Moose in the Kitchen

Trying to decide if my friends would disown me if I wore a pair of Crocs to go dancing next Saturday night. The theme is prom, so I have the fluffy dress and my fingerless fishnet gloves if I can find them because apparently all proms happened in the ’80s. (So did my dress, by the way.) But we’ll be dancing until 3 a.m. and there is no way in hell I’m dancing in high heels for five hours and the Crocs are my most comfortable flats. They’re the cute kind, I promise, the kind that don’t really look like Crocs. I found them on the street the day I was going out to buy new shoes and they fit me perfectly and I decided that was a sign they were meant to be mine, and I’m really not making a good case for myself here, am I? Shit.

Maybe I’ll just wear sneakers instead. (THEY’RE CUTE SNEAKERS, I SWEAR.)

See? Perfectly acceptable, in my humble Crocs-wearing opinion.

This is what happens when I try to blog everyday: My conversation devolves into shoes and donuts because I can’t have deep thoughts all the time, no matter how my brain tries to force me.

Brain: MORE DEEP THOUGHTS.

Me: Please, no. No more with the hyper self-awareness and overwrought contemplation about the nature of insecurity. JUST LET ME WATCH MORE GOSSIP GIRL ALREADY.

Brain: BUT I AM VERY IMPORTANT. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO ME.

Me: Actually, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t listen to you. You told me to pick Crocs up off the street corner and take them home. Is that really the case you want to make for sound judgment and impeccable thought processes?

Brain: Shut up, you know you love those shoes.

Me: ONLY SORT OF.

Brain: You were the one who decided to dress in unbroken navy blue today.

Me: I’m wearing jeans. So that only counts as half navy blue.

Brain: ALL NAVY BLUE.

Me: Oh, hush. You’ve never had to choose an outfit, you just wear a skull all the time.

Apparently, my brain and I spend a lot of time trying to silence each other. I love you, brain! I do! I love you even as I boot you firmly out the door so I can watch Modern Family and laugh hysterically when Claire says, “Well, honey, you’re going to have to smell Daddy’s receptionist some other time,” startling the small dogs waddling past my door on their lunchtime walk.

Speaking of sitting by my window all the damn time, because the square foot of bed next to the window is the only place in the whole apartment that gets any sunlight and after three years I’ve turned into one of those plants that lean into the light, only with a more sprightly internal monologue. (Although maybe house plants do have a sparkling, Aaron Sorkin-esque inner world. WE WOULDN’T KNOW, NOW WOULD WE?)

What was I talking about? Oh, right – window, sitting by, all the damn time. I was sitting there this morning, garbed in Target fleece and unbrushed teeth while I worked on my laptop. That’s how the person who was walking by found me when he stopped and started TAKING PICTURES OF MY WINDOW. I mean, I assume he was taking pictures of the rather lovely flowers (some red fluffy thing, I don’t know what they’re called, horticulture was never my thing) (though I’m the person to call if you ever need a daisy identified) next to my window, but it was still a little…creepy. It was pointed right at my face. If I was some random celebrity or minor royal, I would have ducked. (And I probably wouldn’t live in a basement apartment with only one window that faces right onto the street.) Since I’m not, I just gaped. So if you see a picture of me in fleece and unwashed hair looking cranky, let me know. FOR I AM CURIOUS.

I want you to think I’m great. I do. I admit it. Yes, you. You sitting there in your chair or on the bus or wherever you happen to be reading this right now. Also my friends, my family, people I date, people I meet at parties and will never see again, people I sleep with, people I pass on the street. I want all of you to think I’m funny, nice, smart, and super hot. Or at least reasonably cute, when I’m standing under just the right lightbulb wattage and wearing makeup.

I JUST WANT YOU TO THINK I’M AMAZING. IS THAT SO WRONG?

Of course not. Because we all want that. We all want people to like us.

Everything we ever do – get interesting jobs, spend money, have sex, watch TV, drink whisky sours – is because we want to feel a certain way. Which is great. It’s fun to feel accomplished and loved and buy the entire West Wing box set just because that much Josh Lyman hitting your brain stem is like mainlining coffee mixed with magic. But by doing this we give these things – our friends, our bank accounts, a bottle of whisky, a mythical man with fluffy hair in a big, blinking box – the power to decide how we feel.

I am way too controlling to be down with that.

But trying to separate yourself from the good opinion of others is tricky. Biology is against us. We want to be accepted by the herd, because that means we won’t get left on a snowy hillside while everyone else finds a nice warm cave to barbecue a mastadon and admire each other’s furry togas.

Participating in the proverbial Cro-Magnon cook-out means I depend on you to make me feel good. Do you really want that responsibility? I’m guessing not. Because you have other shit to do.

So I’m learning not to care what you think. Not because I don’t like you – I do. I like you a lot. You’re smart and fun and quite fetching, even when you forget to wash your hair because you stood in the shower thinking about rewriting the Old Testament as a limerick when you should have been using the shampoo. I’m just learning not to care because DEAR GOD I WOULD LIKE TO CHOOSE FOR MYSELF HOW I FEEL AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. Without letting someone who says something unkind or lashes out because they’re hurt make the slightest bit of difference in my day or my mood. Life is too short.

(In a just world, this means I also get a pass when I lash out or accidentally say something stupid/unkind/worthy of snowy hillside banishment while everyone else picks sabertooth tiger out of their teeth.)

It’s not about ignoring what you think, it’s about getting to a point where I can actually hear what you think. Because it’s hard to really connect with people when all the noise in your brain is screaming so loudly that you have no idea what they’re really saying. And I bet what you’re saying is something I want to hear.

My mother’s cat is a witch. Or maybe one of the lesser demons, disguised by a fluffy pelt. Only a witch or a minor devil could slide past a latched door in the dead of night (fine, 7:00 in the morning) to take a flying leap and land smack in the center of my stomach, jarring me out of a peaceful, cat-less sleep. Before hopping off again to engage in a spot of playful bat-the-invisible-rodent, neck bell merrily jangling, while I’m pulling the pillow over my head and begging her to leave or maybe spontaneously die. (Sorry, mom. It was early.)

Sure, I could’ve gotten up, snagged the furry Lizzie Proctor and thrown her out, but that would be admitting defeat. Where admitting defeat = getting out of bed at 6:48 on a Sunday morning. Why should I let a four-pound ball of fluff boss me around with her spritely ways and obnoxious schedule? Even if she is a trained minion of Satan who could probably wither my fingers to blackened stumps with a flick of her fluffy tail for mocking her on the internet.

All this to say, next time I stay at my mom’s house, I’m bringing a padlock.

Skydiving. Public speaking. Bungee Jumping. Talking to men in elevators instead of staring intently at my phone. (Because a text message from two days ago is so much more enthralling than your perfect profile, Hot Guy.) I’m also kind of freaked out by raccoons, but raccoons don’t end up on many life lists, so I plan to ignore their existence indefinitely.

If something scares the living daylights out of me, I want to drag that fear back to my lair and feed it cupcakes until it succumbs. (Unless it’s a raccoon, then I just hide behind the nearest tree until it takes its ornery, be-clawed self elsewhere.) Example: I used to crawl beneath large pieces of stationary furniture to avoid having my picture taken. So I did this. I also did a random Gap photoshoot that put my picture in their 2010 annual report, which was kind of bizarre. Now I’m a lot more comfortable with people photographing me. This came in handy when Trent the stripper was gyrating in my lap and everyone else in the room was doing a very credible imitation of the paparazzi.

Public speaking is next on my list. The last time I spoke in public was at my oldest friend’s wedding. I was set to give my toast after the officiant, the groom’s older sister, made hers. She was maybe 29 at the time and already a professor at Yale. Yes, that Yale. Public speaking was kind of her thing. She was erudite, charming, witty, told a lovely story or two. Then it was my turn. I honestly don’t remember what happened after that. To this day, I have no idea what I said because I pretty much just blacked out.

I’d be tempted to avoid this whole Make Public Speaking My Bitch thing until forever, but I recently did a recorded interview for an assignment. Meaning I had to listen to my disembodied voice over the course of hours as I transcribed the interview and oh, how painful it was. Hearing your voice the way others hear it is a profoundly sobering experience, requiring no small store of stoic forbearance in the face of grinding discomfort.

I have one skirt to my name. I mean, one normal-could-wear-it-to-the-park-without-looking-like-a-drag-queen skirt. I have lots of ridiculous skirts, because this is the way I shop. Black cotton that’s machine washable and goes with everything? Meh. Black net tutu covered in glitter? OH MY LOVE, I MUST PURCHASE YOU IMMEDIATELY. (This does come in handy when someone invites you to Bootie prom – no need to shop for a black net tutu covered in glitter because I ALREADY HAVE ONE.)

In the normal course of life, this isn’t a problem. You only need one skirt if the sole purpose of owning skirts is to have a target for your longing gaze before pulling on wool pants and opening the front door to wispy July fog. But a few weeks a year, the sun comes out and all of San Francisco goes fucking insane. And we all choose to go insane in the same place. Namely, any patch of grass that will sit still long enough for you to unpack blankets and a six pack of beer.

Trying to find your friends in Dolores Park on a sunny Sunday afternoon involves at least three phone calls, the first to establish the fact that you don’t own a compass and for the love of god, don’t expect the word “north” to mean anything. The next two calls go something like this: “I’m near the tightrope walkers…now I’m walking past the shirtless guy in the top hat…you’re by the girls in fluorescent pink sunglasses? WHICH girls in fluorescent pink sunglasses? THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM.”

Um, anyway, it was sunny last weekend and I need more skirts.

Abrupt Segue Because I’m Not Sure Where I’m Going With This Post and WELCOME TO MY BRAIN

I was driving down to Half Moon Bay on Friday, fiddling with my iPod to find just the right song, because it’s important to have just the right song when you’re driving down the coast in the sun, when I felt a gentle knock the side of my skull and a very clear, “Hey, you should pay attention right now.”

There was no one else in the car, and far be it from me to ignore the excellent advice of a hallucination, so I looked up. There was a cluster of cars right next to me. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that it just didn’t look right. So I pulled over one lane to the left and sped up to pass them. As I did, one of the cars smashed into the car ahead of it and spun out. Right where I would have been if I hadn’t switched lanes when I did.

Public Service Announcement: If you hear voices – and they’re saying something that makes sense, like “WATCH THE ROAD WHILE DRIVING A LARGE MOTOR VEHICLE DOWN A FREEWAY” – you should listen.

Another Disconnected Story Because That Seems To Be What’s Happening Today

If any of you remember the bearers of the vegetable bouquet, they recently had a baby, a sweet little girl who’s a precocious eater and sturdy enough to withstand forty minutes in my arms. Forty minutes I spent sitting in stiff, unmoving terror. Because I live in fear of breaking other people’s babies.

Now We’re Going To Talk About Oranges. Just Go With It.

My friends Leah and Simon are getting married in a few weeks. I officiated their legal marriage a few months ago, the one for the health insurance. Diamond rings and fancy parties are all well and good, but the real romance is in staring down half an inch of paperwork for the goddamn Blue Cross.

Leah’s bachelorette party was this weekend and we all assumed it was going to be sedate. Maybe I’m geographically prejudiced, but when you drive to a large, tastefully decorated suburban home in Alameda, the most raucous thing you expect is a mojito poured into the large glass instead of the small one. Besides, the invitation said we’d be watching Regency dramas starring Colin Firth and painting our nails a shiny blue. Which would have been awesome, and just my kind of night.

Turns out, taking shots from a stripper’s crotch is also my kind of night. WHO KNEW?

After a few hours of demure chatting and champagne sipping, I wandered into the kitchen for more pizza. I spend a lot of my time wandering into kitchens for more pizza, and I flatter myself that I know the procedure well. But this time, the hostess pulled me aside and said, “I’ve got a stripper in the garage. Don’t tell anyone.”

I thought she was kidding. I would totally tell someone I had a stripper hidden in the garage just to mess with them. Turns out, she wasn’t kidding.

WHY, HELLO, DENIM-CLAD MAN WITH TOOL BELT AND HARD HAT. Is the boom box and body oil standard for repairing dry wall?

Leah proved herself an excellent sport when confronted with an unexpected episode of dry humping from a recently shirtless man. When she was told to choose a friend for the next song, Alison threw me to the wolves by yelling, “I nominate Amber!” and leaping over the coffee table to escape the arm chair we had just been sharing.

And Then This Happened

My first lap dance. There were a few moments of “Do I REALLY want pictures of my head in some stripper’s crotch on the internet?” but sanity prevailed. BECAUSE OF COURSE I DO.

When he put my hands on his butt, the next thirty seconds of my life were devoted to pondering the etiquette of this particular situation. And wondering why no one ever gave me a book called What To Do When a Male Stripper Puts Your Hands On His Muscular Derriere when I was 13. IT WOULD HAVE COME IN HANDY.  I’m just saying.

Afterward, he turned to me said, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Nope,” I replied. “You’re my first stripper.”

“Wow. You’re strangely comfortable with this.”

I was proud. Hey, we all like to be good at things.

“We’re the sponges of the world.”

Someone said this to me a few years ago, and the idea crawled into my cerebellum and made a nice home there. I suspect the idea even went to Ikea and got some brightly colored cushions and cheap furniture it couldn’t figure out how to put together. So it finally gave up, perched the yellow pillows on top of cardboard boxes named Aspelund and Leirvik, and called it a decorating scheme.

I’m a sponge of the world, it’s true. Absorbing emotion from people around me is pretty much what I do. We all do this, I think, and it can be helpful in some situations – like reading a room or sensing when someone is having a rough time. Not so much in other situations, like when you’re reading the world disaster du jour at work and find yourself sobbing at your desk. That’s awkward, especially when your boss walks by.

Being a sponge also means that I tend to accept other people’s view about how things should be done – work finished, days planned, relationships progressing. It took me awhile to realize that internalizing what everyone else wants doesn’t necessarily get me what I want.

Yes, it’s all about what I want.

(It’s true. No one will make your life what you want but you. Don’t you hate that? I’m still hoping for a Constitutionally prescribed magic pill. Surely, the founding fathers wouldn’t just leave us to flounder. Would they? Someone google the Bill of Rights.)

I recently broke up with someone – a lovely, awesome someone – because we had different ideas of how a relationship should go. Neither of us was wrong, we just wanted different things. I was okay with his different, actually, and probably would have remained okay with his different for far too long, because I’m used to saying, “Oh, I can make that work. If that’s what he wants, I can do that.” Without looking too closely at what I want and need. So I ended it.

It was a big step for me, because:

1) It taught me that breakups can be civilized and caring and respectful and you can even go out to dinner afterward and do the Benny and Joon table ballet. I didn’t have the bread sticks, but I made it work.

2) It was me being brave enough to step away from someone awesome when I recognized we weren’t headed in the same direction. If I say I want a certain kind of relationship, I have to make space for that to happen. Otherwise I don’t get to complain. (I will jump through a lot of hoops to reserve my right to complain.)

My freshly grown spine is tingling. It feels like a cross between a Twizzler and a lightning bolt.

Alternate title: Fuck You, LinkedIn

I’m updating my LinkedIn profile. Something I expected to take twenty minutes. Yeah, it’s now five hours later. Because rather than trust my own instincts – which veer toward talking about monkeys instead of, you know, what I actually do – I did a search on freelance writers to see what crafty things they put in their profiles. As it turns out, these crafty things are Write for The New York Times and Have Stories Published in Vogue and The New Yorker. Oh.

All this would be easier to dismiss if it hadn’t come from the profiles of a whole bunch of people I knew in college. It’s one thing if some glossy haired maven you’ve never seen before lists impressive things in her profile, something else entirely if you’ve seen the person stumble down the hall and trip over a ficus after three vodka cranberries.

According to my possibly-prone-to-exaggeration brain filter, every writer in my class graduated and went on to write for Every Impressive Magazine and Newspaper You’ve Ever Seen Ever. Which made updating my profile feel a hell of a lot more intimidating than it did four minutes previous. I’m not 23 any more. I don’t have the “I’m still figuring out my purpose” and “I don’t have my shit together yet, but it’s okay because I’m in my early twenties and my thighs are tan and svelte” excuse. Even if I could still claim age as an excuse, it wouldn’t fly, because a girl who lived down the hall from me was writing for The New York Times WHEN WE WERE FRESHMEN. True story.

Just because you know intellectually that comparing yourself to other people is a bad idea and a one-way ticket to despair dusted in Kettle Chip crumbs doesn’t mean you don’t do it. Just because you remember all the things about yourself that are truer, deeper, and more important than what you can put on a resume doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel wretched about it for a few minutes.

I am still getting my life together. I’m together in many, many ways. In other ways, I’m a bit of a mess. Scrambling for the pieces and trying to plaster them onto other pieces and balance on top of the pile like a slightly manic circus clown who wishes she had just taken that internship at Rolling Stone rather than being so concerned about money that she took the paid library job instead. I don’t care if I would have just been photocopying things and fetching coffee. I WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PUT MOTHER-EFFING ROLLING STONE IN MY LINKEDIN PROFILE.

Now for the perspective. Because being able to wave Rolling Stone like some magical incantation that proves my worth isn’t the point. My ego is not the point. My poor, sad little ego that needs to be sent to bed with a hug and a grilled cheese sandwich. When my ego is quiet (because it’s devouring grilled cheese), I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do in life. I want to write about people who are passionate about something. Whether it’s theater or solar power or burlesque dancing or banjo music or pet iguanas. I like talk to them and distill their passion into words that people want to read. It’s what I’ve spent my career doing and it’s what I want to keep doing as long as I can.

We all feel insecure sometimes. I’m not naive enough to think that would go away if I had a story published in The New Yorker. So it’s important to say it, to admit to feeling insecure. Even if you’d rather be an ass-kicking word maestro all the time. Even if you’d rather have an impressive resume and then admit to being insecure. Even if it sounds like you’re fishing for compliments. (I’m not. Though do feel free.)

It’s okay to have ambitions. Even if some of them feel a bit shallow. Even if they’re not likely to be fulfilled. It’s okay to want whatever it is that you want. It’s okay to Google the specific woman you’re thinking of, the one who wrote for The New York Times when you were freshman, because you just might find an essay she wrote for a book, and read the excerpt that describes walking onto the hall we shared fifteen years ago as freshmen and feeling just as insecure and out-of-place as you did. About different people and for different reasons, but the core of the emotion is exactly the same. She met the same people I did and felt a little bit less than she did before.

Because guess what? WE’RE ALL HUMAN. WE ALL FEEL THIS WAY SOMETIMES. The girl whose brother was the drummer for a band we’d heard of, the dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, the singer with impressive roles on Broadway – they all had their own insecurities. They still do. It’s okay.

It’s okay to read her writing and think she’s a lovely writer and not feel as if that takes anything from me. Because it doesn’t. Because acknowledging the small places, the dark ones that need a hug and a grilled cheese sandwich, means I can be excited about someone else’s success.

It means I don’t have to regret anything I did or didn’t do in the past, because that just dilutes me. The only power I have is in what I can do now, today. That’s what I’ve got – and it’s enough.

Even if what I have now is a damn LinkedIn profile to write.

I’m plowing through The Gospel According to Coco Chanel because Nicole thrust it in my direction during our last work date and told me to read it. Since everything she tells me to do – “eat this cookie,” “try my homemade ravioli,” “watch Glee and drink two bottles of wine”  - always turns out to be massively fun, I did. She’s right again. Because it’s funny and smart and Coco was a force to be reckoned with, back when women didn’t have the chance to reckon much of anything beyond the butcher’s bill. She’s totally on top of her shit – as you’d expect from someone born in abject poverty in the 1880s who still manages to inhabit my tiny apartment 130 years later in the form of both a book and a bottle of perfume.

My closet will inform anyone with average eyesight that elegance isn’t one of my top life goals, so – yeah. I kind of don’t get that part. (Why does anyone want a quilted handbag? Hanging from a…chain? What’s wrong with a backpack?) But she was also a master of self-invention. Something I wholeheartedly admire, as I try to renovate myself from Charmingly Inept Work-in-Progress to Master of the Universe. Or at least Prompt Bill-Paying Adult.

Since I’m reading about Chanel’s legendary roots and avoiding work that might transform me into that prompt bill payer of my hopes and dreams, I’m taking her advice.

Tips for Refashioning Your Past, a la Chanel

1) Blame all the bad behavior of your forebears on passion.

We’re pretty sedate in my family. On my mom’s side, there were some Danish resistance fighters during World War II, but it’s probably bad form to joke about having a passion for thwarting genocide. Other than that, it’s all Pennsylvania mining towns and quaint Boston suburbs. Fairly sure there are no outbursts of mad passion in quaint Boston suburbs. At least not in the 1950s. My dad wore some unfortunate glasses in the ’70s, but claiming he has a passion for being able to see things is a stretch.

2) Identify with the most glamorous member of your family.

Unless we’re a cast-off branch of minor European royalty and nobody told me, there are no glamorous members of my family. Next question.

3) Rename the people who humiliated you.

Since I’m the only one who ever routinely humiliates me, I rechristened myself Moose. BOOM! Continuing the grand tradition of making a fool of myself, now while pretending to be a large caribou with a rather awkward hat, etc. My brother tries, but his attempts are pedestrian at best. Ugly? Really, child? You’re better than that.

4) Embrace your region.

Northern California is a bastion of fruity, nutty ridiculousness and I love every last bit of it. So do my parents, who lived in a tiny cabin in the woods until I was born and played with crystals and psychic powers and named their dog Freedom. Were it not for my aunt’s intervention, I would have been named Sunshine. Raised in the Church of California Hippie, my college rebellion was to take Advil instead of trying to visualize my headaches away.

Yeah, we’re a little weird around here.

Then I moved to San Francisco (by way of New York) (no fruity hippies there, let me tell you) and it just got weirder and more awesome. People always have something to say about this part of the world, and I adore it. CONSIDER YOURSELF EMBRACED, BAY AREA.

5) Cast yourself as the romantic heroine.

Where can you be a romantic heroine but in your own life? I ASK YOU. (No, really. I do. Is there anywhere else? Preferably somewhere also occupied by Bradley Cooper or the guy who plays Tim Riggins?) (Sorry, Not Tim Riggins, I’m too lazy to google.)

I like the idea of being a romantic heroine. Where my romantic flailings are simply adorable quirks and transforming yourself is something that happens in a two-minute musical montage.

1. My brother and I wear the same maniacal grin when playing tennis. As reported by his affectionate, long-suffering girlfriend. We have the same twisted sense of humor when playing Apples to Apples. As reported by everyone.

2. The baby toddled over to give me a hug as soon as I walked in the door. While I was rendered remorselessly sloppy over the cuteness, it seems my biological clock is ticking less vehemently than my younger brother’s. That would be an unexpected plot twist.

3. My mother is claiming slander and requests that I retract my (apparently) fictitious statement from the comments of last week’s post where I said something about not being allowed to sell Girl Scout cookies. She says it’s because I never was a Girl Scout, I was some less imposing Girl Scout knockoff and therefore minus the proper credentials needed to sell Thin Mints. I stand corrected.

4. We have an unhealthy relationship to Mountain Dew in my family. I shoot it dead and my brother can turn an empty can into a near arrest.

5. Did anyone see the season finale of Hoarders? The one with a house full of thousands of rats? If so, you may have noticed Monty, a particularly charming and hirsute example of rodentia. A pet store in San Jose rescued the rats and my brother’s girlfriend bought him one for Christmas. So my brother is now the proud guardian of a furry reality TV star who enjoys eating socks in his spare time.

This family portrait would be more impressive if there was an actual family in it, but there’s a lot of “You aren’t going to put this on the internet are you?” when I take out my camera at family dinners. As if the internet was a downmarket Saigon brothel.

6. Don’t try to befriend every Billy Bob on Facebook because Facebook will eventually catch on and take away certain privileges, like your ability to press the Friend button.

7. If you invite your best friend from 3rd grade and her husband to stay with you, they will attempt to inveigle your children into helping them compile a compendium of your quirks. (My mother has many quirks, though one could argue she doesn’t have anywhere near as many as her children. We build proudly on the efforts of previous generations.)

8. Halfway through dinner I apparently wrote myself a note on my phone saying, “I swear my whole family is high right now.” Still not sure why, but it might have something to do with the old Crosby, Stills & Nash records playing or all the laughing over my brother’s tin can brush with the law. It definitely had something to do with walking in the door and hearing “Here’s your booze” while someone hands me a glass.