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March 28, 2005
Pearls...
First off, I know I’m a terrible website person. I know. Sorry. I got an email from a longtime reader named Dave and he said my writing was very stream of consciousness lately and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. He said it was good so I believed him and because of that, I’m giving you this which is a bunch of shit put in one entry because I feel guilty about not updating. Accept my apology. Please and thank you.
My sister is a fool.
I called her – let me stop lying – I called her from my cell phone which doesn’t get very good reception in this vortex of an apartment and I told her to call me back at home because I don’t have long distance on my land line. Eww, I just said land line but whatever I don’t have long distance so I’m already the biggest asshole. Don’t judge me. She calls me back and I begin to excitedly tell her about my teeth.
Here’s a quick recap on my teeth for those of you that don’t follow this here page. Two years ago, on my way to see Puck shoot his episode of Cribs, I fell down a flight of stairs and chipped my tooth. Coral rushed me to the nearest dentist and he put a temporary fake tooth on so that I could go to work the next day. Incidentally, I happened to be hosting a fucking TV show at the time so it was extremely important to get the gremlin jack-o-lantern tooth fixed as soon as possible. The temporary fake tooth was supposed to last two weeks.
Cut to last month as I was standing in line at the bank. I don’t know why I ever go inside the bank. Bank of America, yes you nasty ass Bank of America, charges me to speak to a human being both in person and on the phone. But I have poor mentality so I need to see all the transactions go down in my face so I can know where my money is. I don’t like my money to be fooled around with. I done fixed that paycheck so I know if it been messed with. Wow, I love The Color Purple. As a matter of fact, I’m going to play my Color Purple soundtrack as I write this. I bet you think I don’t know nothing but singing the blues.
Anyway, I’m standing in line and I look at my smile in the reflection of my cell phone and I notice a hairline crack. I immediately start crying as all teeth issues are gigantic, dramatic, traumatic, big deals to me. The temporary tooth that was supposed to last two weeks lasted two years! It was supposed to crack but I was upset like I missed my Uncle George y’all. Luckily I wasn’t in front of a bunch of people. I do have a recurring nightmare that I’ll lose my tooth in front of a large Chris Rock Bigger & Blacker size audience.
So, I go in to my temporary tooth dentist and ask for a consultation. Two years ago, he recommended that I get porcelain veneers. They cost one million dollars and I was more interested in, you know, eating and sleeping in an apartment with a door that locks and driving an insured vehicle so I had to pass on the veneers. Two years ago, I had to pass. Now, with the crack threatening my livelihood (read: emotional well-being) every day, I had no choice but to get the veneers. So, I pay all the money and what a sad day that was. Goodbye money. That’s all I ever say. Goodbye money.
As the receptionist went in the back to run my card, I was standing at the counter crossing my fingers hoping this wouldn’t be the day I got seriously clowned by my bank. Did I tell you my ATM card was DENIED at the McDonald’s drive-thru once? Well, after that experience, I just assume my card will fail me. I don’t know if it’s sexism or racism or just plain bad luck, but stupid shit is always happening to me during any kind of money transaction. I listened for the sound of the card going through successfully (it did) and I signed on the dotted line eager to start the process of getting MY NEW TEETH.
First, I had to bleach them. I happened to be going to Mexico (free trip, heeeeey!) during the week of the bleaching. I had gotten an amazing tan and with bright white teeth, I looked like an asshole for the first couple of days. Why celebrities do the mystic tan and the super bleaching together, I’ll never know. I looked like a fucking crazy person. Alert like a mother fucker. The teeth process. Then, they do a bunch of other shit and you come back and 19 Novocain shots later, the new teeth are ready and they put them on. Ooh yeah. I make up songs about my teeth. Forever and ever, and I will brush yooooou.
Well, I got the new teeth. They have that opalescent glossy wet pearly white Sarah Jessica Parker teeth look to them. I’m obsessed with teeth and have been for a very long time so today is a big day in my life. Huge. Like crazy. Even Coral said since she’s known me she can mark major events in her life and mine by my teeth process. From braces to today. I’m a new person. So I had to share with my sister.
We get on the phone and I go off about my teeth. Now, this is an interesting conversation because my sister got veneers put on 15 years ago, but they didn’t have the technology that they have now. We’ll leave it at that. The teeth have changed, but she is not obsessed. She cares very little actually because she has real concerns like children and stuff life that. So, she’s able to revel in the joy because she doesn’t care about teeth. I’m telling her it was the best money I’ve ever been sad to spend. I’m going crazy, being totally self-involved, interrupting her with my excitement and she says…
“I took mom to get some barbecue today and we were talking and she said I should look into getting my insurance shit together to fix my teeth so that I can be beautiful…”
Simultaneous gasp! Jinx.
My mom never really has had any tact whatsoever. When I told her that it was over with one of my boyfriends of yesteryear, she said, “Well, you hap to stop being such bitch maybe…” and I was floored. She further shit on me by saying, “You sometimes are cold-hearted snake, you know…” and I know full well she learned that term from a Paula Abdul song so I couldn’t take her seriously but it did hurt my feelings a bit. But, she’s Asian. Any of you with Asian moms know that they don’t really mean anything maliciously and you have to just grow up knowing this or else you’ll be jackass with no self-esteem. And you’ll spend your life correcting that Asian mom, thinking she hears you but she never will. For the rest of her life, Mercy will say “she” instead of “he” and call tampons “Sanitex” because damn it, that’s what it is to her.
(Side note: I had the nerve to just put my whole arm in the long skinny sleeve of a Saltine cracker bag thinking if I reached there’d be one more cracker for me to eat. Stupid.)
So my sister says to her, “You know, mom, why did you just say that?”
I had to pause there. Marlene, you asked her that. She doesn’t have the answer. She doesn’t know why she just said that. She just said that shit. And she meant it in a good way, meaning you’re pretty now but once you get those jacked up teeth fixed, ooh, you’ll be sexy. Now that Marlene has asked, basically, a rhetorical question she’s going to have to be in a long weird Asian mom conversation for 19 years and then the bill will come and my mom will scoot it her way and look away as if she’s confused by these crazy American surroundings and it’ll be all shitty from there. I know Mercy and I know what’s about to go down.
So my mom goes around and around and finally says, “I don’t know. Why you hap to get mad? I’m just saying you pix your teet, dat’s all…” Keep in mind, Mercy recently lost her own mother fucking tooth – again! The one that I paid to put back in her head. Yeah, she done brushed it off again. You should see her toothbrush. The bristles fray to the left and to the right leaving a void in the middle. She brushes like she’s using one of those minty barks of wood that they use in the straight up jungle. We keep telling her she doesn’t have to brush so hard and she just says, “You kids leab me alone, I do it what I want…” Fine. Keep losing your tooth then.
Marlene tells her that her teeth aren’t important to her and that she has a sparkling personality to rely on, anyway and besides. I agree. My mom also agrees and then says, “So, (long pause) I need butt implants. Dat man on da TB, he cannot sit down por six week. You belieb dat one?”
And that’s how Mercy gets away with hurting our feelings accidentally. She says hilarious shit. My mom always talks about butts too. When I went to visit and I noticed my dad had lost some weight, she said out loud for all to hear, "Meleesa, he don't got no butt..." My dad swatted her away and went back to his video game. John Madden football. He's still really into it. In an online league and everything. His team name is The Baltimore Terror and he designed his own logo. A black fist holding a lightning bolt. Don't go stealing my dad's style now.
So we get to style. Marlene's style. Well...
So my sister said she had to call me back later because she had to get ready for a date. She’s divorced now (thank Allah) and she has a date. Good for her. She says this man is coming to pick her up on a motorcycle.
I say, “You better wear jeans…”
“Yeah, with a wifebeater” she says in a “duh” kind of way.
“And a jacket bitch, it’ll be cold when that wind is whipping your ass around…”
And she says, “Yeah, I’ll put on my cropped jean jacket…”
I said, “No, you can’t wear denim on denim. And you really can’t wear a fucking denim bolero. Are you fucking insane?”
She goes, “I can’t! Who says!”
“The world…” I respond.
I tell her that I learned my lesson the hard way regarding denim on denim. I tried two different washes, different shapes of the jacket. None of it works because in pictures, and I had the unfortunate experience of having my denim on denim photographed for everlasting time, it looks so bad. Look at Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in those matching patchwork denim outfits and he's the hottest man alive and she's, well, she's really rich so see, it can't be done.
After she tells me that little sisters are evil, she says she’s going to wear her leather baby backpack just to piss me off. She had come to visit last year and she had this appalling leather baby backpack. I tried to take it away, tried to offer her another bag of greater value, but I couldn’t when she told me it housed her children’s needs too. But she’s 9, what the hell do you have to carry for her that she can’t carry in her own baby backpack? We don’t know the answers to these stupid ass questions. She kept the bag, currently uses it to spite me and who’s the real winner? Nobody wins. I must burn the bag and replace it with a Marc Jacobs item where she can’t deny the craftsmanship and the style for even a second.
Speaking of burning, my boyfriend’s got a brown knit cap that needs some gasoline poured all over it. He insists on wearing it every day and when I asked him what he’d do if I burned it, he said I’d die. Well, you are all my witnesses. If I die with the raggedy brown cotton shards of a knit cap tightly balled up in my dead clenched fist, you know who’s responsible.
I have to go do some interpretive dance to this here Color Purple. It’s the separation song. How fitting. Baby backpacks. Knit caps. Old teeth… Ooh yeah, I don't have time for this. I have to stare at my teeth until Starting Over comes on. Duh.
Posted by melissah at March 28, 2005 12:57 PM