TRAVELING WITH DUMMIES

TRAVELING WITH DUMMIES

There's nothing that can fuck up a vacation more than a lack of compatibility amongst the people you're traveling with. You know what I mean. Like, sometimes you want to be at the bar until four in the morning because you've been talking to that scruffy guy who looks vaguely homeless but you know he's not because you caught a glimpse of his Prada boots and you've found out he's seen Springsteen play almost as many times as you have and he's been touching you lightly on the lower back for the last forty minutes in a way that doesn't make you want to shimmy out of your skin just so you can wash it in bleach and then the friend you're with announces that it's time for you to accompany her back to the hotel. (I'm just spitballing here, not recounting an actual experience with a friend who is now dead to me and one of the hottest men I've ever seen in real life. Also, hey Jason!) What I mean is that people who go on trips together have to be on the same page when it comes to how late they want to stay out and what it is they plan to do during the day and how you calling the entire closet while you’re still on the plane is totally fair. There must be some mutual respect that naturally exists or the vacation will turn into a miserable nightmare where you might consider doing something rash like flinging a friend off a cruise ship during a squall. (Again, that's just me writing fiction. I never once considered shoving a friend over a railing into the rough surf. Also, hey Jessica!)

 

So with the understanding that exists inside the mind of a rational adult that one should only vacation with people you're quite certain are not walking demonic entities, I can't really feel all that badly for any of the bullshit our Vanderpumpers find themselves in during their trip to New Orleans to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of two people who cannot stand the sight of one another. Look, it's bad enough when the bride and the groom stare daggers at each other over a breakfast of tequila and scrambled hatred, but the others along for whatever is the opposite of a hero's journey are also filled with barely disguised animosity. Think about it. On this one trip alone, the following enemies are expected to dine together...in public...on camera...in a place where there are knives:

Ariana and Kristen:  Though she’s pretending to be sort of lucid these days, let us not forget that Kristen spent an entire season imagining out loud how awesome it would be if Ariana got run over by a Mack truck. 

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

The snow came down in flakes so large and fluffy that they reminded me instantly of that book I used to love when I was little, the one about the boy who experienced so much delight during a snowy day that he tried to keep a bit of it as something tangible so he shoved a snowball in his pocket to have a memento of the moment.  It’s always during the very early mornings or the middle of the nights when the tales I read as a child feel the most present and maybe it’s because I feel then like I am myself part of a waking dream.  It’s funny – those mini memories never wind around any of the major memories from that time.  I think far more about how I loved Sesame Street and the way I knew every single word of that Blondie album than I ever reflect upon my parents’ divorce or how I went from not even thinking about something like heat to knowing quite well what kerosene smells like.

SUCH A DRAG

SUCH A DRAG

Much like any other person who went away to college and spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to sleep in cramped rooms with strangers, exist for months at a time on starch and seasoning packets alone, and broaden my burgeoning intellect, I learned many important life lessons during those four formative years:

 

·      When you live in a dorm, make sure you shower in flip-flops. There is perhaps no fungus on the planet with as much chutzpah as the fungus that lives between the tiles in a communal bathroom and since you will need your extra money to buy chicken wings and ramen, you really don’t want to have to waste your precious funds on spray cans of Tinactin.

·      No matter how beautifully your Big Sister decorated the bottle of cheap champagne she bought you with puffy paint and your sorority letters, that bottle of cheap champagne should still be viewed for exactly what it is:  a liquid demonic entity.  And should you guzzle it, you will be lying facedown in the bushes outside of Sig Ep in no time and it’s a pretty good bet that people have peed in those bushes, so not only will you lose your dignity, but your cheeks will be pressed against remnants of urine.  Instead, thank your Big Sister for the lovely bottle, swear that you will keep it atop your armoire forever, take a few sips of the fruity potent evil, and then spill out the rest when nobody is looking.  Your liver will thank you.

·      When Night You decides it makes total sense to set the alarm for 3:45AM so Morning You can get up and do some last minute studying, recognize immediately that Morning You has absolutely no intention of doing anything besides turning off that alarm and slipping back into a sleep that will then be riddled with hyper-colorful anxiety dreams about trying desperately to locate the room where the exam you haven’t adequately prepared for is being given.  (Seriously – I still have this dream and it’s always about my Evolution & Extinction class and it’s frankly insulting that my psyche has not evolved enough at this point for this particular dream to be fucking extinct.)

·      Don’t even bother learning the pretend astrological sign that correlates to your pretend date of birth on your pretend ID.  No bouncer will ask you that question as long as you’re wearing something low-cut.

·      Go to your professors’ office hours.  Not only is it far more difficult for them to fail you if they have some sort of connection with you, but some professors are worldly and fascinating and often quite funny and getting to know them will actually benefit you as a person – and I swear I’m not just saying that because my father was a professor and I’m a Freudian wet dream come true.

·      Get rid of that long-distance relationship as quickly as you can.  I loved my faraway boyfriend with my entire heart and I’ll easily acknowledge that my devotion to him probably kept me somewhat grounded, but you’ll have your entire life to be grounded.  Cut that guy loose and go dive into that sort of “good trouble” a certain Senator often advocates.  Your “good trouble” will probably not include a sit-in, but my guess is you’ll be lying down for part of it.

·      Make your peace now with the fact that for events like Halloween and Greek Week and some drunken random Tuesday, guys you know will show up at your door and ask to borrow bras and heels because someone once apparently told every single boy as he shot out of the womb that dressing like a girl is hilarious and all kinds of subversive.  Allow whatever guy who stands before your full-length mirror while trying to create the illusion of cleavage to enjoy himself, but for the love of all that is holy, do not lend him your good bras because he will stretch them out with the circumference of his back.  Also do not even bother to explain that dressing like a woman is not actually all that funny.  You’re up against a little thing here called patriarchy here, and to even try to understand why having tits is hysterical is a massive waste of time.  So just shove the guy into a bustier, tell him to curl his toes so he will walk better in heels, and then send him out the door and wave goodbye to that bustier because you’ll never want to put that thing next to your skin again.

 

College ended a long time ago, though much of it seems like yesterday, and it’s hard sometimes to fully remember all of the ridiculousness that bracketed the years I spent at an institution of higher learning.  But all of those lessons came rushing right back when I saw the preview for this week’s Vanderpump Rules episode, the one that included Schwartz dressing up like a woman for his bachelor party.  Listen, should Schwartz have some sort of sexual fetish bubbling up inside of him that causes him to feel turned on and blissfully tweaked and alive whenever he slides a thong between his ass cheeks, I have no problem with that.  Should Schwartz have a desire to dress in women’s clothing just so someone in his apartment looks stylish for more than a nanosecond, I don’t have a problem with that either.  What I do have a problem with is the juvenile notion still floating about a grown man’s head that a guy dressing up as a girl is just so sidesplittingly funny and, try as I might to be tolerant of their rampant stupidity, these Vanderpumpers are really starting to get on my nerves.

THE WAVES

THE WAVES

“Tuffy!” my father called out, and I could hear his voice rebounding against the rolling waves.  “Be careful because I won’t be here.”

I was fourteen years old and it was August.  I stood in the East Hampton surf, willing myself to ride the next wave that came my way without being caught inside of it like I had been that time last summer when a chaos of funneled water spun me into what I’d been briefly sure was the absolute nothingness of forever.  My father was heading down the shore to cast for bluefish.  In less than an hour, he’d be dead.  Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.

And the thing is, I have been careful.  I knew that to fall apart completely in those first terrifying teenage months would only serve to harm me spectacularly in the long run and I guess I’ve always been someone who considered where one moment might fit into the puzzle that was the rest of it.  So instead I did the normal sort of rebelling that was so common for a suburban girl growing up in the days when people looked into one another’s faces instead of down at a screen.  I sometimes drank cheap beer in basements.  I came home from afternoon barbeques held in my friends’ backyards covered in hickeys.  I knew the terror of the second when the condom breaks and how difficult it is to pee on a stick when your hand is shaking and you’re not sure if the screaming is inside of your own head or some external horrible audible omen.

TALLULAH

TALLULAH

I was on the phone with my mother the other night when I broke in and interrupted her while she was midsentence. She was right in the middle of telling me a story about how she’d just been featured in the Style section of a newspaper and that she’d thought it hilarious when a reporter actually stopped her at an event and asked, “Who are you wearing?” as though she was Jennifer Lawrence sauntering down some red carpet while dripping in Dior instead of holding a purse that had once belonged to her own mother.  I asked her to please hold on for just a second because I needed to parent my puppy immediately.

“Tallulah,” I said patiently to the white ball of fluff standing in my kitchen, a ball of fluff that is clearly made up of equal parts goodness and demonic intentions.  “You must stop leaping high into the air because you think that trick will get you a cookie.  I will give you a treat after you show me that you’re a good girl by eating the kibble you’ve ignored all day.”

My Maltipoo cocked her head to the side as I spoke and then she looked me straight in the eye.  I stared back at her, my gaze unwavering, and she slowly walked towards her bowl of food and began eating her kibble. 

“Had that been Wookie,” I said to my mother who had waited patiently and silently as I bartered with an animal, “that fight would have lasted for three days and would only have ended once I apologized for my behavior.”

THE MEADOW BEHIND THE HILL

THE MEADOW BEHIND THE HILL

When it comes to a bedroom, my general rule is that I slumber far more effectively when I can theoretically see my breath.  I’m not entirely sure where this preference comes from or even recall how long it’s been a habit, but my guess is all of those years spent tucked under the covers inside of dank and steamy cabins at sleepaway camp probably contributed to my current hope that I’ll see frost forming on my windowpanes in the height of summer.

Sometimes, though, manmade chilliness does not quite go as planned.  It was a few months ago when I crawled into a bed in someone else’s home and fell into what initially was a blissfully heavy sleep.  I woke up less than an hour later due to a miserable combination of factors:  a puppy exploring a bed she’s not used to, some Netflix show about gangsters blaring at some ungodly volume, and an air conditioner that was apparently made by NASA to approximate what Pluto feels like.  I tried snuggling further under the covers.  I thought about that Barbados heat wave I’d once sweat straight through.  I nestled into the person completely passed out beside me who clearly wasn’t impacted in the least by everything in that room that was causing me total misery.  I considered getting up to turn down the air, but I was afraid Tallulah would think it was morning because, while she’s a very wise puppy, she has yet to master distinctions in time when she gets excited.  I finally realized my only real option was to undress the guy next to me.  I figured the best-case scenario was I could put on his clothing to warm up, but should he misread anything, sex might work to thaw the frostbite, too. 

I did not end up putting on his clothing.  And my clothing didn’t stay on either. 

THEIR BRAND IS ASSHOLE

THEIR BRAND IS ASSHOLE

Here's an important lesson to internalize, my friends: people rarely change. While it’s possible for someone to maybe tweak his or her mindset and behavior and become, say, more patient, more reflective, or less quick to anger, an entire personality overhaul is never going to happen unless you're dealing with someone who’s just spent a year surviving on bark and rain water in the wilderness – and even then it's a slippery slope because you just know that person’s conventional behavior will slide right back in the second he swallows his first Hostess Sno-Ball. Change is hard. Change is inconvenient. And that inconvenience is why the committed liars will always lie, the horrifically selfish will never morph superhero-style into selfless crusaders, and a person who registers in the negative range on the emotional intelligence scale will very likely never fully understand (or care) that his actions lead to painful effects for which he is completely responsible. It's a messy world out there and assholes who have no problem being assholes will rarely volunteer to remain diapered in padded rooms. They will continue to walk amongst us, and I'm really starting to hope they all get stricken with the sort of potent rashes that lead to puss-filled blisters, if only so the rest of us can start identifying them by sight. 

Our Vanderpumpers – and those foolish enough to love them – should probably go ahead and purchase stock in some Adderall-spiked-diaper-rash-destroying-Desitin because assholes abound in Vanderland. We're five seasons into this series and what’s abundantly clear by now is that not a single one of these people is willing to change or capable of change. Strategically speaking, I get it. I mean, the only thing someone like James has going for him is his ability to be a staggering prick. That's his brand now – being a prick – and we exist in a world that weirdly celebrates this sort of bullshit behavior and so something tells me this little weenie-like emotionally-stunted man-child will never choose to overhaul his persona and risk getting kicked off the only real opportunity he'll ever have to exist in the proximity of show business. Yes, he's got that incredibly impressive residency spinning records at an empty hotel, but we all know he'll fuck up even a nothing opportunity like that in no time. 

Now that we're talking personal branding, let's admit what we're actually dealing with on this series: 

Schwartz will forever be The Doomed One, a man so terrified of his now-wife that he'll never be able to gnaw his way to freedom.

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A MEDIOCRE ROASTMASTER SCORNED

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A MEDIOCRE ROASTMASTER SCORNED

I’ve been thinking a great deal about divisiveness these days because, really, how can you not?  We’ve probably never existed in a society in which people were fully tolerant of the views held by those who believed the emphatic opposite, but I think I managed for a while to convince myself that we did.  Call it what you will – naiveté, stupidity, a New York mentality – but even the willfully blind have to eventually wake up and realize that the lines we’ve drawn are really deep now, the sentiments really complicated.  It might be impossible at this point to convince people to believe in something they don’t already believe. 

If you happen to be that one lone human being who has not recently engaged in a bit of existential terror due to the separations that now define us, I want to know where you are currently hiding so I can get you the money I’m raising on my brand new GoFundMe page.  I imagine you must be residing in some sort of bunker and you do not have a television and you have never heard of this little thing called “social media” and all of your closest friends are livestock who rarely roar with laughter, not even when they hear from some sheep down the street that an advisor to the President went on national television where everyone could see her and used the term “alternative facts” instead of the words “bold fucking lies.” Part of me truly envies the person out there who is completely uninterested in the chasms defining this moment in history.  More of me wonders how such a bland mindset can exist and, to that end, the funds I raise will net you a laptop that only grants access to two websites.  Yes, you will be able to wile away the houses in your bunker by reading everything on Breitbart and The Huffington Post.  Immerse yourself in total journalistic bias, my agoraphobic friend, and then decide what it is that you believe and whether or not continuing to remain in that bunker makes sense.  And if you have some extra room, a shower with decent water pressure, and a nice selection of canned goods, perhaps I can join you when the frogs inevitably come tumbling down from the sky.

But even if you spend your days attempting to ignore the rising flames of political and social chaos, chances are – unless you’re that one guy who only speaks to cattle – you still watch television, a venue where chaos reigns.  Take The Bachelor.  On this season’s installment, a bazillion women are ready to gouge out the eyes of whichever woman some guy named Nick decides to feel up first.  To be clear, these “contestants” met Nick less than a week ago and they are already declaring to the heavens that he would make the perfect husband.  They’ve also convinced themselves that they can tell far more about a person by his ability to do a mid-air split in a bouncy house than by the way he deals with – oh, I don’t know – bills that come in when he doesn’t have the money to pay them.  Bouncy houses aren’t metaphors for real life, people.  Neither is rappelling off a tall building or diving Botox-first into the ocean.  It’s not just The Bachelor, though, that’s a breeding ground for dysfunction and conflict.  Look at our Vanderpump Rules gang and you will see conflicts as far as the bile can be spewed.

CONFLICT #1:  LALA VS. EVERYBODY  

Okay, here’s my take on the Lala situation:  the girl played her hand all wrong.  I would actually support someone leaving this show because she began to wonder about the long-term effects of coexisting on television with monsters.  I would applaud a woman who reached her “Eureka!” moment and threw down her microphone and walked away from the sort of contrived scenarios that can only breed mold and hatred.  But I cannot care about or root for Lala, a girl who went on TV and told ridiculous lies and then got annoyed when people didn’t believe those lies.  I can’t wish the best for someone who croaked out clichés like, “There’s no shame in my game,” and then lied about what the game was and who the players were before going ahead and swallowing the dice because she’s just really used to swallowing things.  Lala is a “TWERKIN’ FOR A BIRKIN” tee come to life and I will not miss her in the least when she finally crawls away.

 

COMMON GROUND

COMMON GROUND

“I didn’t raise you to do something like that,” my mother said to me – and I swear I could almost see icicles forming on her tongue.

“Actually,” I responded, “You raised me to do exactly that.”

********* 

To fully understand this story, it’s essential that you know two things:

1.    I will do anything for my brother.

2.    I will go anywhere if there’s even the slightest chance that a pig in a blanket will make an appearance.

It was with those two factors dancing like alcohol-poisoned sugarplums in my mind that I agreed to accompany several members of my family to a political fundraiser just a few days ago.   Those events are not typically my thing.  I don’t own a business so I don’t view a proximity to politicians as a necessary evil and I generally tend to not want to attend gatherings that are fueled by very small glasses of wine and stilted, albeit polite, chatter.  The only political events I’ve attended over the last decade were ones my family hosted or events they were honored at and to those I’d show up on time and I’d smile at everyone and eventually I’d go hide out in the kitchen so I could snag the appetizers first and also pump the caterers for tips about how to make a platter of food look extra pretty.  The best tip I ever got was to form the dough around the mini hotdog into the shape of a daisy and then poke that sucker through and whammo: a pig in a blanket in the shape of a flower is born! Then you shove sticks into them to give it all some height and plunge the sticks into some wheatgrass and the whole thing comes out looking like a blooming garden of nitrate deliciousness. I had a ton of them made for a party I threw to celebrate the release of my first book and those blossoming piggies looked so beautiful I almost cried. 

A STAR IS STILLBORN

A STAR IS STILLBORN

For the last five seasons, I have used the following words – both in writing and in the baffled crevices of my own mind – to describe the kind of person Kristen Doute has willfully decided to portray herself to be onscreen:

·      Lunatic

·      Psychopath

·      Candidate for lifelong intensive therapy

·      Amateur voodoo priestess

·      Professional stalker

·      Woefully misguided pseudo-human

·      A hunk of organic matter completely devoid of self-awareness

·      Romper-wearer

·      Sole person to blame for why we as a society know of the repulsive existence of James Kennedy

·      Batshit crazy woman forever trapped in a stunted adolescence of her own creation

·      The person I'd least like to be trapped in an elevator with anywhere, including Trump Tower

I realize that those descriptors aren't exactly the finest illustrations of my own kindness or compassion or the most effective way to show female solidarity, but I tend not to strive to find an element of sisterhood when I’m not quite sure the other thing in the equation is of my species.  For years now, Kristen has chosen to get paid to go on television and behave in a manner slightly more unhinged than that one student I had who used to think he could communicate with the phantom people sitting in the empty desks.  That guy was certifiably nuts, but he was also a good person; he rarely to never rhapsodized about the joy he would feel if someone got plowed down by a Mack Truck driven at full speed.  That guy never slept with someone his best friend was in love with and he never then went on television with every single person in the bullshit scenario and expected the secret to stay buried.  And even on the days I assigned long and complicated research papers, that guy never once recommended that I go suck a dick.