"Whaaaat?" you say. "I didn't sign up for this serious of a blog entry."
Cool it, kids. Let me relay some examples:
1). Your roommate, who regularly counsels battered women and rescues feral cats, suddenly realizes she doesn't really like helping people or animals other than herself.
2). Your brother, who spent four years at Massachusetts College of Art making florid abstract and textural paintings of vaginas (to praise from all his professors), suddenly realizes all he really wants to do is design software programs in an office cubicle.
3). Your friend, who after an entire year of living in a constant state of drug-induced torpor on the floor of his Philadelphia apartment, suddenly realizes that he is, in fact, living in Cleveland.
Whoops.
Point is, I just came to just this kind of revelation. Since my move to Brooklyn about a week ago, I've kind of cultivated this image of me as a serious, but slightly off-beat professional woman...you know, like every Sex and the City cliche. I may not be Sarah Jessica Parker, but I've got my two pairs of shoes with the stumpy heels and lacquered buckles, one stick of eyeliner that may or may not have punctured my cornea last night when I applied it drunkenly to every part of my face that was not my eyelid, my sassy black dress that smells like coffee and curdled half and half. I strut down the street sometimes, albeit into a hotdog stand or a sewer grate, but you know, I'm usually strutting before I'm eating or falling. I'm fabulous...sort of, in like an understated, slightly mildewy way? I'm...oh fuck it.
Today, as I started sliding all of my clothes into plastic bags in preparation for the exterminator tomorrow (called in to combat a Biblical bedbug infestation), it dawned on me that I'm less of a Sex in the City type figure, and more a Sex in an Alley breed of lady. I'm still technically in the city (I am a professional, and I am a lady), but just in the slummy, drug-laden, barbed wire-fringed part (I am a professional waitress, and I'm a lady that lives with four dudes).
Anyway, was this a depressing realization? In that I have let my personal appearance slump to the point that I look strung out and abused, yes. My right leg is a flaky mosaic of dry skin, crusted-over bedbug bites, mustardy gray bruises, swollen blisters (goddamn those stupid heels), and an angry red scratch I received after stepping on my roommate's cat. The bitch is fierce. In addition, I have some sort of Arabric writing scrawled over my shoulder in orange highlighter (who knows where that came from?), while my arms and legs are flecked with red velvet cake-batter that really resembles the pink of open sores.
On the other hand, it's always good to confront reality. As my roommate Chris said, "You didn't come here to live in fucking SoHo and be ironically grungy right? You came here to be really fucking dirty." Right on. It's time to exterminate all the Sex and the City fantasies right along with the bed bugs. I love you Carrie, but you are an avatar of something I can't have tempting me right now, so I'm going to put you in a plastic bag filled with pesticide and crack open a beer.
Delusions are the worst pests, harder to kill than any mere arthropod. Not to get too philosophical here, but I think a large part of the collapse of the American economy has to do with the pursuit of culturally disseminated delusions and images of prosperity. Our culture promotes the idea that living a lifestyle totally inconsistent with one's means is fine, thus the entire country is in debt. Anyway, enough of that. Let me just say that confronting reality allows you to see and address your most pressing needs, which for me at this point is, quite frankly, a shower.
Goodnight!
confronting reality? how about creating reality
ReplyDelete