fish in the sea, frogs to be kissed, carnival atmosphere
Last night we went out. I’m charged to say, when mentioning dancing with Jennifer, that she danced with a Long Island Iced Tea in her hand – not a screwdriver.
The club was fun – full of danceable music and amiable hipsters, but it was so very, very hot and humid. I thought their AC had stopped working but the guy said, no, it was set to 60 degrees and that that just couldn’t compensate for “600 people”. But, really, I don’t think there were actually 600 whole people there.
I said, before we hit the clubs, that I wasn’t going to try to talk to any men because of the shell-shock and all. But then they just went ahead and talked to me, and, well, gosh dang it, I’ll shoot the bull with anybody.
I’ll talk to a guy on the dance floor just like I’ll talk to an elderly woman in the check-out line. Or like I talked to everyone around me in the nail salon yesterday afternoon. A woman treating herself for once – lots of callouses to remove and the blue stuff tickled her toes. A man treating himself to the ultimate/everything pedicure while his teenaged sons shopped the mall within cell phone’s reach. He said a monthly pedicure was his substitute for a wife. One of the manicurists was working on learning English. She said bowl instead of bottle. When her coworkers corrected her with chagrin, she appealed to us clients, saying that that made her think of a baby bottle. We all laughed. The massage chairs and jacuzzi jets felt good. My lady said I had hardly any callouses at all, since I have my nails done more regularly. I lowered my eyes while the strangers enviously watched her touch my feet. Even though there’s no reason to be ashamed for spending freelance money on a little health and beauty.
So I talked to some guys last night and one gave me his card and whatever, whatever – I see now that there are a million fish in the sea – no, it’s actually more like Galveston where the fish are jumping out of the water and sometimes littering the beach – they’re everywhere, in your sushi and everything, so you never have to worry that you might run out of guys to talk to. And then, everyone says you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince, and I see that now, and it makes perfect sense. But I don’t feel like kissing frogs, princes or anyone today. And I think the whole thing (catching fish, kissing frogs) sounds just like a video game. So I’ll treat it like one – as something to do when I’m not busy – something to play with when I have the time and inclination to move pixels around a screen.
and then
We went to IHOP afterwards and I devoured my Cheddar Turkey Melt like a monster. Then it was 5 AM and I went to sleep. Now it’s almost one and my guts feel hot – I think someone gave me some germs. I’m supposed to work on my galleys (Why is that plural all the time? It is supposed to be, right?) but I don’t have the Post-Its that I need. Can’t do it without Post-Its. But I’m supposed to go do all this stuff today so I don’t know if I’ll have time to buy any. Excuses, excuses.
freaking Mervyns
I hate it when I wake up from a night of drinking/dancing and my guts feel sort of hot and I have a lot of important stuff to do, but then I come across a receipt that says “Enter a sweepstakes to win a $1000 shopping spree! Just fill out our survey at www.mervynssurvey.com!” and it’s like, I have to do it, because the woman so painstakingly pointed it out to me with a green highlighter when I was in their store the other day.
So I go to do the survey and it’s simple enough except that, for my ethnic background, I can pick White, or I can pick Hispanic/Latino, but I can’t pick both. But I am both. But radio buttons don’t let you express your bothness. And it made me sad because, for the nine hundred seventeen billionth time, I had to think about the bothness and what it means to me, not just in the context of filling out surveys, but in the context of everything. And then, like I always do, I clicked the button of my people. The people who raised me. (The brown ones, I mean.)
But before they tricked me into choosing between my forebears like that, they asked me how Mervyns could serve me better. And I wish they hadn’t, because I really just didn’t have the time to explain to them everything they so desperately need to know. I mean – damn, they’d have to put me on the marketing payroll. Or just let me be a buyer a something. I kept it brief – pointing out a few forks in the road where they’d gone wrong. And then I summed it up by telling them that people used to say “Kohls is like Mervyns” and that was a good enough thing to say. But that now, in my mind, Mervyns has become like Sears.
I know, I know – very harsh. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. But they seriously needed to know.
