Quarters and the Taxco Gas Station

With my mom's new found freedom from the chains of wedlock with my father, she rejoined the workforce she had abandoned when my brother got Leukemia. Since it was decided that my 6th-grade-old self was capable of keeping my brother and I alive for the three hours between school ending and mom getting home, we were free as well.
There were, of course, rules put in place as clouds into ether.
1. No answering the door for strangers.
2. No fighting with your brother.
3. No fighting with your sister.
4. Under no circumstance are you allowed to cross Woodlake.
We did our best to adhere to household policy, but to be honest we get a pretty abysmal record.
Now Woodlake was a two lane road running down the center of my neighborhood, my world. It was the maternal paranoia equivalent of an eight-lane highway in Germany. To be fair to my mother and her parenting abilities, the street did connect to the onramp and offramp of the 101 Freeway. Reckless drivers speeding a reckless 20 MPH could have certainly slaughtered us and any one of the numerous petafiles in sleepy white suburbia could have snatched us up and driven us to Santa Barbara where we would adjust to life on a hippie commune growing marijuana and acorn squash.
On the other side of this hell gate was the Taxco gas station. In it held everything my mom would never allow in our pantry: ho-hos, cherry soda, jelly beans, and Bubble Chew. My brother and I determined that the best way to thwart evildoers was to run as quickly as possible, as closely as possible down Leonora Drive where we would cross Woodlake with absurd caution. After all, as any smart kid knew, if we were run over or kidnapped Mom would definitely find out...a prospect that terrified us arguably more than any suspect on America's Most Wanted list.
A successful trip included a Dr. Pepper and Peanut M&Ms for me; a Coke or Cactus Cooler for my brother to be eaten with a plastic-wrapped pair of Ding Dongs with the swirly frosting tie. All of this was paid for by the exact person we were betraying. Anything found near the washing machine, under a bed, or in the blue dish my mom kept jewelry and lint in was fair game. We were never caught. I attribute this to economically whittling the journey down to a 5.5 minute trip along with craftily hiding all wrappers and cans in the bottom of the trash can. A trick I kept in my back pocket for parentless high school parties later on in life.

Road Block

What Happens in Vegas...Gets in This Blog

Amber: Want to go see The Thunder from Down Under Tonight?
Me: How much is it?
Danika:35 to 40 bucks or something.
Me: Hmm…

Spending twenty-five percent of my food stipend seemed a bit silly but hey, when in Rome…
I meet Amber and Danika in their room. Danika is tipsy and takes a swig from a nearly empty wine bottle. I think it is a Merlot. Both of them look pretty, wearing the same hair and makeup from the show before. I am wearing a hooded sweatshirt with “Get Fresh” silk screened on the left side and irremovable coffee stains on the right. I bought it from a boy I worked with at Robek’s Juice back in high school. He was a young entrepreneur. I can’t remember his name. He had brown hair and braces.
Amber, Danika and I make our way through the smoke laden depravity of the Hilton casino to meet four other girls. The other part of our party has decided to get a little more dolled up for the occasion. Mini dresses, legs, and dangling earrings.
One mini-stretch limo ride later, our group is loudly traveling through the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. I’m holding up the back, watching the girls in front make their way. One of the girls makes some retort back at a group of boys carrying hurricane cups. “You girls are fat!” one dude yells. For obvious reasons I find this extraordinarily humorous and laugh the remaining forty feet to the ticket counter.
Forty-seven dollars and forty-five cents apiece buys us stage left seats in two black vinyl booths. The view is shit. The gaggle of girls wearing silver palette dresses, birthday tiaras, and various bachelorette paraphernalia is blocking an already weak view of where the action’s inevitably going to take place. There’s an intro song that plays 39 seconds too long, it’s name I have erased from the Readily Useful Memory Bank. The boys come out together, dancing in what should technically be a synchronized, semi-nude, Britney Spears backup dancer dance. Instead, I have paid for three boys dancing in sync, one who obviously thinks he is above The Thunder From Down Under, another who routinely spins in the opposite of his comrades, and two with long hair who have passionately integrated the “Hair Flip” into their routine.
Our first solo routine is Chris “The Wild One” giving us his naked interpretation of Captain Sparrow. His nipple clips glitter like pirates’ booty under the stage lighting, gels switching from red to blue to red to yellow to blue. A fog machine goes off. Girls squeal. Boredom overtakes the room. An ass swerve revives hollering.
The rest of the show continues with the aforementioned pattern for another hour and fifteen minutes. Each “dancer” gets his own time to turn our childhood heroes into sexual desirables. A racecar driver, a greasy mechanic, a fireman, a vaguely romantic fellow in silk satin pajamas that for some reason doesn’t really resonate with the ladies. I feel exploited. The finale brings the team back together, all wearing denim chaps and white hats. I can’t see Amber, but I hear her screaming all of the lyrics from “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” at the top of her lungs. This could be heaven, but I doubt it.

Las Vegas Expense Report

It’s that time again: convention work modeling. Each time I sign up for a job like this, I can’t help but be forced to compare it to It’s a Small World. Except the people aren’t Disneyfied multi-ethnic plastic midgets, they’re dumb skinny bitches. Cuckoo clock modeling, every hour on the hour.

Las Vegas Expense Report

$0.00
My boyfriend drives me to the airport. The trip obviously costs him something (i.e. time and gas money) but this is my expense report. Matter struck irrelevant.

$17.00
I split the cab with three other girls. I’m usually the one to collect funds because I’m “good with numbers.” Seventeen plus three for tip to make it easy equals twenty divided by four…Gee whiz…

$2.50
Aaron and I make the trek past and through the Barry Manilow store, resisting the urge to purchase Manilow Merlot and StrawBarry lip balm. We arrive at the Las Vegas Hilton General Store. I grab a 1.2 liter bottle of Smart Water. I think about getting snacks but resist. The woman rings it up. “Six dollars.” Uh, huh. No, I don’t think so. I offer to take it back to the refrigerated isle. She tells me she’ll do it. I sense that this is less an altruistic, occupational duty and more that she believes I am going to steal it out of spite. On our way back up to the hotel room with Floor 16 views of this neon wasteland, I buy a bottle of Desani from the vending machine. Ounce per ounce, this was a rather dim decision. And it’s tap water. Fuck off, Coca Cola.

$4.04
Whenever I travel I realize that the two latte a day habit I have developed in the privacy of my own home translates to a very pricey business expense while traveling for work.

$11.80
Twelve garbanzo beans. Four slices of processed chicken. Gorgonzola cheese that I asked for on the side after substituting avocado was deemed impossible. Iceberg lettuce with carrot strings. Definitely not homemade Italian dressing.

$4.50
I break down and buy a bigger bottle of water from the Coffee Bean. The cashier tells me it’s one of the better deals in town. Ultimately, I would have been better served buying that first Smart Water. The prospect will haunt me the rest of my stay in Las Vegas.

$36.00
When I find out the hotel gym costs $20 a day, my frugality kicks and screams and buries my credit card in a random pair of shorts. Four hours into some seriously recycled convention air and toxic fluorescent lighting, we decide a pricey run on the treadmill and a moment in the steam room might be just the ticket. And if you buy two days instead of one you save $2 a day! Wow. I do fill up my $4.50 water bottle four times total, an $18 value. I steal five razors with moisture strips, two red apples and three bananas. Hilton has practically paid me to exercise and sweat. Boo ya.

$13.00
Margarita Grill. Aaron and I will split the same dish three nights in a row: two chicken soft tacos with a side of rice and beans (holding the cheese on nights two and three) plus the Jumbo Guacamole split four ways. By the third night we’re feeling adventurous and get two chicken tostadas and one chicken taco that we forget to specify soft or crispy. We end up with crispy.

$47.45
My biggest expense but not necessarily my wisest. The Thunder from Down Under, Australia’s Hottest Export. I had never been to a male revue before. The most I had ever heard about it was back in middle school. It was rumored that Alex Mendoza’s* father was a stripper at Chip ‘N Dales. I will dive into greater depth on this subject later.

$3.22
Our flight gets delayed an hour and fifteen minutes due to some reason never relayed to we passengers. I buy the Cranberry Power Mix from the Las Vegas Fruit and Nut Stand. I do not tell the cashier that there is a fly in the Dried Mango bin.

$10.00
My contribution for gas and parking. I cram this into the cigarette tray of Danika’s Audi despite her refusal. Take me home. Please.





*Names have been changed to protect the most likely uninnocent

Seattle: Sunset: August: Sixth

The light here is brighter. The colors more pungent and the white as blue as Kristin Poms' were in high school, something I always thought to be the result of a slightly freakish accident in the pioneering of Brite Smile technology. I have escaped the kitchen cum makeup room for a cement seat amongst some plants. Some ways down the street a drum line plays on invisibly. I cannot venture out to further investigate the noise, as I have given myself a thirty-foot leash from the venue doors.
A woman walks past sloppily with a tireless seeingeye dog. I wonder of it's self-awareness in terms of good Samaritanship. I hope she feeds him treats at nighttime; little dog treats shaped like dirty brown cupcakes.
Some man in the drumline yells in Swahili or some African language not offered in my high school ciriculum. The older woman in khakis and a white shirt shimmies about, uncoordinated but well intentioned. "Godeh! Godeh! Godeh! Everybody, move it! Animahl!" I am probably a bit off.
A bug crawls on my right wrist. A streetcar drives by. "18th and Lovejoy." How pleasant a destination, I think. A woman's large bottom walks past, perfectly timed with the bass drum I can only hear.

BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM

D.C.

Our taxi driver arrives in front of The Hotel Palomar at fifteen to seven. I sit inside drinking coffee with soy milk and eating the everything bagel I stole from work the day before. Free breakfast. Heather's afraid the cabs are going to be poached by other hotel patrons so we begin to load early, throwing our bags into a 1989 Cadillac station wagon. The cabbie later tells us it is reliable and easy to fix; his third one in his cabbie lifetime. The dense foliage blurring past us, wood sided suburban houses slipping through. In and out, in and out. Jam funk music circa some disco era plays on the stereo. The blue synthetic felt fabric that was once tightly adhered to the ceiling droops overhead. Meg moves it away with her hand a few times. Karen and I share a blue leather bench seat and listen to the cabbie talk about gas prices cutting into revenues. Although he never uses the term "cutting into revenues." He says something closer to "shredding into my money."
Dulles Airport is a mid-century take on "an airport of the future." The main terminal rises out from the surrounding flatness. Inside the ceiling swoops overhead, allowing you to imagine what it would be like to be under the belly of a UFO. We ride from the main terminal to Terminal D in a military-esque transporter as wide as a boat and one story high, riding on wheels the size of a semi-truck or some discarded military vehicle. I'm not usually a sucker for chatzky garbage, but when we pass the general store with 2008 election paraphernalia I can't help but want to buy the GOP Cookies and Democrat Snacks. I buy Danika a visually uninspiring "Barack Obama for President" pin, a Republican and a Democrat "Got President?" mug both decorated with a red, white, and blue version of their party mascot. I now feel vastly more connected to the democratic process of my country.

Models Digest

Yelling over the inane prattle at Hyde one night, I told my MIT graduate friend that my brain was atrophying like the legs of a paraplegic. My prescription came in the form of a subscription to The Economist, a worldly and well written weekly periodical discussing business, politics, the road to global explosion, etc. Having grown up on a diet of The Wall Street Journal and the Financial TImes, it fit well within the boundaries of my regular reading habits. I attribute my rebound into the intellectually capable crowd to a combination of my friend's generosity and my giving up on a six month Vegan bender in which my brain received little protein.
It would seem that the number of people in my field rarely share my enthusiasm. The reading regimen of my peers consists of US Weekly, Star, In Touch, Cosmopolitan (most often read by the Mormon's), and Elle. Generally Vanity Fair does little to offend my senses and when it is present I consider it a step up from the usual fodder. Call me completely self-involved but I care far more about my own life than that of some MTV reality star. I don't give a shit that Shiloh met the twins. The size of Mischa Barton's thighs should really be no concern of mine and I frankly don't understand why it rivets anyone else. Admittedly there have been a few times that flipping through one of these trash mags provided me with a few little gems: a picture of an Ed Hardy clad male model I work with following behind Britney Spears titled "Is Dante the new K-Fed?", a photograph of another male model with Paula Abdul (easily twenty years his senior), and I struggle to come up with a memorable third.