Self-Portrait as Durga the Hindu Warrior Goddess

Disconnected

A portrait of my cell phone: Elderly at the ripe old age of five. Scratched burgundy shell, the cover long since peeled off. Old but reliable. Not quite old enough to have an antenna, but not quite recent enough to know what an “app” is. It flips open, revealing a screen black and blank. In its disabled state, caused by concrete-inflicted injuries, it no longer remembers how to add a contact. It can recall neither the calculator it once new so well nor the alarm clock. Text messages are a laborious task when you can’t flip a flip phone. I press the number “3” three times for an “I.” When agitated, it takes blurry pictures of the inside pocket of my purse. The phone powers down, exhausted, before I even get to work.

You might call it cruel of me to keep its nose to the grindstone when I should be pushing it to sea in a viking boat and singing sorrowful hymns, yet after several weeks I still haven’t replaced it. I can’t open at a text message longer than five words because the outer screen is too small. I can’t look at a picture. I can’t set an alarm. Dave is my begrudging alarm clock now and I have done nothing. I am in denial. I am waiting for the problem to fix itself.

Nothing annoys me more than technology with a lifespan shorter than that of a hamster. Electronics die and are replaced with a newer, shinier inventions faster than I am willing to keep up with. When I latch on to a cell phone or an iPod, my attachment outlasts battery life expectancy. My phone was a constant in my life throughout college. When I graduated, my phone was there. When I moved downstate, my phone was there. It even lay dormant in my suitcase for four months while I frolicked through Prague.

Dave gave me his old Android phone, a hand-me-down upgrade from the old flip phone. I thought of the advantages of catching up with current technology. Emailing on the bus. Googling engrossing questions. Immersing myself in an emerging genre of literature only accessible with a smart phone. I spent hours on the phone with Verizon trying to set it up, only to find out that I would have to pay a data plan. This I was not willing to do. So I trudged onward, stubbornly clasping a powered-down flip phone that reeks of death and dementia.

When I get a new cell phone or a computer, I want it to meet my parents. I want it to grow old with me. If I get a replacement phone (and that cell phone will likely be an identical flip phone), it better be ready for a commitment. I'm in it for life.

History of Contraception

*Click here for even more uncomfortable-looking IUDs throughout the 20th century.

Massage

Cats give very poor massages, actually.

Dave surprised me with a side-by-side massage to celebrate the fact that we've been together for five years. He refused to tell me where we were going beyond the fact that I should be clean and might want to shave my legs. He also indicated that we would have to have a late lunch afterwards, probably in the form of sushi.

“We’re doing naked yoga, aren't we?” I asked. “Are we pole dancing? I knew it was pole dancing.”

“Yes,” Dave said. "We're doing naked pole dancing yoga."

Whether it shows or not, I was very suspicious that we were going to get massages. As soon as it became clear that the surprise was not food-related, my suspicions took root. But I certainly wasn’t going to make a deduction that ruins the surprise.

“We’re getting coffee enemas, aren't we? I knew we were getting coffee enemas.”

Sometimes I think it’s a miracle that anyone would stay with me for five years. I feel extremely lucky to have found someone who is willing to put up with my nonsense. And my ever-evolving, unconventional eating habits. And the elaborate messes I leave in the kitchen area, caked with turmeric and peanut butter. And the hornet’s nest of notebooks and tea-stained index cards that inevitably covers most surfaces in my home.

“Yes, we're getting coffee enemas,” Dave said.

Dave put on a magnificent hoax the morning we left to do the thing we were going to do. He said we had to stop by his gym to drop off something for a friend. I eyed the spa on the upper level of the building and thought to myself, This is a setup. But I’m not going to say anything.

“Let’s go wait in the doorway,” Dave said.

We went through the doorway and he pressed the button on the elevator. The elevator opened and we went inside.

Rising up several floors, Dave attempted to distract me.

“I thought we were going to wait in the doorway,” I whined.

“The doorway of the gym,” Dave clarified.

We got off at the top floor, which was the spa. As we walked in, the woman at the desk handed Dave a pair of clipboards.

“Where is the gym, Dave? Where is your friend? I don’t see him here.”

The jig was up. As we filled out the clipboards, Dave at long last explained that he had gotten us an hour-long massage in the same room. A massage of that length was inconceivable to me. I had only had two in my life, each ten minutes long and unpleasant in their own special way. The first was at the side of a hot spring in Colorado, performed by a stoned fellow with a blond ponytail and an uncanny resemblance to my poetry professor.

The second was during a benefits fair at work, where the masseuse seemed to be using martial arts on my spine. I kept crying out and the woman from accounting in the chair next to me groaned, “Brittany, why can’t you just relax?”

Dave had thoughtfully arranged for a woman to work with me so that I would be more comfortable. He requested a man, having read that male massage therapists are often discriminated in their line of work. Many women feel more comfortable with another woman and many men don’t want to be touched by a dude.

“I guess I would feel more comfortable with a woman. Should I tell them about my plankton allergy? I feel like that could be important.”

The lines of communication had been crossed. As we waited in a dim room, me in a robe that was too long and Dave flip-flops that seemed too small, I accepted the firm, meaty handshake of someone who appeared to be a body builder. Dave was approached by a kind-looking woman with gray hair. He whispered something to her about wanting to switch. They all turned to me and asked if I would prefer to switch. Now that I had actually met a male massage therapist, I would have felt terrible switching. I didn't want to participate in unfair social constructs. I went with the body builder.

The actual massage was far more relaxing than my previous experiences. Not that I’m very good at relaxing. I’m not. Every once in a while I caught myself clenching my teeth or unconsciously tensing up my shoulders. Once I was genuinely worried that the massage therapist was trying to knock me out with pressure points on my temples, much like a ninja. Some of the places he focused on made my back and neck so uncomfortable that I started to laugh.

“Are you ticklish on your neck?” he asked.

“Yes. I mean, no. I was uncomfortable and that made me laugh. Never mind,” I said.

Laughing is my first reaction to almost everything. It is my first reaction to something funny and my first reaction to something stupid and my first reaction to absurdity and my first reaction when someone falls out of a window. It is not always appropriate, but sometimes it happens anyways. I once laughed on the phone when a friend told me her grandmother had passed away. I didn't think it was funny at all.

At the end we went to our locker rooms. It was nice to not to feel all of my cracks and cricks when I moved. I changed into my pedestrian clothing and met Dave in the entrance where he stood by a rack of fragrant lotions and massage oils. I opened one of the oils with nostrils ready and it erupted all over my face.

As I said before, I am extremely lucky to have found someone who is willing to put up with my nonsense.

How to Travel

Buy a ticket. Book a room in a hostel that you will share with a sleep apnea-afflicted Canadian girl. Wake up early. Drink caffeinated beverages. Pack ample antacids and remember your toothbrush. Bring water. Fill your pockets with granola bars. Always bring more than you think you can eat.

Go to the station. Get in line. Wait for your bus. Leave your bag on the sidewalk. Wince as it’s heaved into the luggage compartment with little delicacy. Agonize over your fragile electronics.

Choose your neighbor carefully. Hit your head on the ceiling of the bus. Avoid looking at the time to suspend disappointment. Expect to arrive at least an hour late. Play the same album on your iPod on repeat. Eat on the bus. Read on the bus. Peer over the headrest in front of you and giggle at Fifty Shades of Gray. Stretch frequently and insufficiently. Remember to hydrate.

Sleep on the bus. Press your cheek against the window. Let your ear drop to your shoulder. Ball your coat up like a sad, useless pillow. Get a U-shaped pillow - everyone has a U-shaped pillow, why don’t you have U-shaped pillow? Take notes from other passengers on how to sleep on a bus – with your knees to your chest, with your head on an empty seat, with your feet on the handrail, with your mouth open wide. Everybody’s doing it.

Wake up on a bus. You still have three hours left.

Locate the bathroom on the lower level. Secure the lock on the bathroom door. Hold on tight both hands to minimize trauma to the spine because the bus is currently careening down a highway. Use the hand sanitizer. Yes, that's as clean as you’re going to get. Eat your granola bars. Share your granola bars. Make new friends on the bus.

Arrive at your destination. Cringe as your bag collides with the soiled pavement. Check your electronics for critical damage. Choke down the last of your Pepto-Bismol. Enter a new city. You will have adventures here.

The Ghosts of High School Past

When I think of English classes, I often think it’s a miracle that I still love reading. So many of the stories we read made me wish I could return to a state of illiteracy. But the thing about being literate is that you can’t go back – unless, of course, you crash a sled into a tree.

In elementary school we read inane stories out of reading textbooks and answered comprehension questions at the end (i.e. Why did the animals eat the pineapple?). They were written to educate us without causing us to enjoy ourselves too much. If it weren't for Harry Potter and the American Girls, I probably would have given up on reading and became an ignorant hooligan.

Some of the stories were intended to plant the seed of entrepreneurship in our impressionable young minds. One was a play about a young fellow who realizes that the price of toothpaste is too high, so he makes it from scratch with baking soda and peppermint oil. Other people also agree that toothpaste is too expensive, so they start buying jars of his homemade toothpaste. He turns his passion for cheap toothpaste into a toothpaste dynasty and becomes a millionaire.

I just thought to look up the story and it seems that it was a children’s book that must have been very loosely adapted for our workbooks. They cut out his female business partner, the lessons about gender, racism, and the true meaning of friendship, and the mathematical problems they must solve to become millionaires. It’s like they cut out all the potentially good parts from our textbook to focus on the logistics of making toothpaste.

One Amazon reviewer says this is the most important book he ever read. Well.

In high school, Ethan Frome was on our list of required reading. I feel like Edith Wharton personally ruined my life in a number of ways. She’s a woman writer and I want to like her because of that, but I resent that I had to sit through the mundane details of various miserable lives ending with a botched suicide. The title character and his love interest try to kill themselves by crashing a sled into a tree, but instead they just become horribly, horribly mangled. Sledicide is on par with leaping out a four story window or trying to overdose on children’s aspirin. Oh, Ethan and your half-brained schemes!

I reluctantly finished the book. Then I hurled it against the wall of my bedroom. If I have to pay a fine, so be it, I thought. I hate all these people.

One of the great things about life after school is that no one can make me read anything I don’t want to read. I was starting to get itchy about required reading at the end of college. In my last playwriting class, we were supposed to read plays and take an aspect of that play to write a scene. I mercilessly parodied the plays I didn’t like. As far as I’m concerned, a story that I think is awful only benefits me if I can make fun of it. My professor would ask, What did you think of this play? And I would say, I don’t like it. She would say, I don't care if you liked it, what did you learn?

Nothing! I learned nothing! I refuse to learn anything from this text, I cried indignantly. Then I stood up and flipped my desk.

Sushi

Dave’s Christmas present this year was an ultra-romantic sushi-making press called a Sushezi. If I were shopping for myself, I would have gone for the authentic bamboo mat and happily struggled with it, eating my broken rolls with pride. I probably would have also worn a kimono and had dreamy Travel Channel fantasies set in a rural village on the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I was, however, shopping for Dave and the Sushezi was the top rated result on Amazon for the keywords “sushi making kit.”  I put it in my cart.

And then, after much anticipation, we made sushi. We went to an Asian grocery store to pick up spicy pickled radish, cucumbers, and sushi rice. We got some pickled ginger and sesame seeds because details are important. Then we went to work.

Sushi stuffing.

We made a veggie roll for me and a Philadelphia roll for Dave. When I look at sushi at this stage of the process, I think sushi is not unlike a sandwich. Only it is infinitely better than a sandwich. That's why we've grafted it into our own cultural palate. The first American to eat sushi probably felt just like Marco Polo eating his first plate of pasta.

In the end, we had a bunch of very pretty looking rolls, and some awkward end bits that were eaten with fingers. Last week I insisted on making pierogi from scratch as well. I'm working my way through the continents.