My Number One Feeling is Sunshine

[Photos by Alex Vega]
On Monday we decided to go to Florida, so on Tuesday we went to the Newark airport to fly to Florida. Our flight was delayed and thus, over variations on salad at the JetBlue terminal's Chili's Express, I subjected my traveling companions to about an hour of my favorite conversation topic: "What should I do for a Top Ten?!". We considered some of yours, some of ours. Some I've done. Where We Are Going and Where We Have Been. We may or may not've spent the next four days throwing out ideas for "Top Ten Critters" at random, which ultimately we realised would have to be an extended feature, like those predictable yet annual "sexiest women ever" lists run in men's magazines -- the ones where Angelina Jolie & Halle Berry always make the top ten. They won't make ours. They may be sexy, but they are not critters.

I try to make Top Tens relevant to that week's activities and said as much, and so we tried to think of things that have been happening lately. One of our Top Ten phrases of the moment is "I have a lot of feelings" (and variations on that), so someone suggested "Top Ten Feelings." Now, our new favorite phrase is: "My number one feeling is [INSERT NOUN OR VERB]." Really, it's hard to keep up with us, we're like Juno. Anyhow, so, as I dipped my lettuce & crisp-bread into my ramiken of ranch, we brainstormed my Top Ten Feelings. It was very educational, I learned a lot about what my friends think of me. I'm not going to go into explaining the list formed in the box in the upper-right, you can make of that what you will. Also, usually my handwriting is way neater, but I was eating and writing all at once:

This list seemed depressing, especially since most people wouldn't understand that "impatient" can be a good thing. That box became a new brainstorm that led to the actual Tuesday Top Eight. Also: clearly kidding about loving animals, which I think I named as my number one feeling. Howevs, I changed my tune re: animals later on in the week ... and when I say that, I'm not talking about Alex leaping over lawn-chairs/tables and torpedoing into the pool (much to the surprise of our compatriots) or our primitive fondness for wrestling like children/monkeys (that's not a veiled sexual reference, I'm quite serious about our wrestling). I'm talking about Tinkerbell, obvs, my new dog (see left, and more on this later).

So, I will get back to this about lists of feelings in a bit. Firstly: a Tuesday night JetBlue fight from Newark, New Jersey, to Ft.Lauderdale, Florida, is essentially a retired Jew-train. If you were to loot the Sunday return flight, you'd establish a healthy supply of Juicy separates and fancy sunglasses, as well as a number of screaming children who I wanted to kill with my bare hands, but Tuesday is 95% peoples in their golden years. Cait was seated next to and thus became besties with a couple she called "my grandparents." Grandma read the news-ticker on her back-of-the-seat teevee out loud to her husband, 'cause old people like to read everything they see out loud to each other, e.g., street signs, newspaper headlines, the titles of other people's books, slogans on other people's shirts, etc. (Imagine aging Jew accent: Gpa-"Big bellies cause DIABETES!" [pause] Gma-"I KNOW!")
*
Here's the thing about Key Biscayne: we were steps from the beach, there were even hammocks available should someone care for certain degrees of relaxation. Palm trees and perfect temperate weather. Food without washing dishes, drinks without consequences. Freedom. From our balcony we could see two large glassy blue pools and their respective hot-tubs, and the paths and green space between them. Night-time is quiet and therefore belonged to us. The humidity mutes out to a perfect 75-degree-cool. There's that ocean. There's the possibility of wine delivered to a hot tub, and of being with friends who make you laugh more than just about anyone. That's an advantage to meeting people on the webbernets via bloggetry: they've already got your sense of humor and basic belief system mostly.

I don't like Miami the city 'cause the people are made of plastic and they all have shiny cars that intimidate me and believe in strange things, but I wouldn't mind visiting Key Biscayne every week or so. Also I don't like Republicans generally.

*

So Alex decided she only has five feelings, but then -- later and drunk, she couldn't remember all five, only: hunger, happy and "dancing."
Dancing isn't a feeling, Vega, Cait & I told her.
It is, she said. And also, she said, my number four feeling is music, and my number five feeling is RuPaul.
We told her RuPaul and Music are also not feelings, but nouns,
but she said, no, RuPaul is a feeling.
Okay Alex, we said, if you want dancing to be your number one feeling, then you go for it. You dance.

*

Also: back to loving animals. We got Tinkerbell from the gift-shop downstairs -- one of many places within the resort who found our presence alarming/interesting -- Tinkerbell also doubles as a purse 'cause you can zip open her back and insert things in it, like illegal drugs, tampons, money and condoms for straight people. Last night (Monday) I brought Tinkerbell to Carly's party and spoke on Tinkerbell's behalf ("Tinkerbell would like a vodka-tonic." "Tinkerbell is very cold.") but Carly told me I had to cut it out and put that shit away. That's fine, I don't expect anyone to understand Tinkerbell like I do. Tinkerbell is a woman's best friend.

*

We spent heaps of time in the elevator -- traveling from our room to the ground floor and subsequently to the outdoors or traveling from our room to the food room upstairs, where we attempted to identify mysterious wrap sandwiches that'd later reappear as salads or mini-desserts the next day. Alex and I ate a lot of sourdough bread and Haviland had a lot of lettuce and Cait dropped her food off the balcony onto the lawn below, which was awesome, our heads exploded along with the lavash.

I tried to tell everyone on the Vlog about this woman who came out of the elevator super-stressed while Cait & I were upstairs waiting on it. She wore a business suit and a nametag and looked like she'd just been to hell in back, and said urgently: I'VE BEEN STUCK IN THERE FOR FIVE MINUTES. Cait & I waited about two minutes for the other lift to arrive before hopping right onto the allegedly damaged elevator. Someone else in the elevator car asked 'isn't this the broken elevator?' which seemed dumb, we were all in an elevator we thought we might never leave, which says a lot about our desires to move from floor to floor. This was funnier later when we tried to re-tell the story than it was at the time. This happens often to us.

I'm not good at being around other people for numerous consecutive hours and also I had a recap to write, so one afternoon the girls left me alone. I tried to go to the food floor alone but all the elevators kept going down and I wanted to go up, which's why I'd pressed the "down" button. It happened like six times, so I started hiding when the lift would stop for me (but not really at all for me) by pressing my back against the button-containing wall when the elevator doors opened, 'cause every time it did all its passengers would look at me like I'd just ruined their lives by making them stop on my floor when I wanted to go up and they wanted to go down. So once I was pressed against the wall being quiet like a mouse and a guy goes "What's this? Another false alarm," and I was like, "Sucker!"

Also there was a tropical windstorm so I went outside and tried to stand as still as possible and let the wind blow my hair around and took photos where Hav says I look like a fetus. Then everyone came back and I told them that housekeeping had come to fix the safe and so now I had the contents of the safe, how exciting! I assumed Cait had called housekeeping to tell them that she couldn't get anything out of the safe. But she HADN'T. They just KNEW. Our sense that we were communicating telepathically with the resort increased when Vega answered the door to a nice hotel worker lady and then told us the lady had asked if we wanted room service. Which's odd, as we'd just been discussing that very thing. Then we realised that the lady had said "TURN-DOWN service," not room service, but Vega didn't know what that is. I do, 'cause they did it on the cruise, that was when they brought the free chocolates and gay t-shirts.

*

Before Saturday, the resort was almost exclusively populated by attendees of a mysterious "Circle of Excellence" convention (appeared Midwestern or Southern, most of them, a lot of capri pants) and very old white people. Perhaps it was because we were dressed like bums or perhaps it was our youth & beauty, but we got famous super-quick, and it seemed everyone in the resort knew about us 'cause everywhere we went alone we were asked "where are the rest of the girls?" I decided they probs thought we were rockstars, 'cause who else would dare to be so foxy and also so bummily dressed? The man at the gym kept really close tabs on us and said weird things about Heath Ledger and the economy (he liked to watch the teevee too, like the woman on the plane, and read out loud to me), it kinda made me uncomfortable but who cares, it was also comedy gold and I got a great workout!

On Saturday, the herds arrived -- neatly tanned middle-aged women with taut stomachs and lipo'ed thighs and their fleshy hairy husbands &  cherubic hypnotized children, and some young couples & groups of pretty thirtysomething girls reading Janet Evanovich novels at poolside in overpriced sarongs -- but by then we'd settled in and we would've stayed forever, even with all the people. All of 'em! I'd never loved this kind of thing so much in my life.

*

When we went to the spa to get massages, during which Alex bff'ed her masseuse due to shared heritage and Cait got her masseuse to reconsider her stance on gay marriage and I got pummeled by some dude, they gave us these robes that totally swallowed Alex and we thought that was high-larious too. Cait took a photo with her phone, it's one of the strangest photos ever, we're like Samurai warriors. I cut off my head in this photo 'cause I look silly in it but you can see I'm preparing for Zen. Alex looks silly too, but I put it up anyway, 'cause it's precious:

*

Though Cait and I didn't want to go out (other people, crowded rooms), the going-out-to-a-lesbo-bar idea was proposed every night. But the last night we decided to get really crazy, which always means that Riese has to drink a lot and then do something really crazy no one else would want to do like get a tattoo. Holla! So I did, we went to Miami Ink, which apparently is famous amongst people who watch television. It was AWESOME. Here it is:

It's Ancient Hebrew for yud, which means "hand." It's here.

I'm so tough! I didn't flinch, I was like, I feel no pain, I am Yoda.

Then we went out and did crazy things I can't talk about, they're just too crazy. But the best part was when we got home and I took a swig of the Dasani water and it turned out to actually be one of many water bottles we'd filled with vodka on the food floor because we're very Savvy. Then I tried to make everyone talk to Tinkerbell but no one wanted to for some reason. She's very soft. Then I got sick, obvs, 'cause that swig of vodka was an unwelcome visitor. Seriously I drank A LOT of it on accident. Also I wasn't the one who put it in the Dasani bottle, the "girls" did that, I was in the room writing my L Word recap like a weirdo.

Mostly we just laughed a lot, like A LOT, and like about everything. It was breezy and beautiful and everything I needed right now. I'm not entirely sure what we talked about but somehow we moved effortlessly and everything was funny and sunshine. I can't really explain it I guess, but it was the most fun. I wanted to stay but instead we're home again. The problem with home is that Key Biscayne was significantly better than home. That's okay. Maybe we'll go back soon. I'm also looking into a Walden Pond-esque situation, let me know if you have any leads. JK. I would never miss the Super Bowl.

Sunday Top 10: Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Last night, circa midnight, as Haviland and I were planning our wedding talking about How to Take Myself Seriously, my roommate MM called (using initials in totally vain attempt to avoid potential googling by the AlAnonitute)--and I generally don't answer the phone, because I'm: 1. deaf, 2. busy--but Haviland suggested that maybe my apartment was on fire. Obvs this is a sensitive topic right now, so I did.

However, it wasn't the apartment that was on fire. It was our souls, burning in the pits of eternal damnation!

Apparently the flames of our mutual sin-i-tude have driven the AlAnonitute, who was living here before either of us, to move out. (Okay, honestly, I have no idea why she's moving out. And she's a nice girl, I think, really a perfect roommate--docile, quiet, never home, never complained (to me)-- and besides my occasional maddening guilt over the fact that, as a schoolteacher, she is way more Noble and Good than I will ever be, I found her altogether non-invasive and pleasant).

So my theories relating to the origins of her desires are based upon some very shoddy detective methods (observance of Self-Help and Jesus literature in her room and my total ire towards anyone who, two years ago, asked a lesbian to move out because she felt uncomfortable living with someone who could want her body, which, p.s., is super unlikely, if you know what I'm sayin') and the fact that, as Sherri points out, it's always fun to make fun of Jesus.

However if she is moving in with her boyfriend, I hope she knows that is also a sin. In fact, I believe it's called "living in sin." Burn THAT, King James!

TOP TEN REASONS APARTMENT 1A IS NOT A PLACE FOR GOOD CLEAN VIRTUOUS LIVING

10. Average Time Spent in Refrigerator by the Average Alcoholic Beverage Before Being Consumed: 3 hours.

9. The Company We Keep. My best friend in the city is a lesbian--a lot of my friends are either lesbians OR at least have had sex with a lesbian! MM's boyfriend is a member of one of the most famous Heavy Metal bands EVER. If I had a boyfriend, he'd probably be a member of an indie-band that maintained it's Artistic Integrity while slipping into poverty and General but Trendy Levels of Disillusionment and Resentment Towards the Man. You can imagine the immoral behavior just bursting through the cracks of our drywall.

8. Banned Books Because my room is small and I am large, I often do work in the living room. Which means some of my books (in particular, books-I-am-reading-for-book-i-am-writing) are on the shelves there. Some of these titles, to the virgin frigid eye, may appear to be somewhat disarming, among them: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution, Fever: How Rock N' Roll Changed Gender in America, Gender Trouble, and, of course, A Tribute to Freud.

7. Pill Poppers On the note of "Things I Did Do for Jesus": I don't think Jesus wants the AlAnonitute to be taking Ambien--that's like, artificial and stuff. He probably does want Stephanie and I, however, to enjoy a restful night of sleep every now and then. So we took care of that mis-appropriation of pills. Life is hard, y'all!

6. Strong Hell-Raising Content Of the 20 DVDs (not including the John Cassavetes collection, because I've only got so much time, people) on the shelf in the common room, the MPAA has found these films guilty of the following sins against the rating boards (obviously all rated R or NC-17)
Adult Language: 75%
Nudity/Sexuality: 50%
Graphic Violence: 40%
Strong Sexual Content: 35%
Substance Abuse: 35%
Violence: 25%
"Graphic" Substance Abuse: 20%
"Pervasive Strong Language": 10%
"Graphic Sexual Dialogue": 5% (Closer)
"Sex-Related Cartoons": 5% (Crumb)
TV shows, and therefore without MPAA ratings, but I can tell you from experience are filled with adult language, possibly even pervasive strong language, and possibly, though not necessarily, Sex-Related Cartoons: 10% (Family Guy, Little Britan)

5. Degrassi...It Goes There. According to the promos, Degrassi "goes there," and for the first few weekends I lived here, the Degrassi marathon kept me endlessly entertained as I set up and did work that required only 50% of my brain. There=pregnancy, homosexuality, violence, drugs, abortions, god-club, rape, internet porn, etc. But like, with high school students, and um...shiny packaging. It might be a little confusing. If you aren't like, familiar, like, with it. p.s., sometimes MM puts in foreign old-school black and white porn for background imagery while we do work.

4. I'm more of a 'Utne Reader' kind of girl. Someone in this apartment subscribes to Time magazine and gets catalogs from the Omega Institute, and it ain't me. Also, it's not MM.


3."In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety" I've been known to mistake men's boxer-briefs for "shorts to be worn around the house" and MM usually cleans in five-inch heels and skirt worn as a chic strapless mini-dress, which is one of my favorite things about her, because it's really funny.

2. Um..this blog? If she finds this, then I actually probably will go to hell.

1. When she confessed to accidentally taking my yogurt instead of hers, I screamed: "You are going straight to hell! Don't talk to me anymore! Just get out of here, I can't trust you!" Obvs I was clearly sarcastic, and she laughed, but then I realized that she actually believes in Hell. And I uh, am a Jew.

Well, I'd like to visit the Moon, on a Rocketship High in the Air

So when you have a birthday in September (e.g., September 23rd, like ... surprise ... MEEE!) and you start a new school/school-housing-situation almost every year and when also even after college you like to pretend that September remains the ideal month for Reinvention/Life Makeovers, you end up having totally Random Birthday celebrations/celebrants. If I was in Michigan, I'd obviously be going to the Macaroni Grill with 20 of my (then) closest friends for free** house wine.

**It's not actually "free," really, unless you have shady ethics and no qualms with what could technically be categorized as "stealing." But I worked there for like, a million years, and servers only get paid 2.25 an hour so we gotta stick it to the man by having big dinners there with servers who ring up one glass instead of 100 glasses because the server would obviously be my friend too because, like I said, I worked there. P.S. it's Almaden. The stuff that comes in a box. So even "free" is more than anyone ought to pay for it.

Highlights of my Random Birthdays include an overnight trip to the booming tourist spot of Flint, Michigan (the hometown of Michael Moore, who documented Flint's utter despair in 'Roger and Me') in grade 5 (we had buffet dinner at our dilapidated hotel and went to the dilapidated children's museum and ate my favorite food, Astronaut Ice Cream) and a 10pm romp at Oasis Hot Tub Gardens in grade 15 (aka junior year of college) with a boy I stopped dating that same week.

I had this fabulous idea for a quarter-life crisis party where everyone dressed up as what they wanted to be when they grew up---obviously I would be Chris Weber, Ramona Quimby, Nolan Ryan or Shirley Temple, and all the guys would be like, basketball players and firemen and astronauts and the girls would be movie stars or like, pregnant fat ladies with expensive shoes or like, Cher, or whatever it is girls want to be when they grow up. Mostly I just want to see people dressed as astronauts and eat astronaut ice cream.

Then I realized it would only be cool if I had like, 1,000 friends, or could have a co-party with someone cooler than me, or if I was Paris Hilton. Bruce Springsteen and I have the same birthday so that's a possibility, esp. if someone dressed up as Bruce Springsteen. He might not like my theme but he also might totally be into it.

Speaking of September birthdays.....HAPPY BIRTHDAY INGRID GREENFIELD!!!!



some disclaimers have been added, post-initial-post, to the following dialogue:
Hav (who is 25-going-on-12, and very young, fabulous, thin and gorgeous, and, in fact, i'd like to add, looks about 19, though her maturity exceeds her tender years): is ingrid turning 25 or 26?
Me: 25, like me.
Hav: why are you guys so young? (by this she means that for our grade in school, Ingrid and I are very young. In fact we were the youngest members of our class for most of our lives)
Me: because we were child prodigies so we started kindergarten early.
(hav laughs)
Me: I'm serious!
I'd also like to add that all of Haviland's body parts are perky, firm, and full of youth and vigor.