Dear John

I thought of calling this letter "Why I Am Breaking Up With You," and then thought better of it. After all, I'm not entirely convinced that I want to. There are so many about us that just don't work together. I am a strong proponent of this whole "opposites attract" adage but I think Paula Abdul meant things like he's quiet, she's chatty; he's rugged, she's girly; he's bookish, she's artsy. I don't think it holds for us. None of the things I am about to write to you is reason enough to break up with you, in and of itself, but the series of things that do not mesh is certainly cause for some concern.

I am boho chic, minus the chic. You are what Abercrombie would be if he grew up and got a job.

I like animals. You do not. It wouldn't be such a problem if you didn't mind them, or if you simply didn't care for them but could tolerate them, but no. You don't want pets. Ever.

I am anything but fancy. You like things of a certain... quality. You're more of a hotel kind of guy while I get my kicks out of hostels and guesthouses. It's not that I mind hotels. It's just that sometimes, I wanna be less removed from the rest of the world. 

I am a social butterfly. You have no friends in the city. Except the ones you work with, and they don't really count since you don't hang out with them outside of work. It's awesome that you are willing to hang out with my friends, but I wish you had your own.

I embrace all cultures. You are very vocal in your distaste for the French and the Canadians. What have they ever done to you?

I am liberal. You are conservative. I believe that some people need a little help to get on even footing, whereas you're more every man for himself. Neither of us is politically passionate enough to matter most of the time, but sometimes, it makes me wonder. 

I do not make a six figure salary. You do. In fact, you make three times as much as I do. Is that why you complain 300 times more than I do even though we work the same number of hours? It's true, my job may not be as serious as yours, and mine might even be kind of fun, but did you ever think to offer me a shoulder rub after a long day before asking me to give you one?

I enjoy food. A lot. I can't even begin to understand how it is that you have not, not even once, walked out of a restaurant with me raving about the tastes and textures that have just danced across our tongues. As I chew in near-ecstasy, I see you picking at your food, eating it dutifully but without joy, and all of a sudden, my food doesn't taste as good. It breaks my heart.

I dream of traveling. I dream of sights and sounds and smells you just can't get here. With every paycheck I get, I dedicate a percentage of it to my next unforgettable destination. You don't really want to waste your money on travel. You'd rather spend it on something more tangible. Like another gigantic television.

I don't watch tv. You love it. Ironic, as I'm the one who works in television. I think it's awesome that you know so much about all of the shows and the entertainment business and all, but sometimes it makes me sad that we are on the couch a good 90% of the time we are together, not counting the time that we are sleeping. And even when we're not watching, you're talking about tv, talking about the characters as if they are people you know in real life.

I love music and the arts. You're not really into the arts, and while you like music, you prefer to listen at home. I'm cool with that. I even like your taste in music. But you know I love museums and concerts and the ballet and the opera and live music, and still, we sit at home in front of the tv. Can't we take a couple nights off from your couch, comfortable though it may be? You do have DVR, after all.

I don't expect a whole lot on holidays. My birthday was on a Monday and I was in France on business. I asked you if you had free long distance at work so you could call my hotel. You said no. And that was that. When I got back from France, you told me you hadn't gotten me anything and what did I want. I said, "Nothing," because I'm pretty sure that's the only thing I could have said without sounding like a whiny little brat. You double checked with me, saying, "You're sure you're not gonna be mad at me later and bring it up if I don't?" To which I replied, "Of course not." What? I'm going to demand that you take me out to dinner or do something nice? Or spend a few extra dollars on your phone bill to make an international phone call? I don't need jewelry or flowers or fancy dinners, but a heartfelt card or a trip to a museum might have been nice.

You don't need me. You keep me around as long as it's convenient for you. When you're tired after work, you don't want to see me because you're tired. When I'm tired after work, I want to collapse into your arms and let the worries of the day disappear. If I do come over when you're tired, you prefer that I don't stay the night because I don't help you relax.

I need to be loved. I have been craving it. That's why I got sucked into you so quickly, the very first day that I moved to the city. You drew me in with good food and nights out and telling me I was beautiful. Now it's McDonalds and Survivor and I shouldn't wear those brown lacy panties anymore because I don't look good walking around the house in them.

My heart hurts.

Follow through...

Where did all the romance go?

We were having an Undeclared marathon tonight after a long weekend of packing and moving and unpacking and cleaning. Granted, he just moved two floors down, so it wasn't a difficult move, but it was a well-deserved day of vegging out on the couch watching ten episodes of a tv show I didn't know existed until it came out on DVD. Steven puts together a romantic evening for Lizzie with candles and dancing and a massage... And as we're watching, JP jokingly asks me if the romance is still alive in our relationship. My first instinct is to say, well, he's not really a romantic guy. Then I think better of it and tell him there's still romance... maybe. I could love him. I might love him even now. I already told him I did, but that was partly because I felt pressured to say it and partly because I want to feel it and partly because I might. But I feel like I was drawn into this relationship based on false advertising. When we first started seeing each other, we went out on dates, I got dressed up, he sent me flowers for Valentine's Day... and now, he doesn't even call me on my birthday because I'm in France, and I can't remember the last time he asked me out on a date. I realize that we eat together a lot, but it is never something pre-planned or special anymore. This makes me a little sad. Follow through...

Nerve wracking

So when is it acceptable to meet the parents? Because I'm not sure I'm so good at this girlfriend thing. Tongue-tied, slightly sweaty, trying to be clever and charming without looking like as though I'm trying too hard... it was all very difficult.

I adore JP, but I adore him even more after seeing the way that he interacts with his family. They all seem very close. No wonder he wants to move back out to the Midwest. I wonder if we'll make it...

At times I look at him and think it might be nice to fall in love with him. And then there are times when I realize how different we are. I wonder what his parents thought of me. Not so much about my performance in the role of JP's girlfriend, but more in terms of someone who might be in his life for a while longer. I'm sure he wouldn't tell me the truth if they didn't think we'd last. And I suppose we wouldn't last very long if they didn't approve.

But Suk likes him, and that's a good thing bc Suki hasn't liked anyone I've dated since MF, and that was years ago. And she's a good judge of character.

Follow through...

Shut up, you stupid roof chickens

I'm not entirely sure what pigeons sound like when they mate, but I'm going to guess they coo perturbedly, and in spurts. I would open my window and throw something at them but I have no screen and I am terrified that one of those disease-ridden fowl might fly into my room for vengeance's sake. And that would suck.

Follow through...

Why you should pay someone else to touch your koo

Because your pubic hair isn't going to go away on its own. In order to maintain a groomed nether region, women resort to various methods of hair removal, none of which are more painful than the Brazilian bikini wax, which was, little known fact, handcrafted by the devil. Alas, this cruel but effective form of hair removal is a necessary evil. When I lived in LA, there was this great little beauty salon called Beba that only charged $35 per bikini wax. Think about it from the waxers point of view: there is no guarantee that every veej is going to be pleasant to look at, and certainly not something everyone is going to want to put their hands all over, but it's their job, and they are brave souls. Sure, the process only lasts 15 minutes, the pain is excruciating, and the fact is that some stranger is touching your koo, but that is a small price to pay for walking out of that room feeling like the sexiest bitch in town.

After moving back to the East Coast, jobless and destitute, I tried the whole au natural thing for a while but felt gross about it. Tried shaving, but didn't like the sharp stubble that kept growing in. I needed a wax, but the salons in the area charge $50 a pop and I can't afford that every three weeks! So instead I found a microwaveable Brazilian bikini wax kit online (GiGi at Amazon.com) and decided to take my chances.

I won't go into the awkward details of where I had to place my legs or the poses in which I had to hold my balance in order to reach some of the places that had hair in need of removal. Let's just say my yoga instructor would be proud. And that my mother would not.

It's not that it's impossible to perform a bikini wax on yourself. It would just be easier with two for a couple of reasons. (1) Two people requires less contortion. You have to put your legs in strange acrobatic positions even when you go to a salon, but it usually isn't any more complicated than lifting one or both legs and propping them up on the waxer's shoulder or the wall. That's for amateurs. When going it alone, you must be very flexible and have very good balance. (2) After the first rip of the wax, as the now-empty follicles from which you have mercilessly torn your pubic hair SCREAM in agony, you remember how much it hurts to gets waxed and each successive pull becomes more and more difficult to accomplish mentally. It's hard to keep going because it's your own body, and there is something wrong about being the hand that causes pain unto yourself. Unless you're into that kind of thing, I guess, which I'm not. So even if the pain is the same with one person or two, it's just better when you don't have to inflict it on yourself.

The home wax kit costs $12 plus shipping, and you get three waxes out of it. So you're talking 20 bucks versus 150 at a salon. I've floated the idea to my two best friends, and they said they'd be willing to help me out with my wax, but as much as I love them, I am not entirely comfortable with having them look full-on at my veej. An accidental glimpse while changing is ok. But an extended experience? That could be a little too close for comfort.

Sometimes you just gotta suck it up. Follow through...

Peeves

I am not a tidy person. Not even close. But strangely enough, I am pretty anal about two things in my bathroom. One, I hate it when someone uses my toothpaste and squeezes from some random spot in the middle. Can't you tell that I have meticulously been squeezing from the bottom up? And if you borrow my toothpaste or anything else of mine, like condiments, please do not leave a sticky mess on the cap, and if you do leave a sticky mess, please don't wipe it off with your finger because God only knows where that was last. Two, I don't like it when the toilet paper roll is replaced and it's positioned so the tp comes out underneath the roll, as opposed to coming out over the roll. Follow through...

One of the boys

I pride myself on being the kind of girl who can be one of the boys. As a senior in high school, I was determined to jump off of a cliff in Great Falls with the rest of my guy friends. The girls were mostly just laying out on the rocks surrounding the pool of water the boys were jumping into, and I wanted to be the girl who could do what the boys did. You had to clear this little ledge of rocks where the water was shallow (maybe two feet) before you got to the deep part of the pool, where it was safe to jump. At the last minute, I got scared and decided not to jump, but the momentum I had worked up from the little run to the edge of the cliff was enough to send me over, so down I went into two feet of water, landing square on my heels on rocks. I ended up with internal bleeding on both of my heels and a large gash on my left heel that has left a scar to this day. The boys had to piggyback me two miles to get back to the car.

Life hasn't really changed much for me. I've been out of high school for almost six years now. I find that I'm still constantly chasing after the boys, trying to keep up with them in this futile battle to prove... what? I don't even know anymore. That I'm a really cool girl? That I can be one of the guys? That I'm just as capable as any of them? What the heck am I trying to prove?

I work in a testosterone-overloaded commodity brokerage house with fifty-some guys and seven chicks (though there are only three female brokers). It's an environment few women can handle, much less appreciate. Imagine being trapped in a locker room with a football team ten hours a day, five days a week. My office is the post-grad equivalent of a college football team locker room. I wouldn't go as far as calling it an NFL locker room because I suspect that NFL guys are used to having female reporters or trainers around from time to time. The guys I work with? Not so much. I think they're not sure what to make of me: I'm a closer. (Or an opener... I never really understood why when you close someone, it really means you've managed to get them to open an account with you. Why don't they call it opening? I digress.) I open more accounts than most guys at the firm. I am privy to an inordinate amount of information pertaining to my coworkers' private lives. I know intimate things about their wives, girlfriends, flings, and one-night stands. Things I don't want to know. At all. At times, I have been implicated in their private lives. (Let's be honest; many have fallen prey to the temptation that is inter-office canoodling. Plus, the boys at my work aren't half bad. Looks-wise, that is.) We're all entitled to make mistakes, right? Riiiight. Anyway, the boys' favorite topic of conversation (aside from work and market talk) is girl talk. Generally speaking, when they're talking about women, it's not exactly respectful. But I've heard them on the phone with their significant others, and it's amazing how quickly they turn into these huge mushballs, telling their gals how much they love and miss them. There's something about putting a bunch of alpha males into a room together that brings out the worst in them. Get them one on one, and they're actually thinking, feeling human beings.

My roommates and I are also very close to this group of guys who live a couple of blocks away from us. My roommate Meaghan went to college with a couple of guys from Bangor, Maine. Adam, who is her best guy friend from college, pretty much grew up with all of the guys he lives with; some from the age of four, others from junior and senior high. They're like brothers. Adam convinced Ned and Matt to move out here after he'd been here a while, and they then convinced Drew and Ryan to move out here as well. Drew and Ryan have set up residence on the couches for the time being. So the five boys, collectively, are known as our Bangor Boys. We spend most of our spare time with them in some capacity or another. Eating, hiking, partying, watching tv, or wiping out (well, that's just Ryan and me since we're trying to learn how to surf)... we do it together! It's strange to see more than two days go by without seeing a Bangor Boy. Their conversation is not so much centered around how much game they have or the chicks they bagged the other night, but we talk about pretty much everything all around. A few of us went out to eat Indian food the other day and a comparison was drawn between the saag (spinach curry) and a dookie. First of all, if your dookie is that green, it should definitely not be discussed at the dinner table. Second of all, I like saag! I don't like comparisons being drawn between the food I am eating and whatever it is that's in your toilet bowl. Apparently, the boys have an ongoing contest as to who can produce the longest turd. And they take pictures on camera phones and send it to each other. Gross. I will not say which of the boys participate in this venture in the interest of shielding them from shame.

After a rowdy Cinco de Mayo party, I went on a spur of the moment surfing/ camping trip with some guy friends from UVA to Salsipuerdes, Mexico. My little bro Nate was in town this weekend to hang out and surf, and Dave was in town working. (The two of them, by a strange twist of fate, are in Nicaragua right now on a surfing trip, and they surfed together all that weekend.) I hadn't planned on doing anything crazy that weekend because I figured I'd be a wreck after Cinco, but that was not the case at all. I had a minor headache and no plans, so I decided to go to Baja with Nate, Dave, and Dave's friends Rob and Colin. I'll dedicate an entire entry to this trip later on, but for the purposes of this entry, let's talk about nudity. I have never met anyone who likes being naked as much as Nate and Dave like being naked. LOVE being naked. I understand that when a guy puts his wetsuit on, he's usually naked underneath it. I appreciate that it is a liberating feeling to be able to get naked. But really, there are limits to a woman's desire to see butt cracks and penises. In some way, I felt insulted that they were so nonchalant about changing in front of me. I couldn't feign the same degree of nonchalance. I had to avert my eyes. This trip cemented my relationship with Nate and Dave as a strictly platonic one. I might as well have been a dude, for all they cared. And while I was strangely flattered that they thought of me as "one of the boys," I felt almost a little insulted. Am I not a woman? Have I not a vagina?!?!

When Dave woke up from napping by Colin's pool and he had to tuck his semi-hardon into the waistband of his board shorts and the tip fell out, I decided I needed to detox from boys for a little while. An overwhelming urge to reclaim my femininity swept over me and I resolved to overcompensate for all of the boy time I'd had by engaging in over-the-top girly activities. Like watching chick flicks and giving myself a facial and painting my toenails and dressing up and wearing red lipstick. Unfortunately, my chick flick partner bailed on me and I didn't get around to giving myself a facial or painting my toenails, so I settled for red lipstick and a night out in mixed company.

In conclusion, boys are gross, but I like them anyway. However, let it be noted that I am ecstatic about being female. Although I may not be the prototype for a proper lady, I like being treated like one from time to time, and sometimes I'll even play the part. But only sometimes. Follow through...

It does make you a bad guy

I handed in my letter of resignation today. Why? Ah, yes, inquiring minds want to know. To make a very long story short, my boss is a guy who lacks integrity on many fronts. And he's frustratingly masterful in the art of spin. I don't care to delve much further into that. If you really must know, just call me. (It's too much to type so if you and I are on a chat-only relationship, you'll just have to wonder.)

So today, I'm back out on the job market. I started sending out resumes last night. I got an offer last night from a non-profit in Orange County. Nice salary, but I'm skeptical. Just this morning, about 15 minutes ago, I received two phone calls back to back from other commodity brokerage firms out here in LA. I have an interview at 1:45 pm and another at 3:30 pm. They asked me why I was leaving my first brokerage so soon, and when I told them it's because I disliked the firm's lack of integrity, they said that's exactly what their brokers who had defected from my ex-firm had said. Hmmph. Isn't it nice that my first job out of college was with a firm that is known for being sketchy in its business circles?

Follow through...