Sandwich

Scuttlebutt and I had just gone to Target, where she’d bought a vacuum cleaner. She’s nesting right now: around the same time I was breaking up with my boyfriend, she was moving in with hers. For most of the five years I’ve known Scuttlebutt, she’s been my incredibly single friend, always reliable for some drama at a party involving, like, making out with some dude in the bathroom or on the roof or being peeved because some dude made out with some other girl instead of her in the bathroom or on the roof. She was also the kind of friend who could be subtly — almost subconciously — deployed as a researcher when someone incredibly not-single (like, uh, me) was curious to know what a male mutual acquaintance would be like in bed. She really never failed in this regard, and some of her findings were extremely amazing.

Anyway, we were walking across Flatbush and she was sort of clucking and mother-henning me about a recent mistake (maybe not a mistake? probably a mistake) I’d made. “Never say you’re not going to have sex with them and then weaken. It doesn’t matter about having some bullshit third-date rule or not — you should do what you want when you want to do it. But if you do have some rule for yourself, that’s fine. Just don’t, like, tell them about it, and then break your own rule! You need to at least seem like you’re in control,” she scolded.

“That’s what I’m bad at, the seeming,” I told her. She gave me a long stare. “This is such a weird role reversal,” she finally said, and smiled.

It’s true: I’ve spent years hearing about her indiscretions and doling out advice that I was probably pulling out of my ass/some magazine I’d read/some feminist book, and she has spent years listening and then not following my advice.

Anyway, I headed up Atlantic and she headed towards the subway back to Greenpoint. Probably she was going to cook a delicious meal in her big new kitchen with the beautiful glass-doored cupboards. Walking home, I realized I had no desire to order takeout, nothing in the fridge except a Brita filter, a thing of soymilk, and a container of grated Parmesan, and no energy to cook anything real. So I stopped at the inexplicably crap-ish health food store and bought the ingredients for a sandwich.

White bread that is organic so, you know, it’s not SO bad. Sometimes whole wheat bread is just too depressing

Those presliced Applegate Farms cheese slices (cheddar, pepper jack)

sprouts

safflower mayonnaise (Hellman’s is better but: health food store)

avocado

dijon mustard

Combine into sandwich. Eat alone while typing.

 

Bacon

Today a schizophrenic homeless man almost punched me in the face. Earlier, I waited half an hour for the bus.  Earlier still, I waited half an hour for a car service guy who’d said he’d be there “in five.”

Oh, and I had a shrill conversation with my ex-boyfriend William, who is holding my digital camera hostage because he can’t find the cord that would enable him to download the pix he’s taken with it onto his computer.  “Have you tried looking for it?” I finally said, after weeks of politely asking to have it back.  “You don’t need to get upset!” he told me, incorrectly.

Also, I found out my cat — my fucking CAT– has a urinary tract infection, and I paid $50 for his antibiotics, plus $20 for the (tardy!) car that took me to the vet, arriving exactly one minute before they closed.

Oh, right, and!  I got screamed at on the phone at 9:00 by someone I’d written about for work, some I’d previously admired!  And then, half an hour later, I got an identical incoherent lecture from that person’s publicist.

On top of it all, a few days ago the Internet decided to cough up a clip of something vaguely humiliating I did a few months ago, instigating another barrage of hatemail and creepy fanmail (ex: “You stoopid cunt” “Fuck Jimmy Kimmel, yr hot! Lol”) in my inbox.  I can’t even read this shit anymore.  I can’t believe I used to be fascinated by it.  I guess I used to care a lot more what idiots and assholes thought of me.

I still care a bit, of course.

So, all in all, a la Alexander, it was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, made doubly so because I’m very, very tired.  But the reason I’m still smiling right now is that the reason I’m so tired is … well.

Ahem. Like I said, I’m not good at writing about sex, or maybe no one is.  But the way I feel about last night is the way I felt about bacon after I started eating meat again after 1o years of vegetarianism.  Which was: I wanted everyone to understand how important, how absolutely essential bacon is.  I wanted to tell people about bacon.  I actually did tell people, several times.  “Have you had bacon? It’s like a potato chip made out of meat!”  Bacon.  Man, bacon is delicious!