Nice and hefty

This is kinda old news, but luckily it is also not real news (in the sense of like, no newspaper would run this, and even the Onion would be like “This is not very satirical Mae, we’re going to go with ‘Guy Drools All Over His Burger Because Life Has No Meaning’” instead). So it is not a real problem. I really fucked up the logical flow of this paragraph so I’m going to start another paragraph now, and it will be my actual story instead of this little windup thing.

One time I was sitting outside a restaurant with my friend, pretty bored and also (as I will reveal again in this same sentence) kind of sexually frustrated, and I was like, “Man, friend, I just want to make out with someone. It doesn’t really matter who. I would make out with that horse.”

Because right then one of there was one of those horse and carriages going by. Also, I call all my friends “friend.” It’s like how Quakers call each other “Oats.”

So my friend looks up (GRAVELY) at this horse clopping down the street and then she looks at me and she goes, “Yeah, that makes sense. You both have big teeth.”

She was not wrong. But the horse was kind of gone by that point and if the horse had approached me, maybe I would have gone for it, but I wasn’t going to really pursue the horse. I hear the horse was kind of a douche anyway. A good horse does not kiss and neigh. Or kiss and hoove. Or kiss and ponytail. (What is the horse equivalent of kiss and tell? Why can’t I stop talking? THE END. THE END.)

Overheard in my life: Episode Gay

Friend: What’s your favorite kind of coffee?

Me: I like soy hazelnut lattes!!! [Moronic smiling. I really, really like them.]

Friend: That sounds hella gay.

Me: What?!

Friend: I’m not saying being gay is bad. I’m just saying. That sounds hella gay.

Me: Oh, well then OBVIOUSLY.

***

If more than 1 person (hi Alex) read my blog, I would probably get some e-mail being like, “My gay friend/I myself, a gay individual, drink only black coffee. You are perpetuating false stereotypes of gay people and you are a homophobe!!”

Well, hypothetical e-mailer:

1) I can think of nothing less homophobic than drinking gay coffee on the daily.

2) Read OkTrends (best site ever!) and THEN we will talk about stereotypes. (They even have a little joke about gay-curiosity and soy milk, I just realized. HEYO)

Porntastic

I don’t usually post things that are arguably porn, but this is so funny and lame I can’t help it.

Look at Trey Songz, maybe wearing a turtleneck!  Look at both of them, not knowing that there is already a term for the phenomenon they are discussing, and that it is “bedroom”! Also, check out how many rooms are featured in this music video – more like welcome to my sex ROOMS, am I right?

And then the lyrics are just incredible.  I am going to get a tattoo of them (hopefully on somebody else’s body, though).  My favorite parts are when Luda namechecks Allstate (SO STREET) and when he says “You might lose four or five pounds.”  Does he have a liposuction machine in his sex room? Also, when he romantically describes some girl’s lips as “soft as cotton,” I began to wonder if Ludacris has ever felt a human lip before.  I mean, you’d think he’d at least have felt his own lips over his thirty something years of living… but PERHAPS NOT.

Final thought: The object of interest in this song is clearly not the ladies.  Just go have sex with your sex room already, guys.

No homo, no shoes, no problem?

I hate it when people say “no homo.”  I think it’s offensive and douchey and indicates that people are like, afraid of the Great Gay Menace In The Sky or whatever.  It’s the redneck version of “that’s what she said.”

Right? Right?

SO WHY DO I WANT TO SAY “NO HOMO” ALL THE TIME?

I don’t know when it started, or why.  I don’t think there are menacing gay people in the sky; I like about the same percentage of the gay people and the straight people that I know (60%); overall, my personal assessment is that I seriously could be worse.  But somehow, this is happening.  I’ve been trying to justify it to myself.  Like, it’s not really homophobic, if you think about it.  It’s just like, “Hey, friendly heads up: I’m not gay!”

Actually, it’s even less specific than that – it’s more like “Hey, friendly heads up: I’m not being gay RIGHT NOW.”  Even gay people can use that!  What if you’re a gay dude who wants to have a platonic, bromantic hug, but you’re worried it will be misinterpreted?  Just say “no homo” pre-hug, and it is all good!  ”No homo” isn’t for rednecks – it is for EVERYBODY!  It is a unifying force!  Every time someone says “no homo,” we get one step closer to world peace!  I love hyperbole!  WOOHOO!  Alright!

But there are still some situations where you definitively can’t say “no homo,” and of course those are the situations where I want to say it the most. For example: the other day, I was tutoring some kids, and I gave them a little writing assignment, which was “write about your dream house.”  They were all boys, and they start writing, and they all write something along the lines of:

“I will live in my dream house with LeBron James/Kobe Bryant/Dwayne Wade…”

When I read these little stories, I said something totally normal like, “Good job, guys!  I want to live in a house with LeBron James too!”  (Which is true.  Especially if he finances the house.  PRIVATE NOTE TO LEBRON: Call me, baby!)

But what I was thinking was, “I wish everyone would just give me a moment of privacy right now so I could say ‘No homo?’ to myself!”

Keeping it Real

I read an interview with Taylor Swift in InStyle recently, and she had this quote about why she had redecorated her apartment that was like (I’m paraphrasing), “My life is so real.  And when your life is as real as my life is, it’s nice to come home and have your walls be painted a fun color.  Like purple!”

This was funny because a) just… wow and b) it reminded me of how in India (oh dang policemen could PATROL on this segue) some of us, such as me, got kind of obsessed with Seeing The Real India.  I didn’t want to see some sanitized, tourist-friendly version of the country – I wanted to see the PAIN and the SUFFERING.  In hindsight this is actually kind of weird, like I went in thinking India must be depressing, and then when it was a mixed bag (instead of an undiluted bag of suck) I was like, “Duh.  The thing I imagined is reality, not the thing I am seeing with my eyes.”

But, weird or not, that’s how I was thinking for a while.  This was most obvious when we volunteered at a girl’s orphanage near where we were staying.  It was a lot of fun – the girls were really cute and smart.  (They were also obsessed with asking us our names – I think because “What’s your name?” was the English thing they were most comfortable saying – so every time we arrived or left, thousands/maybe not but A LOT of girls in super duper brightly colored clothes would come up to us, ask us our names, tell us their names, and leave, only to be immediately replaced by another girl in different colored clothes who would do the same thing.)  (All the moving colors and shouting and repetition could make you feel kind of high sometimes.)

We’d been volunteering at the orphanage for a few weeks when we found out that some of that these girls weren’t necessarily Real Orphans.  Apparently, any girl could live at the orphanage as long as she didn’t have a dad.  This was weirdly scandalous to some people (me).  I wasn’t like, asking the orphans if I could SPEAK TO THEIR SUPERVISOR  PLEASE THANK YOU, but it didn’t seem as Real.

Eventually, though, I realized that these orphans were real, in that they had been sent to live at an orphanage (and in that they were not CGI).  And maybe they weren’t Real, in the way that my totally imaginary Real India was, but neither was anything, really, except an armless, mute, gay orphan (the most disenfranchised orphan ever!).  Or a corpse.

AND FUN FACT: On one of our bus rides, I saw a parade of people walking along next to our bus, carrying an unconscious man on a flower-covered stretcher and singing.

I turned to my friend, who was sitting next to me, and said, “Dude!  Check out that nap!”

My friend looked out the window and said, “Mae, that is definitely a funeral.”

So I actually did see a corpse.   And boy, was it ever Real!

VINTAGE: The Toothless Transvestite

Another old thing.

The Toothless Transvestite

Transvestites are relatively common in the neighborhood where I work.  I figured out how to spot them from Anna, who told me to check the Adam’s apple and the hands (men’s are larger and hairier).  I also discovered on my own that strangely positioned breasts (too high, too low, or the worst – too far left) are usually found on men with rambunctious falsies, rather than women with rambunctious genetics.  And yet what the neighborhood transvestites share, more than hairy hands or prominent Adam’s apples, is teeth.  They all have them.  EXCEPT ONE.

The outlier is the man I call “The Toothless Transvestite.”  (I just call him that because it’s alliterative, though – he actually has about five teeth.)  I have seen this man regularly for almost two years now, and I always feel bad for him.  It’s not just because eating solid food must be hard for him (that challenge is completely compensated for by the ease with which he can use straws.  No jaw movement necessary for him!  Homie probably gets the words for “lockjaw” and “picnic” confused).  It’s because nothing else is quite working for him either.  His boobs look weird, possibly because they are repurposed shoulder pads.  His clothes are all sort of mildew colored, and don’t fit him properly.  His shoes are kind of clunky heels, and they make his ankles look thick (even though they are not!  He has totally fine ankles.  I don’t know why I know this).  And his makeup is totally sale makeup – it doesn’t work with his coloring at all.  Whenever I see him, I think that there should be a fund for impoverished transvestites, to help them impersonate women more accurately.  But then I think about whether I would donate money to this fund, and the answer is always no.

Anyway… yesterday, I saw the toothless transvestite for the first time since summer started, and HE GOT A MAKEOVER!  He looks FABULOUS now.  He got some new breasts that look entirely like breasts, with no connotations of shoulder.  He got a new dress, with real colors and some flattering diagonal stripes.  He also got some new makeup that brightens his face right up and also – most importantly – HE REGREW HIS TEETH.  Or he got dentures.  But I like to think that he chugged some calcium and grew a new set, like a shark.  In fact, I like to think that he is actually part shark, just because the news headline “Transvestite Goes Swimming, Consumes Entire School of Fish” would be… well.  Pretty compelling.

Anyway, the toothless transvestite’s transformation (OMG ALLITERATION RED ALERT! REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES!) made me really, really happy.  When I saw him, I actually teared up.  You go, homegirl. You GO!

I’m back!

I am back at work in The Store, and it’s so great.  Sad fact about me: The Store is one of my favorite places to be.  It makes me feel like a normal person.  I mean, I love being in college, but when the people around you are saying things like “Deconstruct!” and “Arguably!”, it’s hard to feel overly normal.

Some of the things I have liked at work – and it’s only my second day! – include:

1) We have a little sign on our cash register that says “Smile,” and it always makes me smile.  But only because Matt, my artistic co-worker, drew a face on the sign, and that face is not smiling at all.  It’s glaring.  It’s a demon face!

2) There are homeless people who hang around outside our store, and  I’ve always been pretty pleased with them – one, for example, is a very aggressive beggar, but he never begs for money; only for a fish sandwich! – but today they really outdid themselves.

They made a big sign on a piece of cardboard, and it said: “I bet you $1 that you read this sign.”

3) It’s Pride Week.  This is one of the best weeks to be at The Store, and this Pride Week has been especially good; not only is the whole store decked out in festive rainbow flags but, to date, I have not seen a single butt cheek.

This is the opposite of my pride week last year, which featured no flags and many, many exposed cheeks – as many as two per person!  And not to overshare, but they were hairy.  So very hairy.  Hairy hairy quite contrary how does your garden grow VERY HAIRILY THANK YOU.  (I don’t really know what just happened.  I’m sorry.)

4) The Muzak plays “Mmmbop” sometimes!

And it’s always good to have a group of girlish brothers remind you to “hold on to the ones who really care/In the end they’ll be the only ones there/When you get old and start losing your hair.”  Profound thoughts.

Or, as we would say in college, “Arguably profound deconstruct thoughts.”