breakingly beautiful and I adored her from the moment I looked into her big green eyes. The girl has never had an ugly day in her life, and just gets more and more stunning every time I see her.

A lifelong boy lover, because of Claud I knew I wanted a girl, and I prayed that she would be a beauty like her cousin. Could I bond with a less lovely infant? It might have been karmic justice and totally served me right if she’d popped out with an extra eyebrow or something, but I got lucky.

Very, very lucky. When I had to be rushed into the operating room for an emergency C-section, and the great sawing contraption or whatever they use bit the big one and the doctor had to literally rip my belly open to save her life, I of course would have taken the world’s fugliest baby as long as she was alive and healthy. I got the best possible outcome; Devon was not only perfectly healthy, she was perfectly perfect. She didn’t have to squeeze out, so no conehead, no smashed-flat nose, just a gorgeous little blue-eyed fairy baby, with blonde highlights. Even her preemie-jaundice just looked like a fresh-from-Cabo tan. God gets me, I thought. I get to look at her darling little face all day, for the rest of my life.

So, do I ask too much? Is beauty for its own sake worth anything to you? Or am I misguided?

I'd love to hear what you think, dear readers.

Tomboy Redux

2010-03-15T15:06:00.013-05:00

A couple weeks back, my 6-year old daughter was invited to her classmate’s birthday party. If you have progeny about this age, you will understand my trepidation; there is far more to a little girl’s birthday party than just showing up and having cake. One must remember to RSVP, or one looks like an asshole, and by association, one’s child, too. One must purchase a gift, usually at Target, usually 15 minutes before party time. One must also purchase wrapping paraphernalia, an expense that makes one cringe. One realizes that if they’d had their shit together like a good mom, they’d have purchased a stash of gifts and wrapping accoutrements on clearance after Christmas, and not have to be doing this nonsense when Target is asses-to-elbows on a Saturday morning. Then one remembers that one is always completely broke after Christmas, and one shrugs one’s shoulders in resignation.

The worst part of it for me is trying to wrap the damn thing in the car with no horizontal surfaces to speak of, and yes, I’m at least smart enough to buy a gift bag. I’m fairly crafty, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to make a gift bag look nice. It’s going to look like the kid did it no matter how much care I take, so the anal-retentive gift wrapper I once was, pre-parenthood, has died within me of neglect.

A moment of silence, please. Thank you.

The husbo and I have an unspoken agreement about parties; if it’s for the offspring of one of his friends, he takes her, and I volunteer to go along if it’s for a friend of mine. If it’s a classmate we don’t know well, and it’s a boy’s party, he goes; girl, I go. We are both thrilled when there’s a kids-only party, as this gets us both off the hook. There is nothing in the universe that makes me squirm more than small-talk with another parent. I have it in me to pull off about five minutes of banter before I start to sweat and look for the exit and make up excuses for shit I gotta do, pronto. I think you now see that I could be justly called “wordy”, but man, that is not my venue…

This time, it was for a fellow Daisy Scout, and her mom had booked an hour or so at the ice skating rink. Devon was beside herself with anticipation. I never cared much for ice skating myself; spending hours inside a colossal refrigerator, on purpose, just didn’t hold much appeal for this girl. Even the music sounds cold, bouncing off the ice and echoing forever through empty space. I much preferred the warm embrace of the roller-skating rink, with disco balls and mood lighting and all the Earth, Wind and Fire you could stand. But she was all about it, so I had to suck it up and try and make chit-chat in the cold for her sake. The sacrifices we make, right?

She’d been on the ice twice before, with another friend who takes lessons, and once with her daddy, and both he and the mother of her first little skating buddy told me what a natural she was. I admit to some skepticism; our first excursion to the roller rink resulted in the most astonishing array of contusions (child) and sore calves and forearms (parent) in recent memory. Seems like those skinny blades would be tougher yet to master. But I know my kid well enough to know that she’s a carrier of the Werner sports gene, so I reserved judgment.

I was so glad I did. For that hour, I was treated to a lovely albeit nippy reminder of the very best part of my little girl, and a glimpse into what my parents must have felt for me.

While every other little girl spent the party doing exactly what little girls are wont to do (shrieking at the upper end of the human auditory range, standing in little knots tittering about god knows what, whining, hissy-fitting, alienating their friends,etc.), Devon was alone of her own volition, a look of tremendous focus on her little face as she glided with something roughly approximating grace across the tiny oval rink. I was glad the other mothers were leaving me to myself, so I could sit on the bleachers and observe my daughter as she willed her body to do as it was told and perform.

She has always astonished us with her propensity for sports; at 18 months, the girl could dribble a basketball like Curly Neal. She could barely elucidate her frustration when she wasn’t able to do it perfectly the first time, but she screwed up her little baby face and kept trying until she could bounce it once, twice, ten times, one hundred times without a hitch.

The first week she was in daycare, her teachers were dumbfounded when she stood on the edge of the playground and dribbled non-stop for the entire 20-minute recess period, pointing at a passing airplane between bounces without missing a single beat. Husbo and I were mentally filling out college applications to every b-ball superpower institution we could think of. You know, just to be safe.

She’s shown a proclivity for both golf and tennis, and if there’s ever a scholarship offered for Wii Sports, we are in like Flynn, I promise you. I actually fought the acquisition of the Wii; I spent several months on the crew of a video game championship national tour, and saw enough pale, awkward American children to convince me that no offspring of mine would sit on her butt in front of a television for hours at a time.

Not unless I had blog posts to write…

As I sat in an isolated corner and witnessed her mastering her wobbly knees and willing herself to turn corners and weave in and out between the other girls as they fumbled and toppled and collided, I had to fight the overpowering natural urge to coach her from the sidelines. My mother, God bless her, must have had to bite her tongue for 15 years. She came to every single game, meet, or tournament I ever competed in, coached my softball teams, taught me tennis, and followed me in the car when I rode my horse home to her stable after a long weekend ride in the neighborhood park. She knew how to offer insight and/or encouragement when each of those was necessary, but mostly, she watched, and was just present.

My dad, on the other hand, was born to coach, and did not even attempt to suppress the compulsion. He would call me over before I was up to bat and instruct me to do what he would have done were it his team, which of course it was not. This drove my actual coaches insane, as you can imagine. Once, when there was a full count, he advised me not to swing at the next pitch, as the odds a fourth grade girl could strike me out were fairly modest, and then just keep going after taking first base. I was on third before anyone noticed. The poor team manager was mystified, until I told him my dad had told me to. They were all terrified of him, not because he was a belligerent screamer, but because all the other little girls wanted to follow his directions, too. You just felt he knew exactly what he was talking about.

He would whisper in my ear before I bowled a frame, and I took home “Most Improved Bowler” three years running. He practiced free throws and played Horse with me for endless hours, and showed me how to grab a rebound with my elbows out like daggers. When I became obsessed with track and field after the summer Olympics one year, he built a high-jump pit (complete with giant foam-rubber landing pad) and hurdles, and taught me to Fosbury flop at 9 years old. He always told me “You’re an athlete. Never forget that.”

Come to think of it, he made us stilts and a pogo stick, too. Maybe he was just priming us to sell to the circus.

No matter how out of shape I allow myself to get, which we will not discuss due to lack of time and giving a shit right at the moment, I still, and forever, will think of myself as an athlete, and I want to give that same gift to my daughter. I don’t fear that I’ll be out of shape permanently, because in my mind, I am a bad-ass in the weight room. Never in my life have I thought “I can’t do that”, or “I’m not coordinated enough to do that.” I always tell my husband “Do you know how awesome I’d be at that?” or “I HAVE to try that.” He thinks I’m nuts. But really, I’m my father’s child. If you knew him, you could argue that that was almost the same thing.

Growing up post-Title IX, with parents who believed that bruises and sweat were good for you, I do not fear anything physical. I trust my body to do what needs to be done, and even when it doesn’t look like I’d like it to, it always comes through for me in the performance department. I’m trying hard to learn to treat it with the respect it deserves, but I never doubt what it’s capable of achieving. This is a gift beyond measure, for which I am eternally grateful.

So, yes, maybe my pride in my little girl's abilities are a little premature. She may turn out to be more of an "art nerd", as she claims, than a Johnson County soccer princess, and that's okay by me. My sincere hope is that instead of relying on a basketball scholarship, she'll put that amazing muscle of a brain to work and become a Rhodes scholar, or go to my hero Carl Sagan's home of Cornell and study M-theory, or something just as worthwhile. I have no doubt that she will.

But I know that Werner sports gene is in there, and she just might dominate the roller derby, too. You go, little girl!
I wonder; what are your feelings about your child's athletic prowess, or lack thereof? Do you think of yourself in those terms anymore, or are those days long gone?

The Pit and the Pendulum

2010-03-09T12:00:00.009-06:00

Here’s something; I’m fat. Even my fat jeans are too damn tight. Here we go again...

People who know me in real life are aware of my tendency toward, to quote Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, “pushing maximum density.” The genetic legacy I inherited from both parents, at least in the metabolism department, is one I’d have left on the shelf if the chance to shop for it myself had been an option. Or at least kept the receipt.

After seeing some pictures taken at a recent event, my worst fears were confirmed. I really and truly am not Jessica Biel after all, damn it. Yes, I fell off the wagon back in August, and it proceeded to back over me. A few times.

Here’s how it works: Get too busy with work during the holidays, get lazy over the winter , put on a layer of blubber, clothes get tight, am mortified by a random photograph, can’t stand the way I feel, spring arrives, get a boost of inspiration, make a goal, focus on getting in the gym 4-6 times a week, get a handle on my diet, perhaps obsess a wee bit, bust my ass, annoy my husband, bust my ass some more, reach goal, fall rolls around, get too busy with work over the holidays...you get the picture.

Folks, I’ve been doing this for years. I know the bloody drill. If I could figure out a way to crack the code and break the pattern, believe that it would have been done ever so long ago. There must be a Santa Fe Trail-size neural pathway worn into my brain that causes me to repeat the same unhealthy dance over and over, and trying to change it feels an awful lot like this:

Swimming against the current. The older I get, the less I think I’m a bad machine, and the more I think I’m a bad human. A human without the ability to self-regulate. My idle is either stuck on high or broken altogether.

There’s a psyching-up process that I have to go through before I’m ready to start. It usually starts with a picture, as I said, although sometimes it’s the dearth of clothes that I can actually fit into. Last time this happened, the zipper on the last pair of work pants I owned breached one morning like a Ninth-Ward levee, and I had to call in fat for work. Not too humbling or anything. Thankfully, this time it was just the god-awful photograph.

On a side note, you know the theory about how your lipstick is shaped having something to do with your personality? According to this premise, the smashed-flat profile of my favorite color (MAC Crosswires, just so ya know) conveys that I have high morals, am to the point, am very dependable, quick-minded, love a challenge, and am careful about appearances. Obviously bullshit.

However, it makes me wonder if there is a corresponding assumption about where one’s workout pants rip out first, and if so, what it says about someone like myself who has an entire drawerful with the crotch rent asunder? I’m guessing “high morals” may not be on that list.

So, I got nothin’ to wear up in there. I did spring for some new Nike’s. I have some decent socks. I even dropped $85 on a state-of-the-art sports bra. But I am hesitant to spend more than $15-20 on workout pants. Once I find the groove, I’m gonna be in there 6 days a week, so I will require several pair, and I am not shelling out $50-a-pop for some breathable spandex. For that kinda coin, they better come with blow job. I hope Nike is sharing a decent percentage of that with the 5-year old who actually sewed them. Although, please have a supervisor audit the crotch-sewing department. Thanks.

I don’t care, though. It’s been a hell of a long time since I tried to be cute in the gym, and really, at this point vanity would be futile. Some women are intimidated by the whole notion of parading around at their least-becoming in front of all the men, but I’ve never given a rat’s ass; to me, it’s therapeutic to bare my insecurities, and force myself to be honest with the world about what I’ve let myself come to. It provides a perfect baseline of humility which I can push off of and refer back to as I start to recapture the me I feel better being.

Plus, ladies, I submit to you that the only parading most of the men at the gym are interested in includes a balloon rainbow and lots and lots of techno music. True dat!

Looking back at 25 years' worth of pictures, I see the way I swing back and forth, from uber-healthy and focused, to distracted and blobular. I tend to remember things in terms of what kind of shape I was in when they happened, and it's always, always, always on the way to fit, or on the way to fat, and nowhere in between. When will I learn to just be?

Now is the time I muster up all my fortitude and try and swing the pendulum back the other way. Until I can figure out how to stop the damn thing without it cutting me in half, I'm left with the old routine again, and the hope that I can figure it out before it swings again.

So get ready, all you sweaty bastards; here comes the bitch with nothing to lose.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

The Ink on the Inside

2010-03-08T11:48:00.007-06:00

Revolting tomboy that I once was, I acknowledge that there were a few entirely girly elements that mesmerized me as a kid. No, not Barbies; I regret to tell you that any Barbie I ever received from well-meaning but way-off-base friends of my parents were immediately subjected to some much-needed discipline, by way of a haphazard high-and-tight and a full-body ball-point pen tattooing. My Barbies did not live in a Dream House; they lived in a barracks, constructed primarily of Thom McCann shoe boxes. I was not buyin’ what Barbie was sellin’. She was way too prissy and entitled for me. My parents must have feared they had inadvertently birthed a militant lesbian. Now, of course, you can buy them pre-tatted. What does this say?

No, I wanted pierced ears. Or, more precisely, the earrings to go in them. I had a friend who’d had hers done as a baby, and this both horrified and fascinated me. I was in awe of the way she yanked at her earlobes while she spoke. Every time we played at her house, I felt compelled to drag out her jewelry box, which featured a ballerina doing epileptic pirouettes on a mirror stage, and line up all the glittery contents on the dresser for an informal inventory.

My parents had settled on six as the age they felt their child should be before they were comfortable allowing a stranger to gouge a hole in her head, so I counted the days. Of course, once the deed was done (exactly on my sixth birthday; I wasn’t wasting one damn day), I realized there was a little more involved than just being sparkly. There was the whole business with the hydrogen peroxide, and the turning the posts nonsense, and the horror of the act itself; what do you mean, you want to put a gun to my head? Twice? And the having to re-impale myself when one fell out in my sleep and it began to close back up overnight? Not cut out for that.

Maybe it wasn’t all that bad, in hindsight, seeing as how I managed to poke five more holes in my own left ear by the time I was 16 with nothing more anesthetic than a few swigs of purloined vodka. Still not a girly-girl, my own jewelry box was a snazzy black velvet number with a Van Halen logo on top, which also served as a repository for my contraband supply. I didn’t own a single piece of ear-jewelry that didn’t hang down almost to my shoulders; many a drunken night ended with me in tears at the mirror, frantically trying to extricate my long hair from my earrings. It didn’t deter me; I managed to leave the house each day looking like a walking concession stand.

Now, while I still bear the visible scars of my experimental do-it-yourself cosmetic surgery, I seldom wear anything but the most minimalist, understated adornment, in the first and lowest holes only, thank you very little. It’s hard to imagine still walking around with all that metal in my head. I’ve changed my mind about who and what I was at least 10 times since I was six years old, and I’m fairly positive I’ve got a few more personas left to embody before I get my ticket to the great beyond.

Which is the biggest single reason that for this girl, there will be no tattoos. Ever. Anywhere on my person. So let it be written. So let it not be done.

No offense to the already-inked. I actually like the way it looks on other folks, truly. It’s just SO not my bag.

What I might have chosen as my personal talisman, even if it hadn’t had to have been permanently etched onto my hide, is different now than it might have been as recently as 5 years ago, much less 25. If I had started trying that long ago, I fear I would now look like a strip mall in a low-rent district; boarded over and re-rented , with indelible vestiges of all I used to be cluttering up what I now am.

I could say exactly the same for any type of piercing, other than the previously-discussed earlobe variety. My best friend Suzette and I were enamored of Teena Marie in high school, so she promptly went out and had her nose pierced in tribute, I guess. This was well before there were shops dedicated to this particular species of folly, so she had to attempt to talk the girl at the ear-piercing kiosk in the mall into trying her little chrome Dillinger out on a different orifice. She then spent the next 6 months looking not so much cool, as infected. Every woman I ever met who decided after a few margaritas that it was a great idea to pierce her belly button eventually tired of it and took it out. Which is one good thing about a hole versus a fresco; at least it will heal itself.

Ten years ago or so, my husband’s younger sister, who owned a dance academy in her small Iowa town, brought a group of her students to Kansas City for a big dance competition, and we played host. I can recall with perfect clarity the instant when I realized tattooing had turned the corner; when not one, but ALL of the 15-year old dancers displayed their ink for my scrutiny. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; if everybody’s doing it, even the Iowa farm girls, it ain’t counterculture anymore, folks. That’s conformist, not sedition. Count me the fuck out. I want to be the weirdo with nothing.

You now know, if you’ve been reading, my well-documented obsession with my skin. I’ve spent 27 years dousing myself with all manner of concoctions to preserve this delicate outer wrapper, the only one I’ll ever have, and the thought of purposely vandalizing it seems like a travesty, even if I could decide on a single image that accurately summed me up. Why would I turn it into a billboard? I am very wary of permanence. Change is the only perpetual certainty in my life, and I do not wish to label myself as anything that I could not easily amend. There’s a George Bernard Shaw quote that pertains exactly:

"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."

And that’s it in a nutshell. I don’t want to be presupposed by new acquaintances, or pigeonholed by old ones. I am forever a work in progress. If you can look at someone and conclude who they are without ever speaking to them, why would you want to bother at all?

A wise man once told me “It’s the hair on the inside that counts.” And the ink, I am willing to bet.

Tattoos are for Barbie, maybe. But never for me.

I’d love to hear from my readers about this topic; for those who do have ink-How did you decide what to get? Do you worry that one day you won’t want them anymore? What made you want them in the first place?
And for those, like me, who refrain, what is your rationale for doing so?

This should be interesting...

Pianist Envy

2010-03-01T10:00:00.020-06:00

There was an inane application plaguing Facebook last summer; you may remember the whole “Pick your Top 5” trend? It was good mindless fun; you had a near-infinite list of choices to pick from on topics from “Top 5 Vocalists” to “Top 5 Things You Won’t Leave Home Without”. The novelty wore off as soon as the categories started running more to the mundane; I am not going to name 5 things within arms reach, people. You do not need to know that much about my personal space bubble or this calamity I call a desk. Although I tend to sneer at FB apps as a rule, this was a blessedly-short diversion, and it did actually serve to let me know who I should have been hangin’ with in high school, and who was a closeted Republican just waiting to bust out.

My personal favorite was “Top 5 Turn-Ons in Men” (wait…wait…okay, I think I may not puke after all), or something of that nature. Not because I feel the need to reveal every little quirk of my excessively-quirk-bloated psyche to all 300-odd friends, but because it actually made me stop and think for a few minutes, which is remarkable in and of itself. I believe my answers were, in no particular order: bone structure, beautiful smile, smart-assedness, confidence, and guitar fingers. Not just “hands”, either; much too vague. I’m very specific; I love a man with long, beautiful, strong, graceful musician’s fingers.

I admit to having nearly fallen in love with a guy because of his hands, and before I was even able to see what exactly he was able to DO with them (insert disgusting idea here).

Chortle. I said “insert.”

I now realize this had less to do with the guy and more to do with me, revealingly. I was projecting. You see, I suffer from Pianist Envy. I was born with hands that might be useful crawling out of a pit in Buffalo Bill’s basement while holding a poodle and a bottle of lotion, but feminine, elegant and beautiful they are not.

Case in point: As a teenager, my friend Stephen loaned me his guitar so I could teach myself to play, and I tried. By God, I tried. I spent never-ending hours hunched over that thing and all I got was a chiropractic malady. My hands were killing me; anyone who has gone through this process can tell you that your fingertips pretty much fall off entirely. After the initial pain wears off, all sensation ceases, and shampooing your hair becomes disorienting and perplexingly unsatisfying.

I persevered. I learned to play the C major and A minor harmonic scales well enough, but when it came time to learn a few chords I reached a shocking conclusion; I have freakishly tiny hands.

That hits a little too close to home. Except that I would never be caught dead at Burger King. More of a Culver’s girl, me.

Turns out, my thumbs are but a fraction of the size they should be in comparison to the rest of the digits, and my minute fingers just refused to stretch as was necessary were I ever to learn to shred properly. I went to the library and actually managed to dig up a book of hand stretches. I did 100 fingertip pushups a day. While I did manage to improve my driveway free-throw percentage, those bloody bar chords were still wholly out of the question. I complained to a guitar-teacher friend, and he looked at my hands and then mumbled something about not everyone being able to do it. He was lucky he didn’t get a headstock up his ass.

After six months of manual self-immolation, I finally realized it wasn’t meant to be. There was a good reason I chose to play trumpet in elementary school band, and it was not for the sheer Doc Severinson fuckability factor, I assure you. It was three closely-situated valves, onetwothree, well within the scope of my miniature T-Rex hands. The guitar was for normal humans, with standard-issue hands. I gave up in ignominy. When my brother, who was the best guitar player I’ve ever known, told me that was bullshit, that Andres Segovia had stumpy little fingers, and that Django Reinhardt played with two fingers, it did not help my bruised ego at all.

In addition to the size issue, there’s this whole other problem; as a life-long borderline-OCD handwasher, I would be willing to bet that Norwegian fisherman do not have nearly the need for their awesome namesake lotion as I do. My mother told me that as a child, I would dig in the dirt and get just as filthy as my brothers, except that I would come inside every half-hour to scrub like I was needed in surgery. I had detergent hands by the time I was 7 years old.

Working in a professional kitchen, you give up the idea of hands as anything other than tools of the trade. Nail polish is frowned upon, much less acrylic nails, and having your hands in water all day long takes a toll, believe me. The last time I paid the dermatologist a visit, which was the only time I’ve ever paid the dermatologist a visit, he was able to deduce my profession from across the room, without the benefit of looking at my new-patient form, just by glancing at my hands. He advised me to sleep in gloves, with lots of Vaseline on. If I hadn’t just forked over a $30 co-pay, I’d have beheaded him with the edge of his clipboard.

Let me be clear: I do not harbor fantasies of hand-modeling Cubic Zirconia rings for the Home Shopping Network. I did, at a couple of times in my life, pay a lady to glue make-believe plastic fingernails onto me, in hopes of duping the public via optical illusion. But to me, hands aren’t truly beautiful unless they’re truly useful, and having a half-inch force-field around all objects in the universe did not allow me to be useful, if by "useful" you mean "able to touch or pick things up." And frankly, spending upwards of $100 a month on something so inexcusably vain at this point would be like throwing wads of cash out in the street. Unwise, and grounds for divorce.

So I have resigned myself. I have midget digits. They are able to comfort my daughter when she falls at the roller rink, and tickle her until she wets her pants. They allow me to ease my husband's aching back so he can get up and do it all over again the next day. They make a bad-ass batch of focaccia. And they feel at their strongest as a conduit for the soul onto the virtual page. I will live. But please forgive me if I ogle the guitar player's hands.

Made Up, and Over It, Part 2

2010-02-18T18:09:00.018-06:00

Where were we? Ah yes; junior high. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the Eighties, for the love of God. Not exactly the pinnacle of aesthetic taste for humankind, so perhaps I can be forgiven for the travesty that was my 8th-grade face. Hey, Teen Magazine said it was okay! I was 14, what did I know?

Once I finally lost my makeup virginity, I went off the deep end, buck-wild, hooking up with just about any product that would have me. If it was sparkly, glossy, shiny, matte, pearl, kohl, smoky, cream, or crème, I let it have its way with me, and I did not know when the party was over. I clearly recall Martin Spain getting on the bus and turning 180 degrees in his seat to gawk at my ornate facial embellishment (featuring a new creamy peacock-blue eyeshadow pencil), which he continued to do all the rest of the way to Ervin Junior High School, to my dismay. His reaction made me think that maybe, just maybe, that old maxim about less being more was not altogether bullshit. Seems to me, I used a little lighter hand after that. So thank you, Martin Spain, wherever you are. Thank you for saving me from myself.

As I survived each progressive year into high school, and slowly learned to exercise a little restraint with the brush and sponge, I realized I possessed a knack for the process that I never seemed to achieve in art class. I could look at a stranger’s face and intuit exactly what plane to shade, what angle to illuminate, how to give emphasis to an asset and disguise that which needed concealment. My own face, which I had heretofore tried to avoid looking directly at, little by little began to reveal its true nature to me, and I devoted more and more time to honing my technique in front of the mirror.

Of course, I was high as a kite most of the time, so that didn’t hurt. If I hadn’t been staring at my own face, I might have spent that time staring at a wall, so it worked in my favor. I got up absurdly early in the morning so I could blow a few bong hits before hitting the shower, then a couple more while “putting on my head”, and listening to Led Zeppelin 4. Early bird gets the worm, you know. And the best buzz, turns out.

Ever the mad scientist, I analyzed and experimented with every possible color, brand and product that I and my friend Molly could manage to smuggle out of the drugstore in the back pocket of my coat, until I found the perfect combination, which established “my look”, my go-to configuration for both daily wear, and special occasions, like a good Swope Park kegger. It’s funny, I can still remember the names of the particular products and colors, and get unreasonably nostalgic about my first savor of success; a few years back I sought out and bought all those same products, just to see if the formula still worked. It did. I ran out of the bedroom excitedly exclaiming “Look, babe! See what I looked like in high school?”

“Gee, you don’t look like a slut.”

“…and that’s when I killed him, Your Honor.”

As my teenage outlook got blacker and blacker, lo, verily, so also did my eyeliner. In my last school picture I come off like the bastard progeny of Amy Winehouse and Alice Cooper. After being maced. During a swimming lesson. I bought the cheapest stuff possible, the little red Maybelline pencils that come two to a pack for a nickel, and then melted the tip with my lighter so I did not so much draw a line as drip a puddle on both the outside and inside of the lid. I wanted to look hard and menacing, and I’m sure I did, when I wasn’t picking black eye-gack out of the corners.

That was a mercifully short-lived chapter in my ever-evolving concept of beauty. As a twenty-something club queen, I began to obsess, and would spend an hour and a half on makeup alone before a big night out at The Lone Star. My goal: no less than perfection. No drag queen alive could rival me in the highly wrought vista that was my eyeshadow. There is a scene in the movie “L.A. Story” where Marilu Henner says “I’m doing 30-minute lips”, which held deep meaning for me; it took me longer to get my lips on than it took to get to work in the morning, in heavy traffic. I once bought a cool astrology book at Urban Outfitters that eerily predicted I should have been either a judge, or a makeup artist. I wish I could have figured out how to do both at the same time.

I began to follow celebrity makeup artists; Kevyn Aucoin, Bobbi Brown, Mally Roncal, Pat McGrath. Anything they did, I knew about. If they published a book, I owned it. If they mentioned a product, I bought it. In those lean years, back before the Great Nordstrom Makeup Revolution here in the Midwest, if a girl wanted to put anything more exclusive than Lancome on her face, she needed to travel. So travel I did; any time I visited Denver or Chicago or Minneapolis on business, or LA to visit my brother, I made it my mission to ferret out the purveyors of the designer brands I coveted. Why spend down-time at the art gallery or the sidewalk café, when there was a MAC store to be looted? My brother nearly disowned me when I came home after a day running all over greater Los Angeles lugging a $200 black aluminum road case filled with $300 worth of the finest cosmetics my hard-earned, dumb-ass, 20-something, wish-I’d-have-put-it-in-savings money could buy.

God, that case.

Look at it.

Jesus, it was a heavy mother. It needed fucking wheels, for cryin’ out loud, or a roadie to carry it for me. It looked just like an Anvil case, and I think people expected me to take a Marshall stack out of it. I would not leave home without it, seriously. We would go visit family in Iowa overnight, and I’d insist on bringing it. “Y’all better get outta that bathroom; city girl is here with her steamer trunk filled with 22 shades of blush, $50 Japanese eyelash curlers and eyeshadow brushes made from the silky fur of the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse. Pee in the yard, it’s Iowa.”

I am happy to inform you all that I now live in Bizarro World.

Well, maybe not exactly. If I was in a better place financially, my ass would be waiting outside the door of Sephora, I cannot tell a lie. I still love the high-end stuff. But I love food, too, and electricity. So it’s a toss-up. I’ve been forced to re-think my philosophy about how and what I put on my face, and why. It feels like I’m through the looking glass, literally.

The Case ended up in the last yard sale, and my entire collection of cosmetics now fits in a Rubbermaid shoebox. Which previously would have held $250 shoes, which is yet another essay. As I have gotten comfortable with my actual real-life face, I feel less of a desire to paint a pretend one on top of it, no matter how good I happen to be at painting. Most days I have to negotiate with myself to bother with anything beyond concealer and mascara.

I think sometimes my husband misses the glamorous Robyn of old. Not that she’s dead altogether; I will drag her old carcass out and spackle around the edges should any really important occasion present itself. I still clean up quite nicely. And once I get rid of this bakery weight, it’ll be a lot easier to look in the mirror and be satisfied with less.

It’s funny to think that Nature gives us beauty when we are too young and unsure of ourselves to appreciate the thought. I’m totally down with my face as it is now. I’m gonna return Nature’s favor by not being in such a big hurry to disguise it.

So, a little question for you fine people: Do you wear more, or less, makeup than you used to? And if so, do you have a deserted-island item you can't live without? Curious over here...

The Critical Flaw

2010-02-16T14:01:00.019-06:00

You know, it occurred to me that in my last post, I employed pictures of several celebrities to make my point about the ease with which women are bamboozled by the allure of plastic surgery in pursuit of irretrievable youth. In retrospect, this seems disingenuous and probably a little misleading. I actually used the word “Hollywood” for fuck’s sake. Nevertheless, let me assure you I have no intention of turning into bloody Perez Hilton, and I promise I will only use celebrities to illustrate points that apply to mortal women, and not just to make fun of their unfortunate surgical history. Because, if that’s your bag, there are plenty of other, much funnier places to do that .

We all know some poor sucker in our everyday world who’s made the same kinds of mistakes, but it wouldn’t be nice to post their pictures and belittle them, now, would it? That’s for your private time. Outing your friends and coworkers is frowned-upon. Being in the public eye means you’re fair game, though, and that any lazy-ass like me can find 50 pages of Google images of you to openly disparage. Sorry, millionaires! Do your due diligence before lying down on the operating table next time, kthanxbye.

If you’re like me and have a memory bank full of old Discovery Channel shows haphazardly stowed in your skull, perhaps you remember seeing something about the Marquardt Mask. Stephen Marqhardt is a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon who has developed a theory about our inborn preferences regarding facial beauty, its relationship to geometric symmetry and the golden ratio, how that correlates with Platonic Forms blah blah blah. Apparently, according to this theory, perfection is achievable and here’s what it looks like.

Alrighty? If you’re a real self-absorbed asshole you can print out a mask and use it to decide how your doctor can go all This Old House on your face and make you look as perfect as Stephanie Seymour. (Please promise me that if you do this, you will not go look up Axl Rose, however. May I remind you that he’s had a little misadventure of his own at the surgical center. Yep, it hurts us, too, Axl. More than you know.)

Okay! Enough celebrities, already! You’re backsliding here!

Ahem. My sincere apologies. I am far too easily entertained.

What I meant to say was, “Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute there, Dr. Steve.” As a Libra who is ruled by her aesthetic sense (according to the horoscope), who cannot deny that physical attractiveness is something to be admired in an abstract way, I maintain that beauty is never the reason to love something, or more accurately, someone. One day soon, I will confess my horrible looksism. I have always gravitated to beautiful people of both sexes. But really, that wears thin pretty quick, doesn’t it?

As I get older and all the cumulative hours of thought about this here kinda thing start to rack up, I realize that in actuality, it’s the flaws that I come to love in others, if not quite yet in myself.

Allow me to go ahead and out some of my friends to demonstrate.

My friend Kim, for instance. Hi, Kim! This is me talking about you now! Kim and I have been friends since Axl looked relatively normal. She is teensy-weensy, a mere slip of a girl, whose hair weighs more than she does. She’s a science nerd trapped in the body of fifteen-year old boy, with the hair of Chaka Khan. And she knows damn well that this description is 100% positive.

When I first met her, she was a stunning wild child. Granted, she was 17, and if you don’t look good at 17, that’s God’s fault. She was long, lithe, and tan, with that great shock of electric curls, and with a sardonic sense of humor, I liked her immediately. The boys went all goo-goo, too. She was the new girl in town, and she just bowled everybody over. I wasn’t jealous, because she was my compatriot; I was just happy she was on my team.

But you want to know what I love most about her, 23-ish years hence? She has a little chip on her front tooth. I know it bugs her, or it used to. Maybe she is growing up, like me, and learning to love that which once drove her ape-shit. I hope so. Because if she ever gets it “fixed”, I will be lost forever. And so will she, as are all those women who fixed themselves into oblivion.

All those little defects, that which Dr. Steve would no doubt identify as something to be corrected, those are the things that physically make us who we are, the things those who love us cherish about us, miss when we aren’t around. We may never be able to truly see ourselves through the eyes of others, so it’s quite possible that we go to our graves still annoyed that we never got that thing fixed, whatever it was.

So I speak for your loved ones when I say, in the words of Billy Joel, “Don’t go changin’, to try and please me…I love you just the way you are.”

Of course, right after he said that, he said “I want a divorce,” and then married this:

What a dickhole.

I love you, Kim.

I Go To Eleven

2010-02-14T22:10:00.034-06:00

Scene: 1990, Chicago, Illinois. On the El, headed downtown with a group of fellow Nintendo crew members. Gonna goof off, shop, go to Café Ba Ba Reeba with my brother. Lots of loud discussion within the party, much silliness, but I am quiet, absorbed in taking in the landscape rushing by the windows. The train route is posted overhead, and I squint a bit to try and make out the location of our stop on the map. The talking suddenly ceases, there’s a camera flash, and a huge burst of communal laughter. I blink and lower my eyes. The whole crew is on the floor, falling down laughing. Anita says “My God, your face is made of rubber, girl.” I no longer have the picture to show you, but trust me, it warranted the reaction. I make fucking goofy faces, without even meaning to.

It’s a genetic thing, I suppose. We Werners are a rubber-faced folk, no question. We also like weird noises, bad puns and dick jokes, but that is the subject for a blog I have yet to create. A large percentage of the colossal Rubbermaid bin of photos I have yet to organize serve as examples of the countless varieties of this inherited characteristic. Look, me making a face at my birthday party! And here I am, looking ridiculous at our wedding. Aw, remember this scowl at the family picnic? Oh, the memories…

Part of it has to do with my inability to be serious for any length of time. I see the absurdity in things no one else on Earth would, and spend lots of time cackling to myself like a mental patient. And yes, my life’s main intent is making others laugh. Duh. It’s my way of making the world a little less abysmal. But in truth, my expressions are just external representations of my inner life, same as yours, but cranked up to 11. I would not be Robyn were it not so.

Which brings me to the point, finally; at 43, despite the anal-retentive nature of my skin care regimen, Father Time, that rat bastard, is finally beginning to make his presence known, due to my nonstop facial contortions. I don’t care how much cow placenta a girl plasters on her mug, eventually all that grimacing comes back to haunt her. Miniature fault lines creeping across the forehead, the merest suggestion of fissures about the corners of the eyes, the disturbingly-named naso-labial folds (which I am happy to report does not refer to finding a nose growing out of your cooter); all of these are now visited upon me, if still only faintly. I sit down every day in front of a 10X magnification mirror, and believe me, I am on guard.

But the worst by far are what they call “The Elevens.” They meaning the cosmetic surgery industry. “Elevens” meaning the parallel vertical frown lines that stare back at me like both eyebrows giving me the finger. Deep enough to swipe a credit card through, and I could exfoliate until I bled and not undo the damage, alas.

I know that if I wanted to, I could banish them from my visage forever. My niece is a plastic surgery nurse, and when she’s not elbow-deep in a boob job, she’s in the office shooting botulism toxin into half the faces in Johnson County. There have been a few offers to come partake, but after much reflection, I can say with no hesitation that it ain’t gonna happen, Cap’n. Not for this old girl.

Do not get me wrong. I am not against cosmetic surgery in general; I will confess that I myself had a little procedure several years back. Fat lot of good it did me. The concept of vanity ceased to have meaning for me after my brother died, and many years of hard work went up in smoke in a matter of months. But I would do it again in a heartbeat, if not for the little matter of expense. The face, however, is another thing altogether. Would I truly be myself if I wasn’t able to glower at will?

The prevailing cult of youth-worship has persuaded many women to rage against the dying of the light with every modern surgical weapon at their disposal, and convinced them that waging a war against encroaching age is not only admirable, but imperative. For some reason, a thing as natural as a little wrinkle is seen as a sign of frailty, an indicator of a woman’s worthlessness once her looks begin to fade. Some of the most beautiful women in the world have bought into this lie, and we watch as they are corrupted by it.

Remember Meg Ryan?

That was her. Terminally cute. Adorable little mouth. Star of some of the highest-grossing films of the last twenty years. Well, she bought the lie.

Hey Meg, Guillermo Del Toro's on the phone; he's still casting Gollum, if you're interested.

Or, say, Nicole Kidman?

Classic beauty, delicate features, porcelain skin...

...or Miss Havisham. Want some cake?

Just two of many examples I am sure I could offer. And there's no going back, I'm afraid. The damage is done, and until we have the technology to undo it, might as well cryogenically freeze the rest of their heads, too.

To my eyes, health, happiness and wisdom equal beauty, and ever more so the further we get from untroubled youth. It seems a shame to erase all that in pursuit of something clearly impossible to recapture. The argument that there is no place in Hollywood for an older woman smacks of insecurity to me. Tell that to this old lady:

Or this one:

Or perhaps this old hag:

I am happy in my own skin most of the time, lines or no. The ability to get a laugh, or wear my heart on my sleeve for the world to see, is worth many times over what the seductive power of ignorant youth was ever able to get me, even now when I'd know exactly what to do with it. The needle and the scalpel do not fool me. I will continue to do as I have done, take care of my skin, my teeth and my hair, and let it be. Confidence, not desperation. And no, I will never be a 10. But I have eleven written right on my face.

Made Up, and Over It, Part 1

2010-02-13T16:13:00.008-06:00

Okay. If you know me personally, and spent any time with me in the 1990s, hold onto your drawers, this next statement may come as a shock: I’m tired of makeup. Yep, you heard me.

I, Robyn, former Beauty Product Whore of Babylon, am pretty much over it. Where once I reveled in the acquisition of the most exclusive, high-end products, the look and feel of the luxurious packaging, the ritual at the mirror, the whole ethos, I now spend less time, thought and effort on these things than I do cleaning my house. And that, folks, my husband would assure you, is a wretched disgrace. Of course, this wasn’t a sudden falling-out by any means. The evolution of my turbulent, fanatical love affair with cosmetics is a protracted tale indeed. This is but the first chapter…

I was not exactly inspired by a classic beauty icon within my own family growing up; on the contrary, my mother was a card-carrying member of the women’s-lib, Billie-Jean King, Ms. Magazine demographic, and the most I ever saw her apply to her face was a shiny coat of something that resembled pottery slip. Apparently, though, we had an Avon lady in the neighborhood, and my mom managed to snag some swag from her; a pale-green box of lipstick samples the exact shape and size of 9-millimeter bullets. It was this innocuous package that first ensnared me, before I’d even made my 2nd birthday.

She kept it in the bathroom linen closet, on the low shelf next to the tin of talcum powder that smelled of the death of a thousand roses, and I could feel it beckoning to me any time I so much as walked down the hall. The promise of all that gaudy splendor haunted me for weeks, until I was left alone for some length of time, and couldn’t resist dragging my little stepstool away from the sink and over to the louvered bi-fold doors that stood between me and big-girl bliss.

My brother found me, the cube’s forbidden contents strewn about the room as if we’d been raided by transvestite burglars, me sporting a beatific smile with a surrounding multi-hued ring, and entreated with my parents not to spank me. Thankfully, they did something much shrewder; they took a picture, which to this day sits in a little silver frame on my makeup table, to remind me of the way cosmetics are supposed to make one feel. Up until recently, it had that intended effect.

Being a hardcore tomboy, after that heady first encounter I was more interested in horses, baseball and blowing up plastic army men than girly stuff, at least until the girly hormones started to kick in. When the new girl in 3rd grade showed up with a full face of make-up; black mascara, a stripe of awesome 70s-era burgundy blush, and enough lip gloss to affix a roomful of wallpaper, I was dubious, but intrigued. Much too self-conscious to attempt such a maneuver myself, I settled for adopting the lip gloss habit, as did all little girls in those days, and collected giant Bonne Bell Lipsmackers in a dizzying array of flavors. My favorite? Dr. Pepper. Sometimes I would take a little nibble when no one was looking. Deee-licious!

That was my lone nod to femaleness for years, until one fateful day, when I came home from school in full-on pre-teen trauma after being called “Robby” by some thoughtless 7th-grade boy whose identity I do not even remember, and declared to my mother that I was no longer a tomboy and would be wearing makeup from then on. Bless her kind heart, she sat me down and tried her best to administer an emergency make-over. Unfortunately, the only provisions we had on hand were the aforementioned terra-cotta glaze, so instead of ending up looking like Rachel Ward, I bore an alarming resemblance to Edward G. Robinson in “The 10 Commandments.” She took me to the Merle Norman store at the mall the next day, and I was equipped with some much more age- and race-appropriate products, and instructed where and how they were to be properly employed.

But, being of the right-brain creative sort, I wasn’t content to connect the dots. There was to be much research and experimentation…

Of Dogs and Men

2010-02-08T14:29:00.002-06:00

True story: For a period in the late-mid early 90s, I worked at a local overpriced gourmet food purveyor which shall go nameless, other than to say it rhymes with Mean & Palooka. In those heady days I was quite a bit less…cuddly, shall we say? It would be disingenuous to say “skinny” for that have I never been. I was in pretty decent shape at the time, but I had not yet the conviction I do now, and was always aggravated with myself for being what black guys call “thick.” Being a white girl, a very, very white girl, I have never been quite sure if this sort of label applies to me or not.

Anyhoo, I was working a shift at the abovementioned expensive hash-slingin’ hut, when I was paid a visit by a relative who I can call stunningly beautiful without any exaggeration whatsoever. Willowy, exotic, not an excess ounce of padding on the girl anywhere. Wanting to introduce her to someone in the office, I hauled her deep into the belly of the beast, right through the dish room, which at the time was occupied by all the Mexican and Central American utility staff eating their spare communal lunch. There was some animated dialogue going on about something en Espanol, and in that split-second before we entered the room I suddenly felt terrible contrition, like I was leading the lamb to slaughter. She was too stunning for them to just let pass by unremarked-upon. I clenched my jaw and waited for the catcalling to commence.

To my surprise, the room went utterly silent. As soon as we got past the knot of them, though, the one I liked the least said something that made the tiled room reverberate with spontaneous male laughter, and general whooping and hollering. Not being bi(lingual), I could only imagine the uncouthness of the remark. Looking protectively back at my gorgeous companion, afraid she would be offended, I observed her expression was instead only slightly annoyed, but more than anything, pleased. And I noted that my own reaction had the green tinge of envy, even toward said beloved family member. I am by nature a ferociously competitive beast, and recognize my own reptilian-brain’s troubling wish to forever be the center of attention, especially male attention. When I am not, my hidden talons come out.

After she left that day, I cornered the amigo who had made the obviously-boorish comment to compel him to offer an apology, for my young relative, and for myself. When I confronted him, he just laughed and told me “No, paloma, it’s an old Spanish saying: “Bone is for the dog. Meat is for the man.” He winked at me and off he went, laughing.

Thank God for Latin men.

The Tipping Point

2010-02-07T00:38:00.009-06:00

I’m gonna throw some names at you, just for the sake of experimentation. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear…Elizabeth Taylor? Jennifer Lopez? Dolly Parton? Julia Roberts? Shania Twain? Tina Turner? What’s the common thread? That is, other than fabulous wealth, celebrated beauty, and worldwide adulation? I’ll tell you what; a signature physical feature, a bodily calling card on which they construct a public persona, setting them apart from their peers and the rest of the faceless multitude. I do not mean to suggest that talent had no part in their success. But pinpointing your assets, and milking them for all they’re worth, are an essential part of the fame game, and have allowed them to get a foot (or a leg, or a tit, or an…eye? Must every post have an eye-injury reference?) in the door of the collective consciousness. But of course, they didn’t wake up one Tuesday and think “Well, here I am in show business. Better decide what part to stick out on the album cover.” Better believe they knew from childhood what their ace in the hole was. We all do.

For all girls, even the plainest of Janes among us, it doesn’t take long to establish what exactly our good parts are, or in the worst cases, our least unpleasant parts, and train like ninjas in the ways of accentuating the positive. It’s part of the female arsenal, and is one of the first things we learn in life, after the pooping-in-pants, lifting-skirt-over-head phase is mercifully behind us.

As you may have ascertained from my previous post, I spent my youth suffering from some serious epidermal angst. Other girls, those with a decent supply of melanin, tended to show as much acreage as possible, at least in the summertime, to my vexation. A few lucky bitches got boobs way before the rest of us, and though I have been told that this also provoked quite a bit of pre-pubescent cruelty, in a very short time they learned to wield them like anti-aircraft guns. The most fortunate of all were the natural beauties, the girls with no awkward period, who went straight from adorable child to fetching adolescent with nary a bad school picture. I always seemed to be besties with these girls, the prettiest girls in school, creatures who inspired both admiration and frustration in me; nobody, and I mean nobody was interested in the funny little freckle-faced girl, unless as a means of entry into the court of the goddess. Does that sound bitter?

Nah, I figured out my best bits, too, eventually. I realized that, at least up through my twenties, I had the gift of looking damn good in my clothes. My mother loved to spend my dad’s hardly–earned money on an enormous new wardrobe for me every season; who was I to argue? And I wore the shit out of ‘em. All the years of swimming, gymnastics, running, basketball, and horseback riding had given me haunches like Secretariat, and I filled out a pair of Jordache jeans like nobody’s business. I even gained a nickname; Booty Girl. Ah, yes, the rapier wit of the 15-year old male.

I also swear I woke up one day with boobs. I mean, I always had a modicum of boobage, don’t get me wrong. But my friend Suzette actually did a triple-take one Saturday night as we were getting ready to go out, and said “Goddamn, did the Titty Fairy come last night?” Now, do I think she was keeping notes? No matter; she was right, I went from a modest 34B to a 36EE in a matter of about 3 weeks, and I still have no idea why. And no, I was not knocked up, smart asses.

So I had unexpectedly added another good bit I hadn’t had before. I'd had the A, and now I had the T to go with it. My husband tells me that when he met me, it was that hourglass, in an infamous red dress, that knocked his socks off.

I regret to inform you that The Ass That Was is now a mere shadow of its former self. A bigger, wider shadow, but you get the point. The ass can be repaired, but it is not the Six-Million Dollar Ass; we cannot make it better, stronger, or alas, higher than it was before. I posted a shot on Facebook the husbo took of it at 23 years old (see above for shameless ass promo shot) as a sort of tribute. We burned candles, played “Funeral for a Friend”, it was quite moving. It is a passage to but another season of life. For those who know me now, know that Robyn=Boobs.

So, here’s the conundrum; as we age, and the natural gifts we had as younger women start to fail, and we begin to accept and even embrace those shortcomings we fought so hard to rise above before we knew better, will there be a moment when we have possession of all those things at the same time? When we can enjoy the uncomplicated gratification of a God-given gift, and the hard-won contentment that comes with surrendering the deep-seated desire to be somebody else and truly become who we were born to be? Or will the former fade away before the latter is achieved?

Will there be a tipping point, an interval of profound balance between what you were granted by the universe, and what you bestowed upon yourself? I pray that it is so. Because I tell you, that is Female Nirvana. And I hope and strive every day to reach it.

Under the Skin

2010-02-05T21:37:00.007-06:00

I’ve been quasi-joking for years that true maturity comes from accepting the hair you actually have, and not trying to make it look like something you have not. The self-inflicted cowlick I created in kindergarten with my little safety scissors made achieving the perfect center-parted, feathered ‘do of my teenage dreams damn near impossible. I know some women would feel that sentiment way down in their marrow, but in candor, in my own case the crux of my adulthood will always be the acquiescence of something else; this pallid wrapper I call skin.

I am hopelessly Caucasian, folks. I’m a ghost, almost. It does make shopping for make-up in the department store fairly uncomplicated. “Do you carry Irish Death-Pallor? No? How about Clown White, then?” Whatever color (or lack thereof) lies at the far left-hand side of the little rainbow of skin tones on the display, I will have one of those, please. I am but a half-shade darker than the see-through lady in the life-science lab.

It has been the bane of my existence, since I was old enough to be aware of skin color at all. If I had a dime for every minute I’ve spent tormenting myself over my utter lack of pigmentation, I would happily pay off the National Deficit and buy a round of Health Care for the house. After all, I was a child of the 70s, a teenager in the 80s, before anyone knew what “melanoma” meant. My friends “laid out” daily, basting themselves with an ominous-looking concoction of baby oil and iodine, while I lay beside them, sizzling like a L’il Smoky.

In elementary school, our family belonged to a German athletic club in south KC called Turner’s where I swam and blistered and peeled all summer. I longed to show off a severe tan line like my friend Kim, who would get brown just going out to the mailbox. After a long day at the pool with little or no sunscreen between me and disaster, instead of a tan, my freckles got darker, while the rest of my skin turned bright pink, like the inside of a watermelon.

The older I got, this became less of a nuisance and more of a handicap. I hated the way I looked in gym shorts, and actually resorted to a ghastly type of leg makeup as a cheerleader in high school, lest I blind the crowd with my pasty herkeys. My best friend Molly and I attempted to use a prehistoric-looking sun lamp that we unearthed in my dad’s closet, and while I didn’t manage to get any kind of color, we did both manage to burn our eyes. Not the eyelids, mind you. Eyeballs. Yeah. I know. The only thing that eventually stopped the screaming was her mother putting wet socks full of potato peels on our faces, which is some very complicated Irish irony.

Eventually, I was in such a shame spiral that I wouldn’t even put on a swimsuit, not even around my closest friends, not even in the depths of August. I had to decide if I wanted to sit by the pool and slowly melt into the deck furniture, or jump in fully clothed. The first time, it was funny. The tenth time, it was just sad.

It never ceased to amaze me how cruel and thoughtless people could be about it. “Jesus, girl, get a tan!” Like I hadn’t been trying! Like I had any control over it whatsoever! If we were taught not to judge others by the color of their skin, shouldn’t we extend that same principle to the entire spectrum, not just the darker end? They never would have said to the blind kid “Jesus, dude! Get some glasses!”

At 18, I was lured by the siren song of the tanning bed, when the stylist I went to got one of the first in the area, and offered me a freebie. Error! Danger, Will Robinson! It was like microwaving a Ball Park hotdog. Even at the lowest setting, for the shortest possible time, every square millimeter of my poor little hide itched, and I scratched like a tweaker for days, going through tube after tube of cortisone cream, and falling asleep fully clothed on my driveway, because for some odd reason, the retained heat make the itch stop long enough to sleep. I swear I’d have been medium-rare, had you sliced me open.

That was the last straw for me. I had had it with all the grief and the drudgery and the pain of trying to cram myself into someone else’s shoes. It occurred to me that I would never be mistaken for a Baywatch girl, and started each day with a coating of SPF 30.

Then, Hallelujah! Science came through for me in the form of the miracle I call self-tanner. I recall buying my first bottle at the Dot Drugstore on 95th and Blue Ridge, and saying an impassioned prayer on the drive home. A few days later, someone had the balls to tell me I was orange. I didn’t care. It was a color.

Practice makes perfect, or perhaps passable. After years of training, I have mastered the art of the faux glow. It will never be as good as the real thing to some folks, but as it’s my only option, I’m 100% onboard. I have even fallen under the spell of the Mystic Tan®. (That’s right, motherfucker, I said ®!) Truly the Holy Grail for the pasty people of this world. Not often, mind you; my broke ass is usually a white ass, unless there’s a special occasion on the books.

The upside of all this is that after 25 years of diligence with the sunscreen and much care and effort, I am told at least once a week how beautiful my skin is. Imagine that! Pale little me! All the girls I laid out with, who looked pityingly at my colorlessness, now may have wished they had done the same.

My skin and I have declared a truce. I will not lie and tell you that I love being the whitest girl on Earth just in order to wrap up this post with a nice happy ending. I still wish, deep down, that I could throw on a short skirt on a whim and go out in public. My vanity, with its mean-girl voice, tells me I’m a sightless cave-dwelling fish. But at least now, as a growed-up, I can tell it to go fuck itself.

Time and the Art of Me Maintenance

2010-02-04T13:26:00.006-06:00

Jobless bastard that I currently am, I find myself once again picking through the alarmingly scam-ridden Craigslist employment pages, trying to craft the pitch-perfect answer to every conceivable interview question, which I like to rehearse in the shower. God forbid I just shave my legs; the ruling mania for multitasking extends even to the likes of me, sadly. Having spent a few years on the other side of the desk in a former life, I gained some serious interview chops. I’ve heard, or asked, what seems like every question in the book. It’s hard to surprise me. It is, however, fairly easy to annoy the shit out of me.

Wanna see my eyes roll back in my head? Ask me this: “Can you tell me about your weaknesses?” or some dreadful variation on that theme.

I promise you, I never felt the need to pose that query myself, and if I did, I render my apologies to the universe. It is completely useless as a means of obtaining accurate information, and is bound to invite deceit. It’s like asking a guitar player “Are you any good?” Whatever the answer happens to be, only an idiot would believe it. You really want me to tell you? I can be brutally, sadistically candid, if you insist. I may disclose my genetic inclination toward antiauthoritarianism, and my delight in punishing others with excessively long words. Or confess my candy dependency, in support of which I guarantee I will callously rape the Steal-a-Snack box in the employee break room. Or perhaps the unavoidable fact that no matter the job, I count the seconds left on the clock, until I can take off my employee hat and go back to my normal, jag-off persona.

I fully get that the intention of the question is to determine my recognition of any inborn flaws, how I manage to work around them, and how honest I can be about it without confessing a murder. The truth is I’m a pretty good employee notwithstanding. I don’t steal from the till, I won’t be late unless someone else made me so, and I am relentlessly, obnoxiously happy. I give great phone.

The reality is, though, that there is one shortcoming I will cop to, one that threatens to undermine the very foundations of my existence, on the job, but especially in civilian life; I suffer from a chronic case of Time Mismanagement.

Yes, I know. What the hell, you are now asking yourself, has this to do with the stated purpose of this blog? Much, I assure you. If I could figure out this one part of my life, I would be healthy, skinny, and loaded. I swear to you, I do not spend hours watching TV daily, or gambling online, or God forbid, scrapbooking. I make a list each and every day of the tasks to which I must apply myself, and even prioritize the items in said list. I am not a blackout drunk and don’t lose chunks of the day to unconsciousness. Why is it that I have so little time left over to do things like, oh, exercise?

Lest you think me a slacker, I offer yesterday as an example. I managed to take the offspring to school and pick her up (on time, no less), visit the recycling center to relieve myself of a metric shit-ton of plastic and newspaper, wash and fold 4 loads of laundry, take a stack of books back to the library, research a new automobile purchase, and start the blog you are now reading.

But whatever the reason for my daily time-warp, it has the tendency to diminish the odds of me making it to the gym, or planning and executing a low-fat, low-carb dinner, or coloring my disquietingly observable roots, or getting a pedicure, or shopping for clothes that fit, or anything else that might improve my appearance or view of myself. Hard to get a job when your confidence is shot.

I suppose I will eventually get in the right headspace, make the gym a habit as it has been most of my adult life, and get back to my fighting weight before my 25-year high school reunion this summer. But I can’t help but worry, and wonder; when the finish line is finally crossed, will I allow the detritus of life to get the better of me again?

Until I can remedy my weakness in the Time Management department, I fear that question may expose a flaw that I can’t tap-dance my way around.

Damn it, I give in.

2010-02-03T14:13:00.004-06:00

Alright, already. Here it is, like I promised. After much encouragement, and much more thought(an asinine amount of it, to be honest, over a suitable name), I have done what I've been threatening to do for a couple of years now; I have started a blog of my very own! Yippee!

For some reason, despite my borderline-psychotic need to pour out my guts on the page, I have struggled with a general topic, fearing that if I didn't make the right choice, I'd be stuck with it forever, like bad real estate. If I decided later that I wanted to back out of it, could I do so without looking like the dilettante I probably am? Could any one subject hold my absurdly short attention span long enough for me to gain an audience? Or, being an expert on nothing whatsoever, should I simply concentrate on serving my own vanity and exorcising the creative demon trapped in my cranium, and topic be damned, risk confusing the shit out of any readers who might stumble along?

So, I have hemmed and hawed and waffled on that point ad nauseum, until a friend assured me that since the likelihood of anyone actually reading the thing is rather remote, I might as well get on with it. After all, also like bad real estate, if I can't make my mojo work on this particular piece of property, I can burn it to the ground. I'm keeping a can of gasoline handy just in case.

The subject I ultimately elected to delve into is one that I, as a lifelong girl, have a degree of familiarity with, and that may be of interest to others, if only in a voyeuristic sense: The Body. The female body in general, mine in particular, and how all its various and sundry parts relate to who I am at any point in space and time.

I hope to explore themes both cerebral (does my association with my own body have anything to do with ME at all?), and decidedly low-brow (what kind of workout pants prevent camel-toe?), with regular forays into the matter-of-fact (am I insane to imagine I can get into the shape to which I was heretofore accustomed?). I'm guessing there will be moments of inspiration and lots of utter twaddle, and it will be riddled with obscenities, I am sorry to say. But such are the mental ruminations of a 43-year old woman with a sugar addiction, little regard for the opinions of others, and no living parents to answer to or horrify.

One thing I can promise; I will pull no punches. Those who know me personally will confirm that I am that girl, every day. Those closest to me wish I had a functioning filter, but alas for them, I do not. At this point, I truly have nothing to lose.

It will not be art. It may be funny, or not. It may very well turn out to be a mistake altogether. But damn it, here goes anyway...