But my grandparents are dead and I never met them, so I can’t thank them unless I was into psychics and mediums. I’m not. Well, not anymore. Not since I dated a guy who told me my house was haunted with the spirit of a woman who had her period over and over again and moaned continuously about menstrual cramps while she wandered between my bedroom and the bathroom.
George lasted six dates before I couldn’t take it anymore (“There’s just so much blood!” he’d moaned to me, huddled in the corner of my couch). I kicked him to the curb and went on the Internet to find out how to get rid of menstruating ghosts. Funny, no one could really tell me. So I just bought a box of heavy flow tampons and made a big deal about putting them under the bathroom sink, telling my ghost Flow that she could use them whenever she wanted. Needless to say, two weeks later all tampons were still accounted for and I was slightly disappointed that I didn’t really have a ghost haunting me, even if she was on the rag all the time.
Am I worried about turning thirty? Nah. Maybe. Sort of. Okay, I’m freaking out. Because when I was sixteen, I’d sit in front of the mirror and sing “Some Day My Prince Will Come” while brushing my poodle curls, sure there was a big strong man out there for me, just waiting to whisk me away to his castle on a beach in Cabo San Lucas. One who would pick me up with his massive arms and cradle me against his chest and tell me, in varying accents (sometimes he was Cuban and other times Chinese—I didn’t use the Chinese one too often because I couldn’t stop giggling at the Chinese voice I’d hear in my head. Don’t ask me to do it. It’s way wrong.) all the things he just couldn’t wait to do to me once we got to my Dream Castle. We’d live there happily ever after and he would love me for the rest of my days while feeding me grapes and tickling my nipples.
Oh, by the way, I have very sensitive nipples.
I certainly did not expect to be almost thirty and working a dead-end job as a claims adjuster for an insurance company. I’m not going to tell you which one; suffice it to say you’ve probably seen our commercials on TV and chuckled once or twice until they played over and over and over again and you wanted to dropkick the stupid little animal spokesperson. You think the commercials are bad? Try working here. Sometimes, they have some idiot dress up in the animal mascot costume for human resource events. The person in the costume is always chipper and waving hysterically as if they’re under the impression that if they stop, their hands will be chopped off. I hate that damn costume. And, I’ll admit, it scares me a bit. I was the kid who never wanted to have birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese because I was sure the animatronic monsters that were Chuck and his friends were actually real and when my parents weren’t looking, they’d jump down off the stage and snatch me, taking me back to their dungeon where they would eat me slowly. I was the life of every party, let me tell you.
Sorry. I got distracted again.
Where were we? Oh, yeah. My job.
My soul is slowly being sucked dry in a cubicle that is smaller than a prison cell. Trust me, I measured it. But of course, management was not impressed when I brought this up. They tend not to like it when I speak at staff meetings. I understand why, though; what starts as a simple observation usually leads to another of one my “tirades.” Their word, not mine. I can’t help it. I get loud about things that matter to me (“We’re donating to the Salvation Army again for Christmas? They hate gay people! Those bell ringers are nothing but homophobic ex-junkie fascists in disguise! Why are we even donating to a religious organization at Christmas! Jesus was born in April!”). So yeah, they prefer if I don’t speak in staff meetings.
I never expected to still be living in Tucson, Arizona, land of the Border Patrol (aka the Fascist Regime), home of 115 degree temperatures (but at least it’s a dry heat, we always say). I’m too pale to live in the desert. I don’t tan. Instead, I get pink, so much so that I look like one of those oddly disturbing hairless cats that nobody wants to own. I went to a spray-tan salon once, but the woman at the front desk was orange and I was convinced that I would get melanoma just by breathing the same air as her, so I left immediately, after accidentally telling her she looked like a perky blonde carrot. She didn’t think that was very funny. Either that or she normally looks like she’s perpetually pissed off.
When I was younger, I thought I was going to get a ten-picture deal from Paramount, where I’d be paired with all the handsomest leading men in Hollywood and travel all over the world in my yacht. After a hard day of filming a gay action adventure along the lines of Romancing the Stone (called Fluffing My Jewels) we’d all retire to my yacht and have an orgy filled with riotous passion.