I made Cynthia an offer for the entire box, and she gave it to me for 10! whatta win! (Cynthia has been nice to me ever since I talked to her about doing a reality show. She totally shut me down and I just said, “Sure I totally understand.” But now that she’s nice to me, it’s really unnerving. I don’t know what to do when she isn’t telling me “no” or “i’m the boss.”)

Anyhoo, I also found a book called “The Atlas of Dermatology.” I hardly looked at it, but bought it anyway because I wanted to be dermatologist when I was a kid (true fact). When I got back into Boris’ car however, it was a different story. HOLY SHIT. The images in that book were worse than ANYTHING I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. I literally screamed in the car and started rocking back and forth, whimpering, “What have I done?” Boris was all like, “I told you so.” So when we went into the Dollar Store a few minutes later, I just wanted to leave the book in the dollar rack for someone else. Half joke/half art installation. But that would have been mean, so I gave it to Out of the Closet with the words, “Um, you might not want to put this out on a shelf for someone to come across. I might really fuck up someone’s mind.” So they put it in the “special glass case” instead. It’s yours for 3.50, at the pasadena location.

*One day during a fire drill, this particular teacher looked down at me, wearing a cheap sweater bought from the sale rack at Rave. It had a black scottie dog on it, with a 3-D plaid bow around it’s neck. In a slight drawl, my teacher looked down at me and says, “I love your sweater. I wish I had one of those.” My face flushed so red, it might have been purple. Purple to match the horrible cystic acne I had the pleasure of taking oral antibiotics for (that eventually caused an ulcer in my esophagus! yay!). Any how, I sincerely thought this teacher was checking out my (non-existent) chest.** In hind sight, I realize that 1. He was gay. 2. He was just trying to bolster the confidence of the dorky, chubby version of Welcome to the Dollhouse. In my defense my parents had sort’ve made me paranoid about sexual predators… (On the way to a slumber party: “If her dad is in the room when you are changing, you call us.” Me crying into my pillow after a bad day at school: “Did someone do something *bad* to you?)…I refused to get a bra until it was completely and totally necessary.**

**I was so in denial over my budding sexuality that I wore girls’ undershirts from Sears in order to be “modest” but not sexualized. When I finally had the dusty rose colored Christian Dior bra with tiny pearls in the center (again, from Sears), I felt what I used to refer as my “stomach sickness.”*** I felt that way about bras and having breasts until probably my mid 20′s. Reading Sassy probably didn’t help. And reading an interview with Juliana Hatfield declaring that she hated her breasts because they got in the way of her guitar playing really really didn’t help.

***My “Stomach Sickness.” Back when I was 12, there wasn’t much known about anxiety attacks. But if there was ever a child who needed to be medicated for anxiety, it was me. I just didn’t know how to articulate to my parents how sick I would start to feel during certain everyday situations. I didn’t have the words. No one used those words in the late 80′s, early 90′s. So I would just blame my “stomach sickness” when I felt like I couldn’t function or was worried about going to a social function. Oddly enough, I felt most comfortable on stage during all the local theater I did. Anyway, I’m just glad that there are words and meds for “Stomach Sickness” now.

Through 20 years, I journeyed from the Dollhouse to the Valley of the Dolls.

Addendum: I just realized the news station was reporting outside of the thrift store because they were hoping for some crazies. Apparently, the woman before me looked like Annie Lennox on meth, with manic panic-ed spiked hair and a small backpack. I basically got demo’d as a crazy person. Whatta weekend.

Don't be skirred of some little ole ovaries.

My mom was held up by gunpoint in a dark parking lot in the nation’s Murder Capital, but refused to give up her purse. My dad worked on the Joint Terrorist Task Force and wore his piece strapped to his leg. But genetics played a mean, cruel joke on me. I’m their child who keeps my car filled with crap so that the Snopes.com strangler doesn’t pop up from my back seat to kill me while driving through *Burbank*.

I think I just grew a pair writing that.

Anyhow, before graduation, Peter wrote in my yearbook, “Remember that one time you were going to shove Cheez Whiz in my mouth, but then I wrote a nice poem about you instead?”

Way keep the guilt going for all of perpetuity, Peter. Eternal sharpie ink that I can’t take to Dr. Tattoff.

"Shove it in your mouth like Pizza the Hut!"- Sarah Wise, 18yrs old

Today I had a victory over what could have been a real rager and I’m almost feeling like an Urban Buddha.

As I was driving along San Fernando in Burbank, where all the little shops are (well, Urban Outfitters), there was a heavy line of traffic going both ways on the two way street.  I drove around the block three times just to make complete, last, for certain, OCD sure that I wouldn’t be getting a spot and that I should just drive on home to Target.  Just as I was about to give up, I saw someone vacating their spot on my side of the road.  It was my space.  My turn. I slowed to a stop and put my blinker on.

Just as the other driver pulled out, a car from the opposite lane, pedal-metaled, swinging right in front of me, taking my space.  I honked, giving a WTF gesture.  I stopped right behind the offender’s car, waiting for her to get out.  She must have sensed I was wanting to smoke her out, because she spent some time “shuffling” crap in her car.  When she did finally get out, I rolled down my window, and calmly called out, “You know what you just did was really wrong.”

She didn’t even make eye contact, dismissing me with, “Whatever, I just pulled around.”

Me:  No, what you just did was wrong, and you know it.

Parking Offender:  (Dismissing me with her hand) Whatever.  Happy Easter.

And then she walked away.  Did she really dismiss me with a “Happy Easter”? As if I was the bad guy acting jerky on a sacred holiday?  That is a double whammy of wrong, and usually would make me want to find a parking spot, find her and really give her the what for face to face. . . because to be honest, sometimes I’m just waiting for a reason to give someone the what for.  Sometimes people are just ASKING for the “what for” special, that only a woman with the voice of a 13 year old and the range of words that include an almost perfect SAT score can deliver.

I eventually found a parking space and wrote her the following note:

“Happy Easter to you too!  Just a thought though, would Jesus really love that dick move you just pulled?”

As I walked up to her car, I changed my mind.  Why perpetuate the negativity? Why give in?  What must it be like to be a jerk like her on a day to day basis?  And wouldn’t I just be acting white person problem “crazy” and like a jerk too?

One victory for my anger management and one life saved in the township of Burbank.  A pretty productive day.

Happy Easter!

The book took great pains (punsies) to make an example of how *especially* holy the saints who experienced stigmata were.  These were the saints that prayed so heavily and so long, that they experienced the bloody sores that Jesus experienced while crucified.  As this was a book for children, it was heavy on illustration, and it did not skimp on the bloody stigmatas.

As an 8 year old I started to truly believe that if I prayed too hard during mass or catechism class, that I too would develop a stigmata.  The idea of having a bloody gash appear out of the blue on my forehead because I thought/prayed too much was traumatizing.  I didn’t mention this to anyone because, I mean, this was completely normal right?  Could happen to anyone.

Although there are still one or two saints that I pray to out of desperation or habit (“St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, please help me find my black Dr. Scholls clogs”), I myself am not a “lapsed” Catholic because of priest molestations or an antiquated papacy who perpetuates barbaric, mental stress (If as a child you ever had to “confess” to an adult man, a stranger, that you had a “bad thought” about a boy in class, you know what torture is.)

I am a lapsed Catholic because if I want a bloody gash on my forehead, I will fucking pound my head against a wall while hulking out about life’s daily stresses, assholes and LA traffic patrol.

P.S.  Happy Easter.  I still love Jesus.

Also, since the two of you who read this now know I won’t be home tonight, DON’T STEAL MY STUFF.

(btw, all are “a collection of vintage rhinestone earrings”) (i think it was because i was like, fuck, i’m not getting married, but i’m going to make one of these for myself: http://www.etsy.com/shop/1amanda?ref=seller_info)

Addendum:  Problem fixed!  Please see pic attached.

Wiki makes being bona fide so easy.

But maybe, at 34, I’m finally finding my voice, just like [insert list of famous stream of consciousness, long winded, gonzo writers here] did at some point. My 13 year old sounding voice, used when a telemarketer calls and I tell them, “My mom isn’t home right now.”

mom:  I know.  Dad and I talk about that all the time.

I would have done anything for him.  It was all I could do not to reach out and stroke the back of his beautiful head while he was talking to our co-workers.  Mitch, why are you such a loveable ass?  Is it your tough guy stance?  Your ways of making people feel good about themselves?  Your way of making me feel like I’m the only one you want to be with? Your voice?  Your eyes?  Your really cool Bruce Springsteen shirt that you bought off of Melrose?

It all started when our production company traveled to Italy for two months to shoot a bachelor-esque dating show. Our desks faced each other, which let me introduce Mitch to my favorite bands and my over the top synopsis’s of our day-to-day life.  We bonded over nutella flavored gelato and negronis.  He talked about his impending divorce and his love for his children.  On my end, I did my best to make him laugh.  I never really talked about my own endless issues or myself.  It might have been the Zoloft, or the proximity of where we sat 16 hrs a day or it might have been just the inherent “ew” inducing amore in the Italian air, but I had fallen hard…for a married man, 10 years older than me.  And I truly believed he had fallen for me.

Which is why it came as such a shock to my system the first Monday we got back to the office.  He was wearing his wedding ring, a sign of fidelity that he did not wear during our drunken days in the Tuscan villa paid for by FOX.

What was earnest love on my part turned into obsession when he became less and less accessible to me.  That’s when I turned into a shady lady.  I wasn’t myself.  I was a naïve girl in love.  I found myself doing the unforgivable. While sitting behind his work computer while he was at lunch one day, I began searching through his web history for clues as to what or who he had been doing.  Invading his privacy not only hurt him, it hurt me a thousand times more.

I sat focused for 45 minutes browsing through his personal internet searches.  He’d gone to something called “stub hub,” a porno site for stubs and their owners.  He had gone to Adultfriendfinder.com, where he was clearly looking for some kind of recreational activity (and yes, I looked at what his handle was, which was a terrible lyric from a terrible Creed song).  He had ordered sex toys of the gynelogical torture sort, off of some site called “For Her Pleasure.”  But worst of all, the thing that was a kick to the gut, the thing that really flipped my mind and sent me into a hole of self pitying doom, was the discovery of his frequent visits to Hannity.com.  I was in love with a jerk off.  A fucking republican jerk off.

As I let this settle in my mind, an IM request popped up on his computer, shaking me out of my stupor. It was from a girl who Mitch had been rumored to be messing around with in the office (this IM just proved it!) I should have  gotten up and walked away right then.  Scot free.  But because I was upset and wanted someone else to be upset, I answered the IM.

Other Girl:  Hey

Me (as Mitch):  Hey

Other Girl:  How are you doing?

Me (as Mitch):  Hey Other Girl!  This is Sarah actually.

Silence

Other Girl: What are you doing on Mitch’s computer?

Me (as me, trying to piss the other girl off):  Oh, we’re just working in here together today lol

Before the conversation could go any further, Mitch came in to see me sitting at his computer.

Mitch: What’s going on?

Me:  Nothing.  I had to use your computer to look something up.  Other Girl just IM’d you.

And with my head held high, I left his office in a huff.  I obviously like to earn the description of “crazy.” That said, there was a little shame and embarrassment on my part for Nancy Drewing.  But not the kind you have if you’re a conservative, Republican who likes Creed.

There’s a cool breeze blowing in Glendale. Our hearts are beating like warriors when Cantey and I dip out of work and head on the 134 toward Laser Zone. When we get there, the pimpled teenaged dude in charge of taking tickets allows us to join a game already in session. Cantey and I get strapped up in gear aged with the sweat of warriors who have gone before. We masterfully choose our guns. The ticket taker tells us before we run in that “there’s a bunch of kids” already in the maze, making Cantey and I a 2 person team of awesomeness on our own. Which is fine because we use short hand when it comes to playing.

Going by the names of Photon and Vortex, we strategize briefly before running into the pitch-black laser tag maze. The electronic music of Daft Punk courses through our veins while we maneuver through the second level of the laser tag maze. As our eyes adjust to the darkness, we begin to see the outline of our opponents and their glow in the dark guns. While Cantey I hide and run, somersaulting like Macguyver in order to miss the shots fired at us, we sadly take notice that our opponents are not into this game at all. And as much as I obnoxiously try to charge up our little nemeses with cries of “that’s not how you play, you PUSSY!” and “Give us a real game, dudes!” and worse yet, when I scream at the one who came up behind me to “keep your hands off, pervert,” they just won’t get pumped enough to shoot back at us. These kids just don’t seem energized, which only eggs Cantey and me on. They aren’t strategizing, they aren’t yelling, they aren’t running and they certainly are not fun to play with.

After Cantey and I totally blow them away, we haughtily walk out to the scoreboard to see how badly we have obliterated our opponents. The kids walk up behind us silently, probably ashamed of their dismal display of athleticism. I turn around and take a look at them for the first time under fluorescent lights. And it registers like a kick in my stomach. These kids are special.

In a very special special way.

I quickly turn to nudge Cantey, but he has already figured it out. We look over at the parents of the kids, who look none too pleased. Our faces red with shame, we scuttle out the front door. In a curbside confessional, Chris and I wrack our brains. Should we go back in and apologize? Should we just bury our shame and leave? Before the question can be answered, the group of kids and their parents walk out of the front doors toward us. Chris and I keep looking at each other, too embarrassed to turn our heads toward them. We do however overhear one of the parents say to their child, “You were just a target in there.” Ugh, Gut punch.

Cantey and I convince each other that the kids had fun while they were playing. We even think that one of them maybe thought that they had won the game. While putting out a craigslist apology or even following the kids’ mini-van to their house in order to say sorry seem like an option, I don’t do anything but get in my Saturn and feel like crap. I haven’t played laser tag lately. I keep to mostly to nerf gun wars at the office, where I know that my opponents deserve to be shot in the face.

One night as I DJ’d the graveyard shift at the station, Carlton the Bounty Hunter, called in to request Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, which he did every week.  Now, whether Carlton was really a bounty hunter or not, I’ll never know. But the nickname seemed fitting. I do know that he was a rather old man who worked “security” for all the rock shows that came through town.  He was always dressed to the nines in Vietnam era fatigues and he carried a stun gun for anyone who got out of line.  His beard was creepily tied together with a rubber band.  Carlton also carried an Ace of Spades card around in his wallet because according to him, he “got it off some Vietcong” during Carlton’s Tour of Duty.  Who was I not to believe him?  He seemed legit.

“You have such a pretty voice,” he drawled in a lonely southern accent, “Next time I see ya, I’m gonna spank ya.”  Even though Carlton seemed harmless, the thought of him spanking me really sketched me out.  My buns were my own and no one touched them.  I felt the dire need to deflect his offer.  “I’m not allowed to be spanked, “ I nervously giggled, “I’m Catholic!”  “Really?”  “Oh yes!  I even dressed as Pope John Paul for a book report once.  I’m really, really Catholic.  Oh so very religious.  I can’t be spanked!”

Carlton wasn’t buying it, “The Pope, you say?”  “Yes!  The Pope.  Uh, when I was in 5^th grade we had to do these book reports and since I am verrrrrry religious and verrrrrry Catholic, I dressed up as the Pope.  I used an upside down KFC bucket on my head and made a cardboard pope mobile to walk around in.  I got an A +”  Why  was  I giving Carlton so many details of my damned story?

Carlton scoffed, “What kind of fucking teacher would let a little girl dress as a grown ass man?”

“Hmmmm…the kind who DOESN’T spank little girls I suppose.”

At first, my waxer was a sweet little woman who spoke in a soft, whispery asian accent.  She put me at ease as I took off my pants and laid bare naked on the strictly clinical waxing table.

Leaned over a crock pot, my waxer used a wooden paint stick to stir the hot, thick, bubbling wax.  It was boiling, and it was about to be plastered all over my nether regions.  That’s when I felt the panic set in. Without a moment’s notice, my overly friendly waxer  began to rip the wax, hair and probably bits of skin from my bathing suit area. Oh fuck.  OMG. What the hell are you doing to me, ladddyyyyyy?

And as I gasped in pain with every tug at my parts, she would whisper soflty into my ear, “Oh baby, you such a good girl.”   Boredom never felt this bad, or violated.

mom: oh sarah, LA isn’t the only place like that. why do you think shows like Oprah exist?

(still tasted good).

the offenders

Going full speed ahead into puperty, around the 1990 mark, left some stains on my psyche. literally. remember hyper color shirts? those super cool, multi-colored cotton tee’s that changed color with heat? wanna cool hand print on your stomach? do it. Want to blow a ring of hot air onto your sleeve? do it. Just whatever you do, don’t get breasts. Don’t get 12 year old breasts. because what will happen, is that those little heat warmers on your chest are going to draw special attention to themselves with hyper color. at this point, who needs the ubiquitous middle school bra snapper? you can see titties from a mile away with these fore-runners of american apparel. oh 90′s fashion and time traveling Dom Charney, you made my face redder than any hyper color shirt I could have bought with my confirmation money.

i’d like to think they’ve been admired by some wonderful lovers of the latin persuasion during my tenure here in LA,  but the ethnic group who has seen them the most is LA’s population of Korean women. and not in a “girls gone wild way”, but in a “korean bath house way.”

for years i had been hearing about the bath houses in korea town.  vague stories about sitting in hot tubs and getting exfoliated from head to toe.  it sounded luxurious, and since i have some disposable income that doesn’t have to go to husband or child, i made an appointment.

hmmm.  how to say awkward in korean?

this spa/bath house located downtown was not so much a spot of luxury but more like a middle school locker room.

first step:  pay your monies up at the front desk and choose what kind of “scrub” you are going to get.  i apparently choose the “please tear my ass off” scrub.

second step:  get completely buck naked in front of a posse of very small korean women with judging eyes.   feel like a gargantuan amazonian, even tho only 5’6″.

third step:  try to keep eyes averted and not stare at the different patterns of pubic hair , as dictated by generation and whether one is single or non-single.

fourth step:  pretend you know what the hell you are doing as you strip off your clothes in the locker room, all the while hoping no one is staring at the cottage cheese marks on your comparably huge bum bum.

After the fourth step, enter the “wet room.”  Inside there are actual troughs on the floor.  naked women sitting on little 99 cent store stools sit at the troughs and scrub their buddy’s  back.  no seaweed wraps or lavender essential oils up in this house.  the scent is clearly chlorine and generic soap.

For those of us who are white and who came without a buddy, we get scrubbed by employees.  little ladies in black bikinis who lay you down on a conveyor belt-like contraption.

So i slide onto my assigned table, and right away I feel as if i am about to be the victim of some torturous doctoral exam.  Instead, i’m drenched gatorade style with a bucket of warm water.  my “scrubber” stands above me in the standard black bikini.  she tells me to get on my stomach.  i sort of dont want to have my back turned towards this woman, for fear of what she could do to me but i do it anyway because i don’t want to seem rude.  i’m white and invading korean turf.  within seconds i feel the scrub of the brush.  this woman has no shame when it comes to contorting my limbs so she can get to actual hard to reach spots.

what’s left of my american dignity and prudishness literally gets scrubbed away as I accept this hell upon my body.  again and again and again and again.

this would keep them from getting accidental calls at 3:30am while they are holed up in meditation at a hindu ashram in India.

just sayin’.

In the Spring of 1996, I was a sophomore at Florida State.  I owned a pair of doc martins and I often dyed my hair an unnatural shade of auburn.  I listened to a lot of Pavement and Sebadoh.  I shopped at a smelly place called Thriftko and  volunteered at the college radio station in the “public relations” department.  I was a wannabe alterna-grrl, but I looked more like Ginger Spice .

I took it upon myself that Spring Break to visit my grandparents in Ohio.  I also took it upon myself to “borrow” my dad’s jacket from 1960′s era vietnam.  The only way to describe this denim concoction was “bad ass.”  I’m pretty sure I looked awesome in it.  Sadly, I didn’t have that much time to get used to wearing it.

On the way from Florida to Ohio, I had a layover somewhere (chicago, maybe?) that required taking a puddle jumper into Columbus.  A tiny little puddle jumper with no bathrooms and no AC.  Half way through I was feeling…not that good.  The weather had turned stormy, and the little plane was getting more and more rocky.

Knowing that nothing good was about to come of this ride, frantically I started feeling through the seat back in front of me.  It was too late though.  I felt the vomit come up into my throat with every jerk of the plane.  One jerk, two jerk, the third jerk:  the charm.  Without a barf bag, I improvised with my dad’s amazing jacket.  I’m not talking about a little bit of vomit, not a lady like amount.  I’m talking about pure unbridled projectile.

My “riot grrl” guts spilled into the jacket over and over again.  Some older man tried to help me by offering a barf bag, but it there was no turning back. I could only shake my head “no” at him. I had a coat full of barf and I had no idea what to do with it.

So, trying to be polite as possible, I gathered up my vomit pile and walked off the plane with it amid the crew’s smiles and bubbly farewells of, “Have a nice day!”

A few weeks ago, I finally visited New York City for the first time ever.  I was totally excited for steaming sewage, east village punks and lady liberty.  An event that started off the week made it all the more spectacular.  On my first ever NYC cab ride from JFK to TOm and Kelly’s, I met an amazing, knowledgable and sensitive cabbie named Edward (hailing all the way from Ghana!)

While I sat wide eyed in the backseat, Edward wasted no time in acquainting me with the literal ins and outs of  new york ladies.

Edward:  [In his thick Ghanian accent] I have no luck with women in New York!  The women in New York all about getting LAY.   LAY LAY LAY, it’s all about getting LAY!

Me:  Lay?

Edward:  Yes!  LAY!

Me:  Oh…

Edward:  All the women in New York, their Woman’s Paradises are too LOOSE!, because it’s all about the LAY!…You know what I am talking about?  Woman’s Paradise?

Me:  Yes, I think so…[Racking my mind for a suggestion  on where to meet a nice lady.  Church?]

Edward:  Let me tell you something! [He focuses in on me through his rearview mirror]  People think Ghanians are dirty, but we are not, we are very clean.  Let me tell you something!  Take a lemon and crussssssshhhh it onto  your Woman’s Paradise. [Edward raises his right hand and pantomimes crussssshhhinng a lemon]

Me:  A lemon?

Edward:  Yes, a lemon!  You do that, and it cleans it all out.  ALL OUT!

Me:  Huh…

Edward:  After that, I can go all night…

Me:  Wow…

Edward:  And sugar!  Sugar is bad for woman’s paradise!  If I even see a woman eating an ice cream cone, I don’t go near her!

I’m not really sure how the ride ended, but now that i am back in LA, my Woman’s Paradise smells like Pledge seven days out of the week.

And yes, Edward can go all night!