I've mentioned The DP Show on here before, and it's a podcast I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically encourage everyone to listen to. And like female trailblazers before me in history, I have accomplished new heights for womankind through nagging, whining and boobflashing -- and I am now the first female co-host to serve on the show. So go CHECK IT OUT, BITCHES...
I’ve waited a lot of tables in my time. There are a lot of different tables you can wait on, and the people who sit at them are as different as the tables themselves. High top bistro tables. Banquet tables. Booths. Alcove tables. Bar rails. I’ve waited on them all, and all the different breeds of patrons who have sat at them. They all have stories, from the hilarious to the depressing. But the best stories I have, in my career as a waitress, come from the round tables with the cushy lounge chairs on wheels.
I was a strip club cocktail waitress.
It’s not the noblest profession, I’ll admit – I wasn’t curing cancer or formulating a functional plan for world peace. And it’s not really something my guidance counselor had pointed me toward (instead, I was pointed toward journalism; because I’m convinced he hated me). But it was a functional employment for the time – I was a senior in college, broke off my ass prior to working there, and it paid the bills while still allowing me to go to school during the day. The job served its purpose, which was to pay my bills and allow me to eat.
So with that introduction in mind (I’m really bad about long-winded intros, sorry), I’m entering into a whole new domain of stories here at How2, ones that get filed under the “Stories My Children Will Never Know” tag.
One thing you don’t see often in strip clubs is patrons in wheelchairs. However, it happens, because contrary to popular belief, cripples are people too. I don’t know how paraplegics’ penises work, I’m pretty much convinced they’re like robot penises that go all BEEP BEEP BOOP and have “engage” and “disengage” buttons, but I can assume that just because your legs have been rendered useless by whatever arbitrary tragic life circumstances doesn’t mean you don’t like seeing leggy blondes with big fake boobs and series of poor life decisions rub their crotches in your face.
So anyway. Wheelchair patrons, while rare, aren’t completely unheard of. So while we all briefly noted the bachelor party when it came in, complete with a blushing groom in a wheelchair (like I said, they’re people too!), it really wasn’t a huge spectacle. The party took up camp in the VIP room, and as their waitress, I was a soon providing full bottle service with Jose Cuervo and shots of Patron. They were, for the most part, polite, and just having a good time celebrating their friend’s wedding the next day (because let’s be honest, who ever thought he’d actually find love?).
It was one thing for the dancers to give this guy a lap dance in his chair. No big deal. But after a good deal of tequila, the party thought it would be hilarious to sprawl their homeboy out on the VIP couch for a more intense session. So they picked him up out of his chair, which he went along with because, well, he was very drunk. And so, we had Wheelchair Guy being carried and posed in the VIP Room like it was Weekend at Bernie’s.
After paying for a private dance, the bachelor party decided to go walk (walk) up to the bar and get more drinks to give their comrade some alone time with Destiny, Crystal and Treasure. In that time, I’m sure he had the time of his legless life, nobody may ever really know – especially him. He was black out drunk. (Which may have been my fault.)
After an unknown amount of time, the bachelor party realized that The Groom’s private time was over, seeing the dancers wandering the club back on their usual routes, and went back to the VIP room.
This is when things get even more bizarre than they already were.
One of the partygoers comes up to me after they had disappeared back to the VIP Room.
“Hey, have you seen my friend?”
“Um, which one?” I ask, since there were probably a dozen of them. I scan over the floor to see if any of the guys were at the stage, or getting another drink at the bar. No luck.
“Uhhh, the guy whose party it is. He was getting a private dance and now he’s gone. His wheelchair is still in the room.”
Oh. You mean the GUY WHO CAN’T WALK? Is that what you’re telling me right this second? Did you LOSE THE GUY IN A WHEELCHAIR? Is that what you are asking me? Have I seen your friend, what, army crawling on the floor?
So this then begged the question: how do you look for a guy who can’t walk, and isn’t in a wheelchair? This is why I think they need to be tagged like cattle. Because you have no idea when your cripple is going to just roll away.
We put a notice out among the dancers and waitresses. The girls who’d been with him during his private dance said he was there when they left the room, albeit very close to passing out. So contrary to what his friends were suggesting, they did not carry him off. We then began scanning the floors, looking like someone had lost a contact more than lost their bachelor party honoree.
We wound up having to turn on the lights to look for him. His friends – all drunk out of their minds at this point – were convinced someone had carried him off. I’m pretty sure paraplegics have a pretty high mark-up value on the black market. It’s like the elephant man’s bones. Someone out there, probably some creepy Japanese businessman or Dubai prince, probably has like a whole collection of them. The entire club is at a standstill as we are looking for, and I repeat again, a lost paraplegic. No legs. He cannot walk. And he is lost, without his wheelchair.
Finally, I hear his friends yelling from the VIP Room, “We found him!” We all breathed a sigh of relief. The apparent story was that after the private dance, our bachelor drunkenly rolled off the couch. And being too drunk to understand which direction to crawl in to pull himself back up on the couch, he proceeded to roll/crawl under, waaayyy under, the VIP Room couch. (Which I’m not even going to begin considering what was under there…uggghhh.) Out of sight, out of mind, our Bachelor then passed out.
The entire club – patrons, servers, dancers, bouncers – applauded as he left. And I maintain that they really need tracking chips.
And now, a message from Pee Wee Herman…
I’ve been a total serious downer lately. Sorry guys. My life is one gigantic shit show right now in ways I can’t even really begin to divulge. So my writing has started to show it – and I totally bailed on NaBloPoMo. I’m sorry. After comments on the Deleted Post (if you saw it, you saw it; if you didn’t, don’t worry about it… I decided it’s best to confront the issues in another way), I feel obligated to state (the obvious) that I really have the greatest readers, and friends, a girl could ask for. Thank you for your continued readership and support. It means the world to me and keeps me going.
In a Word Document at this very moment, I have an actual, substantial, hopefully funny and interesting post in the works. So please have faith in me. And it involves BOOBIES! Stay tuned…
Besides being my #2 favorite song of all time (second only to this song), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" has always hit a deep resonation with me because of the opening synthesizer. If there could ever be a musical embodiment of how my brain works, it would be this. Constantly moving. Constantly frenetic and frantic and oftentimes incoherent. My brain never, ever, ever shuts off. I wouldn't go so far as to call it ADD -- I can pay attention quite well to things. Maybe too well. But it's always processing.
This is great in certain circumstances. Right now, I'm watching Monday Night Football, listening to music, writing a blog post, answering questions for my text-service query job for the place that I won't actively name but you probably know, and texting on my cell phone. I can multitask with the best and with terrifying accuracy and agility.
Sleep is difficult for me. My brain doesn't shut off to sleep. I've turned to remedying this with TV (I almost always require a TV on when I fall asleep, much to the anger/chagrin of many roommates and boyfriends), and oftentimes a combination of legal and illegal substances. The thoughts don't stop. The obsessing, the constant organizing and processing and analyzing, it never turns off unless I drown my brain with pointless late night television, or chemicals. Even then, sleep is difficult. I have, and still do, frequently go 2-3 days without sleeping. It doesn't come. It usually can't.
I tend to alienate people because I oftentimes get quiet. I can be the life of the party, loud and obnoxious, but often, I get quiet as I think and process the situation surrounding me. I move the furniture around the room in my head. I consider the amount of cream cheese on the bagel. I obsess on the pile of pillows over on that couch that are askew, and I'd love to straighten them, or refold those blankets on the back of the couch. People think I'm not listening; I'm listening. I'm just also running five or six other programs on the insane processing system that is my brain.
Even with that, I can function fairly well (although mildly socially retarded). But sometimes, there comes a glitch in the system. I start to think about a particular thought -- usually something unnerving, upsetting, or depressing -- and everything gets stuck. Whereas a normal person would probably think about it for a minute or two, decide to themselves, "That's too bad, oh well," and move on with their day, the paper jam continues. I obsess. I can't let it go. I fixate on it and it consumes me. It pulls me under.
I compare it to printing a 1,000 page document and the printer jams on page 2. The processing can't happen, but the damage can, and does. I become toxic as I continue to sink into this downward spiral of poisonous thinking. What follows is a predictable series of events for me -- I begin desperately grabbing for things that are stationary, things that are constant. Relationships are a big indicator. And if there's even the most remote sign of volatility in a relationship (whether real or imagined), I pull it into the spiral with me. I can't stop myself. I know what I'm doing and I can see it, even predict it, and I can't stop. The paper jam continues.
Things get dark. I get dark. I continue to fixate on what was once a minor problem and it is now an all-consuming black hole. I draw into myself. I alienate friends and family, particularly if I've pulled those relationships into the fray too. I turn off. I turn to sabotage, I make stupid choices and decisions in an attempt to cover up the downward spiral, but not necessarily stop it.
I can't stop.
I medicate. I drink. I draw further in. The lights get darker and the tornado gets bigger. The diameter of the damage gets bigger, and unless you know how to get me to stop -- which is essentially a solid, angry bitch slap, literally or metaphorically. The paper jam doesn't stop until you beat the shit out of the printer.
Oh, I get furious. I kick and scream. I lash out harder and more angrily, but the spiral stops. The machine has been turned off and groans to a stop.
I stop. I breathe. I think.
I breath. I surface. The fever breaks. I can think clearly again.
The well-oiled machine that is my processing ability fires up again. I go back to the frantic pace that is my mind, and all is well again.
But there is always the possibility of kinks in the system. I'm just always a little scared, after another "incident," that the people who clung on through the storm, may not have the patience to stay around to weather another one.
In the almost two years since I became a parent, the mundane routine of my life sometimes takes me down a dark and depressing road. But one of my favorite parts of the day is bedtime and immediately after. There's such a finality to the day, the first point since about 8 am that I've been able to inhale and exhale in the same second, and can stop and look back at another day down -- good, bad or ugly, it's done.
The bedtime routine itself is predictable and set. Diapers are changed, fish are bed, last call bottles are dispensed (yeah, she still has a bedtime bottle... we're working on it). Sophie Bears are summoned and snuggled into and last kisses are doled out. I turn on Nine Inch Nails on her boom box in her bedroom, a gift from her beloved Uncle Ham, and I shut the door behind me.
Then I breathe.
That's when my last routine of the day begins -- picking up her toys. It's something I find extreme comfort in. The blocks go back into their box. The blankets get folded up and put back on the chair. The babies go in specific order in her little chair, which she will go to first thing in the morning and kiss them good morning. Her little kitchen is lined up with the decorative boxes along the window, which store DVDs (and I replace the DVDs she's become obsessed with plucking out throughout the day). Her ride-on car is placed in the threshold of her kitchen. The dishes and big wooden spoon she uses for snacktime are rinsed off and replaced in the sink of her kitchen.
The dog hair is swept up and vacuumed. The baby gates are set to Security Level Green, which means they're open and I don't have to keep smacking my shins against them as I hurdle over them. The stereo is turned off as I throw up a middle finger at the thought of listening to Kidz Bop one more goddamn time. The TV is set off of Nickelodeon and onto E! or VH1 or whatever random mindless crap I plan to stare at and zone out to shortly.
The day's done. She's gone to sleep. The toys are picked up. It's done. I've survived another day in a job I never thought I wanted, let alone would be able to successfully complete every day. I live to fight another day.
Bring on the liquor.
As of November 5, 2009, I am now officially an undisputed, self-declared AUNTIE...
WELCOME TO THE WORLD, JACK JACK! I love you already and can't wait to meet you with your "cousin" and sure-to-be-partner in crime!
I've been going through some yearbooks and stuff stored at my parents' house, since they've finally committed to moving out of the house I grew up in, and I met the ghosts of my past as I unpacked a box full of trophies from my youth. I wish I could tell you the trophies were from Cool Kid Contests, and sports, and Most Blowjobs for the Football Team, and other highly-contested titles, but unfortunately, my biggest congratulatory bling came in the form of spelling bee trophies.
I was awkward at best through my junior high years. I was made fun of mercilessly, called “Stinky Tuna” because I sat with my legs open (I was a tomboy, lay off) and wore baggy clothes to hide the fact that I had boobs because when I wore things that showed them off I was accused of stuffing my bra. The only time I ever felt like I fitted in was when those aluminum chairs were lined up, the microphone on the stand was hot, and I could out-spell even Hicksville Middle School’s brightest.
I was the Spelling Bee girl. It was my niche. It’s what I did.
I remember my first taste of spelling bee victory. Fifth grade. I beat out Tyler Turnbull, the teacher’s son, with the word “soothsayer.” He cried. I gloated. And I got a cool trophy that immediately made me the object of mockery on the bus ride home. But hey, the bus driver said I did a good job and that’s all that mattered.
Subsequent bees were inconsequential. I spelled. I won. I gloated. I was reminded I didn’t have boobs and wasn’t pretty and didn’t wear clothes from American Eagle. Time passed and I continued to be the most mocked female in the class, but on spelling bee day, God have mercy on all of them. I wasn’t invited to your birthday party. I was shunned from your sleepover. You asked me to be your girlfriend just so I would accept and you and your friends could laugh at me. But dammit. I was going to out-spell all those little shits.
And I did.
Pretty kids don’t win the spelling bee. The quarterback who will eventually get a bigger scholarship than you goes out in the first round. The weird stinky kids are usually in the top 10, but rarely win. The spelling bee isn’t made for the winners of the world like those who joined a sorority or became a CEO. (Okay, I became a sorority girl but that was a completely different story.)
The spelling bee is awkward. The spelling bee is braces, bad acne, scoliosis and coke-bottle glasses. The spelling bee is the kids who get paper wads thrown at them and get tripped in the hall.
For two or three hours, we were better than them. We were the cool kids, if just for a little bit.
Some of my best friends I maintained through junior high and high school were weird kids I met at the county spelling bees. Kids who were made fun of and tortured like me. If the spelling bee is good for one thing, it’s a place where all those weird kids could be weird together. Then it turned into a complete bloodshed once those stage lights were on. But it was glorious geek blood, and it just made us into an ordained blood order of nerds.
The popular kids had their slumber parties and sports practices. They had their intimidating cliques in the hallway. They had their gaggle of hyenas in the backs of classrooms. But us? We had the spelling bee. It was ours.
And last night, I remembered being one of them. Being as tortured and awkward and misunderstood. And knowing that while on stage, those weirdos and dweebs and nerds felt like they mattered, felt like they had something special that was just theirs.
The other kids had plenty of opportunities in life to feel superior. But for us, the geeks and dweebs and mockeries of junior high, we have the spelling bee.
Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially resentful of being a parent and really feel like I hate my life, I feel consumed by the mindnumbing routine of my days. I miss and long for the days when I'd sleep til noon, go get lunch where the whim threw me, hang out with friends, maybe go to a bar, maybe not; take time to study or something equally unlikely.
Parenting is routine. Sure, she may decide to take off her diaper and smear a Poop Pollack on her bedroom wall again, and that might break up the day, but really, every day is achingly the same. I feel like I'm trapped in Groundhog Day but I don't even get the benefit of Bill Murray's humor.
Every morning, I wake up to a cheerful little voice babbling in the bedroom. I ignore it for another 15 minutes before she becomes irate, screaming and kicking the wall, and I come in to get her out of bed. She has thrown all the blankets and stuffed animals and Sophie out of her bed, and upon coming into the room, she points at the floor as though to let me know, "NOW look what you made me do."
I toss the blankets and stuffed animals and Sophie back into the crib and before she can argue this turn of events and toss them out again, I pluck her out and change her diaper, which is soaked, along with her pajamas, because this child is a pee machine. She screams and thrashes because it's cold and I have to do a move that is not unlike a full nelson as I wrangle the first Huggies of the day on her. I usually get kicked in the face at least once, usually twice. And she laughs. Then I dress her as we go through the different clothing items and body parts. She has them down at this point. "HAM? (Hand) SOCK! CHOOS? (No shoes, kiddo.) SHIRT!"
Then I hold her for a minute and she hugs me. Her tiny little body melts into mine and she pats on my back with her tiny little nugget hands. She gives me a kiss on the check, and I stand and I savor my "good morning" from my sweet little girl. I hug her back and squeeze her little body into mine until she spies her goldfish, Anna Nicole Fish, and we feed Fish her breakfast and then Punk wags her tiny little finger at it and sternly tells it, "EAT YOUR FOOD, YOU FISH." (It's really just a series of angry sounding vocalizations, but that's the sentiment.)
Before the fish food can even sink, she's asking for breakfast. "BITE? BITE? JUICE? BITE?" I set up her little chair and table in the living room and I turn on Handy Manny on channel 172 (Disney Channel, I think... I don't even know, I can turn on Channel 172 without even being conscious anymore). I get her juice (V8 Fruit Fusions, because it's one of the few ways I can pile vegetables into her), which I pour into her sippy the night before, and I break up a Nutri-Grain bar into four pieces and put it in a bowl, and I deliver them to her to she can watch her morning TV, eating her breakfast and drinking her juice, as I get around for the day. I prop up the Great Wall of Baby to corral her in to the living room and I quickly dash to my bedroom, because if she realizes that I've left the room she will tear down door frames to follow me.
I'm not a morning person. Anyone who has ever lived, crashed, worked, or had one night stands with me can easily attest to it. (I'm kidding about the one night stands. No, really.) So the routine has become burned into my mind and my subconscious to the point that I really have gone through it with my eyes closed. The day continues at a similar pace of routine and predictability. And a lot of the time I really miss the chaos that was once my child-free life.
But then there's always that first hug of the morning. That tiny little body melting into me, the little hands gripping my back, a soft little breath on my neck. That's the point when I realize I don't really miss it. No. This is good, too.
Like a good American, I've been in a mad panic over the clear and impending doom of the H1N1 (or the "hiney" flu as it's become known in Casa de los How2). I'd meant to get Punk vaccinated a few weeks ago, but the day before her appointment she came down with a nasty cold. So plans were put on hold, and by the time I was confident she was no longer a vat of Toddler Tantrums, Snot and Fail, the vaccine had run plum out.
So you can imagine the moment of panic and hysteria when I got word that a high school about 45 minutes away was hosting a free H1N1 Flu Shot clinic for children. Oblivious to just what I was about to get into, I piled Punk into the car and drove the 45 minutes to the school.
This is what I saw as I pulled in:
(Forgive the shitty quality, it was taken with my cell phone.)
That, my friends, is a line. That wrapped around the entire goddamn school.
But I had driven that far. And I was being guaranteed the line moved quickly. So I stood there with my toddler beside me in nothing more than a light jacket, since I'd assumed we'd be ushered into a gym soon, and I smiled and thought to myself, I'm an awesome parent.
Two hours later and we were still outside waiting. In the end of October in the midwest, where the minute the sun sets it instantly gets cold. Punk was a trooper as much as a toddler can be, but she was bored and tired and cold. So after two hours of standing and waiting, I no longer had my sweatshirt on and was standing in 45 degree weather in a t-shirt, with my sweatshirt wrapped around my tired, pissed off child, who I then held -- all 32 goddamn pounds of her, dead weight -- for another hour.
We got to the front of the line, through the doors of the school, where there was a gigantic flourescent sign awaiting us:
"[Insert County Here] RESIDENTS ONLY. HAVE IDENTIFICATION READY."
This is the point where I got a lot of hostile looks from parents around me as I said (unintentionally out loud), "Oh you have got to be FUCKING KIDDING ME."
I had been waiting 2.5 hours to find out that I couldn't get my kid vaccinated. I was cold, she was cold, we were cranky, we were half an hour late for her dinner time at this point, and we were both exhausted, and my biceps felt like they were about give out. No. I was not turning around. Fuck that shit with a big strap on.
So as I got to the front table to fill out the necessary forms, I got creative. I made up a fake address in the town we were in, and I lied through my teeth when they looked at my ID and I said we'd just moved to this town, and I hadn't gotten my driver's license changed yet.
I have never once in my life claimed to be a role model or an example for ideal moral compass. But I challenge anyone in that situation to just turn around and take your pissed off, cold child home. No. Oh hell no I wasn't turning back.
Punk finally got her Pork Poke, and I struggled to keep myself from having a complete nervous breakdown when they told me she'd need the second dose in a month. "Just go ahead and wait in the bleachers for 10 minutes to be sure she doesn't have a reaction," the nurse said.
Now, my daughter's welfare is constantly a priority for me. But at that point, after over three hours of waiting in the cold with a pissed off, hungry, cold toddler, I'd had it. Fuck it. She might have a reaction, but she probably won't, and that was a risk I was willing to take.
I walked out the gym doors, walked half a mile back to my car, and strapped Punk in. And what followed was something that my kid(s) will one day know is a situation where we don't talk to Mommy for a good long while, as I drove with Battle of Los Angeles on irresponsibly loud and stared blankly at the road, without muttering a word.
Mommy was done.
I've been a serious asshole about this blog lately. It feels like every other post I am whining that I have nothing to write about and apologizing like a little bitch for it. Sorry, I'm busy, my life's a wreck, I have nothing funny to say, blah blah blah... you know the routine at this point.
So it's National Blog Posting Month again. I figure my G's are in so I may as well jump in -- if for nothing else but to challenge myself to get back into writing and stop being a dick to my blog and the few people who actually keep coming back to read. I can't promise it'll always be quality, or funny, or pretty, or even coherent, but at any rate, yeah, sure, I'm in.
So hey, let's kick this shit off with a Punky Halloween Picture. Because my kid's teh win.
