perpetual single-ness

In that vein, and in a struggle to prove that I am more substantive than my more successful peers who have gone before me, and used their dating and relationship [lack] of prowess as a foray into the blogging world, I will attempt this list, of the life of a perpetually single girl, sans cat. It was posted on Gawker almost three years ago, and Julia Allison quickly rebuttled. In a display of my perpetual three-years-behind status, and in an attempt to prove that I have the least going on of any hot young bachelorette, here's my take on how you can identify that I am in fact, and probably always will be, single:

• Piles of magazines everywhere, comprised of tons of pretentious ones that are clearly untouched and then severely thumbed-through Vogues and Luckys

Um, yup, I've got those everywhere. Mostly because I'm a slob, and I consider "paper mess" to be the kind of mess that won't lead others to believe that you're dirty. I've never read Lucky though, but I did see that it had Vanessa Hugeons on a cover once, which leads me to believe it could be something my low-brow self would enjoy. I've got Vogue, but I'm generally too lazy to read it. I also get Teen Vogue (more my speed), Elle, Nylon (I AM an embarrassment), and I used to get the New Yorker, but you're right I DON'T ANYMORE.

• Overflowing shoe rack and nothing in the fridge

I have that thing that hangs over your door, but I only keep flipflops in it. I keep my shoes in boxes. There is stuff in my fridge though - it's beer. (Okay and salsa and a Britta Filter that always inexplicably freezes. Why? I'm not about to turn up the temp though, because the freezing temperatures make THE FOOD LAST LONGER. Genius.)

• Scented candles

This is only because it disguises the underlying odor. Also, I don't have any in the bathroom, so can I get some points for that? 

• Slovenly heaps of little-used makeups in the bathroom

I interpret the word "slovenly" as a negative word, and I would also like to note that most of my makeup is so "little-used" that it is not even in the bathroom. It's in my closet. I keep more important things in the bathroom, like baby wipes. And beer (this is actually true?). I will concede that there is a small "pile" in my medicine cabinet, but I don't think this makes me single so much as a girl.

• Stuffed animals in the bed

I actually do have those, which is making me feel weird about trying to negatively answer all these questions. Shit. I have three. One is on the couch. It's a dachshound. It looks real, and visitors get fairly creeped out by it. My mom bought it for me as a joke. Yes, this is an indication of being defiantly single.

• Cat hair on the furniture / cat smell

I don't feel the need to respond to the accusation of cat smells, because I am too poor to have a cat, and if I did, I'd train it to go outside. That shit's nasty.

• Cabinets full of mugs featuring the likeness of lady who looks like those hypertrophically-limbed Daily Candy illustrations, bearing the legend "I Love Shopping" or whatnot

I have a lot of pint glasses that I've stolen from bars. One says "Beer is my life." I guess I will count that.

• Anything pink

Are girls who like pink more likely to be single than girls who don't? My entire existence leads me to assume it's the opposite, since I only like it in neon form, on leggings, and the only thing pink in my apartment is a bottle of nailpolish. 

• Ornamental pillows

Pretty sure those cost money. 

• Unedited bookshelves, esp. if they include He's Just Not That Into You or anything along those lines

Julia provided a fairly pithy response to this, and I can't, because I was an English major. My bookshelf is edited. I have stacks of books that extend past the shelf, too. I'd tend to think this is more of a contributing factor to my single-ness rather than a result of it, however. Who wants to date a smart girl? Psssh. 

• Nair

I hide this in my windowsill, which I guess is kind of weird now that I think about it. This is really only a holdover from being a swimmer for 14 years - hair removal has become a habit to the point that I feel weird without it. It's not really an indication that I'm aspirational about my sex life. It also took me about a half hour to figure out that was the implied indication, so there you go. 

• Lite cottage cheese in the fridge

I've started buying the full-fat because I really only eat one meal a day and it keeps me full. Then I moved this to my work fridge, because I really only eat at work. So no, the answer to this question is no. 

• Anything lite or diet around. Cases of Diet Coke. Weight Watchers 'Just 2 Points' bars

Why would I buy diet coke when I could just buy beer? This question is confusing. 

• Inspirational or thinspirational things on the fridge

So is this one. I was going to put a picture of someone skinny on my fridge, but I don't have any magnets, so the only thing that's on there is a penguin calendar and a bumper sticker from a New Glarus six pack that I bought this summer. If you are noticing a theme, it's not just you.

i don't take good pictures

via gawker, obvi

I have been tardy for the blogging party because I continually remind myself what a slippery slope it is. Although I haven't actually read any of Julia Allison's collegiate columns (they're not, like, above me - please, I'd just rather watch Jersey Shore), I am aware that she did indeed start off as a Love and Relationships columnist at her own college newspaper. Yes, the Georgetown student newspaper is quite a bit more illustrious than the good old Lawrentian, but keeping in mind that I'm in obnoxious company is always wise. Hence my risk to overly self-promote. Or really to self-promote at all.

Interesting note: I have also worn a costume made of condoms. (To a not-exactly-naked party - it was also made of maxi pads - but still, our similarities are alarming). I also fancy myself to have a slightly better sense of humor, and more of a non-lapdog approach toward relationships, but really, potato-potato. If somebody offered me a nonsociety blog, I wouldn't say no.

choosing sides

The most confusing part about becoming an adult, for me, is realizing that all of the things about myself that I thought would just disappear quietly once I was holding a college diploma didn’t actually do that. Confusingly, the inner turmoil caused by having to choose between lining your eyes with cheap black eyeliner and getting into an older boy’s car to smoke cigarettes instead of wearing your khaki skirt to the children’s hospital to volunteer for the National Honor Society does not disappear with puberty, or even with college. The same dilemma – the conflict between becoming the kind of adult you always saw in movies about families with houses that looked clean, and the kind of adult you are just learning exists, the fun kind – is very much alive and real. It was easy for me to assume that adults like Dennis Quaid played in movies were just born that way, with briefcases and matching suits and wives in housedresses who didn’t seem to have to learn to bake pies. Adults like Meg Ryan, with cute apartments and kind of fun jobs that allowed them to have contact with children without being the teacher who had to wipe their snotty noses, were that way because they had chosen to stay single and unloved. And now, even though I have a job and an apartment and three (!) outfits that I bought at Ann Taylor, which my mother says makes me a “real person” who can no longer use plastic silverware, the internal conflict between the adult versions of the people I was in high school has not silently become a non-issue like I anticipated. In fact, it is even more crushing than it felt while I stared down the popular hockey player in a polo shirt who wanted to take me to Homecoming and play mixed doubles with me and the greasy guitar player in tight jeans who may or may not have actually been old enough to buy me a PBR but was able to get me into his show for free. I thought that I would gently float into one of these personas, and my decision to love either money or fun would seem evident and inevitable.

The problem is that both these lifestyles are still slightly appealing. Unfortunately in the adult world, it takes money to have fun, which makes it hard to pick which goal to focus on. I am still equal parts tortured Bohemian who does not brush her hair, sticks metal through her body parts, and enjoys drinking warm beer out of a can while sitting on an amp during a school night and pretending that smoking doesn’t cause cancer, and the aspirational trust fund chaser who swoons at the sight of a jaunty boat shoe and a yacht club membership and dreams of turning in early after putting four brats to sleep in Lily Pulitzer pajamas and looks forward only to the weekend, when it is acceptable to down more than one martini at the club. I seriously cannot decide if I want to make a life out of working at a non-profit in artistically assembled outfits while drinking free trade coffee and dreaming of the day when I will have saved enough of my paltry salary to shop at Whole Foods, or if I would rather pick out color-coordinated linens and volunteer at the children’s hospital and watch as someone else delivers organic wheat germ from Whole Foods to my door.

Eventually I know you have to pick a team. My rants about the ills of consumer society and my desire to distinguish myself through body art and the rejection of hair straightening will shortly stop being endearing, interesting, or excusable. Eventually my parents are going to start looking for the payout that comes after funding my irresponsible young adult years. And I am going to have to decide whether that payout will come in the form of really, really committing myself to the non-profit, or sending in a graduate school application after all, or biting the bullet, straightening my hair, and finding a goddamn husband. I feel like I’m still a child, and I should be able to go on a date at a dive bar and talk about the importance of pretentious artistic expression on Friday, and then clean up to go on a date at the club on Saturday while showing off my ability to sort and categorize cocktail napkins and Christmas card address lists.

I’d like to think that I can make a go of it on the moral high ground, and that I’ll never vote Republican, but it still isn’t that simple. The thing is, even from the moral high ground, a vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard still looks like an awfully fun way to spend the month of August. Even as I renew my bus card, part of me dreams of resting my freshly lipo-ed ass on the soft leather seat of a late model Volvo with state of the art heating and cooling systems as I drive the next generation of WASPs to their various socially acceptable suburban activities. As I consider the logistics of keeping a fish alive in my apartment and decide whether or not it is morally reprehensible to apply for food stamps with my Americorps stipend so I have more money to buy beer, the other half of my brain is envisioning a flock of dogs in various forms of poodle mix romping across my electrically fenced acre as I toss an organic salad for my husband, who is parking his Mercedes in our three car garage.

Part of me knows I can’t be Jack Kerouac forever, that I’ve got to get off the road, that the only reason kids read this book when they’re eighteen is because that’s the only time this book seems reasonable and not like an incredible waste of money and gas. But this part of me almost certainly conflicts with my plans to avoid dating men who can defend a free market society in fifty words or less while whipping out their Daddy’s Platinum cards to pay for our drinks.

i don't want to know what you do all day

So yesterday, I wore a bike helmet while bicycling for the first time in about twelve years. I don’t refrain from wearing a bicycle helmet because I think I’m too cool for head protection, or because I’m an idiot, two reasons which were probably responsible for my carelessness in the past, but simply because I’m (really) lazy and because I think it makes my hair look stupid. Most people would probably classify the last reason as another way to say “I’m an idiot,” but I say tomato/tomato.
So the other day, I bit the bullet and wore the helmet, because I recently made a list of things that responsible adults do that make them look like they are not just masquerading foolishly on the threshold of adulthood. I decided to start practicing these things, because I feel like an imposter, and I need all the legitimacy I can get so I can start buying arugula and wine with two digit prices at Whole Foods without feeling like a shoplifter. One of the things on the list has to do with wearing a bike helmet. Most of the others have to do with not drinking on weeknights, so I decided it was in my best interest to start wearing the stupid helmet. I felt really good about myself in the helmet, like I was taking a ton of vitamins at once or something. Speaking of which, I've been having trouble knocking these items off one at a time:

Things Real Adults Do:
-Understand that cigarettes cause lung cancer, pretty much directly
-Not drink to excess on weeknights (work nights?)
-Wear helmets while bicycling
-Read books because they are on best-seller lists
-Make their beds in the morning and always remember to brush their teeth at night
-Laugh at office-related humor
-Believe that neither tights nor leggings are pants, and dress accordingly.
-Look forward to spending money on "housewares," which include, but are not limited to, scented candles and whicker products. Saving up for these things becomes more exciting than blowing one's paycheck on drugs, pink champagne with cutesy labels, or aspirational clothing.
-Moisturize more than "as needed." Probably because this is proven to prevent wrinkles. Psssh.

I know real adults do way more than that all day, I mean, on an intuitive level, but on a purely superficial level, do they, really? This alone seems like quite enough of a struggle.

Also included: picture of me looking like a cracked-out teenager, if only to demonstrate that we've got an uphill battle ahead of us.

reasons to join a gym:

-I will probably get out of shape if I can't work out after work
-Maybe I will meet friends at the gym?

Reasons that are neither here nor there:
-You need cute work out clothes to work out at a gym, right?
-It is kind of close to the apartment of this guy I know and it could look like I am stalking him? It is something he would assume.

I mean, I am going to join the gym.

i'm just....not

I saw an acquaintance from high school today who told me he was getting married.
I said, "Cool."

i'm not your last girlfriend

Movies about men who have never loved until the met Penelope Cruz make me want to eat a gun. The reason serial daters are continually single is not because they have never met Penelope Cruz, and the reason they're about to run out on you after your second date, before they learn your middle name, is not because you are not her. It's because they suck.

I don't want a long-term relationship either; I have to watch two TV shows at once. I don't want you to call me all the time and tell me what you're eating for lunch and what color socks you're wearing; my phone will probably be lost between the couch cushions anyway, and I'd rather not bother to look for it when you call. I just want you to call me occasionally and ask me to have a beer with you or go on a bike ride with you or something. I want you to think of something really stupid and ridiculous and then do that with me. I'll even hang out with your friends. I get bored too. Maybe we'll kiss, maybe we won't. I don't care. I've seen Sex and the City, but I'm not looking for anyone to buy my Manolos right now. I just want you to let me know what's up.

Call me and lie to me. Tell me you had an okay time last night, but you're probably not going to call me again. Let me know you'll call me from month to month, when you're bored too. Call me and tell me straight up that you just want to be my friend and do friend things with me, which I find wildly more entertaining anyway. I don't care if you're a serial dater. I just want to hang out. Maybe the thing you're running from all the time is exactly what you keep jumping from girl to girl to find, every time. Maybe you are running away from girls who just want to have fun with you because you're too scared they're picturing the ring you're not going to stick on their fingers.

I'm not going to try to change you and I"m not going to try to fall in love with you. Maybe I will, but I probably won't. I am not crazy enough to think that i have the ability to do anything that dozens of other women before me have been unable to do. I'm not like your last girlfriend. I already know you're an asshole.

To the delight of many I’m sure, this is my last column for the Lawrentian. It is probably my last column ever, because honestly would you hire me? In attempting to reflect positively on these past four years, which were of course the zenith of my entire life, I feel that it is only fair to look forward somewhat hopefully to the rest of my life. I will doubtfully ever be able to look this good or have this much fun in a town with only one real main drag, but then again, I will never have to live in a town with only one main drag. There are many things from which I am looking forward to taking a short break. The world of the expensive, Midwestern liberal arts college is a small one, and certain annoyances have plagued my college career, and made me wonder how any one of us will ever succeed at anything.

Soon, I will never have to listen to people pontificate over things that most people who are working to feed their families couldn’t give a damn about, like author’s intent and the presence of anti-feminist themes written into everything ever written ever. Maybe I’m being overly judgmental, and I am just all to eager to leave all of my failures behind. The last quarter of my academic career has proven to be just as unsuccessful as the first half, leaving only a brief, blissful ignorance in the middle, during which time I believed I was smart and good at the things I’d attempted to pursue here. Recently, though, I came to the realization that I am indeed going to have to live with the grades I earned on the two finals I showed up to while drunk. Clearly, in the past four years, I’ve learned a lot – no one thinks you’re the cool quirky kid when you take your finals drunk, even if they are egregiously at 6:30. Many of you will probably come to this same realization soon. You’re not really all that good at your major, and even if you are, does anyone really care that you know a lot about gender studies? If they do then I hate them.

Hopefully, if I befriend some poor kids from state schools, I will never again have to hear about your study abroad experience. Put politely, I don’t care. I’m not impressed that everything about your time in Europe was just so much better than anything could ever possibly be here. Guess what? I’ve been to Europe too. There are a lot of pigeons. Gross. Spending four months in a foreign country just did not give you enough cultural insight to feel as if you truly belong there, or as if you have been bestowed with some God-given talent for universal understanding. You studied in a third-world country, which helped you see poverty in a whole new light, because we sure as hell don’t have any of that here? Good for you. Don’t misunderstand – studying abroad was great. I’m just sick of hearing about it.

Never again will I have to hear about how no one at Lawrence likes you, no one at Lawrence understands you, you could never stand to date any of the boring, awkward, ugly, nerdy [insert mildly damning adjective here] people you’ve met here – not any of the 1400 of us! I will never have to roll my eyes as I hear people extol the charms, among them, infinite understanding, ability to perceive inner beauty, interest in independent rappers, and “fresh” dressing, of the people “in the real world.” These next several years will serve as a test to the theory that Lawrentians neither have, nor can understand, beauty. It’s go time. If people in your “real world,” don’t find you desirable, you’re just going to have to buck up and take a shower.
The bad part about this is that in the real world, I’m probably going to meet people who are pretty and funny and smart and nice. At Lawrence, it is generally fairly easy to find a combination of those two things – usually the last two. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard that people with all those qualities exist. I’m sure a couple of them do, and I’m sure I will hate them when I meet them, but hopefully I’ll be able to fake it long enough to make sure one will even accidentally mate with me so I can get at some of those genes for my kids.

I will, also, I’m sure, have to stand in line at discount grocery stores, wondering if it will be possible to microwave my entire dinner, while concurrently wondering if the man behind me with his hand in his sweatpants just looks like a sex offender, or actually is. I will have to deal with real bar rats, and not just Aneesh. It will not be like in Appleton, where going downtown is kind of like making a brief pilgrimage to Disney world to look at all the funny characters, and escaping back to your safe haven, the VR, when you’ve had enough. In the real world, I’m actually going to have no other choice but to stay and drink with the other unemployed people who are interested in dollar beers and free popcorn, instead of retreating back to the VR to hang out with Aneesh.

And I leave you with that, Lawrence University – the opportunity to retreat back to the VR to hang out with Aneesh. Enjoy it while you can, because it is wonderful. As promising as the real world is, don’t ever pass up the opportunity for a little unique Lawrence charm, because as it’s slipping away, you’re going to grab at it as fast as you can, unless you are even more heartless than I have encouraged you to be for the past year and a half.

too late to stop now

I moved to a new apartment, and a lot of my friends moved away, so I am drawn to the allusion of solidarity that blogging provides for a recent college graduate navigating the banalities of a first job, first apartment, and an abysmal salary while trying to remain committed to pursuing social justice. What follows is a desperate attempt to create an outlet to express my opinions about things my mom is sick of hearing about, over which I have little authority to comment, with the hope that someone can relate. 

I am resentful

This column isn’t about love. It’s about a lack of love. I am resentful. I tried to write a column about Valentine’s Day, which is a holiday I actually like, because my mom always sends me sweet presents like clothes, that are generally red, which is my favorite color, and because everyone else is in such a bad mood, I generally look like a somewhat cheerful person. Despite my uncharacteristic love for Valentine’s Day, I found the topic incredibly challenging. Here is the thing - winter is a bad time for love, especially at Lawrence. I know no one is about to fall in love with me or any of the other parka-wearing zombies I run into accidentally when I have to leave my room to go to the VR. I have spent three and a half years in this Arctic climate, and this is the winter of my discontent. I am recently beginning to come to the realization that I’d had virtually no good relationships, and that the one that would have to be considered my best ended after three months in the middle of my senior year in high school with a shouting match during yearbook class. My mother, Valentine present-giving ability notwithstanding, recently told me I should become comfortable with the idea of being alone. I have no idea why this paper hired me to give love advice – I mean seriously no idea – I think it is supposed to be a sick joke or an example of cronyism in the most offensive degree, because my brother is kind of my boss. My usual source material has taken a turn for the utterly ridiculous and become entirely too self-deprecating. So instead, I’m going to take a week off and write about something I’m good at – being resentful.

I am resentful of all of my friends who have transferred, graduated, or otherwise hightailed it out of here. This waiting time, in between the security of being protected by the safety of a small liberal arts institution with 1,400 of my closest friends and enemies, while also being treated with all the privileges of a normal adult, including being able to drink legally pretty much whenever I want is confusing. I want to be able to go to sweet parties every weekend with all of my friends, where there are plenty of people acting embarrassingly of whom I can make fun, but I don’t want campus security to take my beer away while I’m there. I want to know all of my possible dating prospects, and see them all in the same place, and feel comfortable with people before being thrust into romantic situations with them, instead of having to go on terrifying blind dates or meet prospective boyfriends at chotchy singles bars, but I don’t like that the entirety of the Lawrence campus feels free to judge, observe, and comment on my every step and misstep, and I resent the fact that the opinions of 1,399 people are considered in every relationship decision I have or haven’t made recently.

I don’t want to eat at Downer, but I really don’t want to make my own dinner, either, and I like having Hilda greet me at the start of every meal. I am also resentful that lately, upon entering Downer, I’m bombarded with solicitors asking me to buy things. Little do they know that the point of going to Downer is that it requires you to spend absolutely no money on anything, especially things you don’t really want. I did donate to the senior class, because I need a corkscrew, but I am not about to buy some cookies when I can, for simply a Downer swipe, enjoy some for free. After living in this climate, with these standards of appearance, for the past three years, I have begun to fail to see the need to ever look nice. I resent the girls who wear heels and makeup to Downer in the morning. I’m lucky if I can find a sweatshirt and get my teeth brushed in time for eggs-to-order. I am not about to brush my hair, because there will be people sitting next to me in flannel pajama pants. I resent being told that I look disheveled when I am simply dressing the way I have been conditioned to dress for three years. I am resentful because most of these people are underclassmen, who have not learned that looking nice is not part of the Lawrence difference; the underclassmen who have yet to make all the mistakes I have, and are still attractive friend and girlfriend candidates. I resent the fact that they will probably not even make half the mistakes I have.

I am resentful of people who have things that work. My iTunes is broken. I can’t listen to half the songs I want to, and I can’t download any new ones to make up for the lack of half my songs. My iPhoto is broken for some reason too, possibly out of sympathy for my iTunes. Recently, I tried to upload some photos from the last time I had fun, which was about 8 years ago, and my iPhoto just shut itself off, which is pretty much an accurate metaphor for the rest of my life. My sunglasses are broken, so I have to squint while I’m walking to Downer in my not heels, and I can’t hide my hangover eyes as easily as I used to be able to, which adds to my overall unattractive appearance and personality. These hardships are the equivalent of abject poverty at an expensive liberal arts institution, and I want to make you all suffer with me.

I can only imagine the fallout from this column. People will probably begin to give me a three or four foot berth whenever the see me. That will be kind of nice, especially in that area right after the landbridge, in front of the Sig Ep house. People get pretty touchy in that area around the ice patches. They will probably also write some angry letters to the editorial staff about how I am a bitter person who is doomed to be a spinster forever, like last time I wrote a pretty honest column. Since those accusations are true, I will not be offended. But you know what, I resent that too. Why can’t you pick up on my sarcasm, Lawrence? I wrote this column while listening to the latest hit featuring T-Pain, “Cyclone.” Surely I am not serious! Why do you meet my snarky columns with serious responses? I resent that. Above all, however, I resent the fact that in a years’ time, I will have no outlet for my resentment, and there will be no one and nothing left to resent anymore.