The big purge

If anybody wants some schlumpy, formless summer clothes in natural-fiber fabrics, please inquire. A large box of them is currently sitting outside my door, waiting for it to stop raining so I can put them on the street. I've stopped dressing that way. One of my college friends once mentioned that nobody back then knew what kind of a figure I had. Well, it was better than I thought it was, better than it is now, but is not yet so far gone that I need to hold onto these clothes. If I get pregnant in the next couple of years I may regret it, but I don't think so.

In addition to purging my closet, I got a haircut just slightly like Heather Locklear's. I have not let a hairdresser layer my hair since I was about ten, because it is so very very straight that layers just lie there, balefully refusing to pouf out in the slightest. But the girl who did it this time had a nice haircut herself, and a French accent, and I was at an emotional disadvantage in more than one way. "Little sheggy layeurs," she said, pawing my head disdainfully. I decided what the heck, if it looks horrible I can always go back to the chin-length blunt cut, staple of uptight classy girls, no-maintenance and boring.

The French chick actually did a good job. I think I look sexy. It doesn't feel "layered" at all, just like there's more hair there, and my face doesn't look so horsy. I can slap it into a French twist and little tendrils hang down artfully at different levels. I considered getting the "light irridescent blond" color kit at Pathmark and a set of rollers, so that I could manufacture a gigantic golden mop like Kate Hudson's, but decided to hold off. I'm bleaching it slowly and cheaply with medicinal peroxide instead.

Of course, the day after I purge my closet, pack up all the winter clothes and winter blankets, the weather gets chilly again. I have the windows open and it's almost uncomfortable. I wanted to bike to Pearl Paint and pick up some tubes of white (NEVER buy white paint in a jar, it dries up on all the exposed surfaces and gets nasty and lumpy) but more rain is in the forecast. I may do it anyway.

Working for BWAC was mildly frustrating. Like with most collective organizations, management is erratic. We sat around for an hour before anyone gave us a task, and then had to pack up about fifty paintings for shipping, with inadequate packing material. This should have been done already, since we were the "site-prep" crew; the girl working with me complained all day about the lack of organization, and how last year was different, there was coffee and donuts and pizza, and paint and spackle all laid out, and she just spackled and rollered without talking to anyone and went home. I would have liked to talk to more people, since networking is one of the major reasons I joined BWAC, but I was missing C. a whole lot that day and did not have sufficient energy surplus for gregariousness. So I wrapped and taped and said "mmmmm" for eight hours and went home.

The BWAC girl reminded me somewhat of a friend of mine who came to visit me in Mexico, and complained for the entire three weeks of her stay. After about ten days of it I let her know that respectfully, she was driving me crazy, and she didn't get it. I realized that ritualized complaining is the only way some people know how to interact. The underlying assumption, as near as I can figure, is that things SHOULD be a certain way, it's somebody else's stupid FAULT if they're not that way, there's nothing that can be done about it, and nothing more to be learned from the situation. This strikes me as utterly pointless. If you start from the assumption that there is a reason for everything, no matter how desperate and stupid it may appear, the world becomes a much more interesting and exciting place. It becomes a dynamic mystery novel and four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle suspended all around you, daring you to assemble it. Once you do, of course, it changes completely and you get to do it again, and again, and again.

It occurs to me that this underlying assumption of mine, that everything happens for a meaningful reason, may have been one of the factors contributing to the explosion of my friendship with L. I made a few innocent, wondering comments like "Isn't it funny that you're meeting all these guys named Mark who aren't calling" and she abruptly disintegrated into hostile paranoia. "I don't think it's FUNNY," she said, and proceeded to accuse me of taking "subtle pot-shots" at her. Which could not have been further from my mind. It WAS funny. Why were they all named Mark? What does "Mark" mean. He's the mark, a marked man, on the mark, marked out? Was she missing the mark? Speculations were open-ended, and had nothing at all to do with her attractiveness or call-worthiness, which I took as given.

But in her mind, I had suddenly become a jealous bitch who was sniggering at her romantic failures, and nothing I could say or do would convince her otherwise. Oh well. Actually I dreamed about her last night. We were both applying for a waitress job, sitting at a table drinking Coke and waiting for the manager, who looked a lot like Jim Carrey. Nobody came over for an hour, and we couldn't even attract anyone's attention to pay for our Cokes. She said something self-righteous, and I said, "you're the one who destroyed a friendship for something trivial in your head." She went over to say goodbye, and I realized she'd already worked a five-hour shift with them. I decided that waiting tables was the last thing I needed to be doing at the moment, and left.