February 2008

One of my least favorite aspects of this job is having to introduce myself at parties as a freelance writer. It sounds really stuck-up and kind of like a lie. It also seems to be a pretty popular thing for trust fund kids in New York to say, and if there’s one thing I’m not, that’s probably it.

So - I’ve been playing around with some alternate titles:

• Professional Bullshitter
• Stay-At-Home Mom, Except I Don’t Have Kids
• Word Hustler
• Technically Unemployed

At least those titles might lead to some more interesting small talk conversation. Right now they all seem to go like this:

“I’m, uh, I’m a freelance writer.”
“Like fiction? That’s so awesome.”
“More like business copy for companies. More like not awesome.”
“So you’re not a real writer.”
“I mean, I exist.”
“Excuse me, I need another drink.”
“Can I go first?”

I’m home alone until Saturday night - Ben is in Las Vegas all week covering a fight. I thought it would be especially hard this time around since I would usually be at work every day interacting with friends and getting out of the house. I thought that this week I would basically be in solitary confinement for me, while at the same time, I would be getting picture messages from Ben of his overflowing buffet plates and of him posing with Hooters girls.

Instead, though, I seemed to have found a sure-fire cure for loneliness: extreme stress.

In my deep fear of not having enough freelance work to keep me busy and pay the bills, I got myself into a mountain of work. And if you don’t think it’s confusing to spend an hour writing about dry cleaning methods and the next writing about 18-wheeler spinal cord injury settlements and the next hour writing about auriculotherapy (look it up - I know I had to), then you would be wrong.

I thought I might spend the week wistfully sighing and conjuring images of our post-wedding winter cabin, complete with crackling logs and wine and snow falling silently outside. And no deadlines. Instead, though, I’m spending every single second worrying about how the hell one writes a joint venture business plan.

It’s a weird feeling - I constantly feel like I’m back in high school and about to take a test I haven’t studied for. The feeling of all of your brain cells lining up and preparing to bullshit to the fullest extent of their ability. Have I ever written about the herbal treatment protocol for smoking cessation? Of course I have! I’m a living, breathing copywriter, aren’t I? I can’t even watch TV or call my friends - I’m just constantly thinking on how I can possibly pull these things off and save my ass.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m enjoying the crap out of my new job. Sure, I might be a bit stressed and more than a little over my head, but on the other hand I’m doing stuff I love, I’m actually getting to make my own decisions and think and voice my opinions, and I wore a wifebeater without a bra all day.

I’ll tell you one thing, though: if stress is cure for loneliness, could a takeout chicken parmesan sandwich and a beer be a cure for stress?

There’s only one way to find out.

Before we left on our wintery cabin honeymoon, we Netflixed some movies to bring with us. My choice was a documentary I had never heard of, but one that the Netflix supercomputer was convinced I would like.

It was called Protagonist - a documentary in which four totally unrelated men tell their life stories according to the Euripidian Greek dramatic structure. Oh, and the whole thing is just four simple interviews intertwined with marionette puppets acting out the scenes. Bored and weirded out yet?

Don’t be. Even though Ben and I spent about the first five minutes of the film laughing at the puppets and the seeming randomness of the whole production, by the end, we were both deeply emotionally affected.

“I know this sounds lame,” Ben said after a minute of silence, “but I was truly touched by that.”

The film follows four men - a bank robber, a terrorist, an “ex-gay” preacher, and a martial artist. Each one takes turns telling the story of how they were formed as men - rough childhoods, strange epiphanies that lead to extremist behavior, and finally the realization that they have been largely brainwashed in their attempts to find mentors or escape their depression.

Again, I know this doesn’t sound interesting or moving, but what truly made the documentary was 1) how subtlety the common themes show themselves and 2) how self-aware, honest, and candid the four men are. All four of them are stellar storytellers and that simple fact paired with the surprisingly moving marionette scenes (I’m serious) make for two hours of film that I wished wouldn’t end.

Director Jessia Wu is also responsible for a few episodes of West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy, along with another documentary called In the Realms of the Unreal - and you can bet that the latter just landed on the top of my Netflix queue.

Ben and I were watching TV last night and doing the regular things that people do during the commercial segments - tidying the kitchen, checking up on our email, exchanging pleasantries.

Then it happened and we were both fixated: a new commercial for a prescription drug called AcipHex came on. It’s a drug that treats stomach ulcers and heartburn and supposed to be a play on the words “acid” and “effects.”

But really, it just sounds EXACTLY like everyone in the commercial is saying Ass Effects.

Call me juvenile, but I’ve never lost control of myself like I did during this 30-second spot.

They would say “Ass Effects truly helped me return to my normal activities,” and Ben and I would try as hard as we could to stop laughing soon enough to catch the next time they said Ass Effects.

“Ask your doctor before using Ass Effects…”
“How can Ass Effects help you?”

And so on.

I know I often complain about not being a high-level advertising executive, but I really want to get to the bottom of this blunder: did no one, in the dozens and dozens of meetings that I’m sure it took to develop this product, ever mention that their drug sounded a lot like someone saying Ass Effects? Has the business world sunk so far into itself that no one, from the middlest manager to the highest executive, had the nerve to point out a butt joke and save their company a few million dollars and months of ridicule?

Was there never a janitor in the boardroom who looked up from his mop to say, “Not to interrupt, gentlemen, but Ass Effects sounds a lot more like the name of a junior high garage band than of a doctor-prescribed medication. I realize that my job description consists mostly of cleaning up your byproducts, but I would strongly recommend not moving to Phase Two of planning before you resolve this issue.”

Didn’t the president of the pharmaceutical company ever bring his toddler in to work one day when the babysitter was sick, and the toddler would hear the word “AcipHex” and say, “Daddy, even I — a hardly-developed human being with limited motor skills, a substandard language ability, and a crippling thumbsucking addiction - even I could come up with something better than AcipHex if you gave me five minutes. You know, maybe something with less vulgar and downright confusing connotations.”

Didn’t any of the actors in the commercial crack up during the first take, when they said AcipHex for the first time? Didn’t they apologize and say, “I’m sorry, and I’d like to reassure you that I’m a professional actor. But am I pronouncing the product name right? Because it sounds like I just said Ass Effects on camera.”

Did it come up once in a meeting, and their big, brilliant solution to the problem was capitalizing the H? Because I have news for you guys - it doesn’t matter. It still sounds exactly like Ass Effects.

I could see Ass Effects being the new trendy exercise that sweeps the nation and takes the early-morning infomercial circuit by storm. I could see Ass Effecting being a late-night soft-core Cinemax flick that involved a lot of terrible sets and only the slightest hint of a plot. I could even see Ass Effects being the name of a show-stopping award-winning chili.

But I just can’t see it as a heartburn pill.

Thanks to Hilary, the video is linked down below in the comments.

Well, that was easy. After a 30-second ceremony at City Hall, Ben and I are officially life partners. I can’t tell you that it feels all that different, but I can tell you that it feels good. I’m not comfortable with the whole “wife” and “husband” thing, but we’re slowly getting the hang of it - and, to my surprise, we didn’t suddenly fall into predictable gender roles or start having domestic disputes. At least not yet.

I thought I’d post a few pictures of the evening - although not nearly the full collection. I’m somewhat certain that you can’t spot the two mustard stains on my dress that I worked for hours to remove. If you can see them, please don’t tell me.

After the marriage itself, we ate cheese burgers at a local pub (it was, after all, our special day) and then walked over to our favorite hole-in-the-wall dive bar, Rudy’s, where many a man is drinking away their pension, no matter what time of the day it is and where every seat cushion is covered in a copious amount of duct tape. We then spent the night hanging with friends old and new and ended the evening with some take-out Chinese food. I couldn’t have had a better wedding if I were given a huge budget and many months of planning.

Still, we are planning a more official event in a year or two that will include our far-away friends and relatives. Until then, though, every time I have a $6 pitcher of domestic beer and an old hot dog, I’ll think about how much I love Ben.

There are more pictures located here. Ben obviously wrote the captions.

I’ll update again tonight with the terrifying adventure known as our winter cabin honeymoon/brush with death. It was really romantic, almost dying together in the snow.

Ben and I are getting married. To each other!

I know I haven’t really told many people, but I feel kind of strange talking about it - it seems a little private, not to mention that my least favorite beast on earth is the rabid bride-to-be. Don’t worry, I don’t want to talk about my dress or my date or my ring or my attendants.

Well - I suppose I will mention the date. We’re heading over to City Hall tomorrow, where we will be married in the eyes of the city clerk, our best friend Dan Brooks, God, and about half a dozen immigrants who are entering loveless marriages in exchange for a green card. After the ceremony, we’re heading to our favorite dive bar to celebrate with a few close friends.

Although we’ve been engaged for months now (again, I mostly didn’t know how to bring it up), we decided that this was the right time - why sit around in an emotional waiting room? We already live together, we already know we want to spend our lives kicking ass together, not to mention my health insurance runs out at the end of the month.

It’s been funny - whenever I tell someone about the upcoming wedding, they say that they didn’t guess that I was the marrying kind. And although I’m not always into some of the roles and connotations and history of marriage, I am very comfortable - no, I’m very elated - to marry Ben. I’m pretty sure he feels the same.

We’ll probably have a bigger, more traditional party/reception in a few years for all of our friends and family, when we’re more settled and when we have a greater need for flatware. Right now, though, this simply feels right.

All of this hullabaloo paired with my new job also explains the lack of updates - for example, today I spent hours and hours writing copy about personal injury lawsuits while also trying to get a stain out of the dress I want to wear tomorrow. I’ll try to post a few pictures tomorrow, but then we’re off to a wintery cabin in the Catskills where we will spend the weekend sitting in front of a fire, staring into each other’s eyes, and drawing up our initial divorce papers.

…Okay, okay, I’ll post a picture of the engagement ring. My aunt, who knows much more about these things, helped me find it and I love the thing.

In my ongoing attempt to capture and sustain female friendships, I attended a coworker’s party this weekend - she and a few of my other coworkers are pretty much the only reminders I’d like to have of my office. She’s a few years younger than me and recently graduated from college. She was also in a sorority.

Now, this all works out great - I’m hopelessly immature for my actual age and she has all the qualities that I look for in a buddy - slightly mean sense of humor and a positive, whole-hearted attitude toward doing fun things and going to sketchy bars.

However, we do kind of come from different cultures, as evidenced by the housewarming party this weekend - As much as I wanted to fit in and have a good time, I was caught without a party shirt.

Everything else was great - they were playing jock jams, which I openly enjoy, they were serving vodka from a bottle bigger than my torso, and I met several nice, funny, intelligent people right away. But really, deep down, I knew that everyone was staring at my lack of a party shirt. I hadn’t thought things through upon leaving the house - I had on a ratty t-shirt with the collar cut out that used to be my dad’s.

You could see it in their eyes - where is that girl’s party shirt? It was like one of those dreams where you’re naked, expect in this case I was unexpectedly caught wearing cotton.

In the cab home, I realized that I’ve never even owned a party shirt - something that shows off my arms, back, and boobs - something shiny and sequined and tight and sexy that involves tubes and halters and things. Something that says, I am dressed specifically to party, whether or not it happens to be the dead of winter. Something that says, breathing comfortably isn’t as important to me as having a fabulous time.

It might have also helped if I had put on makeup or brushed my hair. I suppose most of the problem stems from the fact that I attended a hippy college, where I would describe people’s party shirts as “sometimes clean.” And the other part of the problem stems from the fact that my less than ample rack makes it hard for me to find fitted shirts that aren’t geared toward Dora the Explorer fans.

I find it happens more and more these days - how I feel doesn’t match how I choose look on the outside.  Even though I felt in a party shirt mood and was engaged in party shirt activities (yes, I took a picture of me holding the vodka bottle that was almost too big to pour), I’m afraid people don’t understand that I’m wearing a party shirt on the inside. I can only hope that people get to know me well enough to understand that, metaphorically speaking, I have a closet full of them.