I’m the most fashion forward when
I’m packing a suitcase for vacation. For some reason all the clothes I neglect
during my everyday life lure me into believing I will have a completely
different attitude about them when I’m in a foreign land. Big shocker, whenever
I get where I’m going, I unzip my suitcase and regret every packing decision,
and I have to spend the entire week in the least adventurous outfit, egg-shell
culottes and a hot pink crop top with “Barbie” across the chest.
I went on a
cruise in April, and found myself in the usual predicament of accusing my
12-hour-before-self of being a masochistic saboteur, who took pleasure in my
having nothing comfortable to wear. I couldn’t even rely on making a bathing
suit everyday wear, because the sun crept behind the clouds the day we set foot
on the boat, and our ride along the Pacific coast into Mexico had the grey
chilliness of a February afternoon in San Francisco.
I was
forced to wear the weird clothes I bought off Amazon at 1 am after looking at
over sexualized Instagram models and boring Pinterest lifestyle bloggers. So I
put on a bandeau halter-top and some neon bike shorts and took part in the
cruise ship initiation, hitting up the buffet line. I decided I wasn’t going to
drink alcohol on the cruise because of a really bad scene the weekend before.
I went to
San Francisco with the guy I was seeing. On the drive down, I knew it was going
to be a bad night because the sight of him was making me angry. I decided to
put a cork in my emotional buildup by drinking a million beers, so eventually
my conscious self went to sleep, and I let the hired hand within me take care
of verbally murdering this person I shared a bed with every other weekend. The
drive home from San Francisco in the morning was dreadful. I felt terrible, and
wanted to fast forward to when this time was just a speck. I said to him, “How
about you just punch me in the face, and we call it even?” He didn’t take me up
on the offer, he was relishing too much in his power. Needless to say, we broke
up, but not for another two months because it took me some time to crawl out of
that shame hole I fell into.
Lucky for
me, I don’t need alcohol to embarrass myself, and on my sober cruise ride I
found a great opportunity to insert myself into a situation where I had a
theater size audience, because we were in a theater waiting for a show to
start. An entitled Southern socialite plopped down into the saved seats of a
young family. The young woman quietly pleaded for the lady to move from the
seats, but the old sourpuss continuously waved her off with a flip of her hand.
I took it upon myself to defend the
honor of the woman who was doing a piss poor job of working up the gusto to
call the seat stealer an asshole hemorrhoid. After shouting, “Hey Lady!!” I
noticed all the young kids surrounding us.
Following that up with some variant
of, ‘Move your bitch ass,” was not going to work without making me seem worse
off than the seat stealer, so I shouted in an overly emotional voice, “You are
being so mean!” My parents looked at me horrified, probably wishing I was drunk,
and so did the 30 people within this circle of extreme social awkwardness. Thank
god my parents love me no matter what stupid shit I do because after my
outburst of caring too much, I slowly sat down and dusted off my acid washed jeggings
and straightened out the beaded fringe on my Miley Cyrus belly shirt, and we
all looked ahead like the minute before was a distant memory.
My
interjecting was ineffectual. The lady didn’t move from the seat. For the
remainder of the cruise I couldn’t escape her. I frequently saw her, and not in
the most becoming ways, usually balancing four desserts and a pizza I planned
to eat while watching a movie next to the dirty disgusting pool my kids played
in.
Infatuation
is an STD, and the remedy is the eventual unveiling of the person who passed it
on. Scars from embarrassing times also vanish. I don’t really think about the beginning-of-the-end
in San Francisco or my unsuccessful attempt at being the morality police. These
moments add up to nothing in the infinite space of people that genuinely love
you. In the words of the young philosopher, Miley Cyrus, “Forget the haters because
somebody loves ya.” On that note, I’ll
start dressing how I see myself on vacation because it really doesn’t matter. Not
even the tiniest bit.
 |
| Barbie crop top exists |
