Hair, Dry, Love

I'm in a serious relationship with my hairdryer. I received it as a gift from my brother-in-law Curt when I was studying abroad in Ireland in 2008 and it's still chugging along. It's moved with me from dorm to dorm, house to house, across state lines and back.

It's a simple model, utilitarian, classic. Grey and black. The handle folds neatly into itself and the cord retracts. It fits my hand.

I had long, long hair then. I'd asked for it specifically as part of a secret santa type deal I had going with my siblings and their significant others that Christmas. The gift pegged Curt as the giver right away: it was exactly what I wanted and arrived within days of the request. He sent me a lot of sweet little presents that December: that poster of Obama changed to say STRONG EXAMS, Elvis's Blue Christmas sent directly to my inbox. But I loved the hairdryer most of all. The housing for international students was a converted seminary and it was cold. I had a sink in my room and a mirror, but the showers were down a long, drafty hall with a bone-chilling wood floor. The showers themselves were housed in a beautiful but unheated tiled room. The water never quite got hot and I would race back to my room sopping wet, towel off my hair, the strands already freezing together, and stand in front of my mirror, dryer in hand, until I was warm.

I didn't quite know how to wear my long hair yet. I didn't know how to handle any of it in fact, it being sudden sexual attention after two years at Bryn Mawr, sudden appraisals, flirtations, seductions, rituals I couldn't understand. I was negged constantly, probably because men could sense my discomfort, my willingness to be fixed. I was teased about my glasses, my vocabulary, my fashion choices--everything was fair game and I had no tools to deflect, absorbed every scrap greedily regardless, even when what I felt was more bewildered and hurt than adored and hungered for. I believed everything anyone said about me.

 I got attention for my hair and I would puzzle over it, experimenting with different speeds and strengths of the dryer, different head movements and levels of toweling required. I had no idea what the fuck was happening. I would flip my hair back and forth, running my fingers through the strands, trying to make sense of the adult emerging in front of my eyes, this woman with long hair, with effect.

 My new friends and I took advantage of our study abroad experience to drink as much as humanly possible, and definitely more than was probably good for my fragile 21 year-old brain. I threw up in bar bathrooms all over Dublin. I broke wine glasses, ran down city streets, woke up with strange bruises and generally made an ass out of myself in ways that only a recently de-virginized Catholic girl with a taste for freedom and an equally strong taste for love can. I danced all night and slept on floors and lost cellphones and followed strangers around. I ditched a taxi. I kissed anyone who'd ask and some who didn't. I held my friend's hair back for her and peed simultaneously while she puked eight euros of white wine into an alley behind a McDonald's, and then helped her befriend a stray cat stumbling back to my dorm. I fell in love with the best friend I made there and hid his lube and condoms from his visiting mother when he was in the hospital.

 I slept with an unbelievably hot Swedish man and he got me good, made sex real to me in a way it hadn't been. He broke my glasses one drunken night and refused to give head and I confused watching Die Hard on his lap and then fucking for some kind of commitment. Once he and his friend intimated spanking me for breaking something in the kitchen late one night and it was so casual and erotic that I flushed more completely than I ever have since. I helped fruit vendors unpack at dawn in Berlin with my best friend from home and my twin sister. I went home with the tour guides from the Guinness factory after being called out on microphone for tripping spectacularly in the lobby. I stole their wooden parrot and received a text the next day that read "You probably shouldn't have given us the benefit of the doubt." I went to karaoke every Thursday night at the Wicked Wolf and drank cider through straws.

The depth of my innocence, my lack of preparedness, was completely unknown to me. I spent a lot of time in that cold little room, eating toast and delicious irish butter arduously prepared in a shared kitchen three flights of stairs down, streaming episode of episode after any cheesy American sit-com I could find until the room lightened, sleeping through my classes until the afternoon. I wept while gchatting and watched every Britney Spears video I could find. I stayed up all night writing papers I had done all the reading for within the first two weeks of the semester, fantasized endlessly and shamelessly about every male Irish professor I had.

So the perfect gift came at the perfect time. It was silly, I knew, but it touched me deeply when I opened it, and every time I thought of Curt selecting it on some website, entering in my address. Thinking of me, maybe, and this simple act of providing something for me I couldn't provide for myself. I'd sung Chapel of Love with him and my sister on the final drive to their wedding, Caitlin's dress filling the car with its whiteness, the green and gold of June in Connecticut flying past, saturating the blue sky glinting in the mirrors and windows, our mood nearly hysterical. We'd run a half-marathon together, drunk cocktails in their first apartment in South Boston. He'd covered for me when I'd gotten wasted at an early summer party my first year home from college, taking the blame for the noise my friends made dragging me up the stairs to my bedroom.

Thinking of his love and friendship comforted me every time I dried my hair. There were a lot of hard times to come, and a lot of times Curt would give me more than an appliance to ease them. But the hairdryer says it all for me. Even now I can get a sparkle thinking about it as I warm up with a quick blow on greasy hair or take my time going full witch blown out--it being generosity,  it being love, it being having someone on your side even when they are very far away.

My hairdryer now is more about meditation and security than it is a tool of discovery. It's a great way to calm myself down before going somewhere, the whoosh of hot air around my head in counterpoint to some deep breaths, some forward folds and neck rolls to get the blood flowing. I look at myself in the mirror and luxuriate in the feeling of my hair falling over my shoulders, the smooth flow of it through my hands, my fingers on my scalp. The gradual change from damp to dry, the moments in between. I put it down for a minute and change the song, put on underwear, make my bed, then pick it up again, start fresh.

I joke about it, but there's a part of me that truly believes I derive strength from my hair. When I have really good sex or a really good meal or a really good workout I picture it all going straight to my hair. Spiritual and practical: When I'm using my dryer, I assess the health of my hair and think about what I've been doing lately, how that might be transfiguring what's literally coming out of my head. Curt is a filmmaker, among much else, and in his first documentary there's a scene that's always stuck with me, a scientist testing Curt's hair to assess his intake of corn products. I still find it amazing how much he could deduct just from a strang of hair. My hair is a barometer of my overall status, my overall alignment with elementary principles of input and output.

We're told that we mustn't become too attached to objects, but to me that carries the same flaw in logic as saying that money can't buy happiness. What I really needed, as that bitter December passed, was a way to dry my goddamn wet cold mass of hair, and I was too broke to buy a fucking 12 euro hairdryer. It was just exactly what I needed. And, as so often happens when we ask for what we really need, I got a hell of a lot more than that.

The Right Way To Do It

Ten tips for a good sex life that also apply to horrible, terrible, magic, stupid new year's eve.

1. It's not just about kissing.

2. Exfoliate.

3. You won't get what you want unless you ask for it.

4. Sometimes you won't get it.

5. Lower your goddamn expectations.

6. Breathe, bitch.

7.  It doesn't matter how anyone else likes to do it.

8. It matters quite a bit how you like to do it.

9. Remember any of us could die at any moment.

10. Stay hydrated.

Happy Fucking

New Year

On Mixed Blessings

It's two days before Thanksgiving, and I'm putting cinnamon oil on my feet. I'm trying to drive down the sporadic fever this cold brought along. What a small miracle it is that I can do this, that I have a body that responds to this, that I have a body that can fight a cold. What a small miracle it is that I live in the kind of house where there's oils and someone who can tell you what to do with them.

Earlier in the week I was cursing this cold with all my might. Everyone at work had it before me, the same cough, same weakness, same fever and chills. I cursed the crazed mindset of the American worker who cannot bear to miss a day of work even when contagious and the corrupt financial system that effectively prohibits one from doing so. I'm driving a rental car up the snow-threatened Northeast corridor tomorrow from North Carolina. Roommate and her dog in tow. I am desperately worried about money and worried about the jobs I'm not finding and the pieces I'm not writing because my body is sick. I spend so much of my time wrestling with how to spend it that when I have to face a physical reality, when I am forced to rest, there comes a twisted relief that I then feel guilty about feeling. Call it faking-a-sick-day syndrome.

But here I am, rubbing cinnamon oil onto the soles of my feet, feeling it draw the heat down from my temples. I'm drinking the fanciest orange juice I could find at the discount grocery store and filling the tub, rubbing cedarwood and eucalyptus onto my chest, watching streaming Gilmore Girls on my parents' Netflix account.  The dryer is churning in the back room. The dog pads in wearing her green sweater and gives me her soft, sweet, single-tongue-swipe kiss. I activate my credit card so I can rent this car and the sweetest woman named Beth wishes me a Happy Thanksgiving.  I have friends coming over later to celebrate our departure, still others that have reached out to check on me while I've been sick.

There are too many disgusting and horrible things happening in our country this week to handle. My head is awash in homeopathic cough medicine and hours of smart, snappy dialogue and endless images of cities torn apart, families suffering, so much hate and fear that I find myself astounded--wounded, even--to realize that there is no moral consensus when it comes to atrocity. How I hate knowing this, how dumbfounded and powerless I feel in its raw, basic truth.

What relief I might feel if it were true that everyone reacted to murder in the same way, if everyone reacted to rape the same way. Just on a human level--some kind of a stable response to injustice, to trespass. But it's not that way. We all empathize to different extents, we all have blind spots, we all react out of fear in some circumstances and with love in others. And a lot of those characteristics come from our backgrounds, the experiences we have had or not had, the education we've been granted. I know this intellectually but in practice it is dark, it is enraging, it is threatening, and it is fucking sad. It's sad to me that I can look in the face of someone I know--even love--and see that we will not agree on Ferguson, will not agree about Bill Cosby, will be incapable of arriving at the same conclusions.

I'm shaving my legs, visions of snow-proof outfits dancing in my head. I'm drinking tea with elderberry and hibiscus. I'm rubbing vegetable glycerin into my face, into my new tattoo to make it soft. The beauty of my rib cage with its new black words in the mirror takes my breath. And even so my own existence is making me angry. My own complicity in these disgusting and horrible things taking place, my own inability to do anything to assuage the grief my heritage has directly produced.

A day or two ago I explained to the politically-minded man I'm sleeping with that just because my rapist will never be convicted of a crime doesn't mean a crime didn't occur. I found I have to ungrit my teeth to do it, I have to relax, I have to trust that I will be heard. Saying it out loud melts something in me, tempers somehow the unfathomably deep well of anger. But it still hurt. It still cost me something.  But the melting happened and the gap that had been between us for a moment suddenly wasn't and I also have to take that as a small miracle.

My body is racked with this cough. These sparse connections and disconnections are racking my mind. I want to take the whole world by the shoulders, shake it into waking up. The sheer frustration I feel is hot grit, a glaring, malignant error, a pebble in your shoe that is actually crippling you. My legs are smooth under the hot water. Luke is forgiving Lorelai for saving his dead father's boat. I received a book of poetry recently. On the last page it says "Explaining will get us nowhere." On the last page it says "We are all just trying to be holy."*

*Richard Siken, Crush

Beauty Tips For The Mentally Deranged

Read on if you are one of the following:

A bad bitch

Living in relative poverty

Lazy femme

A witch

Struggling under the nightmarish oppression of the capitalist patriarchy (hint: you are)

Not likely to be fazed by knowledge of my most intimate and outlandish beauty rituals.

I may have refused to wear a shirt until the age of 11 or 12, and thrown many a tantrum against the hegemony of scratchy tights and underwear, but I've also always been drawn to the girly side of life. Even as a small child, watching my mother get ready, selecting perfume, applying her makeup, brushing her hair, I recognized the power of female beauty rituals: the staking of a claim, the celebration of the mysterious, the cultivation of small, sensual pleasures, the attention to self. In becoming a woman, I felt I had found something worth belonging to and worth fighting for--I had a strong instinct that pursuing the feminine would not weaken me. I saw and still see these routines as one way to navigate a world that is brutally unkind to female bodies and female expression.

Over years of experimentation, I learned how to make my appearance into one tool of many to wield; I learned how to incorporate my sexuality, my contradictions, my personality into a series of coherent looks that I could always rely upon to make me feel better no matter what was happening: the failing grade, a relationship ending, odious social events. During the inevitable dark times, I clung to this cultivation as a life-saving device that helped restore my equilibrium when I’d been knocked on my ass.

Now, I see my beauty routines as a core part of who I am, a core part of the way I choose to fight my way through life. My rituals are my refuge. The care I take with my appearance is how I access my creativity, my subversion, my power, my joy, my don't-give-a-fuck. It's part of how I practice self-care, how I draw boundaries for myself, how I prepare myself for life's challenges. It's how I experience freedom. Every lesson has been hard won. Here's a few of my best.

Get weird with it The only real reason you need to do anything to your appearance is to make yourself happy. If, at the same time, you look hot as fuck constantly and scare the shit out of people (read: men) on a regular basis, all the better. Face glitter on a random Wednesday, mixed patterns, daring hair--there is really nothing too out there that you can’t try at least once. No one is watching you as much as you think. There’s nothing new under the sun--that can depress you or energize you.  Make all the combinations, revisions, and decisions that please you the most and you can’t go wrong. Fear nothing. Trial-and-error is everything. Experimentation is the reason that adorable sweater vests from Goodwill are now safe from me, and fake eyelashes will remain unattached to my body.

Take your time I am rabid about my getting ready time, whether it’s a full hour in the afternoon or the ten minutes before my date gets to the bar or the five minutes in the bathroom before work. That is my time, and god help the person who impinges on it.  Taking my time with my appearance is how I mentally prepare for whatever I’m about to do. Life is very short and goes by very fast. Outfits are how I mark occasions (even the Tuesday farmer's market) and how I celebrate myself. Also, getting ready is fucking fun. I put on music, arrange all my tools in front of me, sashay around the room gazing at myself in the mirror, noticing each tactile step: pulling on my tights, my fingers on my face, that split-second wetness of fresh mascara, the way my hair smells while I’m drying it. Claiming my time and my right to use it however I wish is powerful. No one else tells me when I’m ready but me.

Dirty as you wanna be Most of the time, my finished look is pretty damn girly, and if not exactly conservative, contains some element of class and restraint. But I only cultivate that by channeling my inner beast. You know, the one whose hair gets that sheen from the potato chip crumbs in her bed and crazy afternoon sex. The one with secretly ripped tights and menstrual blood underneath her fingernails.  Being a little wild and frankly, gross with some of my beauty rituals frees my spirit. Digging the dirt means I have to be more inventive--the quickly unsmeared eyeliner from the night before, the half-damp paper towel used in the bathroom to bring a flush to my cheeks. The curiously effective exfoliation from the dirt trapped in the lipstick rolling around the bottom of my bag. Embracing filth keeps me from becoming a slave to my beauty standards--I know how to find a way to look as good as I want to even when I've spent the day tramping around the woods, driven a car through the night, been caught in a rain-storm, or just slept through my alarm. Beauty becomes a survival strategy for me in this way, makes me into less of a weird slob and more of a dirty-haired, no bra, dark-circles hungover witch who’s gonna ride her red-wine stained lips into history.

Feel your way Looking good is feeling good, and vice versa. Sometimes I look my hottest when I'm actually feeling sad as shit, because I use my beauty arsenal to work out my feelings and adjust my look accordingly, and I use my feelings to adjust my beauty arsenal. Confrontations with roommates require muscle tees and braided hair. Drab afternoons when I've spent all day in bed require short, tight dresses and unruly waves. When I feel out-of-control I bring out the fancy underwear, collared shirts, and slightly binding mini-skirts. Feeling picked on and I go for baggy jeans, pale colors, and extra lipstick. Thick eyeliner and perfume when I'm meeting someone new. Anger is obviously a black dress. Feeling your way means wearing lacy tights because i like how they feel when I'm sliding myself into my lover's car, or asking myself what Buffy would wear to work if she also had to bus tables for a living. I have a coat I wear when I need to feel like a rich, impossible bitch and one I wear when I need to feel like a country fairy-tale princess. I've busted more than one bad mood just by putting my hair in a side ponytail.

Damn the man The man is out to get you to buy as much shit as possible, unrelentingly and without exception, from now until civilization collapses (so only a few weeks left to go). Don’t throw good money after bad and spend your hard-earned cash when you don’t need to. Shampoo is body wash. Conditioner is shaving cream, lipstick is blush, men’s razors are cheaper, fingers are just as good as most any makeup brush. I aspire to buy only all-organic fair-trade locally-sourced unicorn-tested products but until that happy day arrives most of my beauty shit comes from the dollar store or the grocery store. Baking soda, coconut oil, vaseline, sea salt, witch hazel, apple cider vinegar are some of my cheap go-tos. You can make a delightful scrub just using some sugar and the coffee grounds you were going to throw away (er, compost) anyway. Sticking to the drug-store, combining/re-purposing products, or making my own shit helps me stave off the class envy and depression I go through looking at the Sephora website and keeps me able to afford all the lavender oil my anxious little heart requires.

Be a healthy-ass evolved bitch Being hot is about a lot more than products. It’s not even really about technique. Being hot is a state of mind. When I do push-ups while I’m getting ready, or meditate to the sound of my blow-dryer, I’m getting myself into an optimal state of hotness.  I take my vitamins while I get ready, create mantras, fantasize about my writing, drink huge jars of water, put garlic everywhere (yes, there) stretch and move, light incense and pray. When I eat a really good meal I feel it in my hair, no joke. So use your beauty routine to get right with yourself and become stronger. Masturbate before you get ready. Dance. Make your shower a crazy sacred temple where there’s always a  candle ready to be lit and you’re allowed to think anything you want.  I had a boyfriend who hated when I wore makeup, another one who nearly cried when I cut my hair, another who forbid me from wearing sheer tops. Every time I shake my ass in my mirror, put on red lipstick, take off a layer someone else might want me to leave on, every time I take a risk or a breath, I’m setting myself free.

On Having A Day

I had the chance to engage in some truly superlative activities today. A five-dollar yoga class, a drive by myself, coffee and water, sitting in the steam room, thrifting. A dream day off--floor swept, dishes done, time to myself, plenty of sleep, the prospect of a long afternoon spent luxuriating in preparing for a dinner date in the evening.

And some truly superlative things happened.

I wore my roommate's amazing yoga pants that are somehow deliciously comfortable and make me weep over my own ass. I had on my favorite hoodie that I rescued from a broken relationship, soft and grey with "KINK" instead of "PINK" written in white across the chest. A perfectly worn-in white bra under an orange tee that grazes my hips exactly. Beat up blue tennis shoes I bought in Las Vegas this summer.

I managed to bring water, cash for the class, my debit card, an elastic for my hair, a banana, and still have time to stop and put ten dollars of gas in the car. Triumphs all for the attention-deficit.

There was a choice parking spot in front of the yoga studio I pulled into with a minute to spare.

Ten other women and I breathed and stretched and balanced and sweated and rested for an hour.

I bought coffee and garlic and boric powder capsules and a spinach-ricotta croissant for myself.

I went to the place I used to work and held my longest-ever headstand in a glowing patch of sunlight on a black yoga mat on a wooden floor.

At Goodwill I found my dream red blouse, a slouchy-but-tailored grey sweater from J. Crew, a lacy black shirt I can wear to work in all weather, little grey stripy socks. Elton John was on the radio and I fingered all the baby Halloween costumes and admired myself even in the awful fluorescence of the dressing room--my strong freckled arms, the hair falling down my back, the shadow of a bruise on my inner thigh. No one talked to me or hit on me or gave me a hard time in any way.

The ride home offered crisp breeze, falling golden light on mountains slowly becoming a riot of color.

When I got home, there was a warm, tan egg left in the nook of our porch recliner on a blue blanket.

And yet.

I scuffled with my sister over coffee and putting gas in the car and slammed the door when I left the house. "Everyone here drives like a fucking idiot" was my audible soundtrack on the drive downtown. I bitched inwardly all through my opening meditation because the class I thought I would be attending is no longer offered.  Every time a piece of clothing dropped off its hanger and onto the floor I let out a sigh the sheer force and desperation of which could move governments.

I ran into my old boss and friend at the Y and followed the interaction down into all the ways I had failed in that job and all the ways I had failed in that friendship. I cursed the ache in my back as I bent to try on clothes, brought on by a long, hard weekend at the restaurant. The thought of my sixteen-dollar purchase against the enormity of my debt and my dreams worked me over, punishing in its narrowness. The tiny batman costume made my insides clench with sorrow.

Sometimes truly perfect days offer themselves to us at a time when we are unprepared to accept them. Writing this down helps. Taking deep breaths helps, movement helps, and eating something good. Music can get me there, or cleaning up my bedroom. And sometimes even taking these small steps to feel better can be the hardest goddamnest son-of-a-bitch of a thing to ask of ourselves. We have to try, I think, to do them anyway, even when the benefit is not immediately forthcoming. We have to trust that it's on the way.

In some ways I cherish these days even more than the easy ones. The days I feel like ungodly shit for no reason at all, the days where I am 112 pounds of sheer rage one moment and a puddle on the floor the next, restless, despairing, scared, at loose ends.

I remind myself I'll feel differently soon. I ask myself questions about what I am experiencing and why. I try to notice all the good things that are happening even while there's an anvil on my chest or a vise around my brain. I sit with my sadness and my stupid hurt feelings and my pain and I make allowances for them even when I feel to do so is a waste of precious time.

It's not. It's good work if you can get it.

A Note On Sleep

A revelation I had this weekend that cannot wait for a full-length post to relay: Your day should prepare you for sleep, not the other way around.

Think about that, witches!

Weekend Superlatives

My facebook status upon returning home from my Saturday double at the restaurant reads as follows:

to the man who tipped me a dollar for bringing him a to-go box and some mustard, you are a class act and you deserve a lifetime of unequivocal contentment and peace. to the man who asked me if i'd dropped my smile, you are no gentleman at all and you deserve a lifetime of increasingly disquieting impotence occuring at the worst possible moments.‪#‎weekendsuperlatives‬ ‪#‎becarefulwhatyouwitchfor‬

You really are exposed to the best and the worst of people in my line of work. The table of thirty-somethings who complimented my guns from across the restaurant get an a plus. The bachelorette party rendered deaf by their own screaming, not so much.

I think customers and servers alike could benefit from trying to be the best part of someone's day rather than the worst.

And with that corny sentiment, this is one ketchup-dipped debutante who's putting herself to bed. Here's to the rest of the weekend.