I DEMAND SATISFACTION

I was the biggest bitch at the library today.

The public library in my town has adopted the self-checkout ways of the big-box stores of America - now there are four or five self-checkout stations, and usually only one to two people watching over the front desk.  This is how we do it nowadays: deal with the machine first, and, if necessary, the people. Well, the machines can’t feel my rage, unfortunately. They have remained unresponsive to my swearing. (I swear a lot, everywhere. Library, K-Mart, laundry mat, regardless of whether or not I’m around children or the elderly or any nuns.)

Lately, the self-checkout machines at the library have been receiving a lot of my swearing.  In the past month or so, I’ve had problems scanning my card.  The last few weeks, it hasn’t scanned at all.  It is an old card.  It’s so old that instead of my signature, my mother signed my name.  I was probably 7 when it was bestowed upon me, that little piece of plastic that held the world of wooden blocks and Babysitter’s Club books - I loved Ann M. Martin so much that I went to see her at the local bookstore when she did a book signing. I FUCKING LOVED THOSE BABYSITTER CLUB BOOKS.
So, in order to check out my items - mostly CDs of college radio crap nowadays - I have had to go up to the front desk.  Before today, I had asked twice for a new card. Twice I was denied by the Keepers of the Cards, as it still scanned at the front desk scanners - never mind that it was cracked and the bar code was peeling off.

Then came today.  Today!  DAY OF HOLY CRAP I NEED TO GO HOME AND DRINK A LOT OF GIN! I was still reeling from the rabies-inducing Valentine’s Day fuckery of yesterday, and I was not going to take the librarian’s refusal to give me a new card, as it was my tax-payer and God-given right.  At least, I felt that way.  So when my card refused to scan - and I stood there a good amount of time, waiting for it to be read - I went up the counter and handed the librarian my card.

“I need a new card,” I said.

She scanned it, and, of course, it scanned just fine for her.  OF COURSE.  She told me this, and then said that I “was probably just not holding it there long enough.”  YEP. I’M SURE THAT’S IT. Then she said, “Here, I’ll go over with you and show you.”  BECAUSE I DID NOT WORK AT A GROCERY STORE FOR TWO YEARS SCANNING ITEMS AND I AM NOT A COLLEGE GRADUATE.  Perhaps she thought I was mentally incapable or not patient enough to stand there for more than three seconds, holding my card under the little red lasers of mockery. YES. SURELY THAT’S IT.

It scanned for her at the self-checkout readers, too. I muttered “Thank you.”  Then I checked out my items, and, afterward, I tried to re-scan the card - I even held it at an angle, as she had - but NOTHING. That card was busted as shit.

I went back up the front desk, to the other lady who was working there, and snapped the card in half, then placed the two halves on the counter.

“I need a new card.”

How I Blossomed From a Needle-Phobic Girl to a Dumb Slut to a Cranky Old Lady

When I went off to college, I was required to get several shots that would supposedly make me immune to the things that preyed on the young living in close quarters. These excluded a vaccine for STDs and fuckery, unfortunately - I was staying in the dorm so notorious for poor sexual decisions that it was known as the STD Dorm.  I was not told of this particular dorm’s reputation when I labeled my top four choices for residences on the housing application.  I was 18, and naive, and there were  no indicators on the form - things that would have been helpful such as “The STD Dorm - BEWARE” or “The Dorm Full of Theater Fuckery and Emo English Majors” or “The Dorm At the End of the World” - there were simply the official University names of these dorms, and I went with the few that I had actually heard of and knew of the approximate location.  Looking back, this was probably not the best plan as there were probably reasons why I’d heard the names of these dorms bandied about, especially my number one dorm of choice - it was not because this dorm was full of future Nobel Prize winners, but because it was a hotbed of sluts.  Unfortunately, I got my first choice in dorms, and I became a slut by association.

Not that being a slut, male or female, is a bad thing.  I’m going purely on the comic reputation here, the kind of reputation that gets furthered by dumb nineteen-and twenty-year-old college kids - when they say STD Dorm, there’s either a profound and self-righteous disgust, or, more often, a kind of beaming pride.  I subscribe wholly to the words of Dan Savage on sluttery - if you want to go slut it up, go be your slutty self, and have fun and be safe.  I suppose, however, that because it was called the STD Dorm and not the Condom Dorm that it implied that these sluts, self-identified or not, were not being safe.  So, basically, when I got to college, I wasn’t only a slut, but a dumb, unsafe slut by association with my living quarters.

My first roommate actually lived up well to the reputation.  She’d go to the Campus Christian Churchy Church Group and then, with the love of Jesus in her heart, she would get so wasted that the young men she was with would have to carry her up the five flights of stairs to our shared room (the elevators never worked when I was living there).  She would flop around like a Jesus Fish out of water and I would sleepily look up from my lofted bed, attempting not to hit my head on the ceiling, wondering if she was okay.  The sink became her personal vomit bucket once or twice; after the first time I put in a request for a new roommate.  I never saw my resident hall live-in lady, and she probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, as I’m sure it wasn’t her first sink barf rodeo.

Apparently my roommate didn’t care for me either, what with my staying in and trying to slog through Crime and Punishment, my holding normal hours, and my willingness to put up with her yarking in our sink.  Perhaps she suspected me of eating a shitload of her Laffy Taffy without her permission, which, yes, I did, but she had it in a huge jar and her skinny ass wasn’t going to eat it anyway.  She hatched a plan with her friend who lived two floors below us, who also had a roommate she didn’t want to live with, and soon this girl and I were meeting, and they were asking if some switching could happen so they could be roommates and have drunken Jesus slut times together.  We agreed, and the new roommate of mine became a good friend - she still is.  As for those two, we never saw them eat in the cafeteria together, and figured that they had grown sick of each other - there was no better punishment in our minds for our former roommates than having to share a cramped 15 by 12 room with one another.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t be immunized for crappy roommates, but they did stick me with the Meningitis shot and some other fun stuff.  I hated shots at this time, and I was terrified.  I hadn’t gotten a shot for quite a while, and I hadn’t see a doctor ever since that out of control athletes foot that got me out of junior high swimming (thankfully) for a few days.  I wasn’t even going to a big girl doctor - I was still signed on with my pediatrician, and that’s where I was scheduled to receive the necessary shots.  As the day grew closer, I got more and more nervous about it.  My palms burst into sweat upon the thought of it.

When the Day of the Death Shots arrived, I went to the pediatrician’s office.  I don’t think my mother was with me, though she might have been; I don’t recall her there, holding my hand or anything.  I sat in the waiting room, along with the other patients, jealous that they were still young enough to play with the wooden spirally thing with the beads that move around, and I was stuck there reading Overprotective Parenting Monthly, waiting.  They were oblivious to what terrible things waiting for them behind those doors, but I knew. I knew.

The nurse called my name and I stood on shaky legs and went into that confusing hallway of examination rooms.  She made me do the usual stuff, stand on the scale, hold out my arm so my blood pressure could be taken, and then she lead me to my execution room.  The nurse said a few calming things, probably because I looked all sweaty, and prepared the shots.  Then, needle in hand, she told me to look away, as if she was going to saw off one of my gangrenous limbs.  I turned my head, and she administered the shots.

“That was fine!” I said, and suddenly my vision had dark shadowy frames around it that were closing in.  I passed out.

I almost instantly woke up from my faint, but the damage had been done, and was worsened when I told one of my best friends about the incident.  Rightfully, she laughed at me, but we are the kind of friends that can laugh when one of us faints at the pediatrician's office or gets a pencil stuck up her nose at her ACT prep course.

I have not fainted since that time, and I’ve had several rounds of shots, flu included, and I’ve been tattooed.  But I do get a little sweaty when the nurse holds up the needle.  Recently, I had to get a physical for the fancy new job.  This consisted of sitting in the waiting room for ten minutes and then being lead back by the nurse for the usual weigh-in and pee-in.  She gave me a shot and drew blood, after asking me if I was okay with shots. I laughed nervously. “I think so,” I replied.  It probably didn’t put her at ease, but I didn’t faint.  The worst part of the entire thing was waiting for twenty minutes in the nakey gown for the doctor to come in, and when he finally did, he checked my ears, knocked on my knees with that silly hammer, and then told me I could go.  I’ve clearly passed that youthful stage in my life where I’m frightened of shots, and have blossomed right into my elderly self.  I got pretty much naked for that? Pff, I thought as I put my two layers of pants back on.  Grumble, grumble.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Weekend of Victory

Last weekend, the man I go around with and I went to a show. I knew it was going to be bad scheduling on my part, as I had already made plans to go shopping with my mother and sister at the bright-eyed, busy-beaver hour of nine the next morning. In our family, we don’t go by the phrase “The early bird catches the worm,” but by the phrase, “The early bird catches the best thrift store deals, so hurry the fuck up.”

This show was at the local and once-unknown warehouse, which, since the opening and re-opening of the historically popular music venue/bar downtown and it’s inevitable downward spiral into bro-esque fuckery and poor band booking, has dug its way into my heart. It’s cheap, the bands are always good, I can bring however many PBRs will fit into my purse, and, sometimes, there’s a train on the tracks between you and that destination of glorious metal sin, and you have to climb over it because danger is fun.

Another point to make about the warehouse is that people will go there and they will get all kinds of crazy that is not tolerated or maybe just not present in the bars. The bands that night were of the typical hard/metal/thrash/rock/punk that the warehouse people, bless their hardworking hearts, book, some of them local, all of them great, and people had clearly come there to celebrate the musical talent and their freedom to get drunk in a very physical way.

I love free spirits.

Two jolly fellows in particular were bumping into each other, pushing everyone in their path, throwing themselves into the crowd, knocking people down, and rolling around on the floor as the bands played. They were wearing coats with matted fur that reminded me of when my parents’ long-haired cat gets dreadlocks and we have to get the scissors out and cut them off. These young men looked like two Sasquatches in heat, recklessly throwing themselves around, expressing their feral desires, or perhaps altered mental states moshfully. I am more willing to go to shows like this now, as my health insurance from my new job kicks in soon, but I stand to the side and I stay away from 40s and glass bottles in general, as that is how my boyfriend got his tooth chipped. He was drinking PBR, the nectar of the Gods, at the warehouse Halloween show when someone ran into him, knocking the bottle against his once-beautiful, now snaggy teeth.

I do, indeed, love the warehouse.

Needless to say, after my purse full of beers, I wasn’t in prime shopping shape the next morning. I stumbled to the coffee maker in agony. “Why, Jesus, why did you make PBR so delicious!?” I threw the previous day’s grounds into the compost bucket, which is actually a more difficult maneuver than it sounds like - one has to remove the rubber bands that keep the cupboard doors closed from the kitty’s curious paws, then pry the plastic lid off of the compost bucket while making sure that the cat doesn’t squeeze into the cupboard. My fear of fears: the cat climbing into the mysterious hole in the back corner of the lower cupboards and disappearing into the house (which reminds me of the House of Leaves house, with it’s secret staircase and attic noises and crooked hallways - nothing has fallen off the shelf yet) FOREVER. It is a very real concern of mine.

With my little nugget safely away from the cupboards of death, and coffee in my system, I made it to the street where my mother picked me up. After getting my sister, we went to the consignment store where she happens to work and proceeded to spend nearly three hours there, getting excited over pink metallic jackets in the 80’s section and leopard-print cardigans. Going to this consignment store is like a ritual, a tradition - instead of worshipping at a church, we worship the Rack of Sensible Jackets and the Divine Bin of Boots and Oversized 80’s Belts.

Afterwards, we made a stop at the grocery store, my sister momentarily pausing in the Valentine’s Day aisle to contemplate getting a not-so-secret crush a Valentine’s Day gift, and then to curse at love and all of it’s conventions. We then went to another consignment store to pick up the meager cash we had from things we had brought previously to sell. At that point, we were getting tired. My sister’s caffeine was running low, and so we walked around, trying to find a vending machine. We found one a few shops down, outside, oblivious that it was pure evil. Not only was it not Pepsi or Coke but Dr. Pepper, but the bottle got stuck at the bottom of the vending machine, behind the plastic flap.

“Fuck!” said my sister, and bent down to free it. She pushed the plastic flap, and hit it, and jiggled it, getting angrier by the moment, and swearing up the usual storm. At last she freed the bottle, and victory was hers.


Victorious, in fact, was the weekend, I realized: I had no teeth knocked out, I saw a handful of good bands and two Sasquatch men, and that leopard print cardigan was MINE.torious, in fact, was the weekend, I realized: I had no teeth knocked out, I saw a handful of good bands and two Sasquatch men, and that leopard print cardigan was MINE.

Show Me Your Teeth

It was Saturday, and we had been driving home from the bowling alley, me sitting in the back between my sister and my boyfriend, my parents up front.  The game had been one of intense competition, though not as intense as the Catch Phrase games we play tend to be, and to replenish ourselves we had stopped at the grocery store for some snackage, including individual candies from the large plastic bins - saltwater taffy, root beer barrels, and gummy orange slices.  I had resisted the call of Gouda and had opted instead for Cocoa Crunchies cereal.

We had been merrily stuffing our faces when my dad yelled “Son of a bitch!” as he was pulling up to a stop light, giving us all whiplash with his swift braking. We were startled.  “What?”  He fished around in his mouth, pulling out the half-chewed remains of a gummy orange slice, along with a crown. “God damn it!”

Gummy fruits: dangerously delicious.

The following Sunday night, which tends to be family dinner night, we had all made our sandwiches and were sitting down at the dining table, which had been temporarily turned into my dad’s handyman work bench.  He had been fixing my mother’s CD player, and while he removed the various tools and the scattered segments of the electronic device, he left one lone yogurt container in the middle of the table.  I figured it was filled with the wares of a fix-it-man - extra screws or something - but when my sister asked about the contents, my dad informed us that it was, indeed, the crown that had been taken down by the orange slice the night before.

Having that dental malfunction sitting on the dining room table while she was eating dinner didn’t sit well with my sister. “Ugh, ew! Can you get it off? Just get it off!” She wriggled in her chair.

“WHAT,” said my dad. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It just freaks me out, I start thinking about the dentist . . . I hate the dentist!”

“FINE,” grumbled my dad, getting up and relocating the offending yogurt container. “Jesus Christ.”  I told him he should leave it under his pillow so the tooth fairy would give him a shiny new nickel, but he wasn’t too keen on the idea.

My sister couldn’t stop thinking about the dentist and teeth, however, and about how freaked out she was at the thought of her own teeth randomly falling out.

“Look at these pieces of corn,” I said, spooning up some soup, “don’t they look like little teeth?”

“Don’t!” she said. “I don’t want to think about the dentist. I HATE THE DENTIST.”

“Remember that guy who smelled like chicken salad?” I asked.


“I thought it was tuna,” said my mom.



“Chicken salad or tuna salad, either one,” I said.  “And he got really close to you, and you could smell it.”  My sister agreed, recalling her own uncomfortable, stinky experiences.  He had retired not long after we started seeing him, fortunately, but then we were exposed to the horrors of the new dentist and his teeth-rating, which set my sister off all over again.

“Well,” said my dad, “That dentist actually retired, too. There’s a new dentist, I just went there.  He’s young and good-looking.  He did a good job on me.”

My sister instantly perked up. “What, did you tell him you had two ugly daughters you needed to marry off?” my sister asked.

“NO,” he said. “He had a girlfriend anyway.  I saw a picture of them together.  And she called him.”

“What, he just took his calls while he was working on you?” said my sister.

“No, I was there for a long time.  I would have had to go back four different times, but they made the crowns there,” said my dad.  “So I heard him on a break, or something.”  I didn’t ask why my dad was eavesdropping on the new, hot young dentist’s hot young phone calls but instead wondered aloud if she was a dentist as well, and how they met.

“I wonder if they listen to ‘Teeth,’” said my sister, referring to the Lady Gaga song, and then she asked my mother if she would take her and hold her hand in the examination room the next time she went to the dentist, because she was scared. My mother promised that she would, as she has a kind heart and will go along with a lot of fuckery as long as it makes us feel better, and my dad started talking about the miracles of dentistry, and how convenient it was now.  My sister then asked why they couldn’t just put something in your mouth and zap the cavities away, but then my dad said that it was easier to take precautions and prevent them in the first place.

“Oh, so it’s like herpes,” said my sister.  “Once you get them, you’re screwed.”

The Majestic Blazer of 90's Glory

This is what I pulled out of my closet to wear last night. Rescued from a rack at the local thrift store for no more than $1.50, it is a fabulous bright pink and purple blazer with an obnoxious, yet inviting floral print, circa late 80's or early 90's. Doesn't it just make your shoulders quiver with delight in anticipation of the shoulder pads?

Well, I cut those out, and gave them to my sister so she could stuff her bra with them.

It's not as sparkly as I'd like my 90's blazers to be, the type of sequin-heavy thing that makes it feel like New Year's Eve 1990 EVERY DAY.  But last night, it spoke to me.  Thus, I freed it from its hanger, and shoved my arms into it.

It was going to be a good night. I could feel it in my phantom shoulder pads.

Indeed, it was a magical night. The man I go around with and I got to the bar with 10 minutes until happy hour was over and karaoke began. Despite our fast indulgence in cheap happy hour drinks, neither of us sang, though we pondered what songs we could bring to the table - could we achieve the high-pitched chorus of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy"? Could we slow it down with a "2 Become 1" duet?  Neither of us are karaoke people, and I'm not even a singer, so we got a collective F in participation last night. I've been scarred for life by a music teacher who must have thought that every single person could sing on key and not sound like a cat with rabies, and boy did I show her.  She probably saw me as a monster simply because I have subpar vocal talent, but at least my last name didn't sound like a swear word.

We did enjoy my sister's rendition of a Miley Cyrus song (she too had on a fabulous outfit, sans amputated shoulder pad breast implants). By midnight, many of the songs were just being screamed, though done so with magnificent gusto (the Creed song, in particular), so we went around the corner and visited the dance party. That was where it got messy - slowed down by alcohol but fueled by the beat ("Beat the beat up", my boyfriend said, trying to recall the Pauly D quote), we made our usual half-assed attempt to get jiggy with it.  When I realized I had sweat enough to permeate my fancy blazer, and I had to work in about seven hours, we left and went home, Skee-lo stuck in our heads.

I retired the blazer to the closet this morning - another successful Tuesday night out. Thank you, floral blazer!

My significant other apparently did not have as wonderful of a morning to follow up the great night out. I could tell, because I heard the bottle of aspirin rattling before the bedroom light was turned on at 6:50.  As we were preparing for our day, he walked out into the bedroom, brushing his teeth, then stopped, and turned to me. "What?" I asked.

He paused, then he took the toothbrush out of his mouth, and looked at it.

"This is your toothbrush."

The Last Question

"How do you feel about DIVERSITY?"

I hesitated. An explanation of DIVERSITY had been provided as the first part of the question, and then that bomb was dropped by the personable, even likable, interviewer across the desk.  He looked up at me and waited, probably overcome with anticipation as I formed what was going to be yet another brilliant answer in my interview - an interview that I was slapping silly with my genius. I was doing well, partially because he wasn't being a cold-hearted sea beast like the man who interviewed me half a year ago. That man had spent 60% of the interview looking down, and he had treated the entire charade with the upmost seriousness, as though I was applying to be President of the Moon and not just another forlorn secretary whose main purpose in life was unjamming the goddamn fax machine.

Because this interviewer was so personable, and made eye contact, and because there also wasn't someone else in the room for the sole purpose of taking notes on my fuck-ups, I felt comfortable being myself, that is, the witty and slightly sarcastic person I am, or at least, the witty and slightly sarcastic person I think I am.  I had inadvertently psyched myself up, though I wasn't quite Jack Donaghy looking in the mirror and yelling "NOW GET OUT THERE, YOU MAGNIFICENT SON OF A BITCH!" It was more like that squeaky internal monologue that was telling me they needed me a lot more than I needed them. I had a job already, a full time, albeit fuckery-full job, and they were the ones that needed me to sit in a wee glass box ("cars only hit it occasionally") during my weekend evenings from Thirsty Thursday to Slurring Saturday. Earlier, my internal voice had been trying to extinguish all nervousness: "You don't even care about this. You don't! So don't be nervous.  Brush your teeth again, your breath smells like cheese, you shouldn't have eaten all of that Gouda this morning."

Gee, DIVERSITY? Is that really what it boiled down to?  This was the last question on the official interview list, and it was something so broad and land-mine-y - what was I going to say? I could barely compose the words in my head because at that moment the internal voice was screaming "SHIT SHIT SHIT HE'S LOOKING AT YOU NOW! ANSWER! SAY ANYTHING!"

"Good?" I said, finally.  I'm sure I chuckled a little, ha ha, yes, I can laugh at myself, did you HEAR how lame that was?


I paused. "I mean . . . I've worked with plenty of people, different ethnicities, different socioeconomic backgrounds . . ."

"OMG REALLY?" yelled my internal voice. "JUST ACT LIKE YOU DON'T EVEN SEE RACE OR POVERTY, you see PEOPLE. DO IT. Oh, God, I think I still smell Gouda."


I should have said something along the lines of how diversity creates different viewpoints and ideas.  And different viewpoints and ideas are essential to innovation and advancement.  That's basically what it's all about - variations - evolution - adaptation.  I could have been science-y and nerdy and created that brilliant metaphor but all I could think of was GOOD. DIVERSITY. GOOD.

"It's good," I concluded.  "I feel like this should be an essay test!"

Fortunately, the kind-hearted interviewer smiled, nodded, scribbled something, and then started in about uniforms.  Whew.  Shirts. There's no conflict or tension there.  We could just have a nice, simple conversation about shirts, and forget about the Freshmen Rhetoric 101 speech on DIVERSITY.

Overall, I did well on the interview, very well, and besides being slightly confused - oh, I'm on the FIRST floor? - right when I stepped out of his office, I felt a sense of elation and accomplishment.  I could have said more about DIVERSITY. I could have composed some feel-good poetry in the name of DIVERSITY, and maybe made a joke about Antoine Dodson being a historical figure of our times, transcending boundaries, just to show how much i knew about DIVERSITY.  Sadly, I didn't ace that question, but then I thought about all of the other
interview fuckery I'd had over my lifetime: "List three words to describe yourself." "Um, watch these VHS tapes about employee safety at the grocery store" - and I felt good. At least I'd pronounced "socioeconomic" correctly.

Then I pretty much got down on my knees and prayed right there, in the middle of the street, oh please Lord, I do not want to interview again for a long, long time. Please, please, let me be President of the Moon.


But I got the job instead.

Who wouldn't want to be President of some fancy, uninhabitable space rock?