Cell Phone Plans in San Diego – Survival Guide Style

First I’d just like to say my I can feel my blood cells crying inside of me. There is a lot of poison in there. I hadn’t been doing my usual thing Wednesday nights and boy did I just jump right back into old habits last night. I have confusing text messages in my phone from “Poppa Sara.” Everything is still in my wallet that was in my wallet, but it has been thoroughly re-arranged. This morning my mouth tasted like chocolate cake and eyeliner.

Anyway. I need to talk to you about smartphones.

My phone is not very smart. It is a feature phone I bought in 2011 for $99. It has a slide out keyboard. It *can* connect to the internet, but I like to avoid that. Instagram is not even an option, haha, no, why would you even think that?

I got bad olives or a bad roofie in my martini one Goth Night @ the Flame and a phone just like this one went way down into a toilet. I tried to fish it out but there was nothing I could feel except my lost dignity. So I re-ordered it off Amazon. Besides a brief stint with CHINAFONE, which was cool because it had A FREAKING RADIO ANTENNA but not cool because it didn’t send picture messages even though it had a camera wtf… I have been loyal to this phone for the past two years.

Samsung T669 Gravity Touch, your time is coming to an end. I need 4g. I need more than 2 megapixels. I need Facebook in my pocket.

Katelyn needs a new phone as well, because it never seems to work when I need her immediate attention and dammit why doesn’t she ever text me back? Anyway, she went in for the HTC1. The sales rep, who for now I’ll call Mr. Sprint Guy, saw me send a text message on my piece of junk and slyly said, “Actually, we have a Buy One Get One sale on this phone next week.”

I tried very hard to replicate the face I made then but I think I’m a little too hungover. Just imagine this with me making a creepy “heeeeeeeeee?” noise:

I guess I could have just put a picture of Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black.

Mr. Sprint assured us that he’d be able to get me in to their plan, “Oh yeah, I can work you in there,” even though Katelyn and her family are maxed out at 5 lines. With the Katelyn family discount, that would mean $30 a month or less for unlimited high speed data. And a free HTC1 (well at least half off). Sign me up.

Plus like, shiny matching lesbian phones. Adorable!!!

See, I’ve been with T-mobile for years and have never gotten a subsidized upgrade. My parents always stole my device upgrades. Now I’d have to pay full price to change my phone. Or $200 to leave T-mobile. It was $200 I was willing to pay…. or at least try hard to get out of paying. I mean, my reception really, really is terrible.

We went back the next week and the same Mr. Sprint was there again! He grabbed our two HTC1s, a couple of Otterbox cases he said he could price match to Amazon, and started ringing us up. Then things got weird.

Katelyn: “So you can grandfather in Sami to the plan, right?”

Mr. Sprint: “Well, I actually have to change the plan, but it’s really just a change in the name. It’s basically the same thing. It’s hard to explain. I wish I had something to show you.”

Katelyn: “Wait, you’re changing the contract? Can I get a printout to compare?”

Mr. Sprint: “They’re just changing the way things are named and the way the numbers are organized, but it’s basically the same thing. I can’t know the actual numbers until after it’s rung up and the taxes are added.”

Me: “What do you mean by ‘basically’ the same?”

He got a little uneasy because I called him out all cold-blooded like I do. Katelyn repeated her request to see a printout of both her current plan and the new one. He grabbed a pamphlet and showed how her current plan works. He had to clock out to avoid overtime, so he handed us off to a supervisor. She walked us over to a tablet, and showed us a magical webpage that I can’t locate now. Seriously where is that webpage? It was kind of like T-mobile’s pretty webpage, in that you could easily mess around with the plan and see what kind of price it made.

I got on chat today and got the details for you. I lied a little bit. Also I wasn’t as nice as I usually am to customer support because Cathy (not her real fake name) was inept and went on a completely inexplicable tangent and also my liver is made of sadness right now:

Cathy: Thank you for visiting Sprint. What questions can I answer for you today?

You: I’m trying to get to this webpage they showed me in the sprint store that showed us how to have 6 phones on a plan

Cathy: I would be happy to help you with the Sprint services.

You: Thanks, so how do I get to that webpage? I started trying to look at a plan but it only let me add 5 phones

Cathy: Once you submit your personal information during checkout, you will receive a credit evaluation to determine your eligibility for service. There is a page in the order process that will indicate if a deposit is required at this time.

Cathy: If additional information or a deposit is required after you have submitted your order, one of our Order Support Agents will contact you.

You: That is totally not what I want

You: I just want to know what the plan looks like to have 6 phones. Currently I am with T-mobile and I was thinking of switching to sprint if I can have 6 phones

Cathy: Alright.

Cathy: I am going to ask you a few questions to better assist you today.

You: ok

You: See tmoible has a nice and easy to use page here: http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/family.html…

You: I thought you have something like that

Cathy: How many of those lines will be smartphones and basic phones?

You: 6 smart phones

Cathy: How much data would you need for each line? Do you prefer 1GB or unlimited?

You: unlimited

Cathy: Thank you for the information.

Cathy: Based on the information you have provided, the Unlimited, My Way plan will cost just $360 per month, before taxes and fees.

Cathy: On the Unlimited, My Way plans, the first line is $50 a month, the second line is $40 a month, the third line is $30 a month and each additional line (up a total of 10 lines), is $20 a month.

Cathy: Each smartphone will require either a $30 unlimited data package or a 1GB data package for $20 a month.

Cathy: Each line on our Unlimited, My Way plans receives unlimited talk and messaging.

You: Ok, thank you for that information, that is exactly what I needed!

Cathy: My pleasure.

Cathy: Are there any other questions I can help with?

You: That’s it

Cathy: Thank you for visiting http://www.sprint.com.

Ok, have I lost you yet? That was really boring. I apologize. Wait, no I don’t. NEVER SAY SORRY. Never.

The important thing to realize is that $360 is NOT ‘basically’ the same as her current plan. Katelyn left the pamphlet* at work, so I can’t give you exact numbers, but her current plan + $30 a month is more like $180-200 dollars. Um, no. Mr. Sprint your new name is Mr. Scumbag.

You should have seen the look on Ms. Sprint’s face when Katelyn did the math for her, and it sunk in that she had been living in Mr. Scumbag’s fantasy world where a $100+ difference is basically the same. Except the name is different. Right.

We walked out immediately.

Moral of the story, kids, always insist they show you a print-out before they take your credit card. And if anyone has an old smartphone they don’t want I’m in the market…. Not that I couldn’t drop 600 dollars right now for a brand new shiny one but I don’t feel like carrying around 600 dollars in my purse at all times. Ya ya ya I know there is insurance but Anxiety is not a cooperative member of the United States of Sami and insurance doesn’t make the panic go away when it’s two days before Christmas and there’s a hole in my car and… that’s a tale for another day…

All told, it’s not that Sprint is worse than any of the other cell phone companies out there — they’re all about the same when you average out the pros/cons — it’s just important to remember that some salespeople are scummy scummy loserfaces and they don’t care about your feelings. And also if you really want 6 phones on a Sprint plan, stick with the old plan and just add an additional phone on a separate line for $80 cuz you’re still better off that way. So, put on your consumer armor and don’t let the Mr. Scumbags of the universe trick you into giving them lots of your moneys.

*I can add this pamphlet to the interwebs later if anyone would like that. Probably should, as a public service.

Know-it-all Syndrome

Know-it-all Syndrome. You know what I’m talking about. Well, generally, it’s a bit more extreme than what I’ll discuss. “Sufferers” of this disease are known to annoy everyone around them by pretending knowledge on every topic of conversation. What I’m aiming at, however, is more the general adaptation of this habit, where you nod away things that are going over your head. What’s the harm in pretending to know about something you know nothing about? You’ll just Google it later.

Look at this sheep. It is so smug. ‘Cuz it has cooler tastes in music than you.

Recently I promised myself to stop pretending. The idea for this vow grew out of the little brown notebook I carry in my purse. I’d started writing the things people told me, as they spoke to me. I named it my memory augmentation device. (My memory is unreliable enough without the drinking.)

Something started happening. I noticed a twinkle, an edge of excitement in their voices as I wrote. They’d add more, “oh, and look up The Ben Heck Show.” I’d latched on to the idea a long time ago, from some reading, that “observation is sexy” and I realized I could show a little appreciation for someone just by writing these things down in front of them. Look, I’m listening.

This didn’t cure my know-it-all ‘syndrome’ right away. First, I must add that my case is a little unusual. Due to my delusional escapades as an alien princess, a Christian, a heterosexual… my connection to reality is a bit flimsy. I can never be sure just how far off I am when I’m confused about the order of things. Which century was pointillism? Where is the Bay of Pigs? I know the answers, I really do, but pretty much anyone can make me question myself. Hey, they didn’t spend 7 years of their childhood sharing brain-time with an extraterrestrial dignitary. They might be a little more in tune with the real world.

And look, I will never catch up with people who have been paying such close attention to 90s pop-punk that they actually know the name of the lead singer of Blink-182. (Seriously I don’t know and I don’t care.) So, I nod and pretend to know a few things about ‘culture’ and hope the subject changes soon. If a subject is truly boring to me, why slow down the trivia slinging? This I’ll allow, despite the vow. Let the nerds exchange their factoids quickly before they realize they need to educate me.

But, what I’m going to quit doing is going along with something I don’t know just to seem cool… and smart… and stuff. I kind of realized that no, just no, it doesn’t do you any good. People like being experts, they like knowing some esoteric thing about history, or science, or just some band you didn’t know existed. I’m going to let them show off that knowledge to me.

And, really, is there any shame in not knowing everything? In this information age, there is so much to know. Let’s stop trying to stay up on the same trends. Let us meander every which way, collecting data deeply, and share synopses. Let us learn this world collaboratively, and stop believing the loneliness will only go away as soon as we know exactly what our neighbor knows. Ask each other, what do you know? and stop pretending to know it, too.

An opportunity to test this theory came up immediately after I took the vow. Recently, I admitted I didn’t know what the Camino de Santiago was. I’ve been in a long conversation with a pretty pen-pal and I figure she deserves, as much as anyone, the truer me. So I confessed. I added, “Let me know if you find this endearing or you like me less for not memorizing all the same things you have memorized.”

She responded, “Now, I do find it endearing that you didn’t Google The Camino de Santiago. Although when I wrote it, I expected you would.”

What followed, in her own voice, not Wikipedia’s, is a personalized and very real description of the Way of St. James. I read it, twice.

A conversation with my brother

It’s 11:59pm. I miss a phone call.

“Oh it’s Zach, it’s only Zach,” I say loudly and facetiously to my lovers.

I call my brother immediately.

“Zach, you there?”

“Hey, hi, I just wanted to like talk or something,” the drawl in his voice is permanent so I can’t know if he’s drunk, just affectionate, or both.

“For sure, what’s up?”

“You like at a party or something? You busy?”

I explain that I’m not. Loosely. Through a few dropped calls, we establish that he’s lonely and that I’m available to talk.

“It’s just that back home,” he means San Diego, “I’m a God. You know what I’m saying?”

“And you’re a– in Berkeley you’re a puppet.” He’s told me this before, how he’s a character, how he performs. But he adds something new:

“I’m a clown. And everyone laughs at the clown. But the clown cries you know. This is just an allegory. I mean. I’m — a metaphor — I’m using poetry, here.”

“Right, you’ve got a tear painted on your face…” He keeps talking like he doesn’t hear me.

He mentions feeling better than everyone, how maybe he’s a sociopath. “But I have empathy. I love every fucking living thing on this planet.” He’s just surrounded by morons. People who can’t even distinguish a rectangle from a square, or solve a crossword puzzle. He reads The New York Times every day.

“Hey, Sam, can I ask you something? How many people died in the Syrian Wars?”

“Uh,” I guess blindly, “30,000?”

“That’s cute. One hundred ten thousand,” he says.

“See, I don’t know anything. I’ve been asleep.”

“Right, everyone is clueless.”

“I’ve realized lately that I’ve been out of touch with reality for most of my life. Now, I finally fucking care. I want to know everything. All of art history and science. I want to understand things like I’ve never understood them before,” I say. I mean it, too.

When we talk I giggle loudly. It’s good, his voice is good. Other people don’t sound like themselves on the phone, but I just hear my brother in the hot piece of plastic against my ear. He mentions how the Illuminati or maybe the overlord lizard-brains are monitoring our call, trying to intercept it, how he’s been really into conspiracy theories, “But I’m just high, it’s fun to talk about these things. I’m just augmenting my brain chemicals or some shit. Hey Sami, I’m going to drop a bomb on you, k?”

“Okay Zach.”

“You know when you were little, I was like 3–” he’s wrong, he had to have been at least 6, but he remembers things from age 3 so I don’t blame him for thinking it could have been then, “–I overheard you talking about your alien thing, Anastasia.”

“Venastasia.” I correct, and wonder now (and not a moment earlier) what the other people in the room think of my side of the conversation.

“Right. I just think there’s something about us.”

He asks me to lucid dream with him. When we were young our grandmother told us stories of sharing dreams with family far away in Michigan. She told us how our uncle, at 7 years, would touch people in the grocery store, and they would start crying. “Either she’s fucking crazy, and it’s in my genes so whatever,” I imagine his squinty self-deprecating laugh, “or there’s some extra-dimension bullshit going on.”

I have asked myself in the past if I were crazy, and I know the ache and frenetic sadness that comes with that. Even though I hear my brother saying these words, asking me if he’s crazy, I’m not worried. Somehow I’m confident he’ll be fine.

We finish our conversation with these thoughts, “You’re the only person I can really talk to about this, Sam. You know you share more DNA with me than anything else in the world.”

“I think about it every day, Zach.”

“Meet me in your lucid dream, in the café on Mars.”

Theme party ideas for adults

Of course, the first week I miss a scheduled post, 6 people at a party make a point to tell me they enjoy my writing/blog. Did you all work together to guilt trip me? Because it worked. You crazy kids made me a little weepy, d’aww.

Also, I got a slew of nonsensical comments from the interwebs, which the WordPress spam robot completely missed. Probably skipped ’em because they aren’t linking to Christian Loubouton shoes or Gucci handbags. Instead they just link to facebook profiles of attractive people. I’m keeping some of them, because look at this one:

Your website has to be the eltcreonic Swiss army knife for this topic. (from Pocket Cheese)

I don’t know if a bunch of drunks found one of my business cards or I’m just being punished by the blog gremlins.

So, I’ll set aside the part of my Saturday generally reserved to pretending if I lie still in bed I can fall back asleep and my hangover will go away and Katelyn might wake up and I can ask her to bring me a water…and instead I’ll write a make-up post. But don’t ask me to say sorry. Yes, I prioritized getting laid over writing in my blog, and no one can make me apologize for that.

This is what I look like right now.

Choosing a theme for your party

I have been throwing theme parties since I was 7. I would plan for my next birthday just as soon as the last one passed, brainstorming ideas in my journal. I found that two key ingredients made for a notable party — the type of party people talked about for days after — and that was a carefully chosen guest list and, of course, a well-executed theme.

Historical themes included (and feel free to steal them)…

Teeny Tiny Party – Miniature everything. Cupcakes turned upside down and decorated like cakes. Those toothpicks with tiny pinwheels on them. Half-sized gel pens. Mini skirts encouraged. Palm-sized pizzas. Custard cups of “spaghetti” made from angel hair pasta and the littlest hand-rolled meatballs. Even the invitations were itty bitty.

Under the Sea – If you make ocean-themed blue jello cups, don’t put gummy sharks in them. Don’t put gummy anything in them. The sugar gets all sucked out and the gummy engorges with water and you end up with floppy tasteless shark blobs. Actually, this was entertainingly gross. I also made sea-shell pasta and hot dog “octopuses” (slice the hot dog vertically just past the halfway point, and the dangly hot dog “legs” will curl when you boil them).

Image from Taste of Home, click for recipe.

Casino Royale – Invitations in black envelopes included cut-up card confetti and fake money. I made a roulette table out of a lazy Susan and card-stock. Keno board out of a white board and painters tape. Poker table. Poker chips scattered everywhere. A paper-mache golden egg, covered in a thick layer of glitter, contained prizes for the winner with the most counterfeit cash.

Sweet 16 – Candyland. I found a freaking candyland VHS tape + floor game and left it playing downstairs to add to the ambiance. Giant lollipops made out of balloons and cellophane. Smarties necklaces. Decorations and food were strictly pink, orange, and white. Those little sticky white pork buns.

Murder Mystery Dinner – I wanted to throw one regardless and was willing to write my own script, but I lucked out and found a boxed murder mystery at the thrift store. Aw yis, vintage. Each invitee received a wax-sealed manila envelope stuffed with a packet of instructions, including period costume ideas and character breakdowns so they knew in advance how to play their roles. My mom helped me put on a 5 course meal, and each ring of the dinner bell both signified when to bring out the next dish and to advance the game one round. The murderer ended up being a surprise porn star from the film, “Stiff Upper Lip.”

Image from Vintagegameworld.com

I’m a Big Kid Now – For my 18th birthday I encouraged guests to dress up as 5-year-olds. One boy came in a Spiderman costume. Everyone brought baby pictures and we had a guessing contest. Bubbles. Crayons. Finger-painting. At the end of the party, I had a bead-giving ceremony à la YMCA summer camp, where I gave out plastic beads on safety pins to each person in turn, explaining what the color of the bead signified and what each person meant to me. I cried. A lot.

And, of course, with any of those themes you need only add alcohol and they become adult parties. That’s really what I do; throw a kid-worthy party with over-the top decorations and at least one craft activity and/or game, and tack on a BYOB.

The Mashup Formula

I’ve also recently discovered a sort of formula, and that’s the mashup. Take a style (such as a genre or pop culture meme) and mash it with a type of event or holiday. And then throw it on your birthday because, yes, you can have Halloween in February (Sami says it’s OK). I did “Ravemas,” which was actually kind of temporally relevant because my birthday is two days after Christmas.

Rave + Christmas = Ravemas:
Fishnets, glittery Santa Hats (Claire’s had the best ones), fuzzy leg warmers, antler ears, big black boots
Mistletoe & cuddle puddles
Egg nog and spiked hot chocolate
Twinkle string lights every-the-fuck-where, plus rave-y lights
My friend brought his DJ gear and played a house set
Cookie club kids decorating sesh

Using this formula, I can think up a mint of other themes for ya:

Tim Burton Easter
Death Metal Valentine’s
German-style Wake (for the passing of your 20s). Ziggy zaggy ziggy zaggy. Oi oi oi!
Walking Dead Prom
Office Party Halloween (put on some bunny ears and pretend you’re in the conference room trying to get a sexual harassment suit)
Sci-fi Speed-dating
Dexter Pool Party

Get creative, because no one wants to go to yet another Mad Hatter Tea Party this year.

P.S. If you’re asking why I don’t throw more parties, why don’t you offer to host a location for me?

Local Celebrity Profile: Xanadu Rocketship

Xanadu Rocketship

Lives in: Mission Hills

Favorite Bars: El Dorado, Brass Rail

Favorite part of SD: Hilcrest

Worst experience had at: True North

lovekiller.net | Tumblr | Storeenvy

For my very first local celebrity profile interview, I’m featuring a very close friend and source of my inspiration, Xanadu Rocketship. She speaks intelligently about art in San Diego, last weekend’s Comic Con, and SD subcultures. Listen and enjoy.

P.S. if you wish I had transcribed this, tell me in the comments.

FOMO NO MO’ (How to Cope with a Fear Of Missing Out)

So the strep and its zombie cousin stole 4 weeks of my summer.

I MISSED PRIDE.

I had some serious FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) anxiety that could only be staunched with coping strategies of questionable healthiness. Please benefit from my guide and learn how to conquer your FOMO.

FOMO Coping Strategy #1 — Disparage their fun!

Nope to the festival, I’m not going to pay to let people hock their merch at me, even if their merch has little plastic rainbow flags stuck in it. Last year I did get free stuff. Free TRASH stuff. The only thing I even wanted to see this year was the parade, but ew parking and ew getting up early and ew the sun.

Nightlife? Who wants to pay $20 for a block party that ends at 11?? And how much did Rich’s charge for cover? I heard Brass got up to $30. You know what, people said it wasn’t as fun as last year (even though it only was the most historical year of Pride in my life as an adult so far…) But like three people said it wasn’t as fun.

FOMO Coping Strategy #2 — Your alternate plans are so much cooler/mature/subversive

Yes, I had to stay in, and yes for my health I didn’t want to drink. But wine is just juice. I can have juice. I also invited over a couple of attractive people. Attractive people who recently went through antibiotic regimens like me! We covered the floor with records: Steely Dan, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Undertones, Elvis Costello. Our tastes are so sophisticated. And we got all artistic with some body painting. And we went night swimming. (Because swimming in a pool at night when you are sniffling and coughing is sound decision-making. Thanks, wine juice.)

FOMO Coping Strategy #3 — Escapism

I’m not into minecraft anymore; I’ve just played too much of it and you can only put so many low resolution cubes in your castle before… Oh, heyyyyy there, Minecraft. On a new server. With my brother. You build the farm. I’m going to go chop some wood. Let’s put the mine shaft outside the main house instead of underneath it, this time. Holy what happened to 4 hours?

FOMO Coping Strategy #4 — That-fun-thing-you’re-missing actually would have killed you. Obviously.

We all know that the Zombie Strep is activated by heat and debauchery and I’m sooo glad not to spend a boatload of money to 1) get sunburned at the parade and 2) get drunk in a pit of attractive queer women who want to make out with me. Do you realize how many strains of new and exotic viruses are flying in from around the country, world even? No thank you, spawn of swine flu.

FOMO Coping Strategy #5 — You are going to have way more fun! IN THE FUTURE. It will just blow away all the fun you used to think was so important, haha, silly you

Other cities have pride, and on weekends that don’t coincide with the nastiest string of sicknesses I’ve had since I was too fever-delusional to watch anything with more emotional intensity than South Park. Palm Springs Pride, woo here I come! Palm trees! Warm weather! Drinking! Everything I would have got in San Diego but not in San Diego……..Oh, heck yes, Palm Springs night…life…?

Anyway.

How are y’all nerds coping with your SD Comic Con FOMO? I’m using my family reunion as an excuse to dip town, as well as strident self-affirmations that I don’t care about Comic Con because I suck at geekitude anyway and it’s not like all my friends are going (all my friends are going).

Unrelated Life Update

Hey you. I’m going to do Novel November. Exciting! By the end of that month, I’ll crank out a swanky first draft of a book I’ve been prepping since last year. I’m sort of anti-procrastinating by doing some of the legwork right now. Feels like I’m breaking the rules. I love breaking rules.

One of the most important steps to successful novel-ing is developing your “Elevator Speech,” which starts with an intro/summary that you can say in one breath. To some schmuck in an elevator. Who you found out is a publisher/agent/millionaire/popular-kid. And you need them to like you. And you have 1 minute of juicy trapped-together-in-elevator time. Go.

Through conversations with her father, a daughter discovers the ghost of her dead brother inside her childhood alter ego as an alien princess.

Maybe sort of interesting, ya? Let me clarify. I’m writing a book that is a true story. Nonfiction. About me.

Through conversations with my father, I discover the ghost of my dead brother inside my childhood alter ego as an alien princess.

So, it is really important that I get honest reactions to these scripts. Please respond privately in the box below, or with your real face on the facebooks.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Your reaction can be one word. Even if you just type “WTF?” into the box, it will give me some idea of how the world feels about my story. Be as critical as you want. I haven’t even started writing the book yet. Maybe I’ll write a book about belly button lint instead. Anything can happen at this point.

Thank y’all <3

Sick of Partying, Pt. 2

The z-pack should be called the zzz-pack. I can barely stay awake, and when I do manage, I’m confused and vaguely nauseous. (Or, currently, really nauseous.) I’m back on antibiotics, and the strong stuff, because I seem to have relapsed. The strep is back from the dead. Zombie strep.

Zombie strep is re-animated by heat and debauchery. I have the sun/rugburns to prove it.

Naturally, after two weeks of staying in and minding my health, I poured a little liquor on my wilting party monster. It scrapped up and bared a smile of disorganized, razor teeth. More? We drank Jameson that wasn’t Jameson (I’m a little concerned no one would tell me what it was in that bottle), lost a game of darts, avoided the hot tub (!), lost our white rabbit ears… Party monster started to feel alive again.

Then, after 1 hour of sleep, on Sunday, I co-hosted The World’s Worst Yard Sale. When the other host switched from Saturday, I knew we’d miss out on all of the churchgoer traffic. Since I dislike most churchgoers, I thought we might get a more interesting crowd. True, when we did have ‘customers’ they were ‘interesting.’ A woman who said she just got out of a 20-year coma grabbed a chair between us and told a slew of cow jokes:

What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground beef.
What do you call a cow with one leg? Steak.
What do you call a cow with two legs? Lean beef.
What do you call a cow with three legs? Tri-tip.
What do you call a cow who just gave birth? Decaffeinated.

There were more, but, as if she wanted to make up for a quarter-of-a-lifetime of silence, she spoke too quickly for me to catch them all. Her brother bought an Masaru Emoto book and they left.

Then we mostly sat, drank beer, and overheated. Beer helped. Beer helped a lot, but it did not make me invulnerable to the rage of the sun. No one, by the way, ever tells you to put sunscreen on your feet. They started burning first, and as the sun crept under the shade of the garage door, my sleep-deprived effort to slap on sunscreen revealed itself in red patches on the inside of my upper arms, weird lines on my thighs, and the tops of my knees. I crawled off with my 5 bucks (I think we made $20 all together) and slept in feverish discomfort. Literally feverish, probably, but I didn’t know to suck on a thermometer at this point.

When I woke up Monday morning with a sore throat, I opted to work from home. By 2:30 I signed off. (I started work at 11. I didn’t make it 4 hours.) I tried to ignore my building fear. I peered down my nose at the numbers growing on the digital display. First reading: 100.9. No. Not. This. Again.

Look guys, weathered wood. This could be an Etsy listing.

Desperate, I allowed a doctor’s appointment at 8:30am the next day even though that is an hour I meet only in the stupidest of circumstances, like a yard sale on a Sunday morning. Because I fear known enemies more than novel experiences, my inner hypochondriac started to bargain for something more exotic than strep. What if it’s Toxic Shock Syndrome? My sunburns became rashes, my next temperature reading confirmed I’d be up to a deadly fever in a few hours. 911, I need an ambulance, I’ll be in the pool trying to lower my temperature… It’s not like I really wanted this, but my fever brain likes to trip on weird scenarios to keep itself entertained.

I eventually maxed out at 101.5 but by then had given up on taking pictures.

But it’s the strep. It’s the goddamned strep all over again. I guess debauchery has its consequences.

Don’t Apologize & Never Say Sorry

I cringe when people apologize to me. Exchanging guilt and forgiveness is one of the most awkward human experiences, in my opinion. When a scared dog is on its back pissing itself, I’m not feeling like the sadistic alpha with all the power. Instead I’m thinking, “Oh, no, jesus, there is urine everywhere.” There’s something insane about the idea that I should barter my shame for an ounce of redemption, when I honestly think most people don’t even want my shame. I mean, they want to hear about it, but they don’t want it specifically vomited in their direction like some sort of unanswerable question.

Think about it. Any time someone has told you in so many words, “I’m sorry, I’m terrible, I’m a worthless person,” you just wanted them to shut up. Are they trying to get you to comfort them? When did you sign up for this? You were so over that thing they did so long ago that you forgot it was even a thing.

At some point in my life, I just stopped saying sorry. Repercussions? Zero. I think people like me better for it. “That lady is kinda mean but I think I like her.” I am a whirling force of fun. Some calamity is inevitable. I make it clear I intend no malice, and the impressions of my misdeeds fall away like fat off a spit-roast. Besides, I pay for most of my sins automatically, foremost in nasty hangovers. And, you know, I get the strep of death.

I really think nobody cares that I almost never apologize. No one is keeping track. Nobody notices what you’re doing, until you do it eleventeen times and they finally realize you are a writer because you like, have a blog…

Guilt feels like a wasteful emotion. I know if I wrong someone bad enough, begging for their forgiveness isn’t going to magically make them happy with me again. If I can’t fix things, or time can’t fix things, or if their achy breaky heart just don’t understand….then they’re kind of a lost cause to me. Feeling guilty is all that’s left and is really my own problem, a problem that I choose to not have.

Just saying sorry is totally different than owning your mistakes. I still do this on the regular. “I totally thought your drink was my drink, and I drank all of it.” You should see the relief on people’s faces when the source of their woe is a real human person and not malicious, drink-stealing mystery gnomes. People only like good mysteries, as in, “Sami is being mysterious, maybe she’s fantasizing about me being naked with her. Maybe she is writing this as a secret message directly to me because she thinks I’m super great. Naked. Great when naked, specifically. Ok maybe in general, also.” People hate bad mysteries, as in, “Is that vomit on the floor, or just rice pudding?” When you can fill people in on the mistake or bad decision that negatively affected them, they are usually relieved that the puzzle is solved. Oh, that’s Susan’s vomit on the floor? Susan better clean that up.

Or, of course, there’s the scenario when you know somebody is guilty and you’re sure they’ll never confess. Suddenly you’re relieved when Susan says, “I did it. I threw up on the floor.” And you had worked out an intricate yet stressful plan to expose her to everyone at the party for the secretive puke monster you assumed her to be…

So, yeah, if I screw up I will do the opposite of try to hide it. Bonus, if I shout my mistakes to the world they are more receptive to my bragging. “I know Sami said she is a badass who orders bacon on her vegetarian sandwiches, but I am more likely to believe it because she also admitted she sucks at Pinterest. Haha, Pinterest is so easy she must ~~be an idiot~~ be a well-rounded individual who is totally dumb at some things and totally awesome at other things.”

Other people have not gotten on my anti-apology train. For long-time friends who make a habit out of saying sorry for everything, I just let my eyes glaze over and pretend it didn’t happen. Or, if they know me well enough, I tell them, ENOUGH WITH YOUR PARANOID GROVELLING. Prospective friends get a brief on my feelings on the subject. Most do well and quit telling me they’re sorry they said this thing or the other when my reaction isn’t immediate sugary approval.

BUT, once in awhile, from the leftest field of whackadoodle, I get an “expired apology.” That’s what prompted this rant, btw. An expired apology is one that is so old in respect to its crime that it’s completely missed its window and should stay in a deep basement to rot with the rest of your baggage. Seriously, it would make the recipient way happier if you just felt bad about yourself the rest of your life rather than bother them by digging up that musty dirt clod…

This particular musty dirt clod was an ex-boyfriend. He preempted his apology by saying, ‘I know this is too little too late.’ IF HE KNEW THAT WAS TRUE, THEN WHY BOTHER? He wrote to me what, if I based my knowledge on the serial-dater that I once knew, I could only assume came from an apology form letter that he sent to all 20 of his exes. Hint: if your apology contains the words, “I fucked up and there’s no excuse or explanation that can make up for it…” you are not revealing a mature knowledge of your mistakes and their consequences. You’re just pissing yourself.

I planned to contemplate why he might be contacting me 5+ years after our brief and ridiculous relationship to solicit forgiveness. I really don’t assume that he gave me a form letter – I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are being sincere, and I bet he wrote up a stale-apology just for me. I was going to try to offer him some solace, tell him I was crazy back then anyway and it’s not a big deal.

But I didn’t do that. Maybe apologies confuse and irritate me or maybe I’m just a big meanie but I definitely did not react the way he hoped when he sent me his plea for a pardon. I’ll share my first paragraph:

Come on, we dated for 2 or 3 months. If you really think the damage to my pride via you lasted more than a couple weeks, you’re insane. Sure, when people are exchanging dating horror stories, I do tell them about the immature and idiotic way in which you ended our relationship.* I hope you’ve learned not to date anyone when you are literally too broke to afford to dump a woman over coffee like an adult.

Or I could just be bitter because I thought I was in control and so out of his league like I was his Charlie Nicholson, but he dumped me.

I have had apologies come from the deep past and work. The key, it seems, is when the ex-boyfriend first attempts a conversation with me. A conversation without motive. This ex was my high-school beau, whom I dated for a long freaking time. We ended up in a class together in college, and I decided to reward his uneasy wave and smile by taking the seat next to him. I wanted to be an adult, too.

We chatted at each lecture, both very aware that he had been awful to me (that is, more awful than teenagers are to each other by default) but wanting to be civil. After all, we’d spent a good chunk of our lives together and it seemed silly to not try to be friends, or to not, at least, try to learn from each other. Eventually, the apology came. He hinted at some horrifying moment in our past, and stopped. He said, “I understand now that I was a complete asshole to you. I’m really sorry.” Now that, that was a professional apology. He was owning his mistake, when it was relevant, and not making it more or less than it needed to be with platitudes or drivel. He wasn’t saying it because he wanted my forgiveness, he wasn’t saying it for closure, he didn’t have aims to say it in the first place. The moment came for it, he took it, and I do feel a lot better hearing it.

An apology is meaningless when you ask it for yourself, when it is presented without context, when it is premeditated and rehearsed, when it is meant to heal your own shame. But if you’re ever given the chance to tell someone, honestly and without personal gain, that you’ve made a mistake, take it. Strangely enough, I think that’s the moment you’re most likely to receive forgiveness.

*He dumped me over the phone because he didn’t have enough gas money to meet me. This, after spending the night at my place the evening before. Poor planning, really.

Sick of Partying

I wish mac ‘n’ cheese had all the essential nutrients and vitamins, because it’s the only thing I’ve been able to eat since Monday. I’ve been coughing much, much longer than that, and had made a doctor’s appointment for Tuesday to see what rattled in my lungs. Monday my health rapidly plummeted from a disgusting yet livable cough to hellfire and a throat full of barbed wire. I measured my fever at 101.2 degrees Fahrenheit. This was after I’d taken a cold shower, convinced that my brain was boiling in my skull.

Fortuitously, my mom tele-worked on Tuesday, so she took a long lunch and drove me to the doctor’s. I’m pretty sure I would have killed myself and at least 2 other drivers if I’d tried to use a car that day.

The receptionist asked if I wanted to add my picture to the file; they had a camera right there and the doctors use the pictures to…. I made my face into a disgusted shape and she understood immediately that I don’t normally look like a 14 year old boy with hygiene problems and bad hair. “Not today.”

The doctor poked the flashlight-hammer thing into my facial orifices and asked me symptoms-questions, putting an emphasis on fatigue. I knew she wanted it to be mono. They always want us to have mono, because everyone who is young and promiscuous deserves mono. But she said my throat bumps or whatever medical term she used for them were so “red and beefy” that it could be strep. She darted two cotton swabs in my throat at the same time so she’d only have to gag me once. How kind.

“What if my girlfriend doesn’t get hers treated,” I planned to ask, “will she just pass it back to me when I’m done with my antibiotics?” This would be a white lie – my girlfriend seems to have skipped this round of contagion. I wouldn’t have been asking for her, not exactly. Although I can count on just one hand the number of women I made out with during last Saturday’s party, any number felt like too many to confess in that white interrogation room. How do you tell your doctor that you may be responsible for spreading a nasty disease with a Jameson fueled make-out binge? (Forgive me, for there was a dimly lit bounce house on premises.) But when the doctor popped back in and announced, “it’s strep,” she also told me she’d be giving me a shot and I forgot all my questions.

“I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to be a bee sting. But you’ll feel better faster, and the swelling in your throat will hopefully have gone down enough by tomorrow to make it easier to swallow these horse pills I’m prescribing.” Welp. I numbly rubbed my shoulder. I felt my arm getting heavier, willing itself to die so it wouldn’t feel the pain. I practiced not clenching my muscles.

The nurse came back, told me the shot will actually be going in my butt. She didn’t say Gluteus Maximus, she said butt. A shot. In my butt.

“It would hurt too much if it went in your arm,” she explained, as if that would actually make me feel better. I think she noticed my eyes flaring and my head wobbling on my neck like a ship listing in the waves. “You can be lying down for this.” I started to think it wouldn’t be so terrible until she added, “I just need to get someone else to help me position the needle. The anatomy of the body changes when you’re lying down.” She told me to pull my pants down to my crack. I laid face-down on the table, waiting for them to return, sure that she sought a helper to pin me down so she could harpoon me with the syringe on the counter next to me. I felt like the albatross from the Rescuers Down Under, my shame exposed to the cheery nurse mice, who almost seemed to look forward to my suffering.

(Watch the first two minutes for a scene re-enactment.)

When the other nurse came in, there was no time to reason with them. They wiped me down with an icy square of disinfectant – higher up than I expected – and I think the shock of yet another surprise location and the idea of the needle potentially hitting my hip bone made me start to panic. “That’s not my butt?” I said into the pillow, and quickly they shot me, and I whimpered and freaked out. “Don’t touch it!” I gasped, because my nurse was grinding it in with her fingers. I started to cry a little. She pulled my pants up and rubbed through those, and started talking science to me, which calmed me down a bit. 1 minute of this, and she’s done, and she didn’t even stay to cuddle.

I think they gave me this purple dinosaur band-aid for being a big baby. Also note how it is very much not on my butt.

I stayed on the table for a little longer. (I had to wait in the room for 20 minutes to make sure I didn’t have an allergic reaction.) Once I overcame my feelings of degradation and self-pity, I moved to the chair and actually felt a little better after that adrenaline rush. My ass is still numb though.

Partying with “Old” People

“14 going on 40,” my dad called me, because I liked to think I could fare well in conversations with the adults. I did; until I got older and more conscious of my words and the gaps in my knowledge and experience. And, of course, I was a really delusional person from age 7 to age 21 – see last week’s post. Before the Christianity there was 7 years of alien princess nonsense that I’ll have to get into sometime… I’d say I’ve only been interacting directly with reality for the past two years. So, it is with great hesitation that I call someone a peer, especially if they have some years on me.

By that, I mean, I tend to assume people have their head together better than mine, and that I am totally out here to learn from them how to be a semi-functioning “normal” human being. I’m easily impressed by the folks who can figure out the difference between Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise and other famous white guys (seriously they all look the same to me how do you even keep track of what’s going on in this movie). I defer to people’s superior knowledge of pop culture and geekery and national news.

This makes me gullible, to a fault. Of course I’m going to take the word of someone I trust, even marginally, over my own perception of reality. 3 years ago I was so out of touch I was yanking the e-brake to stop my perfectly functioning car, thinking it wasn’t working because in my dreams I skidded on roads like a wet dog on soapy linoleum. You can tell me it’s a Tuesday on a Wednesday and I will believe you.

But I’m having to come to terms with the fact that older =/= wiser. People I call friends think homeopathy is a real thing. And they’re paying attention to when the moon shadow is in the Aquarius Capricorn Libra or something. I’m having to fine-tune my bullshit detector so I can both enjoy the variety and personal insight from the circus of people in my life and still, you know, not let the pseudo get all up in my science.

But, like, I’m young and I don’t know everything and some people really like to point that out.

Category 1 of Old People: Know-it-Alls

For the purposes of this section, anyone over 30 is an “Older Person” — not because I think 30 is old, but because 30 seems to be the magical number that makes people think they can dispense words of wisdom to me. I get it, I really do. I, for example, am a whole lot smarter than a 13 year old.

I would definitely sit down 13-year-old me and have a talk.

By the way, little Sami, you are not really an alien. But that’s fine, it’s not the craziest thing you’re going to believe in your life. Unless you stay out of the Church. STAY OUT OF THE CHURCH. Also, you should kiss as many boys as possible because that is going to suddenly get way less fun in a few years.

Normally I seldom think about how young or old my party-pals are, but occasionally they won’t let me avoid the topic. Yes, I know I’m only 23; I had to prove it to get into this club… I do often act in age-appropriate ways – binge-drinking, flirting, wearing garish clothing, running around in the woods, notching up and down the Kinsey scale, mooching off my parents… I’m not delusional that I’m responsible or something.

I’m spoiled, though. I’m used to the gayborhood; guys find out my age and squeal that I’m a baby and tell me I’m sexy. They know youth is fleeting and they’re still chasing it. In my hot-head I start to think Older People should treat my presence at their “potluck” as a favor. You should be so lucky I grace you with my energy and my anti-gravity lady-lumps. So, when someone gives me the “when I was your age” speech, I get a little cranky.

“When I was 23, darling, I was an idiot. You have so much to learn…” Some bearded 38-year-old goes on about the folly of youth. And he really said darling. In his defense, he says he uses all sorts of pet names with women all the time. Don’t really see how that is a defense and not a very real sign that he has unconscious chauvinistic tendencies…

“I try not to treat people like they’re typical.” Oh. Geez. Did I really just say that? I try to sit on my rage, but he calls me ‘sweetheart’ and I go inside, aggressive. A woman is about to talk about Masaru Emoto’s touchy-feely water crystals and the power of resonance. “Bullshit!” I interrupt her. She looks hurt. “Sorry, maybe you’re talking about something else. I didn’t mean to jump on you.”

“But you did.” Touché. She continues. Definitely Masaro Emoto. Okay, sorry I’m not sorry. I let her finish, then explain why frozen water crystals with emotional signatures are about as real as Big Foot. Oh dear, looks like she built half her spirituality around that paper she read… I try to be nice, say something about the power of human imagination, but I’m pretty sure when I leave that a lot of the stress in that room leaves with me.

Ah crap. I’m that stubborn young woman who doesn’t like to be told what to do with her life and doesn’t have respect for people’s personal beliefs.

Category 2: Everyone Else

Again, I normally don’t think about this. My friends are my friends, and I forget that I’m the young one until one of them points out that I look ‘especially teenage tonight.’ Yes this happens a lot.

But there are plenty of advantages to having “older” friends:

The wisest of them let me live my life while opening up theirs to me. I am addicted to people’s stories, and these people have more years of them.
They have zany clothes from years of thrift-store collecting and aren’t afraid to wear them. Fuzzy paisley hats and zebra stripes and big furry coats and tutus and corsets, the really nice ones.
Better taste in booze. They give me Horny Devil and Bullet and Laphroaig like they’re some kind of alcoholic evangelists. Obviously, I do not complain.
They are living proof that you can still have fun past your 20s. So. Much. Fun. Can’t keep up with all this fun.

San Diego Survival Guide

Sami navigates and examines being young, gay, and weird in San Diego. Updates (every other) Taco Tuesday. Now with more activism.