The Really Bad Date

Inspired by reading the blog Simply Solo today, I'm sharing one of my really bad first date stories.

The Really Bad Date

He was an artist. When you're 20, you think that's hot. What it really means, you learn, is that he doesn't have a job, has at least one addiction, and lives in Brooklyn, off the G train. (If you don't know what that means, we call the G train the Ghost train, because it never shows up.)

But, in the spirit of adventure, I patiently waited 45 minutes for the G train on a hot, humid, New York summer evening. I had tried my best, as women do, to look pretty. It was our first date, but it wasn't a blind date; we had seen each other before at a party- in the dark, inebriated- so there wasn't too much suspense, though there was some self-imposed pressure to live up to whatever had drawn him to ask me out in the first place. I had tried on about 97 outfits before settling for a pink linen blouse and a flowy skirt. I was ready to have a great date.

When I got out of the subway, he was waiting for me. How sweet, I thought, forgetting that I'd just spent hours of my life in an underground hell. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that said, "Legalize Marijuana." Well, that's an odd choice. Whatever. He probably just wants to make me laugh. I said hi and smiled. He still looked as cute as I'd remembered him. He kissed me on the cheek and my heart started racing. I waited for him to tell me I looked nice. He picked up the cue and checked me out- head to toe- before saying, "You look hot." Not exactly what a girl hopes to hear as the first compliment, but no problem. He's an artist, he's playing it cool.

He took me to the restaurant where we were going to have dinner. The place was crowded and when the hostess said there'd be a 15-20 minute wait, he turned to me and said, "Let's go somewhere else." I told him I really didn't mind waiting, it was friday night and there'd probably be a wait anywhere we went, but he really didn't want to stay there. I thought he was going to take me to another restaurant, probably one as nice as the one we were just at, but instead he took me to a diner. Now, I have no problems with diners. I actually love an old-fashioned new york city diner and don't think it's a bad place for a date. But I was really confused about how his plans to take me out to dinner at a nice restaurant had turned into eating at a poorly-lit, unimpressive diner, and started getting paranoid that maybe he didn't think I was pretty anymore and didn't want me to have any expectations.

As soon as we sat down, though, he started to explain himself, "You look all dressed up, I feel bad bringing you to a diner, I should've made a reservation, I never think anywhere's gonna be as crowded as it is." Oh, how cute, I thought and decided to ignore that his second compliment of the evening was you look all dressed up. "Please, don't sweat it," I said and gave him my best smile, "I rather be somewhere where we can hear each other talk anyway." He seemed pleased with my response and smiled back, which made him look super cute and I was back in this-date-is-going-to-be-great land.

Then the waitress came over. I've never been any good at being the girl who orders a garden salad at a diner, so I ordered a burger, fries, and a chocolate milk-shake. I guess that shocked him, because he blurted out, "What are you, pregnant?" The waitress looked at me, and my face must have registered, "What the fuck?" because she said she'd give us a few minutes. He looked at me and said, "I'm just joking around, I know you're not preggers."

Aside: to any male readers, if I may give you some advice here: Never, never, ever, ever, on date number 1 or date number 508, not even on a date with a woman who is pregnant, not even on a date with a woman you think is so skinny she'll most certainly understand that it's a joke, should you ever, ever, ever joke about a woman being pregnant. And, for the record, "preggers" will never be funny.

So, now that he had succeeded, with one sentence, in making me feel fat and self-conscious about what I'd ordered, you can imagine how the date went. I shut down and became monosyllabic. He could sense that something was up, though, and talked enough for both of us. For an artist, by the way, he was incredibly boring and I might as well have been on a date with an investment banker whose favorite hobby was collecting stamps. The highlight of our conversation was when he asked me to guess where his four piercings were. I'll spare you the details on that, as I myself have worked very hard to try and push that memory away.

I barely ate my food, which he didn't seem to notice, and when the check arrived, I didn't offer to split it, which I always do. He picked it up and paid for it with wrinkled $5 bills that he took out of his pocket (no wallet ever made an appearance), and asked me if I wanted to go to a bar and, I kid you not, "have some shots". I yawned and said, "It's a long way back for me, I think I should go home." He looked semi-defeated.

He walked me to the subway, and when we reached it I tried to avoid direct eye-contact so as to kill any impulse he might have kiss me, but he grabbed my hand and tried to kiss me anyway. I was so startled I almost fell on him. "Oh I'm sorry, I was trying to kiss you," he said. "Yeah, I noticed, I didn't see that coming." And then we stood there in an awkward silence. I mumbled the obligatory thank-you-for-a-nice-evening, and he replied with the let's-do-this-again-sometime, and then I went down the stairs to the subway, thinking to myself, Golly, I'd rather have had a date with the G train.

The next day, he wrote me an email (this was just before men resorted to texting for all forms of communication), saying it was great meeting me and asking me out again. I wrote back politely declining.

A few years later, he found me on facebook (yep, creepy), and sent me a message: "I know I wasn't good enough to date, but wanna be my facebook friend? I still think you're hot!"

Um. No, thanks.

Image from here.

Blessed

In the midst of holiday spirits, I am reminded that I am blessed.

There are suddenly no reasons to complain. Problems seem trivial. Dissatisfaction vanishes. Obligations evaporate. Desires become distant.

In the place of everyday gloom and doom, wanting and needing, there is simplicity and space.

And then, to my delight, there is an abundance of peace and love.

---fear not, dear readers, I assure you this perspective is temporary.

My Big Bully: Beauty Standards

Ten years ago, I watched the video of my 15th birthday party with my parents and started to scream because of how ugly I looked on the screen. My huge nose, my ear that stuck out, my heavy sagging breasts, my blemished skin, my tiny teeth; all blown up and immortalized on the TV screen. I had never felt pretty, as I've blogged about before, but now it wasn't just a self-esteem issue existing only in my head; there was evidence in the form of digital media, and it was beyond devastating.

Not a day went by after that when I didn't complain about being ugly. Self-hating behavior soon followed: cigarettes, drinking, not eating, overdoing it at the gym, and so on. Coupled with an untimely rejection from the boy I had a crush on at the time, it set me into a depressive spiral, and my parents started worrying about me. Shortly after, I made the decision to undergo plastic surgery. Thanks to Brazilian culture, my parents were unshaken by plastic surgeries, as well as desperate for a solution to my unhealthy self-image, so they allowed it.

On June 12, 2001, an ungentle doctor injected me with a general anesthetic, I passed out cold, and the woman nature intended me to be got cut, tucked, nipped, sculpted, stitched and sewn up, never to be seen again. Six hours later, I awoke throwing up blood and peeing myself, but I had a narrower nose, tucked ears, and smaller, perkier breasts. Not that I could see any of it- I was so bandaged and drugged I could barely remember my own name, but the team of doctors in their aqua-green uniforms were very cheerful and optimistic. All had gone very, very well. June 12th is Valentine's Day in Brazil and, as she wheeled me back to my room, the nurse said, "Happy Valentine's Day! Do you have a boyfriend?" I groggily shook my head no. "Oh, that's okay," she said and stroked my bandaged head, "You'll be so pretty now, next year you'll surely have a boyfriend." Although I was completely doped, I prayed that she please be right.

I forced my ugly-duckling self to blossom into a swan, because I did not know what else to do. Now that I'm an adult and deal with women's self-image issues on a daily basis, I am appalled that no one sat me down and said, "There's nothing wrong with you. Your insecurities are normal. You will survive adolescence, and changing your exterior self will have very little to do with it." Sure, I probably wouldn't have heard them and it may not have stopped me, but it's rather unsettling to think that no one even tried. A 15-year-old girl said, I'm insecure, I feel ugly, I'm going to have three plastic surgeries, and no one tried to stop it. No one tried to find a different (perhaps less permanent/painful/dangerous/expensive/risky) way to help me get through my teenage angst. Not one single person sat me down and tried to tell me I was good enough just as I was. It makes me want to start an "It Gets Better" campaign for plain and unpopular teenage girls. I think the pop-culture and media that standardizes the chase of socialized beauty ideals and profits from the insecurities of teenagers is a big fat bully, and someone should be protecting impressionable young women from it.

Although I have always said I don't regret any of the procedures I went through, the truth is it all happened when I was so young I really have no idea if I've turned out to be the best (or healthiest, or happiest) version of myself. I never got to see myself as an adult pre-surgeries. The irreversible nature of it all meant that what I ended up with was now what I'd live with- I would never again be 100% natural. Unlike medical surgeries and scars people end up with throughout life, these changes in me were self-imposed and forced. Plastic surgeries, much like lying, have the stubborn aftertaste of inauthenticity, and something about me would always feel slightly fake.

I recently heard an older woman talk about wanting to get plastic surgery and remarking, "My boyfriend loves me just the way I am, no one's ever complained, this is just for me," and I felt a pang of jealousy. She got to see who she really was, she found a way to accept it, and she got to be loved for who she was, flaws and all, before making the decision to change it. That is something I have never known.

I never tried to watch that video of my 15th birthday party again, but I still have it. I am pretty sure that if I watched it now I would not be mortified by my ugliness, though. If anything, I'd probably be disturbed by how misconstrued my own self-image was and left wondering, yet again, why there was no attempt to make me aware of that.

The truth is that it was easier, for me and everyone around me, to give in to beauty standards than try to change them. It was also easier to fix the exterior "problems" than deal with the interior battle, and I got what I wanted in the end. When I saw my prom pictures a few years later, I had the thought, Well, look at that. I'm pretty.

And the nurse's prediction was accurate. On June 12th, 2002, I didn't spend Valentine's Day alone.

Image from here.

An Encounter with Loneliness

I threw up my life on Sunday. Provoked by an overconsumption of vodka tonics on Saturday night, my body decided nothing was staying in. Shivering, I made a bed of bath mats on the bathroom floor, surrounded myself with towels, and lay next to my new friend: the toilet bowl. And there it went, in approximately 12 minute intervals: all the poison my digestive system protectively rejected.

As I lay there, in a sort of delusional state, weak and disgusted with myself, I felt not only the painful pangs of "I hate you right now" from my stomach, but also a feeling I'd not seen so close to the surface in a long time: I felt incredibly lonely. As though with every purge I also lost my knowledge of nurturing and belonging, I seemed to grow increasingly emptier. There's nothing inside me, was the recurring thought. I suddenly had an urge for evidence of every lesson I'd ever learned that had made me capable of providing myself with love and care. I wanted to know that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" existed inside me, as a tangible idea that I had proved throughout my life. I wanted to know that rejection, pain, abandonment, and loss had created muscles in my body and provided me with resources that I could rely on for survival.

What I felt instead was a hollowness, an endless void. There was no physical evidence of the things I had overcome and the lessons I had learned. Any acquired strength or courage had left no imprint. The depths of my stomach had been evacuated, and with it went all my adult-like knowledge that everything would be okay.

I didn't have much time to dwell on this, as I eventually fell into a deep sleep, and by the time I woke up, I was the same as I had always been, except my stomach was flatter and my complexion paler. I felt weak, yes, but my body knew how to go through the motions of taking care of myself. I could get up, shower, change, eat something bland, drink water, and lie back down again. I could tell myself, everything is going to be okay.

But I can not shake that for those couple of hours, exhausted of my defenses, I felt an emptiness so deep it paralyzed me. My knowledge of the world, of myself, and of my life, had somehow abandoned me. The inner mother, the adult-within-the-child, the wiser voice; they were all gone. I was alone.

Was it real, I wonder? Was that loneliness the essence of humanity, and all the rest is just a sham to help us survive? Or do we really have souls, a higher Self, a sense of belonging to a bigger picture?

At the end of the day, are we just alone, or is there really something at our core that never leaves us?

Gratitude and God

I tend to bargain with God.

I'm not really a big God person but, sometimes, I do talk to someone- and not just an energy or vibration, but someone very specific to me, whose presence I can feel clearly and closely. And I call that someone "God", because it's practical and, honestly, I haven't come up with anything better.

When I have food poisoning and feel like I'm about to throw up my lungs, I start talking to God. Ok. Listen. I'll do anything. Just make me feel better. I know you can do it. I know you just want my attention. So here's what I'll do: I will sell my Prada bags and use the money to buy meals for homeless people. How does that sound? Please, just help me out here.

Or when I want to do well at an audition: Yo. Here's the deal, help me do really well in this audition, because I really really want it and I need a sign that I'm still supposed to be doing this, so help me get this part, and I'll pray every night for a week. Ok, I probably won't. But I'll remember you. I'll blog about you. How does that sound? I'll remember to be grateful. I promise.

Essentially, I turn to God in times of need and, for the most part, forget all about God when things are going well. It reminds me of a Chuck Palahniuk quote, "Your parents are like God, you turn to them when you need them."

But every once in a while, I remember to make a gratitude list before going to bed. It's mostly just an outline of the simple things I usually take for granted. I feel a shift immediately, a relief of being unburdened from always wanting more.

So here's today's list, may this be my tribute to the powers that be.

Today I am grateful for...

Sleeping well.

Warm covers.

Technology that allows for alarm clocks.

Cuddling and body warmth.

Caring about someone.

Coffee with a super fun co-worker.

Rain.

A warm coat.

Monthly unlimited metro card.

A painless subway ride.

Bagel with butter.

My laptop.

Email from an old friend.

Boredom. Far better than stress.

More coffee.

Scrabble.

The outdoors.

Smart women.

Press passes.

Washing hair.

Hot water.

Pink fluffy towel.

Birthday dinner.

Reconnecting.

Sangria.

Tapas.

Chocolate mousse crack cake.

Walking.

Peter Rabbit.

Tea.

Don't have to wake up early tomorrow.

Bed.

Old pajamas.

Blogging.