SELFABSORBED.ME

So I have this friend..let us call him “Pohn” so as to not confuse you with his ‘real name’. So Pohn and I used to work together many years ago. It was during a time when he wore braided belts and I had highlights the color of warm urine. It was not a good time for all to say the least. We always stayed very friendly even after we left the company though and would do the occasional "mass email", but that was as close to intimate as it got.

Well I was on my way to 7-11 two weeks ago because I like the price of their Diet Coke as well as their neon lights burning my retina…when I ran right into Pohn. Well one thing leads to another and I get the whole “I got a new phone and I don’t think I still have your number..” excuse (I mean really, is ANYONE besides ALF buying that one these days?) So I give him my number, he says I look great, I tell him he looks great too (I want to punch myself in the mouth just for saying it) and we go on our separate ways.

Fast forward to three days later. I get a text message from Pohn.

“Hey Kim, you really looked good yesterday, what are you up to tonight?”

Now being that it is 11:00pm on a Tuesday night and I am in a facemask and teeth whitening retainers, I figured now was not the time to be inviting any guests over.

So I responded, “ Thanks...I am heading to bed…I will call you tomorrow though.”

I then received a text back, “What are you wearing to bed?”

Um…what?

I look down at my grey sweatpants and t-shirt that says ‘Smokey the Bear Says Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires’..and I consider what it is I am supposed to write back to that.

Do I lie and tell him I am naked?

Do I tell him the truth and let him know that with the right amount of tube socks I might be able to be on a Full House episode?

Do I just not respond at all?

Do I ask him what HE is wearing?

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

And if I DID answer with a sexy response, was this going to continue on through the night? Was this some sort of sexual texting that I am unaware of, a texting ‘porn’ if you will…where two people sit at home alone but have wild fantasies through Verizon T9?

I didn’t want to set a bad tone for this new relationship and make him think I was some kind of texting slut. And then once you give it up once on texting, you could be expected to give it up everytime.

And furthermore, I didn’t know where this new relationship with Pohn was going anyway…what if we end up getting married one day and my kids ask me about the first time daddy and I fell in love and I have to tell her it was through my free night and weekend minutes and some one-handed quick fingers?

So I decided to play it safe and write back in the words of Marky Mark, “Say hi to your mother for me.”

If you would like to guest-blog for me this week, please email me something funny ( I will be the judge of what is funny in Jesus' book) and it may or may not get posted. And I may or may not have the bubonic plague, but hey, anything is worth a shot.

Email me to guest blog at Kim@NYCPonderings.com

“So” She said on the phone to me after a particularly late night at work. “I went to Bloomingdale's to pick out a new outfit for work…and I had to make the forever daunting decision…of whether to look like a mom or a hooker.”


Just thinking about “work clothes” I could feel the bile building up in the back of my throat. I, myself have had one too many encounters with ‘work appropriate attire’ that I will deem sole responsibility on being a young woman in my 20’s. I can’t seem to win no matter which route I choose. I always see commercials for young people going to “work” in hip little corduroy blazers and ripped denim, carrying large architecture cases. Who are these people? Because, let me tell you something it more or less looks like Corduroy McGee's so called “work” is the unemployment line.

Even if you do happen to work in a ‘casual’ work environment, women still have the ever mysterious task of looking ‘nice’, but not ‘sexy’. But sometimes how can you be nice looking and not appear sexy? Or sexy, but nice? Or nice, but in a nonsexual kind of way? Or not nice and overtly sexual? Or how much wood would a Wood Chuck chuck if a Wood Chuck could chuck wood?



The lines become even more blurred when you are blessed by the Greek Gods with things I would like to refer to as, “boobs”. These so called “boobs" may seem fine in everyday life, but in the workplace they are utterly shunned upon. These alleged boobs must disappear completely come 9am, and must magically reappear after the hour of 5pm. However, if they are a decent size, even a basic v-neck sweater suddenly makes your work outfit look more like a Cheetah Club after-hours audition.


Oh and sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph may you be struck down dead if you have one of those dresses with spaghetti straps. You want to show a shoulder?! Who are you?! Naked Nancy?! Put that shoulder away, dammit, can you not see how you are arousing the men of the world and no one can concentrate on the work at hand with you showing that damn shoulder of yours! Men wont be able to “email” or “fax" or even have a basic phone conversation if they get one whiff of that Clavicle bone of yours!

The sexiest bone EVER

Have you not received the memo? Men will not respect you if they think you have a (whisper voices please) “body”. Yes, that is right, let no man think you have boobs, or shoulders or anything else for that matter. “Look at Mary, look at her and those BOOBS. Right there in her high necked-turtleneck! I can see the OUTLINE of those things! Distracting everyone! Get rid of her! She is a menace to the community! You better send that child home right now before she disgraces us in front of the men-folk! Now please, will someone go to the kitchen and churn some butter..."


Now if you don’t want to go the hooker route to work, you next best option, is the mom uniform. Oh yes, let me tell you, Peggy in accounting has this one down very well. Peggy is about 25 going on 83.

She strolls in everyday in her pleated front khakis, heart-patterned turtleneck and a blazer that’s big enough to fit the small population of Asia underneath it. But you know what, people like Peggy for her MIND, and because you can’t see any of those distracting things like “boobs”…or even that Peggy has an actual vagina. Thank God!

God forbid people found out she has an actual vagina, she may not get promoted at all.

I prefer to go to work with my entire body covered. Mostly in sheets, with a ski mask and possibly some goggles. I find I am much less distracting that way. And more people can concentrate on their work when they are not being demonized by my body or by my outrageous good looks.

And if Banana Republic could please stop advertising some kind of ultra good looking architect staff wearing high waist jeans and wife beaters, I might be able to actually be able to figure out what is work appropriate.

WHY?

WHY?

-Why do personal trainers in gyms like to use made-up terms to confuse you? Terms like “cardiovascular”, “fitness” and “aerobic activity”. By using these terms they can convince you to stand in the middle of the gym on top of a neon plastic ball, doing crunches, while swinging a jump rope. Let’s call personal training what it really is…making you look like an asshole.

-Why do you always have one friend whom you can never explain what it is they do and the more you try to explain what they do, the more confused you get? “Oh yeah Mike works with computers at this company, he rewires things, I mean he uses wires, well there are wires in the computer and he touches them… I think he touches the wires…maybe he just has other people touch the wires…I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t even see the wires, maybe he is just in a backroom somewhere studying what the wires might look like, I don’t really know..” Until you are eventually like, “Yeah fuck it, I have no idea what Mike does.”

-Why it is that one friend can never find the place is it you are going to, no matter what you do to try and help them. Even if you MapQuest the place for them, draw a diagram, highlight the route, drive their car there yourself, put them in a wheelchair and wheel them right in front of the building, they will still sit there and go, “Umm… yeah I have no idea where this place is.”

-Why can I not cook any kind of food in the microwave at work, because it is inevitable that everyone is going to want to make a comment about it. People come out of their office to try and see who is cooking something the minute any type of smell is produced. Your co-workers feel the need of actually take guesses at what the smell is, until you finally have to be like, “Dude, it’s popcorn...”

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