I meant to blog sooner, but my Internet history 'mysteriously' cleared itself again- ie a certain fiance of mine is adorably trying to cover his porn-laden Web tracks- and it was too frustrating typing in "eas" and not having the rest fill itself in so I just avoided the blog altogether in protest. Me is bad, very bad. You know what else is bad? When you get back from the gym and see you have a voicemail from Boss #1 asking 'what is this? YOU authorized some Discover payment on June 25th? Please call back IMMEDIATELY!' So naturally I gauged out my eyeballs with the fork meant for the grill, shot myself in the stomach, which is harder than you'd think with no eyes, then ressurected, showered, made up a brilliant story, called him back and, for the millionth time with him, Saved.My.Ass.With.Lies.
I shouldn't be so proud of my lying abilities, but being ashamed of them would even more certainly be a lie so who's a winner now? No one. See, not only am I a good liar, but a brilliant justifyer too.
So funemployment is truly an exercise in "how lazy can I comfortably let myself be?" I force myself to work out because there's truly no excuse not to (plus did you know the Hallmark channel has like 4 straight hours of The Golden Girls each morning?), and to take care of other housekeeping to-dos, but a lot of time is just spent reading trashy chick lit, and making myself feel okay with that has been the biggest challenge. So I decided to reaaally live it up and do what I've been wanting to do since I joined the San Diego Library System: check out Judy Blume's classic, the oft-banned "Forever." Let me explain: I read this book in middle school, when I totally knew all about sex and that jazz but loved me some Judy and was a horny beast and when those pieces come together, and you live in a town near a city and books aren't banned for having cartoon penises ("In the Night Kitchen"), you read "Forever."
In early winter I joined the library and had a libragasm. What is this, you ask? When you think of the library and remember "OMIGOD I CAN READ ALL THIS SHIT FOR FREE!!!" I get super into the library for a few months at a time until life takes its toll and I have to read serious stuff, but these waves, this cycle of forgetting/remembering makes each libragasm even better.
So this winter, upon receiving my bright blue San Diego library card, I enter the fiction section and see The Holy Grail- Judy Blume's "Summer Sisters"- and "Forever" is next to it. All I want to do is re-read this piece of my adolescent sexual-development history. But how to check it out when you're 23 and want to be taken seriously in the world? It doesn't help that I'm BFF with all three of the librarians (hey, when your mom is a librarian you feel the need to befriend them all because you hear horror stories constantly of kids with just NO love for books and NO respect for the English language and SO MUCH chewing gum it just tears at the soul) and would feel pangs of embarrassment that could quake the entire West coast if they saw what I wanted to read. Second thought, and for a solid 20 seconds I thought about this, was to make casual conversation about how I'm a mentor and I'm just picking up some books for the kid. REALLY, Allison? Picking up well-written, compelling, extremely informative yet BLATANTLY GRAPHIC SEX NOVELS for a 6th grader?
But today, with just one week left in this ghost town before I (US Airways) hoof it (appropriate physics terms for flying) to New York, I sucked it up and checked it out, no words uttered between me and Friendly Young Male Asian librarian. I kept on my sunglasses. And ran away Road Runner style yelling thaaaank youuuuu over my shoulder like the classic awkward "Superbad" scene where Evan and Becca are walking in the same direction but he wants to get past her so he trots quickly away.
Conclusion: My God, it's so good. Why? All the familiar feelings are coming back: "What will MY first time be like?" "I can't WAIT to be in love." "Wait, they had cordless phones in 1975?"
READ IT. READ IT AGAIN. Call up your first time. Reminisce. Did I spell that right?
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Wow, I do really want to read those again now. I had Summer Sisters and that summer I think all my friends, their moms and their sisters managed to borrow it. It is truly "The Odyssey" of middle school summers where you had no bills to pay but also no sex to have (unless you were THAT girl who is by now at least three kids deep with three different daddies...)
ReplyDeleteScandalous!
ReplyDeleteI'm picturing your exchange with Friendly Young Asian Librarian as Kevin and Paul's exchange with Old Farts Who Run A Bookstore in The Wonder Years episode where they throw down a 20 and run away with a copy of "Everything you wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0750367/plotsummary
The Wonder Years, a coming-of-age classic formative in the sexual development of many a gawky, pimply-faced teenage boy.
Here is my Judy Blume confession:
http://indefenseofgettingoff.wordpress.com/category/ten-years-in-hotel-masturbation-a-retrospective/
Perhaps we can start of blog of awkward, adolescent, Judy-Blume-induced moments.