Famous socks are still just socks
Last week I was hanging out at a bar by myself because I’d committed to seeing some friends tap keys and strum strings in their obscure – albeit adorable – band, when I noticed a familiar set of eyes staring in my direction. I looked away immediately, desperately trying to figure out who it was before that awkward HEY, REMEMBER ME! conversation could happen. Old classmate? No. Old co-worker? Nope. I turned to take a quick second glance just as dude slid into the seat across from me, and before I knew my ass from my head I was sitting in a dark booth on the edge of a dive bar with a very, very famous man.
Before I go on, you need some back story: One of the greatest things about San Francisco is the lack of celebrities. Sure, it’s a popular city, tons of people dream of leaving their hearts here, and the cable cars are a blast. But the bad weather perpetuates rebellion against designer strip malls, and little dogs aren’t keen on mud puddles (see also: Seattle). When a famous person does decide to walk our grimy streets, it’s usually to drop in on Twitter, hang out at the MythBusters office, or maybe pose for a Polaroid at True. They have a mission, they pull their hats down low, nobody thinks to look twice, the paparazzi stay away.
And then, every so often, they decide to hit up local spots where timid chicks like yours truly are just trying to prove their loyalty in peace. Dude immediately apologized for barging in on my “super awesome looking fun time”, but I died and came back to life before picking up on the sarcasm. A few seconds of horrifying silence later, he hurriedly explained that he just needed a less obvious place to chill and that if I was uncomfortable with his company he’d totally understand.
I don’t remember what I said with my mouth, but in my head it was no, please stay, stay forever, and hey, maybe we should play naked Twister?
Fast-forward to four (maybe five?) drinks later. We ragged on each other for being loners at what we decided in that drunken moment was the “diveyest dive bar in all of San Francisco" (not even close), and then retracted our insults when he found out that I was soul-searching and I found out that he was hunting for inspiration.
And then, in our bubble of self-serving loneliness and vodka, someone got an erection.
Y'all, a FAMOUS ERECTION!
I’m not going to tell you who it was (the famous person, not who got the erection) for three reasons:
1. I don’t know how the aftermath of half famous affairs works
2. You’d never believe me anyway
3. He kept his socks on, and I don’t want to be responsible for single-handedly destroying a sex symbol
This life is crazy
OH HAI. It’s been a long while, I know. That’s the thing about working online: you realize how public everything really is. Today, for example, not two minutes after I finished sifting through the ‘net for dental coverage, my phone rang. Turns out it was an insurance agent (did I really plug my number into one of those sites? I don’t remember…) and in the voicemail he left he said he could get insurance for me right now! Today! This minute! Huzzah!
Then I got about fifteen e-mails from other agents claiming the same thing. And then, that first agent? The one that called me? I Googled him. I don’t know how or when I developed the strange compulsion to Google absolutely everyone from the grocery store checker to Robert D. Owens the insurance guy, but I do it. When it dawned on me that I probably get Googled too, I stopped blogging, made my Google Profile as presentable as possible, and then slowly curled up into the fetal position with a bottle of wine.
It’s not like this is a new development, this whole internet = public thing, but now that I write about it on a daily basis I feel less inclined to tell you that I make tiny replicas of the asshat PR people I have to deal with for my job and then stick pins in them. Or that I’m physically stalking the hot barista I saw at Starubucks last week. Or that I’ve developed a slight twitch in my right eye.
It just makes me look bad, you know?
Anyway. I’ve also been super busy. I decided at the beginning of this year that I was going to be serious about my job. I mean, I was always serious, but now I’m more serious, which is code for: I asked for more money so now I have more responsibilities. Good timing too, because since then I’ve been to the ER, the dentist, and there’s a plane to Paris I have to catch next month.
DID YOU CATCH THAT, ROBERT D. OWENS? I’M GOING TO PARIS!
Making it in 2009
Angela: shitmydadsays got a book deal
Chelsi: yeah
: so did the guy who does that fuckyoupenguin site
A: WHERE'S THE BOOK DEAL BITCH
C: you just have to start a stupid twitter or blog
A: "stuff my vagina says"
C: something that's ephemerally cool and doesn't give away the fact that you're actually intelligent
: and BAM
: book deal
: Urban Outfitters will totally sell your book, too
A: they wouldn't even sell me shirts
: IRONEE
C: OH
: AND YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO SPELL CORRECTLY
: ICANHAZBUKDEEL?
A: this is important
Appreciating a couple of Johns
John Updike was an amazing story teller. The Creative Writer in me is deeply saddened to learn of his passing.
The following is a flash fiction story he wrote called Oliver's Evolution:
His parents had not meant to abuse him; they had meant to love him, and did love him. But Oliver had come late in their little pack of offspring, at a time when the challenge of child-rearing was wearing thin, and he proved susceptible to mishaps. A big fetus, cramped in his mother's womb, he was born with un-turned feet, to crawl with corrective casts up to his ankles. When they were at last removed, he cried in terror, because he thought those heavy plaster boots scraping and bumping along the floor had been part of himself.
One day in his infancy they found him on their dressing room floor with a box of mothballs, some of which were wet with saliva; in retrospect they wondered if there had really been a need to rush him to the hospital and have his poor little stomach pumped. His face was gray-green afterwards. The following summer, when he had learned to walk, his parents had unthinkingly swum away off the beach together, striving for romantic harmony the morning after a late party and an alcoholic quarrel, and were quite unaware, until they saw the lifeguard racing along the beach, that Oliver had toddled after them and had been floating on his face for what might have been, given a less alert lifeguard, a fatal couple of minutes. This time, his face was blue, and he coughed for hours.
He was the least complaining of their children. He did not blame his parents when neither they nor the school authorities detected his "sleepy" right eye in time for therapy, with the result that when he closed that eye everything looked intractably fuzzy. Just the sight of the boy holding a schoolbook at a curious angle to the light made his father want to weep, impotently.
And it happened that he was just the wrong, vulnerable age when his parents went through their separation and divorce. His older brothers were off in boarding school and college, embarked on manhood, free of family. His younger sister was small enough to find the new arrangements--the meals in restaurants with her father, the friendly men who appeared to take her mother out--exciting. But Oliver, at thirteen, felt the weight of the household descend on him; he made his mother's sense of abandonment his own. Again, his father impotently grieved. It was he, and not the boy, who was at fault, really, when the bad grades began to come from day school, and then from college, and Oliver broke his arm falling down the frat stairs, or leaping, by another account of the confused incident, from a girl's dormitory window. Not one but several family automobiles met a ruinous end with him at the wheel, though with no more injury, as it happened, than contused knees and loosened front teeth. The teeth grew firm again, thank God, for his innocent smile, slowly spreading across his face as the full humor of his newest misadventure dawned, was one of his best features. His teeth were small and round and widely spread -- baby teeth.
Then he married, which seemed yet another mishap, to go with the late nights, abandoned jobs, and fallen-through opportunities of his life as a young adult. The girl, Alicia, was as accident-prone as he, given to substance abuse and unwanted pregnancies. Her emotional disturbances left herself and others bruised. By comparison, Oliver was solid and surefooted, and she looked up to him. This was the key. What we expect of others, they endeavor to provide. He held on to a job, and she held on to her pregnancies. You should see him now, with their two children, a fair little girl and a dark-haired boy. Oliver has grown broad, and holds the two of them at once. They are birds in a nest. He is a tree, a sheltering boulder. He is a protector of the weak.
I underlined that one bit because it's underlined in the book I have (Flash Fiction Forward, edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard) and I think it's quite lovely anyway.
One Minute Writer
While I do have a tiny bit of spare time for personal writing, it's after I've written for a handful of sites and worked on what feels like a zillion projects. Meaning, by the time I have time to write for GAS, I'm usually too braindead to logically put together the stories of my life, however interesting they may be. For example, there's this taqueria guy I met recently who tried to get me to take some free water by telling me it was 5 million years old and that it'd be served in an elegant cup that I'd surely run home and tell all my friends about (it was a standard paper Coke cup). I'd LOVE to tell you all about him but I just don't have the energy to fully do the story justice, and Taqueria Guy deserves better than that.
So tonight I'm going to try something new, which is actually an idea I'm stealing from this adorable dude I know (more on him later as well) who stole it from this website.
The tagline of the website is: You have 1,440 minutes a day. Use one of them to write. They offer up a daily prompt, but I'm going to choose which one I go with this time because today's is about which technology I couldn't live without, and at this point I feel like throwing my computer out the window. It's probably best not to open that can of worms, ya know? So here we go:
What is your favorite place in your home?
My bed, by far. A full-sized haven positioned just underneath a five foot wide window. Not too soft and not too hard. Covered in a goose down comforter and a ridiculous amount of squishy pillows, though I only use one under my head. Cream colored sheets with tiny pink flowers feign a girly side to my aesthetic preference, and the roses engraved in the light wooden frame don't help either. Still, whether it's alone or with someone who'd likely give me shit for having such a pansy bed, there's usually nowhere else I'd rather be.
Yeah that’s right, an Unbeatable Writing Machine
There are few things I remember from the Creative Writing classes I took back in college, but one thing every single teacher made a point to drill into the skulls of their doe-eyed students was: If you want to be a writer, do not get a writing job.
For a long time this seemed to be sage advice. It’s difficult to muster up the brain power or the creativity to write fiction, non-fiction, personal narrative masquerading as fiction, etc. when you’ve already spent the greater part of the day writing about something you are likely less than passionate about. I didn’t want my dream of landing a book deal to fall to the wayside, so I added Art History to my list of Bachelor’s degrees and figured I’d find some romantic job at a non-profit. Apparently my younger self thought I’d be comfortable with living off of stale bread and a single pair of holey jeans.
Although I’m not quite finished dazzling the non-profit arts world with my charm and charisma, I’ve long since thought it could one day support the kind of life style I intend to maintain. So after weeks and weeks of e-mailing galleries with no response, I went and got a few writing jobs.
I know that just now it sounded like I “settled” for writing jobs, but on the contrary, I was totally stoked. The first one came to me via an e-mail from a close friend of mine and it went something like, Hey Chelsi, a friend of mine named John read GAS and totally loved it. He wants to know if you’d be interested in writing product reviews for a site he runs. Shoot him an e-mail if so.
I shot John that e-mail a couple of months ago and though the site is brand new, terrible to look at and in need of a lot of upgrades, I’ve never had a more entertaining job. The site is targeted toward women, so writing the reviews comes fairly naturally, and as it turns out I’m dead set on doing whatever I possibly can to see that John’s dreams for his company come into fruition. So far, with words alone I’ve already built a lovely fan club, full of very loyal friends whose lives have been changed by the things they ordered. (These things include the iBra and several cosmetic kits!) And that’s a good feeling.
A while after taking the job at SGW Media, I was talking to the same friend about how much I loved writing and how much I’d love for it to support the life abroad that I dream of every single night. So she goes, Hey, why don’t you contact my old editor and see if he’d give you a gig? And then I said something like, Hey, that’s the best idea you’ve ever had in life.
So I sent the Editor of CMS Wire an e-mail that went something like, Hey Editor, I have a serious beef with my location right now and I’d like to change it. I know the difference between your, you’re, their, there and they’re and I’d like to write for your site in exchange for the money that will save my sanity. Check out my personal site and the writing I do for SGW Media and let me know what you think. --And three days later he replied with something like, Cool, when can you start? And then I danced around so excitedly that I almost died.
The techie writing is obviously on an entirely different plane than the girly reviews. I don’t go to sleep at night anticipating the “exciting” assignments I’ll get to work on the next day, but I do have a new sense of responsibility, of commitment, of purpose, and of general AWESOME, I’M A PAID WRITER-ness, and that my friends, makes writing about geek developments a fuckin’ dream job. I’ve been doing it for about a month now, and already my ears perk up at the mention of anything and everything that has to do with content management. I enjoy my finished articles immensely, and for whatever reason I believe I’m even developing some kind of legitimate interest in the topics. Aside from that, the techie folks are kind and fun and this is going to sound a little on the bat shit crazy side, but I genuinely believe that my new ability to turn around and school someone (anyone) on Enterprise 2.0 just added a butt-load of sexy points to my personal scoreboard. Who wants to join me at the next tech conference and watch my head swell?
Unfortunately, my Creative Writing teachers were sort of right. My posts on GAS have definitely suffered since starting the writing jobs. And what’s even more disturbing is that I’ve started to integrate the CMS Wire review form in all of my other writing, case in point: My recent entry titled The Poison. It goes: Intro, Background information, Bullet list of something er other, Summary. Oh, and that I just used the word Integrate? That’s example number two.
THE TECHIES ARE INVADING MY MIND.
Regardless, I am incredibly lucky to be in the position I’m in right now, and I feel a few hits to GAS is not that serious-- it’s a small price to pay for what these two jobs have the potential of becoming to me. I’m working on getting into a smoother rhythm when it comes to juggling all of these balls I have in the air, so please, until I find that rhythm, excuse whatever madness I post here on GAS. I’ve always been determined to do what people tell me I can’t do, so my Creative Writing teachers can suck it. Every day that I write a review, be it on stilettos or widgets, I’m thismuch closer to becoming an unbeatable writing machine.
I’m confident that it won’t be long before I can update three websites on a daily basis, and as soon as I figure that pattern out, all I’ll have left to conquer is the problem I have with being way too interested in certain boys that already have girlfriends.
Do you see the madness I just typed in that last sentence? That’s the kind of stuff I’m going to need you to forgive.
The message
I have a confession to make: I’ve been following this chick on the net for a while now; I forgot how I found her, but I often look at her photos as she is an aspiring model and takes tons and tons. Something about the angles in her face is very striking, and, I mean, who doesn’t like to look at pretty things? I was taught in my psych 101 class that even babies are more likely to stare at people with symmetrical faces (symmetry being one of the main factors in what and whom we find attractive) but now I’m just digressing because I don’t want you to go, CHELSI IS A LESBIAN, CHELSI IS A LESBIAN!
I want to make it clear that I don’t keep this site because I want to be famous or adored. I write what I write here because, as silly as it may sound, it gives me a sense of accomplishment, and I honestly don’t think I could get along in the world without having some kind of outlet like this. And while the choice to make it public may seem like a cry for attention, I really just hope that through this medium I’m able communicate with people across the world who may be having the same kind of issues or thoughts. This is going to sound a little crazy, but after a long day of running around, working with people I have absolutely nothing in common with, and doing my daily hustle (not involving illegal activity), I love, love, love coming home and getting on my janky ass lap top and talking to all of you folks. For one, you can’t talk back (HA) and two, normally I'm confident that the people who continue to come back here are people who enjoy my point of view and hopefully, are inspired by it.