Let's Face It

At the risk of sounding vain I am just going to go ahead and say it: I want to look cute forever. And at the risk of sounding full of myself I am just going to say this: I don't even want to live in a world where I am not adorable. Having been the biggest girl in the room for my whole life, my million dollar face has been the one thing that has gotten me a seat at the couple of tables I have been invited to. You would think my personality would be the show winner but, believe it or not, a lot of people don't take to loud overweight girls that enjoy having open and honest conversations about vaginal hygiene at the dinner table. Go figger. 

Where is this all coming from? Well, I have talked to you all before about how worried I have been about my skin since I turned 30. Gone are the days of me having an effortless complexion. My pores are getting larger, and I need a moisturizer like a fat kid needs cake. On social media, girls that I went to high school and college with are looking ten years younger than they did when I met them. And since I am not ashamed to admit that my face is the one good thing I have going for me you know, outside of my brain, I can't afford to let it go. Let's be honest,  I let my body go in the 3rd grade happily and without effort once I started wearing a bra. Since I am not really excited about getting things injected into my face or having appearance altering surgery, I have to keep this face tight and right. 

Tortilla has great skin, but she uses those trillion buck Korean skin potions you can order from Sephora. I am currently using a scrub that I got out of a gift bag. I like it though, it smells like sweet potatoes! But it is going to take more than sweet potatoes to keep my skin on the up-and-up. I watched a Youtube nighttime skincare tutorial that included seven products, so I guess I have to step it up. I guess I was naive for assuming I could keep my face from cracking off of shower gel and Vaseline. 

At this moment, I would just like to express how pissed I am at men. They can look like something the cat dragged in and women will still be beating their doors down as long as they have a good paying job and health insurance. What is a poor girl like me to do? Home chemical peels with hot bacon grease and a plastic knife?

Well, I guess there is nothing left to do but enjoy my face while it is still here. Beyonce said that pretty hurts, but she forgot to tell us that it also fades. But there will be no fading over here, not yet, as long as I have my bacon grease. 

Mortified

I have been pretty scared a few times in my life. One time that stands out in my mind happened when I was an undergrad student in New Orleans. I had gone to a parade with my friends and I was NOT in the best of moods. I was so immature back then. If I was unhappy, everyone had to be unhappy. So, eventually, my mood was so fowl that me and my friends decided to leave and go back to campus soon after the parade was over instead of hang out. Slow dragging behind my friends in a black hoodie with my lip poked out, I heard a man talking about how fat I was to his friend. I turned around and they both laughed, so I shot them both the finger. They stopped laughing, and the tall one who had made the remark motioned in his jacket the way that gangsters do in movies when they have a gun.
My heart started pounding so hard I could hear it over the band playing in my ears. I started to walk quickly, dipping in and out of the crowd, only to look behind me to see that the dudes were pissed and hot on my trail. I sped up, which should tell you how young I was. I am so out of shape now that, if this would have happened yesterday, I would have just stood there and taken the bullet before I tried to run from it.
I dipped behind a float alongside the train tracks. From my position, I was able to see the thugs racing down the street looking for me. And just when I thought I couldn't get even more scared, I saw the man who called me fat turn my friend Tiesha around quickly. I held my breath thinking, Oh God, please don't let this moron shoot my friend over something stupid I did. He looked her up and down, realized she was not me, then continued on the hunt. When we got to campus alive and safe I was so happy that I collapsed on my bed and screamed in my pillow. My mouth had gotten me in tons of trouble before, but that was a close call.
I say all this to say that this weekend I ran into an older woman in my life. She has been diagnosed with colon cancer and is doing chemo to shrink the tumor so that it can be removed. She got so upset while telling me about her treatment and her infusions that she started crying. I gave her a hug and that is when I felt it. This woman was not scared, she was mortified. This far surpassed the mere fear I felt when I thought that I was going to get gunned down in the Big Easy. Hugging her, I could feel the nervous energy bouncing around in her body. She was trembling and secreting a panic that sat in the air, making it warm, thick, and uncomfortable. You could literally smell her anxiety. I felt that if she could have, she would have screamed.
What could be scarier than knowing you are going to die or having good reason to think that you might? What could be more agitating than going over the list of things you want to do and get done over and over in your head? Is it possible to even explain in words the fear of not knowing what the afterlife holds in store for you and if you are spiritually ready to find out?
I thought these things as she left to go run errands. As someone who is often afraid to go after what I want in life, she helped me to remember that there are worse things than being scared.

The Sexless Love Interest

After writer's group, I had a long conversation with Ryan the crush. Truth be told, my crush was beginning to fade. A flame can only burn for so long when it is clear that the one you are ablaze for has absolutely no interest in you. I had to take a lesson from Aunty Maxine Waters and start to reclaim my time. There is no time wasted like time invested on a dude that doesn't return your feelings. We hadn't spoken in a while. But, after writer's group, we took a second to catch up. He got a new job. He's going to take a vacation to Miami before the summer is over. He also said that he is excited because that very day marked his tenth year of being abstinent.
Get the f*&k out of here! I wanted to scream. How could a man this hot and this smart and this old (he's 42) be walking around sexless?
Instantly, the crush rekindled at 1000%. It was a huge turn on to meet a man who, in this day and age, had some modicum of self control. I live in Atlanta, where, weekly, men make their rent rain in ones at one of the city's well-known strip joints. Dudes cheat. They have more than one girlfriend. Their lives seem to revolve around sex, indulging in their desires at every possible turn. And there I stood, next to a man, that made a serious decision, in his youth, to hold off on sex.
"I'm looking for love," he said honestly, nibbling on one of the homemade brownies brought to the group by Jabbering Janice, the one woman in group that can not stop talking.
Love me! I imagined myself screaming, jumping in his lap.
I told P about this when I got home. Of course, he had something rude to say about the whole thing.
"This guy is obviously gay," he said nonchalantly.
Ryan isn't gay. I like to believe that he is a sign sent to me from heavens that not every man is a fornication-obsessed dirt bag. Now, if I could only get him to sleep with me.
Lol...just kidding.

Holly Thee Horsey

The other night I was feeling pretty bad about myself and my life. It was then that I got the urge to read my Bible. I have the Bible app on my phone, so I reached for my phone and accidentally clicked on the YouTube icon. This is where I was introduced to one Megan Thee Stallion.
Listen, Megan may not be holy but she definitely took me to church! It has been a long time since I have heard a female rapper so brazenly and articulately discuss ripping men off for their money. I have to say, I was spiritually moved.
When it comes to the age-old art of shaking men down for their paper, it is important to go to The Word of God. I wasn't sure about this but my friend Angela told me what was what a few years ago when I was getting tossed out of my apartment.
"You don't have a dude that can help you with the rent?" she asked, concerned.
"What? No." I thought she was being silly, but she was totally serious.
"Look Holly, we were made from their rib. They are supposed to be taking care of us. It's part of the creation story."
Case. Closed.
Isn't it interesting how, even today, as forward-thinking women, many of us still often think of men coming in and saving the day for us? I can not tell you how often I have dreamed about a strong, muscular man with both an open mind and wallet coming along and taking care of some of my past due balances.
Sadly, my goody-goody upbringing won't allow me to really live and think this way. I know I have to take care of myself. That is, unless God sends a man my way with some money. Then I will have to treat him like Megan taught me:

If you balling and you know it, then let the money show

If he acting scared to spend it, I'ma show him to the door 

Amen. 

Pots

I am 34 and I don't have a pot to piss in. The only thing separating me from a person that is REALLY up shit's creek is that I have a lot of close friends, and I think that at least two of them would let me borrow a pot if I really needed one, under the condition, of course, that I would wash it before I returned it.
If you have never been under INTENSE financial stress, allow me to describe it to you. In short, it is a consistent state of anxiety and fear. You are afraid to the answer the phone. It could be a bill collector. You don't check the mail. It could be full of bills. The same feeling you get in your stomach when you have to call you OB/GYN for your pap test results is the same feeling you have when you have to call the IRS and BEG them to reinstate your payment plan.
Time flies. When I was a 2nd grader, I used to entertain myself by counting on my fingers how old I would be in five years, ten years, etc. I would get excited, thinking of myself at 21. I would be rich and married to one of the members of Immature. Well, me and Romeo never made a love connection and I am now in my mid-30s. And no, I don't play that add-up-the-years game anymore. If I count forward 50 years, I don't see me dancing in an Immature video. I see me in a nursing home that smells of poop. It's the only place that will take me because I didn't have a savings, and it is the only place my poor people insurance will cover. The nurses will smoke cigs and blow the smoke in my face. I will spend days on end in my soiled diapers. And, perhaps worst of all, the only beverage option I will have with my pureed dinner is UNSWEETENED TEA!
I try to complain about this to P, but he is a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" type of man. He just doesn't get it. I had to throw my last pair of boots away, the ones I had had for 12 years, because I could no longer plug up the holes in them with toilet paper.
My minister did a sermon about how bad times are good. You have to go through things so you will be prepared for what God has in store for you at the end of the rainbow. As hungry as I am for a change in my life, I better be able to taste this rainbow.
Enough belly aching for now. I have to go but my empty wallet next to my Bible and see if God can create a water-to-wine situation.

Unrequited Imaginary Love

Franklin is a young man in my writer's group. He is about 10 years younger than me. That should be the end of the story. But, and this is all my fault, I was overly nice to him a couple of meetings ago. Now he thinks I like him. His whole attitude towards me has changed. He now gives me stiff side hugs, calls me ma'am, and avoids me during the after-meeting refreshments. Feel free to roll your eyes. 

At first, I thought that this was funny, seeing that I am not interested in him.  I thought that everyone in the group knew that I have a huge, embarrassing crush on Ryan, the silver fox that cuts his convos with me short after group to get to the last of the Oreos before Pregnant Patty gets herself out of her seat to ambush the cookies. Now I am a little offended. 

This is not the first time that a guy has thought that I had a crush on him and decided to send me signals that he was not interested as to not hurt my feelings. These signals include but are not limited to: only talking to me in a group, switching from hugs to handshakes, repeatedly letting me know that he has a girlfriend, or even ignoring me altogether. Many times I was not interested in these guys. And it has always been amazing, and hurtful, to see the lengths that these guys would go to let it be known that they are not interested just in case. 

Okay, so I am fat, unemployed, and living with my aunt with a credit score that is in the toilet. I am also hilarious and have a great head of hair! Does that count for nothing these days?

A part of me doesn't want to go back to writer's group, wanting to avoid the scene that is inevitably going to come from this. Another part of me wants to kick Franklin in his balls and tell him to get over himself. I will let you know which way I decide to go. 

Behind-Your-Back Talk

What do you do when a friend tells you that another friend has been talking ish about you?
I swear, female friendships are constantly evolving. They also never change. The "she was talking about you" routine has been going on since I was in grade school. But back then, I feel like spilling the beans on behind-your-back talk was done out of boredom and messiness. When this happens when you are in your 30s, you can't help but feel like there is some malicious intent. I think that Friend A told me about the behind-the-back talk to warn me about Friend B, who she is no longer friends with. But it low-key hurt my feelings.
I know, I know. All the things I have said about friends in the past, I have a lot of nerve being butt hurt. But shocker, I is.
"For me, the story isn't that Friend B was talking about you," my friend Tay said during our volunteer meeting. "It's that she felt comfortable talking about you to Friend A, which makes me wonder what Friend A says about you too."
Mic drop. Good point. Good point that I'd rather not think about. I really, really like Friend A. She has shown up for me in some very important ways over the years.
Unfortunately, this spilled tea has left some small, sticky stains on my friendships. But what can you do at 34 but wipe up the tea and keep going?