Awkwardly Social

I had a mild panic attack on the way to the west side today.  I slid into a chair at the Chateau Marmont, and seriously couldn’t even look the waitress in the face.  Tears were sliding around in my eyes and there was really no reason for it.

After 20 minutes of patience on the part of Mr. F, I finally succumbed to a Valium and margarita and 10 minutes later I was feeling half way back to non-suicidal.

Quitting smoking and PMS have proved to be a dangerous combination.  I’m so fucking glad I have Mr. F to sit across the table from me, because if he wasn’t there, I would most definitely be the next dead girl found at the Chateau.

I had no idea what a fucking strangle hold something as lame as nicotine could have on a person who has survived a goddamned crystal meth addiction could have.

I’ll be back tomorrow.  Hold tight.

Louie’s desk is behind a door.  It’s easy for me to sneak up on him and it’s also easy for me to peer at him through the crack in the open door.  I know if you haven’t seen the way the room is arranged you’re confused.  That’s ok.  You’re going to get through this story.  It’s not that long.  Let the confusion pass over you, or through you (if that’s your thing) and just listen.  I’ll try harder.

Louie’s desk is behind a door.  The door opens and rests against the desk.  He faces the door.  There is a crack that allows me to peer in on him sitting at the desk.  This is hard.  It’s like explaining how one ties one’s shoe.  Or how one eats with a fork.

I peered through the crack in the door by the hinges and watched Louie mesmerized by the computer.  He had a blank look on his face, but I could tell he was focused on something.  I raised the timer next to my eyeball.  The eyeball that he would see when he looked up after hearing the timer ticking.  At first he was kind of confused, because it was a sound he doesn’t normally hear around here, but then he recognized my eyeball and smiled.

It’s nice when someone recognizes your eyeball through a crack in the door.

It just occured to me that “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman,” is a kind of anti-feminist statement.  Then I thought, “Wait, is it anti-feminist to say men are stinkier than women?”  Which is exactly when Louie told me to smell his armpit and I did it.

Louie is on vacation.  He left for San Francisco this morning.  I was actually kind of excited to have the house to myself, something that I’m really comfortable with, and miss from Allie’s travelling days.  But now, after accidentally getting drunk on White Zin, sitting in the dark apartment, with no one to yell at about crap I see on the internet, I can see how people get… what’s that word?   Lonely.

La la la love.

Shit.  This is three posts in a row where I talk about Louie.  And if that makes you irritated, try being me.

First, Louie and I went on a condom buying adventure last night.  The reasons were two-fold.  One, we were out of condoms, and nothing makes me want to have sex more than being unprotected!  Two, we felt the need to drive around and shop for embarassing safe-sex devices.  So, I don’t have any problem going to Target (even though I don’t shop there any more for political reasons) in broad daylight, with only two items in my cart and purchasing a HUGE box of condoms.  It doesn’t bother me to slap down, condoms, tampons and gum on the moving sidewalk for store bought goods.  But for some reason, I cannot go into a say, for example, 7-Eleven, or say, for example, a Gelson’s, or say, for example, a Sav-On, when it is past 8:30PM, I am paying in cash and hanging out with my boyfriend.  Because for some reason the puritanical brainwashing I received in my early years translates into not being able to buy condoms during the hours when condoms might actually be used.  But it does however, allow me to talk about it on the internet.  In front of God and my parents and people searching for porn.  The brain is a mysterious place.  And Louie is a good boyfriend and went into all three of those aforementioned places in search of the perfect box of condoms.  I am very particular, and Louie knows this (now) after purchasing condoms in too small a quantity, the wrong brand, the right brand but without spermicide, and etc.  You might be happy to know that we were in the end successful.  Hooray for America!

Two, Louie is a driver by trade.  He makes his living driving a thing that starts with amb and ends with ulance, and has flashing lights on top and gurneys inside.  I think that makes him what I like to call, A CRAZY DRIVER.  He likes to think he is an offensive driver rather than a defensive driver.  Last night, whilst on the “Great Condom Search of 2006,” I made a few ‘comments’ about his ‘driving.’  I put those two words in quotes because whenever I’m sober in the car with Louie I scream about lane changes and he asks me who is driving, and when I consider the fact that I am pressing my feet into the floorboards and making the car brake, and leaning to my right or left (depending on the turn) to make the car turn, I think sometimes I am driving.  I even made the argument that as his elder, I had been driving longer, and he scoffed at my driving experience.  Scoffed!  As it turns out, we have come to the realization that 50 years from now, I will still complain about his driving, he will still swerve across 6 lanes of traffic to make it to the exit he knew about 3 miles in advance, and we will still be in love.  Unless, of course, he kills us in a car accident.

Sometimes I look at Louie and think, “wow. he’s really good looking. he’s so hip. he knows a lot about music. he can talk to strangers without the help of alcohol. I’m a lucky lady.”

Then, sometimes, like recently, because of the dorkfest surrounding Superman Returns, I hear Louie start to talk, and think, “holy shit. I’m living with a huge comic book nerd. like a supernerd. his super power is his nerdiness. he’s still talking about Superman. he loves Superman. how can I get him to stop talking about Superman?”

Eye rolling doesn’t work. Squinched eyes don’t work. Walking away doesn’t work (he just follows and keeps on listing off why the first two Superman movies were nearly perfect movies, and how he’s not sure if he wants to see the new movie, but how he probably will, and it JUST. DOESN’T. STOP.**). Fortunately, I have his Kryptonite, and it is called cleavage. Unfortunately, I am not nerdy enough to know if that analogy works, or has me killing my boyfriend with my boobs.

**I had to change this section because originally I wrote how he was listing off the benefits of Superman vs. Spiderman, and Louie got mad and said, and I quote, “Everyone knows I like Spiderman more than Superman… Don’t turn this into a house of LIES!”

You know that lame classic rock song, “Feels like the first time, feels like the very first time,” right? Well it was playing in the grocery store last night as we were shopping for something to unplug our shower drain. I asked Louie if it was about the first time the lead singer put his penis in someone’s vagina, and he believed that it was in fact a song about just that. Or, at least, feeling like that. Which is when we started singing alternate lyrics. Louie came up with the best ones.

Feels like the first time
kind of awkward, over too fast and it was a man
on that very first time.

I’m still giggling.

Also, I like to obsess over my stats some days, and today was a good day to do so. Whoever is reading the blog and translating it into Spanish, welcome! Or should I say, bien venidos.

Love is patient
Love is kind
Love washes the dishes
Love wakes you up accidentally to get into bed even though you sort of wish you weren’t woken up but you are and you get kind of grumpy about it but then feel bad, because it’s only 10 PM and who goes to bed that early any way
Love is good in bed
Love touches the rotting chicken in the fridge that you bought before you decided that meat is gross and feel guilty about not eating, but raw chicken has never really been a strong suit for you and so it’s good that love can deal with it
Love forgives you if you snap
Love is never having to say your sorry, but saying it anyway
Love is never wrong, unless Love says that Lost is not worth watching
Love is kind of tired of your bullshit, but puts up with it because there are some things you can do…
Love knows the importance of DSL
Love is patient
Love is kind

It’s hard to explain what is going on with Louie and I without sounding like a damned song from a Disney movie. It’s sickening. And frankly, telling you how he touched my face and called me pretty makes a part of me (the part that still lives in the lonely and sad and cynical past) want to throw up. Being in love is boring to talk about, but it’s great to live, baby. Most people want to hear about the pain, they want the dirt. They want misery. I just don’t have it at the moment.

The other big elephant in the room is one I just don’t want to talk about because, well, it’s where the money comes from and without the money, I’m in debtors prison, and then I’ll have something to blog about.

I do have a few things that have been stirring around in my head, that I’d like to mention.
1. I think I have toenail fungus. It’s disturbing and disgusting, but also partially explained by the abuse the marathon wreaked on my feet. No one believes me, but also, no one will get remotely close enough to my feet to tell me if my self-diagnosis is true. All I can think about is that disgusting commercial with the fungus guys using a toenail bed as a litterbox.
2. I am one more Organic Farming/Dangers of Slaughterhouses book away from becoming a straight up hippie. My mother is clapping with glee at the moment. I have this weird vision of my own children being excited about the vegan delicacies I will prepare for them, then I remember how embarassing it was to be the only kid with whole wheat bread with a thermos full of fresh squeezed juice and a baggie of carob chips in their lunchbox. Add to that my belief that my stuffed animals actually were talking to me, and I was a weird fucking little hippie kid. It’s no wonder I moved to LA.
3. The lighting situation in our apartment continues to vex me. My mom gave us an awesome lamp. But now that it is in place I’ve realized I don’t have a lamp anywhere near the couch for me to read by. Why am I never happy? When will my lighting thirst be quenched? Why is our coffee table so annoying? All things I think about each night.
4. Speaking of kids, I keep thinking I only want them if they’re going to be little nerdy precocious sensitive eggheads. My biggest fear about having kids is that they’ll grow up and be Republicans. I’d rather not have children than have Republican children. For serious. I wonder if my dad feels the same way about his Democratic daughters. I can’t ask him because that’ll open the door to some screaming political discussion, and that has been banned. There is a treaty against it.
5. I think it’s weird that 6 years ago I had never used the word ‘jihad’ in a sentence. Now I use it all the time. Like just last night I was thinking of declaring a jihad against my slow draining tub, but instead I just decided to impose some trade sanctions against it. If only terrorist organizations could use the same kind of thinking as I do…
6. I drove by a Lutheran church last night and it was trying to be hip and cool with a flashing jumbo-tron type sign announcing the worship service. I thought to myself, “If God was real, he’d be mad that this is what churches have resorted to. Damned flashing signs.” Then I thought of the burning bush. And I got confused. So I put it out of my head and thought about smoking instead. How I wish I could smoke, but how I know I can’t. Religion always leads to smoking in my head. They are inextricably linked. I wonder why that is. A God-fearing person would tell me it’s because of Satan.

Happy Thursday.

Louie has continued his tradition of buying me a ridiculously awesome teddy bear from a road side stand and giving it to me on Valentine’s Day. This year I got a huge white teddy bear holding crystal AND silk roses with a pillow that said “I love you,” which come to think of it, seems a little redundant. If you’ve given someone a huge white teddy bear I think they know. They know that you love them. It will scare them how much you love them. Anyway. I finally got around to unwrapping the teddy bear last night. It was creeping me out sitting all suffocated in the celophane wrapping. And truth be told, I was concerned that there might be candy in there. Suffocating candy is a travesty. Travesty!

I’ll have you know, there was no candy, but the bear, oh the bear. It was wrong in so many ways. It was holding a bow and arrow sling, but had no arrows, instead, as I’ve mentioned, it had crystal and silk roses rubberbanded to its paws. Poor bear. I started to squeeze the bear at this point. (It looked like it needed a hug..?) And realized there might be something extra inside of it. Something… drug related. Which is when I was about to rip the bear’s head off. You know. To get to the smuggled drugs. Look, I’m not an addict or anything, but I know the value of a pound of cocaine, right? And it is enough money to, I don’t know, have a party. Anyway, while contemplating how to tell Louie that I had to rip the head off the bear to get to the cocaine, I found a velcro patch on the back. I thought, “Gee, smugglers are sooooo smart!” Which is when I realized that my bear did not have cocaine in it. But something better. It had song and dance inside of it.

Dance… actually is putting it a bit - how do I say this?- nicely. It actually sort of looked as though it was, well, masturbating. Masturbating to “You Light up my Life.” Also, it blushes while it’s masturbating.

So, I have no pound of coke, but I do have an awesome masturbating bear.