Self Misrepresentation

Currently, my unsearchable internet thumbprint is a yellowing web of youthful self-indulgence; it's 10,000 drunken photos I took of myself for public consumption before learning Photoshop.

  

Subway Adventure No. 764a

You’re on the N or the R – you weren’t paying too much attention when you got on – and you’re minding your own fucking business, reading a borrowed book, eating some Swedish Fish, chewing on your nails a bit, crossing and uncrossing and crossing your legs, when a dirty and disheveled gentleman off to your left who had previously appeared to be asleep screams “Shut Up!” as if his head were going to explode into skull fragments and a wash of whiskey saturated gray matter if the two Korean women on the opposite end of the car don’t stop whispering to one another. There is awkward silence before the train gets going again.

At the next stop he leaps up and demands for you to tell him if this is 95^th Street. It isn’t, and you tell him so. You are about to give him a bit of helpful information, when the train rocks into motion, throwing the drunk back and causing him to careen into one of the metal ceiling-to-seat supports, spine first.

“Bitch, cunt,” he burbles, “You saw that, you had your eyes open!” He sits down across from you, attempting to scowl, barely able to keep his eyes open. “I should kill you.”

You sit, trying not to laugh, but not doing very well. He makes a slow reach into his coat pocket, maybe to make good on his promise to kill you, but only to haul out a huge bottle of brown liquid (Old Barton? Kentucky Gentleman?), all the while giving you a wobbly eye and cursing you. You look around at this point, and see that the rest of the car has migrated north. This suddenly seems like the best idea.

You move to your new seat, and now it sounds as if the drunk has begun to encourage you to go get AIDs, but it’s difficult to hear. When the train makes its next stop, it becomes apparent that he is indeed hoping you get AIDs, because he is still screaming about it.

At Whitehall you switch cars; you don’t want to be around when he figures out what you were going to tell him before he started screaming at you: that in order to get to 95^th Street, he needs to get on a train going the opposite direction.

The Comment

The summer extended before her like a boyfriend who owed her seven hundred dollars: an entity unwanted but one that must be faced. Would she escape? Or would she be doomed to spend her days serving once frozen tilapia to AARP clients and her nights rotting in shopping plaza bars among boys she didn’t remember from high school who proudly declared their unwavering attendance at such places? And where would she go if she did manage to escape? And, there, once again, was the question which had tortured her so acutely two years earlier: “What are you doing with your life?” read the MySpace comment, cruelly judging her in common Helvetica.

The Old Man in the Romance Shop

He gives me a tour of the store, even though I had already toured it and found everything lined up alphabetically by author and according to genre - or more like sub-genre, since they all seemed to be romances, shelves and shelves of Jude Deveraux. He hands me a book during the tour, by Carly somebody ("This is hilarious, read the back of it"), then he sits back down and starts giving me advice and showing me pictures of his grandchildren.

"I have to live to see her graduate," he tells me. He hands me a three by five portrait of a four-year-old Lolita who can sing like an adult. Her long honeyed hair drips over her baby shoulders. "I'm eighty-one. That's ten more years."

He is healthy enough, he thinks he will make it. He asks if I am married or single. "When you find someone, make sure it is someone you can live with. Don't try to change anyone, because you can't. " I can't argue, or don't. "My wife says I talk too much," he says. "She is always yelling at me. But I just think I have so much to say that can help people your age." I smile. I won't try to change anyone.

I had come in for literature but had found only what I had already read (All Quiet on the Western Front) or what I did not want to read (The Complete Ghost Stories of Dickens). I browse bestselling novels by Andrew M. Greeley and Stephen King. The store doesn't take credit cards anyway.

He tells me about some men who bought three houses near the high school and filled them with marijuana and made millions but then were arrested. "The world has gone crazy," he says, and he can't believe it. There is a Depression coming; he can tell, he was born during the last one. The rich getting richer and the poor all buying marijuana. He can hardly believe it himself, but he is reading a book about the end of the world. There seems to be a trend in books on that subject. "Yes," he says, "but that's been true ever since I can remember."

Lavender Extract

Ever since Suave ruined my life by discontinuing my "What kind of shampoo do you use!" hair products featuring the magical ingredient and no lilac, my life has screeched to a mediocre cruise of the slow lane. Yes, I am fucking serious. I am suffering and I blame Suave and their fear of ammonium xylenesulfonate. Ever since the shelves of the K-mart in Astor Place went dry, my mind has been seeped in confusion and my scalp desiccated. No longer driven or dedicated to my former career goals, I wander the earth searching for a new scent. I drive up to new age shops and peruse their hippie aromatheraputics; I Google "Suave Naturals Lavender extract" and consider overpaying for products that have long past their recommended shelf lives. Once a promising young lady with luscious lavender locks, now I fall asleep every night with the unfortunate knowledge that no one is going to demand to know what I am washing my hair with anytime soon, and it hurts. Suave polluted my hair fragrance with lilac and the days drag like a four course meal with no seasoning, like a trip to Amoeba with only a dollar and thirty cents in your pocket.

Turns out a chainwheel was my Achilles heel

Past two months spent: ritually preparing cafe au lait, nursing a tendonal stab wound, hand washing dishes for a family of five and laying them to dry inside a dishwasher in disrepair. Spent looking for jobs and applying to jobs and not getting jobs. Spent waiting excitedly for the next movie to arrive via mailbox. Spent not looking for jobs. Spent sorting out fifteen years' worth of junk from my parents' garage, spent shredding paperwork from 1982. Spent dwelling on every dumbass thing that has ever passed my own lips. Spent researching new methods of preparing pears, spent reading the entire Harry Potter series. Spent vacuuming and scrubbing the interiors of medicine cabinets and hosing down porch furniture. Spent purchasing plastic bowls of pine nut hummus, copies of Nylon, every variety of Kashi bar, POM teas on sale, sweaters from departments stores, one hundred bananas, cans of Wolfgang Puck spicy bean soup, five and a half pounds of leeks, bottles of wine, eyeliner, copies of Gourmet. Spent lacquering toenails, applying facial scrubs, waxing unwanted hairs, deep-conditioning and moisturizing. Spent cringing at the sound of Judge Judy shrieking; spent reading various Lonely Planet guides and eating at Greek restaurants. Spent watching television shows about murder, fictional and non. Spent turning pages.