Unmask the Glasses

 So many things to bitch about when it comes to the era of pandemic masking. But just for today, all I have to say is how awkward and gimpy and frustrated and bitchy I feel when trying to pull one mask loop off my ear ... and my glasses get pulled off my face with it.

The fumbling. The blindness. The vulnerability. The impatient inability to perform this action gracefully ... smoothly: with efficient commanding ease.

The desire to feel and swallow and gulp all the fresh air immediately upon exiting the store, and finding yourself holding up traffic fumbling to catch your glasses while your hands are full with heavy ungainly grocery bags and a purse strap your stupid fucking long hair is caught under and being pulled by before they all fall on the asphalt. 

The horrible comedic unglamorous juggling of my middle-aged ugliness. The near-blindness adding to the sensation of being genetically inferior. And I hate my hair and I hate going to lady salons and even though there is a new thing people who are supposedly like me are talking about -- "quiet appointments" -- I haven't gone inside one of these places since pre-pandemic and I so desperately do not want to that even the thought of it makes my eyes burn with hot don't-make-me saltwater. Please I am begging "you" -- the world of you -- somehow I need to find a way to be less ugly but also not attractive because the last thing I want is for people to like me enough to think they want more of me: to know more, to talk more, to be around more, to "everybody has to eat" more with each other why not let's be friends. Some kind of a face and haircut and unbudgeable unsmudgeable spectacles and uniform that say "there is something strikingly enjoyable to observe about this weirdo with their set of extreme limitations that makes them unapproachable but admirable from a distance, and lovely to interact with as a stranger under very specific unusual structures and time constraints; I would count myself lucky to exchange nonverbal greetings or rhythmic multisyllabic nonsense salutations and knowing facial grimaces with them someday but for now we shall give minimal nods acknowledging one another's strange presence on this physical plane at this moment wherein we both feel connected to shared memories of paths crossed and spaces traversed in other worlds and dreamlike dimensions. Hello human; isn't this charade we're engaged with tiresome yet hilariously absurd and even charming when we wink at one another and pretend to play along while we mark time waiting for the band to start playing the music we instinctively know to dance wildly to or get knocked into sedated delirium? God it's so fucking exhausting but I see you too have the ingredients for root beer floats and hot nachos. We will enjoy these gross foodstuffs within the privacy of our own respective hidey-holes."

Why is that so hard for everyone to understand? Because you'd be surprised how often that does actually happen. Or probably I just imagine it does. I guess. Because see I don't believe that. I know that it happens and it is real, so OF COURSE I DID NOT FIND EVERYTHING OKAY TODAY. That is to be expected. There was not a rainbow with a pot of gold and lobster at the seafood aisle end of it today, but I wasn't actually expecting it. I can't say that I had it on my list so maybe I wasn't looking for it in the way you meant (and lobster isn't the actual epitome of luxury to me, it's just a stand-in for whatever and because it is not actually my favorite would make it more like a surPRIZE since it's not something I'd ever actually put on my list and look for but caviar on the other hand) ... though I did keep myself open to being surprised by something like that) but again, if I wanted help finding something AT THE REGISTER is the last place I would ever go to try to get that help, and if I did approach the cash register as a last resort in trying to find something, I would not have placed my basket on the shelf that is too small for the baskets, and I would have said oh excuse me actually I'm looking for _____ before I check out ... could someone help me?"

I wish there were handicapped stalls close to the grocery store doors not for parking, but like large phone booths with curtains and cots; a place to hide and gather yourself for a moment when the sounds of car alarms and closeness of strangers and terrible questions like "how are you today?" and "did you find everything okay?" get to be too much and figuring out what to buy to eat when you're so hungry you could eat what you came here for without cooking it but when they're OUT of that thing you counted on and you have to come up with another plan but you can't think because you keep saying excuse me when someone else wants to look at the shelves of so many things that are not the right things and you can't process the things and you're trying to stand there and figure out but you can't figure it out and nobody else says excuse me and you just try to go to another aisle but there are people there, too, talking on their phones and not saying excuse me or even noticing anyone else while you're noticing everything but not able to filter out anything and actually process the overwhelming data and you need to buy something to eat but you can't make sense out of anything or breathe right and you just need a time out but you can't go home without food so just a little quiet dark room and little door nobody else notices except for people like us with headphones and a cot but with arms like a dentist's chair and lead-lined weighted blankets encased in hypoallergenic sanitizable coatings and it's okay if you go in there and lose your shit and cry hysterically for three minutes after which an understanding hunchback in a pistachio lab coat emerges from behind a shadowed curtain to extend a very grown-up lollipop to you filled with lickable unsalty lithium, valium, and/or CBD flavors and a paper cup you can refill over and over again with  a effervescent restorative beverage dispensed from one of those big upside-down jugs and it always makes a satisfying plunky burp-bubble sound every time you hit it without ever seeming to actually be depleted of its thick blue translucent-walled store of hydration.

What I'm really upset about is actually the way the post office laughs at you for wanting to look at the stamps and pick out special ones and needing a receipt for $1.68 after they already mocked you after you stood in line and listened to much stupider extensive useless personal asinine chatter, and you did it all for your mom (but also wanted to look at the stamps and pick out good ones for yourself, too, it seems like a small understandable thing to ask for just a moment of sticker sweetness via government-issued tiny unframed wavy-bordered art) but your mom was texting you while you were being mocked and hurrying to get home in time for your phone call that you planned for at the same time as every time but still double-checked and confirmed FIVE TIMES with her saying can we make it 5:15 instead and you didn't see it until you already rushed home robbed of stamp joy and fully made fun of all for her (but for yourself a little too, let's be honest) and had to find a way to kindly say NO I CANNOT DO THAT TODAY. I have to stay on track, especially now that I will have to waste time crying and everything is thrown off and I feel badly for not being flexible but also mad and misunderstood.

And that's why I have this blog. To prevent misunderstandings and hope nobody ever reads it. My hair is so long and ugly it gets sucked up into the metal when the seat belt retracts and almost strangles me and I have to cry for the raccoons and squirrels to come and puzzle and chew me out of there. I just want to get nailed one weekend a month by some big-dicked simpleton who is endlessly intoxicated by big tits and has virtually no refractory period in a clean-ish dark apartment with no pets or kids or laborious poly complications who just wants to feed and fuck me and act like every hour with me like that is Christmas morning with Daddy Warbucks and we have nothing to do with each others bills or routines or the dailiness of life outside of that. I don't want to hear another dog fight or guilt trip or cat fight or dumb fucking phone conversation or coded etiquette question where they ask you something you're supposed to understand they don't really want the answer to ever the fuck again. I am going to make a store full of simple magical things where weirdos can come in and look at things quietly for fifteen minutes by themselves if they want and it doesn't matter how old or young they are and if they can buy the magical things they will still fit them forever even if they gain or lose a ton of weight and I have the stuff that gets everyone wet in any color they want and it will make you live and not die at least for another day or night and I won't judge you for using cheap paper and I would give it to you for free if I can.

But if I can't have any of that, cocaine and valium will do. And you know I am crazy because everything I said before that sounds more attainable than those two specific things.

I got a subscription to the paper archives and my family names and forefathers and foremothers and side-aunts are in them going back back back back back back back back in jail bars and river cars when boys were named after summer months and bridges galloped and fell into the giant octopus depths where one of them took the pictures for the Mad Men company but not the famous pictures ... the ones on the other side. Wars and wars and lumber mills and deputized recordings. Songs and pictures and stories with voices and chin dimples I didn't know were on both sides.