Locked in Like Animals

Catherine: Oh hai. I know I promised you facebookers I’d have this story to you this past weekend, but guess what? JANA WAS IN TOWN so I didn’t have time to write because our lives were falling apart together for once. Nothing terribly disastrous happened, you’ll be sad to know. The nearest disaster was avoided so, mischief managed.

Anyways.

Last week I was on Lake Tahoe. More specifically, I was NOT on Lake Tahoe, but I was on Donner Lake. Of the Donner party, which you may recognize as the last known example of cannibalism in the United States. I’m not sure what that has to do with my story, other than it’s a pretty bad thing, and perhaps will help to set the stage as it were. Anyway, I was with a group of old friends, reunion-style, and we were staying at Donner Lake for a week to drink too much and get sunburns on the backs of our (my) legs.

We’re going to get into some sexy stuff, guys, so if you’re not up to it, OR IF YOU’RE MY MOTHER, stop reading.

We still here?

Mom, go away.

Ok.

I was at the supermarket in a little group trip to stock up on snacks and food for our mini army of 10 people. I very discreetly snuck away as we checked out as a group – “I forgot something! How SILLY of me!” And ugh, I hate this story. I hate telling it. Maybe you hate reading it.

But I needed to get like, UGH, condoms. UGH. SO ANYWAYS. I went to the aisle I had seen them in and reached up. But – they were locked up, like little sex prisoners. I was displeased. I went to the pharmacist stationed nearby and very meekly asked, “Uh, um” (dies inside) “How do I get … in there” (I point ashamedly in the general direction, I am not mature, not at all.) Without so much as giving two shits, the pharmacist calls over the intercom “Customer assistance, aisle 8.”

Me, carrying pickles, moments before the incident.

Not one minute later, the teenage boy with the Bieber cut who had been bagging my groceries saunters – like, really saunters – down the aisle. At the moment of impact (having arrived at the um, ‘penis covers’), ANOTHER employee, in her 50s, disgruntled, arrives.

“Whatdya need?”

“Hi, um, yeah, I needed some of the ………………. condoms.”

“Which ones?”

(Points, dies inside, teenage boy smirks)

The woman reaches up and retrieves them. Without so much as a key. No key needed. SPOILER ALERT: THEY WEREN’T LOCKED UP AT ALL. I AM JUST REALLY STUPID. I had not been able to get them down, not because they were locked up, but because I am terrible and not very bright.

The woman laughs, “They weren’t locked up.”

“Yeah, yeah, ok. I want to die, like, ok.”

“We’ll be talking about this in the breakroom later!”

“Oh, yeah? Cool…”

The teenage boy and I walk back towards the registers together because it’s a grocery store and there aren’t emergency exits for when you embarass yourself less for having sex than for being an idiot. As we pass the self check-out, I call to the boy, just behind me, “I’m just gonna do the self-checkout. I want to die right now.” (verbatim, guys.) He laughs at me, pointedly.

The self-checkout is packed, as it would be, but I spy an open register and throw the (cough) CONDOMS on the thingymajig JUST as the teenage boy saunters by (seriously, kid was a serial saunterer.) “Self-checkout, huh?” Cue him laughing, sauntering away. Cue him also probably thinking, “Does she know she has zits on her mouth right now? Like, 70? Poor girl.”

And scene.

Jana: This story makes me want to kill myself.

Here is a penis drawn on my leg LATER THAT DAY. I turned it into a cat.

To The Woman Currently Cutting My Hair: Are You Paying Attention?

Jana: Recently, I got a haircut. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to tell you about the full experience of my haircut.

 

At 6 AM on the day of the haircut, I got up and drove my boyfriend to the airport, as he was leaving to move to Los Angeles. Then I came home and lay in bed being sad for a while. At 11:30 AM, I roused myself, ate three pieces of toast, and got in the car to meet my sister, because we had purchased “Living Social” deals to get haircuts for only $20, and we had thought it might be a nice activity for the day that would help me take my mind off my boyfriend moving and my having no money and no real plan for my life. I was encouraged by the thought of the haircut.

I need to note that my encouragement was a product of that pesky human inability to accurately remember pain (my best example of this is eating hummus only ten minutes after having been on the toilet bargaining with God because of hummus-induced problems. Once it’s over, I’m always like, it wasn’t so baaad. Ooo is that Sabra? What kind of crackers do you have?). Because, when I’m being honest with myself, I’m fully aware that I always have a terrible time at a haircut. The conversation between me and the hairdresser is a lot like this, always:

Hairdresser: Let’s see here. Oh woah, so we’ve got some serious split ends.

Me: I know, yeah.

Hairdresser: You really need to stop straightening your hair. This is really damaged! If you don’t drastically change your lifestyle, it’s going to be damaged forever.

Me: I know, yes, you’re right.

Hairdresser: And oh my god, such little hair! It’s so so thin!

Me: Yeah, it’s really thin.

Hairdresser: Ok, I’ll see what I can do but I can’t make any promises! *Laughs*. So, are you excited to start high school in the fall?

 

Then they cut off the split ends and try to make conversation which I try to deflect with silence; then, I pay them $60 and go home to furiously straighten the hair.

But, on the day of this haircut, those memories were all rose-colored. Off we went to our haircut with tear-stained faces (just mine, my sister was fine) and hopeful hearts.

It was a very hot day, so we were excited to get inside to an air conditioned room. We ran across Mass Ave and into the salon and found it… stale. Terribly, terribly hot, and empty save for one girl getting her hair cut by a strange-looking man who was wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m just here to annoy you.” We approached the front counter, where a woman stood looking over some papers. She completely ignored us. “Hello?” we tried. She was obviously pissed that we were there. “Busy now, you can sit over there,” she said (it became clear at this moment that she was some kind of European foreign, which I’m only saying to accurately set the scene). We didn’t know what else to do, so we went and sat over on the weird-looking bench. From that vantage point, I could now see the woman’s full person:

This was an older lady, maybe in her late 60s, with cropped white hair, which is fine and good. She was wearing a somewhat ill-fitting dress that really highlighted her stomach paunch, which is also nothing I’m ever gonna get on a high horse about (am I right ladies? – sorry, I don’t even know what that joke was). But ok, HERE IS THE KICKER: on her feet, she was wearing those shoes that have the individual toes. I don’t even know that you can really call them shoes, but regardless, I’ve always understood them to be designed exclusively for endurance running. And yet, this woman wore them in her hair salon, paired with a dress. Furthermore, the shoes appeared to be wet.

You heard me. They were wet. As if she’d recently been walking in some sort of river.

Despite the shoes, we stayed. My sister was soon taken in for haircutting by the “Annoy you” t-shirt guy, who’d finished with the other girl. As I flipped through a magazine, I sensed from overhearing my sister’s conversation that the male hairdresser was in fact quite capable and normal; they laughed together as he cut her hair. I relaxed into the uncomfortable wooden-wicker bench.

Eventually, old Wet Shoes was ready for me, which she signaled by pointing – “Sinks, I meet you over there.” I went to the sinks.

Once we were there, in the familiar space of an awkward salon hairwashing, I sort of started to like her. She told me that she had just seen that movie “Hot Mike,” and that it was full of “beautiful bodies.” She explained that she’d been so rude earlier because she’d been trying to find an envelope full of something to do with taxes, and it had ended up being right in front of her. I got that, I’ve been there. I figured it would be ok.

And it was, such as it was, in that she did cut my hair and we did interact with only mild awkwardness. However, as we chatted, I couldn’t help but notice that she seemed to be really arbitrarily selecting pieces of my hair to cut. Juuust whatever. Just a piece here, a piece there. I didn’t see a PATTERN, see. In addition, TWICE during the haircut, someone came into the salon to ask her something, and she talked to these people WHILE SHE CUT MY HAIR, with her head fully turned away from what she was doing. So, I worried. But I was so TIRED and emotionally drained, and so sure of my inability to speak up for myself, that I just settled into it. I equate this situation to quietly agreeing to rent a HIDEOUS house that I’d have to live in for six months for fear of insulting the realtor. We live in our hair, is what I’m saying.

Then it was over. We tipped, we left. When I got home, it became very clear that my wet-shoed friend had cut a full layer of bangs all the way around my head. Like, an all-one-length layer. Left alone, this very closely resembles a mullet, or a poorly done version of the haircut Rachel had on “Friends.” But it’s ok! It’s just the way it is. I have a bang, around my head. And because hair grows at the same rate over time, I can only assume that this is how it will always be.

Like this.

PS. Right after the haircut I cried while eating half a pizza and then fell asleep watching “Something Borrowed.” Just to be clear about the day.

Catherine: If there’s one thing I like to make fun of besides Jana’s allergies, it’s her hair. It defies gravity. It has been known to fight the strongest straighteners, the firmest tugs of the comb, and emerge victorious, standing straight up on Jana’s head like a crown.

It’s incredible.

Jana, you gotta stop cutting your hair. You do it all the time, it never looks different, and you’re always really sad afterwards. This story, I hope, will teach you to steer clear for at LEAST a year. You don’t deserve the pain. You simply don’t.

And also, you should have been tipped off by the toe shoes. Those are disgusting. The only thing I hate more are probably Tevas, shoes that look like Tevas, and birkenstocks with socks. It’s in the top five worst shoe – I would’ve walked out then and there.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST – Jana and I will be reunited again next week! Maybe something horrible will happen? It probably will. We’ll let you know.

Six Miniature Tales All Rolled Over and One Fell Out

Jana: Recently I was talking on the phone with my boyfriend, and he told me about his Friday night. “Pretty standard, just had a beer and a shower and watched part of Wall-E and fell asleep,” he said. A beer and a shower? Or a beer IN the shower? Oh yeah, it was a shower beer. This reminded me of the only time that I’ve tried this “shower beer” thing. Here’s what happened: I bought six raspberry beers on a Friday afternoon. Feeling like hey! I’m an adult who can do what I want!, I brought one into the shower with me. Within two minutes, I reached for it with a slippery, wet hand, and the bottle broke and there was glass everywhere and I had to get out of the shower and carefully step over the glass and then get dressed and clean it up immediately.

Catherine: Jana, I recommend you try shower beers again, perhaps with a can this time? It’s an exquisite experience and I don’t want your brokenglassplosion to deter you. But more importantly, this reminded me of the first time I ever shaved. I was in middle school, taking a bath (I only took baths until I got to college – I often would put in a CD, something like Missy Elliott or Alanis Morissette’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie – and listen to the entire thing and THEN get out. I also had a little remote for my CD player so I could skip tracks if I wanted. I have since learned these patterns are highly irregular.) BUT ANYWAYS  – I took my mom’s razor and shaving cream and shaved my legs. Blood going EVERYWHERE. But I didn’t stop there, I also shaved my stomach (???) and my arms. Bleeding. Surprised I didn’t bleed out.

Jana: Catherine. I cannot believe that you shaved your stomach. That is too good, and I am never going to stop picturing it, and next time we’re together I’m going to need to feel your stomach and see if it has weird stubbly hair on it because of this shaving incident?

Anyway, this reminds me of something that happened to ME with sharp things and blood! This past Monday, I went to the dentist for a regular teeth cleaning. It was standard: the hygienist prodded at me with that sharp metal tool they have, my gums gushed massive amounts of blood, she asked me questions knowing full well that it was impossible for me to answer while my mouth was stretched open. But then, her hand slipped and she dropped the sharp metal tool, and it hit my shoulder. “Oh lord, are you ok?” she asked quickly. I thought about my shoulder and couldn’t discern any issues, so I assured her I was fine. The examination continued, she told me I have a cavity and my gums are frighteningly weak, I left. No big deal.

But then the next morning I woke up and there was a little weird pimple-like dot on my shoulder, and it hurt. So what I’m saying is: I think I’m fine, let’s not get alarmed. But, I did go to the dentist for an average, normal, human visit, and ended up being stabbed and likely having MY OWN TOOTH GERMS injected into MY SHOULDER.

Catherine: I’ve never had a cavity! But I think I need to get my wisdom teeth pulled, meaning that I definitely do, a dentist told me, but I’m putting it off because it will cost me $28976048237604 and I don’t have that money (this is the same reason I am ignoring my last mechanic’s assertion that “your brakes don’t really work” before handing me a work order for $600 which I scoffed at.) But anyways, when I was growing up, my dentist had a thick Italian accent and referred to me as “Little Miss Muffet”. I don’t think he ever called me by my name, ever. He also refused to give me braces when I desperately wanted them, a behavior that confuses me on both my and his part.

Jana: Maybe he didn’t give you braces because you have straight teeth and didn’t need them, Cath. That would be my educated guess. But, ah well. Yes, childhood. Remember playdates? There is one from my childhood that I remember quite well for its simple agony. It was just a bike ride; on the Sunday after a sleepover, me, my friend, and my friend’s entire family went on a bike ride. I didn’t have a bike, but they had an extra one! So, I borrowed it. We biked for what felt like hours, and I was WAY behind and just SWEATING and working so, so hard to keep up. They yelled encouragement at me and I tried to act like it was fine and not draw attention to myself. When the ride somehow came to an end, it was discovered that there was essentially no air in the tires of  the bike I had been so kindly loaned, thus making my pedaling job as difficult as lifting huge weights with my tiny, weak legs. Everyone felt bad and apologized to me. I don’t remember feeling much of anything except just sheer exhaustion from continually being alive and in some variation of this scenario.

Catherine: I would like to VERY BRIEFLY tell of one of the first days I was still learning to ride a bike. I was in the elementary school parking lot and heading towards a wall and couldn’t stop, so I hit it full speed. The pain was intense. My brother ran to me to help but I was so humiliated that I pretended I was fine as tears welled up in my eyes and I handed him Swedish Fish from the brown paper bag that I had in my basket. This has been a theme of my life, pretending I’m fine as I’m about to cry and eating to mask the pain. Shit just got real, y’all. This blog is DEEP.

See? We’re deep. Also creepy, vacant, and wearing a see-through dress and a fluorescent necklace.