Don't Mince Words

“Wow, you don’t look 38. Maybe 31, but not 38. I’m 30 in August, so we’ll look the same age.”

The bad angel on my left shoulder said, “Congratulations. You won. Now shut up and take your clothes off.”

When I lived in New York, I encountered the best panhandlers the world has to offer. Now that I’ve been in LA a while, I have to say, I’m not impressed.

NY bums have an angle and they understand marketing, no matter their mental faculties. I’ll toss money at a mother carrying a baby if her story is “I have AIDS.” Subway panhandlers will play you a tune on their mobile Casio or beatbox for change. Everyone in NY works hard for the money. I always gave when the talent was good or when the story seemed genuine.

Yesterday I had to run into the drug store for my blessed multipack of tampons. It was a ‘get out of the way before the dam breaks’ kind of day….and a NY don’t-fuck-with-me day. But it was 80 degrees and sunny with a breeze, so that took the edge off.

Until….

Some 40-something guy with nappy-ass hair and below the hip baggy jeans saw me parking at the drug store. He moved from the median strip and began to approach me.

“Hey, New York, you think you can spare some change,” he said, obviously literate enough to understand my “I love NY” bumper sticker. He picked the wrong woman on the wrong day to hit up for anything.

“That’s the best you can fucking do? Can you spare some change? Come on, you gotta have a better story than that in order for me to help your ass out,” I replied.

Fuck. My inner child went verbal again. I turned, went into the drug store, knowing my tires would be slashed when I came out. I was probably the first honest cracker he had encountered all day.

I pulled my primary purchase off the shelf, tossed it in the basket, and stalled for time in the store in order to give Mr. Some Change time to move to another area of the parking lot.

When I left the store, I noticed that he must of come in behind me and made a quick purchase. He had Windex and paper towels and he was asking people if he could clean their windows.

It was a very 80s Time Square angle, but at least I taught him something. Homie got a game plan.

You know you are getting old when you go to Tijuana for drugs, not tequila. Today was my first trip to Tijuana and it was a drug run. No pictures with donkeys, ponchos, and sombreros. My friend was on a mission to lower her Rx costs. I was along for the ride, and possibly shopping.

You know you are getting old when you pass up Vicodin and Paxil and go straight for the 30 gram tube of Retin-A. For $5, I had to get it, just like the $4 liters of pure vanilla. I crossed back over the border half hoping to get searched. “But Mr. Customs Officer, I need to maintain my baby smooth skin and bake cookies,” I would of said.

You know, next time I think I’ll work my way up to Tylenol 3.

Is it wrong for me to give an eight year-old a quarter and hope he calls me in ten years?

I’ve known sweet Aaron since diapers. We were reunited in Phoenix at Thanksgiving. I chased him around the house yelling, “I’m going to kiss you. Give Aunt Marna some hot loving.” He squealed with equal amounts of excitement and disgust.

When his deadbeat dad didn’t find the time to help him with a homework project, who did he call for help? Cool Aunt Marna. I was asked to assist with his Flat Stanley assignment. His Stanley drawing was coming to LA to visit and Aaron was going to use the pictures I took to write a story.

I went from Pasadena to Hollywood and finished at the beach, snapping pictures of Stanley enjoying LA. I don’t remember homework ever being this fun.

Thanks, Aaron, for thinking of me. Yesterday, a man 30 years older than you decided he didn’t want me. Today, you did and you thanked me. What a difference a day makes.

Don’t forget to call me in 10 years.

Are men the reason there are lesbians? I’m beginning to believe it. Today I had one of those “what just happened here” moments where I shook my head. Did I miss something? For the first time in my life I got dumped by email – a true method for calibrating ball size.

I’m realistic and I know when things aren’t working in a relationship. This one came from out of no where. The “man” I was dating, who I thought was emotionally evolved, told me, “The feelings that I thought were there, I’m realizing were not a reality and I do not have the feeling that I want to persue [sic] this any longer. It’s not anything that you have done.”

I’ll spare you the details, but what kind of person says the things he said to me… things that require feelings… and then, poof, the feelings are gone and it was never a reality? Was he blowing smoke up my ass telling me things he thought I wanted to hear just to get laid (the old “I did it all for the nookie” alibi)?

He obviously didn’t know me very well. He could of foregone the “you are the type of girl I could fall in love with” and “you are everything I every wanted” and still gotten laid.

Fucking idiot.

I’ve never encountered such insincerity–I have never ‘thought’ I had feelings that I ‘didn’t', I don’t even understand what that means. I have to keep telling myself I’m in LA – land of the insecure and the narcissistic.

I’m not going to change. I’ll continue to be honest and trusting and let the cards fall where they will. One day I’ll met a guy with balls big enough to know his feelings and not be scared of them. Until then, I’ll be envious of my happy, lesbian friends.