Retail Therapy

These boots are gorgeous, are they not? Mr. Donald J. Pliner has once again went and designed a pair of $300+ boots I cannot afford. My obsession with these boots has been so intense that I dreamt about them last night. Sadly, that's not the first time this has happened (I have a recurring dream about the pair of Joe's Jeans in my closet that I wore so often that there is now a giant hole in them preventing me from wearing them). However, I spent an entire therapy session today discussing these boots with my shrink... now that's a first. I may have never mentioned that I am in therapy, but if you've spent any time reading this blog (particularly this) you probably aren't surprised to hear that.

I have a number of options available to me in obtaining these coveted DJP creations. All of these are options I've explored in the past with varying degrees of success. They are, in order of most to least likely to wield success, with success being actually having these gorgeous specimens on my feet by Sep 5:
1. Beg my mom to buy them for me
2. Whip out a credit card and pay for them over 5 years
3. Beg my boyfriend to buy them for me

However, both my therapist and I agreed that these are the decisions that the Sue Ellen Mischke of years past would make. I am a new and improved Sue Ellen Mischke driven by several factors to get my ass out of debt. They are, in order of most persuasive to least:
1. My boyfriend won't marry me until I pay off my car and my credit card (a decision my therapist says is a good one).
----
Did I say several? Well, I was lying. I wish I had more motivation than that one thing for many reasons (not the least of which is I want to create parallelism between the two lists), but really, this fact is the only fact that motivates me to get out of debt. Every time I find myself in a shoe store (today in fact) or a clothing store (last weekend in fact), I ask myself if this pair of shoes or that pair of jeans is more important to me than him (which typically the answer is no). With that in mind, I've decided to try something that my doctor says I am not very good at--- and that is WAITING to buy them. While I am WAITING, I am going to put money aside and then pay for them in cash if I still want them so badly. The idea here is that I will feel "good" about exercising restraint to save up for them, rather than having someone buy them for me or charging them on a credit card. My instinct is to say that I will feel good the second I get those sexy boots on my feet no matter how I make them mine, but, as George did one fine episode of Seinfeld, I am going to ignore my instincts and do The Opposite, as my initial instincts are so often wrong.

Things not to do when out with co-workers

Lately, I've started this trend that, when drinking, I think it's a great idea to make the lewd hand gesture used to represent a private intimate activity usually performed on a female. Don't ask me why this trend started, but I think it's becoming a problem. How do I know it's a problem? Well, when my colleagues sent out the photos from our night at the wretched Howl at the Moon, I knew I'd hit a new low. As my roommate Kelly said, I have to be stopped.

Howl at the Poon

School starts Monday. I'm quite excited about it actually. Sure, I'm mourning the death of the Summer of Sue Ellen Mischke, but I am looking forward to getting back on a schedule that includes more than working out, laying out and getting hammered.

Speaking of which, one of the newer teachers suggested we all get together for a department outing to start off the year. She boldly went where no suburbanite teacher has gone before; she suggested that the outing take place in ... The City (cue dramatic music). Had such an outing taken place in the 'burbs, I would have had a good excuse to decline the invitation. But since it was in The City, I kind of had to say yes. Besides, although I don't attend every outing my colleagues plan, I enjoy going to a few each year.

Of course, a suburbanite cannot plan a city outing without choosing an appropriately wretched suburbanite tourist trap location. Sure enough, my colleagues planned for us to go to Howl at the Moon, a dueling piano-theme bar. I do not like, never have liked, and never will like theme bars. Maybe that makes me an elitist fuck. Maybe it just makes me a curmudgeon. Either way, I don't care. As I walked into the bar, I looked around to make sure no one I knew was nearby to see me enter the place. At first it felt awkward to be there with my co-workers while the crooning pianist rapped Sir Mix-a-lot's "Baby Got Back." Something about hearing a white man rap "'Cuz I'm long, and I'm strong and I'm dying to get the friction on" to a piano in the company of married women with children felt very dirty. But eventually, I just started drinking chardonnay, (bleck.... I hate chardonnay, but it's the only white they had. The only white wine, by the way, not people; there was no shortage of white people here, particularly trashy-looking white girls), and I found myself on the dance floor with my colleagues belting out the lyrics to a shitty Billy Joel song (which one?). I guess I was, in fact, howling at the god-damned moon.

In the end, I was happy to see all the suburbanites having fun in The City, even if it was at a hole like that. I was just glad I didn't have to get behind the wheel after that night of drunken teacher debauchery. My boyfriend was kind enough to spare me a drunken el ride home, and he picked me up at about 11:00. Now that I think about it, 11:00 is awfully early to be as drunk as I was. Oh well, I guess the theme bar got the best of me.

Howl at the Moon is a chain. Do you have one in your city? Have you been there? If not, do you go to and like theme bars?

The Gaiety

I am reading "Don't Get Too Comfortable" by David Rakoff. It's a series of witty and snarky essays that I read here and there. I came across an essay the other night where Rakoff writes about his experience at Puppetry of the Penis, a show wherein men do obscene things with their penises by pulling them every which way, fashioning them into familiar images such as the Loch Ness monster. Rakoff's story reminded me of the trip I took to NYC when I graduated college. Some people backpack across Europe when they graduate college. But, I, on the other hand, had a week-long fag hag extravaganza in NYC, where I sampled gay night life with my good friend from high school, Jeffrey, and his posse...
Rakoff contrasts Puppetry with The Gaiety in NYC:

• "The drill was the same with each dancer: he came out wearing very little, danced quite badly- the strippers were largely, easily identifiably straight- and then went offstage while the very well-behaved audience waited. In a perfect world, he was supposed to come back onstage starkers and erect. In an evening of twelve or so dancers, Dan and I only saw one instance of tumescence. The boner got some polite clapping, like the entrance applause that greets an ingenue who has received good advance notices."

Technically, I should leave it at that, as I fear I cannot say it better myself. But I feel compelled to share my Gaiety experience with you, if for no other reason than I have nothing better about which to write.

Jeffrey and I were drunk, and it was late- probably about 4:00 in the morning. He convinced me we should go to The Gaiety, which he described as a male strip club. Although I'd been his hag for years, we went to separate colleges and did not have any time as legal drinkers together, so my experience on the gay bar scene was limited. These days I'd be suspicious if one of my gay friends said we were going to a 'male strip club.' At the tender age of 22 though, I pictured a roomful of drunken bachelorettes cheering wildly while burly men on the stage in cop uniforms (yum) danced seductively and accepted one dollar bills in their belts. And even though I knew were we going to a place called The Gaiety, I clung to the hope that it would measure up to my bachelorette party expectations.


I don't think I have to tell you this, but that's not what I saw when I got to The Gaiety. We walked up a brightly-lit dank hallway, its stairs covered in thinning, gray carpet. I handed $10 to a person (whose gender still remains a mystery to me) who sat in a little room behind a window. I thought it odd that it was so quiet behind the door we were instructed to enter. Where were all the screaming bachelorettes, I wondered. I got my answer when we entered the dark theatre. The bachelorettes were not at The Gaiety; they were smart enough not to spend their last days of single status at a place with a name that is a derivative of the word gay. In fact, there were only about 5 other people in the room with us, and none of them were women. They were men, and they were all dateless, which made it even more unsettling. The stage was empty, but as we awaited the arrival of the strippers, a huge movie screen came down from the ceiling to entertain us with hard-core gay porn to pass the time. Having never even seen straight porn, I was shocked, and clearly I did not want to be here. When I told Jeffrey I wanted to leave he argued that "we'd look funny" if we just up and left. As if a girl in a gay strip club didn't look funny to begin with...

Finally, the first stripper came out. Just as Mr. Rakoff said, he was clothed and he danced poorly. The best thing about it though was the song he danced to when he came out for Act I. It was "Sailing" by Christopher Cross. This is by far one of the worst songs of the 80s, and you've probably heard it in more than one elevator or dentist's office in your lifetime. True to Mr. Rakoff's account, the stripper left the stage mid-song. He returned a few minutes later completely naked, and he was considerably more aroused than when he left (unlike Mr. Rakoff's experience, the three strippers I saw achieved this result). This was where the polite golf-clap came in, and I found myself joining in on the applause in spite of the fact that I was still in shock from the point-of-entry porn during the prelude. The music was a much faster pace for Act II of this gentleman's routine so he was kind of bouncing around onstage stark naked. I would categorize this as 'bad naked' (kind of like coughing or sanding the floors naked), but the audience loved it, and they went up to the stage in droves with their dollar bills. The worst was when they would put the dollar bill on the ground and the stripper would reach down to grab it without bending his knees so the audience could see the goods very clearly. It was hilarious and horrifying all at once.

We didn't stay much longer, but we stayed long enough for me to learn that when a gay guy says he wants to go to a male strip club, there probably aren't going to be any screaming bachelorettes there.

"I got a Guy for that...."

The car situation is much worse than I thought. I left for St. Louis on Friday under the impression that, upon my return, my car would be as good as new. I couldn't have been more wrong. When my boyfriend drove it home from the tire place on Saturday, he knew immediately I had done more than destroyed my tire. He called me to tell me it would have to be towed to my mechanic because it was unsafe to drive. I called my Guy the mechanic, and told him my other Guy the tow truck driver, would be delivering my Prius to his house asap.

I use Guy as a proper noun because I grew up with a dad who had a Guy for everything- a car Guy, a tow Guy, a lawn Guy, a shrimp Guy, a meat Guy, a leather Guy, a diamond Guy, a watch Guy. We aren't allowed to do anything in my family without first checking if my dad has a Guy for it. If you made the mistake of going out on your own and finding your own Guy, my dad would say, "Why didn't you tell me you needed _______ done? I got a Guy for that!" My dad used to be a Guy himself. He worked for a juice company so he was a juice Guy. When my car Guy or tow Guy would give me a deal on something or get me out of a bind, Dad would hand me several quarts of assorted juices and instruct me to give them to the car Guy. I think the idea there is that you get better service from any given Guy if you can offer Guy services in addition to your payment. We used our Guys more often when we were driving American cars. Now that we drive Japanese or Swedish cars, the Guys don't see us as much, that is unless I have a run-in with a curb, in which case the Guys will receive 20 calls from me in the space of three days. My dad doesn't work for a juice company anymore, but he does work for OxyClean. I wonder if he's an OxyClean Guy now? I've even sort of become a Guy myself- I'm a shopping Guy. If you need a hot outfit for a special event or an entirely new wardrobe, take me to the mall with you; I'm your shopping Guy. Somehow I don't think my towing Guy or my car Guy needs a shopping Guy to walk him around Nordstrom. They might rather have an OxyClean Guy.

Guys are very reliable under normal circumstances. When I deliver my car to my Guy, I can be certain that
A. he is going to have it fixed by 5:00 the following morning
B. he will call me to tell me the list of 35 things he did to it (in the thickest Chicago accent you've ever heard; think Andy Sipowitz on steroids)
C. it will be 5:30 in the morning when he makes the call
D.he will charge me only, like, $62.39 for it

I wasn't so lucky this time though. My Guy called me and said that he didn't even have to go under the car to know that the bottom of it is completely messed up (he said something about a left lower somethingorother and a ball joint and something else about a heat shield and a bent frame). It's all very mysterious to me but I wrote it down, and that's enough because I trust my Guy. That's why you have Guys after all- because you can trust your Guys. You cannot, however, trust those other guys.

Now my car is at the dealer, whom I do not trust, because the dealer is the opposite of the Guy- he is the other Guy. The dealer is why the car Guy exists; he is what keeps the Car guy in business. I am looking at a costly repair. Fortunately, my insurance is going to cover much of it, but not enough of it not to put a considerable dent in my checkbook and set me back a few months on getting out of credit card debt. Needless to say, I'm feeling a little bit of stress about the whole thing. I need a money guy.

Do you have a Guy for anything? Are you a Guy?

Tomato To-MAH-to

I am off to St. Louis this weekend to visit my friends from college. The five of us girls haven't been together in about a year, so it should be a good time. The bad news is that I am going to be a 9th wheel all weekend. My boyfriend couldn't get the weekend off (something about his district being "the murder capital of Chicago" and it being "short-handed"), so I will be the only one there without a companion. I should probably be used to that situation, as it happens all the time, but I still kind of hate it.

Most people think I'm a "bad driver." I don't agree, but yesterday was one of those days that make those accusations difficult to refute. I was in a big hurry to get somewhere (as usual) and I took a corner too fast. There was a very high, sharp curb, and, as I turned the corner, it literally JUMPED out and ATTACKED my front driver's side tire! I've never seen anything quite like it. My poor little tire was mangled. I keep telling people "I got a flat" but really, my boyfriend (who changed my tire in the extreme heat) insists I "caused a flat." Whatever. "You say tomato, I say to-MAH-to" as they say. I wonder how many people out there are bad drivers but won't admit it. I mean, I would wager that nearly 80% of the people with whom I share the road are awful drivers....
Are you one of them? Or are you a good driver?

This turn of events could have ruined my weekend plans. Fortunately, one of my friends lives near my parents in the suburbs, and she offered to let me drive with her and her husband, so my lack of transportation didn't render that trip impossible. I hope to return with some good stories, or at least some new pictures of little Charlie.