Archive for December, 2009

I know you’re never supposed to talk about politics or religion in mixed company, and this blog is certainly mixed company.  But since I’ve already danced with politics and disclosed uncomfortable sacreligious antics of a variety of shapes and sizes, I think the only place to go next is religion itself.

Here’s my big fat disclaimer for my more religious friends:  I know I’m being a baby here.  I don’t have anything against religion or Christianity.  I’m all for community, peace on earth, and potlucks with Jello molds.  And yes, I realize that what I’m writing about is only an hour to endure before I can return to binge eating, binge drinking, and compulsively baiting my relatives into the discussion over the healthcare question.  Perhaps as I gain years and maturity, I’ll feel less like throwing a tantrum over the entire affair and more grateful that we have some family traditions.  But for now, without further ado:

Church never was a popular prospect in my childhood home.  Sunday mornings were met with dread, which inevitably lead to screaming matches and aggressive fights.  My mom would sweetly try to wake us up, telling us it was time to go to church, and the situation would gradually escalate as Adam and I pretended to sleep through her requests.  First there’d be yelling.  Then she’d march into our rooms and yank off the covers, telling us we were either going to church or finding a new family to adopt us (and that family was probably going to hell).  We’d keep our eyes clenched shut, but at some point it was clear that there was no choice:  we had a better chance of getting kidnapped by pirates than getting away with skipping church (maybe that’s why we were so captivated by the movie “Hook”).

Years later, after Adam and I went to college and started regaling our parents with stories of our drunken bad decisions and hedonistic lifestyles, my mom gave up on our eternal salvation and dropped her fight, preferring to spend time with us in the holy house of Starbucks when we were home for a random couple of days.  But there’s still one service each year that we can’t avoid, no matter how hard we try:  the Christmas service.

This strikes me as incredibly ironic.  If there’s one biblical tale that I’ve got down, it’s the Christmas story.  Here, let me prove it:  Mary fools around with the Holy Spirit, gets knocked up, rides Joseph’s ass all the way to Bethlehem (probably his donkey, too), goes into labor at an incredibly inconvenient time, and pops out a kid in a stable.  Then some dudes follow a magical star and show up with gifts, and that son does some shit, like turns water into wine (which is really a miracle I can get behind), dies on a cross, and amasses a fervent following.  Check.  And yeah, okay, not all part of the Christmas story, but my point is, I’ve got the basics here.  The story doesn’t change.  I’m not sure what this year’s rendition is going to teach me that I don’t already know.  And quite frankly, at my current life juncture, even if there is a crucial detail that I’m missing here, it’s probably not going to overcome my complete and utter inability to pay attention in a religious service.

The Christmas service goes the same for me each year.  The day of Christmas Eve, my grandpa, brother, and I spend a lot of time complaining about going to church, pointing out the obvious fact that we already know the story.  My mom and grandma put their feet down, demanding answers to impossible religious questions like “What are the names of the three wisemen?” or “King David decreed that all boy should be killed if they were under what age?” or “Jesus’s middle name is what?”  When we inevitably don’t know the answer because we’ve never once paid attention to anything more than the Sunday school version, which included figurines, pictures, and sometimes role-playing, we’re told we have to go.

We foiled them last year, thanks to the holy book of Google, may it bless itself, but then they did that whole guilt trip thing, and we found ourselves at the same end point:  dressed up and sullenly getting in the car, arriving 45 minutes before the service started so as to find a good spot in the sanctuary.  I’m not sure why this is important.  It’s not like there’s going to be some twist in the service this year.  It’s not like the minister is going to offer get-out-of-hell-free coupons to the front row.  It’s not like the nativity characters are going to come to life and do a tap dance number to a jazzed up Silent Night.  So what does it matter if we’re sitting front and center or in the darkest corner?  The way I see it, getting there 30 minutes early means that I have 30 minutes to sober up a little too much before the service starts.  30 minutes in which I’m not celebrating my annual tradition of eating too many cookies.  30 minutes in which I’m smelling the intermingling old lady perfumes until I want to pass out.  I’m just saying.

After shaking hands with a number of forcefully pleasant people wearing 200 kilowatt smiles and expressing tidings of CHRISTmas, I spend a few moments searching for hand sanitizer in this age of H1N1, and then we enter the sanctuary.  The feelings of discomfort begin only seconds later.  As the choir and ministers stare down at me from their holy perches, wearing the angelic WASP-y smile of peaceful self-righteous enlightenment that can only come from surrendering one’s life to a religious purpose, I imagine them staring deeply into my scantily clad soul and seeing the sin that lives within.  Feigning confidence, I shrug off my winter coat, revealing my outfit, which is always either, depending on my romantic state of affairs, a sophisticated or slutty dress in a festive color (and by that I mean black) (sometimes red).  Occasionally when I pull this stunt, I’ll catch the slightest flicker in expression from my godly observers.  I am clearly overdressed (or, uh, underdressed) for church.

Costume choice is important, however, because I always spend the first 30 minutes of the service scanning the crowd for attractive men.  I’m not sure why.  Meeting at church is probably not going to lead to a story that ends in passionate blissful romance.  We’re probably going to have a number of “lifestyle differences” that ultimately spell epic failure.  But at least it gives me something to do.  And when I stumble upon a piece of Christmas eye candy, which I like to think of as an eye candy cane, I like to flip my shiny hair a couple of times and muster my sultriest voice for the five Christmas carols we sing each and every year (a futile effort, as I am inevitably drowned out by the oppressive organ).

When the search proves fruitless, or when I get tired of trying to seduce someone who may or may not be saving himself for marriage, I turn my attention to the hairstyles and wardrobe choices of the congregation.  After all, being at church is like being at an ugly sweater party only without the alcohol or irony.  For instance, this year’s introit was a jazzy number ruined by a joyless woman with Mormon bangs wearing green velour.  Sequins, Cosby sweaters, and gold lamé ensembles were outnumbered only by bad haircuts, running the gamut from parted down the middle and frizzy to comb-overs to perms, inexplicably brought back from the only part of the 1980s that’s actually still dead.  The best of all, though, was the man I saw after the service:  red turtleneck sweater, cell phone ear piece with microphone in ear, and a mullet masterpiece, created from a bowl cut haircut on top and silver locks flowing down his back.  It was far more interesting than any zoo animal I’ve ever seen, so I naturally tried to take a picture.  The fruits of my labor:

At some point, after I’ve gotten glares from my mother, grandmother, and anyone else who can see me as I pass notes to Adam, pick all the candle wax drips off the candle and throw them on the floor, underline passages of the Bible, write long calls for help on my grandparents’ entry in the attendance folder, try to imitate Grandma Judy’s inability to sing anything other than the alto harmony during hymns, do impersonations of everyone on stage, make an origami nativity scene, and interpretive dance the Christmas story, I sink into a stupor just in time to tune out the Christmas message.  As for my antics, it’s really some unsolved medical mystery that I regress to the maturity of a five-year-old when it comes to the birth of Jesus.  Perhaps it’s another miracle by the holy man himself.

Finally, the service blissfully ends to the tune of Silent Night, sung as we all light each other’s candles from the flame of the Christ candle.  Pretty sure this has some sort of symbolic meaning, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.  Each year the reverend cautions us against lighting our neighbor on fire.  Each year I pray that we get so lucky as to have such a delicious holiday drama (interestingly, this may be the only prayer I say during the entire ordeal).  Each year I am disappointed.

And then we’re released into the world, free to run to our cars and sit in the ensuing traffic jam where we’ll all inevitably forget the lesson of love and peace we just learned and cut each other off in order to get home to the more important parts of the holiday season:  the presents and the booze.  Free, that is, after my mom greets everyone she knows, shows off her kids so no one thinks we’ve permanently strayed from the warm light of the church, and shakes hands a few more times with aforementioned H1N1 people.

Oh, we endure it. Lord knows we’re not getting out of it. And hey, maybe years from now, when I’ve finally firmly refused to go to church because I’m an adult free to practice my own beliefs, I’ll miss the opportunity to whine.

For me, the biggest source of stress this holiday season is coming not from family or friends, or the airport check-in lines, or even the icy roads. It’s coming from Whole Foods.

I am proudly a Whole Foods shopper (at least when I’m not being a proud farmers’ market shopper). I drank the (all-natural organic) Kool-Aid long ago, deciding that rather than ingest chemical processing and pollute, I’d like to save the earth and my soul, one free-range chicken at a time. I like to wander the aisles, stocking up on $25/lb bulk goods and cookies made with just whole wheat flour, agave, and love. I toss a package or two of fair trade coffee into my cart, tapping my foot to the sounds of vocal jazz, while smiling at the little munchkin clothed in hemp, playing with a Sigg water bottle plastered with stickers cleverly using the signs of all major religions to suggest that we “coexist.” I make my way to the Whole Body aisle to purchase $39 soap and toilet paper. And I build lunches, dinners, and the occasional breakfast from the prepared foods section, perching haughtily in my ivory wholesome food tower above my more frugal co-workers who opt for the likes of McDonalds and frozen burritos.

I’ve embodied it. Whole Foods is engrained in my identity, and there’s no escaping it. It has infiltrated my family. We’re card-carrying (and by that I obviously mean reusable cloth bag-carrying) members of the middle class white person tribe. Our conversations about Christmas cover which charity we’re supporting with each gift, what community service we’ve done since we last gathered, what fair trade coffee shop is open on Christmas morning, and what Whole Foods sides will be present on our table of feasting come Christmas Eve.

My point is that I spend a lot of time in this store because it’s normally a pretty pleasant experience that fills my post-yoga soul with a strange love for humanity and desire to hug my global brothers and sisters. I try to go at least 5 times a week to make sure it remains part of my personal brand. But this holiday season, the campaign to feed a family is really throwing me off my game.

Now, I’m not really a bad person. In fact, I think I’m a generally pretty okay person. And if not, I’m a person who believes in karma, so I like to act accordingly. If you’ve been reading this blog since last year, you know that I really like to bank karma during the holiday season because it’s so easy. So the first time I was asked by the Whole Foods cashier if I’d like to pay to feed a family, my answer was, emphatically, “Yes. Yes! I would like to shell out an extra $10 so the impoverished people up the street can eat Whole Foods for lunch! Everyone should have access to cage free eggs! Merry Christmas! And a very happy New Year!” And then I went on my self-righteous way, happy to be bringing sustainable food culture to a whole new demographic of society.

Here’s the problem. This campaign started right after Thanksgiving. By my calculations, that means I’ve been asked if I’d like to feed a family at least 20 times. All of a sudden, my reactions are less emphatic. “Um, well, I already did that, you know, like, yesterday soooo….” And then the cashier and I stand there, looking at each other passively, trying to pretend like we’re still experiencing the brother/sisterhood of humanity and that this interaction is not awkward and that we still love human beings.

I know what that cashier is thinking. They’re thinking, “What, this middle class white person is buying a $13 grilled cheese sandwich but they can’t afford to give $5 so some poor people can eat? Who are they kidding? They think they’re getting away with this? This is why the world is going down the drain. This is why there’s an income gap. This is why welfare is SO NECESSARY. This is why AIDS is killing people in Africa.”

In MY head, I’m thinking, “I’m a terrible person. Really? Really I’m buying a $13 sandwich wrapped in recycled paper and I’m refusing to feed a family? Really? I should starve to death, I deserve it. But, on the other hand, if I give $10 every time I come into this store, I’M going to be one of the people who needs that free meal. So, no, Whole Foods cashier, I don’t want to donate this time. I want to buy my $13 grilled cheese sandwich and $9 4oz. cup of tomato soup, get in my fuel-efficient car, and be on my way.” Whoever came up with this campaign is clearly a genius. The only things White People like more than Whole Foods are saving the world and embracing cultural differences in the name of equality. This campaign covers both bases. It exploits the self-imposed obligations of the entitled class. Jerks.

If I were in a more aggressive place, like maybe Safeway in a blue-collar neighborhood, there’d be a stand-off involved. We’d be able to discuss the fact that I wasn’t donating AGAIN like mature, hotheaded adults. But we’re in Boulder, and we’re in Whole Foods, and when in Rome, aka Boulder, I do what the Romans do, which is to passive-aggressively avoid eye contact and drop a lot of names of charities that I’ve donated to in the past month (uh, 5 years) before the cashier has a chance to ask me if I’d like to feed a family. I tap my feet to the Louis Armstrong Holiday mix, make a reference to the vegan lentil soup I’m making, and bada bing, bada boom, I’m on my way, no longer staring cashier or the hungry family in the face, free to enjoy my overpriced lunch with peaceful thoughts of how much I’m helping the world.

But the guilt’s there. It just is. So in reality, while I imagine being able to skate unscathed through this interaction, I get through the avoid eye contact part, I get through the jokes about vegan lentil soup, and then they manage to slip in that question: “Would you like to feed a family?”

And every time, my answer’s the same: “Nnnn—nyes! Ok! Great! Great. I’m having a great time here in Whole Foods.” Every time.

Merry Christmas.

I recently saw a silly greeting card on someecards.com that read “You’re going to love hating living in New York.” Soon after, I stumbled upon this article in the New York Times. Big shock, New Yorkers are the unhappiest state population in the union. The happiest states include much of the south and a handful of less-populated states in the west.

I happen to find this hilarious. Oh, I think the New York part is probably about right. When I lived in New York, I complained constantly about my quality of life. I bitched about subways, commuting, the cold, the way my hair looked in the humidity, the gray sky, the lack of exercise culture, the aggressive work week, the dirty martinis, the lack of Mexican food, the grime, the wind, the rain, and just about anything else that happened to infringe upon my comfort zone. So did everyone, because we could. And then we went on with our lives, self-analyzing, drawing on inspiration, generally doing business that makes the country run, and feeling slightly superior for living where we lived.

The places on the happy list are in poor areas with low levels of education. I’m sorry, but isn’t there a hint of “ignorance is bliss” in this list? Are these people happy? Or do they simply not know any different? I think there’s also a negative correlation between IQ and happiness; I have a hard time believing that the general population of Mississippi is as smart as the general population of New York.

Smarts aside, I think the city-happiness correlation is like the relationship-happiness correlation. I happen to live in a pleasant city right now. Boulder’s like the hot significant other that’s really nice, pretty friendly, funny enough, but the spark just isn’t there. I like to walk around and hold Boulder’s hand. I like to snuggle up on the couch with Boulder and watch a movie. But if I ever brought up a deep topic with Boulder? Ha, we’d drive each other nuts, Boulder trying to calm me down and telling me to let it go, me feeling stifled and like we’ll never understand each other. Boulder’s nice, it really is, and we could probably be together forever, coexisting in our separate spheres, smiling at each other without understanding, having only the occasional affair. But I’d know it’s just 80%. I’d know I wasn’t pushing myself to my full potential.

New York, on the other hand, is like the fiery passionate love affair. New York’s a little bit ugly, but man, has it got wit, a sense of humor, a drive to get things done, and fierce independence. Half the time we’re involved in passionate embrace, half the time we’re throwing the champagne flutes at each others’ heads, threatening to end it and move out. We engage, we push each other, we analyze, and we help each other grow. We seek to understand, and even though we get comfortable, there’s always something there that we didn’t know about each other, the discovery keeping the relationship interesting forever. We’re both sublimely happy and awkwardly miserable, but we can’t muster up the strength to find someone else.

I don’t know if I can marry either city. But when it comes to long term, I’ll take harsh reality over bread and circuses, maybe just cohabitating with NYC until it becomes common law.

“Why is the bread holey?” I looked up at my mother with earnest 6-year-old baby blues. She’d just served me and that afternoon’s play date a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on two slices of stale wheat bread that resembled swiss cheese. Jelly was oozing out of every crevice, coating my fingers with a sticky film. I despised sticky fingers. It was making me nervous.

“It’s special bread,” my mom said, with just the faintest hint of a blush creeping into her cheeks. “I made it.”

“What’s this blue fuzzy stuff?” my playmate asked. My mom looked, horrified. I didn’t know it then, but that blue fuzzy stuff was a patch of mold missed as my mother had mauled the bread, scraping and cutting out the bad bits, trying to salvage the end of a very old loaf.

“Frosting. Just eat it.”

Such was the nature of the lunch play date at my house. While my friends’ parents served Chef Boyardee, grilled cheese and tomato soup, and Kraft macaroni and cheese, my mom dug up whatever looked the least terrifying from the fridge, arranged it artfully, and pawned it off on kids that didn’t know any better. My friends would turn their noses up and scamper back to the magic fairy land we’d built in the scary unfinished basement while I would dutifully eat every bite.

This was all fine and well until a little later in elementary school, when my mom’s lack of willingness to cater to the tastes of a child created some awkwardness in quintessential social interactions. Whereas the 6-year-old doesn’t know the difference, a major determiner in the cool-factor of a 9-year-old is the kind of food their mother keeps in the pantry: the leaders of the pack get their moms to buy stuff like Cheez-its and gushers, Mountain Dew and Twinkies. I’m not even sure my mother knew what a Twinkie was. Besides the aforementioned moldy bread, my mom oft had expired yogurt (“oh, come on, that stuff never goes bad”), shriveled vegetables, and unidentifiable tupperware container contents that resembled science experiments. The protocol when dealing with these foodstuffs was to open the lid, take a big old sniff, and if the smell didn’t make you immediately want to vomit, it was probably safe to eat.

At that age, it was also standard operating procedure to talk to your playground friends about how picky of an eater you were, and how you’d managed to force your parents to make a sandwich or buttered noodles instead of eating the gross adult food like foie gras and truffles. I always found myself silent and uncomfortable in these conversations. My mom had probably never heard of foie gras, but she had heard of the crockpot. And I’d no sooner get away with forgoing my chicken dinner, cooked until tasteless and leathery, than I would be allowed to play in traffic or stand on the corner smoking cigarettes.

It wasn’t easy to have discriminating tastes in my household. We were a family that was expected to eat anything that was put in front of us, edible or no. Generally, my mom did all right when she could use the microwave or draw on her Midwestern roots to create “salads” that contained very few vegetables and plenty of mayonnaise. But I remember distinctly a couple of absolute disasters, including an eggplant casserole, no doubt lifted from the pages of a diet cookbook, that caused a 3-day long bout of fake-vomiting and volunteering to be sent to bed without dinner.

The casserole looked relatively normal: A big glass baking dish filled with mush and specked with unidentifiable colors and chunks. It had a faint red hue, which we associated with lasagna or spaghetti pie, so we were expecting something of an Italian nature.

Mom cut big slabs of the congealed paste and slapped them onto plates with enthusiasm. We were called to the table, poured big glasses of questionable milk, and then told to eat.

The smell resembled something between microwaved sneakers and warmed death. And the taste. God, the taste. Eating that stuff was like being forced to chew on tinfoil. For hours. While standing in an overused outhouse. And we were happy to let our mother know just what we thought of her cooking, with a series of gagging noises, followed by dramatically plugging our noses and swallowing.

Most parents, tormented by the high-pitched wailing and moaning of a particularly obnoxious child, would have surrendered. They’d have acknowledged that they fought the good fight and ordered Chinese food. Not my mom. She let us cry as long as we wanted, which was about 4 or so hours for three days in a row, and wouldn’t let us leave the table until every bite of the revolting vegetable concoction was gone. And she put the dog outside so as to eliminate any chance of foulplay. This was worse than Guantanamo. We threatened to run away. We threatened to commit suicide. We threatened to call child services. She offered to do it for us. It was a useless stand. Freedom fighters finally beaten, we forced down the eggplant casserole and plotted our revenge.

For all the shortcomings of this approach to family dinner, there were a couple of distinct advantages to being raised on more than just boxed starch. For instance, when I was a sophomore in high school, a friend’s mom inadvertently served us long-sour milk. None the wiser, I gulped the entire glass in a few swallows, noticing the strange texture, but not thinking much of it. My friend’s first sip made her gag, and we all waited with bated breath to see what the horrific outcome of my actions would be. Would I vomit? Diarrhea? Never come to the friend’s house again? 4 hours passed. Then 8. Nothing. I was in the clear, my body immune to rotten food.

This immunity has paid off in other countries. Dog in Indonesia, cow entrails in Argentina, mouse brain somewhere along the line, and the only thing that ever made me sick was the package of processed cookies in Buenos Aires. And really, I’d never have eaten any of that that food in the first place if it weren’t for the fact that being forced to endure torture by dinner had made me willing to give any food a try once.

Somehow, out of that food culture, my mother managed to raise two food snobs who not only worship pork fat and homemade pasta, but who also sit around comparing brands of knives used for cooking. And with this turn of events, she had no choice but to succumb to the inevitable evolution into a more conscious consumer, or she’d be left behind for dinner excursions. As much as my mother loves the microwave, she can’t stand to be left behind. In the name of socializing with her family, even her own palate became too discerning for tuna casserole.

Old habits die hard, though. I recently had business to attend to in her house and found a tomato rotting on the counter, juice everywhere. And when I cleaned out her refrigerator about a year ago to make room for a dinner party I was preparing, I found bread crumbs. From 1997.

The game of dating is ridiculous enough when it’s just about 1 boy and 1 girl, but there’s a periphery dynamic that should never be underestimated in making it even more complicated: the ex factor.

I’m not talking bitter with baggage seeks same. Obviously, dating the dude recently split from his pedestal girl presents its own set of ghastly challenges. I’ve had enough of convincing a current fling that I’m not the same kind of crazy as his last girlfriend to last me for an entire lifetime. Likewise, if I have to hear one more time about a dude being “unavailable” because he’s not over the ex he broke up with 4 years ago, I’m going to light someone on fire. I get it. She was beautiful, witty, charming, smelled nice, had good lotion, and has a successful career in HR. We all have that person. But are the rest of us sitting around and becoming either celibate monks or love-less prostitutes over the relationship that probably wasn’t THAT great anyway? No.

The ex factor I’m talking about, however, is the required interaction everyone has with the array of exes they’ve dated. This ex factor complicates relationships, but it also provides very real drama in single life.

Few human interactions are more fraught with danger than the obligatory catch-up drink with an ex flame. Depending on the ex in question and the nature of the prior relationship, this customary social event can resemble a wide variety of experiences including but not limited to Guantanamo torture, a quick draw duel, or a snuggly blanket. But even if I’m lucky enough to have the blanket situation, I’m always pretty sure I’m gonna get a rash of some sort from the interaction (and, no, not in that way… ew).

There are really only three reasons to plan an interaction with an ex: desperation, desire to tell the former significant other about how great my life is (especially when that great life includes a new great man friend), or the ex experiencing one of those two situations and thus berating me into meeting for a drink. Not one of these is a particularly pleasant reason to plan a reunion. All three of these foreshadow a convoluted interaction.

The desperation scenario is the main source of ex factor drama in singlehood, and it usually stems from a slew of confusing emotions plus a period of time in the barren desert of not dating. As time increases since my last romantic interaction with a male, I find myself reflecting on my exes, trying to dissect what went wrong. Inevitably, I’m unable to put my finger on the problem in at least a few cases. Maybe the timing was wrong, I’ll think. Maybe we’re right for each other but I didn’t give it a chance. I should just call him; no harm giving it a shot. When I’m trying to decide if I’m going to go through with a desperation-motivated meeting, I spend several hours feeling guilty, strangely vindictive, coy, and shameful, usually all kind of at the same time, over opening old wounds just because I’ve been experiencing a romantic dry spell. This oft results in a lot of phone tag and rain-checking.

Eventually, I decide to “live life with gusto” and go for it, which of course results in a highly unsatisfactory interaction. If he’s as desperate as I am, we make small talk for awhile, going through the key points of life since we were last beneath the sheets or out on dates, and remember exactly why we didn’t connect. And then we either drink enough to forget our lack of romantic spark and do the deed, or neither of us gets up the gumption to make a move and we both leave frustrated and dejected that we couldn’t even score that one. If he’s not as desperate as I am, I get more and more aggressive as the night proceeds, usually only stopping when he firmly tells me he’s not interested. And then, hey, frustration and dejection. Cool.

It gets even more complicated when my motivation is gloating about my happiness, usually because it brings another romantic player into the mix. The initiation of an ex interaction of this type initially comes from a more secure place. I think, what a delightful young fellow, that ex-love! I wonder what he’s up to these days! My life is wonderful, and his probably is, too. We should get together and talk about how wonderful our lives are! Maybe our significant others could meet! Maybe we could take an adult vacation to a Sandals resort in the Caribbean!

Nice, right? Except that in the back of my head, I’m reflecting on the power dynamics of our former relationship and subtly positioning myself to keep the upper hand. Not so nice. My approach with setting up this kind of meeting is more aggressive: facebook wall posts, text messages, voicemails that start “How ARE you?” The badgering gets so persistent that my poor boyfriend-past finally runs out of excuses, breaks down tortured witness style, and agrees to a drink. And then we spend an evening in subtle competition trying to out-life each other, feeling, in the end, both self-righteous and a little insecure. Occasionally this interaction completely backfires, my significant other having done way more cool things than me since our last meeting, and then I spend the night irritated at him, irritated at my current fling (who I’m sure is then so glad he pretended he was so cool about me meeting my ex out), and irritated with myself for putting myself in an ego-deflating situation.

Being on the receiving end of an aggressive attempt to reunite is possibly the most dangerous place of all. When the ex is the one pushing for the happy catch-up, I find myself analyzing his intentions with the careful obsession I normally reserve for a new crush. First, I have to determine whether he’s desperate or whether he wants to tell me about his great life. Then I have to assess my life state, deciding which game I want to play. Finally, I have to time all interaction so as to not appear too interested, thus preserving the nature of obligation and the upper-hand. And even my careful detective skills can lead to wrong conclusions, setting me up for a night of aggressive pursuit when I thought we were going to be talking about our careers, significant others, plans to buy dogs, and general level of life-perfection.

With every interaction, there’s always a risk of bad decision, and that’s what the ex factor really is. After all, the attraction and [perceived] connection has been there before, who’s to say a beer or 10 won’t bring it back? 9 times out of 10, morality and text messages from a current fling keep me on the straight and narrow, but life gets a lot more complicated when I go in to the game ready to gloat about my new love interest… and wake up in my ex’s house the next day with an inexplicable rekindled crush, having drunkenly justified this action because I’m not yet official with the new dude. Suddenly, I’ve derailed a future relationship and reignited a lot of disgusting emotions that will probably send me down the road, listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel” and living in a moment of blinding nostalgia.

When does this end? Why do some moments of my life turn into some weird ex vortex, where I’m unable to escape love (or lust) long lost? I thought the games died with the relationship. Apparently that’s only the beginning. Hooray. Let the games begin.

I’m going to be 24 tomorrow. That’s firmly in my mid-twenties. That’s firmly in the age group where it’s suddenly not as okay to be talking about a lack of life plans. Here is my happy birthday to me post.

I’m just gonna say it, graduation was a hoax.

I’ll never forget how I felt that day. When I was walking across the stage to receive that diploma cover (I’d get the real thing in the mail after my final grades were entered), I felt cool, calm, collected, and ready to take on the world.  I was leaving an epic 4 years, childhood, paper-writing, exams, terrible hangovers, and bad decisions behind to embrace the world of finance and my future.

That feeling lasted maybe 6 minutes.  Now, it’s about 3 years later and I feel more like this:  hey college, you warm, snuggly, slightly alcoholic blanket.  Take me back.  Please?  Turns out paper-writing and exams beat actual work work, and the terrible hangovers and bad decisions don’t go away.  Plus now I just live with this incredible uncertainty wondering if I am in fact moving myself toward a fulfilling future.  That’s fun.  I’m sure it’s doing wonders for my health and well-being.

Perhaps you have been better about post-graduation plans than I have, but I’ve spent the past three years chasing a whim, declaring I’ve learned a lesson, and following another whim. My experiences are varied:  I’ve led a culture and language team, crunched numbers for a financial consulting company, sold wine to consumers, sold wine to restaurant and liquor store owners, scrubbed ovens, reviewed restaurants, made reservations for luxury hotels, incorporated a business, and cocktail waitressed.  As my grandma says, I’m going to have to start carting my resume around in a wagon.

Varied though these experiences may be, the result is always the same:  decisiveness in pursuing a whim, euphoria at my impulsive actions, irritation over the fact that whatever I pursued wasn’t the magic happy bullet.  So, you know, repeating a decision over and over and over and expecting a different outcome.  I think that’s actually the definition of insanity.

Because I can, I’m going to blame this one in some part on my parents.  “You can do anything,” they’d tell me, “You’re so smart.  You can be a doctor or a lawyer or a politician or a professional athlete or an astronaut.  You want to fly?  You want to get a superpower or two?  You can do it!  You special girl, you.”

Assholes.  How in the HELL am I supposed to weed through the myriad of choices that I have in order to derive a career that will sustain me for a lifetime?  That’s a big old commitment to make.  And as I’m an experiential learner, I’m doomed, because I’m not really going to know if I’ll like something until I start to do it.

Add to this wealth of choice the fact that I don’t have just one motivation.  I’m so jealous of my friends who just want to make a lot of money.  Or just want to advocate on behalf of the less fortunate.  Or just want to take over the world by usurping political power from others. What I wouldn’t give to have one overpowering desire that would lead me toward venture capitalism, non-profit work, or politics.

But as it is, with no family business, overarching goal, special talent, or independent wealth, I have to navigate the trenches of indecision with just my cunning to protect me.  And that totally sucks.

I don’t think I would be concerning myself with any of this if it weren’t for the fact that I experienced a very real panic attack this summer.  Suddenly, after months of doing whatever I wanted to do at the very moment I wanted to do it, I became disgustingly interested in where I wanted to be in 10 years.  This is gross.  Mostly because I feel like the inevitable boring conclusion to that envisioned future is something along the lines of “living in a family home rearing kids while balancing a boring work-person job that involves a lot of conference calls.”  I hate conference calls.  And I also don’t really know how I feel about family homes, particularly if they’re situated in the suburbs.

I’d much rather picture myself jet-setting around the world, the key executor of some major component of a deal, only to get home to my swanky West Village apartment in time to cook dinner, talk to my kids about cultural outings and appropriate wine pairings for whatever dish I was preparing, and welcome my deliciously attractive husband home from his grueling day.  This would all probably take place in French, or maybe Italian.

As I write this, I’m mere months away from yet another life-changing decision. After a lot of soul-searching and plenty of irritating conversations with various sages in my life, I came full-circle to what I’ve always inherently known would be the last step along the way:  I want to be a lawyer.  Thus I’m going to law school.

I know what you’re asking in your brain because sometimes I ask it in my brain:  Is this really different?  Am I merely taking the plunge into another field, hoping it will be the magic bullet? Well, gentle reader, at the very least, I’ve exhausted all the other options, and I’m still back where I started. And happy bullet? Absolutely not. I’m expecting to hate moments in my law career. I’m expecting to write a lot of posts about the misery of my life in law school. Rather than acting on impulse, I feel more like I’m grudgingly at the end of a whimsical era, succumbing at last to the inevitable.

The school era closed with a cap and gown and crisp diploma, but this era will likely close much less ceremoniously. In a sense, I’m going to miss it. I can already tell I’ll be looking back at this period of my life thinking about how great the carefree journey really was. But as on that stage, I’m feeling cool, calm, and collected, ready to leave the hangovers behind. That’s probably not going to happen, but maybe I’ll at least be drinking more adult appropriate alcohol.

I’ve been posting for over a year, and I feel like I don’t even know you. Let’s get a little too personal. I’ll go first. You’re about to see a side of me I should probably keep tied up and locked in the closet for eternity. It’s a dumb insecure side. It’s a side that isn’t going to make me any friends. And it’s a side that may put some strain on future romantic relations. But guess what? I’m going to talk about it anyway because for some reason, as with just about everything else I write about, I can’t stop myself. So here goes. Please still read my blog. Please still be my friend.

I am a dumb girl. No, strike that. I am a dumb DUMB girl.

I explored a lot of possible topics for a blog post today. I pondered discussing the commodity meat market in the United States and implications of local vs. organic. I considered portraying a lovely little metaphor comparing a fulfilled life to a mountain bike ride (I don’t mountain bike, though, so I’m not sure that would have really made sense). Anything to get away from what has suddenly become my favorite topic: single life and relationships.

But, alas, here I am, a dumb dumb girl, a fact that is immensely evident due to my decision today to carry around a pink bag with my name scrolled across it, and I need to come clean.

You see, as I’ve been posing as this distant sage on what’s going on in male-female interactions, coolly indifferent and untainted by a love interest of my own, I’ve been involved in a year-and-a-half long dramatic saga, acting worse, more disgusting, and more vile than any girl I’ve ever observed, and I need to exorcise the demons. It’s time to at least pretend that I want to move on into delightfully mature adult relationships built on trust and communication. I’ll be 24 on Thursday, and that’s firmly in my mid-twenties. On some level, I’m tired of being a child, having some variation of playground relationships over and over and over again. You, gentle readers, can help me. I welcome any advice. And I thank you in advance for lending your unsuspecting ear for my horrifically pathetic tale.

It’s an unfortunate truth that we all want what we can’t have. Woody Allen, wise prophetic god amongst men, postulates in one of his movies that only unfulfilled love can be romantic. Once love is fulfilled, it becomes boring. Lord knows I hate boring. Lord knows I love Woody Allen. Lord knows that it’s the unfulfilled love making me absolutely 100% psychotic.

Let’s start at the beginning. Approximately a year and a half ago, I met a guy who is everything I’ve always wanted. He’s very tall, has dark hair, a great smile, a good bod, a sexy sense of style, and he occasionally wears glasses. Below the surface, he’s funny, he’s smart, he’s had as much or more life experience that I have, he makes me think, he enrages me, his emails are remarkably free of grammatical errors, he’s comfortable in social situations ranging from black-tie on down to keg stands, and he smells good. He’s also Jewish, but not religious, and successful by the conventional standard, but doesn’t act like a douche bag. I’m sorry, can you blame me for instantly falling in love? Aesthetically and intellectually everything I’ve always wanted. On paper.

We met in a crowded d-bag bar in Denver, a breeding ground for post-college frat-tastic boys nights out. He claims not to remember the events of the night, but I do. We talked for a long time. He suggested we get married so our life could resemble Dharma and Greg. We went out for breakfast at Pete’s Diner at about 3 am. And then we went back to his house, where we did NOT have sexual relations, and I dropped the bomb on him that I was moving to New York. In 3 weeks.

Oh, it was easy to play it cool back in those early days. What did I care? I was leaving. This fun fling would never come to fruition. I made a lot of jokes about back-door moving in with him and photoshopping our pictures together to frame in his house. He seemed to think I was cute; I could play it like I was far too carefree for anything like a serious relationship.

Until somewhere in those magical 21 days, 5 of which he was out of town, I fell hopelessly and revoltingly in love with the guy. Maybe I fell in love with the guy. I’m not sure. My memories are muddled. Mostly because I went on a month-long soul-searching trip right after we met. Too much time on a bus listening to my “pensive” playlist on the old iPod while the romantic Chilean and Argentine scenery rolled by may have had something to do with the twitterpated feeling in my heart and stomach. His email responses to my witty trip updates may have also fueled the fire: “you can’t start seeing a guy two weeks before you leave on a trip, then tell him you are moving out of state, (which he took like a champion, by the way) and then just up and decide not to return to the US at all!” and “Of course I’d like to visit you and maybe even sleep in your swank Brooklyn apartment.” And never doubt the power of endless conversations with a close friend on the possibility of having found “one that could really count for something” (whatever the hell that means).

So that was awesome and all until, as promised, I did move to New York and suddenly inexplicably became unable to move on to new love conquests, and so began the inevitable transformation into a dumb dumb girl.

Our interactions became strained, at best. First I sent a lot of drunken text messages suggesting we keep dating and maybe even move in together someday. Then it was enraged drunken text messages because he made it clear the notion of continuing to date and moving in together some day was not in the cards. Hanging out in Colorado led to highly unsatisfying meetings in which he would tell me all about the girl he’d recently started dating, I’d either act pouty or say flat-out that I wanted to date him, we’d have a highly unsatisfying sleepover, and then we’d go our separate ways. I totally can’t figure out why he was suddenly not interested. Wretched is SO cute. Cute, also, are the myriad of emotions experienced in rapid-fire succession, the time required to go from loving and ecstatic to enraged and jealous remarkably miniscule. I sent pathetic emails, had pathetic gchat conversations, turned every interaction into something far too dramatic for the situation, and obsessed over every word, glance, and touch exchanged.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t talk about anything else with my friends (here’s a revealing look at women, boys: we analyze EVERYTHING. If you’ve ever even crossed our minds as a love interest, you’ve been dissected, organ by organ, Operation board game style, with our friends acting as the little buzzy things on the side when we probe things wrong). Big surprise, after about 6 months of my endless obsessing, my friends thought I needed to forget about this guy. My feelings clearly weren’t requited.

After 8 months in New York, I moved back to Colorado and we entered a period in which we were pretending to be “friends.” Maybe he felt like we were friends. He probably did. But I can tell you it puts a real strain on a friendship when you’re wishing death (or at least sudden obesity) upon every woman he considers dating. It doesn’t do wonders for your close bond to avoid going out in groups with him so as to avoid seeing him interact with other girls. And it sure as hell doesn’t facilitate honesty when you’re restraining every conversation to circumvent other love interests, other guys who have found you attractive, and generally any goings-on in life that don’t involve him. Such was our “friendship.” Punctuated by dramatic fights that didn’t ever really get to the heart of the issue.

At some point, I convinced myself that I didn’t want anything romantic with him. That I was okay with just being best best best best friends and that’s it. That I could maturely accept that I wanted this guy in my life but not as anything more than a confidant. As someone who was great but not for me. And then I still cancelled plans with other friends to hang out with him, apologized profusely for things that weren’t my fault, and bent over backwards to try to make him think I was good enough to be his friend.

Okay, go ahead, gag. Seriously, gag. I’m gagging. Really, I’m even making that gagging noise. In a crowded coffee shop. People are getting nervous, including the cute guy sitting across the room from me. But come on, how does this happen? I’d like to think that I’m generally a pretty independent lady, doing my own thing, dating on my own terms, and never, and I mean never, getting hung up on guys like this. If anything, I get obsessive until I drive it into the ground, grossed out by my own emotions, and then I move on to the next dude without a glance back, vowing to never make the same mistake again (which, of course, I do, over and over and over). So how does a girl like that spend a YEAR AND A HALF acting like a crazy bitch from a terrible romantic comedy? Seriously, Hollywood, fuck you.

This is inexplicable to me. I’m not desperate. I’ve had flings, boyfriends, love connections, and male interest in that year and a half. I haven’t been hurting for interaction with men. It’s not like I’ve been isolated alone in Antarctica with just my memories to keep me company. I see all the other fish in the sea every day, and most of them are pretty cute. So what the hell? What is it inside of me that makes me unable to move on with my life? What makes him the one that got away, when there wasn’t ever a period of really having anything? Unfulfilled love or need for medication? Probably both.

So there you go, I am a dumb dumb girl. And somewhere inside of me, in some horribly dark and miserable place, I’m enjoying the drama, enjoying the challenge, and still hoping against hope that he’ll see the light, which, let’s face it, is never going to happen. I’d like to stop it. I’d like to go back to that lovely pre-this guy period when I didn’t act like I had an inferiority complex, didn’t have dramatic fights every couple of months or so, and didn’t talk about only this with some of my friends. I’m sorry to those friends. I’m sorry to the guy in question who, awkwardly, will likely read this post. And I’m sorry to the readers of this blog that I’ve been posing as the cool indifferent type. I’m coming clean in hopes that the embarrassment of having this out in the world for all to see will prevent me from behaving like a moron in weeks, months, and years to come. In hopes that somehow, admitting I have a problem will be the first step to a whole new me.

Crazy women of the world unite. I’m one of you. Hold me. Let’s stroke each others’ hair, watch “When Harry Met Sally,” and eat ice cream by the deliciously caloric pint. We all know that come tomorrow we’ll be secretly hoping he calls, but for now, let’s pretend like we don’t need him, anyway.

As a final note, I’m holding out for a positive resolution on this topic, and not one in which we end up together, riding into the sunset after our passionate elopement in France. No, no, I’m hoping for some medication, lobotomy, new guy, level of maturity, nugget of wisdom, or other solution that ends my year and a half long ridiculousness. I’m ready to break free, to be cool and indifferent once more.

And that’s why I’m getting personal. I want your thoughts. I want your advice. I want your obsession-free life. Think you can help? Sponsor me. Save me from myself. Relationship baggage is so unbecoming.

I’ve found a new variation on the third wheel debacle: the group first date.

A couple of nights ago, I found myself in a familiar social situation. I traveled with a group of my friends to Denver for a comedy show. The group was comprised of 4 males and 4 females. 1 male and 1 female are very much a couple. 1 of the males and I are very much not a couple. The remaining people were basically on first dates with each other, except that 6 of their friends were there with them to prevent them from acting horrendously awkward by having to talk to each other too much.

On paper, this seems like a great idea because it alleviates a lot of the horrific first date pressure. It’s kind of like a practice date before the real date: if it goes terribly, it can be passed off as a friendly get together. Plus, when 6 people are laughing at your joke or otherwise showing they generally like you, it’s a lot easier to seem cool, which is really all that matters on a first date.

So that’s tons of fun. I’m always happy to facilitate love matches among friends, and I often encourage these situations, laughing loudest and hardest of anyone there. As with any third wheel occurrence, I recognize when I’m needed in the convo—and when I need to butt out. I essentially play the role of a really awesome interactive accessory: I’m there to make everyone look good and then fade into the background when necessary.

When the date is bad or mediocre, I play a pretty integral role. When the date is epically successful, however, the group first date is a miserable experience for this single girl.

Take my experience a few nights ago. The night started fine; we all rode the bus, drinking classy beverages like Coors Light. We all ate pizza and laughed at the comedy show. And then we all went out drinking, choosing a venue without hordes of people so as to facilitate more conversation.

And that’s where things went wrong (or right, if you’re not me). This was an epically successful group date. Each person was really interested in their potential mate. So much so, in fact, that they had one of those experiences where it feels like no one else in the world exists. How heartwarming. Except that someone else does exist: me. And as the group surroundings melted away, I was still there, caught outside the happy warm tavern universe, cheeks pressed against the glass begging to be let in from the arctic chill.

Suddenly, the hopeful couples were sitting next to each other on low loveseats, legs crossed toward each other, enveloped in purring intimate conversation and strategically trying to show their affection from subtle touches on arms and legs. There was hugging. There was hair-flipping. There was lip biting. And there was me, across from them, alone with my blue martini, trying not to give anyone the stink-eye (even though my childish side wanted to pout), and trying to pretend like I was engrossed in a conversation (with who is anyone’s guess).

Naturally, there were a few moments (like when someone had to go to the bathroom thus bringing their mate momentarily back to reality) when one of my friends picked up on my discomfort with the situation and we had a conversation like this:

(them, subtly): “Are you sure you’re having fun?”

(me, loudly): “Oh YEAH! Of COURSE I am! Yeah, don’t worry about me! I love this couch and my drink and I’m totally FINE!”

“Ok, well just say the word if you want to leave.”

“Oh, no, no, I’m SO good. Better than good. I love this song, I love you people, I love this drink, I love my life. Everything about it. Right now.”

“Ok, just let me know.”

“Don’t you even THINK about me! Go over there and get your swerve on!”

Inside my brain, though, I was having a pretty self-righteous little inner monologue. Like, hi, I’m the ultimate wing woman here. I’m sequestered by myself on the single couch with no one to talk to (perks of the quiet place where couples can hear each other) and no one is even going to remember that I was here. Then I’m probably going to go home and die alone with my cats. But this is what I do because I’m SUCH a good friend.

Between a rock and a hard place, that. Due to the noticeable lack of patronage in the bar as well as my awkwardly bad attitude, the notion of striking up conversation with a random stranger is not really an option. Likewise, I can’t interfere in the conversation because then instead of being the really awesome accessory, I become the heinously tacky purse.

For all parties involved that night, I love you guys, I really do (don’t get defensive or start apologizing profusely- it’s not like that). But just like prom, I’m beginning to think it’s better not to go stag to these things. Next time, I’m bringing a date. Probably a girl. Maybe also some Beyonce. Whoa oh oh oh oh oh.

Happy Hanukkah.

Those of you who know me well know of my inexplicable affinity for Jewish holidays (and the chosen people themselves). I think this is because I feel like I was robbed: my grandmother’s maiden name is Bass; I can’t even express how disappointed I am that my great great grandfather had the nerve to convert. If conversion back to my roots meant automatically having a family that observed Rosh Hashanah and Purim, I’d be all over it. Unfortunately, I think conversion means I have to attend synagogue, which seems about as fun as church, which isn’t really that fun at all, except that the Puritan Protestants like to have weak coffee and weaker conversation after their services, while the Jews like to eat and interrupt each other. I like to eat and interrupt. I also have a tradition of overbearing matriarchs, for what it’s worth.

Possibly because of this affinity, I have a lot of Jewish friends. Each year, I watch jealously as they plan seders, imitate their Jewish grandparents (“What, you aren’t eating? You goin’ anorexic on me?”), and anticipate their free trip to Israel. Who cares if they also fast in repentance for all the bad things they’ve done in the past year and eat unleavened bread for awhile? Worth it.

Though Hanukkah is less significant than some of the other holidays, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the festival of lights, plotting to subject roommates and friends to such Jewish treats as latkes and matzoh ball soup (do you even eat that on Hanukkah? I’m confused) as well as the ceremonial lighting of Lindsay’s tiny menorah. I want to spin the dreidl. I want 8 nights of gifts. I’d really really like to dance the Hora, but only after I’ve had a lot of wine and forgotten that I lack coordination.

I’m being totally serious. Stop judging me.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one all up on Hanukkah. I love the Jews, but Senator Orrin Hatch, Mormon family man and hymn arranger extraordinaire, really, really loves the Jews. He wears a Mezuzah around his neck and keeps a mock torah in his office, presumably in case the wisdom of the Book of Mormon fails him. He claims he wishes he was Jewish (touché, though I think that sends him straight to the outer darkness of Mormon hell). So this holiday season, the senator has teamed up with a liberal Jewish song-writer to craft a Hanukkah song for the Jews. He wanted Barbra Streisand to perform it, but had to settle on a Syrian-American instead. Yep.

You can watch the video here.

Syrian sings Mormon-written Jew song. Who needs the peace talks at Camp David? It’s the modern day “We Are the World.”

I feel you, though, Mr. Hatch. It may be the only thing on which we see eye-to-eye. So this year for Christmas, I’m asking for just one thing: 8 nights of Hanukkah instead.

There are several people in my life that provide an unpleasant but necessary service: my dentist, my doctor, the cute tiny woman who gives me a pedicure, my waxing lady, and my optometrist, among others.

Unpleasant as my experience may be with these people, it doesn’t even hold a candle to other providers of these services who were apparently trained in some torture facility in Romania and are posing as teeth cleaners and eye-dilaters.

I had an inkling that good unpleasant service providers may be important about 5 years ago when I went to a new doctor in my network. After 18 years with the pediatrician, it finally became a little awkward to sit in the waiting room, playing with the train set with the 5-year-olds, so I sucked it up and found an adult practitioner who had no lollipops, no stickers, and no fun. The practitioner did have, however, a rather interesting nurse.

“Laura!” A male’s voice was beckoning me into the nether regions of the fluorescent-lit aesthetically horrifying doctor’s office. I turned, expecting (hoping) to see some attractive young man in scrubs. Not the case. My nurse looked like he could be security at a Journey concert: black jeans, black dirty tee shirt, black braided belt, long red hair in a braid down his back. He looked quite pleased to see me as his patient.

“Up on the scale with you. What a good eater you are! From the looks of you, you must have a good Irish mother, just like me.” Uh, screw you, dude, that translates in my brain to “You’re a fatty.”

Journey nurse led me back to an examination room where he proceeded to ask me about all of my vices. I don’t know about you, but when a male nurse is asking me about my drinking, smoking, and sexual habits, the last thing I want to happen is for him to tell me all about his personal life. I know he was probably trying to build rapport, but come on:

“Drinker?”

“Socially.”

“Of course, you’re Irish [perhaps it’s appropriate to note here that I am maybe, maybe 1/16 Irish]. Smoker?”

“No.”

“Good girl. How many sexual partners have you had?”

“Ummmmmmmmmm.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to answer. Just be sure you’re using condoms. I didn’t use a condom. Got Chlamydia. Now I’m sterile. Welp, ok, the doctor will be right in.”

I can remember very few times in my life when I was rendered speechless. This was one of them. I changed my clothes and did my best to modestly cover all my sacred parts with the child-sized swath of fabric I’d been left and then tried to arrange myself in a position that didn’t scream “I’m anxious” to wait for the doctor. I settled upon crossing my legs and leaning back on one hand, a move I hoped said, “I’m totally comfortable with the painful exam you’re about to perform.”

She walked in about 5 minutes later, talking at me 100 miles per hour about mental health and why soda is bad. Finally, after all the blood pressure and normal stuff, it was time for the unpleasant female part of the experience. This part sucks no matter what. For you males who are lucky enough to never have to experience the joy of the gyno, there are stirrups involved. There’s also a lovely little tool with roughly the diameter of a watermelon (ok, at least that’s what it feels like) and lots of horrific swabbing. Bet you’re glad you know.

But first was the breast exam.

“Sorry,” said my doctor, “I just finished a diet coke. My hands are freezing.” That they were. There are few things more awkward than nipping out while your doctor is making sure you don’t have breast cancer. I felt the need to explain myself, but kept my jaw clenched shut.

Into the stirrups. After a few minutes of probing, the doctor packaged up all the little swabs and announced that she was done.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, “We’re going to do a cholesterol test. I’ll send the nurse back in to draw your blood. When he’s finished, you can take this package-“ she gestured at the tools she’d just been dragging around my cervix “-to the lab and be on your way.”

Let’s review. Journey nurse is going to come into the room with my female reproductive tools on display, draw my blood, and then I’m going to have to exit the privacy of the doctor’s office and take my little happy woman package to the lab. Great. Great.

I quickly changed my clothes to avoid the awkwardness of wearing a hospital gown in front of the former STD victim, who came in and chatted at me while he drew my blood. And by “drew my blood” I mean poked the needle in my arm at least 3 times looking for my vein. Finally, the blood was drawn, the nurse was gone, and I was collecting myself before making the trek with my swabs over to the lab.

I gathered my things and walked out—and ran into the Journey nurse, again, who was leading another patient to an exam room for their torture session. He paused, glanced at my lab tools, looked at my arm, poked the gauze, and said, “that’s really scabbing up nicely.”

Needless to say, I promptly found a new doctor.

After that horrific event, there was a good stretch there that I felt I had all my providers in order: I had a doctor who was encouraging me to drink and hook up more (and prescribed Ambien for overseas flights), I had a cute Vietnamese woman who minimized pain in the Brazilian wax, and I had a dentist and optometrist that I’d been seeing forever.

And then I moved to New York and had to start over.

One day, I realized I hadn’t been to the dentist in about a year and a half since not living with my parents anymore meant that no one was nagging me to make an appointment. Eager to take on the scheduling responsibility and ownership for my beautiful teeth, I asked a bunch of people to recommend a dentist. A coworker suggested a woman who kept an office on the Upper East Side. Reasoning that rich people like good dentists and probably go to dentists that live in their neighborhoods, I decided this was a safe bet.

My dentist was young, like maybe 2 years out of dentist school. Her practice was in a small house wedged inexplicably between surrounding skyscrapers. And she was clearly nervous, which made me clearly nervous.

She led me back to the chair and instructed me to open wide. This was a new one for me. In my past experience, the dental hygienist did all the dirty work and then the dentist came and took a two-second look at my mouth, maybe probed a couple of teeth with a sharp stick, declared that my teeth looked beautiful, and sent me on my way. And now I know why. Dentists, skilled s they may be in seeing cavities and gum disease, are apparently not trained in being gentle. Somewhere in that hour of being pinned to the chair, mouth open, while various tools scraped and ground and made high-pitched squealing noises, I started to have a panic attack. My gums were bleeding, a nerve was struck, and I suddenly understood why everyone hates the dentist.

The worst part of the whole experience came as she was leaning my chair up and taking my napkin from around the neck. Normally, this is the point when the dentist gushes over my good mouth genes, tells me I’ve got not a single cavity, and says something like, “Just look at that beautiful smile!” So it rained on my parade quite a bit when she told me two things that really put the icing on the cake from hell: I had a cavity, so I’d have to come BACK to her office the next week, and I had a weird bone growth in my jaw that needed to get checked out by an oral surgeon.

For the first issue, I grudgingly made my appointment, and then was subjected to her hands of torture again as she injected me with nerve-number and used some things that smelled like burning to “fill my cavity” so I could drool all day at the office. If I ever have to get another filling, I’m going to need laughing gas or anesthesia. Traumatic.

As for the second issue, I walked around for about 10 months convinced I had oral cancer. I’d called my old dentist immediately, who said he thought it sounded like nothing. Since half of me likes to walk on the wild side, I opted not to make the oral surgeon appointment. The other half of me, however, is an obsessive hypochondriac, so I’ve spent a good chunk of time since moving back to Boulder wondering if I was going to die a slow painful death.

I went to the dentist today, a lovely dentist that kissed me on my head and told me my teeth were as beautiful as I am. Turns out my bone growth is present in 80% of adults. Not dying. And not ever taking my service providers for granted again.