Bra Shopping with My Mother

"Roger that. She wants that one."

I became a woman, so to speak, at age ten, and I felt like an alien species. No one else was going through that particular misery yet. Naturally, I tried to hide the fact that I was an alien. Back then, buying a bra was like a covert operation. I would breeze through the lingerie department, pretending to look for my mother, then quickly nod towards the bra I wanted. My mother, who was actually behind me, would then pick up the bra and head nonchalantly to the register.

In junior high, when other girls were finally going through puberty, I let my mother take me bra shopping out in the open. We had just been hiking, so I was sweaty and adorned in my usual sports bra (I wore them constantly because they tended to tamp things down). She took me to Gap Body, which I think she picked because it seemed like a more neutral/less sexualized store than say Victoria’s Secret. It was also where she shopped. We didn’t know what size I was, so a saleswoman with a measuring tape sequestered me in the dressing room. I remember my mother watching too, as the woman measured my breasts. I was humiliated to say the least, especially since I was sweating and wearing a gray, ratty sports bra.

Twelve years later, I was visiting my parents, and mom and I decided to do the traditional shop. I needed bras. I was worried that I might still be wearing some of the same bras we bought that day, when I was thirteen. We went to Gap Body. I wondered if my breasts still were the same size. Sometimes they can change on you. I have friends who have thought they were A-cups and suddenly learned they are Ds, which is like thinking you’re 5’4″ and finding out you’re really 6′.

I tried a couple bras on by myself as my mom shopped. The As were a little tight and the Bs were too big. I approached a saleswoman named Brandy.

Upside Down Backwards

I’ve become a tourist in my hometown, which is too bad because a favorite Santa Cruz pastime is making fun of tourists. I remember one summer a lot of tourists wore upside down, backwards visors, and we locals were particularly disgusted. Well, I’m not wearing an upside down, backwards visor, but there are things about me that mark me as different. LA has changed me.

I never drank Diet Coke before I moved to LA. I pull up to my parents’ house and guiltily eye the Diet Coke cans, like I was arriving with a car filled with cigarette butts. I drive differently now too. I drive with purpose and anger. The locals here take their time, probably because there are beautiful things to see from the window of your car in Santa Cruz. In LA, everything’s an identical strip mall. Although at a stoplight in Venice, I did see a homeless woman take a dump on the sidewalk. However, I could probably see that in Santa Cruz too.

It’s not like I ever felt particularly Santa Cruzan growing up. In sixth grade all the cool kids were professional surfers. I remember overhearing conversations about sponsorship. “I’m sponsored by O’Neill.” I would have been sponsored by SPF 100 or American Girl Dolls. I thought I could maybe dress the part: if I adorned myself in Roxy or Hang Ten, no one would notice that I had no interest in the ocean or the great outdoors.

In Junior High, I forced my dad to take me to some surf shop and buy me board shorts. My dad likes to get to the point when he shops, so he went right up to the guy behind the counter and asked where the board shorts were. I was twelve, so during this whole interaction I wanted to die. The guy who worked there took one look at me and said, “You’re sure your daughter’s into this kind of stuff?”

Acting Origins: MLK Jr.

I began my acting career playing a coat rack. When I showed up in her life, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Gardner, had long given up on actually teaching. She constantly looked surprised to find herself in a classroom. She mostly was interested in maintaining her bee hive, white jeans and Delorean. What a sight. When the door of that car raised up, she might as well have been arriving in an alien pod. All she needed was her own theme song.

School plays have no blocking

Anyway, Mrs. Gardner must have cleverly realized that if she put on a play, rehearsals would take up a lot of lesson time, and the performances would prove to our parents we were learning. She chose plays about people of historical importance. Elementary school actors are more like re-enactors and sports announcers, declaiming what’s happening. “Hark, it’s Plymouth Rock.” Haven’t they ever heard showing is so much better than telling? Elementary school theater also isn’t big on character-driven, relationship-based plays, probably because the idea isn’t to create a bunch of actors (heaven forbid). No, the school play is supposed to teach you something, but I’m not sure what.

My Hair

Yesterday a homeless man approached me and said, “Wow, I thought you were a guy, and then I saw that thing in your hair.” Then he asked me for some change. I was wearing a dress and a headband. He really needs to work on his pitch.

History of the Pixie Cut from Betty Mae Vintage!

What’s worse is I’m in the long laborious process of growing my hair out, and I thought I was reaching a point where it’s fairly obvious that I’m female. When it was a pixie cut, I wore heels, makeup, earrings and dresses all the time just to drive the point home. I felt sort of like a drag queen, wearing an exaggerated costume of femininity. I’m sensitive about making it known that I’m a lady, and I think this started in elementary school.

In second grade I got this bowl cut because I was really into kickball. I found a poem that I wrote at the time. I remember writing it during one of those art class days. Reagan had cut all the art classes in elementary schools, so maybe twice a year we would get an art teacher who would teach anything from Native American singing to poetry. Since they were only there for a day, we would spend most of the class taking in the oddities of the teacher. Were ponchos clothing?

Call Your Mom

When I do something bad-like ruin my appetite before dinner by eating cereal-I call my mother. “Hi, Mom. Just wanted to tell you that I spoiled my appetite with cereal. Ok. Talk to you later.”

There’s an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry does the exact same thing, so I’m not alone. Why do people do this? Are our mothers representative of our guilty conscious? Is telling on yourself a way of making sure you get back in line?

Actually, I think I call my mom so that she can reassure me everything is OK. I  want her to accept that I ate the cereal, so that I can accept it and move on. Unfortunately, she never does. I don’t think she would be a good mother if she did. So it’s important to hang up before you can experience any sort of judgment.

Stranger Danger

The Threats Trap is my favorite. That actor is amazing.

Kidnapped

As a child I was certain I would be kidnapped. I made both my parents, not just one, walk me to school. I locked my windows and door before bed. But I had a hard time sleeping. After all, we had a swing set in the front yard, a tell-tale sign any good kidnapper would recognize.

I’m from the Polly Klaas generation, and well-meaning legislators are probably to blame for my overwhelming anxiety. They sent a policeman to my fourth grade class, so he could educate us about the dangers of strangers. To this day I partially hold him responsible for my social anxiety. He told us to never let on that our parents might not be home. If we couldn’t produce an adult, we were instructed to lie, explaining that our parents were in the shower.

Ryan Jones, the class smart aleck, raised his hand. “We’re supposed to say both our parents are in the shower. Gross!” The class giggled, but I remained serious. I imagine I was taking notes.

Later if I was alone and my parents’ friends would call, even if it was just Dennis, my dad’s good friend who I knew, I would turn the shower on and hold the phone up. No one was getting me.

Of course there was a possibility that I’d already been captured. My parents could really be my kidnappers. This was too much for my brain to handle, so I decided that if that was the case, I was just going to have to accept them as my parents. The danger had already passed, unless my real parents might try to kidnap me back.

My Cat IS Hitting on Me

Dr. Poopy Pants, as he is sometimes known, strikes again.

This time in my bed. You know you love someone, or some cat, when you’ll let them shit in your bed.

Since I now do time as a cat psychologist, I believe he was marking his territory-claiming me as his. Oh wait, no I’m sitting in some leftover cat shit.

Oh, he shat on the couch too! I don’t feel special anymore.

Yet again, Poopy Pants a.k.a Youngblood, tells us something about human romantic relationships. Just because someone, or some cat, declares their love, doesn’t mean they aren’t declaring it all over the living room.

Also, I’m pretty sure YB is related to Kramer. He keeps making Kramer entrances-throwing himself through doorways and around the room. But he’s black, so he doesn’t make stupid racial remarks like Michael Richards.

Get your shit together Mr. Richards-you’re mad talented. YB, you also need to get your shit together.

This stuff really does work:

We need all three sizes.