Awkwardly Social

Since I’m here with a blank page and nothing else happened to me this weekend other than laying in bed naked wondering how much extra heat Lula was adding to the already stifling apartment and thinking if I got her wet it would help but never managing to get up out of the whisper of breeze the fan offered to test my wet dog in the apartment theory, I guess I could tell you about last night.

I’m a little hesitant to write about it, but only because I opened my big stupid mouth and told everyone I had a goddamned blog. Then, when lightly pressed for the URL, I gave them MY ACTUAL URL. Hello, young blogger, learn to tell a fucking lie. Jesus Christ. Next time I will say with pride and a little wickedness in my heart, “Raymi the Minx,” and if called on it later, I will claim no knowledge of ever saying such a thing. “Raymi the Who? Why, I never!”

So, I had a drinks thing last night. In certain circles it would be called a date. I don’t know. I met him at a party. I gave him my number. He called me. We went for drinks and dinner. I guess that’s sort of the definition of a date, but for some reason, I’m not really willing to put that fine a point on it. Gun shy, much?

After we were finished with dinner, a friend of his came over and joined us. And then another friend from the restaurant joined us, and then there were plans concocted and errands run, and by the end of the night we were on a rooftop watching a dancer twirl fire while we smoked weed and I tried not to think too hard about how a mere two hours before I knew exactly zero of these people but sort of started hoping they would take me under their wing and give me lots and lots of material for the old writing well.  Because, come on, fire twirling on the roof with an orange half moon rising?

It was 2:30AM. The night was showing no signs of ending, one guy was testing his makeshift cape for wind resistance, a couple had left and come back, I was being inducted into a text message harem (which is almost exactly as hilarious as it sounds), stifling a yawn, knowing I was not quite cut out for this shit. This kind of thing requires training. And naps. Possibly amphetamines. So I left.

He walked me to my car and well, a nice girl doesn’t kiss and tell.

But, since you know I am neither nice nor a girl, I’ll tell you, we kissed. In the street. It was a little dangerous come to think of it. It wasn’t like we were on a side street, we were on Vermont. I could feel the cars swishing right by us, but I almost didn’t care.

And that my friends, is the way to have a Sunday night in Los Angeles.

I was a pretty good kid until I started drinking. Until then, I followed the rules, or at least attempted to make it look like I knew what the rules were. Then alcohol made its way into my life and boy was I rotten. I struggled with all the normal teenaged girl bullshit - the ever changing cast of friends, the girls who love you one day and the next don’t answer your calls, the mysterious entry into the ranks of womanhood and all the games that come with it - but I always wanted to be badass. I know I tried being a girly girl for a while, but when it came down to it, I wanted boys and girls and parents and teachers to fear me. I have no idea what that says about me, other than I’m pretty sure if an apocalypse happens, I’m the chick you want on your side.

The biggest obstacle to my badassery back then was that I was (still am) kind of a chicken. I don’t know how my parents did it. None of my friends had the same fear. I’m pretty sure even the girl who got beaten with a belt until she was 17 wasn’t even afraid of her step-dad. Me? My mom looked at me wrong and I started crying.

I snapped that picture of the 15 on the street light last weekend while I was sitting outside with my big ass 75mm-300mm zoom lens looking for inspiration, and my first experience with that rush you get when you plan and execute and don’t get caught came rushing back. I have a sneaking suspicion if parental circumstances were different, my life today would be that of a criminal. And come to think of it, I’d probably be having a fuck-load more fun.

When you turn 15 and a half in Arizona, you’re allowed to get your driver’s permit. Which means you can legally drive a car as long as you have a licensed driver accompanying you.

Or, if you’re me, you pretend it means you can legally steal your parents’ car while they are out of the house for the night, drive it to ‘town,’ smoke Marlboro cigarettes with all the windows down and drink wine coolers while wishing, someone, anyone will ask you to the dance because they recognize how clearly badass you are. There are many things I’d like to tell my 15 year old self, (like no one will ever respect a wannabe badass who drinks fucking wine coolers) but one of the main ones is, dances are fucking lame, and feeling some 15 year old boy’s sad little erection pressed against your thigh while slow dancing to Journey is never going to be as amazing as you imagined while reading all those bodice ripping romance novels.

It was a Friday night. My sister was away at college. My parents were going to be at a concert in Cottonwood, about a 30 minute drive away from my home town. And I wanted to hang out with my friends. On main street. In my parents’ Subaru. I don’t know, if you’re from a small town, it’s the law that teenagers must hang out in parking lots and talk about the same things they talk about while they’re hanging out at school. What those things were? God. Let’s see here… hmmm. Which boy just drove by? Who had a hickey? Where’s the party was at? Who had a fake ID? I don’t remember. It was boring. I did it anyway.

My driver’s permit was folded up neatly in my wallet. I pulled the Subaru out of the field we kept it parked in, careful to not make any new tracks. I drove to town following all posted traffic signs. Not a very badass move to drive the speed limit, but I was certainly not taking any chances with Camp Verde’s finest. I sat in that parking lot with the back hatch open and the windows down and talked to girls who were talking to boys but never talked to the boys myself, and I thought about the time ticking away. The time slipping through my fingers as I sat there. Turning 16 was going to mean freedom, but it was also going to mean that sitting there in that parking lot with those girls who talked to boys was going to be my national pastime. There wasn’t anything else. There wasn’t going to be anything better.

I drove home with the windows down, airing out the car as I smoked my friend’s mom’s Marlboro lights. I felt victorious. I had stolen a car. I had driven without a license. I had nothing else to do.

15.

Continuation of this post. I almost sat down to write this yesterday after I finished re-writing a sequence about homecoming, but was attacked by a severe case of wine inspired ennui.

Where were we?

5. Map of the Problematique - Muse. When Louie and I were dating, every time a Muse song would come on the radio I’d turn it up and ask him who it was. There’s just something about the way the lead singer breathes between words that makes me want to have his babies. And this song makes me want to have all of your babies.

6. The Youth - MGMT - “Time to Pretend” is currently on heavy rotation on Indie 103.1, and I love that song, but this one, I don’t know… Something about it reminds me of a mixture of Pink Floyd and Queen without all the 70s and 80s hoo-ha and the subsequent overplaying and hence bad memories of said bands. I hope this band sticks around for a while because I’m really enjoying them, but not too long because I don’t want to hate them the way I hate Pink Floyd.

7. Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event - Big ups for a local band, woo! Los Feliz! This song is on rotation on Indie 103.1 (seriously, you should be listening to this station if you live in Los Angeles) and the first time I heard it, this lyric -

And you walk…
under the streetlights
and you’re too drunk to notice
that everyone is staring at you
and you so care what you look like
the world is falling
around you

struck such a chord that I obsessively listened to the station to hear it again to make sure I wasn’t crazy and the song was actually that good. Silly, me, I could have just looked them up on Myspace.

8. Foolin’ Stealin’ Killin’ - Country Air - Full disclosure, this song was on a mix tape that Louie gave me when we first started dating. If you listen closely you can hear us getting together, falling in love and then out of love and then there’s the part where I get dumped. Maybe that’s just me.

9. Sovereign - The Duke Spirit - I found this song to be the perfect balm for that 3 month post break-up bought of blues I felt last month.

10. Have You Ever - Brandi Carlile - It’s probably bad for my eensy-teensy bit of street cred I’m trying to hold on to with the tips of my fingers to put a Brandi Carlile song on a mixtape, but this song is one that I would listen to while pathetically riding the bus hoping my life was going to change, never knowing how much it would change, but hoping nonetheless.

11. I Feel it All - Feist - I know Feist is totally over-played now, and it’s probably another not-so-cool move to put her on a mix tape, but man, this song feels like a hug from an old friend. I sing it at the top of my screechy lungs in my apartment, and I feel like I’m having a serious and earnest conversation with myself.

12. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - The Arcade Fire - This is another song that I would listen to on the bus, I loved it when it would come on just as was walking down the big hill to the bus stop. This lyric makes me want to be a better writer, “But sometimes, we remember our bedrooms and our parent’s bedrooms and the bedrooms of our friends. Then we think of our parents… Well, whatever happened to them?” Perfect.

I should be in bed. I shouldn’t be wondering why my hair smells like chlorine. I should be drinking another glass of water. But here I am. I’m resisting bed like a certain 2.5 year old I know. Just one more story! I promise, one more, then I’ll go to sleep. (Hi, Nolan!)

If you’re at all like me, that is, resistant to technological hoo-ha and gadgetry but then once you figure out how awesome it is you can’t stop yourself from telling everyone about it, with that slightly incorrect voice that newbies have. For example, “I didn’t blog about that? Did I send you an e-mail? Oh yeah, I twittered it. You should subscribe.” Or, “Yeah, that’s one of my feeds. You know, RSS feeds. I read it in my feed reader. You should get one.”

The not-so-latest thing (because I’m sure there are at least 20 new things that I don’t even know about yet, so I can’t even scoff at their uselessness) is muxtape. It’s a rad place for you to upload mp3’s for your friends to listen to in a mixtape form. I was quite a mixtaper in my day. In my own mind, that is. I listened to an old one the other day that had a Spin Doctors song on it. Yeah, it’s not the song you immediately think of either, Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong, oh no, it was “Cleopatra’s Cat.” Ugh. Talk about a song that doesn’t hold up. And didn’t even hold up the first playing, yet there I was, forging new mixtape ground.

With that in mind - I give you the liner notes for my first Muxtape.

1. Classic Girl - Jane’s Addiction - If I had my dream budget and a script that I couldn’t actually call finished, this would be the opening song. I like it because it’s one that I never heard on the radio, so it only brings back good memories of hanging out by the river listening to Ritual de lo Habitual over and over again while we drank Zima and watched for cops.

2. Hey - The Pixies - This was Bob’s favorite Pixie song for a few seconds. Bob was the boy who tortured me my senior year. I remember him sitting in the bucket seat of my Mustang, rain trickling down the windows, him popping this song in and singing every word to me.

3. Everything will be alright - The Killers - I think I blogged about this already, but this song came on my iPod just as I was walking back into my apartment after fleeing California because my boyfriend had dumped me on a Monday morning. It was a total sign. I fucking love this song.

4. Aly, Walk with Me - The Raveonettes - I heard this on Indie 103.1 (best radio station in LA) about a month ago and I thought I hated it. There’s this part that sounds like pure noise about halfway in and if you let it, it will kill you dead. In the good way. I finally let it. Possibly the best song I’ve heard in a long time.

Shit. I’ve totally run out of steam. I’ll continue this tomorrow. I know you cannot wait!

I’ve been in 201 for 3 months now and I still have two boxes left to unpack, a gigantic plastic bin of stuff I don’t know what to do with, and I’m kind of living like a hobo in a hobo nest. It’s all I can do to not sleep all day on weekends, trying to hide from the depression that’s lurking on the edges of my subconscious.

I’m doing pretty well, all things considered.

I have a deadline to meet for this stupid script that’s been over a year in the writing. I’m a little embarrassed I haven’t finished it yet. Not embarrassed enough, mind you, to sit my ass in my chair and fucking finish it already.

I’m looking for freelance writing work. I don’t know how one goes about querying without sounding like a total newb, but I’m doing it. Eventually something will hit. I have every confidence in that.

I have an index card with a directive on it to write, right now. But I can’t find it. It would be really easy to just make a new index card, but I’m not one to take the easy route.

I’m trying to remember what it feels like to have a drunken make out session, pressed against a fence or a car. I miss that.

I dropped into my favorite wine bar last night and was greeted with a smile and a handshake from the valet and a huge hug from the sommelier. I think that means I go there enough, but not too much.

I miss being on vacation, but am enjoying the LA weather, as psychotic as it’s been.

Today is the Stoner Holiday, but I’m going to stay sober.

I constantly feel like I’m playing catch-up. I don’t know what I’m trying to catch up to.

All things considered. I think everything is going to be alright.

My sister just told me I needed to update this thing. I know it’s part of her procrastination solution so here goes nothing.

My writing partner and I have been doing a lot of research on the Native American nations in Southern Arizona for a script we’re writing. We’re trying to be as culturally aware as possible and probably failing miserably. I think Tara finds it amusing when I throw out a name from one of the kids I knew growing up and we put in the script, only to have me biting my nails in angst trying to remember if Lionel Honwyethewa was (is) a Hopi or a Yavapai-Apache. I grew up in a town in Central Arizona with three reservations, Yavapai-Apache, Hopi and Navajo. I find it amusing that Tara is Indian, from India, writing about Native Americans, who we call Indians. It’s like her lost spice ancestors are finally getting their culturally fucked up voice through our words. The best part about all of this is that if I really wanted to know the answer to these some of these stupid questions I could just call up Corey, one of my friends from high school, who now is in a pretty heavy weight job with the tribe having something to do with the casino we have in town. (Note to self: Call Corey.)

Anyway, Tara and I were talking about a part of the script that involves tribal theories on spirit animals, and in pure white girl fashion, I piped up that I wished I had a spirit animal. Tara looked at me in all seriousness and said it was too bad I didn’t, she knew what hers were. She spent some time in Peru doing Ayahuasca ceremonies and she’s been visited and protected by her spirit animals in the astral plane.

Side bar: I might have to delete that stuff about Tara because it is totally her story to tell. I’m dying for her to start a blog, because the stuff she told me about her time in Peru and what happens to you on Ayahuasca are beyond fascinating.

So she told me what she had learned and I was sad that my spirit animal had never revealed itself to me. I thought, maybe because I liked horses and hawks when I was a kid one of those was my spirit animal. But after thinking about it a little deeper I realized that probably had more to do with me having a nearly unhealthy obsession with the movie LadyHawk and not so much to do with me actually feeling a kinship with hawks. (There was this crazy road trip I took to Seattle once, where every 10 miles I would see a hawk sitting on a fence post. I counted them, and there were 13. I got nervous because 13 is unlucky. I started writing my will in my head, and then the 14th and 15th appeared. I was pretty tired that trip, so who knows.) Horses on the other hand? Well, show me an American girl who doesn’t love horses and I’ll show you an undercover Communist spy.

So the past couple of months we’ve been working on this script and I’ve been trying to figure out what my spirit animal is. I know what you’re thinking, and believe me, I’m thinking it too. White girls don’t get real spirit animals, we get inappropriate tattoos butchering tribal motifs that we find cool and in touch with the earth. But listen, I think if you believe in God and Jesus and Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, you believe in well told fairy tales, the Apache people have been around a lot longer than you, and their stories are a lot more fun to read.

Meanwhile, as I’ve mentioned, I took a trip to Vancouver, putting a halt on my nightly bedtime wishes of mystical animals (oo, maybe an owl or a fox!) protecting me in the Spirit World. And on Friday night, we had a couple of glasses of champagne, I was feeling lucky to be in the company of a soul sister who we met through the magic of 1s and 0s and went to bed feeling all was right with the world.

In recent months, I’ve shed my most often recurring nightmare (it’s actually more of a night terror, I’ve woken up screaming, heart pounding on a few occasions) of the house falling in on me and it being all my fault because I forgot to tell the landlord about a missing board, or a loose screw. (Hi, Subconscious, nice to see you being so fucking blatant.) That dream has been completely replaced with other less obvious, and more tedious half-assed nightmares about not finishing my homework, showing up to work without my pants, forgetting my passport on the way to the airport. Pretty much every night I have a dream, it’s something stressful. Something about me forgetting to do something, thankfully, now that I’m single it has nothing to do with my relationship crumbling at the foundation. The exception was last Friday night, that night I had the most amazing dream.

I was flying. It was a moonlit night and I was skimming over a thick forest, and leading the way was a gigantic bald eagle. I must have flown behind that eagle for quite some time, just chillin’ with my eagle, cruising the forest. We flew over a lake, too. When I woke up I had the most peaceful, rested feeling. And I knew that it was true, this WHITE GIRL found her spirit animal! Woo!

Either that, or it’s high time for me to get some new insurance or call my Congressman.

As I was dozing on the plane, drunk from two hastily ordered double Caesar’s in the airport lounge, I had the flash of falling into someone’s kiss, being reminded that I was gone but now I was back. Soft lips, tender embrace, that warm feeling of being missed but now being home.

Lula curled up in my lap and huffed in my face, but it wasn’t the same.

My apartment was hot and smelled like the pot I had stirred the garlic cheese fries in was making a comeback the likes the world hadn’t seen since John Travolta danced back into our hearts in Pulp Fiction. I remembered as I locked my door before I left on Friday morning that old wives’ tale about having your house in order before you go on a trip, I just couldn’t remember if it was that you were supposed to have it in order to ward off the fates or leave it a mess to have something unresolved keeping the fates at bay. Either way, I survived and the dishes did too.

Vancouver is a city like no other. There are forests and mountains, water and snow, cabins and mansions, red necks and French Canadians. I loved being able to walk a few steps into a secret world of trees and moss, and a few steps more onto a street of adorable shops and delicious sandwiches.

I think I might want to live there.

Full set of photos on Flickr.

I’m just happy that above title sentence actually makes sense!

Kristin and I are drunk and surfing the internet. It’s a wild party. There’s someone with a British accent on the televsion. Canada is a foreign country! Did you even know that? Their money is different. I paid for something in all coins today and I wasn’t carry bags of pennies. Nope, just handed over a couple of loonies and toonies, and embarassingly enough counted them out on the counter like I was some kind of seven year old. Two, Four, and that is a Oner so that makes Six, oops no FIVE, Six and look here are two quaaarrrters. If I hadn’t told them I was an American I’m sure they would have assumed I was some kind of high functioning retarded person. Oh wait, um, yeah I guess they probably assumed that anyway. I love Canadians! Except that guy at the bar who tried to make fun of Americans at the bar and I told him that it was a real problem, our recession. And I gave him my serious face, “It’s really tough there, things are bad.” and in my sad face and morose eyes he saw a vision of America that looked not unlike Soviet Russia in the 70s. Oh, I’m good!

Nolan was making fun of my skinny arms today. He said, “And you have little guns.” And I made the “pew pew pew” sound that the tie-fighters make in Star Wars and he thought that was possibly the funniest thing he heard since baked beans. Or, whatever. He thought it was funny, is all. I’m not trying to make it a bigger deal than it was, but dude, I am big in the Candian under 3 market. Give me a big money for a book deal, I’ll sell in the high ones That’s single digits baby!

Ooh, and I managed to bring it back to the numbers. It’s like a drunk blogging miracle.

It’s easy to get low self-esteem in Los Angeles. I am surrounded by size double 0 women. Women who don’t eat. Women who eat only vegetables. Women who eat but throw up. Women who eat whatever they want but look like models anyway. Beautiful skinny women are the foundation that Los Angeles is built upon. Say what you will about the past and how it was all different then, that women were curvy. I’ve heard it all, but fuck it, women in Los Angeles were always thin. And by the way, Marilyn Monroe was not even close to a size 12.

Guess what size I was for the past, oh, all my adult damned life, um, it’s scary for me to write this, but here goes nothing - a not so perfect size 12. I even feel the need to tell you, as if I need to justify it, that only my pants were sized 12. My tops, I could fit into anything from a large to a small. Never extra-small because these tits weren’t made for extra-small, but yeah, the pants were a size 12.

It seems like such a harmless number, the number 12, but let me tell you, in Los Angeles, when you’re looking for a size and the nice (pinched, skinny) sales lady asks if she can help you find it, when you say 12, it’s kind of like saying, HEY, I’m a big fat person, I’m lucky Wild Bill didn’t see me or my big fat person skin would be adorning his dress form right now.

When I went to get my expensive dress to wear to the Oscars, I had been training for the marathon for 2 months. I had lost some weight, and I was feeling good. I went to BCBG in Beverly Hills because I had no idea where to start. In the nicer stores in Beverly Hills you don’t have sizes out. They get the sizes for you. I was fucked. I couldn’t just casually grab a size and scurry into a dressing room. I had to engage with a sales woman. I had to tell her my size OUT LOUD. I felt ashamed (ASHAMED!) to tell her what size dress I wore. To be honest, I didn’t really know. I told her I wore a 10. The biggest size they had was an 8. The first one I tried on was too tarty for me, and it sort of fit, but was not something I would have felt comfortable wearing, so I tried on the next one. The blue one. The one I spent way too much money on. I didn’t feel fat in it. I didn’t look fat in it. But something in the back of my mind told me, “You are wearing the largest size in the store, what a fatty.” I wore a ’support garment’ underneath it.

I’m going to Vancouver this weekend to hang out with Kristin, a woman I admire in so many ways. When we first met, here in LA, I felt like I had known her for a million years and we had a billion things to catch up on, but that’s blogging for you. You read and support the people you would love and appreciate in real life. The thing is, Kristin is skinny and tall and goddamnit, she’s pretty.

I went through my closet a few weeks ago and got rid of pretty much everything that made me feel bad about myself when I wore it. This left… not a lot to wear. I’ve lost weight in the past few months. Hard work, running with Lula every night and (this is the weirdest thing, but I think it’s relevant) not watching TV have brought me within 10 pounds of my goal weight. My Los Angeles Dream Weight is only a mere 10 pounds away. Seeing as I’ve lost 8 pounds in the last four months, it doesn’t seem so unattainable now. The problem with losing 8 pounds and getting rid of all your clothes and not making much money? Well, I had nothing to wear to Vancouver. This wouldn’t be such a big problem if I didn’t have such low self esteem, but being that I do have low self esteem, added to the fact that Kristin, as I’ve mentioned, is tall, thin and gorgeous and we are planning on going out in public together, I was a little worried.

So, with visions of tax refunds in my head I ventured into Beverly Hills again today to buy some damned denim. Now, it’s been a while since my last brush with designer denim and I am a different woman now. Let’s just say, I went in with low expectations. The last pair of jeans I bought was in January. I felt gigantic trying them on in the store, and they were a little tight when I looked in the mirror, but I bought them anyway. Two wearings later, they’re too big. The thing about designer denim? You have to buy it too small, the fucking expensive stuff? GET’S BIGGER with age.

I went to Anthropologie because I know they carry Joe’s Jeans. And Joe’s are the kind of jeans that girls with big asses wear. (I hesitate to write this next part because even though I shouldn’t be ashamed of what size I wear, because it’s just a stupid goddamned number, I still feel like I’m a gigantor assed woman with too much butt.) I grabbed the two sizes I figured would work, a 32 and a 31. I tried the 31 on first, thinking, “Fuck it, I can always go to the 32 if I need to.” And, guess what. They fit. Almost perfectly. The alarm bells began ringing in my head. They said, “If you are going to buy a pair of jeans worth more than you make in a day, you best buy the right size, dumb ass.” I opened the dressing room door and called for my lady.

“Hey, do you think you have these in a 30?”

She came back with my jeans. The smallest jeans I have ever worn. The jeans that still were in the 30s but jesus god, looked so tiny on the hanger.

I tried them on. They were tight. They fit like a glove, not quite an OJ Simpson glove, but a tight glove. A glove I knew would look perfect after three days. So I bought them.

I didn’t know that buying a smaller sized pant would make me feel so good. Worried I had been duped by a skinny mirror and bad lighting, I tried them on in the privacy of my own home this evening and examined them in my own skinny mirror and my non-skinny mirror, and hells yeah, I am ready for Vancouver.

Sound the alarm, ring the bells, I am a smaller size. Could someone please explain to me how this is possible? Wait, don’t tell me, I just want to revel in the fact that I am thinner today than I was 4 months ago when the bad thing happened. Ah yes, that’s a nice feeling.

I didn’t want to anger the travel gods, so I haven’t mentioned that I’m going on a trip this weekend. But since I confirmed my dog sitter last night, figured out how I’m going to get to the airport and in pure Tamara Travel Fashion have been wildly procrastinating on my laundry situation, I figured it was safe to mention. I just knocked wood and blew an eyelash off my fingertip. I know that’s not the right superstition, but whatever.

I let myself slip into a little bit of self-indulgent sad time for the past couple of days, and last night as I gulped down a second glass of wine with a giant bowl of garlic French fries, a switch flipped and I gave myself a little mental shake and snapped out of it. Because Jesus God, there is nothing more annoying than cry for help blogging. I mean, when I do it. I love it when the rest of the internet is depressed, it makes me feel so much better about myself. Keep being sad, internet! I need the self esteem boost!

When I meet new people I go home and google them. This is a bad way to live your life. I know this. But I can’t stop myself. Then when I ’stumble’ upon their imdb page I get depressed that they are just another cheesy actor with a bad head shot and a string of student films on their internet resumé. I don’t know about you, but once a bad impression is made over the internet, it cannot be wiped out of my mind. Especially if you’re a bad writer, photographer, actor, skateboarder, filmmaker, fill-in-the-blank-er. I have had three consecutive crushes, well, crushed because of the internet. This is ultimately for the best, but penultimately not good for my sex fantasies. How can I get hot thinking about you if I’ve read your bad poetry or seen your lame head shot where you’re not a hot bartender dude but a dude with a bad haircut and too much eye-liner?

Finally, I have a new upstairs neighbor and I think he likes to wear combat boots while pacing back and forth all night. Either that, or we have thinner floors than I previously thought and now my downstairs neighbor thinks I’m a large fat man who likes to jump off and on the bed all the live long day (LULA!) while somehow simultaneously having a nervous breakdown pacing around the apartment in chunky heels (that last part may be true). I have yet to actually see my upstairs neighbor, and I know he just moved in this weekend, so I’m hoping all the pacing has something to do with unpacking, because, land sakes alive I wanted to punch him in the baby maker last night. I turned up a screechy Bette Davis movie to ‘very loud’ levels to drown it out and still was hearing the stomp, stomp, stomp.