The awards themselves were a blur. We awoke early and traveled uptown to have our hair styled professionally for the first time. We hit our marks and heard our voices echo up to the rotunda. We saw James Franco, something that now seems hard to avoid. During intermission Isabel and I got into a tearful fight when I told a makeup artist that Isabel “ought to own a store.”
“You don’t believe in me,” she said. “You don’t think I know how to do anything real, which is the only reason you would ever tell someone to open a store.”
“Yes, I do. Look at all this!” I cried.
“Yeah, but we’re not going to, like, do this for our lives,” Joana said.
In the months that followed, we dispersed: me to Los Angeles, Joana to graduate school, Isabel to upstate New York, where she met a man named Jason with a sweet smile and no connection to the art world whatsoever. We took the videos we had made together off the Internet, embarrassed by the things we had once thought so profound.
“What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?” is a popular question in interviews and at dinner parties.
“Once my boss yelled at me for giving Gwyneth Paltrow the wrong size in baby leggings,” I say, wincing at the memory. What I don’t say is that it felt like home, that it started our journey, that we ate the best lunches I’ve ever had. What I don’t say is that I miss it.
1. Death is coming for us all.
2. There are no bad thoughts, only bad actions.
3. “Men, watch out: the ladies are coming for your toys.”
4. Confidence lets you pull anything off, even Tevas with socks.
5. All children are amazing artists. It’s the grown-ups you have to worry about.
6. Unhappy at a party? Say you’re going to check on your car, then exit swiftly. Make eye contact with no one.
7. Drunk emotions aren’t real emotions.
8. A sweet potato prepared in the microwave, then slathered with flaxseed oil, makes for an exceptional snack.
9. It’s never too late to learn.
10. “The Volvo is bad enough. I’m not putting a coat on the fucking dog.”
11. A rising tide lifts all boats.
12. That being said, it’s horrible when people you hate get things you want.
13. Hitting a creative wall? Take a break from work to watch a procedural. They always solve the case, and so will you.
14. You don’t need to be flamboyant in your life to be flamboyant in your work.
15. Wear a suit to the DMV to speed things along a bit.
16. Do not make jokes about concealing drugs, weapons, or currency in front of police officers or TSA workers. There is nothing funny about being detained.
17. It’s all about tailoring.
Dear Blanken Blankstein, Remember when I ran into you last summer at the coffee place near your house? I was with a bunch of guys from my work and you were with some guys from yours. Some of them wore “wifebeaters” and looked like wife beaters. I was rendered speechless by your tangled Rip Van Winkle beard, which I didn’t get close enough to smell but can imagine presents massive hygiene challenges. It clearly took major effort to grow, and that is the biggest signal I’ve received to date that your emotional equilibrium is off. I shook like a dry drunk because I was so scared you’d yell at me for the thing I wrote about you. I said sorry a lot that day. Your expression was so stormy, I just wanted to calm you down. Plus, I was trying to be adult around my coworkers, a concept you would know nothing about, you coke-nosed dick-swinger.
But I’m actually not sorry at all. You weren’t kind to me, so I have nothing to be sorry about. I’m sick of saying stuff I don’t mean.
As you were,
Lena
p.s. All my work friends thought you looked like a puppet of a hipster. Your pants are so high waisted I could cry. I don’t care what your work friends thought of me. I hadn’t showered in four days and I still have a boyfriend last I checked.
Dear Dr. Blank, My eardrum was punctured, you WHITECOAT. And you treated me like a psycho with a little scrape, like an exhausting roadblock between you and your lunch. I cried when you poured the solution down my earhole and you just held me in place. I had to beg for painkillers like a junkie. Who gave you a license? This has since become my most traumatic memory, usurping the premature death of a friend and the time I saw a woman with a gaping pink hole where her nose ought to be. I resent that.
Lena
Dear Mrs. Blank, You are literally schizophrenic, so it’s futile to answer your email, BUT I gotta say: you are bananas. I understand that you come from a generation of women who had to work hard to be heard, but for you to impugn my feminism and act as though I’m a scourge upon women everywhere, just because I refuse to spread your particular agenda? That’s dark, and it’s not what you fought for. If you continue this way, you’re worse than they are (they = men). We are all just trying to get by. There is room for all of us. Also, “cudgeled” isn’t a word people use. I’m going to live at least fifty years past you.
Sincerely,
Lena