CONFESSIONS OF AN OVERLY CURIOUS GIRL

One of my co-workers has his vegetables delivred to the office every Wednesday. That amuses me to no end. Even funnier, he orders lettuce. Just lettuce. Every week.

Organic lettuce is funny.

When my parents were still married, they would have a regular Saturday date night. I loved this, because that meant my Aunt Francesca would babysit.

With Aunt Francesca, it meant princess time, long bubble baths, and watching TV in my pink sleeper with white heels (the full body pajamas. My family referred to them as ’sleepers.’). This was, of course, the late 80s and early 90s, so for me, this meant an evening of Saturday night TV, when the networks still cared. My aunt, who was older than my mother by about eight years and still single,  loved the Golden Girls and it’s spin-off. So that’s what we would watch.

I remember lying on the brown carpet with my long, brown, wet hair eating popcorn and divided orange slices on a towel for a ‘picnic,’ as Francesca called them. I thought Sophia was the funniest. She was my favorite.

Today, she has died, three days short of her 85th birthday. She lived a good, long, life, bringing much joy to many. I am grateful to the memories she has passed along to me. Tonight is going to be a long night of Golden Girls reruns.

Being bulimic never made me thin. It only gave me a sense of purpose. I could eat everything I wanted, provided I followed it up with a liter of water and the reverse side of a fork jabbing down my throat. It gave me a sense of control in a world you really can’t control much in.

One of my motivations for doing it was the desire to be thin, obviously. But it also gave me a sense of control. Even if I lacked self-control, I had the ability to take back my indiscretion. If I couldn’t resist that pizza or sweet, no sweat. I could bring it back up. It allowed me to take charge of something, when a lot was out of my hands.

I loved the feelings of a binge. As it unexpectedly came about, the dream of what I would swallow and then un-swallow. What I got to taste. Often it was ice cream. Ice cream was the easiest to regurgetate. Smooth and creamy, it didn’t even hurt on the way back up. Not like real food. Spaghetti was difficult because it came back up in long strings, which, if they didn’t have enough velocity, would get stuck in the throat. Otherwise, it was smooth sailing.

The first time I drank was the first time I was caught. In Italy, when I was 14, I threw up e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Everything. Which was dumb. You’re in Italy, you enjoy the sauce and the pasta and the gelato. It’s what you do in foreign countries, especially Italy where the food is amazing.

That night, I had gelato and felt a familliar need of control mixed with guilt mixed with I NEED TO GET THIS OUT OF MY STOMACH. I had also had my first taste of alcohol: a bellini. A bellini is champagne and peach juice, maybe something else. It seemed like a good Italian way to start my alcoholism (yeah, I’m not an actual alcoholic) and also safe, not too harsh. I also had a Bloody Mary.

I was feeling quite tipsy, downing the drinks in twenty minutes at the bar by our hotel. I walked back to my room, on a warm Mediterranean night. Humid, but pleasant. I went to my room, happy no one was around. I went for it, stretching my middle finger as far as it would go, standing over the white porcelain bidet, soon kneeling on the black and white tiled floor. Up came the familliar vomit, the sour taste comforting and painful. As it came up, the anxiety of a foreign country and homesickness and loneliness went with it. With the purge, I always felt my problems solved. I flushed, stood over the sink and stared at my bloodshot eyes, the whites of my eyes rose red from the pressure. I splashed cool water in my face, toweled myself off. Took a Q-Tip dabbed with makeup remover from my makeup bag to get rid of the mascara stream down my face, and I finally emerged.

What I saw was the girl who I was sharing a room with sitting on the bed. Taken aback, I played it cool. “Hey! What’s up?”

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked. “I heard you throwing up.”

“I wasn’t throwing up,” I told her, with great indignation. Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkk. I CANNOT GET CAUGHT.

“I can’t believe you threw up after two drinks!” she said, giddy.

And I accepted that. It was the perfect cover, and I was able to live another day with my secret.

I am very fortunate to have many close friends. My roommates and Shelly fill the void at school, and most of my good friends from high school remain as such. But Christopher is my absolute, be-all, end-all best friend.

There is never judgement with him. Our brains just connect in a way I never imagined possible. There is an unspoken bond. He is the Will to my Grace, the cheese to my macaroni, the peanut butter to my jelly. He is the only man I have ever loved.

If he were straight, I would have given up years ago and married him at 14. And I don’t know that I want to be married. But for me, I don’t think I could be closer to another man. He is my barometer upon which I judge all other men. If I don’t have the connection (preferably better) that I have with him, there is no reason. Whomever I date will always be inferior if they don’t entirely measure up, because Christopher is my best friend. Christopher is who holds me even when I don’t want him to. He answers the phone if I’m crying and puts up a fight to make me happy. When I’m with him, I have zero concept of time. It all goes into space, passing without notice.

I don’t write about him much. We aren’t a part of each other’s everyday, and haven’t been for awhile. Many zipcodes and time zones have seperated us. But he is the one thing in my life which is always good, always happy, never hateful. Words don’t express my love for him. It’s one of the only times I have nothing to say.

1. I’m not planning on going to graduate school
2. I’m not traveling enough
3. I’m not going to medical school
4. I’m not going to law school
5. Because of 1, 3, and 4, I have crushed his dreams of my ever being a professor, doctor, or lawyer.
6. I own a gigantic inflatable penis
7. My room isn’t clean
8. When he saw me, I had just stepped out of the shower and subsequently looked gross
9. I don’t go to Columbia (or Barnard, or Columbia: Chicago or Columbia: Missouri)
10. My friends’ accomplishments are more impressive than my own (save for my journalistic capabilities and writing for the paper)

My mother’s ex-fiancé, Max, is in town for a few days. Due to my new full-time job, plus my part-time job, I will see him for a total of ten minutes. Before he arrived, I didn’t think I would miss him, or, even cared that he was coming. Turns out, I did.

When he got here, my sister pulled out photo albums. “God, you kids annoyed me!” he said, jokingly, to a photo in which my younger sister, complete with her blonde curls, hung off him. “How would you like to be me raising you two?” Actually, she accused him of bothering us: She had nicknamed him “Bug” in our early years. We laughed and then he pointed at me. “Not you,” he said. “Wow! You were one smart kid.”

I then did the “girl thing,” in which you flip something around and make men squirm. “Were?” I asked. I knew what he meant. But that didn’t mean I liked the implication I had since quit my intelligence since age 8.

He is everything I wish my parents were. Not just my biological father, but also my mother. He’s smart, practical, sensible and funny. If they had gotten married, I would be Ivy League right now. I would have gone to the better school (not to say that Urban, my high school, wasn’t impressive: it was, but it doesn’t have a national reputation); I would have better grades, plus legacy status.

Max is brilliant. He speaks in much hyperbole and much interjection. He is a very positive, energetic person. But the fact of the matter is, he pushes me. As a child, I held my pen the wrong way. I did some weird bear claw, old lady hand thing when I wrote. He refused to allow me to get youth carpal tunnel, and forced me to sit down for hours, practicing my penmanship, until I wrote properly. Frankly, it was borderline child abuse. But he did that, that’s how he worked. He approaches everything with great determination, and he won’t quit until he gets it right. That’s how he forced me to live.

Max sat down with me every night. He quizzed me, helped me with my homework, and when he was there, as my check and balance, I had that determination, persistence, and motivation he radiated. I would be so much further if I pursued everything the way he does. He invested so much into me; I wish I could find some way to pay him back. He didn’t have to do anything he did to help me further my life, and as a result, I owe so much to him.

Weak.

To be perfectly honest, for the longest time, that is what I believed people in relationships to be. Think about it: you’ve conceded that you can’t be alone. You need someone else by your side. I never wanted to NEED that.

Then I wised up. It’s quite the emotion, that love thing. I still, to a degree, believe it’s an admission of defeat, but, at the same time, it could be nice. But here’s the thing. It’s not worth crossing that line unless it’s real. Unless it’s entire.

In the finale of Sex and the City, Carrie breaks up with “the Russian” because he doesn’t give her that. He doesn’t give her what she wants; what she needs.  ”I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t live without each other love.” She is absolutely right in that reasoning; you can’t be with someone unless they are IT for you. Unless they are ridiculous for you, unless you inconvenience yourself, unless you’re consumed with that passion.

That’s my bottom line. I won’t settle. I need that huge, immense passion. Nobody should settle, no matter how comfortable you are, no matter how wonderful anything may be. If you feel that it isn’t THERE, you cannot continue. Not without the ridiculous, not without the inconvenience, not with out the consuming, and especially not without the can’t live without you.

You are not right for an Office spin-off. Your shtick grates me, and I love The Office. Please don’t ruin it. Lauren Graham is a much better fit. Or Kristen Bell. Or Keri Russell. Or, most practically, Rashida Jones. But you tire me. You in a starring role of a sitcom… would be too much. Yeah, you’re talented, but better in sketch comedy. I got sick of you in Baby Mama, stopped watching SNL when you started hosting Weekend Update, and your best qualities are who you associate yourself with: your bestie Tina Fey and your husband, who I have much Arrested Development for. (GOB-love forever!)

Please don’t join the new Office. PLEASE!!

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20212791,00.html

If you would like to read “one,” please e-mail me at overlycuriousgirl@gmail.com and I would be happy to share. It is some of my most honest writing, I’m very proud of it, but unwilling to make it entirely public.

There are places I remember, in my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better, some have gone, and some remain
All these places have their moments, of lovers and friends
I still can recall, some are dead and some are living, in my life, I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compared to you
And these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as someone new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection, for people and things, that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them, in my life, I love you more

The Beatles. ‘Nuff said.