Your Geek Girl is at the AWP convention, overwhelmed, exhausted and with sore feet from stupidly walking in spike heels in the middle of a Boston blizzard, because she always has to be fab (and refer to herself in the 3rd person)
If you’re at AWP, come find me and get a FREE STICKER! And check back Sunday for updates.
My Gay-Gay, in a famous piece of family lore, ditched her girdle in the ladies room at the officer’s club in Okinawa, Japan, while my grandfather was stationed there.
Clearly, we are a family who is not into rubber slips. But I survived, and I’m going to be honest–I’ll probably hang onto them for special occasions. They work, which makes me hate them, but I, being vain and shallow, also enjoy the attention the bring me. And the good posture.
I didn’t tell Chris that he was picking my dinner. The Deadstring Brothers were playing the B-Side Ballroom, and since they’re on the same record label as Justin Townes Earle, I had to ask Chris to go with me, since he’s responsible for getting me into JTE and we saw him together back when he played Foothills.
But I woke up in a lot of pain because I spent all of yesterday huddled over a tiny picture of a geranium teaching myself to cross-stitch, so after trying a horse-sized dose of ibuprofin, got out the big guns, downed a latte and took a muscle relaxant, hoping the two would balance each other out.
I continued to cross-stitch until my brain went numb, then went upstairs to lie still and hope to God I didn’t sink into the floor like Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting. When I woke up, I realized it was 5 p.m. and I had a date in two hours. A date I was wearing heels for. And the muscle relaxant hadn’t quite worn off.
But I figured if drunk girls could walk in cheap, too-big heels from Rue 21, I could handle myself in Betsey Johnson stiletto booties. In the snow. And Spanx. Because I’m tough.
Chris suggested pizza because he is chill and thus proved Arlene’s rule that it’s better to eat hot dogs with a man than caviar by yourself. I pretended not to know what I wanted and let him get a slice for me, and he ordered broccoli, which I never get but actually enjoy. Later, at the B-Side Ballroom, he ordered us french fries, which pretty much solidifies him as the Best Date Ever. And since I now know the power of Spanx, I can eat junk food with abandon, mwa ha ha!
A few words about Chris. He’s perfect. I want to put him up on Ebay. He told me I looked nice with specifics about my shoes and haircut, let me take his arm so I didn’t fall in the snow. He is a gentleman of the utmost order, a genuinely good and kind person with not an ounce of malice, even when he’s making fun of people.
He’s also from Cobleskill, my much-hated hometown, so we talked about our alcoholic choir director, little league teams, senior quotes and high school pictures. I’m not from Cobleskill, I just grew up there, and even though some of us, like Chris and I, manage to escape, it gets in you, stays in your blood like a virus. But the good part of this is that I can turn to him and point at a guy with a white fluffy mullet and say “Cobleskill Hair” and he understands what that means and laughs.
Chris also doesn’t drink, which is cool, especially because I didn’t want to explain that I couldn’t drink tonight because of the massive doses of horse tranquilizers I have to swallow in order to turn my head. So we got ginger ales and sat in the corner and felt like teenagers sneaking into the place where the grown-ups have all the fun.
The Deadstring Brothers had the place rocking. It was like Roadhouse without the chicken wire or the Swayze. And when the band called for “Ladies Choice” we slow danced (he was an excellent sport about this even though by that time, Ian had arrived and was talking with a friend), and he smelled like cool water cologne, and he didn’t grope me the way the guy with Cobleskill Hair was doing to his date.
A note about dancing in Spanx. You can do it, in theory, but your perfectly sculpted legs are reduced to a C-3PO-like shuffle. So you’re stuck only moving your arms and your hips, which can look good or it can make you look like a drunk mess. I like to think that I looked great, but this has yet to be confirmed.
. . . And He Will
We stayed out until 12:30. I can’t even remember the last time I stayed out that late. But the B-Side is my new music destination, and Chris is my new music date . . . my Saturday Night Thing, if you will.
“Robert Mitchum hates to see a woman “all trussed up” . . .Men want us to look as natural as possible.” Arlene Dahl, Always Ask a Man
WHAT?!?!
So let me get this straight . . . men don’t LIKE rubber undergarments, but women wear them ANYWAYS?!?!
Are we INSANE?!?
My associate editor at the paper, MJ, says she giggles every time she sees me, because she knows I’m wearing Spanx. I love working at the paper, I love being “Libby Cudmore, Girl Reporter,” I love seeing my name in print* and I love getting the paper on Wednesdays and saying, “Wow, look what I did!” Everyone in my office is grand and I’ve never had a better working environment.
That being said, the Spanx incident has really made my think. In having a rubber slip squish me into loveliness, the realization that I could always be thinner was a tad horrifying. I mean, as it is, I just sold a Hot Topic wiggle dress from high school because it didn’t fit anymore–as in it was too big. The most I’ve ever weighed is 111, and that was for a very brief time. I still fit in a bikini I bought (also from Hot Topic) in my freshman year of college. I wear a size 1 juniors in jeans.
But I can always be thinner.
Subsequently, working for a newspaper means being ready to work every minute of every day. “There are a million stories in the naked city,” my boss always chides when I struggle to come up with something notable to write about. This is one of the few times in my life where I haven’t been working two/three jobs, but I work –in some form or another–seven days a week. That’s not a complaint, that’s a fact.
A recent Forbes study showed that women work harder than men. And we’ve all been told that the harder we work, the further ahead we’ll get in life. Over a decade working multiple jobs and getting a MFA, and I’m still up to my ears in student loan debt and can’t afford an apartment
I can always work harder. Anything else is failure.
I realized that this was a problem when on Tuesday night, I had nothing to do. My stories were all written, my pages were all laid out, there weren’t any meetings to attend. I had the whole evening free . . . and I had no idea what to do. I hadn’t had a night off in so long that I had forgotten how to relax.
I Would Wear Triple-Spanx for That Man
So I asked my friend Mike, who works a normal job like normal people, and he was thrilled to be asked because relaxing is something he excels at. Not in a lazy way, but in a way that he knows the boundaries between work and play. He told me to watch bad TV or play video games. Since the X-Box was at the Teen Center and our TV is hooked up yet, I peeled off my Spanx and sat on the couch, watched three episodes of Face/Off and then Justified, which I don’t even like, but, well, Goggins.
Last night, after working another full day doing tear sheets, I came home, made dinner, did some errands and watched Law & Order: Special “No, this isn’t Chris Brown/Rhianna, what gave you that idea?” Unit. And finally, after days of having my smoothed and shaped butt up around my ears from tension, I relaxed.
And having relaxed, I think I’m finally able to get back to work. In Spanx.
*And I’ve got a story coming out in the next issue of The Vestal Review!
The worst part about this is that today wasn’t so bad. I almost didn’t know they were there except that they kept riding up, which was okay, I guess, because my sweater dress was a little too short to properly hide them. Luckily I was sitting all day, so no one noticed.
The thing is that they work. They narrow in my waist and lift up a backside that’s not much to write home about. And the feminist part of me is really bothered by this. I’m 5’3″ and weigh 104 lbs, but they can still make me thinner. Because a woman can always be thinner.
How awful is that?
“Smooth, well-fitting undergarments are the foundation of good grooming” Arlene Dahl, Always Ask a Man
1) It is impossible to be happy while wearing a rubber slip
2) I actually do look thinner.
3) I hate everything
4) My posture is perfect.
5) 6 more days in this thing to go
I was watching SVU (“Starved”) with my F-i-L and noticed an eerie parallel between the episode and my Arlene Dahl-inspired Dinner Challenge:
Yep. That’s the face of a creep.
Dean Cain plays Dr. Jergens, a control freak who rapes women who don’t like what he orders for them. Mariska goes undercover at a speed dating event to try and catch him, and he orders her a dirty martini, which sounds disgusting and she says no (NO MEANS NO, SUPERMAN!) so he tries to follow her and the Stabler and Ice-T spout some cliches and haul him away and I assume he goes to jail although I didn’t finish the episode. Maybe he kills himself and Ice-T shakes his head. Maybe he gets away and Mariska makes that open-mouth fish face she makes when she realizes that Dick Wolf’s name is about to come up and she hasn’t finished her case.
Moral of the story–if you don’t like what your date orders for you, just be careful he’s not Dean Cain. Go ahead and mace him, just in case.
“It’s not only that he doesn’t want to get married–it’s that you know all the time he’s unworthy of you.” Helen Gurley Brown Sex and the Single Girl.
I call these guys cads, but they’re also referred to, by themselves, as “nice guys” and they’re the absolute worst kind of man. As soon as a guy says he’s a “nice guy,” run, run as fast as you can. Also, he will probably either wear a fedora or a bowtie.
My first encounter with a “nice guy” was Joe at Binghamton University. I was young and naive and still into musical theater, so I thought a guy in a fedora who sang Frank Sinatra tunes to me during fire drills must be absolutely in love with me . . . until he kept trying to dry-hump me–after I pushed him away–while we were watching Lord of the Rings. Not okay.
Musical Theater guys are the absolute worst because they’re all cads. I just met one during auditions for Little Shop of Horrors (he was reading for Seymour, I was reading for Audrey in the scene right after “Suddenly Seymour”) who almost kissed me in front of everyone, including Ian, who was auditioning (and landed) the part of The Dentist. You’d think that the dumb cad would have noticed that I walked in and am sitting next to this guy I keep snuggling up to, hmm, maybe we’re dating. But I, like the bimbo I can be, assumed he understood this arrangement and offered to meet him for coffee.
We hung out a few times and had some really great conversations, but he kept trying to grab my ass even though he was sitting on the couch in the home I shared with my boyfriend. Apparently, he couldn’t stand the Friendzone he’d voluntarily placed himself in and ditched me for some other blonde. My pride was more wounded than anything, because I hate that kind of garbage from men. I make my position known right up front–you have no right to act like I went and broke your little heart.
But here’s the kicker, dear readers. I didn’t get the part (it went to a 16 year old moron who managed to not go completely flat on at least 1/64th of her notes) but on opening night, I wore my Betsey Johnson booties, a belted black tunic and leggings, and when he saw me outside, he pushed his girlfriend out of the way to get to me. Yeah, I’m that good.
I never saw him again and I’m fine with that. I mean, really, who needs a cad?
But in all fairness, some of them can be very sweet. Dan’s a good example of this–Dan is a good friend and a sweetheart, but he is an utter and devoted cad. He loves women too much, I’m afraid, to keep his hands (or his lips) off a pretty one that drifts by. He’s not mean spirited or dishonest . . . just a silly romantic still chasing that perfect love.
“You probably have quite a collection (of men) yourself, if you just count them” Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl.
Technically, I’m not married, so I guess I fit into HGB’s definition of a single girl, which means I’d better make my list of men I could, in theory, marry (just in case). She divides them up into several categories, and I’ll address one each day for the weekend.
The Eligibles: (Men I could marry, maybe)
Ian: My boyfriend of 8 years. The first thing I noticed about him when my friend Anthony introduced us was that he looked like Ewan McGregor. Ian is funny, tender and generous. He likes adventures, works hard and celebrates all the wonderful beauty of life. He also loves me, which isn’t always easy to do, spoils me (he built me a fully-functioning Tom Servo puppet!) and is an amazing artist who designs our award-winning Halloween costumes every year.
That’s The Man I’m Going to Marry
Mike: Mike and I have been friends since senior year of college, almost a decade now. Mike has good hair, a well-curved New Jersey mouth and really great eyes. He’s funny, a straight-shooter and knows me probably better than anyone, even the parts of me that I can’t stand. Mike is the ultimate example of “knows everything about me and loves me in spite of it.” Also, he puts up with me talking about Walton Goggins.
Sterling: Sterling is one if Ian’s closest friends, smart, well-spoken, nice looking. We keep each other company and can talk for hours. The only downside is that he lives in Austin, and Austin is filled with dudes in cut-off jean shorts.
Geza: I dated Geza in high school and we’ve remained friends ever since. He has silver eyes and jet black hair and has agreed to marry me if no one else will.
Chris: Chris was my stage manager on The Odd Couple. He’s adorable, plays guitar and bought me Ryan Adams Heartbreaker on vinyl because he saw it in Nashville and knew I “had to have it.” He could be, quite possibly, the sweetest person on earth.
Pete: Pete can reduce me to tears of laughter. I knew Pete briefly in college and remembered him as being somewhere around 8′ tall. He graduated well before I did, but we got better acquainted after my friend Eeon’s wedding. An epic storyteller, Pete can tell the same story ten times and every time, it will have some new element to make it even more hysterical. Pete has also signed to direct James Cameron’s Titanic 2: Dolphin Quest.
Geek Girl Goes Glam 