Delurk Is A Fun Word To Say Out Loud January 11, 2008

Last night saw me get wasted accidentally.

(The title of this post demonstrates where my brain currently registers on the Intelligence Scale.)

I considered more creative ways to begin this post.

Observe.

Possible Introduction #1. My mouth tastes like ketchup right now. Ketchup and stale beer. Ketchup, because last night’s dinner was The Legendary Stilton Burger and a mountain of french fries. Stale beer, because I just returned from throwing up in the office bathroom.

Possible Introduction #2. Sometimes my mother would hear a thud in the mornings while I was in high school. She’d race upstairs and pound on the door to the hallway bathroom and ask if I was all right. If I took too long to answer, she knew to assume that I had most likely fallen asleep in the shower. While I am happy I no longer must routinely wake up at 6:00 a.m. and narcolepticly fall asleep while showering, this morning also saw a thud in the shower. The thud of my naked ass plopping onto the shower floor. The mental willpower to stand upright in a slippery environment was apparently beyond my hungover self’s capacity.

Possible Introduction #3. Back in high school, I won Best Dressed Senior (Thanks, Abercrombie and dELiA*s) - pissing off Emily Jackson, who had worn different colored flip flops for an entire month in her attempt to sway the voting and would have needed to thank Old Navy were she to have won - and had my picture taken for the high school yearbook. Fast foward to the last two years and my office, a highly reputable firm that demands business professional dress every day. Were awards given out around here (Ed. note: Best. Idea. Ever?), I’d most likely win The Reason A New Dress Code Policy Was Established For Every Employee To Sign In July 2007. And on picture day, I would have quite a few outfits to choose from: Secretly stolen man pants; a New Years Eve dress turned into a skirt; a wrap skirt turned into a top; co-worker’s clothes changed into the morning before our office holiday party; or, after today? Black stretch pants paired with a cyan J. Crew boatneck tshirt purchased in high school (Ed. note: But really, does anything change about J. Crew’s clothing other than what amount they decide to set their unwarranted overpricing?) and bright orange and yellow Sauconys that I’ve been told remind people of McDonald’s.

Possible Introduction #4. Sometimes I forget that the nickname Thirsty Thursday needn’t be interpreted as a command. 

Possible Introduction #5. A quip about how it seems like a great injustice that brushing your teeth should lead to gag reflexes that make you slightly throw up in your mouth. What is the quip, you ask? My brain is too taxed now, I respond.

My hangover can’t manage creativity. It wants to eat McDonald’s Hash Browns and sleep in a pile of down comforters. It yells for Water!! and ADVIL PLEASE. 

So why - rather than slowly die in my darkened office while I wait for this too to pass - am I blogging. 

Due to the lovely Jamie who writes over at Oh! How Lovely, I’ve learned that it is DeLurking Week. The details escape me, but I have discovered that delurk is a fun word to say out loud. This, apparently, is enough reason for my hungover brain to get involved.

My head won’t move beyond a 45 degree angle from my neck. And in an odd variation of this classic “I’m hungover at work and trying very hard to sit upright when all I want to do is nap underneath my desk” pose, my head also insists on being cocked to the side in a 45 degree angle from my neck. I hope my words are helpful enough for you to picture what an idiot I look like this morning.

Thanks to the downward direction my head is pointed, I just noticed a faint stain on the front of my shirt.

Incredible.

The unfair - yes, unfair - thing about all this is that last night began with the best of innocent intentions. Which is rarely ever the case. Let’s relieve work stress at Goose Island, my boyfriend and I agreed. A nice relaxed dinner and maybe a beer, we proposed. But his co-worker happened to be there. We got caught up with pursuing our MBAs (Masters of Beer Appreciation). And the rest, as they say, is now flushed down the toilet history.

But I digress.

The summer before my freshman year of college, my university sent cards to the homes of incoming freshman that needed to be filled out with some basic information. It was a card I never saw because my mother filled mine out. Freshman year began and yearbook-style books listing all freshman with their photos and their “basic information” - Hometowns, High schools and Interests - were distributed. Others had Music or Ice cream or Politics or Film displayed by their names. And mine had People next to it. Which is how I learned that the card sent earlier that summer had displayed a list of interests to check, and my mother had selected People as my interest.

People. Like you.

So say hi today. Introduce yourself. Let me learn who you are. And rest assured that should you be a person, my mother thinks I will be interested.

Comment on which Possible Introduction up there you liked the most (or, similarly, hated the least). Tell me to never ever please oh ever write in a fucking hungover state again. Share your favorite sexual position and I’ll tell you the public place I have done it. Ask a question and I will answer. Whisper something about you and trust that I’ll remember. Or trust that I won’t remember if you’d prefer that. 

The possibilities are endless.

Especially if your brain is capable of thoughts beyond how fun a word delurk is to say out loud.

Who Wears The Pants? December 19, 2007

I overslept in his bed, Backless Halter and Skinny Jeans. Tardy without choices, I secretly stole this stranger’s pants to wear to work. 
 
From stranger to boyfriend, he mourned his missing Armani pants. I remained silent. Then one day, we moved in together. After 17 months, the pants had returned to their owner. 
 

  
  
[Ed. note: This is a 17-month long saga of humor and horror. To condense it into 50 words was not easy. But I appreciate a good challenge. Like when my friend told me to smack the bitch who elbowed us out of our front row spot at the Dispatch concert we attended our freshman year and I did it, even though the girl was twice my size and I wasn't even drunk.]

The Company Of Unlimited Sangria December 14, 2007

There will be a party tonight featuring plenty of tapas and unlimited sangria to the background of forced laughter, awkward conversation and silent urges pulsing in my fingertips to pull any fire alarms I see to end the occasion early.
 
Even in the company of unlimited sangria.
  
Drinking - heavy and plentiful drinking - was a thing my 18 years of locked up angst adapted to quickly and efficiently once I arrived at college. The stream of long nights blurred with dancing and seducing, phone number exchanges and searches for misplaced cell phones, 24-hour Burger King runs and 10:00 a.m. discussion sections for my Modern Germany class dressed in my outfit from the night before provided distractions of allure and a rush of constant movement that never faded for me.
 
Graduation from college didn’t change the quantities consumed, only the settings. Rather than plastic red cups of keg beer at Phi Delt’s off-campus apartment, it was now a bottle of red in my apartment while sitting on my couch and secretly crushing on Santino. Walks of shame past Hillel and the engineering buildings turned into 6:30 a.m. cab rides and a quick stop at McDonald’s for hash browns before arriving at the office. A break-up with a college boyfriend just days after graduation only pushed me to move harder, move faster during those months as a newly inducted player of the real world. I just needed to move.
 
Then came the news of the upcoming office holiday party. My first. I considered my options - newly guaranteed employment, top-shelf open bar, and my own personal patterns of non-stop double-fisting even around unlimited alcohol - and became nervous. Moderation and I have never been words synonymous. 
 
Tales regaled by a roommate of her co-worker who arrived at work the day after theirs only to be handed a box of his things by security and a message that he had been terminated for his gin & tonic-influenced words and wandering hands only frightened me further. Instant sympathetic recognition and thoughts of Fuck! Could that be me?? as responses to this story made me understand that extreme measures had to be taken to prevent me from being this man when my own office party happened in a few days.
 
So, on the night before this office holiday party two years ago from present, I called my friend Brendan to inform him that the goal for the night would be to get me so drunk that the mere sight of alcohol would discourage me from consumption the next evening among my coworkers. A goal that began as a joke and very, very quickly became reality. Sake martinis at Japonais, liters of wine at the (then) newly-opened Quartino, gimlets - gimlets! - with the escargot and cheeseburgers at late-night spot Bijan’s Bistro, and I was tanked. And to encourage matters, my now boyfriend who was only a boy I had just met a few weeks earlier when Brendan had dragged me to his apartment party had joined us by this point. Who welcomed the challenge to get me so drunk that the mere sight of alcohol would discourage me from consumption the next evening among my coworkers. Which soon led to wild giggling over the waitress’ indignation at our order of “ESSS-CAR-GITS” and drunken French blabbing of how our serveuse de coquetels needed a sens de l’humour and forced Brendan to find us too caustic to humor any longer and leave.
 
Leave us - me and this boy who caused butterflies and sparks but a boy I had just met a few weeks earlier - to end up in his bed. Leave me to slur that my mouth was too dry for kissing and leave him to run to the kitchen to bring me a 24-ounce glass mug of water that I could barely lift to my mouth. Leave us to have sex for the first time. And leave me to text my coworker at 4:30 in the morning something involving many misspellings, exclamation points and pleas to bring me suitable work attire the next morning for me to wear.
 
She found me cowering behind a pillar in the lobby of our office building the next morning and burst into laughter at the sight of me, hungover and hair messily pulled into a ponytail held by a miniature red and white scarf that I had stolen from the snowman soap dispenser I had found in his bathroom (Ed. note: I learned many months later that the snowman soap dispenser had been sent in a care package from his mother). She threw into my hands a Bloomingdale’s Medium Brown Bag stuffed with clothing and told me that I had better replace my jeans right away. Because our office? Is a very professional setting where I may be able to pass off a hungover face and a messy ponytail held in place by a miniature scarf stolen from a snowman soap dispenser but jeans? Jeans were completely unacceptable.
 
I scoured through the shopping bag and considered my options. Faced with the decision between a pair of brown pants that ended right above my ankles and a black skirt that ended right above my knees - a pair of pants that ended below the ankles and a skirt that ended below the knees of my co-worker who at 5′2″ is 5 inches shorter than me - I erred on the side of slutiness rather than unfashionable, and chose the skirt.
 
And for the rest of the day, I sat in an unlit office with my head unable to move beyond a 45 degree angle from my neck. I grimaced at comments of my festive appearance. And silently cried on the inside when 65-year-old Susie asked me where she could get hairties that looked like little scarves for her granddaughters.
 
But I made it to the office holiday party that evening that began at 6:00 p.m. And while coworkers ordered glasses of white and sipped on scotch, I drank my water and averted my eyes away from the bar. And when the younger attorneys and staff decided to move the party to Suite Lounge on Wells and told me I was not allowed to go home that early, I went along. And shot the Lemon Drops. And drank the Carrot Cake Martinis. And sipped the Chambord + Sparkling Waters. And realized that my body had become so accustomed to alcohol running through it’s internals that it no longer presented any discernible effect. My coworkers talked brutal about other coworkers, danced on table tops, screamed profanities at cab drivers, and I watched bewildered, shocked that I had felt worried about my possible behavior.
 
It prepared me. And reinforced the life lesson that one should always get drunk when the opportunity is available. So when the night before last year’s office holiday party came, I spent it indoors, away from Sake Martinis and Gimlets, and went to bed early, like an athlete preparing for his big game the next day. But the party was no festive occasion because an older attorney at our firm, the father of the managing partner, had passed away the night before. And while the party was still held, it was no time to chug down the endless drinks I had prepared my body for. Naturally.
 
One more year has passed from that day and the night of another holiday party is now upon me. And yesterday evening - the night before tonight’s holiday party - I went to dinner with the same boy I spent the night before my office holiday party two years ago, the boy who is now (finally!) my boyfriend. We enjoyed their delicious focaccia with taleggio cheese, truffle oil (Ed. note: I would bathe in truffle oil for the rest of my life if I could somehow afford this to happen) and herbs to start. The New Zealand snapper with shaved fennel, pomegranate, celery leaves and coriander followed soon after and was consumed in minutes, prepared to perfection. The meal also saw a bottle of Portugeuse Bruto Rosado. We made jokes that the bottle was for me and we should get a glass of something for him. But by the end of the night, my boyfriend had drank more of the bottle than me. And after our bill was paid, we ran over to Sepia for a nightcap to celebrate the anniversary (Ed. note: My boyfriend and I like to celebrate atypical anniversaries. We’re kind of forced to because of the very odd way we came together. We agree to look at it as humorous). Avec had been perfect as always, and Sepia was wonderful. But my happiest moment of the night was when we ended up in the same bed we had ended up in two years ago. And instead of feeling disgustingly drunk, I felt calm, content, and giddy.
 
And of course there was sex. Sex that I could remember today.
 
So this evening poses as my third chance. Dressed in my own work attire and not a bit hungover, it’s one more opportunity to indulge my insatiable thirst for alcohol on the company dime. And perhaps it’s a product of age or feeling less like I’m desperately running from my demons and more like I’ve gained some control over a life and behavior I once thought of as uncontrollable, but it’s a thirst I’ve seen become less insatiable over the past two years.
 
However, it’s still a party with coworkers, where the setting will be of forced laughter, awkward conversation and silent urges pulsing in my fingertips to pull any fire alarms I see to end the occasion early. And because drinking oneself obscenely drunk is still not technically illegal - unlike pulling a fire alarm when there is no fire - you can damn well bet that much of that unlimited sangria will be ending up in my stomach.

Sometimes The Devil Wears BCBG November 5, 2007

Last Friday, while attempting to return a pair of pants I had recently purchased, I called a BCBG Assistant Manager at Macy’s a bitter bitch of a cashier to her face. I’m not proud of this, but it is the situation I found myself in after a series of escalating events that I think we will all agree was entirely her fault.

“The tags aren’t attached,” she pointedly remarked to begin our fun exchange, as she held the tags in one hand while another sales clerk processed the return. ”Our policy is that we can’t allow any returns on any items where the tags aren’t attached.” She paused and smirked. ”For sanitary reasons.“

Sanitary reasons? A valid concern apparently for a pair of pants that still displayed creases from sitting in a folded position. A pair of pants that displayed no wear and had been purchased not even a week before. A pair of pants being returned by me, a girl, who may occasionally go a couple days without showering, but is overall very clean and presentable. We all have our list of adversaries, and in the past year, pants have quickly become a part of mine. Sartorial karma, I imagine, working overtime since that morning I stole a boy’s pair of pants that weren’t my own to wear to work after oversleeping at the victim’s apartment. (Ed. note: There really had been no extra time to return to my apartment or stop at the Ann Taylor’s Loft near my office.)

“Right. The tags. Sorry about that. I didn’t get to try on these pants when I bought them because the store was closing and the woman who was helping me mentioned she had already cleaned the dressing rooms. I wanted to save her some trouble so I just bought them. I thought they’d fit so I ripped the tags off without thinking before putting them on, but they’re too big,” I began to explain in my best oh-us-gals-and-the-troubles-we-face voice.

I had in fact briefly considered attaching the tags back onto the pants before arriving at Macy’s, but then had concluded that Macy’s would not make a big deal of unattached tags.

Seeing her glance down at the tags, and subsequently raise her eyebrows that were squeezed into a dress two sizes too small, I knew that my next mistake was suggesting that the pants were too big.

“Well, like I said, the tags aren’t attached.” She stopped to glance at the receipt. ”I see that the person who sold you these is our manager. I have to assume she told you about our return policy, and that you have just decided to disregard it.”

To sum, homegirl - all in less than five minutes - implied that I am unsanitary and a liar.

It’s customary for American consumers to fudge the truth when returning items. It’s especially grating, then, when you are not lying even a little bit, and, in fact, the woman who sold the pants to you who apparently is also the manager never explained the return policy to you and even said that you will of course be able to return the pants hassle free if they don’t work out in light of the fact that you did her a favor by not insisting you try them on even when there was half an hour left till close, and all you want is to get your money back so you can just buy another goddamn pair of pants, of work appropriate pants.

“Well, okay,” I said, as I tried to breathe deeply and remain calm. “I wasn’t aware of the return policy. I’m really sorry. I brought the tags along with the pants, thinking that would be sufficient. You can see that I bought them not even a week ago. Would it be possible for me to just speak to the manager?

Generally, the speak to your manager line is the one threat that we American consumers who have ever had to deal with shoddy cable service, cell phone service, car rental service, or any other type of customer service can use at our disposal to show that we mean business. (Ed. Note: I just noticed these things all start with a “c”. You know what else starts with a “c”? CRAP.) It’s a line so passive-aggressively scathing that I’m surprised I haven’t yet read a news article describing a crime scene where “Why don’t you just speak to my manager?” was found on the wall, spelled out in blood, the latest victim of a customer-services-employee-turned-serial-killer.

Unfortunately, I had briefly forgotten all of these connotations, and I had simply asked to speak to the manager because it was she who, apparently, had sold me the pants. I foolishly thought that since the pants had been bought so recently, there was some chance the manager may remember me and the pants could finally be returned and I could go back to an existence of not wanting to bash my head repeatedly against a hard object.

I saw her mentally think Oh no, you didn’t. 

“She’s been moved to a different store location.”

Of course she has, I thought.

“Well, can you offer any suggestions as to what I should do?”

And to our BCBG Associate Manager’s horror, the other sales clerk suggested I return home, attach the tags, and come back. She even winked at me while saying this.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” our BCBG Assistant Manager sneered.

Some retorts of I’ve told you I won’t allow a return! to my question of whether I could have my pants and the tags (the tags! the tags!) back from the clutchs of her hands that were squeezed into a dress two sizes too small, and her threats of I have no problem calling mall security after I told her I simply wanted to leave the store with my pants later, I hissed that Marshall Field’s would never have treated their customers like this and stormed off.

To the elevators that weren’t working.

To having to press the button over and over.

To having to stamp my feet impatiently.

All in the view of the BCBG Assistant Manager. 

To having to walk past her to get to the escalators that were on the other end of the floor.

To muttering that she was of bitter cashier-land and to her declaring she was of grand assistant manager-dom. 

To riding down the escalators and plotting revenge maneuvers I knew I’d be far too lazy and forgetful to follow through on.

But lest you think otherwise, I am a good Midwestern gal who was raised the right way when it comes to manners and direction. So when I got back home, I attached the tags back onto the pants just like the BCBG Assistant Manager had taught me and went to a different Macy’s to return the pants, all with a smile on my face.

Some may say I’m a bitter bitch of a coward. To them, I say I’m now $168 richer even.