Jenny Holiday

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You look like a goddess

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V0045118 Kali trampling Shiva. Chromolithograph by R. Varma.

We were dancing, Lulu, the Boss, and I. Because that’s what you do when you’re hanging out with  your girlfriends and you have a get of jail/parenting card. The Boss said something about her bald head. It was semi-self-deprecating.

“Do you know what you look like to me? Lulu asked the Boss. “You look like a goddess.”

I had to agree.

A couple weeks later, the Boss and I went to the Keg (If you’re in the US, know that the Keg=semi-cheesy Canadian steak franchise. But expensive enough that you feel kind of classy). We took a picture which I can’t post because I don’t generally post identifying pictures here, but also because in front of me you can see 1) a “Keg-sized” glass of wine, and 2) a giant vat of butter for me to dip my crab into. (“Dip my crab into” should be a metaphor for something untoward, but I assure you it is not. I was literally dipping my crab.) There are only so many receptacles of yellow liquid a lady can countenance being photographed with.

The Boss had a hot flash. Who knew that was a side effect of chemo? Five to ten years of fake menopause, which ends just in time for the real thing!

“I’m going to have to take off my head scarf,” she said. “Is that OK with you?”

I sort of loved that she asked my permission. I was like, “Hells, yes! Take it off! Take it all off!”

This was the same lady who a few months ago was all, “I am not OK with being a person with cancer.” And yet, tonight, she was smoking. The makeup, the outfit–she had it going on. She just didn’t have any hair. It made her even hotter, in a “I am ripping up a picture of the Pope in front of you motherfuckers” sort of way.

The funny thing is, the Boss has this killer wig. It is to die for. I tried it on once, and I’m telling you, I have never looked so good.  I’ve seen that wig a whole bunch of times, but never on the Boss’s head out in the world. I think this is telling. I think the Boss is braver than she thinks she is.

Wigs are hot and uncomfortable. So, apparently, are head scarves when you’re having a hot flash.

So she pulled it off. We were sitting at the bar. Then we went to a show (more on this later!). The Boss stayed bald the whole damn time. As we were walking from the restaurant to the show, she said, “Watch, watch how people stare at me.”

It was true.

I defended them. “Of course they’re looking at you. Who wouldn’t look at you? Think about it: you’re walking down the street, you’re on your way home, and all of a sudden this beautiful bald lady is in front of you. How can you not stare?”

My defense was heartfelt, but man, did they stare. Worst was the 30-to-40-something men. They seemed to be riveted to their phones, but then they’d look–just for a second–and then they were back to their phones. But the look–the look was killer.

“Do you know what you look like to me? Lulu asked the Boss, back when we were just dancing in our hotel room. “You look like a goddess.”

Yes, I thought. This is EXACTLY what a goddess looks like. Everyone is staring at her because how can they not? But also, SHE is staring at them. She is saying, “I’m hot, and I don’t want to wear my wig or my headscarf, and if you want to stare at me as a result, knock yourself out and BEHOLD ME.”

I might as well have been walking down the street with Kali. I learned about her in yoga teacher training. She’s the goddess of war and destruction, dark and violent and fierce. But also of life and creation, because you can’t have one without the other, can you? There are 108 ways to say her name! It takes a long time to go through them. Here we see her standing on top of Shiva, who is usually considered the Main Destruction Dude. (Because, you know, boys write history. And mythology  But I digress.) Also, she is blue, so you would probably stare at her if you saw her sitting at the bar at the Keg.

“You look like a goddess to me!” Exactly. I just hope we can all remember, later, when everyone is healthy and distracted, what it’s like to be a goddess. Or what it’s like to walk down the street with one.

Communing with nature

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“I don’t want to look like a hobo,” said Lulu, looking around to see if anyone was watching before dumping her coffee on the ground.

Lulu, the Boss, and I were communing with nature. It was item #1 on the agenda of the 24-hour girlfest slumber party extravaganza that had just gotten underway.

Before communing with nature we went through the Tim Horton’s drive through. At our destination—a little forest reserve thing near the Boss’s house—the Boss produced some Bailey’s and proceeded to spike our coffees. Because we all know communing with nature is enhanced by Bailey’s Irish Cream. (Bailey’s Irish Cream is not paying me for this post. But they should be.)

Did you know that if you put chickadee feed on your palm and hold it out, actual living chickadees will land on you and eat out of your hand? This, the Boss assured us, was supposed to be an exciting prospect. So exciting that she produced about 10 pounds of birdfeed from her handbag (a handbag being another thing that enhances nature communing).

When Lulu and I sipped our doctored coffee and shook our heads, the Boss was indignant. “Are you kidding me? They land on your HAND, you guys! It’s awesome.”

“When I go to hell and they make me push large a boulder up a hill for all eternity, they’ll also make me do it one handed so that WILD BIRDS can land on my free arm,” I said.

So Lulu and I huddled a safe distance away while the Boss fed the birds. The Boss wins the communing award, for sure.

Lulu was the first-runner-up communer, though, when a few minutes later she was attacked by a squirrel. It ran up her leg. For real. “No word of a lie,” as Lulu herself would say. The only reason Lulu doesn’t take first prize is because her communing was of the involuntary sort.

After the screaming was over, Lulu was more philosophical. “I’m delicious,” she explained, when we asked why she thought the squirrel had so decidedly targeted her. “I’m full of sugar and chocolate at all times, so why shouldn’t I be?”

When we got back to the car, Lulu didn’t want her coffee any more. “Just dump it on the grass,” said the Boss.

“I don’t want to look like a hobo,” said Lulu, who apparently thinks that the vagabondily-inclined are known for dumping their coffee on the ground.

“This grass is dry,” I pointed out, because I like to be helpful. “It could use some liquid.” So Lulu dumped her Bailey’s-laced coffee.

Then we packed the car with nine pounds of birdfeed and went home to commune with Wii Just Dance 4, where I played Patrick Swayze, the Boss played Jennifer Gray, and Lulu provided the color commentary. “I had the time of my life,” the song goes. Totally.

I sipped my Chardonnay and she reappeared looking like a cross between the ghost of Christmas Past and a beauty school drop out

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“I might as well be injecting meth,” said Lulu, who was smoking an “adult cigarette” in her garage, dressed in her husband’s bathrobe and wearing a shower cap.

If you remember the original Mock Chicken, I should tell you that Lulu is no longer in the city with me. Alas, she moved, and is now about two hours away, in a quaint little town famous for its Mennonite community. Some of them ride around in buggies and wear traditional dress, though most don’t. It’s the “most don’t” contingent that worries Lulu. “They’re everywhere!” she says. “And they want to steal your soul.”

I need to set the record straight here. Lulu is maybe a twice a year smoker of adult cigarettes, which, I hasten to add are PERFECTLY (sort of) legal here in Canada. I cannot join her, because inhaling anything into my lungs besides fresh air and, like, the bus exhaust of my mega-urban street, gives me a panic attack.

So on our last visit/slumber party, Lulu had me all set up. “Have a seat,” she said, ushering me into the garage, where she had set up two camp chairs. A bottle of wine had been uncorked for me.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Have a drink.”

We were in the garage because of the aforementioned soul stealers. Lulu felt that the eighth of an inch of daylight between the edge of her blinds and the window well might be playing host to some of her neighbours’ eyeballs, and so she’d planned a retreat to the garage.

I sipped my Chardonnay and she reappeared looking like a cross between the ghost of Christmas Past and a beauty school drop out.

The robe—her husband’s—was so large that it pooled on the floor and covered her hands. Charles Dickens could have stashed not only Ignorance and Want there, but there would also have been room for Overindulgence and Maybe Just One More, But Only If You Insist, Thanks. Between it and the shower cap, only her face was showing. It turns out that although Lulu enjoys the occasional adult cigarette, she doesn’t enjoy the lingering smell.

“I might as well be injecting meth!” she shrieked, taking a puff and looking around as if she expected a horse and buggy bearing an unmerciful neighbour to come charging through.

Well, no. But Lulu is prone to hyperbole and that’s why we love her. How lucky are we to sit back and sip our Chardonnay and bask in her paranoid glory?

The freaks start to look normal and you start to get the creeps from the happy couples in Central Park

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My latest 60-second crush struck at a Diane Arbus exhbition at the Walker Art Centre in Minnepolis. We all know Diane Arbus for her pictures of freaks, right? Literally mid-century circus freaks and also assorted oddballs like female impersonators and the children of the extremely rich. But who knew that she took way more photos of ordinary New Yorkers? Except under her eye they manage to be both ordinary and slightly off — so much so that the freaks start to look normal and you start to get the creeps from the happy couples in Central Park.

Childwithhandgrenadedianearbus

This was the setting for my latest 60-second crush. I was on vacation, so I went on a weekday, thinking I’d drift idly through that and other exhibtions, unbothered by crowds. My prediction mostly came true, except that there was an entire school in attendance. Teenagers were everywhere, giggling at the tattooed lady and the naked midgets, but you could tell that some of them were secretly blown away by this sudden prospect of a whole other world where the camera gazed on everyone with the same cold eye, irrespective of sex, weight, amount of facial hair, or degree of beauty.

A tall lanky boy was crouched in a corner, as far from his classmates as he could possibly be. He was sitting on some steps and writing in a journal, furiously. He had on black pants, a dress shirt with a t-shirt over it, and–wait for it–one perfect long rosary around his neck. Oh, it slayed me.

Realizing that my latet 60-second crush had deposited me into the realm of the illegal, I moved on, to another exhibtion, by this guy called Cameron Jamie, who was not unlike Diane Arbus in that he was interested in the fringy subcultures of our day. He took photos and drew pictures of teenage wrestlers and people who put on haunted houses in New Jersey. One part of this exhibition was a mountain that you had to walk into — a room that had been outfitted so you felt like you were entering a cave. There was a path and some rock walls that quickly gave way to darkness. They gave you a flashlight but as you peeped in all you could see was pitch black. They told you that there were certain “works” inside. But they only let you go in one at a time. Not that I had anyone there with me to go mountaineering with, but the fact that they made you go it alone (and there was a guard there enforcing it) simultanously freaked me out and impressed the hell out of me. It was so dark that I had a little panic attack and didn’t go in. On my way home I thought:

1. Wow, there didn’t even have to be anything inside: the whole thing was unsettling enough that it made its point. But I wish I had seen what WAS inside there.
2. I suck.
3. Rosary Boy would have gone in.

 

I’m so tan that my hands look dirty

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The lastest from Lily, whose pallor is apparently threatened.

Dude, I’m so tan that my hands look dirty. U know what I mean? Why? See attached picture. Priestess were playing Coney Island at 1:30 in the afternoon. In the SUN! I literally RAN down the beach 2 shove my way 2 the front row. Whereupon I found that 5’5″ chunky, not-cute-no-matter-how-U-spin-it Mikey Heppner has NATURALLY RED-BLOND ROOTS under his dyed black hair. He was drenched with sweat. He was bright red from the heat. He will never give me the time of day. I heart him! Even though he made me tan!

Lily loves him even though he made her tan, and that's saying A LOT.
Lily loves him even though he made her tan, and that’s saying A LOT.

How about we call it even when I throw the rest of this cake out the window?

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Lulu, as you know, recently purchased a condo. I have not bought her a housewarming gift. There is a certain point in your life when you’re old enough to be attuned to things like housewarming gifts but still young enough to have friends that move every 18 months. It presents a dilemma for the modern girl.

When Mr. Mock and I shacked up, I was overwhelmed by the number of books he owned. Never mind that the number of books he owned was, when I had visited his apartment in the past, his most charming and attractive quality. When they – all two thousand of them – were suddenly under my roof, I freaked out and had daily clutter-induced panic attacks.

When it became clear that an evening get-together I was having for some girlfriends shortly after moving to the new place was being reinterpreted as a housewarming, I adamantly insisted that I would not allow a single additional object to pass through my door. I jokingly told them that the best give they could give me was to come and shoplift an armload of books. (Seriously, we [and by “we” I mean “he”] had not one, but two, copies of Robert’s Rules of Order. I like to think that if we suddenly had to revert to parliamentary procedure in our apartment, that one copy would do. But I digress.)

So everyone heeded my warnings and I received no margarita sets, no bamboo placemats, no bud vases.

But now Lulu’s moved and I kind of recapped this whole thing to her recently when we were pigging out at my place, demolishing a chocolate cake. I felt bad, I said, that I hadn’t gotten her a housewarming gift. Lulu was feeling bloated and I think she blamed me for the ungodly amount of food we had consumed.

And really, this whole story is set up for what she said next…

“How about we call it even,” she said, “when I throw the rest of this cake out the window and leave you to clean it up.”

“Deal,” I said.

 

There’s not going to be a single girl in this movie, is there?

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Girlfriends are good for the soul. Okay, I sound like a fracking Hallmark card, but it’s true. Mr. Mock is out of town and Lulu and I had a slumber party. We spent a fair chunk of the time talking about Lily – and aspiring to be inebriated enough to drunken dial her but falling far, far short. I blame the vast quantities of butter chicken and chocolate cake consumed over the course of the evening.

Last weekend the Mr. Mock and I went to see Jarhead. About halfway though, fully appreciating the Very Important Statement it was making about the nihilistic pointlessness and skincrawling futility of war, I leant over and whispered in his ear, “There’s not going to be a single girl in this movie, is there?”

“No,” he said.

“Except of course for in the porn they watch, right?” I couldn’t resist asking/pointing out.

“Right,” he said.

Since I had chosen the film, there was nothing to do but nod and settle in for another 90 minutes of burnt bodies, oil fires, and frat boys with automatic rifles.

The antidote to all this, I must say, is in fact The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Yes, it’s made for teenagers. Yes, the impossible yet central premise of the film is that there’s one magic pair of jeans that fits four totally differently-shaped best friends and, like, brings them luck. Yes, people are dying of cancer and one’s emotions are all terribly manipulated. But it’s lovely! Plus there’s this monologue near the end by the Girl With Terminal Cancer about how happiness isn’t about having a perfect life, it’s about “stringing together the small things” and making them count. You know, things like sleeping late and taking yourself out for brunch (which I plan to do tomorrow), discovering the perfect Christmas present for Mr. Mock, and having the same conversations over and over with your girlfriends.

I was struck by how if Jarhead is a movie about boys made by boys for boys, The Sisterhood is the exact opposite.

So viva la difference, I guess, but the real point is watching movies with your girlfriends and eating butter chicken is good for what ails you, even if you don’t think there’s anything ailing you.

Well, we all have our own personal pore-cleansing nose-strip disasters, don’t we?

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Well, we all have our own personal pore-cleansing nose-strip disasters, don’t we? Lily recommends that anyone thinking of buying the Ponds version because it is a buck cheaper than category-leading Biore, think twice.

At home recently, she read the directions on the Ponds strips, and, as instructed, held the strip to her nose with one hand and moistened it by dipping a finger from her other hand into water, and passing it over the strip. Chicklets, her finger stuck to her nose! Being nothing if not crafty, she managed to salvage both the situation and her finger and sat down to wait the appointed 5 minutes for the strip to dry.

Twenty-five minutes later, it was, she reports, still sopping wet. “I don’t have all day,” she said, so she got out the hair dryer and began to blow dry her nose.

“And all I was thinking,” she says, “is about Pompeii and about how if something catastrophic should happen, I’ll die blow-drying my nose strip.” Indeed, Chicklets, there must have been people immortalized in ash doing the first-century-A.D. equivalent of removing blackheads with off-brand nose strips, mustn’t there? If death arrived instantaneously, what would you be doing?

“The lesson,” Lily says, “is spend the extra dollar.”

Enough pink drinks and she was able to forget…

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Duran-Duran-1983-300x195

Lily spent last Tuesday night on Liberty Island at a private party to launch some new brand of vodka. Not being told by the publicist friend who invited her that the event was part of Fashion Week, she came dressed in her usual Lacoste-meets-Goth clubwear. They were ferried over and plied with pink vodka drinks distributed by supermodels in babushkas. Enough pink drinks and she was able to forget that she was wearing a polo shirt and platform boots and Mikal Baryshnikov was wearing Armani.

After watching fireworks while lounging on Persian carpets and plush throw pillows scattered about on the lawn, the evening ended with a concert by none other than Duran Duran. Playing on a floaty raft thing forty feet out in the water, they were, Lily reports, “phoning it in.” She did not care, though, because of course she will someday marry Simon Le Bon. One doesn’t want one’s husband to be too enthusiastic when whoring himself out at corporate gigs, does one?

He took off his jacket and she was overcome with a desire to yell “take it all off” but thought about how she was surrounded by nine-foot supermodels doing shots of vodka and just clapped politely.

“Then we got back on the ferry with Mikal and the supermodels and I went back home,” says Mrs. Le Bon.

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