I’m a Jinius

This is my second week of being impoverished thanks to my student loan debt (remind me not to send my kids to a liberal arts school) and I’ve been having a hard time buying inexpensive groceries that are somewhat healthy because the only cheap foods are canned goods and hydrox cookies. Is this why Mississippi–where some cities have a poverty rate that is twice the national average–suffers from the highest obesity level in the country? I can’t be obese now! I’m going to Fire Island in July! (Oh, don’t you just love the suffering of liberal arts school grads?)

At least having no money has helped moderate my drinking problem predilection. It’s amazing when you realize how much money you spend on alcohol. I won’t take my suits to the drycleaners because I don’t want to pay twenty bucks but I’ll freely throw down sixty bones for booze. It’s like I’m spending money just so I can lose control and impair my judgment and make myself susceptible to venereal diseases.

I’ve also been handwashing stuff like underwear and bras but today I broke down and finally did laundry because I really needed to wash my sheets and it’s not like this is the Oregon Trail. I can splurge five bucks for laundry.

So in order to save money I don’t go out at all during the week and I pretty much stay at home and watch reality shows instead of, you know, living in reality.

Of course I watched the Top Chef Finale. Hello, do I not breathe? And I think I can speak on behalf of America and pretty much the rest of the world when I say how relieved I am that Lisa did not win. Oops, spoiler. My bad. I love that Adam Platt over on NYmag calls her The Gorgon. I didn’t know what that was so I looked it up and learned that a gorgon is a mythological monster. Upon reading that, I laughed so hard I cried. Some blogs have contested that the editors made Lisa out to be the show’s villain but I don’t think the editors crafted that serial killer hair cut and Jack Palance glare.

I have to confess that I got teary-eyed when Stephanie talked about how happy she was that she won (oops, spoiler!) and that she made it through despite doubting herself and now she knows that this is what she’s meant to do in her life. It is nice to know that even talented people doubt their talent. Sometimes I wonder how much I could accomplish if I just got over this fear of failing. What’s the worst that could happen if I just tried? What if I just put together a book proposal and had it slammed by every agent in the city, thus confirming all my suspicions that I am indeed talentless and derivative? What’s so bad about that???

A friend of mine suggested that I turn some of the blogs posts into a book idea and I was like awww, thanks, but you have to say things like that because you’re my friend. But I’ve been reading other people’s personal essay books and I’m like, hmmm I could do that…if my attention span enabled me to write something longer than a blog post. One book that struck me was Sloane Crosly’s “I was told there’d be cake” (Clearly if I had written the book my title would’ve been “I was told there’d be open bar”). She has a very likable voice with a wry and self deprecating sense of humor but the entire time I kept thinking: this is just another white girl writing about life in New York.

But an important lesson I derived was that you don’t need exotic subject matter to be a compelling writer–you can stick to the mundane. And it’s all about your perspective. The most successful people out there are the ones who follow their own path. I don’t have to adopt the voice of Crosly or Sedaris or Burroughs. Especially since I’m not a white girl or a gay man. I just have to keep it real. Unfortunately, right now keeping it real involves eating pasta with poor man’s sauce (butter, olive oil, and salt).

I hope there’s an audience out there for an Asian female writer who doesn’t necessarily want to exploit their immigrant experience and would rather talk about boys, booze, and LOST while making random hip hop references. Hmmm, something tells me I need to throw in a random story about my strained relationship with my reticent yet loving Asian father. Every ethnic writer needs one of those in their portfolio.

Anyway, not having any money right now has been the best thing for me. I’m not drinking (as much) and I’m working out more and I’m using this solitary time to just figure shit out. Poverty is like going to church!

I guess the important thing is just to stay focused and work hard. Like Nas says: I know I can/be what I wanna be/if I work hard at it/I’ll be where I wanna be.

Hip hop tracks with kids singing the chorus are way inspirational.

In other news, there’s this story in Slate about an 85 year old woman and 92 year old man who met at a nursing home and started having sexual relations. Oh, and they also suffer from dementia. And when their kids found out they separated them. It’s like Romeo and Juliet only with adult diapers.

When I turn 80 and senile (lets face it I’m already on that path), I hope you, dear readers, will remember that under no circumstances are my kids allowed to cock block me. As god and the internet as my witnesses, I declare that I will get booty till the day I die.

We’ve all been in this position before.

You’re waiting in line for the bathroom at a bar or restaurant or coffee shop. (I’m sure you’ve been in line at a coffee shop because, hello, coffee!!!) So you’re the only person in line and waiting forever because the person in the stall is either reading Ulysses or removing the entire contents of his/her digestive system. The person finally exits the restroom and does not look you in the eye.

A harbinger of things to come.

You enter the bathroom and your olfactories are immediately arrested by a stench so unholy that you are convinced that the person before you must have murdered someone, eaten them, and then purged them from their bowels.

But you get over it and do your thing.

Then you leave the bathroom only to find that a line of people has actually gathered outside the restroom. Where were all these people before?? And now they will think that you are the perpetrator of this unholy grail!!

What do you do? Shrug? Grimace? Be like Shaggy and say, “It wasn’t me”?

Ladies and gentleman, I propose that we all employ the universal sign of “not my shit” so as not to be responsible for a sin we did not commit. As we exit the restroom, we should pull on our right ear to indicate to our fellow restroom victims that we did not, indeed, drop a deuce.

You’re welcome.

so one of the senior office members yelled at me this morning in front of everyone.

usually i’m pretty good at asserting myself and yelling back but i was caught off guard since it was early in the morning and i didn’t even have a chance to drink my morning coffee!

then i ran out of the office crying.

ugh.

but everyone at the office agrees with me that this guy is a huge fucktard so i’m trying not to take it personally.

i just think i’m tired of working in an office. my ideal office environment would be my living room. anyone out there hiring bloggers? hello? is this thing on???

1. Skip dinner. You don’t need to buy as many drinks when you’re drinking on an empty stomach!

2. Go to verlaine. Happy hour until ten.

3. Buy a Vietnamese Bloody Mary. Think of it as a liquid dinner.

4. Buy a lychee martini

5. Pass out

my mother was never the type to harass me about lassoing a husband but lately all she asks me over the phone is whether or not i’m seeing someone. all this time i thought i had managed to avoid the call of the marriage siren but she managed to sneak up on me like the smoke monster from LOST.

i should’ve known that marriage was on the brain when i was in miami last december and we spent the day at this cute little bay by our house and she wistfully said, “this would be a great place for a wedding.”

um, yeah, i’ll have a wedding there. in two thousand and fucking never.

so now that the whole marriage pressure is being externally induced by my mother, i should probably go on eharmony.com and marry the first christian dude that proposes. ha psych! bitch, please, do you know me at all? yeah, sure, marriage and companionship would be nice but i’m not trying to just settle down with some asian dude with an mba. altho that would make my mother do a scissor kick across the miami skyline.

it’s just so funny that my mother is encouraging me to get married because she used to lament the fact that she got married too soon. “date lots of different men” she used to say. i guess she thinks i’ve dated enough men because now she’s all up in my grill.

as much as i understand my mother’s concerns, i’m a firm believer that you should only get anchored into a committed relationship when you are first satisfied with being alone. if you can’t make yourself happy then you will only become needy and frustrated when your partner can’t make you happy. i’ve been really into the word “partner” lately. i kinda like the idea that your significant other is more of a partner in crime. or i guess the word partner also implies same sex marriage. whatevs.

in other news, i was running along the east river and was amazed at how many hot guys were running at the track. but it’s hard to hit on someone when they’re literally running away from you.

also, i’m amazed every time i see those huge ships floating on the river. how the hell do those monsters stay above water? i think archimedes first explained this all with his theory of density and displacement thousands of years ago but i dont remember. science is cool yo.

i finally caught up on the season finale of LOST–all three fucking parts of it!!!!–and i feel like i performed a triathalon–if they have triathalons that involve sitting in front of a computer and screaming “oh no they didn’t!!!” for three hours.

dave sent me this nytimes story on LOST and this paragraph sums up why this show is like the television equivalent of crystal meth:

“Lost,” which concludes its fourth season on ABC on Thursday night, refuses our passive interest while it denies us the satisfaction of ever feeling that we might confidently explain, to the person sitting next to us at dinner, that we have a true grasp of what is going on — of who among the characters is merely bad and who is verifiably satanic. To watch “Lost” is to feel like a high school grind, studying and analyzing and never making it to Yale. Good dramas confound our expectations, but “Lost,” about a factionalized group of plane crash survivors on a cartographically indeterminate island not anything like Aruba, pushes further, destabilizing the ground on which those expectations might be built. It is an opiate, and like all opiates, it produces its own masochistic delirium.

You can read the rest here.

my roomie is a yoga fanatic and she was showing me a good stretch for my quads since my legs have been feeling so tight from running.

basically you start in a kneeling position and then arch your back, sit back on your heels, and you want your head to eventually touch the floor.

and all i could think was that this would be a great warm up for this position.

tee-hee.

tried and true
most of my guy friends are dating two to three different women at the same time. i know one guy who is in grad school, seeing two girls, and also doing online dating. how does he have time for all these fillies? i barely have time to see my friends let alone date 3 guys.

for men, variety is the spice of life whereas for most women (okay, maybe just me) i can’t see more than one guy at a time. i think alot of it has to do with the way men and women view sexual compatibility. most men have a very easy time getting their jollies off and don’t really care if it’s with some chick they just met a bar or a girl they’ve known for years. women, on the other hand, enjoy sex more with someone they’ve developed chemistry with. we need someone who’s familiar with our lady parts so they know how to hit it and quit it. ha.

i suppose this is why men galavant around town with the ashley dupres of the world and i stay at home watching re-runs of LOST on the internet.

the poverty diet
i just paid my student loans and now i can’t eat for the rest of the month. yeah, i went to a liberal arts school and all i got was this lousy scurvy.

the poverty diet consists of walking to and from work because you’d rather splurge on beer than a metrocard. eating pbj sandwiches for lunch and rice and beans for dinner. it’s kinda like being a college student all over again. only you’re almost thirty.


i treat my body like a temple. the temple of doom.
i ran four miles after work yesterday and wanted to puke as soon as i finished. note to self: it is probably not a good idea to consume beer, nachos, margaritas, and mac and cheese the night before a run.

sex and the city
no, i haven’t seen the movie. i’ll wait until my roomie goes to hong kong and gets it bootleg. i don’t know why but i’m just not that excited to see it. sure i own season two and three on dvd and i cried during the show’s finale but maybe it’s because i’m older now and more pragmatic (ie jaded) or that i’ve seen every episode a gazillion times thanks to the re-runs on tbs, but the more i watch the show the more i cringe at the show’s message of faux empowerment.

i think the episode that made me start to feel that way is the one where samantha gets back at her boyfriend richard for sleeping with other women by having sex with some fat, balding reporter at a party.

is that how we’re supposed to empower ourselves? by sleeping with another man to get back at the one cheating on you?

don’t get me wrong, i still think the show was ribald and sassy for its time but i think it is a bit outdated for now. but whatevs. i’m still a sucker for a rom-com.

a new direction
anyway, i’ve been having major blogger’s block lately and i’ve decided that i’m still gonna write about the same shit (boys, booze, and LOST) but with an empowering angle (are sci-fi shows empowering?). i think sex and the city had good intentions with its pro-female message but they gave too much currency to hand bags, shoes, and random hook ups. sure, i love shoes and smoochies as the next girl but i think there are more things in life that will amplify your sense of self.

i just need to figure it out.

i love three days weekends but loathe the melancholy that creeps in at the end. it’s kinda like in elementary school when you greet the weekends with such glee only to be told on sunday night you can’t stay up to watch married with children.

i think it gets harder as you grow older because you’re also grappling with hangovers–emotional and physical. so in order to avoid coming down we just continue to party and drink.

and smooch.

i’ve been going out since thursday and now i am coming down hard. oh, and i also have my period. i am one big party bus of fun.

but a brief review of the weekend.

so do you ever wake up one morning, turn to your side, and find some random person sleeping there?

whoops!

yeah, i went out on thursday to my friend suzette’s going away party and ended up talking to one of her friends and bringing him home with me. nothing happened but i was still shocked to see a stranger in my bed. and on a school night! he was a floppy haired brooklyn boy who evidently watches LOST. i believe that’s how we started talking.

I want to write a book called The Nerdy Girl’s Guide to Dating: How to hook a live one with references to LOST

i also managed to find random business cards in my purse. Um, yeah, I’ll call you never.

on friday my friends and i go to the restaurant where my bartender works. we all sit at a table and i suppose to an outsider we probably look like we are on one big group date because the group consists of three girls and three guys. and the bartender is acting not that friendly and then it hits me that if i were in his situation and saw him hanging with other girls i’d be a little salty too. usually when im at the restaurant i’m hanging with gay boys and this night im with my friends colin and allstadt who aren’t exactly the most approachable people. colin is wrapped in tattoos and allstadt looks like he eats entire villages for breakfast.

at the end of our dinner the bartender even asks me, “so which one’s your boy?

okay, i know he is just joking but my comedy writing teacher once told me that all jokes are rooted in truth. and since i believe everything that semi-authority figures tell me, perhaps mr. dark and brooding is feeling a little jelly? whatever, you don’t own it till you claim it!

anyway, he ends up coming home with me and he leaves early the next morning to play sports with his boys. for the first time since we’ve started our little trysts, i am strangely sad. the only comparable feeling would be when you are coming down after a night of partying and drinking. i feel like i’m on a high when i am with him and when he leaves i feel like a junkie. and any practical person would just cut it off so that they avoid feeling the lows. but apparently i enjoy feeling like a character on trainspotting.

people ask if i like him or what do i even see in him and i have no clue. who can explain the laws of attraction? all i know is that the moment i spotted him behind the bar i knew i had to have him. maybe its pheromones or my recent fondness for facial hair and tattoos.

ugh.

i’ve been thinking about the ending of eternal sunshine and how clem and joel decide to give it another go even after they know all the horrible things they’ve said about each other. and i remember this old nytimes piece described the movie as an homage to memory itself. that even our painful memories have some use. that they serve as souvenirs of our old relationships or even lessons for our future ones.

so even though i know that this little crush on the bartender has all the warning signs that i am going down heartbreak cliff, i continue. sometimes it is more fun to go near the edge than to stay on the right path. but what the hell do i know? i don’t even drive.

ursy says i should break his heart before he breaks mine. “He’s young. He’ll bounce back.”

is it horrible that we both found that hysterically funny?

on sunday, i meet up with meredith at 7A. she gets there before me and tells the waitress she’s waiting for a friend. the waitress says, “I’ll seat you when your partner gets here.” Ummm, partner?? was meredith wearing a lilith fair shirt or something?

so i get there and we are seated outside. we notice that there is a woman standing on the corner, holding her black cat in a bag, and wearing cat rings. isn’t it both hilarious and tragic when you see someone who is your worst nightmare come to life?

after brunch we head to central park to hang with our friend henri and his friends. they are playing soccer and one bystander gets kicked in the balls with a soccer ball. i could tell he was in horrible pain so i started laughing. mer and i asked him what it feels like to get hit in the balls and he says, “you kinda feel like you want to puke and take a shit at the same time.”

im so glad im a girl.

afterwards we head over to williamsburg for a bbq and it is populated by boys who look like the designers of Heatherette. i notice one woman walk in wearing a shit load of makeup when i realize that it’s not a woman but a tranny.

this is your boyfriend.

anyhoo, the rest of the week has been pretty chill. i watched wimbledon the other day. the movie. with paul bettany and kisrten dunst. ugh, this is my life. also, the republican was in town and he asked if i wanted to meet up for coffee but i didn’t.

i think i need a detox from boys.

or not.

i was flipping through the new issue of nylon mag and noticed they have this whole fashion spread on “geek chic”. Why didn’t they toss this term around when I was in elementary and middle school? I could have comforted myself with the fact that at least there was a little bit of chic to me.

I think it’s funny that it is now acceptable or even trendy for people to brag about their nerdiness. “Oh, yeah, I’m such a dork. I love playing video games.” Bitch, please. Unless you have ever eaten alone at a lunch table in middle school then you are not, and never will be, a nerd!!!!!

There’s also a blog post on jezebel.com about how being a loser in high school seems to damage guys more than girls i.e. guys grow up to be players with a major chip on their shoulder whereas girls kinda get over it because even nerdy girls get cat called by construction workers.

I had this conversation with a guy friend of mine and we were commiserating about how we were nerdy and unattractive in our formative years and how this has affected our dating mentality. He has now blossomed into a very attractive guy and well, I’m still wearing glasses. But he was telling me that even when he was a nerd he refused to date homely girls who were interested in him because getting with them would only confirm that he was at their level–that he was, indeed, a nerd. And he still thinks that way about dating.

I guess my feelings toward dating are a little more colored because in elementary school and middle school I was flat out nerdy and ugly and then I transferred to a performing arts high school and all of a sudden guys were flirting with me. I guess artists have more open minded perceptions of beauty.

I’ll never forget being in the sixth grade and someone asking the hottest guy in our class to rank the girls who he would date and i think i was like third to last. Yeah, that was a good day for me. And then flash forward to junior year of highschool and this guy sitting next to me in computer class tells me that he and his friends put me on their “shit list”. What the hell is a shit list? I asked. “Girls who are the shit.” So, yeah, that was a little redeeming. Especially since my friend Grace was on it and she was so hot she could turn gay dudes straight. She was also so hot that guys would befriend me just so they could get access to her. It’s okay, I still don’t have a complex about it or anything!!!!

But people who grew up as nerds and then metamorphasized into attractive people seem to have this duality of always feeling like a nerd inside but also being extremely picky about who they date. There will always be a part of me that feels like that girl who sat alone in the cafeteria, pretending to read greek mythology. (Why didn’t anyone tell me that joining the mythology club does not help you get guys OR friends?!?!) I am still surprised when guys express interest in me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t act like a total bitch to guys who try to kick it to me at bars.

At the end of the day, nerds just want someone to ask us to eat lunch with them. We want someone to say that they accept us. And we just want someone to say:

“Hey, I like you.”