coffee chugged. homies hugged.
SHE’S CRAFTY
I’m back to drinking the Sleepytime “Extra” tea before bed and I think the valerian gives me extra (SWIDT?) weird, extra detailed dreams. Which of course I write down, just so future biographers who find my scribbly bedtime notebook can be more thoroughly confused. A recent favorite included me working on a porn film with a dolphin protagonist; we did not have a real dolphin but were using a human dude, and I was trying to fashion a dolphin-dick prosthesis out of dixie cups and masking tape. It was going about as well as you might expect. Is that an anxiety dream? A sex dream? A work dream?
THOUGH WE REALLY DID
For some reason today I remembered how as a 5- or 6-year-old child I had memorized Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” (why?) and would often belt it out in the bathtub. That must have been weird for my mom to overhear. I have a lot of bathtub memories and I’m sure my kid will too, because every smart parent has learned (once they’re past the drowning age and the dumping-water-over-the-side age) that a good long little-kid bath, with bubbles, boats, containers, funnels, eyedroppers, little plastic people to drown, etc, is a great way to get a goddamned minute to oneself.
(There sure are a lot of ‘70s songs about breaking up, aren’t there? Or if not breaking up, then “baby we’re going to make it if we try” kind of songs—ie, being with you is a difficult slog but we’ll do our best! Someone needs to write a graduate thesis on changing sociocultural heteroromantic relationship standards as expressed through AM radio hits.)
So between dreams and childhood memories and exactly zero actual Life Events this entry is already way less dramatic than the last one, which is good, right? Let’s bring it back on brand with Mundane Mimi, Mistress of Minutiae. And about that last entry, just about everyone has been perfectly lovely and amazing: all your emails, your reply tweets, your direct messages. Thank you. Really the only replies that I felt even moderately grumpy about were those that seemed to express an inordinate amount of “sympathy.” I am probably too sensitive but you pet me the wrong way when you imply that there is something wrong with my child and you need to feel sorry for us as parents.
Those types of emails are most likely my fault for leaning a little too hard on the “path to acceptance” part of the narrative in my entry, but neither did I want to write a sunshiney, this-is-no-big-deal post when it comes to something as pervasive as gender identity. Classic rock/hard place, I tell you. You write something! You think “I’ll write it THIS way so no one takes it THAT way” but sometimes people take you too much at your word. UNFAIR, we writers yell. WE MEANT IT BUT WE ALSO DIDN’T MEAN IT. Words: an extremely flawed system.
BEVERAGE TAX
Last week was rather horrible for me work-wise, as I had to host a large dinner and organize a meeting and speak clearly and cogently at said meeting, complete with slides and handouts. That last part got in the way of me having as much wine as I wanted at the dinner, which was a shame because deep inside me there is still a broke-ass college graduate thinking “we paid for a three-hour wine and beer package and thus I am going to drink steadily for three damn hours” but no. I had to be an adult about it and hand over my corporate AmEx at the end of the night, all the while knowing that the restaurant won that battle.
THE EVOLUTION OF MY PUBIC HAIR
“Evolution” made me want to do a Pokemon joke, but it was not working considering the subject matter (“PIKACHU! MUFF DIVE!”), and anyway we shouldn’t put “Pokemon” and “pubic hair” in the same sentence because that’s just asking Very Bad Tumblr Porn to make an appearance in your life.)
ON TO THE ACTUAL LIST
Stage 1. None, because I am a baby.
Stage 2. Some. Then lots! I pay it no mind. (This stage lasts well into my 30s.)
Stage 3. I get bored during a Wine Bath and shave it all off. Surprise! Decide that I like it and keep it up.
Stage 4. Why not pay a professional for a similar, but more thorough, service? I start visiting the Intimate Waxer. Like my hairdresser and myself, she is a former Chicago 90s goth so we get nostalgic about bars and shows while she rips the hair off my private area.
Stage 5. No offense to gothy wax lady, but I decide I’m tired of paying $60/month for ingrown hairs. Hello, Groupon? It’s me, and my groin.
Stage 6. Laser hair removal package! Listen: this is fun. I LOVE THIS. The machine goes “ping”! It’s over in moments! Expensive but effective! It honestly barely hurts! You get the sci-fi goggles and you and your junk are living in the future! Lasers and fast and pew pew pew ping ping ping! The laser lady is very sweet but a little odd, she and I tend to have lots of conversations about her detailed nutritional philosophies. She’s one of those “digestion begins in the mouth” people and is all about EXTREME CHEWING and I’m like, “you’re not exactly wrong but you are also about 2 steps away from handing me a whole-wheat cracker to quell my harmful sexual urges.”
Apparently the laser is prejudiced and the hair-removal wavelength only works well on certain hair-skin color combinations. I’m sure science is working on that—it’s probably third in line for science, right after alternative fuels and antimicrobial resistance. But if you have Done The Research and are on the fence about laser, do it! You can ask me questions. I am happy to be Marlow guiding you down the Congo of high-tech hair removal; WHO KNOWS WHAT WE MIGHT FIND. It could be Pikachu, with Bulbasar heads on stakes, yelling “Pika pika! Exterminate all the brutes!” Or it could just be a better form of hair removal for your Area, if you are the Area Hair Removing type. (And of course you don’t have to be!)
I will leave you with an excerpt from Sylvester Graham’s A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity: Intended Also for the Serious Consideration of Parents and Guardians. It could describe any one of us wankers in this age of Trump. Eat your crackers.
—mimi smartypants is a fiend of darkness.