Texts with My Bro: Another Week Begins...

C: Mondays are like Friday nights, except the opposite.

Me: I hate Mondays. I am Grumpelstiltskin.

C: Grumpunzel, Grumpunzel, let down your hair.

Me: Grumpilocks and the 3 Bears.

C: Grumpty Dumpty.

Me: Cinderella and her Fairy Grumpmother.

C: Grump Master Flash.

Me: Grump Shaker.

C: Correct. The Grump Cayman Islands, also the Grump Canyon.

Me: Oscar the Grouch! I WIN!

C: And Reebok Grumps.
Grump up the volume.

***9 hours later***
C: She had grumps like a truck truck truck.

Me: Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

C: Right?
Right?

Me: You win.

C: Forrest Grump.

Me: Donald Grump and the Grump Tower.

C: Grump card.
Sitting like a grump on a log.
Grump up the jams.

Me: I WILL ALWAYS PLAY THE GRUMP CARD!

***The next day***
C: Tuesdays are OK.

Me: I hate Tuesdays.

Texts With My Brother, the Wordplay Edition (what other kind would there be?)

C: Conan wants to get the word THRICE into the OED. I think we should help.

Me: Duhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I often use it in regards to defecation. As in, "I've pooped thrice today."

C: I've been to jail thrice. I don't want to go back.

Me: She's once, twice, thrice...a lady.

C: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, shame on you again. Don't call me no more.

Me: Excuse me, I've already warned you thrice. Go to the principal's office now.

C: Once bitten, twice shy, thrice less shy.

Me: Knock thrice on the ceiling if you want me! Twice on the pipes, if the answer is nooooooo!

C: Honestly, it was an honor just to be nominated...thrice.

Me: Lefty loosey, righty thricey.

C: If I've told you thrice, I've told you thrice-thousand times.

Me: If at first you don't succeed, try thrice.

C: You're thrice the woman I'll ever be.

Me: The tacos come with thrice and beans.

C: No, ANNIE!

Me: IWINNNNNNNNN!

C: Fine. You're thrice as good at this as me.

Word of the Day, vol. XXI

Word of the Day: DRUGS

It’s funny how my final word of the day is drugs.

Especially because I didn’t have any idea what to write about aside from the really horrible story of this one time I got really paranoid and was sure the water I tried to drink was actually cranberry juice and then was super sick with food poisoning from Indian food I’d eaten earlier that day and spent the night with my head literally in the toilet and humming to calm my stomach and, then, thought I’d gone crazy and was never going to be sane again.

Yeah, it’s a good story but that was a bad night.

Then, I started getting into Weeds.

I’ve caught up just in time for the sixth season to start tonight.

Too bad I don’t have Showtime.

I am obsessed with this show.

Nancy Botwin is so tough and vulnerable and a mess.

And her sons are total messes.

And Mary-Louise Parker needs to win more awards. And so does Elizabeth Perkins. And Hunter Parrish is super hot. And I don’t understand how Justin Kirk has ridiculous chemistry with every single woman on that show. Cuz he seems kind of gay too.

And I don’t understand how the creator, Jenji Kohan, can write all those men so well, everyone from a 14-year-old who loses his virginity to an Asian prostitute endorsed by his uncle to the Mexican drug lord and all the guys in his posse.

And what kind of name is Jenji?

It’s a pretty amazing show.

And I think it’s warping my reality.

I went to McDonald’s tonight and was making wisecracks that sounded like they should be on the show. And it struck me that I was imagining that all the black guys in the place were savvy dealers, at the whim of a suburban housewife who is smarter and tougher than all of them.

It’s also about drugs.

Duh.

Nancy goes from being a widow dealing marijuana to make some cash to falling into drug/gun/sex trafficking in Mexico. And is trying to raise her sons and deal with a complicated love life at the same time.

But, mostly, it’s making me want to start wearing gold jewelry like Nancy’s.

Word of the Day, vol. XX

Word of the Day: LOVE

There are many kinds of love.

And I needed all of them to make it through grad school.

In honor of them, I give you a list:

-The Spill-our-guts-at-the-first-lunch-we-shared love. This turns into New-friend love. Which turns into We-have-to-work-together love. Which turns into the fierce love that makes you sob in public.

-The Snarky-sneaks-up-on-you love. Which turns into the love that takes you to a tiny apartment where you drink lots of red wine and gossip until it’s suddenly two in the morning. The love that you know can’t end because you’d both be able to blackmail the other with juicy, hilarious info.

-The We’re-so-not-going-to-be-friends-then-we’re-best-friends love. The love that turns into sleepovers and tears and gratefulness for what you’ve learned. The love that has to change because it’s too intense.

-The other kind of We’re-so-not-going-to-be-friends love. The one that turns into the Holy-shit-she’s-wiser-than-her-platinum-blonde-hair-and-white-stilettos-show love. Which turns into the She-saved-me-on-a-national-holiday love. Which turns into an intense, almost sisterly, pact.

-The Let’s-sit-and-sing-and-make-faces-at-each-other love. That turns into the Always-down-for-anything-love. That turns into the Sunniest-most-generous-friend love.

-The love that rescues you when you’re totally confounded by your eighth grade class. A sort of Southern-gentlemanly love that you think couldn’t possibly be as easy as it is. But, it is.

-The New-friend love that you totally trust. The love that tells you you’re beautiful and deserve the world. The love that sends you champagne and cookies because what else would you possibly need?

-The love that reminds you there’s someone across the country going through stuff just as deep and lets you write about it, honestly and frankly and never judges that.

-The love that you have for the young people you’ve worked with. Those who shared the intense experience of your teaching. Who made you laugh hysterically and who broke your hearts with their openness and friendship.

-The love you learn to accept from a mentor, who listens and supports you through one of the most difficult challenges of your life. The love you know has developed because you’ve been through the war together, and she’s helped you survive it.

-The love that is just as emotional as you are and that challenges you because of that. The love that makes the whole machine run, indefatigably and with grace and passion.

-The love that holds you up when you decide to GO THERE and then you break. The love that never makes you ashamed of that. That gently steps on your foot while you sob to remind you that you’re still there and you’re not alone.

-The love that reminds you why you want to be a teacher. Or whatever you are. That speaks about it with such passion that you weep because it weeps. The love that gives you advice that pegs you between the eyes. And then changes you forever.

-The love that demands you to understand who you are. That sits with you for hours, sharing stories of theatre and art and family and loss. The love that makes the whole experience unforgettable. And makes you bigger and better than you expected.

-The love that is guaranteed to make you laugh and texts with you through important TV shows. That calls to vent about family and work. The love that doesn’t really understand what you’re doing but supports you with fierce and protective pride anyway.

-The love that keeps you fed and sane. And is only eleven houses away. The love that, in a crisis, drops everything and brings you McDonald’s and lets you cry over it.

-The love that sat glued in front of its computer to see you walk across the stage and texted you ten times to let you know it was with you in spirit and could you hear it clapping?

-The love that got you there in the first place.

-The Chosen-sister love that keeps you going and overwhelms you every day. The love that sends cards at just the right moment. The love where it’s safe to feel your worst but that makes you feel your best.

I couldn’t have done it without you.

Word of the Day, vol. XIX

Word of the Day: HAIR

There is much photographic evidence of my mother cutting my hair when I was younger.

One day, when I was probably 10, I decided I wanted to cut my own hair, so my bangs would look like Kelly Taylor’s.



I, of course, kept cutting and cutting until my bangs were um…very, very short. So, then, I, of course, had to go to the salon to have them salvage some sort of hairdo out of the mess I’d created.

I’m such a cliché.

Then, I hit my hair-dyeing phase. I started with auburn in about 6th grade. It was the compromise I reached with my mother because she wouldn’t let me wear makeup to class.

That meant I couldn’t wear the brown matte lipstick, black lipliner trend that was going around in 1994.

Poor me.

My hair color became experimental. I went from auburn, in my final years of middle school, to blonder, during my first year in California. I figured I had to try to fit in SOMEHOW.

Tips became hot pink when I was 16. Oh yeah. I was such a bad-ass. And I’m pretty sure it WAS Manic Panic.

You can see them mostly faded here.



I chopped my hair into a bob. Which seemed to suit me at the time. Although, I have a mad cowlick near my right temple that confounds hairstylists. And I never styled my hair at all, I let it air dry, so the bob often became just a big sweep to one side.

The hairstyle I chose for my junior prom was three spiky ponytails, one on top of the other.

Senior prom, I had curly hair for the first time in my life. Back in a half ponytail. It was pretty exciting.

I also wore a black satin gown with a crisscross back and no bra. I felt like Angelina Jolie.

Then, right before our senior photos, I decided I wanted Meg Ryan’s short spiky ‘do.



Of course, this style takes a lot of work. Which I never did, and so my hair is mildly mulletesque in my senior photo.

I let my hair grow out pretty naturally in college and in the years after. It became the longest it had ever been in years and years, when I got the best haircut of my entire life at a salon in Park Slope. Long layers, sweepy bangs, easy to manage.

One day, the guy who regularly did my hair there suggested I get a glaze, “to cover the grays.”

I politely refused and, in fact, didn’t dye my hair for most of the years I lived in New York after college, even though gray became more prominent than I would have liked.

Now, I’m on a new quest, for the chestnut brown hair I’ve always wanted.

I’ve decided I’m too young to have gray hair but too old to be quite as brassy a redhead as I was for the beginning of this year.

It’s kind of like when I realized I can’t wear dresses without a bra anymore, last summer.

No more feeling like Angelina Jolie.

Come to think of it, Angelina probably can’t do that either anymore. She’s had too many babies…although I bet she doesn’t breastfeed them.

So maybe she can still wear dresses with no bra.

I bet she does dye her hair, though.

I am Linguistically Significant

So...secretly? I start trends.

Like, linguistic trends.

You know when you have a quirky way of speaking or an abbreviation you use all the time and then the people around you start using it? And then those people take that way of speaking to the people in their lives and then suddenly you see someone on the internet speaking the way you've been speaking for years and then it's a national trend?

Here, let me give you some examples.

Thanks to my friend Jennifer (with a little help from Austin Powers), I (and probably you) now use the word "honestly" as an all-purpose word to indicate mild irritation mixed with disbelief.

Let's use it in a sentence.

"Honestly! Who throws a shoe?" or "Honestly! Why is that girl wearing stilettos and a tube dress in 5 inches of snow?"

Also, I am unsure how this trend actually started (whether I brought it with me or got it from someone here--like some kind of infection) but there is a large contingent of people in the Northeast who now use the terms "P.S" and "slash" to preface non sequiturs.

Such as, when two people are having a casual conversation about their homework, and one person suddenly says, "P.S. I totally have to take a dump." Or, "Slash, I totally had a sex dream about this kid in the play I'm working on."

You get the idea, I hope.

And, finally.

This was originally a combination of several factors: an Italian man my friend became one evening while drunk plus the task of nicknaming some other friends.

Anyway, we eventually started pronouncing the word "face" as if it was an Italian word: "FAH-chay."

We called each other "poop fah-chay," instead of "poopface" for no real reason. And, hilariously, the movie Office Space became "Oh-FEE-chay SPAH-chay."

Yeah.

But check it out!

This is Seth Rudetsky, a New York City-based musician, musical theatre columnist, blogger, and radio personality.

(I apologize in advance for his face and voice, but watch the video anyway. I'm actually a really big fan. His website is kind of amazing.)



I am so famous.

Word of the Day, XVIII

Word of the Day: LOSS

I’ve never been very good at losing. Or doing things poorly. Or even doing things less well than anyone else.

This is why I do not know how to ride a bike. This is also why I don’t really cook. Or drive. Or play sports. Or games I cannot win.

When I was in 5th grade, there was a school-wide spelling bee. Maybe there was one every year—that I don’t remember, but I do remember lining up against the classroom walls and waiting until it was my turn to spell a word.

I don’t even remember winning within my class, although, I slightly remember that nobody there put up a very good fight.

And, suddenly, I was up in front of the whole school. Asking for the words to be used in a sentence, even though I had never used them in sentences myself, so how would that have helped?

Words like “navigable,” which I had never heard before but will never forget how to spell because the correct spelling spontaneously came to me on that stage.

“Navigable. N.A.V.I.G.A.B.L.E. Navigable.”

And, then, it was down to just two of us. Me and a 6th grade boy, Andrew Schwartz. His sister, Vanessa, was in my class. They were redheaded. And snobby. I think I hated Andrew even before this fateful day. He probably knew I was just as smart as he was and despised me for it.

We spelled word after word in rapid succession.

You could cut the tension in the auditorium with a knife.

“Nourishment,” one of the teachers boomed at me.

I started, “Nourishment. N.U.—“

I heard a gasp of relief behind me and a sigh from the crowd and realized something had gone terribly wrong.

My stressed, overeager (and probably overconfident) mind had switched the words “nourishment” and “nutrient” in my brain.

I’d lost.

In front of my whole school.

At 10 years old.

To a boy.

Andrew swept in front of me, spelled the word correctly, and the competition was over.

I remember stumbling off the stage into the arms of my favorite teacher, Ms. Tonick, and bursting into tears. She tsktsked me for being so upset and hard on myself.

The certificate I won for getting that far hung on my wall all through middle school, even though I secretly thought second place was just another term for first loser.

I still think that. Mostly.

My future kids better grow up to be winners. Or they’ll be totally screwed with me as a mother.

Word of the Day, XVII

Word of the Day: FEAR, or “My Brother, the Superhero”

I think I’ve figured out that I was an insomniac as a kid.

Or maybe it’s not that I just figured it out but that I only recently started saying it out loud, as a reality of my childhood.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget staring at the bright blue radio/clock numbers as time passed, when I couldn’t sleep. I would get so frustrated sometimes I would cry until I’d finally nod off.

There was a full week or two when I barely slept, after watching a made-for-TV movie about the plague coming back, starring the teacher from Head of the Class. I was sure everyone I knew would catch the plague and die. I stayed up late night after night, reading Little Women, but I kept myself from finishing the book because I was sure Beth’s death would haunt me and keep me from sleeping.

And sometimes, when I did finally sleep, I’d have terrible nightmares. About being attacked by oversized bees or intruders or people not being who they seemed.

I remember talking to my older brother about this one day.

He suggested that we make up a superhero power for me, so that, if I started to get scared at night, I’d remember I had this superpower and I’d be able to defeat whatever was frightening me.

Maybe he remembers what we ultimately decided my power would be because I don’t. What I do remember is not having a hard time falling asleep after that, for years.

He still has dreams in which he has superpowers.

Maybe, in them, he’s saving me from all the bad guys that haunted me when I was little.

Word of the Day, vol. XVI

Word of the Day: MUSIC

In the summer and fall of 2004, I had a brief stint as a nightclub singer at a piano bar in the Castro.

OK, that’s not entirely true.

I don’t remember how we discovered it—S probably does—but for weeks in a row, she and I and her brother and our friends would get dressed up, head to Martuni’s (it took me like a year to get that joke), and drink fancy drinks while we waited for our names to be called so we could get up and sing to a room full of gay men and fruit flies.

Weekly, I would stand by the piano, nervously, while the pianist, Houston, would coach me and coax me through “Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls. It was a huge crowd pleaser and sometimes I even sang it well.

Mostly, I was just having an insane time, dressed in clingy black dresses and pearls and fedoras and slashes of red lipstick. Trying to be super sexy and forgetting that I was playing to the wrong audience. Although, the friends we brought always appreciated it.

I was never really sure what I was doing, but I knew I had something…a little different to offer.

Eventually, I added “When You’re Good to Mama” to my repertoire, which I would belt to the high heavens. It’s hilarious to think that this song actually made me feel a little bit like a rockstar.

We gained a bit of notoriety at the bar; people would stop us to congratulate us as we exited, dashing to catch the last BART train or to pile foolishly into S’s parents’ car and head back to Berkeley, where we’d stay up late, eating donuts or noodles or just keeping drinking, while we regaled the events of the night.

I was in summer school that summer and we would crash, still reeling from alcohol, and I’d wake up, sweaty and hungover and have to run to campus to work in the costume shop or go to my improv class, thinking I would die on the way there.

I don’t remember sleeping more than six hours a night that entire summer.

It was an incredibly heady time, for more reasons than I can even mention here. Things among the group got very intense and our reign at Martuni’s sort of fizzled, as the summer ended. I performed a poorly executed version of “Anyone Can Whistle” one night and realized a little bit of the magic was gone.

Sometimes I imagine reclaiming my post by the piano, when I visit San Francisco, just as a lark.

I would do it just to recall some of that magic.

Word of the Day, XVI

Word of the Day: SCHOOL

I’m sort of cheating with this post. I’ve been wanting to fill you all in on my OTHER most embarrassing moments, both of which involved distinctly shoving my foot in my mouth. Conveniently, they also both occurred while I was in school, so just roll with it.

High school was tough. I moved from New York City to Cambria, California the summer before my freshman year started. (And, there is a reason you’ve never heard of that place. It’s tiny. And not really worth mentioning). But, I was the new kid and it took me a good year to feel settled with friends I liked. Still, it wasn’t the most fun four years ever. Of course, whose high school experience is?

I went to a few football games. Our team sucked. But one night, I was there with a bunch of friends, and one of them commented about the coach. How he was such a nice guy or some shit. And, suddenly, I had diarrhea of the mouth and was complaining about how arrogant he was. How much he thought he knew everything. I think he had recently substituted for one of my teachers and I had been frustrated again by how much smarter I felt I was compared to my teachers.

Several moments passed and suddenly I heard behind me, “Who was talking about Coach?” And felt a jab on my shoulder. I reluctantly turned around.

“This is his wife and this is his daughter.” This woman pointed out two totally lovely looking women who were sitting right behind me.

Whoops.

I apologized profusely and sat forward the rest of the game. His daughter said she’d hated him growing up too. But still.

Stupid small town.

The other incredibly tactless moment happened when I was very drunk, so you can’t really blame me. And it was my birthday.

Beckett’s is an Irish pub near Berkeley’s campus, and we ended up there late in the night on my…22nd? Birthday. I don’t even remember where else we were that night, but a big group of us piled into a booth and the waiter came over and asked a question I didn’t understand.

“OH MY GOD! ARE YOU EVEN SPEAKING ENGLISH?!” I asked, too loudly.

An awkward silence fell. And everyone pulled out their IDs, which is what he’d asked for, in his Irish brogue.

“OH! OH! YOU WANT MY ID!”

My friends were appalled. I was sure I was going to get kicked out of the bar, the big, bald, Irish waiter was so pissed.

“Are we gonna have a problem here?” he asked me.

I apologized profusely and explained I was drunk and it was my birthday.

He eventually came back with our drinks and sat next to me, needling me for another apology and a kiss on the cheek, and then all was good.

Moral of these stories is you can’t take me anywhere.

Word of the Day, vol. XV

Word of the Day: HATE: a Post of Vague Complaints (in no particular order)

I’ve felt like whining a lot lately. It doesn’t matter that it’s sort of warming up or that the weather’s been nicer lately or that school is going well. I pulled “hate” out of my word bag and all I could think of was writing a probably-uninteresting list of all the things that bother me.

Bear with.

(NOTE: This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. But I’m sure you figured that.)

1. Lack of etiquette when it comes to taking up space in a public place.
2. Lack of etiquette when it comes to voice volume in a public place.
3. Lack of etiquette when it comes to use of cell phones in a public place.
4. Assholes who don’t let people OFF of public transportation before barreling onto it.
5. Spitting.
6. Slamming doors for no reason when you enter or leave a room.
7. The fact that sometimes I’m the only one in my house who brings in the mail or empties the dishwasher.
8. People (including me) who speak just to hear themselves speak.
9. People who speak without forethought.
10. The use of the word “gay” as a synonym for lame or stupid.
11. Douchey guys getting up in my face at bars.
12. The fact that winter feels really long these days.
13. Not having any money.
13a. Not having any money to buy new clothes, as many books as I want, to travel, to go out to eat every night because I’m too tired to cook, etc..
13b. Not having enough money to live alone.
13c. Not having enough money to keep the heat up in my house, so always being cold in my house.
14. Owing lots of money.
15. Not knowing what the hell I’m doing in August to make money.
16. Not living in the same city as my best friend.
17. No real spring break this year.
17a. February break being nearly over.
18. Feeling out of touch because I’m so consumed with student-teaching.
19. Feeling in transition as school screeches to a halt.
20. Losing my dating momentum.
21. Being on top of everything all the time.
21a. Being scolded, even though I’m on top of everything all the time.
22. Having more ideas for projects than time to do them.
23. Not having a more creative thought for a post than writing all the things that bother me.

OK, I’ll stop with lucky number 23.

I’m such a whiner. Thanks for reading.

Quotes from a Day of Grad School

(dictating an email) RM: Give a [sister] a break.
me: Is that "sistER" or "sistAH"?
RM: "SistAH."
me: Like, with an "a-h" at the end?
RM: Yeah.
me: Got it.

...and, later that day:

me: Does it make me an alcoholic if I had a drink and it made me feel better?
PM: That's like...the American Dream.

Watch This Space

Stay tuned for Word of the Day, vol. XIV, which will appear on the website for WAM Theatre, my classmate's theatre organization. My first guest-blogging gig!

Check the site out.

I will keep you all posted.

Best Non-Sequitur Award Goes To...

me: What's the @ sign in your theatre name for?
MW: Wherever I end up will be "[Theatre Name]" AT...the umbrella location.../
me: So, when my brother was in my mom's womb...


What can I say? It's late.

Update: Reviewing this, I realize it might only be funny to me and MW. But, funny, it is!

Word of the Day, vol. XIII

Word of the Day: DANCING

So, you know how having a “most embarrassing moment” somehow makes you a better conversationalist? I distinctly remember taking some time to figure out mine, so that this story would be at the ready if anyone ever happened to ask me what it was.

When I was 13, I had been dancing at the local Dance Studio on and off for maybe six years. At this point, I took my schoolwork and my dancing pretty seriously. I was in advanced ballet and beginning tap the last year I lived in New York and was dancing about three times a week.

Of course, at 13, our bodies start to change and suddenly, I found myself squeezing into leotards and tights and feeling…lumpy. Obviously, I was never going to be a ballerina, but it gave me something besides school and home to concentrate on and I truly loved it.

Every year, in the dead of June, there was a recital at BAM. I was performing in two classes’ final pieces, so I had two costumes. My costume for ballet was just a bright purple leotard with a small ruffled skirt, my white tights, and pointe shoes. My costume for tap, though, was a black one piece with culottes(!) and a gold shrug, a small gold cap and black gloves.

No, I am not kidding. There is a picture on my wall to prove it.

Needless to say, the tap costume was much more complicated to put on, and so, I figured, the tap dance was first, so that my quick change would be an easy one.

I showed up to the hall and discovered ballet was first and that I’d have approximately 35 seconds to change into my four-piece costume.

The ballet dance was a huge hit—I still remember some of the steps and also how we totally freestyled at one point in the dance. Thanks, Jennifer D.! (That was my teacher. She was so awesome.)

I scooted into the wings after the dance and quickly changed my clothes, with the help of a classmate. The black one-piece was held up by just a single string and of course, in the mix, it busted, so we had to pin it to keep it up.

The music began and I entered.

Flap, step, flap, step, flap, step, flap, ball, change. Annnnd….snap.

Mid-way through the dance, I realized the string had busted again. Which meant that suddenly I was doing the time-step in front of a huge crowd and my whole family with my 13 year old boobs in a sad black bra showing.

I kept dancing though, grinning sheepishly the whole time!

And then, I got offstage and cried. Nobody in my class had seemed to notice that I was giving the audience a wee peep show. (Or not so wee—have you SEEN my boobs?)

(To be fair, this embarrassing story falls into the “topless in front of a crowd” category. I have a really great “sticking my foot in my mouth” story as well, that I will save for another time. This is enough mortification for one Sunday morning.)

Word of the Day, vol. XII

Word of the Day: ”FAME”

It was a shock to my system when I realized, after seeing a flyer for auditions for the next season of MTV’s The Real World on campus, that I am too old(!) to be on it. Circa The Real World: Boston, I was determined to be on the show one day. I was sure I’d add an intellectual and reasonable air to any house of seven strangers. Alas, at the ripe old age of 26, I’ve missed that particular boat. And, of course, realize now that I escaped certain insanity.

Still, who doesn’t have a soft spot for MTV’s pioneer voyeuristic reality show? I was a devout follower of it through about New Orleans and watched some of a few seasons after that. One Christmas, I asked for several books about the phenomenon, in the days when reunion shows actually dealt with real issues the roommates had encountered, like alcoholism and pregnancy scares and death.

I put the word of the day in quotes because…the people on these shows, while I did become strangely attached to them…aren’t actually famous. Well, most of them aren’t. Eric Nies has carved out a sort of career for himself, post-Real World: New York. He was a model and on-air MTV personality. Jacinda Barrett is sort of a legit actor—she was on the London season. Sean, from the Boston season, is a politician in Wisconsin (and married to Rachel from the SF season—they have six kids!). But otherwise, most of the people we came to know and love either escaped media attention altogether and are living in the country and doing things like teaching elementary school or they continue to assault us on the never-ending permutations of The Real World/Road Rules Challenges.

I don’t really have a point except to express that, as a young adolescent, I thought these people were important. I learned from their debates about race and from their sexual indiscretions. I wanted to see them hook up and for their relationships to last and was pleased to discover that some of them actually have.

And, a couple days ago, I found archive videos of certain seasons on MTV.com.

I rewatched all of the San Francisco season, looking with new eyes at a city I have since gotten to know a little bit but which seemed foreign and exciting as an 11-year-old in Brooklyn. For your information, Judd and Pam are married and have babies now. Cory lives in Southern California with her family. Rachel, as I mentioned, married Sean from Boston and they have six kids. Even the notorious Puck is settled somewhere with a family.

And then, there’s Pedro. Pedro who died the evening the final episode of his season aired. From AIDS. At 22. I will never forget watching a marathon of the season in my room in New York and tearing up at Rachel’s final confessional, in which she cried about how much she’d miss everyone. Then, the screen faded and the words “In memory of Pedro Zamora, 1972-1994” appeared. I burst into tears, shocked and heartbroken and feeling kind of silly that I was so affected by the death of someone I didn’t know.

Nothing has really changed since I watched these episodes as a younger person. These people still aren’t famous. Further, the show itself has gradually deteriorated to be mostly a sad spectacle of binge-drinking and distasteful sexual behavior.

This review of the show has made me nostalgic for a time when reality TV was about putting people in a spotlight with something of substance to say. And to realize how educational and influential some of what they put out there was for me. Even if it never made them famous to anyone but me.

Word of the Day, vol. XI

Word of the Day: NAMES

I learned all 55 first names in about a day, gave myself the test of greeting them each by name as they walked into the classroom where I’d eventually be teaching half of them this semester.

Some of them are wary of me. Unsure of the young-ish but obviously authoritative woman working so closely with their regular teacher, apparently seamlessly, disciplining them as she does, using their names to their faces in encouragement and consternation and concern.

Wasn’t I just in high school? I swear they smell the same on the East Coast, so every time I walk the halls, I remember walking through my middle school, with the veneered wooden floors and plastic chairs. The echo-y halls smelling like bacon one day and beef the next. And always sweat.

Except, this time, I also have access to the staff bathroom, passwords and copy codes, the teacher’s lounge with one table, a water machine, and no working microwave.

This has all happened so fast.

My Program Director told me I wouldn’t be able to “just get through it,” which is what I thought I’d be able to do, as I’ve done so many times in my life before.

He’s right. I can already tell. I am a different person today than the one I was on Sunday, before I started. Not only because I’m doing this at all but because I think I’m good at it.

And, suddenly, I’m a “Miss.” A teacher with no first name.

Word of the Day, vol. X

Word of the Day: ALCOHOL: a Post in Factoids

Number of times I got drunk before I turned 21: 1

Substance I got drunk off of in that instance: Raspberry Smirnoff Vodka

Place I consumed said substance: the Substance-Free Dorm I lived in at college

Number of drinks I consumed on my 21st birthday: 0

Number of fires I put out on my 21st birthday: 1

What S and I lived off of during our nine-day trip to NYC when we were 22: Trader Joe’s Oriental Rice Crackers, omelettes, and alcohol

Number of men over 40 I have kissed while intoxicated: 1, that I know of

Regrets I had while hungover after said kiss: Many

Number of shots I consumed during about 90 minutes on New Year’s Eve 2005: 7

Number of seconds I blacked out on New Year’s Eve 2005: just a few

Time I passed out on New Year’s Day 2006: 12:05 AM

Number of bottles of wine I consumed the night before MTEL review: 1

Number of times I’ve been to an MTEL review still drunk: 1

Number of times I sang a song while intoxicated on New Year’s Eve 2008: countless

Time I passed out on New Year’s Day 2009: 4ish

Time I woke up on New Year’s Day 2009: 8ish

Hours it took me to get out of bed that day, threatening that if anyone touched me I’d throw up: 2

Number of times I’ve thrown up from alcohol: 0

Number of times I’ve consumed alcohol from a McDonald’s cup: 1

Combination of beverage in said cup: Root beer vodka and Diet Coke

Number of days in a row I was drunk over Thanksgiving: 3

Number of days in a row I plan to be drunk on Christmas: 2

Number of days in a row I plan to be drunk while in CA for New Year's: 5

Word of the Day, vol. IX

Word of the Day: CLOTHES

There are moments in my life when I physically feel it changing. It’s like something shifts into place again or a chord is struck within. This happened a lot when I was living in Apartment 8. I could sit and look around and realize how much work I had put into the person that I was, the person that I was becoming. These friends that I had met, this home I had created, this art I was making. It all felt so different from what I had ever experienced. Better than what I’d expected life could be like.

My relationship with clothes is volatile. Because it’s so much about my relationship with my body. And I’m only recently just beginning to really figure out how to live in this one.

I guess I can look back and realize that I spent a lot of time hiding in my clothes. High school was tough because I was the New Kid all four years. I didn’t know how to make anyone see me in the ways I wanted them to. I was just trying to get out of my house and the small town I saw so many people get stuck in. I rarely thought twice about “what I looked like,” because I always asserted that I wanted people to accept and want me for more than that. It was a preemptive strike. I beat people to the punch by putting on clothes that made me disappear. They weren’t noticing me anyway, I proclaimed.

In college, I lived with people who were consumed with their outer appearances in ways I actually resented. We all know how much I love S, but it still boggles my mind that a casual outfit to her is fitted jeans, a detailed blouse, and low heels. In college, when I was throwing on frayed jeans, polo shirts in sizes too big, and running shoes, this made me feel incredibly inadequate and unnoticed.

I hated shopping because I could never find things that fit and I never had any money, but one day during winter break, my friends dragged me to San Francisco where I spent literally eight hours in fitting rooms, while clothes were piled up and thrown at me to try on. I spent my entire budget of $500 on a new wardrobe and the rest of the night sobbing that I didn’t know how to let go of the old me. It was a full-on breakdown, one that scared me and my friends. It felt intensely scary and risky to try to have people see a me I didn’t know was ready to come out yet. And incredibly sad to realize that, in a lot of ways, I didn’t think I deserved to feel like a better version of myself.

As I started regularly wearing clothes that really fit me and began learning how to shop for myself, I slowly began to realize that feeling good about one’s self on the outside does trickle in to what’s going on inside. It doesn’t have to happen every day, and it doesn’t have to be a lot of work. It’s important for me to dress the body I have because those clothes are the most flattering anyway. And it’s amazing what finding the perfect pair of boots or a really amazing blazer does for one’s self-esteem. I can’t deny that.

Last weekend, I attended a party alone. It was a pretty low-maintenance grad school gathering, but I dressed up because it finally feels like fall, and I did just purchase a fantastic pair of boots. I threw them on with black tights, a black and white plaid skirt, and a royal blue sweater. As I was getting ready to leave my house, I felt a hearkening back to physically feeling my life change.

It was like my body realized how much further I have come. Realizes again how much work I’ve put into the person I am, the person I’m becoming.

Word of the Day, vol.VIII

Word of the Day: TRAVEL

Until I was 20, my passport picture was of me as an infant. I look miserable, like I am sick AND just woke up from a nap. I got a passport as an infant because my family lived in the Netherlands for a year then. We were there long enough for me to start speaking in both English and Dutch. It’s part of the family lore that my brother and I would jabber away in Dutch, to the utter confusion of our mom. The other standard story is that we got caught in a rock slide there. Obviously, I remember none of this.

I do remember spending a family vacation in Florida once and being sorely disappointed that we didn’t visit any sites, just stayed in our hotel and by the beach. Sea World? No. Disneyworld? No way. Miami Beach? Nope. We might have gone to exactly one zoo.

I’ve never done the tourist trap things in Los Angeles, even though I feel like I always plan to.

I’ve been to Disneyland exactly three times. The first time was when I was probably under 5. One of my first memories is the Small World ride. I went again as a high school senior for Grad Night and had, what I understood later to be, a panic attack on the crowded line to Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I went again with friends in college and we spent 11 hours there, riding the Winnie the Pooh ride several times in a row for no other reason than that there was no line, at the end of the night.

I didn’t travel out of the country again or get a new passport until I was a junior in college and spent the summer in London. It was a magical summer, full of revelations about living on my own, feeling like a woman, like an actress. Seeing thirteen plays in four weeks. Learning dialects that I teach now. Doing some of the best acting I’ve ever done in my life. I always say that if I could afford it, I’d move to London in a second.

I spent a tense Thanksgiving in Portland, Oregon one year, cooking because it didn't seem like anyone else would. And a lovely week in summer there another, when my brother and I had an amazing time at the local zoo and played a lot of Guitar Hero.

Honestly, though, I hate traveling. I hate airports. I hate flying. I hate couch-hopping. I hate spending so much money. I hate being away from my own space, my own things. I have a hard time being on other people’s schedules or visiting places where I have a ton of people to see and feeling like I’m performing for them and them for me for days.

S is probably the only person I’m really good at traveling with. We realized this when we traveled to NYC before moving there and consumed only alcohol and Trader Joe’s oriental rice crackers for nine days straight.

I think I don’t like traveling because it makes me feel displaced. Traveling feels too much like moving and I’ve certainly done enough of that for two lifetimes.

Still, some of the best family memories I have are when we would all travel to my mother’s family’s hometown in upstate New York. For years in a row, we would have large family reunions there. Reunions that I was too young to resent or be bored or stressed at. I would bunk with my cousin, dress up for large dinners, play games late into the night, sit in the sun, swim in waterfalls. One summer, my mom, her sister, my brother, and two of three cousins stayed in a house by a lake and we’d fall asleep to the trains rumbling by and wake up to go swimming first thing. We were all giddy with the safe freedom of those days. We’d float air mattresses into the lake. We’d make up ways to make each other laugh. We’d play Charades and music until the summer heat cooled at night.

I remember that as one of the best times of my whole life.

Is it still considered traveling if it felt like home?