Bitches Be Crazy: Graph Edition

Tiny Beautiful Things

The Rumpus.net

Dear Sugar,

I read your column religiously. I’m 22. From what I can tell by your writing, you’re in your early 40s. My question is short and sweet: what would you tell your 20-something self if you could talk to her now?

Love,
Seeking Wisdom

Dear Seeking Wisdom,

Stop worrying about whether you’re fat. You’re not fat. Or rather, you’re sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.

In the middle of the night in the middle of your twenties when your best woman friend crawls naked into your bed, straddles you, and says, You should run away from me before I devour you, believe her.

You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.

When that really sweet but fucked up gay couple invites you over to their cool apartment to do ecstasy with them, say no.There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.

One evening you will be rolling around on the wooden floor of your apartment with a man who will tell you he doesn’t have a condom. You will smile in this spunky way that you think is hot and tell him to fuck you anyway. This will be a mistake for which you alone will pay.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.

When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

Yours,
Sugar

***

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It does exist!

 

 

Pretty weak sauce blogging all week because I’ve been working too much.  So here are a few updates:

1. Jon Stewart has some really funny things to say about the President’s interruption of the Bachelor to talk about the Debt Crisis.  For example, “Did the President just quit?” Worth the time if you’re interested.  Also takes a few good jabs at Boehner.  It’s truly hilarious. Watch Here. 

2.  Santonio Holmes re-signing with the Jets pretty much made my week. As did his tweet and picture that was featured on the cover of the NY Post. Nnamdi next?  I’m not going to get all crazy and do the whole Jets in the Superbowl? thing because we all see how that turns out every year.  But seriously…

3. This kitten went through the wash and survived 50 minutes of spin cycle. ”Princess arrived at the clinic on Friday night very shaken up and shivering, with a nose bleed and sore eyes but her owner had managed to dry her off very well prior to bringing her in to the clinic.”   Hopefully her owner didn’t put her in the dryer.

4.  Last night, a loyal reader ran into the Condom Truck I wrote about last week and sent over this picture.  (Thank you.)  So it does exist!

More to come.

 

 

 

#Work

 

 

The Implications Of Telling Someone “If You Want To…”

Thought Catalog

By BRIANNE GARCIA

Have you every been texting or iChatting with someone you’re romantically interested in when, much to your dismay, he or she replies with this disconcerting phrase: “We can hang out later, if you want to”? Wait, what? Cue the freakout face. You know the one: think Macaulay Culkin’s character in Home Alone. It’s a face dripping with fright, immeasurable pain and vulnerability. When someone typed this exact phrase to me, I immediately assumed the role of conductor on a train of thought going nowhere good. If I “want to?” But what about you? What do you want to do? Are you saying you don’t really want to hang out, but if I want to then you’ll oblige? Are you implying my presence, our time together, is an obligation? Am I that terrible? Am I getting on your nerves? Is it because I spent too many nights at your apartment? Do I snore? Do I take up too much space in bed? Am I that fat? (it always ends with the fat thing).

These four little words, when left dangling at the end of a sentence like a cancerous limb, can result in a mental breakdown for the person on the receiving end of this inconsiderate conjunction…especially if typed via text message, IM, bbm or Facebook message. There are plenty of phrases uttered throughout the course of courtship that carry immeasurable weight, but “if you want to” might sit at the top, right along with “we need to talk” and  “something feels different.”

I know what some of you are thinking: he meant nothing by it; this phrase is one that slipped into our casual discourse years ago without any intention of hurt. But you know what I say to those of you who think that? You have a penis. Or you probably do. Because 99% of men do not weigh their words before they blurt them. Women, on the other hand, are obsessed with weight; we calculate, measure and make split-second hypotheses about the outcome of most of what we say when it comes to dating dialogue. We manipulate sentences like Reagan’s speech-writer to get the results we think we want. Of course this doesn’t always work out, but that’s beside the point. The point is: we think about what we say before we say it. We’d never tell a man he could do something “if he wanted to” unless we had a very specific purpose in mind.

So what do you do when you see this four-letter expression on a screen in front of you, teasing your eyes and toying with your emotion? You have three choices, and each carries a set of consequences that makes none of these options better than the next. You can: X that motherfucker out and go about your day. Forget the inconsiderate asshole who doesn’t weigh his words like you. He should know that this is a “thing;” (type “what does it mean when he says “if you want to” in Google and check for yourself.) Or, you could ask: “Well, do you want to?” This reply, while falling into the dangerous category of answering a question with a question, seems harmless enough in this situation. He (or she, but probably not) will either say yes, or they’ll ask what you mean, and you can explain why this phrase should altogether exit their vocabulary. Or finally, you could pretend it didn’t happen. You’re aware that the phrase has become the norm. That he probably just means yes, he’s down to hang out if you are; he’s just confirming that you want to hang out too.

Or you could scream “SCREW YOU!” like a maniac and stomp on your computer screen. But I don’t recommend it.

Gus really wanted to bring the pool inside.

Obbbbbviously.

Buck Foston’s

Careers Articles - The name is not obscene, it doesn’t infringe on any copyright, and it doesn’t conflict with anyone’s civil liberties. And yet, the bar owner who thought up the moniker is having trouble getting a liquor license, which is keeping him from earning a salary of his own, let alone employing a good-size staff in New Brunswick, N.J.

Of course, if mispronounced, the name in question, “Buck Foston’s” could sound terrible. And let’s face it, that’s what bar-owner Larry Blatterfein is counting on. He’s a lifelong New York Yankees fan who has no love for their major rivals, the Boston Red Sox.The Boston Herald reports that he’s hoping the name will “engender an emotional response.”

Blatterfein claims that New Brunswick Mayor Jim Cahill, a dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan, is attempting to prevent the name by withholding a liquor license. Without a liquor license, a bar can hardly function.

This is an outrage! How could you not give this guy a liquor license?  Can they do that?  One of the most clever names I’ve heard for a bar.  And the only thing standing in the way of Larry Blatterfein pursuing his Yankees dream Bar is a Boston fan.  What a surprise.

Anyway, I know I’d want to drink there.  It’s the type of name that makes a bar famous.  ”Hey, let’s meet at Buck Foston’s!” Like, obviously. What better place to congregate?  Even all the dumb betches we hate who wear Vic’s Secret Yanks shirts and pink Yankees hats would know where to go for drinks during games.   (Which, when this bar finally gets its license, could ultimately be the next issue they have to deal with.)  But there’s no way they can be worse than the Boston betches.

Stay Out.