I, Pigeon. (Alt Title: Why does my crotch smell so facey?)

Sitting alone at the coffee shop early this morning, I watched a pigeon get struck by a trolley car. Or a trolley car get struck by a pigeon. I don't know, I guess whoever started it doesn't really matter, the point is that the pigeon lost. The trolley will cut a pigeon. 

The pigeon was dead, but only on its left side. The right side was determined to fly away, or perhaps its right side believed it was flying, because it continued to flap awkwardly as cars drove by. In between sips of latte, I watched and made those teeth clenched sucking in noises each time a car's tires would send more feathers flying. 

The bird wouldn't die, even despite its being dead. Such optimism in the face of adversity. 

I am that bird.

No, I am the road.

An old Chinese trash collector man walked into the street and swept the bird into his dustpan and dumped it into his rolling trash bin. "Not dead yet! Not trash yet!" I murmured, quietly angered by the indignity. 

I am that trash collector.

No wait, I am the broom.

I pulled my finger out of my ear to inspect whatever my pinky had been rooting around for this entire time, and wondered why nothing deep ever happens to me. I never get to be a metaphor. It's not fair, and frankly I think this blog suffers because of it. It would've been nice if that whole "I am that bird" thing back there had worked out, that sounded deep. 

Hold on. It's coming together now. If the trolley is vodka cranberry, and the bird trying to fly while half dead is anything like me trying to steal a room service cart full of grilled cheese and french fries and bring it in the elevator down to my hotel room last night, then maybe I am that bird. 

Are you following me on this? I have a crazy hangover, so I might be off on this, but bear with me.

If bachelorette party weekends are the coffee shop, and I am the bird, then the eternal struggle between life and death is the floor lamp I wrestled last night and broke, then put in the elevator with my cart of grilled cheese to take to my room so the hotel would never find out. And the people who witnessed the bird get hit by the trolley are a metaphor for the hotel manager who saw the bride-to-be and I dragging hotel property down the hall and into the elevator on the security camera and came looking for us.

This is getting good. Really deep shit. 

And the room service guy who I trusted enough to open my closet and show him the lamp and ask his advice for how to proceed in the matter would be the trash man, because well, I don't know if that trash man is a tattletale, but this guy definitely was. It's a good metaphor though because they both sweep up things that aren't dead yet and/or have a trusty kind of face but are extremely disloyal.

Then there's the elevator mechanic. I might need help with this one.

My friend swiped the wrench out of his tool belt on our ride up in the elevator, and when he discovered it missing, he called our room to accuse us of stealing it. 

"One of you turkeys stole my wrench," he said. 

"Gobble gobble," friend replied. 

So he turned off our suite's electricity. Wait, ok I remember now, that's when I started the fight with the lamp. I was confused about why the lights had gone out. But anyway, our room went dark and quiet as revenge for stealing his wrench. So we threw it back in the elevator and pressed the down button. That mechanic is God, taking and giving life/electricity all willy nilly, and also all-powerful/has no sense of humor.

And in an unexpected twist, God (real life God, not metaphor God who was played by the mechanic) is me (coffee shop me, not vodka me) because I watched the whole bird scene play out and God watches my whole life scene play out, and God probably makes those sucking air in through clenched teeth noises at me too. 

Oh, and my friend Ani is the road, because I sat on her face last night.

 

The Sailboats and Lighthouses Will Hunt You Down and Steal Your Dignity

Cape Cod has changed me. I will return from this vacation a whole new woman.

A much, much fatter woman.

The thing is, Cape Cod is different from LA. I won't say people are fatter here, but I will say that relatively speaking, I look a whole lot thinner here than I do back home.

And I won't say that people are generally older here, but I will say that I've never looked so young by comparison.

And I won't say that people here wear topsiders and bold flower-print knickers and shirts with sailboats on them and earrings shaped like sand dollars, but fuck it, yeah they totally do. I look like a freakin fashionista by comparison, with my camouflage workout capris and my New Balance sans socks and my hoodie. Back home I'm the unshowered girl who people are always asking, "Oh, did you just work out?" and I'm like, "No, why?" and they're like, "Oh, because your hair's wet," and I'm like, "No it's not." And then I pull my mobile terrarium of Awkward Silence Crickets out of my backpack and count them off "And a one, and a two..."

But my point is that out here at the Cape, relatively speaking, I'm practically 15 years old and a fashion model and I'm so thin you can't even see me. I'm like one of those tropical fish that disappears when it turns sideways. I'm barely even the size of an atom that's how thin I feel. I have to form double covalent bonds with the patio furniture just so I don't blow off the porch in the summer breeze. Men want to ef me but I'm attainable on account of being invisible without the help of an electron microscope, so I'm that much more desirable. You always want what you can't have. Or see. Or talk with. Basically, you know I exist but only because scientists tell you. Like Nessy, or the G-spot.

Feeling this thin all the sudden hasn't changed me at all. I'm still super nice to ugly people and maids, which is awesome because thin people don't HAVE to be nice, except for to people who are thinner than they are. Which in my case is nobody, seeing as how I'm a carbon atom. Sorry, Nicole Ritchie, you hit a wall with that whole "needing a skeletal system" thing, it's like dead weight, huh? *sad face for you*

It has changed me in one significant way, actually. Going to the market is a totally different experience. Where I would usually pick up Fage Greek yogurt, Skim milk, apples, broccoli, and salad fixings, my grocery list since I arrived at the Cape is now Eggos, chocolate chips, ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, cookies, and smores fixings. Being the thinnest person in Cape Cod means all junk food every day. Like, last night? Instead of having dinner with everyone else? I had a sundae. And then after that I had a sundae. And after that I had a sundae with a warm cookie on the bottom. And then a cookie and whipped cream sandwich, which is my own invention and doesn't work that well because the whipped cream oozes out the sides right when you bite down (duh! It seems so obvious now!), so then I added ice cream and it all worked out. After that I couldn't sleep because of the staticky noise in my eyeballs, so I had some ice cream. Just plain this time, because it was so late.

As it turns out, even skinny carbon atom supermodels can have trouble buttoning their jeans in the morning, even when the jeans are stretchy jeans and even when the jeans haven't been washed in a week and are as big as they can get, and even when the atomic supermodel in question sucks in as hard as she can and doesn't even try to tuck in her muffin top this time, and even when she wears them Cholo-style around her hips with the crotch at her mid-thigh area, and even when she leaves them unzipped and wears a dress over them, Nope!

Sometimes even atomic supermodel teens have to borrow their mom's two-sizes bigger lavender sassy-lady high-waist pants with sailboats and lighthouses all over them.

My Nana thinks I look "shahp" though.

The shame. Oh, the shame. *hangs head*