The Figurative Cocksucker Problem (Not the Muslim Problem)

There seems to be a lot of cock and balls going around about Muslims lately, and it seems that way because there is.

However, I assume that if you're reading this, the cocks aren't coming out of your mouth, so this is less about changing your mind than putting our heads together to combat those who suck on Fox every day.

I think a huge part of the problem is how easy it is to forget that you're a human when all of your physiological needs are being met. It's even worse when cocksuckers believe that they earned or deserve those things more than others.

 

Fig. 1: OMG. Isn't this pretty!?

So, I think most racist, selfish cocksuckers are floating somewhere between love and belonging and safety. Esteem and self-actualization are, for whatever reasons, out of their reach at this moment, and because they can't give/get respect, solve problems and accept facts, they don't have much self-esteem and definitely don't lack prejudice, which we find at the very tip of the hierarchy. 

Focus on the tip, cocksuckers. 

I thought everyone knew that. 

But they don't. 

So, let's help them. 

One of my biggest character flaws is not giving cocksuckers enough respect, which doesn't help with their esteem. When someone hacks up a hairy ball about Muslims, I take it personally because I just so happen to know, love and respect a lot of people who practice Islam. 

However, I need to remember how fucking weird it is that I hang out with a bunch of Muslims from Saudi Arabia in Parkville, Missouri every day. That's not a thing. 

It's a lot easier to hate and fear a group of people if you don't know any of them. As a result, I need to respectfully share some of my positive experiences with actual Muslims whose most terrifying quality is trying to find me on my lunch break to ask questions with people who eat cocks for breakfast. 

Clearly, I'm still working on that respect bit, but I've got a cousin who really has it down. 

This is what she posted on the Facebook: 

Fig. 2: Fuck yes.

The first comment was from a woman, who strangely looks like she doesn't get the opportunity to suck cocks a lot, who said, "I WILL NOT SUPPORT THEM..." in all caps! Just like that! It was hilarious that she felt so comfortable exposing the fact that she's not even close to being self-actualized. 

Then my cousin responded with: 

That's fine ********, you don't have to. Your neighbors will do it for you. That's the great thing about the U.S. Refugee program it places refugees in communities that have the capacity to house, feed, teach English and employee them. So since the 1980s we've welcomed thousands of refugees to America and the only people who noticed are the people who wanted to help.

And that's how you do it.

Crisis? What Crisis?

My coworker was having a rough day at work because that's the kind of stuff of which dreams are made.

The pressure had clearly gotten to her by the time she whirled around and said, "Emma! You have to teach me how to deal with stress. You're always so calm and collected."

I would have laughed if I hadn't been so dumbstruck.

Who the hell did she think she was talking to!? I actually looked around the room to make sure the school hadn't hired another Emma because I hate it when other people have the same name that I didn't choose for myself.

"Well, shit," I thought, "Now I have to tell her the truth."

I tried to explain to her that I'm not naturally the laid-back, patient, happy-go-lucky Stepford teacher she sees at work. There's some real rage boiling beneath my top knot.

Didn't she remember the time I walked into the workroom and yelled, "Fuck!" in front of my new boss?

But she did make a good point. I am eerily calm at work even on my worst days.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Spain

2. a special repression technique that I have been developing since childhood

The first reason might seem pretty obvious, but there's more to it than that. As someone who has had everything handed to her in life, I didn't experience any real struggles until I went to Spain and even those were by choice. Finding a job, a place to live, friends, doctors, dealing with communication barriers, teaching myself how to teach a language to people spread all over a foreign city and basically not knowing what the fuck was going on at any given moment for a year straight wasn't easy.

But it also wasn't that hard. Having actual challenges taught me to recognize when something really wasn't a problem. If I'm not going to die, it's not a problem. Something like that. Also, Spain is chill as shit, and I even lived in what is known as the most uptight region.

Child's play compared to the United States of Anal Retention.

Which leads me to this other thing that really creeps me out. When I was a kid, I didn't hold anything in. The bad feeling entered, I exercised it out pea soup style, and I was totally fine seconds later. That doesn't work well in a classroom environment mostly because I would be vomiting (screaming) a constant stream of soup into students' faces for an entire hour and ten minutes. Then I'd have a ten minute break. Then I'd vomit for an hour and ten minutes. Then a generous thirty minute lunch hour...vomit...and so it goes on like this my entire career.

Instead, I prefer to absorb stress into my body and have it manifest itself in other ways. I don't even feel it. It's awesome.

I just get really sick once every other year, snap at Jaime for touching my ear or have nightmares that I'm going to miss my flight, and I'm running through the terminal trying to find my gate, and no one will fucking help me. Like I said, it's awesome.

But I didn't tell her all that. I just told her to move to Spain. Crisis? What crisis? It's fine.

Me when I'm teaching how to do a works cited page.

School of Wife Witchcraft and Wizardry

I sent my husband to work in a pair of booty shorts with skulls all over them today.

I expressed my concern about his underwear as he made his way to the bathroom, and he shot back that they were the only clean ones he had left because someone (I can only assume he meant me) hadn't done the laundry like she'd been promising for three days.

Clearly, I am not the keeper of Jaime's dirty underwear. He doesn't expect me to do any more or any fewer domestic tasks than he does, but I do expect that of myself.

And it's not because I am the keeper of the vagina. It's because he works way more hours than I do. It was my idea. Even-steven. Fair, square and seven years ago.

On paper, communism is a great idea, too.

My father fancies himself a domestic goddess and spent many years trying to convince me that things like cooking, cleaning and dressing like a lady is fun. I didn't buy what he was carpet bagging as a child, but after years of real world experiences, I can finally say that I was absolutely a genius kid.

It's still impossible to convince myself to like doing domestic work that I promised to do, but it is possible, I've learned, to sometimes convince my partner that I'm doing stuff around the house that I'm so clearly not. I've decided to call it wife witchcraft.

We just moved to an awesome new place, and I spent a long time arranging the kitchen and adjusting everything to my height. I do most of the cooking now because Jaime gets home so late. Lies.

It's because he puts three carrots in a bowl, covers it with spinach and calls it dinner.

Anyway, I finished the kitchen. I looked around. I suggested we walk to the Indian restaurant around the corner. He agreed. Did zero laundry. Wife witchcraft.

I didn't do the laundry the next day because the people below us left their clothes in the machine. It's rude to dump them all out. This is not college, and this is not the Dirty Hands United for Constantly Smoking Marijuana Cigarettes and All Day Video Gaming Co-op where we used to live. I didn't do it. Wife witchcraft.

Instead, I spent the afternoon wrangling a dining room table that seats six, cost me $25 dollars and required both of my parents and their truck. Jaime got home, dropped his keys on it, turned to me and started talking about his day. I interrupted and asked if he liked the huge table that I texted him about then inserted into the giant hole of a dining room we once had. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "I didn't even notice!" Husband sorcery.

The next day, I had to paint a mural in the dining room then paint over it then paint one over the fireplace instead, so I couldn't possibly have done the laundry that day. He loved the mural. Wife witchcraft.

I did, however, make brownies. They were a box mix. I hated making them, and they were pretty gross. His mom asked me for the recipe over Skype. Wife witchcraft?

I don't think that one counts.

But skull booty shorts on a man who wears a helmet when he bikes to work and is supposed to be taken seriously as a medical researcher is where I draw the line. I'm doing the laundry now, but I'm also writing a blog about it, so I'm taking forever to get it done, but I am doing it, so it's almost done.

Jaime didn't sign up for a witch wife.

However, he did choose this week of all weeks to bend down, kiss my head and say, "I couldn't possibly have ever found a better wife than you."

 Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to fold this in the hour I have before he gets home, so I can rub it in his stinking face. 

Image swiped from: http://artjetset.com/2010/05/

Vaya Con Dios Part 2 of 2

So, like I said, eight hours later, and we were on our way...to Arkansas.

Por que Arkansas, you might ask? Porque there's a museum there that we wanted to see. Also, Jaime is in the stage of immigration when it's cool to collect new states. This is, after all, the guy who once exclaimed, "I LOVE Southwest Kansas!"

Whatever, dude.

But it's this kind of enthusiasm for the unremarkable that made me fall in love with him, so when he said, "Yeah! Book a cheap hotel with a pool!," I did it.

The first thing I did after we checked in was ignore my partner completely while I checked my messages, but the second thing was put the gallon of milk I'd brought from home in the mini fridge.

The milk, to my chagrin, was the only thing Jaime requested when I asked him what snacks he wanted me to pack.

He made fun of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I'd thought to bring but ate two before we'd left the city along with some nectarines and dozens of grapes along the way. But did he take a single sip of milk? No, of freaking course not.

I figured he'd drink it in the morning.

I squished my body into my bathing suit and padded barefoot over to Jaime who was lying on the hotel comforter because ain't no party like a Perales Green party cause a Perales Green party is gross.

Thirty minutes later, we were standing poolside, and thirty and a half minutes later, we had deemed it too cold. The look of extreme anxiety that overtook the one guy in the hot tub's face as we approached him was too much. We ignored it and claimed the quadrant furthest from his children.

The strange guy got out quickly, but that meant that Jaime had to half-heartedly toss back the stranger children's beach ball whenever it landed in our over chlorinated pee water like a bored uncle. We quickly ceded the hot tub to a family of ladies who were even more unamused by us and settled into sweet, sweet air-conditioned sleep right after my husband deemed us vegetarians.

"Is fish okay?" I asked. "Fuck no!" he answered. "Okay then," I agreed knowing exactly how this was going to go.

In the morning, I cleaned up the milk that had hilariously leaked all over the fridge, and we went to enjoy a free breakfast with about a million other people. Jaime was eye balling the bacon, and I reminded him that he wasn't allowed per his vegetarian deemnation. He got sad.

Before we went inside the museum, we took advantage of the cool morning to do some hiking, as the grounds are surrounded by trails and a lovely forest. It was boring (I'm kidding!), so we bounded down the stairs letting our extremities go limp until we heard someone coming. Then we did it again. And some more times.

The museum was nice. We learned things, and we gave up at exactly the same time.

Jaime commanded the GPS to take us "home," and as we drove through the green hills of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri thankful for all the rain we got this summer, he asked if I wanted to stop and get catfish sandwiches.

Guys, I married Keanu.

Vaya Con Dios Part 1 of 2

I don't think I'm ever as happy with Jaime as I am when we're moving at high speeds.

I love flying with him, driving with him and riding on trains built way too small for him, but I always fit, so it's fine. We've never been on a boat together we just realized. That might actually cause a divorce. We'll see.

It's not that we're good travelers so much as good travel buddies. We want to pursue the same completely irrational feats but give up on them at exactly the same times, and last weekend was no different.

We made Friday an early night so that we could leave for Arkansas at the ass crack of dawn (8ish). I was pretty proud of Jaime who required minimal nagging to get out the door. He even said he would drive! However, he was very quickly not so proud of me when he heard the nasty sound our car made when driven above 60 mph. I'm usually the one who drives it, so I should know better.

In my defense, our coffee pot broke earlier in the week, and I thought an early morning road trip was an ideal time to kick my habit.

No.

He was right. I was wrong. Let's not fucking dwell on it.

Less than an hour later, I was on the phone with Chopper. He told me to bring it on in because they could at least diagnose the problem though he reckoned they wouldn't have time to fix it.

Jaime wasn't in the mood to talk to me. I had no idea why. I asked Chopper if he knew where I could get some coffee, and before I could pretend to try to stop him, he darted over to the cafe next door that I had already noticed wouldn't be open for another two hours. He banged on the back door, and all I heard was, "Jesus! I was jus' checkin'." I was grateful ta him for tryin'.

The guy who wasn't called Chopper told us that he recommended that we not drive to Arkansas seeing as how our front driver's side wheel was about to fall off and all. We thanked them, gave them twenty bucks and agreed that fixing it might be the better option over death.

We drove back to the city then into Kansas City, Kansas cause Jaime knew a guy who knew a guy. Sounded legit.

We spent the next five hours chilling in the Hispanic barrio.

That was the day that I learned without a doubt that Jaime is not a Latino. It may have been the gringo wife, or the fact that he informed the mechanic that he'd "bringo" the car around, but no one gave two shits about speaking to him in Spanish. Can you blame them? I can't. We just ate our tamales, drank our "100% sugar!" tamarind soda, napped on a picnic bench and pretended we weren't to blame for the economic conditions of the neighborhood. I think they believed us.

We got the call to pick up our car, and we were totally not shocked but still annoyed that it was more expensive than we thought. My conquistador pulled out his debit card only to be told that it was a cash only operation.

How freaking fabulous!

We found an ATM. No receipt from the mechanic. But it didn't make the noise anymore.

Eight hours after we were supposed to begin this bitch of a trip...Vamos? Vamos.

No.

You know that word association game when one person says a word and the other person says the first word that comes to mind?

Bra

What was your word?

I'm not playing with myself, but I'm pretty sure my word would be, "No." And that's not just my id talking. That includes my ego and superego.

Shortly after weaseling my way into my first brassiere, a hand me down that was too big, I began to shun them.

Because, not to be dramatic about it, but bras slowly suck out my soul through my breasts, expire it through the polluted air of the city and cram it back into my body through hooks, straps, elastic and clasps. They are also expensive.

I once took off a red sports bra during a middle school softball practice because the underwire was making it impossible for me to concentrate on fielding balls.

My hyper sensory issues and total lack of athletic ability aside, why the hell was I wearing a bra with a goddamn underwire!? I don't remember if a teammate hung it on the wall of the dugout in an attempt to embarrass me (lol), but I do remember the feeling of the breeze going in one arm hole, igniting the line of sweat under my tiny boobs and going out the other. It felt like freedom. Like the freedom of not giving a single shitty shit that Emma's Secret was smacking against chain link for all to see.

And I've kept that feeling with me.

Every rare time I have worn a bra in my adulthood, it has been for someone else. It has been so you wouldn't have to see my nipples through the sheerness of my top or because you (students) have no self control and are turned on by the natural movement and pointy shape of my breasts.

I take that back. I have a wool sweater that chafes my boob hats (Parks and Rec reference), and that hurts me, so that is definitely for myself. But no other time! The rest of the times are for you!

And I will never wear one so that you will not be grossed out. Not important to me. Not important at all.

You is not actually you. You are cool. But you know who is not cool? The shop owner who asked me how old I was, and after hearing the answer, said well then I'd better start wearing a bra.

In her defense, I think she thought that I should be concerned about sagging. Truth time. I'm not.

I realize that a lot of women feel more comfortable wearing a bra because they have large chests, gravity is winning the good fight or for lots of other reasons. This post isn't to convince anyone that they shouldn't wear a bra.

This post is to convince everyone that I have a great rack.

I forced Jaime to impartially feel them last night, and though he did not agree they were the breasts of a fifteen-year-old (in retrospect, I should not have used those words because it made him uncomfortable), he did agree that they were, in fact, very perky and dense.

I understand that I've never had my glands filled with milk, I'm a solid member of the B team, and even though I tell people I'm 30, I'm not yet. Don't hate on me for using this to my advantage.

I'm going to ride this train as far as it carries me (and maybe even way past my stop) because no one gets hurt and I feel awesome when I'm not wearing a bra and significantly less awesome when I am. Why would anyone have to explain anything beyond that?

I mean, sure. I'm bigger than a Tyler and Putin 

(more like a size Nicholson/Rourke). I wonder where they get their bras? 

America. Fuck Yeah.

Jaime and I live in the United States for exactly two reasons: my family lives here and the crisis (pronounced creesees, what creesees?) in Spain.

But during our walk to watch the Republican debate at our friends' place, we started discussing the American Dream while carrying a pineapple from Costa Rica and popcorn made with palm oil.

Are we living it? We wondered. We have jobs at universities, our one bedroom apartment has running utilities albeit no central air or working oven and we're both almost insured. We're tickling thirty and don't have kids, but we do have an infant marriage. Debt free and we don't live pay check to pay check. Sounds like a fucking dream to me, and I'm not even being sarcastic.

The American Dream is supposed to be subjective, right?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't actually believe in the damn thing because the Jesuits told me it was all a lie, but you know who does? Jaime's padre.

Unlike my own padre, he wanted his sons to sail across the Atlantic to achieve success and high salaries. Alfredo, I see you, I love you, I feel you. I get it.

My brother-in-law and husband are brilliant people who deserve all the success that they will absolutely get in their lifetimes, but what have they given up?

No honey, you will not get the month of August off to surf and swim among the orange groves. 

Please talk to your new boss about how much time you get for Christmas. I really don't know if it will be enough to visit your family and dog. 

Sweetheart, I know that healthcare is a basic human right and so do you, but we still have to pay a shit ton of money for it. 

We couldn't afford children even if we did want them because we won't get maternity/paternity leave. 

No, we can't just "get another degree." That will cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

Anyway, we sort of watched the debate.

Nine men with ghastly fake tans plus Ben Carson all having achieved or been born into the American Dream saying some of the dumbest fucking shit I have ever heard.

If this is what the big AD is supposed to look like...

Imma gonna pass. Mkay?

Driving Ms. Jaime

I thought I'd be at least fifty years old before I found myself nervously waiting for my baby to finish his driver's test.

But there I was, sitting next to a middle-aged man and his tiny granddaughter while my thirty-year-old husband, who's been driving since the age of 18, circled downtown with a smokin' examiner.

He was waiting for his wife, so we felt each other. The conversation eventually turned to the detention center across the street. "Man, that's a bad, bad place," he said. My white privilege answered, "Yeah, I wouldn't want to work there!" I'm no fool, I watch OTNB. "Well, I wouldn't want to be there again." Dammit. I'm a fool.

Jaime pulled up right as a bunch of former guests were being released out onto the sidewalk. I guess one could describe the atmosphere as euphoric. Jaime's hot cop assumed that he was afraid of them, but he explained to her that he was just startled by the excitement. I think it was because his nerves were totally shot.

For months, we'd been talking about his license, and for weeks, he'd been driving me crazy about it.
"How exactly would you describe this sign?"
Stop.
"Mmm-hmm. And what exactly are they going to ask me at all times?" 
I don't remember. I was 15.
"Unacceptable."

I'd been doing most of the driving for months. He has a Spanish liscense, as well as an international driving permit, but the United States is better than every country combined, so we were worried about him being pulled over with foreign documents.

I was so proud of my giant baby when he happily bounded out of our giant Buick, though I really shouldn't have been because of course the man can drive a damn car. I was also excited that he was going to stop peppering me with questions he already knew the answers to, but I was mostly excited that he'd be driving a lot more.

False.

Now it's, "Oh god! We're in his blind spot! Pass! Pass!" or "This guy is not giving me the proper three seconds! He's eating my ass right up!"

My husband might be a neurotic driver, but he's also a great one. Therefore, I'm happy to splay out in the passenger seat when he lets me because we still argue over who has to drive much to my chagrin.

I am a passenger.  (link)

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

In Barcelona, I had been accidentally sleeping with someone for weeks when he mistakenly came over one night.

"That was fast," I said. "I came on a bike."
"I didn't know you had a bike." "It is my wife's."
"Mmhmm...Come again?"

That was my first real run in with what we call a green card marriage, and I had a lot more after that.

Of course, I would have married a girl friend because they have a lot more staying power, though at that time, it would only have been valid in Spain. I never really considered it, but it appealed to me way more than getting real married. Might as well get something out of it, right?

Fast forward to asking my boyfriend of three months to marry me.

Like Charles Manson, I had to marry the person I wanted to stay close to, but unlike Charles Manson, I had to prove the legitimacy of my relationship.

And please let me assure you all that our relationship is Le.Git.I.Mate. We do things in front of each other of which I should be very ashamed, though I am not...especially Jaime.

So, it would have been devastating if after we had submitted clean background checks, proven we could financially support ourselves and completed months of expensive paperwork, one person behind a desk decided that we were faking our quite frankly excessive love for each other.

Jaime and I cope with stressful situations in very different ways. He frets for days beforehand like he's a really tall Jewish mother while I tend to remain creepily calm until the car ride there. They're both great coping mechanisms.

Therefore, preparing for our immigration interview was extremely enjoyable. Mi marido spent hours combing through our old messages and photos. Turns out, I cuss a lot. It took me ages to copy all the documents we thought we needed, and copying is my favorite activity! However, when it came to going over the questions the inquisitioner might ask, I just couldn't bring myself to practice very hard. How could I not know nearly everything about the person I'd been popping the pimples of, pooping near and sleeping against for more than a year? I knew we had this.

On the morning of the most important day of our marriage thus far, we reviewed each others' tattoos then completely covered our tattoos with eerily matching oufits. We decided not to change because we had this.

Then I silently freaked out during the drive because that's how I handle my shit. A week before, Jaime had discovered that a question they sometimes ask is, "Which side of the bed does your partner sleep on?"

I immediately imagined our bed as if one was looking at if from our doorway while he answered as if the immigration official was lying in bed between us. I say that he sleeps on the left, and he says that I sleep on the left. We both can't sleep on the left! We didn't have this!

I don't get nervous often, but I'll admit that I was a little antsy while raising my right hand and repeating an oath after a woman even though she did have a nose ring. Don't fuck this up, Jaime is what I silently transmitted to him, but what I was really worried about was fucking it up myself.

She asked some pretty basic questions about our birth dates, parents' names, phone numbers and address. I believe we got them all right before she turned to Jaime and asked only him quite a long list of questions including:

Have you ever raped anyone?
Are you a communist?
Do you smoke? 
Do you plan to lead an armed rebellion against the United States?
Are you a drug trafficker?
Do you plan to practice polygamy? 
Do you love your wife?

                     I'm kidding. She never asked if he loved me. 

I felt bad for him, but it was also nice to know that information about my husband. I mean, I have never once asked him if he's raped anyone, and now I know for sure he hasn't because he raised his hand and promised. 

What she didn't ask was what side of the bed we sleep on or does your partner have any unusual birthmarks or tattoos? I was disappointed.

Furthermore, she took very few of the copies documenting the legitimacy of our relationship. She didn't even want to see the Shutterfly book of the wedding pictures we made for 50% off! It was like she believed us from the moment we walked through the door.

She told us it would be two to five weeks before we received her decision, but we got the letter in the mail less than a week later. 

I want to think that she could immediately pick up on our lovers' chemistry. That we just oozed compatibility and we were clearly made for one another.

But what she really picked up on is probably a couple of first time married white people, European passport, English fluency and advanced degrees. I doubt she cared that we love each other, and why should she? Is marriage really about love or legal rights? I suppose it's no one's business.

Maybe we should ask our partners if they rape people? 

Just saying.

I Will Never Be Invited to Another Wedding Ever Again

My sister called and asked me to be her matron of honor.

She meant for it to sting, and it did.

As female baby children, we were taught that only two things were to be certain in our lives: we would bleed from our NO! places one day, and according to my school nurse, everyone around us would be able to smell it, and we would get married.

We could be whatever we wanted to be, were just as good as men and should never be afraid to march to the beat of our own tambourines cause that's what girls play, but god dammit, we would be wives.

Four years after me, my maid of honor was born to my great relief. That was one thing I wouldn't have to stress out about after someone would completely surprise me by asking me to marry him because we never would have discussed it like rational people beforehand, and I would have to decide in 2-3 seconds whether to say "yes" or "of course I will". 

It was especially helpful at sleepovers when we would sit in a circle and explain who would be in our wedding party when we married our fourth grade boyfriends whom we had never actually spoken to. 

"I'd choose all seven of you to be my maids of honors or however you say it," most of my friends would say except for the brave bitches who would actually be honest and choose one person in the room because she was her best friend, and the rest of us could be bridesmaids. We'd all make a mental note to make her be guest book attendant.

I don't know if I'll ever know if my friends felt as uncomfortable during this conversation as I did.

What about our sisters and our cousins and all the friends we will make at college and work!? I like my brother, too! Didn't they know that our lives would and should change a lot between the ages of 11 and 25, the oldest age you can be to get married? What if we're all gay? This is a softball sleepover.

I had an out because I always said my sister would be mine. They couldn't judge me for that, and besides, I swore to them that they would be my bridesmaids even though I knew it was a lie, and breaking promises never scared me.

I really resent it when people say that all girls dream of their wedding day because I really don't think that's true. Certainly some do, but I'm prepared to say that a lot of them don't give a shit. Both are okay.

As I got older, I started to pay attention to weddings. I liked to dance and eat cake. Those were solids, but other things bothered me...like the whole fucking rest. Here's a small sample:

1. showers- why are only women supposed to care about weddings? Why aren't men invited? Why are we obligated to buy them gifts for a personal choice they're making that has nothing to do with me, Carrie? 

2. bachelor/bachelorette parties- give me a break and last night of freedom my easily offended ass. Am I the only person who's not okay with my partner paying (or exploiting) other women to see their tits and get a blow job? I mean, we can't afford that! Plus, get off the sidewalk you stilettoed, drunken vomit fountains. I live here.

3. Today, the bride wears white to symbolize virginity. I have never met a virgin bride in my life, and I hope I never do because that is ridiculous and unattainable unless you are a child bride or were raised in a cult that miraculously didn't exploit women (both bad).

4. A father walks his completely dependant daughter down the aisle to GIVE HER to the groom who assumes the burden.

5. To be presented as "man and wife" and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Jerkoff is offensive. You can argue with me until we defriend each other, but this always has been and always will be completely sad and wrong.

6. Spending more money on your wedding doesn't make your marriage any better...or worse than anyone else's, and people who make weddings into competitions suck a lot.

Hey, I'm really sorry for just trashing your wedding, but I'm guilty of some of these abominations, too.

I really don't care what people do at their own wedding so long as it makes them happy, and it's not #5 from above, and they have traditional white wedding cake with loads of buttercream frosting that will make our poop turn a fun color that for a split second makes us think we're dying.

All I ask is that you think about the meanings behind these traditions we have as mostly privileged, mostly white, mostly Christian raised Westerners and change the meanings...then feel free to partake in some or all of them but with your new secret, independent motives that would just shock the hell out of your guests if they only knew.

Because I am so damn excited to stand next to my remarkable sister on a day that will make her unbelievably happy in a dress that looks pretty bad on me after I've done every single thing she asks me to and not to do. I will be terrible at it, but it is my birthright, and I'll be damned if anyone thinks they can take that away from me.

Right after anyone tells me that they are doing something 

ridiculous because "it's traditional."

The Definitive Interview with J.P.P.

I sat down with Jaime and asked him ten questions I already knew the answers to. Here's what he said: 

Do you speak English? 

I do. Do I have to be funny? 

What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you besides moving to the United States? 

That's not the worst thing. 

What's the best work out music?

Ummm...This is Gaythe album including groups such as: Bonnie Tyler, Village People, Diana Ross and others. Sorry! Actually Cher. Cher has to be included in that. The only one I always skip is Britney Spears.

Do you like it when I use superlatives?

No. I think it's fake, and it doesn't convey what you want it to convey. It made me feel very good once, but then I realized lots of people are the same, and I was like, "That's bullshit." I don't have one best friend or anything like that. You can't say, "You're the best." You can say, "You're among the best." In any case, fuck off you're not the best. 

Is our apartment the correct size?

Yeah, it's the right size. I like it this small. It's easier to clean. It looks very tidy all the time. The only thing I would like to have is a bigger garden.   
But we don't even have a garden. 

Yeah, exactly. A bigger flower pot that you didn't let me buy. 


Do you like gluing rhinestones to horse heads? 
No. I like the outcome. I don't like the process. It's very tiring and boring, and I prefer you to do it. You have more patience. You have more patience towards it. Not in general. You have more patience with rhinestones. What are you typing? 

Are dogs better than people?

Yeah, absolutely. People are violent. Dogs can only be aggressive. Dogs do not hurt just for the sake of hurting, and they're usually lovely. And most of all, people are powerful and dogs are not. And dogs are softer...usually. Except for your ears. 

Who is a better cook: you or me?

Comparisons are hateful. I think we're both good in our own way, but if we had to cook something special, we would both be bad.  

Who is a better driver?

The same. 

Oh! You're forcing the answer. Okay. I'll tell you what I think. I think compared to me, you drive faster and your braking is more sudden which scares me basically because I had a very bad accident not so long ago. Sometimes you don't scare me. Doesn't mean you drive worse than me. You drive differently, and that difference scares me. (I'd like to add here that the most stereotypical looking grandma woman passed him on the highway the other day.)

What do you prefer to be doing right now? 

I'm good here. Being naked at home and doing fuck all. 

That's all I have for you today.

And you think that's enough for a blog post? You better add something. I'm going to tell you a secret. You could've recorded this with your phone or your computer. Wouldn’t have to be typing all the time and could focus on what I say. Will you correct the mistakes I made? 

You didn't make any mistakes.
Sometimes I do. 

Only you have the power to turn shitty things into stories.

When I Say INTRAUTERINE! You say DEVICE! INTRAUTERINE!...

This year, I'm celebrating Mother's Day, my own mother and our Mother Earth by getting an IUD.

Thanks Obama!!!

But in all seriousness,

Most people would applaud a 12 year old for getting one, but some people don't think it's very cool that a childless, 29 year old, married woman with a strong support system is considering putting it in her "About" information.

Children aren't a good idea for me at the moment. I don't need to explain, but I will.

Everyone's all like, "You and Jaime would have the cutest, olive-skinned, red-headed bilingual babies! And you'd be like the best parents ever!"

False. Jaime's family is super white.

Also, I'm not convinced that we would make good parents mostly because Jaime hates children, and we're completely self-involved. Sometimes we forget that we have a spouse. I don't want us to forget that we're parents, too. 

But enough about how horrible we are...

There are other legitimate reasons to choose not to be a parent indefinitely or for awhile.

Do you know how many stupid people we have on this planet (correctly assuming that every person is stupid)?

7,316,069,472

I don't like that. It's gross. And in the words of Paul Giamotti as God on Inside Amy Schumer, "I really need to stop making so many white girls."

Not to mention the financial aspect. We can barely afford the five vacations we need to take every year. Jaime was born the size of Danny Devito. We wouldn't be able to lie about our kid's age like my parents did at Shoney's and movie theaters.

He also keeps checking out books with titles like, Self-Sufficiency on a Shoestring! and How to Tell Your Wife that Everything She Does is Bad for the Planet. We recently slept on the floor of an RV during a tornado watch, and he thought it was the bee's pollen press, which leads to insane comments such as, "Hey! Can you believe that they'll give you land in Kansas and Minnestoa for free!?"

I can.

All this just makes it clear to me that we don't know what we'll be doing or where we'll be doing it in six months much less five years. I will die if I have to care for a human child inside a railroad car in the middle of Kansas. I really will.

So, I will apologize to my mother, the best mother, who wasted a perfectly good egg on me. May she be a grandmother, the best grandmother, and may my younger siblings be responsible for that because I cannot wait to be an aunt. 

In the meantime, I'm still trying to figure out how to raise myself and an adult Spaniard.

  Auntie Em and Tio Jaime long after he has stopped 

plucking my beard. We should be so lucky.

Living With a Conscience

I've been living with a conscience for about a year now.

Its name is Jaime, and it sucks.

I prefer to choose a few of my own causes and make believe that other travesties and human rights violations don't exist so that I have time to get on Facebook and Buzzfeed and read disreputable "news" stories.

It's kind of like saying, "I'm okay with pillaging so long as you promise no raping." Or, "I mean, in this case, I think the guy deserved to be feathered but certainly not tarred. Or, "How dare you loiter while I'm trespassing!?"

Next to me, Jaime is taking notes from Democracy Now and imploring me to watch a documentary with him about the United States' involvement with The Killing Fields in Cambodia at 11 o'clock at night.

Jaime's against bad things, so he doesn't support bad things. I'm against bad things, too, but sometimes I need stuff or YOLO. 

I was telling my coworkers that Jaime is really upset that all the produce at Costco is from Mexico, so he doesn't want us to buy it even though we spent $50 on a membership. Another teacher who studied abroad in Alicante for a semester chimed in that yeah, Spaniards really hate Mexicans.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

I had to explain to her that my husband isn't a racist, but he is concerned about exploited laborers in Mexico meaning, I guess, that he loves Mexicans.

I just love guacamole made with avocados bought cheaper in bulk.

I never went shopping in Barcelona, and if I did, I went to second hand markets. Therefore, the most appropriate work clothes I had were hot pants, skirts missing one or more buttons and torn jeans. Mom and I ran to J.C. Penney during a super sale the week before my first day, and I got an entire work wardrobe for under $50. The manic high I got from "robbing" J.C. Penney quickly wore off in the car, as I thought about Jaime's disappointment and the lives of the men, women and children who made the clothing for far less than I paid for my super deals. I look really good, but I feel really bad.

We just bought Jaime some shirts and shoes at a thrift store, and he was just giddy about them the whole way home. See what a guilt-free conscience can do? He looks sorta good but feels awesome.

But I think the thing that hurts the most is when he disses my girl, Obama. He isn't some ignorant, racist redneck who doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. He has lots of clues about what he's talking about, and it's because he doesn't refuse to read foreign printed articles criticizing the behavior and *gasp* politics of the man who has the worst job on Earth...like I do. 

Living with someone who has such a strong moral compass really does make me want to be a better person no matter how much I complain about it.

It also helps me to ignore him when he says nonsensical things like, "Comparisons are hateful," and "Spain has much higher safety standards than the U.S.," and "Society is very accepting of fat women, but is really tough on overweight men."

Because we could all stand to be a little more Jaime and a little less Walmart, Gap, Apple and Monsanto.

Fuck these guys and not in the good way.

Here's some light reading:

http://www.laborrights.org/in-the-news/14-worst-corporate-evildoers

http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators

Higher Ground (Teachers Keep On Teachin')

I love my job because each day scholars in the school of life trust me, their sensei, to connect with them on a spiritual and mental level at a small point on their endless journey to enlightenment.

I'm just kidding.

I love the sound of my own voice. That's why I'm a teacher.

My new job is like my old job in that I teach English. However, my new students are like my old students in no way at all.

My old students kept entire hoofed legs on their kitchen counters, drank beer all day and wiped their butts with toilet paper.

My new students don't eat pork or drink alcohol, but they do wipe their butts with their hands.

I love this. I think it's great. My preferred spice of life is interacting with different people from different cultures all the live long day. Why? I have no idea.

What I do know is that 24 people depend on my help to get to Level 3 of a 7 level program. I also know that 23 of those people are from Saudi Arabia, and 2 of those people are women. We'll get to the 1 person who's unaccounted for.

I want to start by saying that I adore my students before I shred them. I value them for who they are and where they come from. They teach me an awful lot more than I teach them.

And here we go...

What in the fuck is going on in Saudi Arabia right now? I tried to prepare myself, but egads, guys. E...gads.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can compete with twenty-five years of being told it's this way when I think it's that way, but I am arrogant enough to think that I can prepare these adults for a bachelor's or master's program in the United States despite the fact that they're not giving much to work with.

For starters, I've warned them not to cover their male friends or new acquaintances with kisses...especially on the nose. They just wouldn't believe me despite my threats of public humiliation or much worse. We role played, I professed my love for the kiss in spite of my culture, we hypotheticaled ourselves silly until I said, "It would be like if I had a problem with my right hand, so I went to shake your left hand instead of your right" (ensuing pandemonium).

And no, I cannot just change your grade. I know that I can, like, open the gradebook and erase a grade, and like, put a better grade there, but like really I can't. This is considered a serious question.

The phone goes in your bag or in my hand. It does not go in your pocket. No, it doesn't go in your other pocket, and it sure as hell doesn't go in your face when I'm lecturing. It goes in your asshole. 

Dating. I don't want to talk to you about it either, but this chapter is on dating because the ESL gods hate me. Yes, I have ex-boyfriends. Yes, that's okay in my culture. I'm serious! No, you don't have to marry the first person you go on a date with freaking thankfully. You can date more than one person at a time if you want to. I know dating is forbidden. You don't have to do it, but I did notice that you cut all the pictures of women out of our book. Gross. 

I hate that I have to sit across from a grown man for forty minutes with unbroken eye contact because he can't not cheat or write on the tables.

I also hate that I have to say everything ten times (this is not an exaggeration), and they still do the exact opposite of what I say. 

But what I hate the most is that during an I agree/disagree exercise, they all looked straight at my face and told me that yes of course men are smarter than women. The only person who disagreed was the one person who is a woman and VIETNAMESE in the class. She also has by far the best grade, though her vagina makes her the dumbest person in the room (except for me cause she's Asian).

My job is really hard, and that's okay because I need a hard job to keep my mind from imploding.

But my job is really easy when I forget my lunch and multiple students bring me theirs. It's also really easy when I bring the most unpopular guy in class a week old cookie from the teachers' workroom for his birthday and catch him taking a picture of it on his phone. It's easy when they remember my own birthday and sing to me. And it's really, really easy when we make each other laugh, as we do every day.

So, I'll teach a woman in a burqa even though I really want to see her face, and I'll teach a man who thinks I'm inferior to him. I'll even do it in a green snake skin skirt wearing heels and a v-neck blouse while constantly tucking my uncovered hair behind my ears. Because if they can come sit and listen to a godless slut all day, this godless slut can at least listen to them.

Not so much here...

or here...

but riiiiiiight here.

What I Thought and What I Said

I worked at Starbucks for three and one-fourth days, and I can never undo that.

What I can do, however, is force my family to refer to Starbucks as "Insurance," so as not to mutter its name any more than we have to. Although, if you're like my husband, you won't remember that and have no idea what I'm talking about. 

What's worse is that I'd been actively avoiding Insurance for over a decade because my white hipster privilege allows me to go to my local coffee shop and work in a locally owned gourmet cheese store without realizing that people sometimes need real life.

The call for an interview came right after we decided that we were going to rent an RV with pretend money and travel around the country eating air until Jaime's work permission from the Department of Immigration went through; we just weren't finding jobs that inspired us and included a Googleesque work environment with full benefits and three months vacation.

I kid you not, my eyes welled up, as I agreed to an interview because we need health insurance no matter how much my socialist Spanish husband doesn't understand it and watched our dreams of bathing in rest stop sinks roll behind me like a giant hub cap.

But I feel like this story will be less painful for both of us if I present this in 

WHAT I THOUGHT vs. WHAT I SAID

form. So here goes...

The manager asked for an interview. 
What I thought: Oh my god. I have a master's degree. Why the hell do you think I want this job even though I applied for it!?
What I said: Yes, absolutely that works for me.

The manager asked why I think I would make a great Insurance employee.
What I thought: I wouldn't. I am your worst nightmare. You will regret this.
What I said: I'm great with people, and I would represent Insurance proudly.

The manager called to offer me the job.
What I thought: You're freaking joking. You couldn't see through that? This is the worst day of my life.
What I said: Oh my gosh! Thank you so much. I'm excited to start. 

A customer orders two white chocolate mochas whole milk with two extra pumps of syrup and FIVE packets of sugar stirred into the drink.  
What I thought: Oh, I get it. You want to die. You want to kill yourself, and I am going to help you do it. I watched a documentary, so I know about this.
What I said: Okay! Can I get your name? Your total is a bajillion dollars.

A drive-through customer orders a eioehtetnvrnglakrhaiohgirgrnlgakraghrkahgroiaetaigaigbiarhgklarglargh.
What I thought: I can't do this. I can't do this any more. I hate everything. I'm working a drive-though, and the worst part about it is that it's too hard. At least I'm not wearing a visor.
What I said: I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? It's my first day, and I'm having a hard time locating the buttons.

The drive through customers get angry with me because I ask them to repeat their order.
What I thought: I will come through this window. I will come through this window so fast. I will spit my hang nail into your drink. I will fling this boiling hot fake coffee on your face.
What I said: I'm so sorry about your wait. Enjoy it!

My manager says, "Don't say frap. Frap is the Insurance 'F' word. Don't say it," after I repeated a customer's "frap" order.
What I thought: You wanna know what my F word is? It's fuckstarbucks; that's what it is.
What I said: Really? Okay.

An incredibly rare customer orders a black coffee.
What I thought: Slow clap.
What I said: That's what I drink. 

A man lectures my co-worker on the evils of corporations, and tells her that Insurance doesn't pay her enough to put her above the poverty line. She makes fun of him.
What I thought: He's right. I'm leaving with this guy, and we're burning this place to the ground.
What I said: Nothing because she wasn't talking to me.

A group of teenage girls order the most ridiculous, diabetes inducing, prissified drinks possible, and I stumble through finding all their custom shit on the stupid screen.
What I thought: This is not coffee! You are NOT drinking coffee, but you are pretending to drink coffee, and that makes you horrible.
What I said: What's your name? That will be a bajillion dollars. 

I could go on and on, but I think you get the gist.

Have you ever felt too good for something, as you're realizing you're not capable of doing it? Guys, working at Insurance is hard. I have been the only adult in a room with 22 kindergartners in paint smocks, and that does not even begin to come close to the stress level I felt taking orders for caramel drizzle on white noise from a never ending line of cars.

I was shown how to make macchiatos, lattes, cappuccinos and cinnamon something somethings. I was shown twice. Can I make any of those things? No.

It made me feel awful. I felt fake, stupid and defeated. And how could I have abandoned my principles so easily? I mean, would I set foot in Hobby Lobby? God's name in vain no.  

But I also felt in awe of the women (only women worked there even though the regular men call them "his girls") who not only can make those complicated glorified cups of liquid death but genuinely smile while doing so. They're not stupid and fake. They're really good at the job that they enjoy.

So, the only thing I learned while there is that I'm absolutely not too good to work at Insurance. 

If you go to "Insurance", and that's okay if you do even though you'll never catch me dead in another one, please tip them well. That job suuuuuuucks, and they probably hate you.

I usually can't with this, but this is exactly it.

How Sting Ruined My Wedding

I didn't want to get married. Jaime didn't want to get married, either. And it's not that we didn't want to marry each other, we just didn't want to marry anyone. We're alternative like that.

But even though marriage is a separate thing from love, to continue loving each other in the same place (which we both did want), we had to prove it to government bureaucracy workers whom we do not know and be married.

So, here's the story of two people who whined their way into a happy marriage despite themselves.

Some people have asked how he proposed. Good one guys.

I technically proposed to Jaime in the parking lot of Wal-Mart when we were visiting my family in July. We were arguing about my creative visa status in Spain and the danger that put our relationship into. At one point, I yelled, "Well, let's just get freaking married then!" And he said, "Okay."

Then, we ordered our get married stuff, drove through and picked it up at the window. It was that easy! I'm kidding!

After months of dealing with the fresh hell called immigration, we finally got to ask our families how soon they could get to New York.

Why did we get married in New York?

1. It is much easier and cheaper for his parents and brother to get to NYC than St. Joseph, MO.

2. Missouri is not rainbow colored yet, and I have a big fucking problem with that.

3. I love that city so much, and when my boyfriend posted "Full lap run at Central Park. 2 raccoons (first time I've ever seen them), fireflies, drum and bass without the bass with a bagpipe, super parents running and carrying their kids in a pram, cool people on their pimped bikes listening to rap, beautiful people, hip hop dancers, and yes, the rest of the views to Manhattan and the park. Want it to be my new casa," on Facebook, I knew that I wanted to make him my husband there because he doesn't usually write that kind of sap.

4. I didn't want to plan anything, and Jaime literally didn't know what a wedding was...conveniently.

Why did we only ask immediate family?

1. Our irresponsible lifestyles mean that our family and friends are littered all over the world, and if we couldn't have all of our most importants there, we would only have our very most importants.

2. We can't afford to feed that many people.

So, on 1.23, a date that is cool in the United States and significantly less cool (23.1) in Europe, I woke up thinking, "Shit. This is supposed to be the best day of my life, but there's no way it will be." It was also on this date that my mother, sister, best friend and I figured out that we can't do hair...or makeup. We did the best we could and four hours after everyone else was ready, I put on a green dress before my mom helped me into the most bridey thing I could muster, a lovely, perfect tulle skirt she had made for me.

Our entourage burst out of the hotel clipping along while taking photos because our goal was to piss off every native New Yorker we passed, as we tried to beat the lunchtime rush at the marriage bureau.

I love the marriage bureau because everyone there is either picking up their marriage license or attending a wedding. You take your number, sit on one of the green sofas along the long hall and wait with the stockbrokers, the coke heads, the pregnants, the Asians, the young ones, the old ones, the weirdos and the perfectly normals who all found someone stupid enough to marry them.

Our number, C719, was quickly called, and I made sure that my new last name wasn't "NO CHANGE" on our marriage certificate because I had to specify earlier that my name wouldn't be changing. We signed and asked my sister and his mother to sign as witnesses. My sister knew this would be her job and had been referring to herself as "witness-of-honour" I assume in opposition to my robbing her of her birth rite.

Before we could sit down again, we were called to the Ugly Room (thankfully we weren't in the Uglier Room) for our fifteen minutes of fame, which was really only about two minutes.

We were married by an Angel...

whose last name was Lopez, as the people we love and who love us the most stood in spots too awkward for a decent picture. 

Everyone was starving, so we stopped at a pizzeria that hand to Jesus had the best pizza in the world on the border between Chinatown and Little Italy before taking the subway to Central Park.

It was freezing cold, but I was not about to let my ten-year-old coat ruin my wedding photographs. Everyone else figured their bulky coats were good enough, so thanks for that, guys. We didn't stay long because we cared more about actual warmth than the warmth of memories, however, my mom insisted we stop by Strawberry Fields before going back to the hotel, and I'm so glad we did. 

We came up on the John Lennon memorial after it had been covered in flowers by what Jaime calls, as you know, beggars. It was beautiful, but having come from Barcelona, we were reluctant to trust anything that was "free," while one of the men thrust a yellow rose at me. I finally relented, and he didn't ask me for money. Instead, he asked if he could give us some marriage advice.

"Never, ever let anyone or anything come between the two of you because what you have is very special," is how I'm choosing to paraphrase his nonsense. It was one of those rare, urban, human connection moments I love so much, and no one took a picture of it. Damn it.

After changing our clothes, we all went to dinner in Times Square. As we sat around the table, Jaime and I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed and flabbergasted that our families were in the same place at the same time while I tried really hard not to think about how few times that would happen again. It was awesome.

Later, after we had been interrupted for the fourth time on the only night we would get to sleep in a room alone while away for our wedding, we agreed that it was somehow impossibly one if not the best day of our lives. That's neat.

But the point of this post is to explain how Sting ruined my wedding. Okay, so my mother is in love with Sting for obvious reasons. My sister's got it pretty bad, too, while I can bandwagon myself on the Sting train if the time is appropriate.

The closing night of his Broadway show The Last Ship was the 24th, the day after my wedding, so we absolutely had to go, right? Right. We're there, and the show is great, and he gives this heartfelt adieu at the end, and all I can think about is my mom meeting Sting because that would just be everything to her. We're still on the high of our great wedding day, so we are really channelling all the powers of The Police and Roxanne and that guy who plays the udu on Desert Rose as we wait outside the stage door. I'd even written to The Last Ship beforehand asking if there was any possibility of her meeting him...they hadn't said no, but they hadn't said yes...

He comes out. It's Sting. It's definitely him, and my tiny, little momma is being pushed roughly to the front by us, but then he makes a beeline for his car, breezing past us, really, really close to us and is driven away.

What the hell, Sting!? Screw you, man. 

My mom and sister have forgiven you, were never even that mad at you, but I never will, and I still am.

I can't wait for Sting to read this.