I Peaked in Sixth Grade

This is bound to go well.

[ipeakedinsixthgrade]

A Few Things of a Vaguely Traumatic Nature I've Encountered in my Office Parking Garage

As I've mentioned before, I live in one of the less savory parts of Long Beach but I work in the heart of chichi, fancypants Beverly Hills. I like to think that, by the sheer force of my Paige-ness (you may call it The Power of the Paige - I'm of course much too humble to do so, but... y'know... others have), I have a subtle but salutary effect on any place or person I spend any significant amount of time in or with. It would appear, however, that my daily 2.5-3 hour roundtrip commute has worn a thin spot in the space-time continuum between the two places, and there is now a hole through which a little bit of the special seediness of Snoop Dog’s LBC has been transplanted to Beverly Hills. (I've been watching a lot of "Fringe" lately; just go with it & don't think too hard about it.) I wish it could be the other way around, but what can I say? I just have the power. I don't control it. In any case, this tear in the fabric of the universe appears to be concentrated in the parking garage next to my office, which is one of those City of Beverly Hills garages with 2 hours' free parking (and monthlies like me).

I spend more time in this parking garage than a person who does not actually work in a parking garage probably should. This is because every day, around the time my eyes start to burn from staring at two huge computer monitors for hours on end, I take an hour break. On this break, I go to my car, drive up to the open roof of the garage (which happens to have a pretty rockin' view of the Hollywood Hills), park as far away from the other cars as possible, open the windows, and read in the sunshine for half an hour. Then I lean my seat all the way back, set my phone alarm, and take a little half hour snooze. When the alarm goes off, I drive back down to the shade of the 2nd level of the garage, park, and return to work. (C'mon, I have to protect the precious paint job on my 12-year old Civic from the brutal California sun, people. Plus, I always have an assortment of half-drunk water bottles rattling around on the floor & I don't want to die from that shit. You all know about hot cars making the poisonous plastic leech into your bottled water, right? Yeah, I know what's up.)

I concede that this is a somewhat odd little routine, but let me tell you IT IS AWESOME. I return to work refreshed, re-energized & probably somewhat annoyingly perky, as everyone else is in their post-lunch food coma & I'm rarin' to go. Most days I don't totally fall asleep, but I did forget to set my alarm one day & fell deep asleep. Oops. I'm not sure why no one called me wondering why the hell I'd been gone for an hour and a half, but they didn't. When I was startled awake by the sound of a car door slamming 2 feet from my head, I had NO idea where the hell I was, and the ensuing 5 seconds of complete disorientation & panic I displayed would have been highly entertaining for anyone who might have witnessed it.

One day, as I was innocently reading Tina Fey's book (side note: Tina, Mindy Kaling, and I are BFFs in the nonsexual side of my fantasy world), I peripherally registered two people, a man and a woman, walk behind my car towards the beat-up red pickup truck parked kitty-corner to my car (the corner of their back bumper was about 8 inches from the corner of my back bumper). Please see the very professionally-rendered, perfectly to scale diagram below:

                             _______________

                                       Red truck

                             _______________

| BossyPants |

|    reading     |

|   in my car   |

|             Me   |

I was pretty absorbed in my book, so I didn't really register that they never actually started the car & left, like normal people (who aren't me). I didn't really notice anything other than Tina's brilliance until I started hearing a soft little ree-uh ree-uh ree-uh ree-uh, just outside my open window. Which gradually got louder, faster and more insistent: REE-uh REE-uh REE-uh REE-uh REE-UH-REE-UH-REE-UH-REE-UH-REE-UH-REE-UH!!! 

It is a testament to the lily-white purity of my mind, soul, and body (well, lately anyway) that it took me far longer than it should have (and quite an eyeful in the side mirror) to figure out exactly what was happening. "OMG!" thought I. "FORNICATIN'! In a beat-up pickup truck! On the roof of a parking garage! In broad daylight in the middle of a Tuesday!!!" I wish I could say I found this titillating, but really, I just felt kinda sad for them. I mean, good for them, I guess (and hey, they're gettin' laid & I'm having nonsexual fantasies about Tina Fey & Mindy Kaling, so really, who should we feel sad for in this story?). But I got a good enough gander at them to see that this wasn't a couple of hot blooded twentysomethings being taken over by hormones. This was a couple of pretty haggard lookin' middle-aged people boning silently for about 90 seconds in a beat up pickup truck. (A truck, by the way, that badly needs to have its suspension adjusted, if you’re reading this, Rooftop Truck-Sex Man!)

Not too long after that vaguely traumatic experience, I was back up on the roof, happily indulging in the "fully-reclined, windows open, power nap" portion of my lunch break, when I had a less “vaguely,” more “uncomfortably recognizably” traumatic experience. That day, the roof of the garage was completely mine - no other cars on that level at all - just the way I like it. I was pretty zoned out, but aware enough that, at some point, a car pulled in to the space RIGHT next to mine, on the passenger side. Because I was fully reclined, they couldn't see me, but I was annoyed/weirded out that, out of an entire empty level, they'd parked right next to the only car in the lot. The engine turned off, but no one got out. I heard the windows being rolled down and 4 or 5 men talking. I couldn't see them, but let's just say these were clearly not Beverly Hills hedge funders discussing the latest leveraged buyout. What they WERE discussing, I quickly discovered, was the PLANNING OF A ROBBERY. I now found myself alone, in a relatively secluded area, on the otherwise-empty roof of a parking garage, within a few feet of 4 or 5 criminals actively planning what I now also discovered was to be an ARMED robbery, the details of which they were unknowingly sharing with me, the idiot weirdo taking a nap in her car with the windows open. These guys obviously didn't know I was there, and I really hoped to keep it that way. I laid there in my stupid reclined seat, quivering like an idiot, barely breathing, fervently hoping they would finish their felonious little board meeting, start the car, and drive away without discovering they weren't alone... WHEN MY FUCKING IPHONE ALARM STARTED GOING OFF (marimba, if you're curious). To wake me up from my nap, see?

Looking back, I really have to marvel at the speed, fluidity, and grace of the single movement with which I un-reclined my seat, started the car, threw it in reverse, and FLEW down off the roof of that garage, raced around the tight curves and into the relative safety of the more populated Level 4, Level 3, Level 2, and, finally, Level 1, in sight of the attendant, pulled the parking brake, and booked it back to the office. I mean, really. It was Olympian. I was so adrenalized I didn't even realize my phone alarm was still going off until I was sitting at my desk, still shaking. I did have a slight moment of hesitation RETURNING to my car later that night, but all was well (actually, not ALL was well, as we shall see in a moment, BUT): the criminals were not lying in wait to kill me, and I can only assume their heist went well, and that no one got hurt in the commission of it. It was a very well-thought-out plan, I have to say.

"Wow, Paige. That's crazy," you must be saying to yourself. "What could be worse than that?" You know what could be worse? Parking lot vomit. That's what could be worse. Stepping/sliding in parking lot vomit while wearing very thin-soled, waffle-bottomed strappy sandals you NEVER wear, but decided to today because you were "feeling girly." Stepping/sliding in said parking lot vomit because you're not looking where you're going, but are instead snapping your head all around like a paranoid crazy person, looking for criminals who may be lying in wait to kill you because you know all the details of their big caper. Deciding that goddammit, killer criminals or not, you're going to have to sit half in / half out of your car, doing your best to wipe the parking lot vomit from between your toes and from the surprisingly deep grooves of your very thin-soled strappy sandals with bits of trash from the center console, hoping you have enough poisonous bottled water dregs rolling around to rinse them at least a little bit (alas, you don't), because if you have to spend an hour-plus commute home trapped in your car with the smell of someone else's vomit on your shoe and toes, you're going to vomit all over yourself and the killer criminals might actually be doing you a favor if they just came & ended it for you right now. That's what could be worse.

[ipeakedinsixthgrade]

Confessions of a Beverly Hills Bag Lady

In my ghettohood lives a very sweet, very religious family who takes care of my cats when I'm out of town and does things like send their three boys (6ish to 10ish - but let's be honest - they could be anywhere from 3-14 and I probably wouldn't know the difference) knocking on my door on Labor Day to wish me a happy holiday and ask if there's any labor they can do for me... take out my trash, etc. Sweet, right? They also stop by sometimes just to say hi to the cats & get a quick head butt. (And boy does my head hurt! Ha. Catskills, here I come.)

So when the youngest boy came by one day asking if I had any plastic bottles he could recycle to raise money for his Sunday school class, I was happy to help, but I have a Brita filter for water and don't often buy drinks in plastic bottles. My meek offer of an empty Diet Snapple bottle was met with a smile and an "Oh, thanks but they're only collecting plastic bottles. But that's ok, I'll go take that to the trash for you!" as he skipped off towards the trash area, bottle in hand. Bummer, right?

But wait! I work in a relatively small office (11 people), with a generous employer who provides us with all sorts of snacks and drinks that keep us caffeinated, sugar-high and ultra-productive throughout the day. This is an actual, no-exaggeration list I made looking around the kitchen today: Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Diet Sprite, Hansen's soda, Hansen's fruit smooties, V8, Gatorade, Vitamin water, Arrowhead water, Martinelli's cider, orange juice, grapefruit juice, Activia yogurt, Tillamook cheese, string cheese, Famous Amos cookies, Nutter Butters, Oreos, Dove chocolates, biscotti, pretzels, kettle corn, Quaker Oats cereal bars, Now & Laters, Fig Newtons, honey oat granola bars, fruit & nut trail mix bars, sweet & salty nut bars, Planter's peanuts, Reese's peanut butter cups, Motts fruit bites, Jolly Rancher Pops, Tootsie Pops, peanut butter pretzel sandwiches, Pepperidge Farms goldfish, Milanos, Sun Chips, and every flavor of potato chips you can think of (OMG Lord if you’re there save me from Tim's Sweet Maui Onion). Yes, I've gained a little weight since starting this job 9 months ago (hence my recent, less-eventful visit to the Hot Nutritionist). Shocking, I know.

Technically, they provide all this for the dozens of high school students we host for four-hour practice SATs & ACTs every weekend, but good luck keeping us office rats out of it. Suffice to say, we generate a helluva lot of trash... and recycling. Hey! Plastic bottles galore! So I announce to my coworkers that I'm going to start collecting all the plastic we plow through every day to help out my cute, sweet little neighbor kid and his Sunday School class. I have awesome coworkers, so they (after one or two "this isn't for some weird fundamentalist church that pickets funerals is it?" questions - told you they were awesome), all pitch in and within two days, we have amassed a glorious mountain of crushed plastic bottles in bags behind my desk. I can confidently report that we are one fully hydrated office - we manage to fill two 30-gallon trash bags a week on a regular basis, which I'm always so excited to bring to the kid - and he's equally excited to get. Finally I can repay some of their kindnesses and it feels really good.

It occurred to me, as I was changing into my gym clothes before leaving work one night (knowing that if I have to change at the gym, the only exercise I'm gonna get is just waving as I drive on by), that I do work on one of the chi-chi-est streets in Beverly Hills, and that I probably look like a bag lady walking down the street in my ratty sweats and massive (clear, because of course) garbage bag full of bottles. I'm ashamed to say that I apparently DO give a damn what the Kardashiassholes of Beverly Drive think of me and I've actually, on one or two occasions, taken the time to transfer the bottles into canvas shopping bags before taking them to my car, so the richies won't - God forbid - think I'm a poor person who has to collect other people's recycling to get by.

Well, the other night I just didn't care, and I hauled my two huge trash bags of recycling down the street to my car in their see-through bags. As I approached the garage, there was a homeless woman sitting by the entrance. We have quite a few homeless regulars on our street, and I've seen her before. Some of them are more aggressive/passive-aggressive than others, but she's always polite and unobtrusive, and she's one of the few I've given money to once or twice. She looked at me, checked out my bags & gave me a big smile of solidarity and said, laughing, "That's right honey. Good for you - I do it too! Ain't no shame in it! It's good money! You go on!"

Awesome. I'm now the Bag Lady of Beverly Drive. Even the homeless people think so, apparently. But you know what? I actually don't care. I realized I'd rather have her respect and admiration (even if it's slightly misinformed) than that of most of the people shopping and dining and honking (God, the honking) and posing and gossiping and judging and cupcake-eating and illegally parking and "oops-did-my-dog-do-that-I-didn't-really-see-maybe-nobody-else-did-either"-ing on Beverly fucking Drive.

Maybe next time I'll give one of the bags to her. Somehow I don't think the kid would mind sharing.

[ipeakedinsixthgrade]

Adventures With a Hot Nutritionist

I am in love. The fact that it's completely one-sided is of no concern to me. I am in love with my hot nutritionist (heretofore known as "HN") and I'm pretty sure he knows all about it. HN helped a dear friend of mine lose over 100 lbs on a looming but uncertain life-or-death deadline - while she was on the waitlist for a double lung transplant, and had to lose the weight to qualify for the transplant that would save her life, should one become available. NBD. Even more impressive, she did it with diet ONLY - she couldn't exercise due to seriously restricted lung capacity prior to her transplant. I was so impressed with her accomplishment that, though I didn’t have nearly as much weight to lose, I knew I needed to enlist the help of the man who'd helped her.

So I call HN (though, at the time, the "H" was unknown, so as far as I was concerned, he was just "N") and set up an appointment for 7:30am later that week. N tells me I'll be doing active and resting metabolic tests involving a stint on the treadmill, so I show up at his clinic in chi-chi Newport Beach (home of the Original Real Housewives of Orange County, hoo-fucking-ray) in ratty sweats, t-shirt, no makeup, and a baseball cap. I'm sitting in the waiting room when in walks the most adorable creation (of the adult male variety; my nieces and nephew are the grand champions) God in his glory hath ever wrought. Looks directly at me and says, "Paige?" I seriously considered looking around with an innocent, "Hello? Which one of you botoxed, lifted, surgically enhanced fembot bitches is Paige?" but let's just say one of these things is not like the others and it's pretty goddamned clear who's there for weight loss help. It's about this time that I start mentally cursing my friend all to hell for neglecting to mention the rather pertinent fact that N is actually HN, and wishing desperately I'd made any sort of effort at all to look like a human being that morning. On the best of days, I am not a morning person and I'm not accustomed to having to be anywhere at 7:30am. Honest to God, I can't even say with certainty whether or not I'd brushed my teeth that morning.

So HN introduces himself and we chitchat for a bit, me nervously making all sorts of bizarre, obscure jokes and talking - I'm quite certain - complete, unintelligible gibberish at 3x my normal speed of a mile a minute, which he, charitably, laughs at. I can tell he doesn't know quite what to make of me. I want to pat him on the back and say, "It's ok, I don't know what the hell to make of me either. Let's just pretend I'm normal and keep going, k?" He tells me we'll be doing the resting metabolic test first, which involves him strapping some sort of bondage-reminiscent, neoprene mask on me that covers my entire face from the apples of my cheeks to my chin, and secures at the back of my neck and head. This attractive device has a round plastic hole in front of my mouth, which makes me look like some kind of seriously niche-market, baseball-cap-wearing blow-up doll that's probably popular in Germany. To my sex-doll face hole, he attaches a hose whose other end is attached to a laptop. He explains that the test will take about 15 minutes, and that I should just relax and breathe normally while I fill out some paperwork - paperwork that, I'll soon discover, seems to have a rather distressing preoccupation with the quality and frequency of my farts and stools - and the test will measure my C02 uptake or some such rocket science NASA magic, and tell him how many calories my body burns at rest.

He leaves me to my paperwork, returning about 10 minutes later to look at what the test has to say so far. "Huh," he says, seeming genuinely puzzled. "This is so weird. The test shows that you're having a significant stress response just sitting there filling out paperwork." "WELL OF COURSE I'M HAVING A STRESS RESPONSE! THE MOST ATTRACTIVE MAN I'VE EVER SEEN IS TALKING TO ME! I AM FREAKING! THE FUCK! OUT!" I want to yell through my bondage hose. Instead, I try to look confused as to why that would possibly be the case and squeak out a muffled "Huh. That is weird," and diligently resume answering questions about my poop.

Next up is the active metabolic test. This test involves me - still in my supersexy mask & hose - on a treadmill for about 12 min, while HN increases the speed and incline about every minute or so. The goal of the active test is to determine the heart rate at which I burn the most fat, so my workouts can be their most effective. At one point, while I'm still only at the pace of a brisk walk, he steps about 5 feet back and is looking me up and down, disconcertingly focusing mostly on my thighs. "YES, MY THIGHS RUB TOGETHER WHEN I WALK!" I yell (yes out loud IRL) through the hose. He laughs and tells me that, no, that's not what he was looking at, that my stride is not even and it appears that my hips may be slightly askew and that he'll show me some stretches later that will help with that. "Oh... ok. Cool, thanks. Heh, heh."

He then comes back to me and starts increasing the speed & incline again, to the point where I'm now RUNNING up a hill. I'm making a Herculean effort not to huff and puff and pass out like the out-of-shape slob I am, which is not helped by the fact that he's now leaning on his forearms on the front of the treadmill about 10 inches away from my face (potentially breathing unbrushed-teeth-breath, we mustn’t forget), and is apparently feeling chatty. 

"So," he says casually, "are you... seeing anyone?"

O

M

G

I wish there were a video I could post here, because what happened next is something I've only ever seen in cartoons. I was so stunned by this inquiry into my romantic status - and what I inferred to be his interest - that I actually stumbled and flew several feet backwards (still tethered to my face hose, mind you) on the now steeply inclined, very fast-moving belt. I believe that, in that moment, God, if He exists, stopped laughing long enough to take pity on me and slow the space-time continuum down just enough to allow me to miraculously regain my footing (if not my composure) and avoid flying completely OFF the treadmill and slamming into the wall, ripping my face-hose tether out of its very expensive machine as it flings it across the room and breaks it, along with my will to live.

Once I was back in my stride, blithely pretending the astonishing thing that had just happened HADN'T just happened, I debated how to answer. I wasn't seeing anyone, but if I said no, would that make me seem like a dateless loser? But if I said yes, and he was actually - unbelievably - interested in this Charlize-Theron-in-Monster version of me, would he lose interest? Why was this perfect specimen of the human race asking me if I had a boyfriend? Was HN the primary member of the weird German slobby sex-doll niche market?? As I ponder these questions, the forward progress of time sneakily resumes and I belatedly realize that he's looking at me expectantly (probably wondering if I'd had some sort of a stroke a moment before). I panic and blurt out, "Um, yeah, well no, I mean... I date."

Brilliant. You’re for sure gettin’ some sweet sweet lovin’ tonight, girl. GET IT.

He goes on to ask if I live alone or with a roommate, what I do for fun... ultimately, as it turns out, he was trying to get a feel for how I dealt with what was, at the time, the insane amount of stress in my life. Owning a failing business during a global economic meltdown with no discernible light at the end of the tunnel can have that effect. He was not, in fact, getting ready to ask me out on a date, damn it. Not exactly a shock, given the state of my... everything that day. But still.

After the fun of the metabolic tests is over, HN tells me it's time to weigh me. "Oh," I say with a smile, as I step on to the scale, "Well this is the most humiliating moment of my life." He laughs while I die a little inside. He then proceeds to measure my body fat by pinching the fat on my "triceps" (I use that term loosely), waist and thigh. "Oh I'm sorry," I say, "THIS is the most humiliating moment of my life." He laughs again. Hey, at least the guy thinks I'm funny.

At the time, I owned a women's fitness franchise and spent my days helping other women successfully lose weight through diet and exercise, but, for various reasons interesting only to me and my therapist, I struggled to help myself do the same thing. The women-only gym explosion (read: rabid overexpansion into a niche market at the expense of individual club owners, but no I’m not bitter, why do you ask?) of the early 2000s has contracted significantly in recent years, with a huge number of clubs closing and the model losing much of its caché (and nearly all of its profitability, if only on the club level). After my experience owning and managing a club for 5 years, I can say that, when executed well, with enthusiastic and properly-trained staff and actively involved owners with a passion for helping others, the women-only model absolutely works. "No Men, No Makeup, No Mirrors" - in other words, no judgment. And it's great in many ways. But I gotta say, for me anyway, there is something damned motivating about knowing an unbelievably hot (and as it turned out, smart, kind, sensitive, and funny) guy is going to be pinching the fat on your upper arm, waist, and thigh every two weeks.

Oh, the things we do for (even unrequited) love.

[ipeakedinsixthgrade]

Online Dating... Online Hating?

I was an early, and unabashed, adopter of online dating, long before anyone had ever heard of social networking, the explosion in which has now made meeting strangers from the internet de rigueur. I've done time on okcupid (which does pretty incredible analytics of its user communication patterns in addition to being fun and, remarkably, free), eharmony (expensive, irritatingly constraining with its "guided communication" bs and, in my own personal experience, though admittedly not that of several friends, terrible ideas about compatibility), a brief but eventful few months on jdate (I'm not Jewish but I do love my Jewish boys... though I soon learned the phrase "shiksas are for practice" and won't soon forget it), salon personals (gathering place for witty, left-leaning, educated, intellectual types, and my favorite before it merged with yahoo personals and aol personals and spark networks and... well you get the idea), plenty of fish (free and... just gross, stay away, trust me - one of the basic profile questions is "do you have a car"), and the mother of them all, match.com (pithy observational comment too long for a parenthetical aside). All in all, I've been on and off various sites looking for love for the better part of ten years. I've even come close to finding it once or twice.

I really took to online dating, much more than I ever took to our mothers' way of doing it, which is to say, meeting someone at a party, or at a bar, or in class, or in the goddamned supermarket, sharing a laugh, flirting a bit, being asked for your number and going out on a date. For being, what I'm told, a relatively cute girl with a pretty decent personality (I have absolutely zero perspective on this, other than to say that yes, ok, I have my charms), this has never been my experience. I didn't really date in high school or college - though, to be fair, my Amazing Exploding Bustline™ at the age of 13 resulted in enough unwelcome attention from creepy older men to scare me off from sex for a good long time, and I was a drama major at NYU focusing on musical theater, so I was surrounded by gay men... which didn't stop me from crushing on several of them in the most tragically predictable of ways. Sigh. (You’ll always have a piece of my heart, S.!)

My one “appropriate” college crush was on my straight (an improvement already!), adorable, interesting, and very charming neighbor, N., who quickly became a very close friend. We had a million of those endless, cigarette- and wine-fueled, late-night-into-early-morning conversations that could veer from drunken analysis of the under-appreciated brilliance of “The Simpsons” to uncontrollable giggling at literally nothing to deeply intimate, philosophical discussions of life and love and sex and social justice and dreams for the future and changing the world that are so nostalgically reminiscent of college, and which have become the foundation of lifelong friendships for so many. I was in secretly in love with him for close to 9 months, terrified to say anything for fear of ruining the friendship, but desperately wanting him to make a move and flashing green lights like it was my job, As it turns out (plot twist!), near the end of the school year (thank God for small mercies), I inadvertently discovered (via, of all things, a note ***about me*** that fell out of the trash when the bag broke as I was emptying it) that my beloved N. had, in fact, been sleeping with my (engaged) roommate / close friend / confidante / advice-giver-on-all-things-N for months. Soo yeah. I admit, that one did take me out of the love game and plant me firmly on the “fuck this shit” bench for a few innings.

As far back as I can remember, though, when I did get asked out, my first instinct, always, unless I had already decided I liked them based on previous observation and/or actual interaction or established friendship, was to say I had a boyfriend or make some other excuse. (In my defense: for whatever reason, the... personal presentations of the men who most frequently DO approach me in public tend to inspire rather immediate concerns about their mental stability and/or apparent intellectual deficits and/or possible sex offender status and/or employment status and/or basic living conditions, so y’know. Not totally unjustified.) But when I do find a guy attractive at a party, or a bar, or in class, or in the fucking supermarket, just try to catch me making sustained eye contact, let alone smiling at him. God forbid. (Gosh, can’t imagine why it’s only the creepers who approach me.)

I think online dating appealed to me because it allowed me to a) look at cute boys and learn all about them without having to appear interested unless I wanted to (thus removing any fear of rejection, see above), and b) when contacted by someone, I could get a lot of information about them before deciding if I was, indeed, interested, and if not, it was much easier to say "thanks but I don’t think we’re a match" in an email than face-to-face. As much as rejection sucks, I honestly feel almost the same level of - if a different breed of - angst when I'm the one doing the rejecting.

It also allowed me to present myself in a way that highlighted all the things I liked about myself - I could be funny, smart, a good storyteller, occasionally sincere, post realistic but flattering photos... and I'll be honest, I got a ton of interest. From a ton of really great guys - smart, interesting, funny, successful, attractive men. It was great! I, of course, also communicated with, met and/or dated a good number of schmoes, man-children, addicts, weirdos, commitmentphobes, creepy stalker types, and flat-out liars, but for the most part, I was introduced to and dated a lot of great guys I never would've crossed paths with otherwise. In fact, I'm still friendly and in varying levels of communication with almost all the guys I initially met online that I connected with enough to go out with at least a few times (and, actually, two that I only went out with once, but those boys are another story for another blog post).

So here's the thing: I think I might be done with online dating. Or... to be more precise, I think online dating might be done with me. I've always gone through periods where I turn off all my profiles, either because I've met someone and want to see where it goes, or because I get busy and dating's not a priority at the moment, or because I'm nursing a bruised ego from a failed almost-relationship, or just because I need a break. On average, I probably spend four to six months a year with an active profile or two, and the rest of the time I'm offline. But every time I re-activate, there they are, a bunch of guys wanting to talk to me. I'm telling you, it's fabulous.

Except this time. This past fall, when I reactivated my okcupid profile following a particularly insane experience on the relationship crazytrain (oh I guarantee that one's gonna be a future post; it involves forceps and a trip to the ER), I was getting significantly fewer profile views and emails - especially from the all-important category of "men I would be halfway interested in meeting." Men with things like jobs, cars, the legal ability to drink BUT not the owner of an AARP card, not having fathered three kids by two different women, a familiarity with basic grammar and spelling rules, the modicum of class it takes to refrain from asking if my "knockers are real," the lack of an extra chromosome. Etc.

So I pulled out my debit card and reactivated my match.com profile. Maybe it was true: you get what you pay for - after all, okcupid is free. Same thing. What is going on here? I wondered. Have all the good guys left online dating en masse? So I started doing a few searches of my own, and guess what? There are still a lot of great guys online, but they're no longer looking for me, and here's my theory about why: on Halloween last year, I turned 35. And as we all know, the most desirable demographic to advertisers and men of all ages is 18-34. Even the ones who don't want kids. Now, I don't think they suddenly find me unattractive and unfunny and assume my ovaries have dried up overnight, but I suspect that the searches they're doing stop at 34. These same guys, once I "view" their profile (visibly, to them), view mine, and contact me. Fabulous. Problem solved. But one thing is clear: I'm either gonna have to get a helluva lot more proactive than I've gotten used to being (and really, who has time?), or I'm gonna have to pull the totally sleaze-ass move of aging myself downward to show up in searches. Yuck. No thanks.

OR... and this is the really crazy thought... I'm just gonna have to learn to smile at men in the goddamned motherfucking supermarket. Wish me luck.

[ipeakedinsixthgrade]

Small Hands, Happy Patient

I am currently in need of two things: a new dentist, and a new doctor of the ladyparts. The reason I am in need of both of these things at once is this: I have (relatively) newly-activated halfway decent health insurance for the first time in my life (thanks, real job!), and it's time for a tune-up, upstairs AND downstairs. This is not to say - let me emphasize clearly - THIS IS NOT TO SAY that there is anything wrong in either place.

Well ok, I probably have a cavity or four. IN MY MOUTH.

My primary requirements for both of these health professionals are simple and, perhaps surprisingly, the same for both:

1. Geographical desirability - near my job in glamorous Beverly Hills, or near my home in one of the less fabulous areas of fabulous Long Beach. Yes, I live my days straddling the vast economic Grand Canyon that is life in Southern California... one foot in the ghetto, one foot in Vanderpumpland. (Side note, I love Lisa Vanderpump beyond all rationale, for numerous reasons, not the least of which is her unbelievably fantastic, "is this real life?" name. And her adorable husband who got so MAD about that slimy little snake Cedric on the reunion show. And her sad little bald dog. Frankly, her whole "bawdy broad who says things like 'I feel like I got shagged through a hedge backwards' in the body of a gorgeous, classy British aristocrat with fabulous hair" thing. I. Dig. Her. Judge if you must.)

2. A willingness to dispense, and a spirit of generosity in such dispension, any and all anxiety- and/or consciousness-reducing drugs while I am under their expert care. I don't need 'em when I go home. But I'd rather not be "there" while I'm there.

3. Small hands. This one would seem not to need further explanation.

If you love your dentist and/or your gyno, please oh please won't you give me their name?

[ipeakedinsixthgrade]

Love on a massage table (or chair)

Back when I was a table-toting, in-home massage therapist (years ago, and briefly), I used to pretend I was in love with my clients while I worked on them. Now, before you start picturing something creepy & skeezy with regard to what kind, exactly, of services I was providing that required my pretending to be in love... get your minds out of the gutter. Scout's Honor, I never did anything I wasn't taught in massage school. Well... almost never. My VERY first client out of school, in a tryout at a weird little Persian "spa" right by the Hollywood Bowl, demanded I give him something he liked to call "soft touch." "Soft touch," suffice to say, was not a massage technique I'd been taught in school. It was like a very light caress with just the tips of my fingers/fingernails, along his arms, legs & back. "Ok," I thought, "this isn't really in the playbook, and I feel weird about it, but it's not like he's asking for a handjob. It's a little uncomfortable, but it's not really sexual, and hey, it's a hell of a lot easier than deep tissue work. Get over it." Which I did, right up until he started grinding his hips into the table. MY table. And yes, there were groans. With an s. Yeesh. So, after a moment of indecision, with a little tap on the head (the one on his neck, pervs) and a firm "All right, that's all the time we have," I sent him packing, collected my tip and never darkened the door of that spa again. I immediately started rationalizing the whole experience and telling myself that I was overreacting, but upon discovering, when I got home, that he'd given me a 100% tip... I think it's safe to say a line had been crossed that I never wanted to approach again.

Moving on from that somewhat traumatizing first professional experience... dozens of fine, upstanding, perfectly-behaved, 20% tipping clients after my first, unforgettable "swarthy gentleman" (who, it occurs to me now, bore a striking resemblance to Saddam freaking Hussein) I discovered that pretending I was in love with the client actually made the massage more enjoyable for BOTH of us. I first tried it purely as a mental escape hatch with a client I found physically repulsive (sorry, but yes, it's true - if you have a full-body hair sweater, weird, infected-looking, scaly, flaky skin patches, anything anyone anywhere might term a "pustule" and/or unnatural... or perhaps what I mean to say is way TOO natural... smells emanating from various body crevices, your MT is repulsed, I guaran-fucking-tee it) and I found that when I attributed a sparkling personality, offbeat sense of humor, brilliant mind, and unexpected kindness and generosity to this spectacularly unappealing man (I may even have given him a tragic backstory), I worked on him in a much more caring and attentive way - a way that he, as a not-evil human being, deserved. Not in a "soft touch" way, mind you, but in an almost empathic, energy-exchanging way.

(This guy likes a soft touch along with his genocide)

Normally after a massage, I was tired and felt like I wanted a massage myself, but when I pretended it was my boyfriend I was massaging - when I made the effort to appreciate the uniqueness and beauty of every person I worked on as if exploring the (g-rated) areas of a lover's body - I was actually energized and found myself much more alert & responsive to every signal I was getting from the client. In the same way that giving pleasure sexually to someone you love can be deeply satisfying to the giver, I found that I was gratified by giving massages in this frame of mind in ways I'd never expected. Even more unexpectedly, I was also gratified in the more traditional way - I started getting 40, 50, once even another 100% tip - from male AND female clients who were clearly not "getting off" in any way. I believe they simply felt loved, whether they realized it or not, and it made them - and me - feel great.

(Why yes, in fact, this is EXACTLY what I look like)

I haven't worked as a massage therapist for years, but I still LOVE getting them myself when I can afford them (being a constant "practice dummy" is one of the biggest perks of massage school). I've had $300 massages at high-end spas that weren't worth the lotion that was wasted on them (let alone the expected $60 tip), and I've had the more typical, $60-$80/hr massages that were pretty good but nothing to write a blog post about. Then, a year or so ago, I discovered a little Korean “foot spa” not too far away, which offers 60 min (that's 60 FULL min, not the traditional 50 min), full-body, mostly clothed (more or less, depending on the whims of your therapist and your own level of modesty in a low-lit, open room with 15 other massagees in various states of nirvana and undress) massages for a mere $20, and 90 min for $30. It's a crazy deal, and I honestly feel a little guilty taking advantage of the clearly very recent immigrants from all over the Pacific Rim, but I'm a 50-75% tipper there, so I buy my way out of my guilt, at least a little bit.

I've had decent massages there (which, for the price, were pretty freaking great), and I've had very good massages there, and, tonight, I had the most amazing massage I think I've ever had. I splurged on the 90 min for $30 (don’t hate the playa) and, while I'd asked for a male when I made the appointment, I got pawned off (or so I thought) on a woman. This is not unusual - there's a therapist there named "Bill" (one suspects that's not his real name), who is amazing, and once, when I made an appointment requesting him, as I always did, they gave me another guy and tried to convince me this was Bill. Now, I know y'all think WE all think all Asians look alike, but that ain't my Bill.

Well. Helen (again, why do I suspect a name switcheroo?) is incredible. She actually inspired this whole blog post, because, despite the dozens upon dozens of good and sometimes even great massages I've had since my time on the MT front lines, I have never once been reminded of my old habit of pretending I was in love with my clients. Helen might not have been using my old trick, but it was something damn close, and she earned herself a 100% tip. And, for 90 blissful minutes, I felt loved.