You’ve Been a Very Very Bad Bad Girl
3/14/10 3:39am ~ UncategorizedOutstanding submissions: 13
Rejections: 1, personal-ish
Another rejection from Copper Nickel. They enjoy my writing, want more but not this story. Alas. This story is one of my favorites so I trust it will find a home. I say that about every story but I don’t really write things I don’t like.
I go to the gym nearly everyday including weekends but you would never know it to look at me. That’s frustrating, to know that who you are becoming is not accurately reflected. Weight loss sucks. It’s hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It takes forever. Sometimes, I buy those issues of People magazine where reformed fatties hold their fat pants in front of them and those women say things like oh I just walked an hour each day and lost 234 pounds. Liars. Losing weight is not like on The Biggest Loser where you get to live on a campus where all you need to do is eat the healthy food they provide for you and workout for seven hours a day with two of the best trainers in the country and participate in forced product placement scenarios for Yoplait and Extra Gum and 24 Hour Fitness. In the real world, there are Dairy Queen Blizzards (I mean COME ON! Delicious treats blended into an artificial ice cream product!) and work and play and no television cameras watching your every move.
I love The Biggest Loser but I hate how easy they make it look, like all you need is three months and everything will be okay, like all you need to do is cry about your problems for twenty minutes and all your troubles disappear. The worst part is that the weight loss process is so difficult and so slow that you have all this extra time to try and figure out how you let this happen, how you let yourself get to such a point and you think about why why why and you get so angry at yourself, at others, at the why but there’s nothing you can do with that anger. Â Nothing good can come from looking back, not really. Things can’t be undone, food can’t be uneaten. And so. The anger sits there and festers, weighing you down with everything else. I look back at my twenties now and I think, I was utterly out of my mind. I’d like to go back to have a chat with myself at 16, 17, 18, 19, when I was kind of crazy but fly as hell. I’d slap that girl and tell her to do something different.
My landlady considers herself a human scale. She has been obsessed with me since the day I moved in five years ago. Every time she sees me, she likes to offer an estimate of how much I’ve lost since the last time she’s seen me. She watches me from her window upstairs to like make sure I go to the gym everyday and monitor my schedule. She offers me diet advice and exercise tips and also tells me about every single fat person she’s ever known. She’s 86 so my innate belief that old people should be respected prevents me from telling her all about herself. The other day, my gentleman friend J almost knocked her on her ass because she kept yapping when we came in and asking him if he spends the night and where he’s parking his car and all sorts of hugely inappropriate things to ask people OVER THE AGE OF THIRTY. Also, she watches the comings and goings of me and my guests intensely so really, I think you know the answer to your invasive questions, ma’am. She never lets him park his truck in the lot because she micromanages the parking situation so he was kind of at his wit’s end. He’s mellow and he has to be pushed quite hard to lose his temper. He got all blustery and his little lower lip was just twitching, and he said, “We have to go,” and he cut the conversation short. Â It was great. I want to be like that, to just say, enough but I always sit there and listen to her yap and never say enough is enough. I’ll work on that and see about some anger management too.
I have some killer muscle situations going on beneath the surface of my skin. One day, I’m going to be like a butterfly with great tone. I’m predicting a significant midlife crisis in my 40s with lots of acting out. I’m not going to waste a (relatively) killer body.
Someone called my phone and left a message but it was a wrong number. The message was awesome. It said, “Hey Amber. Bessa. It’s Mandy, I was calling you to let you know that J J as in the hospital and he’s a dumbass.”
Sometimes, its really quiet in my apartment and my printer will stir awake and the sound of it will scare me.
I am weak and easily swayed by good advertising. I may have purchased an iPad.
The Lady Gaga/Beyonce Telephone video is fabulous. The song makes me do one of my signature dances and this one involves a fist pump. I’m almost done memorizing the moves from the video. If you don’t like this video please don’t tell me so we can still be friends.  The dialogue! OMG. “You’ve been a very  bad girl–a very very bad bad girl,  GaGa.” And the way Beyonce says GaGa. I love it.
Lena Olin is fierce.
I ordered some hair products. Two small bottles came in this HUGE box. I still cannot believe it. WTF Carol’s Daughter?
I was in the Detroit airport and there were BIRDS inside. If you look closely you can see a little birdie. It was kind of a neat moment.
I went to a potluck and I secured my dish with a seatbelt to keep it safe. It was Haitian macaroni and cheese and yes, it was delicious. I may have shared this picture before but I still like it.
i like how you care so greatly about your mac
n cheese
you keep it so safe.
parenthesis what makes it Haitian?
i feel the mac n cheese loved you a little during that car ride
like, ‘it aint so bad now, that i’m gonna be eat-in’.
like, ‘i feeled some love. at least there’s that’
like, ’some people dont even get THAT much during their lifetime’
say all of these things with a haitian accent.
fill your mouth with cheese and mac when you say them
or just imagine it all
or, really, maybe, don’t do any of that.
i have a muscles under the skin situation too.
if only i could cut away all the skin
im pretty sure there’s muscle there, i mean,
how else would i be standing up and moving and crap
you should see my ‘FL-abs’.
they’re quite ‘the situation’
if the situation was lethargy
parenthesis i dont know how to say that word
that lady gaga video was incredible
tarantino-esque
parenthesis the jail parts omg
esp. when they threw her into the cell
and took her clothes off
and the jail dance sequence
made me feel ‘funny’
between my legs
what was that funny feeling mommy?
i’m confused by how this video makes me feel.
‘down there’
my mommy tells me to hush now
and
dont talk about that and
go play outside with your brother
then she blocks things on my laptop
and i can never watch that video again
and my computer turned into an atari
module and
lady gaga has never been invented yet so
oh well.
Your comment is like a poem!
What makes it Haitian is the way it is made in Haiti. It might also be French. It involves condensed milk, pasta (whatever little shape you like), butter and parmesan cheese. It’s pretty amazing. Its one of the few things I can cook that is just stellar. SITUATIONS! Lehhhhh THAR GEE. OMG the cigarette sunglasses? The whole prison sequence was quite sexy. ATARI.
Ohmigod, I want this macaroni
My huge comment was deleted somehow. I’m going to go cry.
This post made me very happy and I’m very hungover and needed some joy. That video is the best thing I’ve had happen to my brain all week.
I had internet sex with some guy I went to high school with last night til 4 am and then slept until 3pm. My self hatred and tequila hangover are so immense that I am stunned. I’m walking around stunned. My family is away for the day- and this is what I do. Walk around like a zombie afraid to remember last night. Also- unable to. it sort of works.
I have like ten law and orders dvded and that is going to be my life for the rest of my day and maybe half of tomorrow.
The pussy wagon is Tarantino’s. I also had some internet sex last night with a buddy of his (old friend of mine)…
sigh.
Oh, PB, it makes me sad when long comments are deleted. I’m sorry that happened. DAMN COMPUTERZ! Sounds like you had a busy night. Enough with the self-loathing though! What harm is there in a little Internet Sex. It’s pretty safe unless you catch a virus. Not funny? Drink more tequila for the hangover–hair of the dog and all. I’m glad I could give you a little joy. That video is just exceptional. I’ve watched it more times than I can count. The Cutting Edge 4 on ABC family, that’s how I’m spending my evening when I should be dissertating. I’m not proud of this.
You’re right about my landlady. The whole thing just makes me terribly uncomfortable. Glad to know that your midlife crisis is going well. That makes me hopeful about mine which is, at this point, inevitable.
Oh- and the busybody landlady? I understand respecting your elders, but think this- she was probably like that at 22. It’s just not OK.
I’m having an amazing mid life crisis and have been for about 7 years and I recommend it highly. I’m just going to keep on leaving comments here.
paula had drunken internet sex?
i think we will be friends….
I hope the muscle and the general healthfulness still feels awesome even if the going is slow. Seems like we need a serious cultural shift from work out to shed pounds to work out to feel better. Aren’t there a ton of studies now showing BMI has been crazy overemphasized as an arbiter of health? And irregardless, stigma and oppression and inaccessible public spaces hello airplane don’t help anybody.
There are totes birds inside the Denver airport, so we have that (among many other fabulosities) to look forward to.
i’m so jealous re: the ipad!
every time i hear that name i want to say “more like iRad, am i right?” but if i said that my wife would say “dork” and then go off about how lame the ipad seems. so i keep it to myself. i’m not swayed by marketing, i just love apple products.
we watch biggest loser, too. every time they do one of those moments where jilian or bob talk to the audience and say “get up off the couch” i say “no,” and then i’m the only one laughing ’cause my wife is a workout nut and me not so much.
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Hello, I love the Shrek movies, very good animation!
LOL – she is so amazing.
Thank you for creating this web site! I am so happy to be able to watch the progress of this restoration. I am filled with admiration for what you are doing! Best of luck with your work.