This Afternoon In Drama

Using My Powers For Good

So maybe sometimes I am briefly-- briefly-- under the impression that my mind is leading the physical world in a short-- short!-- game of Simon Says (just this past Sunday at the gym I was staring intently at a guy's knee brace until I caused it to fall down to his ankle), but when you are sitting in the doctor's office, flipping through a magazine, and you come to an ad which formerly contained diction you took gentle issue with, and the ad has since (in a very short period of time) switched out that diction, you might almost feel as if the physical world is encouraging these types of impressions.  And then you've really come full magical-thinking circle.

Now let's see if my brain can do it again with this ad that is so, so close to perfection (who wouldn't want in her armpit the cool, drying sensation of a refurbished chateau, a joust-ready king on a horse, Lance Armstrong's French nemesis, bakers hurriedly pedaling over fresh baguettes, a personal portraitist in a beret, a mime!, and two well-oiled fireman from the fourth and seventh arrondissements who literally blow liquid love from their hose?) with the exception of the Dalmatian in the red bandanna that's pawing at the deodorant.  The dog strikes me as too American.  I'd like to see a French Bulldog in a scarf. 

At the very least, a Papillon in a striped shirt.

Oops, and where's Jerry Lewis?

Interiority

One spring I walked into Esprit and the entire collection was hot pink, lilac, and aqua.  I wanted it all.  I was ready to commit to an all-Esprit wardrobe.  My mom, bad cop, limited me to one piece in each color.

One day when my parents told me they were finally going to let me choose my own wallpaper for my room, I opened the book and went straight for a festive confetti design in hot pink, lilac, and aqua that would match all my hot pink, lilac, and aqua art.

When I was younger, my aesthetic was the aesthetic of the cocaine dealer's lead girlfriend on Miami Vice.  As I've gotten older and my tastes have become more sophisticated, it has matured into the aesthetic of the Miami Vice cocaine dealer himself, as I'm now also very interested in blues at the deeper end of the spectrum.

This term I'm taking an interior design class and the assignments have been so enjoyable down in the soul that I've been questioning my life path.  Lately the moments in which I've come closest to peace have been when wrapping presents, creating imaginary rooms, or coming up with new appetizers like "orange fig spread on blue corn chip," and this has led me to regret that I didn't lay early ground to become a lifestyle purveyor.  Like Martha.  But instead of the New England country tones of her vision, or the mid-century autumnals of Jonathan Adler's, or the optimistic, girly retro of Cynthia Rowley's, I would be able to provide interior design, accessories, and curling ribbon based around the tones of the secretly somber whimsy of the "Me Decade."  In this current climate of coffee colored rooms, where a gray-blue is considered a punch of color, I can't believe there's not a clientele for this, even if it's had to go underground.

Our first assignment was to put together a "mood board," showing the colors, shapes, and looks toward which we gravitate.  (In the photo you can't really see the dimension (or details) of the board-- certain pieces are mounted on styrofoam-- because space has been collapsed, but hopefully you get the idea):

The second was to redecorate a room to our liking.  Since I'm not working with an actual house, I took a picture of someone else's Los Angeles living room and fixed it up.  The idea behind my room is that there wouldn't be a color in it that you couldn't find shimmering across a mound of snow during early evening.

Closer up:

My decorative take on this year's holidays to follow soon.  In the meantime, If anyone in the area will let me do their room, I'll do it for free.

Reunited And It Doesn't Feel So Good

I am in possession of a top shelf bitchface.   When I am relaxed, when I am strolling down the street, thinking about going and getting some peanut butter frozen yogurt, I know that my face settles into an expression that reads as if I'm about to fuck someone up.   Recently I said to my newish shrink, "People often think that I hate them when I don't," and she asked, "Why do you think they think that?"   And I said, "Well, when you don't know me, I look mean."  Almost as if in relief, my shrink leaned back in her chair, nodding and smiling, identifying this evaluation with what I assume was her first impression upon meeting me.

In my senior year portrait I am giving especially impressive bitchface.  I didn't remember that this was the case, but when I walked into my ten year high school reunion this past weekend, I was handed a sticky name-tag with my color picture on it, and I marveled at my "Bitch, please" eyes and smirk.   I do remember the taking of the portrait.   In the dark studio the formerly happy photographer was becoming increasingly frustrated with my inability to smile.   "Big smile!" he begged.   "Just one!"   And I said, "If I smile right now, it's just going to come out fake, and then the result will look even less like me."   "But your parents will want a picture of their beautiful graduate smiling," he insisted.   "Don't you think my parents know who I am by now?" I asked.   More on that later.   But this was the portrait I picked along with my parents to put in the yearbook because in it I was kiiiiiind of smiling.   Ten years later: no, it's a smirk.

Walking around the reunion, I knew how I must look.   Really, I was overwhelmed by the large number of people, the blaring music from the late nineties, the feeling that everyone in that bar was both familiar and unfamiliar, but on my face all of that translates into standoffishness.    It seemed that most of girls reacted to this face by approaching me as if I were breakable or they were breakable.   A lot of the time I couldn't sort out which was which.   But they fixed their eyes on me in the way you would a vase on the edge of a table, or in the way that Martha Stewart was watching the baby tiger she had on the show the other day as she was petting its back. 

And I also know that I'm a hard person to get to know.  I was bullshitting the photographer a little when I gave him the line about my parents because this year my mom asked me to estimate how much she knows of who I am, and I believe I put her somewhere around sixty percent.   I'm aware of this blurriness surrounding me; I think others intuit it almost immediately.   Still, the bitchface is unintentional and without meaning.   When I am angry, bitchy, or mean with intent behind the mood, I look completely different.

A number of the guys at the reunion seemed to have decided it was high time to break the bitchface.   Whenever I'd run into a certain former classmate, he would launch into a lap dance.   Sometimes when I was standing, sometimes when I was sitting.   And since I am very bad at giving people what they want when I know what they are trying to drag out of me (see photographer, above), I would just stare into his eyes as if he were telling about his new baby and lakeside condo and eventually he would snap at me for being too cool for school and accuse me of something along the lines of ice princessness.   Another former classmate who used to like to deflect the bitchface in high school by nicknaming me "Dark Star" would only talk to me in the language of sarcasm, and if I didn't laugh at what was said, he would inform me that he was being sarcastic, sarcastically.

Another, one-upping the lap dancing, approached while I was mid-conversation with someone else and began grinding into my leg.   His penis was like a windshield wiper on my thigh.   I didn't react (as I was telling my Loyola fiction students this week, often when you put a lot of crying in your work, you make it more difficult for your reader to feel like she wants to cry because the response suddenly feels manipulated and dead) because I didn't really have that much of a reaction to the grinding, other than wanting the return of my personal space, and so he put his arms up and increased the motion of the dance.   I waited it out like airplane turbulence.

Later, while getting some air outside, I was aware of him on a couch behind me, considering me.  Eventually he rose and came over, his eyes half-lidded.   By this point he was completely fucked up.   Alcohol and possibly something more.    Staring (half-lidded) into my eyes, he said, "Brown University.  Brooooown University.  You're smart, huh?"   And I said, "Your eyes are pretty much shutting."   And he said, "That's cold, Andrea.  I have a lazy eye."  And I said, "Oh, no, that's not it-- they're both about to close."

Continuing to stare into my eyes as best he could, the classmate said, "You think I'm dumb, but I'm not."   

"I don't think you're dumb," I said.   I don't.   In fact, I know he's not dumb.   All I was thinking was that he wasn't going to remember any of this the next morning, so why were we bothering? 

"You think I'm just a dumb guy, and you're off and far above and I couldn't understand where you are." 

Again, I said, "No.  That's really not what I think." 

"Then why are you like...this?"   He's very tall and he was bending over to meet my gaze, gesturing back and forth between us.

Unable to come up with any decent way to explain my feelings, I said, "Maybe it's because you treat me like I'm some character."

Then, still bent, he said, "I just want to kiss you." 

He wasn't saying this in a way that indicated he was unabashedly smitten with me or feeling suddenly romantic, but in a way that seemed to have something to do with wanting to tackle a problem.   "I just want to," he said, leaning closer, when someone decided to take a picture of us.   I looked toward the flash, and he, remaining focused on the problem, announced somewhat loudly, "I'm going to kiss you!"   A bunch of guys I hadn't noticed before then started chanting, "Do it!  Do it!  Do it!" and this former classmate took abrupt hold of my head.   My first thought was that I felt like a pumpkin.   I think this is what went through my brain because of the movie Return to Oz, in which there's a pumpkinhead character who can just pull his off.   For the next few seconds my former classmate continued to pull up on my head (he's at least a foot taller than me), trying to turn it toward his, and I used formidable neck muscles to keep my bitchface from twisting.

Finally, he gave up.  "Okay," he said.  "You're so much smarter and into bigger things and on a higher plane, right."

I said, "You have no idea who I am."  Not that that's his fault.

My friend, standing opposite us with the camera, said to him, "Really, she isn't like that."   And then to me said, "You just don't know how you come off."

But I do.