It's A Mahon's World

An asshole takes up a seat and a half on an old subway car. I perversely sit on the edge of the half seat to spite him, leaning forward, careful not to make physical contact for six stops until my back hurts so much I just stand up around 28th St.

Two teenaged assholes make out directly in front of me. I take out my phone and sneak a photo of them that I delete almost immediately because I feel self-conscious about my actions.

An asshole hits a button on his boombox (yes, boombox). His asshole friend somersaults into a cirque du soleil performance, swinging from pole to pole. As his high top whips past my face, I wonder how he got such a strong core. I pretend I’m not impressed.

An asshole steps onto the train with a guitar. I place my earbuds instinctively into my ears. Five seconds into his Wonderwall cover I turn up the volume which doesn’t quite drown him out, creating an emotional barrier between us and a deafening cacophony in my ears.

A small asshole tempts me with Fruit Snacks and asks for a dollar to support his youth basketball team. I privately support his participation in afterschool activities but have no money, so ignore his existence. I don’t need the sugar, I tell myself.

My Long Journey

In this first person account, I discover that I’ve once again forgotten to close my bar tab. Retracing my steps from last night and venturing back to the farthest bar possible from my apartment, I face challenges of a crippling hangover, a loquacious Uber driver, and a string of supremely regrettable outgoing texts I just now am discovering on my phone. Though my tenacity guides me on my odyssey there and home, I ultimately curse myself for not just cancelling the stupid fucking card to begin with.

  10,000 Days Without a Boyfriend

In this page turner, (with foreword by my mother) I navigate the rocky roads of single life for 27 years straight. Follow my journey through heartbreak, confusion and general despondency, as I miraculously repel all relationship-seeking ‘good guys’ and attract all the wrong men like moths to a “chill” but undateable flame.

   The Race of my Life

It appears I set my alarm to PM instead of AM for the thousandth time, in this thrilling true story of how I have exactly 32 minutes to get dressed, forget to apply deodorant, and make it downtown to work for a client call that ends up getting canceled four minutes before it’s supposed to happen because advertising is a soul crushing industry that fucks with you constantly.

 A Million Ways I’ve Embarrassed Myself This Month

This is actually just my diary, and I’m not sure how you got your hands on it.

   The Test of My Life

In this emotional memoir about anxiety and constant overthinking, I learn to cope when faced with one of the most difficult challenges of my lifetime: my phone dies. Cut off from the world and unable to check Instagram for over one hour, I set off on a quest to find myself. Along the way, I happen on a cast of misfits who teach me fundamentally nothing, including a homeless woman who asks for change, a man driving a white van who makes comments of a sexual nature out his window, and a bartender who finally puts my iPhone on a charger behind the bar, thank god.

   My Life in Love: A Thousand Overhead Shots of Tacos

A compilation of photos of tacos, mostly pork, taken from above, some of which have bites taken out of them because I forgot to take a photo before I started eating.

   The History of Me

In this telling narrative, watch over my shoulder as my Google search activity gets me into some awkward situations like just now when my boss approached me as I was Google imaging ‘can babies poop in the womb.’

::Clears cookies::

   Coming to Terms With Having No Purpose

Though slightly redundant, in this existential tale of self-discovery awareness, I contemplate what I was placed in this world to do. As I try to figure out my god-given talents, I realize my major strengths are writing copy for brands I don’t use, spending beyond my means, binge watching TV shows, and eating a lot of pizza.  The narrative ends with me turning on Netflix and ordering a pie because the only place that’s open has a $20 minimum.

  Wine and Moan: A List of Guys I Mostly Should Not Have Slept With

In this autobiographical novel, I drink a lot of wine and complain about how guys are jerks until the bottle is empty. My roommate sits and listens because she is a good friend. We agree about how guys are such jerks until my words become illegible because I am so fukced up rihgt now and guys are jrrks. Thehy’rre jeeehrks

20 Ways to Achieve Success in Your 20s

Dear Seagrape,

You majestic shithole.  You dingy little marvel.  You beautifully disgusting diamond.  It’s been too long.  I remember throwing back house shots and doing that thing I called dancing under your roof like it was yesterday.  And here I am, five years later, preparing myself both physically and emotionally, to see you again.  Am I excited?  Of course I’m excited.  But I’m not too proud to say I’m a little bit nervous too.

Sure, I’m the one who left.  But I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I know you know that.  It was time for me to emerge a sobered butterfly, from my collegiate cocoon. Besides, you had a whole new batch of juniors just thrusting themselves mouths first at you.  How do you think that made me feel? Come September, it was like I’d never existed. You and your fancy new booths, and weird new refurbished, practically sanitary bathrooms.  What the hell, Grape?

I don’t mean to sound bitter, because I’m not.  In fact it’s impossible not to think about the good times.  Because, with the exception of the ejection of two of my very good friends on what became a semi-regular basis—there were only good times.  You were the spot, the go-to.  Where else could we go four nights a week that was just a stone’s throw from home? Where else could we go to hear a part-time DJ surprise us with a new Top 100 shuffle, night after night? Where else could we count on the same cook—turned bar back—turned bartender who got us loaded one day to come knocking on our doors with a hot pot of coffee the next?  And where the shit else was a vodka-180 even a thing?

From the moment my lips touched their first house shot to the moment I dumped my last beer over someone’s head on graduation night—and every 21st birthday, mind eraser, make out, and Saturday Point Day afternoon in between—I knew this was a special kind of love. Time and time again I, along with the rest of my class, would gladly cram inside your four walls and yell to the bartenders we knew too well.  Rounds of house shots were poured and passed over heads and spilled and taken.  Screaming, girating bodies jumped and made sounds that were songs or mating calls or both—all in the space in front of the dartboard brilliantly dubbed the “dance floor,” one of many wise decisions made on your watch.

I can hear Jason Derulo whispering his own name as I write this.  I can remember Peace Please and that tambourine as we flung our underwear at our friends.  A typical night would end with a dangerously exciting rendition of Shout.  We’d take it a little bit lower, and louder again, stomping our feet in puddles of Bud Lite and vodka and shaking the walls just a little.  The lights would go on, and not wanting to part from you just yet, I’d linger for just one more drink.

And just like that you’d chew me up and spit me out onto Reef Road for the night to do with me as it pleased.  Because you knew in a day, at most two, I’d come crawling back—we all would come crawling back for more.

Into the night we’d saunter, the bunch of us, off to the BFNH for physically destructive late night tomfoolery, or the Donkey Punch for table dancing, and a shot at love on that fucking futon...  Or to Pier 7 to dance to the same song for three hours and like it, or perhaps to the Sandbar to witness a human tornado causing some cataclysmic damage to my home like punching New Jersey shaped holes into the ceiling or obliterating the fence in the yard.

The following day, we’d be back in line. And you see, Seagrape, despite the ATM always being broken…despite the crime against humanity that was a cement mixer…despite that awkward few weeks when townies and Sacred Heart kids seemed to be infiltrating our sweet sanctuary [resulting in my regretfully giving one or more of them my number,] and despite your having one of the grossest ladies’ bathrooms in America, I loved you.  We all loved you.  And in a few short days, we’ll be back.  And we’ll walk through your doors the way we walked through them a hundred times before.  And we’ll dance to all the same songs.  And we’ll feel pretty goddamn old, but our hearts will be racing—mostly from vodka 180s—and it’ll be [sort of] like old times.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, thank you for the memories.  And for a reason to never ever ever drink another Jack and Coke ever again—ever.  I will see you soon, old friend.  In the abbreviated words of a few more of your ex-lovers, #LFG. 

Forever indebted to you because you know too much,

…And with much affection,

Keema, you sly devil. Somebody really wants to find you.

Dear Landlord,

Thank you. Thank you for teaching me so much in such a short time.

In the last year and a half, I feel that our relationship has helped me grow as a person.  Handling the issues in our building has taught me that no matter how bad things seem to be, they can always and will likely get worse in the next few days.  Dealing with you and our so-called super has built my character, made me more independent. In my time here, my survival skills were tested.  My patience tried.

Sure, at some points I felt angry, homicidal even.  But following every challenge that was thrust our way this past year, my roommates and I came out…alive. Learned a lesson, even.

For instance, who else of my friends has been physically readied to survive a night against nature’s elements from within their own apartment?  Who else has spent one of the coldest nights of the year in the shivering cold without heat? Who else has been stripped of hot water mid-shampoo on more than one occasion?  Could I survive a night in the wilderness [as long as I have eleven or twelve heavy blankets, a toilet, and an emergency space heater with an outlet to plug it into]? Yes, I could. Cue Destiny’s Child, ‘Survivor.’

And I’ll never forget my first maybe-stalker.  Walking in to my apartment after work to find it had been broken into was an experience that brought with it an onslaught of heavy emotions.  Our home was invaded, our privacy violated—Learning that nothing had been taken from the pool of valuable electronics and cold hard cash that were laying around, except for a small token of little to no value from each of our bedrooms?  Well, that stirred up feelings of ‘what-the-fucked-ness’ you just can’t make up at the end of the day.  Who else can claim they’ve had such an experience? I can’t think of anyone. Neither could the detectives.

What did it teach me, aside from training my body to actually sleep with one eye physically open?  To take initiative.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, but our apartment was transformed into a ground floor Fort Knox in two hours.  Locks forever.  We were one step away from installing a mother*cking panic room.  (Thank you for reimbursing us, because locks are stupid expensive—and rest assured, we will give you the key to that top lock just as soon as we move out and no longer care who has access to the apartment.)

Listen, I wouldn’t call our relationship toxic.  I wouldn’t. I like you. You’re a nice lady.  I would call the carbon monoxide that slowly leaked out of our oven and into our lives toxic because… well, it was.  That’s not me, that’s science.  But I want you to know that I’m the one that’s sorry. I’m sorry that the tenant upstairs called Con Ed because he or she did not trust that you would do anything about the gas leak and wound up getting the building shut down.  We would never do that to you. We didn’t do that to you. We only called 911.  And we were probably overreacting.  And so were the firefighters who came in and told us our levels were high and shut off our gas.  Do you believe that?  “New York’s Bravest,” and they’re afraid of a little poisonous gas, HA! Because really what’s a little odorless gas with the potential to kill you if it doesn’t actually kill you?  You know?  I’m really asking.  I guess what I’m really trying to say is the building still hasn’t exploded, so maybe you were right about the carbon monoxide thing being “no big deal.”

The fact that we haven’t had gas to cook with for over a month is beside the point.  I’m not even going to talk about our lack of a working oven at all.  Seriously, I’m not even going to mention the month+ we have gone without this basic necessity.  Because it took four weeks, but it’s not like you never sent us those electric burners that smell like burning feces when they get hot.  And it’s not like absolutely no one is benefitting here.  Seamless’s business is fucking booming right now, thanks to me, which is really thanks to you and Con Ed not turning our gas back on, costing us our cooking capabilities, which I’m totally not going to mention.

I guess the point of this letter is, if I knew exactly what to expect in my own home, life would probably be a little too easy.  I need a challenge here and there, for several weeks at a time, you know?  I need something to keep me on my toes, even if it is a ceiling leak dripping into our light fixtures or a strange man squatting in our hallway for a couple of weeks.  So our front stoop collapsed under my body weight on my way to dinner with my dad.  So we’ve had an on-again/off-again relationship with a mouse and our living room has felt like Antarctica during one of the most brutal polar vortexes committable to memory.  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  And I think you’ve proven that.

We have totally learned and appreciate the lesson.  So if you feel like maybe making our lives a little easier in the final few weeks we inhabit our apartment, we wouldn’t object.  An oven would be nice.  A buzzer that actually rings so the Seamless delivery guy doesn’t give me a hard time when he delivers the dinner I was unable to cook for myself—which I’m not mentioning—that would be very nice.  But, no pressure.  I know you have a prison to run. And girl, I ain’t gonna get in your way.

Sincerely prepared for all future housing issues,

Growing up, my mother hosted all of three of the major holidays at our house, every year. She'd spend the night before and all morning laboring over a hot oven, producing the smorgasbord that would feed fifteen to twenty mouths.  Appetizers, sides, entrees, desserts--everything was delicious.  But my very favorite part of the meal was always the chocolate on chocolate cake she made for dessert.

One particular Christmas, things were winding down after another long day.  Gifts were exchanged and unwrapped.  Bellies were full.  My parents were in the kitchen washing dishes by hand and using the dishwasher as a drying rack to make the process as grueling as possible. The rest of the family sat in the living room relaxing, breaking in their new gifts. I was busy wrestling one of Barbie’s arms into a new gold number and devouring a tin of Fudgy Bears my grandma had given me, when my mother came out of the kitchen to hassle me.  She told my sister and I to bring our toys upstairs and change into our pajamas before dessert. As she disappeared from sight, I tossed a Fudgy Bear wrapper over my shoulder and returned to my chocolate doll-dressing efforts.

A few minutes later, miffed about being ignored, she returned holding her double chocolate cake and immediately launched Plan B. (Plan B was threatening to take away something we cared for deeply… like chocolate cake.) She let us know the only way we were getting dessert was if we went upstairs and changed out of our dresses.  I sat massaging my neck, having suffered from minor whiplash, trying to gauge her level of seriousness.  Level: high.  Confident that she’d made an impression this time, she returned to the kitchen with the cake I planned to make mine.

What my sister did next was either quick thinking for a four-year-old or a complete misunderstanding, likely because she was a four-year-old. All eyes turned to her as she began to undress in the middle of the living room.  I watched, my fudge-filled mouth agape. Stockings around her ankles, she stood there smiling like a small idiot, as relatives and family friends began to giggle and coo as a pack in her general direction. 

“Ha!” I thought. This was great. The whole room was amused.  And it meant we didn’t have to carry all our crap upstairs in order to get to that cake. Each of these was reason enough for me to know I’d have to get naked too.  As Kristen shimmied out of her thick wool stockings, leaving them inside out on the floor, off came my ruffled Christmas dress.

Now the crowd was really laughing. What were we doing?  I can’t speak for Kristen, but I was having a damn good time.  Anything for a laugh has been my mantra since I can remember and it’s been getting me into trouble for years.  I was down to nothing but my saggy Fruit of the Looms when my mom reentered the equation. 

“KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  When a parent screams your name in a way that sends chills down your tiny naked spine, 100% of the time it’s not good. I could see her marching towards me, as I stood trembling beside my pathetic pile of clothes.  She must not have noticed my stark naked sister standing directly next to me. She stormed over and collected my clothing.  As she escorted me up the stairs, now naked and embarrassed, she beckoned Kristen, still naked and not in trouble by the way, to follow.

The lesson that came along with the shame of that day was that I apparently was too old to just take off my clothes whenever I wanted. Something about it being inappropriate and very very weird to get naked in front of large a group of people including grown men I’m related to. Fine.

I will say this: I stripped down to my underwear in front of company for two reasons that Christmas.  It seemed like a funny thing to do.  And I really wanted that cake.  And as I write this now, it's hard to imagine I wouldn’t do the same thing today.  Maybe not on Christmas.  Maybe not surrounded by my family. But come on. Laughs. And cake.  I’m hungry. 

Dear Man Who Exposed Himself to Me on the 5 Train Two Years Ago,

I never forget a face.  Except yours.  I was too distracted by the sight of your penis to remember your face.

 It was early.  I hadn’t had a coffee. I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that I had to commute to work.  Then I looked across at the uptown platform, where you were standing with your dick in your hand, and that was just the icing on the cake.

Perhaps you thought I’d find it flattering that despite my donning a down winter coat and crusty morning eyes, you found me attractive…(thank you) or at least made it appear so from the looks of things on your side of the track, but friend, if I wanted to see your penis, you’d have known it.  Turning around to a stranger applying the handbrake as he glares at you from a not so distant distance is actually pretty off-putting.

Let me ask you something.  Do you have a girlfriend?  Is she aware that you masturbate for/to the general public?  Ok, I feel like you might not have a girlfriend.  Are you looking for one?  Because in the future, I think if you’d like to meet a nice lady (or a man, but my understanding is you are into ladies), you should definitely not try picking her up from across a subway platform by showing her your genitals. You might try taking her to a nice dinner.  Maybe a movie, do you like movies?  I have a feeling you do. Or you could talk to her, with words.  Ladies tend to respond better to words than to what you were doing.

Another person I would advise you to speak to is a therapist.  Why do you think you do this?  Is that how your mother raised you?  Did your mother raise you?  Did you have some experience as a child that turned you down a path of public masturbation?  Does turning people off turn you on?  Is it the exhilaration of doing it in public?  Of being a delinquent?  Of exploiting women? How many innocent commuters have had to bear the sight of your junk first thing in the morning? 

I wanted to look for you on Family Watchdog, but I never got around to it, though I tell our story from time to time.  The worst part about the whole thing was that you almost made me miss my train. Do you know how annoyed I would have been if I had to wait on the platform for another twelve minutes? I had somewhere to be. The only reason I didn’t run upstairs to report you was because I felt the subtle dirty breeze of an oncoming train.  Regrettably, at the time, making the next train was more important to me than bringing a sexual miscreant to justice.  Two more minutes and you would have been toast.

Go ahead and give yourself a hand.  Get it?  But really, I hope you’ve gotten help.  I don’t take the train from that stop anymore, so it’s unlikely we’d run into each other.  If we did, I don’t think I’d talk to you anyway.  Just stop doing that.  K? It’s fucked up.

Sincerely scarred for like five minutes,

I've sworn to myself a thousand times I won't let it happen.  Each time it starts off the same way. My eyes miraculously open at the exact time I'm supposed to be waking up. Did I set an alarm? The answer is no. I was having too much fun for that. But my body surprises me sometimes, and on these mornings it just does what it's supposed to. Then my brain decides to get involved in the decision making. So instead of getting up and showering the stench of the night before off of my body and the look of 'definitely didn’t shower’ off my face, I lay in bed until the last possible second before slithering into the easiest and fastest outfit imaginable. This is usually a maxi dress or a t-shirt and jeans, based on the season and what’s clean. “Effortless, but cute,” I think. The effortless part is dead on. Luckily I took my makeup off last night...because I have pillows on my bed that are great at taking my makeup off while I sleep.

I spend a few minutes thoroughly combing through countertops, cabinets, and the refrigerator for any available carbohydrate, usually to no avail. I chug a few quarts of water and set out to be conquered by the day. I make it all the way up to the front door of my building before I'm scrambling for my sunglasses to shield my eyes from the horror that is daylight. I hail a cab because I give no fucks--I'd pay all the money in my bank account to not have to do the subway. I need to be delivered from one door to the next in order for today to happen. 

I get to work. I stroll in casually, a wave here, a nod there, “Hey Bob,” I don’t know a Bob... until I get to my desk. I think I'm fooling everyone as I collapse into my chair, start shoving a bagel into my face, and stop the caring I feigned for fifteen whole seconds. The giant water, Gatorade, and coffee on my desk aren't not giving me away. No one is fooled, but really, no one cares. Also...there's a faded bar stamp on my wrist. Shut up.

I simultaneously power on my computer and my hangover. There’s no worse place to be on this planet than in front of this screen.  The lights. My eyes. They hate each other.  I’ve entered a professional hellscape.  Let’s see... I open an old document to make it look like I’m doing something of worth, annnd, fire up Facebook.

My first trip to the bathroom is mostly just to take deep breaths and repeatedly ask myself why. One look in the mirror and I see what everyone else is seeing. What is Steve Buscemi doing in the women’s bathroom at my job, anyway?  I make note that I should really do something about the lighting in my apartment. I also notice that my pillow didn't quite get all of last night's mascara and wonder briefly whether it can pass as fresh makeup from that morning. It can’t.

Over the next few hours, I somehow manage to use my puddle brain to do some work, which is hard and takes a long time.  Every so often, I wander off to the bathroom to take a break from doing a poor job and from human beings and my reflection taunts me.

At 3:00, I cannot believe it's seriously only 3:00. Why is time such a cruel monster, and why is this the longest and worst day of my whole entire life?  At 3:04, I honestly cannot believe that only four minutes have gone by since the last time I checked the time.  At this point I’ve completely accepted defeat. The only future I can see is making love to my couch the second I get home, except I’m too hungover to make love or even to make jokes about fucking my couch. I’m ordering food straight to my living room and I’m using one finger to dial.  AND it’s going to be something that can carry this day of regrets into a night of regrets because I’m not done hating myself.

Generational differences, stubbornness, selective hearing. Call it what you want. Whatever it is, I've come to the realization that no matter how much of a broken record I allow myself to be, some things will really really really never change.

1. When you hit ‘reply all’ on an email, everyone can see the thing that you think you’re only writing back to the individual who sent you the email.  Under no circumstances should you hit ‘reply all.’  Ever.  I’m serious.

2. The joke you make at every holiday dinner about your three kids from two different wives being three nights’ work: Mom doesn’t like it. Your three kids aren’t crazy about it either.  And while we’re on the subject, an eye roll does not mean, “Please tell it again.”

3. You could have emailed me that article about ‘financial literacy’ instead of saving it for three weeks, losing it twice, finding it again with a little bit of food on it, and giving it to me as a small newspaper clipping the next time we went out to dinner with a bunch of people.

4. I know you know all about my birth control and how many times I’ve switched it and other things typical dads probably don't know about their daughters, but jokes about the pill and casual sex are awkward in private. When you make one in front of a third party, it makes me want to die.

The last thing my Grandma said to me was on May 13, 2012.  It was Mother’s Day.  As she left our house that day, she slid into the back seat of her own car, and I slid right back there with her because she had something she wanted to tell me.  She’d been saying some things that didn’t make much sense lately, but she ushered me closer, so I leaned in to listen. I loved our secrets.

She told me that I was her Kelly girl, and I could come over any time.  I already knew that. I’d known that since I was a little girl.  And it made a lot of sense.  I gave her a wink and said goodbye.

First Fridays

On first Fridays we had a routine.  As I returned to earth from my tippy toes, I checked my naked wrist just to make sure it was the right time. 11 o’clock on the dot. And just like clockwork, I saw her appear from around the gate. I pushed passed the behemoths in my second grade class and ran directly into her velvet, nicotine hug, my hair getting caught on the birthstone representation of me that hung from her neck.  “How’s my Kelly Girl?” she wanted to know. 

I slipped into the backseat and buckled up, the smell of cigarettes and perfume penetrating my nostrils.  She’d settle into the front seat, place her mammoth sized pocket book securely into the seat beside her, and we’d ride off into the half-day sun. I’d offer Pavlovian responses to questions about school before we’d get into the good shit. Every first Friday, my very best friend, who also happened to by my dad’s mom (funny coincidence), would pick me up from school and we’d head to our “secret restaurant.” We’d order “two frankfurters with mustard and saur kraut,” and hold one of our private meetings. As acting co-presidents of the Lady Bug Club, it was important that we had these monthly meetings, to keep the organization running smoothly.

After our ritualistic meal, we’d head back to her place, where I’d hand her the clicker forty-seven times over the next six hours. We’d start by watching “our programs.” The View, The Price is Right, and Martha Stewart were all part of the lineup. After that, the soaps would start. Since this meant the potential to witness an onscreen kiss, which was the last thing on God’s green earth I wanted, I took it as my cue to start sorting through the soup cabinet. A prodigy in the kitchen, I’d whip us up some Chicken Noodle or Chicken with Rice with my special touch of one ice cube each. I’d microwave her a cup of tea and crack open my third Coca-Cola since this was the land of no rules, and we were set.

My dad would usually walk in during the middle of one of our poker games, in which my grandma would have me fooled to believe that I was kicking her ass.  They’d chat for a bit while I collected my winnings, and we’d leave shortly after that to get home for dinner. I’d lean in for a big old wet one, while she slipped me another $20 and told me not to tell my dad. I lived for our secrets.

“You know you can come over any time.” 

Last year I got a work phone. Apparently, before I got this phone, a girl named Keema had the same number. I'm pretty sure Keema told exactly zero of her contacts that she was changing her number. And so, they contact me all the time. They think I'm Keema.  I used to ignore them or tell them they had the wrong number.  That got old fast, so I started taking a different route.

Our bodies change. It sucks but it's true. It’s a good thing, though, before it’s a bad thing. I didn’t always see it that way. 

Most young girls awaiting boobs and womanhood look forward to it. Not me. I was the girl in my sixth grade class in a loose tee, who still hadn't touched even a training bra. It made changing for gym class a skill to be reckoned with.  Getting me to go bra-shopping was like pulling teeth.  Ironically, I fell into my first bra-wearing groove in the eighth grade, around the same time they slapped a set of braces onto my bottom row of pearly off-whites—I invented the awkward stage, in case you were wondering how it originated. Wearing a bra, I was able to commit to...wearing a retainer, no so much.

I still remember my first on the record lesson in puberty.  I was in the fourth grade when our teachers segregated boys and girls into separate classrooms so we could learn about our respective bodies.  The easiest and most efficient way to explain the menstrual cycle to a group of physically and mentally undeveloped girls is to show them a video of a cartoon egg passing through a woman’s cartoon fallopian tubes until it exits through her cartoon vagina.  I can only imagine the animation they were airing down the hall.  We all got puberty packs. It was the prepubescent equivalent of receiving a swag bag at a college fair. Imagine a bag of free shit you have absolutely no use for. You’re excited for a minute because it’s free and free stuff is exciting, and then you remember that a mouse pad will serve you in no way.  What was a fourth grade ‘me’ going to do with a panty liner? (I stuck it to a boy’s back. I think it goes without saying that I didn’t have a boyfriend for a long time.)

I was pretty much still weighing the pros and cons of admitting to my friends that I believed in Santa at this point, so I wasn't that concerned about my uterus. I had bigger problems. I wanted nothing to do with this body-changing business and I was sick of being hassled about it.  One night, in one of her earlier attempts to convince me that it was time to start wearing a bra, my mom planted a book about the female body in my bedroom. I pretended to ignore its existence, and neither of us ever brought it up, but I’d leaf through it for answers from time to time. Its labeled drawings of ovaries and simple language made it pretty comprehensible.

My body faced its first real change when I was in the sixth grade, and involuntarily boarded the puberty train.  I thought I’d shit my pants one day but it seemed unusual so I called my mom from the toilet for a second opinion.  One "oh honey," and a chortle later, she was directing me to her maxi pads under the sink.  I’m happy this amused her.  Ten minutes later I had applied my first pillow-sized pad, and I was officially a woman.  

Later that night, I made a case to my parents over dinner.  I was about six inches taller than usual in my new maxi pad booster seat, so I figured they had to take me seriously.  I was officially a woman and all the other sixth grade women weren’t running around in pads that could be measured in meters.  The next day, in a fun little game of role reversal, my dad took me shopping for normal size pads with wings—“ones that would stick to the outside of my underwear,” according to my extensive research, and dainty little panty liners for when Aunt Flo wasn’t being a stupid bitch--this would be toward the end of my cycle--also info I gathered from the net.  My poor father is perpetually involved in knowing the state of my menstrual cycle against his will to this day.  My birth control is still covered under his health insurance, (although that jig is almost up) and over the years, he's had to pick up more than his fair share of boxes of tampons for my sister and me.  To be clear, I agree that his fair share would have been none.

I realized after this bodily milestone that change was out of my hands; my body was going to deviate from its prepubescent form.  Where then, were the boobs that everyone else seemed to be sprouting along with their periods?  At least the boys liked those. I was still flat as a board, and that was reason enough for me to continue to rule out bras as an option for another year and change.

Finally, in eighth grade, the boob fairy realized she’d skipped over me and looped back around. As I began filling out my high school applications, I began to fill out an A cup. And just as this magnificent new development began, it ended. I wore a size A until I got to college, when a little bit of the freshman fifteen landed in my bra, and bumped me up to a small B. You heard it here: the secret to natural breast enhancement is Cup of Noodles and Natty Light, every day for a year. Only side effect is that every other part of your body will also grow in a way that makes you upset. 

I knew something was wrong because my forehead was quadruple its normal size. I was burnt. Burnt bad. I pressed my finger into my mushy oversized head. Ew. It reacted like memory foam.  I was the color of a lobster.  Head to toe burns.  And my forehead was one enormous blister.  This had to be a nightmare.  The sun had pretty much taken a heaping dump on me.  I went into my mom’s room to get some help.

“Jesus Christ, Kelly.” 

I sat, icing my face, when the doorbell rang.  It was the doctor, here all because I didn’t feel like wearing sunscreen on my pasty white skin in Mexico.  Everyone wears sunscreen in Mexico. It’s Mexico.

“Don’t look at me, I’m hideous.” 

He looked at me and told me immediately that I had sun poisoning.  Then he reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out the longest needle I still to this day have ever seen.  “Where are you putting that?” I asked.  He lifted one brow without breaking character. “WHERE ARE YOU PUTTING THAT,” I demanded. He pointed to my butt.  He signaled that I should turn around by twirling his finger in the air.  Oh my god.  I turned around slowly and dropped my bathing suit bottoms.  I bent over, biting my lip.  “I don’t usually do this…”  He didn’t think I was funny. No one thought I was funny.  There I stood in the middle of the kitchen of our Mexican hotel room bent over the counter, while a strange doctor stuck me in the ass with what looked like a rapier. My father looked on from the living room, shaking his head.  He was neither pleased nor amused.  After my injection, I shamefully pulled up my bottoms and thanked the doctor.

“Stay out of the sun." 

“But...”

“For Christ’s sake, Kelly!”

I spent the rest of that vacation applying copious amounts of aloe and SPF 1 trillion in a hat, under an umbrella.  It hurt to shower, it hurt to sleep, it basically just hurt to exist. 

Papal rules are rules.

Last March I took a trip to Italy with some friends.  While we were there, we took a tour of the Vatican with a glacially-paced Italian woman named Luciana.  When in Rome.  Basically there was one rule: do not take photos inside the Sistine Chapel.  My friend Maya took a selfie inside the Sistine Chapel.  Luciana caught her and made an example of her in front of our group.  Needless to say, after a three hour tour of the courtyard, and ten minutes inside the Sistine Chapel, plus a lecture about following the rules, Maya was not in love with the tour.

We got home a few weeks before April 1, just enough time for the "Papal State" to locate their suspect and send her this email. It was the icing on the cake.

No.

like, real things we named our pets....

When we were kids, our parents let us name our pets--we had a lot of pets...a lot of them. Most of our friends had a cat or a dog, maybe both. We had a perpetual menagerie. The number of species occupying our home at any given time was usually uncountable on two hands. Anyway, we were usually allowed to name them whatever we wanted. Creative freedom. Loved that. So naturally, my sister and I formed a system for naming our animals. The system went something like: there is no fucking system, are you insane? Call it anything. It was sort of how celebrities name their human babies now.  

Here are a few names that especially stood out.

Whiskers & Macagotthetation

When we were little, my sister and I had these four made up words for the colors, red, green, blue, and yellow. I swear this is relevant. I can remember two of them.  The others don’t matter, but each was long and extremely bizarre. There was absolutely no rationale behind them. If you closed your eyes and banged on your keyboard with your fingers for a minute straight, that could have been one of the words. Anyway, one Christmas, my parents really delivered on my sister's gift list. She wanted a gerbil—she got two. Because it was the fair thing to do, my mom told us we could each name one. My natural knack for naming rodents meant Whiskers had a name in a flash. Done. What a great gerbil name, right? Whiskers? It was Kristen's turn. She approached the task from a different angle. This would require some thought. A few moments of grave concentration yielded a second name.  It was our made up word for "green."  We had a gerbil named Maca-got-the-tation.

Seriously, just sound it out. That's how I fucking spelled it in the first place.  Don't try to figure out what it means. I already told you it meant “green,” except it really really did not. Eventually Macagotthetation had to go back to the pet store due to his regular assaults on Whiskers. He was probably pissed off about his name. We're not sure what ever happened to him...

  Elvis Rock-n-Roll Dude

Prior to my existence, my mom’s cousin gave my dad a baby Burmese python to raise as his own.  It was probably about a foot long, and a super cool man pet for a dude living with his woman, and her Persian cats. A few short years later, the family had grown by two babies and a small dog. The snake had grown by about nine feet.  We were the kids at school who watched their dad feed a live rat to their pet python every few weeks. We’d always referred to it as ‘the snake,’ and one day it dawned on us that we didn’t know our own pet’s name.  Turns out my dad’s not really into names, so good thing my mom was around when we were born.  He told us we could name him/her (I still don’t know.)  Pause for effect. This was a huge responsibility, which we obviously were going to take very seriously.  After days of rigorous brainstorming and creative processing, we’d come up with the perfect name.  Elvis Rock-n-roll Dude. We named it after Elvis Presley. I do not know why. Rock-n-Roll Dude was an add-on. We thought it was an awesome manly name for our big badass snake. My dad continued to call it ‘the snake’ until the day it died of reptilian mouth cancer.

   KB