The Frenemy.

I think you’re a pretty good lookin’ lady. There. I said it.

I think you’re a such a good lookin’ lady, but baby, I don’t like you only for your body. Don’t worry, your body is slammin and all but you’re pretty nice too. I like you for your MIND. You got some funny things tumbling around in there.

In fact, I think you are so all around great that I want you to go home and…treat yourself. By yourself. You know what I’m talkin’ bout. I’m talkin’ about good down home loving. I’m talkin Ludacris and Lil’ Kim but you are both Ludacris and Lil’ Kim in this situation. I’m talkin’ when a lady loves herself very much, she wants to use her fingers and write herself a sonnet.

Don’t blush! We all do it from time to time, except I don’t want it to be in the furious “all I’m wearing is my flannel pajamas and my head is buried in this pillowcase and I’m trying to think of something sexy but oh god, time is running out why is this taking so long? DO I NOT WORK ANYMORE?” Give yourself some respect. There is no shame in this! Make it a mother fucking occasion!

Tonight, put some candles up in this bitch. Maybe one, because God knows when there is more than one candle in a love making scene I expect the whole place to burst into flames and engulf you in your bed. Put some mood music on, but don’t overdo it with the Boyz II Men. Maybe keep it at one Boyz II Men song and then put something on the playlist to switch it up. Man in the Mirror.  Party in the USA because damn it, you’re touching yourself and you’re an AMERICAN. Dance a little. Oh, that looks weird. Don’t dance, now that I think about it.

Start slow. Build the anticipation. First, go get yourself a sandwich. A big, melty, gooey sandwich and eat it in your kitchen and cock your eyebrows at the television and lick your lips slowly and ooops…did you just get a little sauce on your collarbone? Oh, baby. You get that sauce off you. Don’t use a napkin. Use your fingers. Nobody’s watching. Lick the plate of its cheese like Kim Kardashian in those hamburger commercials. I’m sorry. Don’t think about Kim. It’s just you and you, sugar pie. Drink a glass of wine till you get an nice sexy haze of fermented grapes in your stomach. Cross and uncross your legs while drinking the wine and giggle: “oh this? This is just some ole three dollar 2011. 2011 was a good year for Shiraz. Hey! My eyes are up here…but you can keep on lookin’.” Be playful. Be flirty! Make yourself laugh, but that kind of tinkly laugh that sounds like fairies having consensual, loving intercourse.

Drop something by a mirror. Bend over and pick up the thing by the mirror very slowly and look at yourself from behind. Oops! I didn’t mean to do that! Giggle. Bend over again. Bend and snap, but LOL that reference is dumb now.

Sit on the couch and tersely watch an episode of a show you’ve already seen. You’re distracted, though. You can’t finish it, thirty minutes with commercial interruptions of diet pills and depression pills and 5-hour energy is too much. You know what’s coming. Do you…do you want to go to the bedroom? Don’t just go to the bedroom. Retire to the bedroom. 

If you don’t want to do the whole rose petals thing, just scatter kettle chips all over the bed. Eat the kettle chips off the bed without using your hands. Then, slip into something more comfortable. A giant t-shirt from your summer camp. A 14 dollar H&M dress. Hanes Comfort Fit. Whatever works, because you’re only trying to impress yourself. I often wear a bird mask and a large cape I bought in a Halloween store. Kiss your own hand. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the first time I laid eyes on you.” 

Now you must spend the next 36 hours impressing yourself. Lock yourself in a room. Don’t eat or drink water until you actually hallucinate Michael Fassbender/That Kid From Shameless/Vampire Diairies dude/Guy who works at bar/Jennifer Lawrence in the bed with you. They are eating a bouquet of flowers. They are covered in a thin sheen of chocolate. Float up to the sky. Set your bed on fire. Do stuff that nobody’s ever done before and tell yourself “nobody’s ever done that before.” Take a summer vacation in your genitals- take a mother fucking Sandals vacation with the running around and the having the time of your life, but in your own naughty parts. Not naughty! They should be called “Precious Moments parts.” Summon Ra, the Sun God. Scream “more” in 36 different languages. Learn bird calls. Break a mirror, turn off your phone! 

Now, eat through all your pillows. Waken a sleeping giant whom you know have to fight to the death! You’re losing! Hark! A SWORD! Battle him with that dirty sword, and make love to yourself on your victory. Throw gold coins into the sky. You’re making love in this club, in this club, in this club! You’re in the Room of Requirement! You’re the new Spiderman! Discover that you have entered thirteen other dimensions through a pit in your floor. Explore them all. 

Dirty talk! Say stuff like “you’re such an animal” or “I’m covered entirely in mud and I need to be cleaned off.” Have your room become a palace of animalistic lovemaking. Discover body parts you didn’t know you had. “Where’d this arm come from?” you think.  Caress this newly discovered arm till it can take no more and falls off, never to be seen again. Blast Pitbull till your building collapses and you are having sex in the rubble of it.

When it’s all said and done, lay there and hold yourself. You’re such a nice girl. Maybe you’ll call yourself sometime. I don’t know, though. Things get complicated. I’m going to be busy with work for a while..and well, I already made plans this weekend. Tersely put your number into your phone, and wait two days before you text yourself a smiley face. Don’t respond to that smiley face until Saturday when you’re drunk. “If you only knew what I’d do to you if you were here.” 

That’s right, go ahead, touch yourself. You deserve it.

Then, when there’s a real person in your bed, and there is no Sun Gods or pits of dimensions in the floor of your room, you can smile at them and say

“You were good, but you’ll just never be as good as the last one.” 

Mean it.

What I Do:

• curl up in a ball on my bed like a feral cat that has just found its way into a human bed so it feels the need to roll around on it and scratch at the pillows because who gives a fuck, it has claws
• never leave the comfortable cave that is my bed, my bed is my cave and my special place and my Sabrina The Teenaged Witch Other Realm, leave me alone
• eat all the things and the progression of all of those things, like the cycle of life, begins and ends with cheese that is gooey
• guzzle whiskey like I am a baby who is also a gas-guzzling car
• listen to sad or loud music and stare off into the distance, and if a photographer took a picture of it he would be like “whoa that is so profound this is my greatest art”
• G-chat at least three friends with various expletives like “fuck” if I’m being creative
• endlessly stare at the Internet as a portal
• silently but poignantly curse the world whilst feeling great despair even though come on, it’s not like my problems are huge

What I’d LIKE To Do: 

• walk around the streets like “YO you wanna fight” and successfully punch buildings into oblivion, because I’ve just been granted the most powers in the world
• furiously work out SO HARD in the span of twenty minutes that I become sort of a really sexy Hulk that looks great in a maxi-dress because I’m not THAT green
• be able to translate my bad mood into the most beautiful of words, and all those will love me and despair, and be in awe of all those words
• be able to Christmas Carol see my way into a time where I am so happy and giving fuck-alls to everybody because I’m drinking lemonade
• have people bring me lots of food to my bed and bow down to me and only care specifically about my mood
• feel something good, like look at a ladybug on a flower and be like “oh this metaphor makes me happy” or some shit
• control the rain like Storm in X-Men, but without the white hair because I don’t think I’d look good platinum
• make Adele write a really good song about my bad mood, which is something along the lines of (NOT THAT I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT): This song is about poignant sadness/Suck it everybody/Suck it everybody and die (But it’s sang really pretty and stuff)
• gain the ability to murder and then bring them immediately back alive when I realize the grave consequences of my actions
• discover my sink produces nothing but queso  
• be able to call Adam Scott and be like “oh this day is shit” and he would be able to text me back because we’re friends and stuff
• relocate to this city that is great and advertises no problems
• change my sheets to puppy cover and it’s just spoiler alert: puppies
• play Oregon Trail and I win and everybody I’m mad at gets some weird Oregon Trail disease and flips over on the river cross and dies
• on another note, punch my 15-year-old self in the face for various reasons, mostly her optimism
• discover 100 dollars on the street because I bet that happens!
• host American Idol and rudely insult everybody on it because I feel angry
• notice that everybody else is as miserable as I am and everybody’s scowling and no children or couples or happy teens are running around doing things that remind me of happiness
• clean my room or do something productive with my life, sometimes I wonder if I have a floor
• have other people pay my bills and do the responsible things while I wallow
• It can’t be THAT hard to burn things with my mind, right? 
• Find out I’m actually in a TV show that is beloved and my plight and words are just reblogged .gifs on Tumblr
• I don’t know, maybe Jason Segel tweets at me or something
• guess what? My bad mood is just an ADVENTURE of the most epic proportions
• learn that I can do an excellent acoustic guitar version of every song in the world, maybe we should all just sing Creep together or something
• lose my temper over something but I am able to say something like ‘YOU LOST THE ACCOUNT!” and the account is millions and bajillions of dollars because I am very “high up there”
• have everybody just feel SO BAD for me constantly
• sit in a quiet theater and watch The Hunger Games without any interruption, which almost sounds like “the impossible dream” at the moment
• meet a precocious child who will teach me something about life
• meet Morgan Freeman who will teach me something about life
• have this amazing realization about life that will make me start living my life almost constantly
• not think at all about my past because oh BORING YAWN that’s NEW
• the world is my sunrise! I feel the calm emotions of this sunrise!
• Oh come on, how could I be in my early 20s and not add TRAVEL somewhere and LOSE MYSELF (not eminem) in Thailand noodles and beaches?
• realize that the ‘tiny violin’ joke is actually just one of utmost sympathy
• be able to comment honestly on Facebook and those people implode
• listen to my friend’s pleas that I should just calm down and open my eyes to the beauty of things or some CRAPSHOOT
• meet the human double-rainbow of awesome
• be able to hop out of bed and let the sunshine in
• REVENGE is a dish best served bloody
• laugh maniacally while thunder claps around me
• have at least 5 good things happen to me because I heard that’s nice
• get over it, huh?

What I WILL Do Now:

• be mad, be pissed, smile, feel hope.
• Tomorrow.

If I counted the amount of times I went without saying how I really felt on my hands, I could simply clasp my hands over my mouth and let the 1,000 other phantom fingers float somewhere in space. 

Funny enough, it goes without saying how much I really don’t really say anything at all. Ever. If you were an outsider (i.e. not my brain or my best friend) you might never see it. I can be really fucking loud, sometimes! I raise my glass and I laugh and I am social and I make jokes and I seem like one of those ‘sassy pants ladies who wears pants never, really, just skirts, but also says what she means.’ My secret is that I don’t. I’ve got a heavy suit of armor in the disguise of an old jacket and and an old knowledge that sometimes people are assholes. Or worse, simply don’t feel the same you feel. You wouldn’t know this, you wouldn’t ever know how hard I bite my tongue. Somewhere along the way, emotions have become weakness to me, for I am the most equipped of islands. Islands don’t sustain themselves on “here’s what it really it is, buddy.” It sustains itself on Lord of the Flies Piggy murder and stuff. And silence, always silence. The truth is, I find emotions to be an annoying burden: if I feel them in my head, why do I have to go the extra mile to express them? Haven’t my emotions ever heard of rejection? Of disagreement? Are they stupid or something? 

The first time I felt rejection was probably when I was a kid, but kids are precarious and obnoxious and don’t let things get to them because they are constantly adorable. I got rejected from school plays. From crushes that I exclaimed on the playground. As I got older, rejection raised its mighty wordish sword in the form of high school: everything sucks and everybody hates you. I battled it to the best of my ability and with braces, of all things. I think I lost the battle somewhere in college (without the dental work), when I was finally tired of what was to be known as “putting myself out there.” I built a comfortable little box of sarcasm and sat myself in it, never to be seen again.

The problem is, we make it seem like expressing ourselves is akin to standing at the edge of the world with no bottom to see. It’s the end of the world. It’s awful, no matter what the outcome. We encourage others to do it so we can test the waters on what it’s like, we are brave with everybody but ourselves. So I began to shut my mouth, and shut it always has stayed. Shut up, mouth! Keep talking, brain! 

I spend a hell of a lot of time with things on the tip of my tongue. The moment where I could let it all fall out lives at the very point of my mouth. It’s caged in my lips, where all of the many wild things are, and it ain’t coming out any time soon, buddy. You don’t need to see how vulnerable I can be, how much I can think about things, or how much I can wish for the plummet to the unknown. I hear it might be nice there. I hear we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take, but we also technically DON’T miss those shots, either, nah mean?

I have stopped setting fires to the things I feel. I go home and I spend hours listening to music and drinking wine and promising myself “next time.” I light the flame and let it extinguish, and this is precisely why we relate these things to fire. Fire burns only for a minute in our minds because we’re not forests and Smoky the Bear don’t need no warnings with it. It’s a god damn sparkler. It goes away unless we keep fanning the flames. I wake up and praise myself for not being brave and there’s something very wrong with that sentence.

I wish I could be real weird with it. I wish I could be stronger skinned about being bolder. But that’s risky- that means fighting the zombie apocalypse and realizing you actually suck at it. That means having to move up and on.

If I say nothing, nothing happens. This used to be a beautiful thing. I have my bed and my laundry piles and my almost. Lately, I’ve begun to hate that. I want to express things and I want to explode. I want to feel extra pain or extra happiness or anything that shows I went for it. I want that badge. I want those consequences that come with it.

Listen, I’m not telling you to do anything, I’m actually asking you for something, today. I’m asking you because I can’t do it by myself because I’m the toughest boot-wearing baby that’s got an iron mask on made of cheap Target lipstick. I’m asking you to open your mouth and scream in the proverbial ‘I’m young’ way on a mountain with me. I’m asking you to tell somebody how you feel, to stand by the sword to rejection and hope that it doesn’t cut your face and your heart and your brains off. I’m asking you to breathe deep and just go for it, no matter how many years you’ve lived on an island without fire. I wanna see the starts of a spark.

I want you to unclasp your mouth because I want to try with you. Let’s see if we can fall head first into something thorny or soft, just to feel the fall.

I bet it’s as awful and as big as we think it might be. 

As a full-time freelance writer and part-time lady, I feel like I am completely qualified to write for Cosmopolitan magazine. For instance, like a human or maybe an intelligent monkey, I can type nonsense into my computer at any given time! Furthermore, like a human with breasts and a sassy hairstyle, I can translate that nonsense into female-centric ragtime! Here are some of the articles I would pitch if given the chance:

• Tomatoes! The SEXY food? Eat a bunch of tomatoes and squirt them all over your face when they are in the off-season months, so they will be mealy and you will be prettier than them. Men will flock to you like wildebeests, ravaging you and licking the tiny squishy seeds off your face. Bonus tip: try them on a salad and watch your girl friends go wild! Wild will be the theme of this article.
• Quiz: Are You TOO Ugly? Questions would include (a) Are you an independent thinker and if you answer yes, that’s the end of the quiz and the magazine will delightfully catch fire.
•  Skirts and Shit! What will be hailed as the most “deserving of an Edward R. Murrow award more than Edward himself” because LOL it’s really Robert Pattinson, this will be a parade of ladies in various skirts that are short. Some of the skirts will be paired with sensible tights. Then ANOTHER skirt will be calf-length, because 1 out of 46 ladies has a job. This will be my article about skirts. 
• It’s Not Love If You Didn’t Meet At A Sports Bar: Alicia Jorgenson thought she had a happy relationship with her partner Jake, a philanthropist who saves baby elephants, until she realized she didn’t meet him at happy hour cocktails with her girLLLZ. Alicia Jorgenson then bludgeons her boyfriend to death and meets Mike, an ex-rugby player who rated her ass “3 out of 4 Bud Lights.”
• Doctors Say WHAT?!??!?! I found this doctor who wrote this book with a title that is probably “It’s Not A Break Up Until He Breaks You Emotionally” and SHE says that if we don’t keep our shoulders visible with the right top, we’ll get a very rare uterus disease. That disease is called SAD UTERUS, and it’s serious, because it makes your uterus cry and keeps Katherine Heigl movies in constant production.
• Sex Position #23564, The K.O. You’ve played Mortal Kombat, right? This is an homage to that game, but you just wrap your legs so tightly around him in the shower (the number two best place to have sex) that he stops breathing and then some guy yells “FINISH HIM” and you chop his head off after he’s found your g-spot. Which reminds me…
• The G-Stop!!!!! You’ll get that little pun after I explain it to you. The G-Stop is a play on words of the illustrious g-spot, which is this thing ladies have when she wears an expensive teddy and marries her boyfriend. It only works 15 times in your entire life, so if you’ve USED it, you eventually lose it. I know, I know, it’s been rumored that if you DON’T use it you lose it, but that’s just a tricksy to expose the harlots.
• Lesbians and How Guys Think They Are Sexy: 37 stories of how you made out with your friend in college and this doesn’t mean anything except one day you will experience a Bridges of Madison County type scenario where a hot old person will come to you house when your hubby’s away and you’ll make love and they’ll leave and it’ll be a WOMAN!
• Taylor Swift’s Makeup: In which I examine Taylor Swift’s makeup and cite various sources about what this means for the potential economic upturn. Trend: what does red lipstick say about health insurance for the unemployed?
• Channing Tatum’s abs: It’s a scratch and sniff picture, and you scratch it and you smell your cat’s litterbox in your bathroom.
• Woman and Stuff: A three sentence column where I say something viable about women’s health/women’s issues, right underneath a giant article about how to make your breasts smell like lavender. Hint: grow lavender and wear it under your breasts all day.
• I’m Jeremy, and I am “Your Man”: In the shocking article of the century, I meet up with everyman Jeremy McCarthy, the guy they are referring to whenever they say “your man” in any Cosmopolitan article. “I’m just a dude,” he says. “I didn’t know this would get so out of hand.”
• Are your friends talking behind your back? The word yes will appear in this article almost 900 times.
• Pictures of Girls Crying: A subtle reminder of what can happen if you put your foot down in a relationship, or do other stuff like wear patterns with a chunky necklace or forget to Google Alert Zac Efron.
• The Final Definitive Answer on How To Be The Sexiest: This title will be on the cover but then all of those pages will be ripped out in every magazine ever and all the girls will explode.
• Dick: AWWWWWWWWWWW YEAHHHHHHHHH
• 4 Things That Freak Men Out Every Time: The article where I reveal that men are in fact just skittish dogs, and so you shouldn’t have thunderstorms or vacuum cleaners or scary strangers around them ever. The fourth thing is loving him TOO much, which is when you accidentally pay attention to him the way you might a friend, like when you invite him out in public.
• But I Am The Way I AM: Laila Johnson is exactly the way she is, and that is why she’s such a boring, idiotic person. 
• Dying Alone. Is it for me? A cute little sunshiney blurb on the art of the 3 lb. weight loss. Tip One: It’s not hard to do ab crunches in a room MADE FOR ONE.
• The MOST Embarrassing Story: This one couple got caught having sex in her parent’s beach house by her parents, and it was so much more mortifying than any story you’ll EVER tell, because her parents are strict Catholics. Therefore, no more embarrassing stories can ever be told again, because this one couple got caught doin’ it in Martha’s Vineyard.
• Got A Crush? Here’s Some Subtle Signs That He Doesn’t Like You: He blinks being the number one reason why he might not like you.
• Shave Your Legs: A cute Raymond Carver-esque “slice of life” piece about shaving your legs.
• Reiterate: The Dick! YEAH! Put that thing all over you!