Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

stories

We Are The Goon Squad and We’re Coming to Town

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I did it. I finally broke the seal. I got an Express credit card. I know, i know, it only means trouble. Trouble, debt, tight jeans, and hot reversible belts.

It really started out with the suit i bought at Express last month. At the time it was a desperation buy – i needed a new suit jacket, and i needed to locate it in a two hour span. I had no idea that Express suit jackets would fit me as if they were personally tailored… comparing it to the two other suits i have owned is like holding an undershirt up next to a knit poncho.

Although i’ve had it for over a month, i hadn’t worn the suit all in one piece – the jacket showed up with jeans, and the pants made an appearance at work, but i hadn’t combined the two in a real world environment until I finally wore it for an offsite meeting yesterday. Needless to say, i looked as sharp as a tack.

While admiring my sharp-as-hell self in a bathroom mirror, i began to ponder: Do i look this sharp all of the time? I pride myself on it when i go to bars, or attend parties, but not at work – where i spend the most time and where it matters the most. Most of my dress clothes wardrobe was cobbled together from co-op to co-op between 2001 and 2004, with just a few shirts added this year. The assortment features few spectacular outfits, but it isn’t especially interchangeable – too often all of my clean shirts hinge on being worn with a single pair of pants. The result is that at work i often look just as random and dumpy as an intern, my more evolved sense of style smothered underneath unfortunate color combinations and fabrics subjected to too many cycles in laundromat dryers.

I decided then and there (still admiring myself in the bathroom) that if i wanted to maintain my reputation as fashonista i had to aggressively defend my title. No more pants that are too old to hold a sharp crease. More shirts that match more pairs of pants. More incredibly sexy suit jackets. I spend over a third of my waking life working for a living and, by god, i can use that livelihood to make myself sharp while doing it.

Thus, tonight i traveled to Express. My stated purpose was buying just one more suit jacket so i didn’t proceed to wear the other into the ground. One suit jacket turned into one new suits and, after discovering that they were priced at 50%, one new suit turned to two plus complementary ties. After the better part of an hour i realized that the dreadful day i had always always known would come had arrived – my Express purchase was so large that the discount that opening an Express credit card would provide could not sanely be denied.

At this point my impending purchases had become voluminous enough that I had acquired a specific helper employee to help me shuttle it to and fro the register, and to tell me i looked hot. I queried, “Would it be really good for you if i opened a credit card?,” and her eyes lit up like high beams.

And, well, long story short is that I have a ridiculously high credit limit at Express (my helper let out a gasp when she saw it), i got a free-suit’s worth of discount, i made Jennifer’s eyes light up like high beams, and i now have an entirely new dress wardrobe including major support in the BIV division of my RGB spectrum. If i can’t manage to look sharp now i have nothing to blame other than bad fashion sense.

Take a Chance, Make a Change

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Now that Philadelphia is experiencing a transit strike I count myself amongst this fine city’s proud cycling commuters.

If you were to ask me how I feel about this, i would reply “absolutely terrified.”

It seemed like a good idea yesterday, as Elise and I walked the three miles to and from work. It seemed like a good idea last night, as i whipped out my credit card at Target. It even seemed like a good idea this morning, as the adrenalin hit me as i sped up 5th street on my brand new bike.

Riding my bike to and from work may, in actuality, be a good idea. That doesn’t stop me from being so terrified, though. In this case, along with the vast majority of other cases, i blame my mother. She never taught me *how* to ride in a street. As far as i knew, only hooligans who didn’t value their own lives rode in the street.

Quite to contrary, commuting cyclists are by no means expected to ride on sidewalks. It’s considered to be more dangerous, and in some places it’s even illegal! Yet i have no concept of how to ride my bike on the street because i was never allowed to. In fact, now that i think about it, aside from trips to my grandmother’s house i can only recall two times i rode a bike while not under my mother’s supervision, and they were both in college. Not only do i not know how to ride in streets, but i only know how to ride with my mother barking things at me from her adjoining vehicle.

(Incidentally, i also blame my mother for a day-long Italian-mother guilt trip she laid on me regarding the fact that i am now taking my life into my hands by riding a bike, and that she is convinced i will be “doored” by a park car as many other unfortunate souls have directly preceding a trip to her ER.)

This morning i walked my bicycle at all points above Broad and Vine due to my vast mother-induced fears. This makes me, in the words of elderly bike curmudgeon John Forester, an unrider.

At work, I decided that i would not be bullied into unriding a $200+ dollar piece of aluminum around the city. I read the highly recommended Bicycle Safe for an absolutely unapologetic guide to avoiding the ten collisions most common to bike commuting, and the informative and spiffy Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia informed me that all city bike shops were performing free bike safety check. A free bike safety check sounded like a wonderful way to assuage my fears, so i headed to the conveniently located Breakaway Bikes.

And, well, it didn’t, because i discovered that my bike’s wheel was noticeable bent and had probably been that way since i left Target with it last night. But, i left feeling empowered. I had went to a bike shop. I was becoming an informed consumer and commuter.

I’d love to say that the story ended there, happily. Unfortunately, and with a cruel sense of irony, i feel compelled to report that I fell off my bike twice – TWICE, the only two times i can ever recall falling off of a bike – both in the parking lot of Target as i went to exchange my bike. One was a full on, head-over-handlebars tumble that has left my left hip scraped, my right leg highly disfunctional, my left hand sprained badly enough that i wince every time i spot a guitar, and myself even less sure on two wheels than i was this morning.

In about nine hours i’m due to mount my bike and ride to work, and thanks to the convenient convergence of my mother and my own parking-lot clumsiness i am convinced that with every rotation of my gears i am spinning closer to a sure and sudden death. And, in this terrible sureness of my own demise, one thing keeps me aimed true for that pillow-padded saddle seat: if i commute six miles a day by bike i will eventually become both physically and conceptually more attractive.

Hopefully that happens before the death part.

AotWME pt3: Stospberry vs The Goose

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I forget sometimes that Elise and I are total yuppies who have jobs at insurance agencies across the street from each other, and that part of being said yuppies is that we spend money on… well, just about everything.

Case and point: we both like good liquor, and Elise is sprouting a bit of a taste for wine. I say this not to brag about having good taste in liquor, cause i mostly buy by brand and by what doesn’t leave me with a headache, but just to illustrate how the two of us like to HAVE things. We’re very have-y people. I typically keep at least three different kinds of vodka in the house, and none of those kinds are Banker’s Club or Smirnoff. Elise has a similar assortment of tequila (and never the twain shall meet). We even buy nice mixers; i think the only truly cheap thing in our cabinet is brandy i bought for making sangria.

I sometimes forget that not everyone is like this. The ex, between stories about nearly being arrested in London, crashing at his house until he was made a formal roommate, and following his favorite punk band on tour (all relatively isolated incidents – he’s actually quite charming; the most objectionable thing he’s done all night is touch my computer screen, which i somehow managed to endure but quickly clean up after in an OCD frenzy when he visited the bathroom) had made a sizable dent in my Strawberry Stoli. As that’s my favorite of the current vodkas, when he went back to the kitchen to mix another drink i hollered from the living room, “you should work on the Grey Goose, it’s in the freezer.”

He looked from me, to Elise, and back to me, tipsily dumbfounded. Was this sort of ex-boyfriend test? Was i really asking him to switch from Stoli to GG?

“Well, we’ve got more of the goose.”

Attack of the Well-Mannered Ex part deux (cont’d): All These Poses

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Okay. I have now given him the tour of our house, eaten dinner, and had three more drinks.

I think i have identified the perfect drink-to-Elise’s-ex ratio, because we’re having a more charming conversation between the two of us than Elise is having with either of us.

Well, not right now, but a minute ago, when i was in the kitchen.

We shared a moment. Actually, several consecutive moments. Like, a naughty daisy chain of moments. See, first he was talking about Golden Girls, which is one of my favorite television shows ever. So, we’re in the kitchen enthusing about our favorite GG moment’s and he says “Bea Arthur” and I off-handedly remark to Elise “of course, now i’m singing that song in my head,” meaning Rufus Wainwright’s “California” where he belts out “and my new grandma Bea ArTHUR!” And, he was like, “oh, yeah, i know that song. I love that album.” And, THEN, we simultaneously launch into Rufus Wainwright concert stories in which we cry for the majority of his set.

I mean, what are the chances of two guys who like Rufus independent of a girlfriend’s influence and who are straight (mostly) (i think).

So, yeah, i think as long as i keep drinking and he keeps liking Rufus Wainwright i won’t even be freaked out by the fact that he’s sleeping in my house.

Moveable.

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With Hemmingway on my lap i began to shed layers acquired since the night before.

Raining all week, people at work began claiming that they were depressed. I think rain just gives you time to realize why you might have been depressed in the first place. Having that generally figured out, i quite like the rain.

I peeled off my sweatshirt and stuffed it down into my bag to cover the bottle of vodka, still undrunk. I carry a grand’s worth of electronics on my body almost every day, but i am scared that someone might want to knock me down when i get off the train so they can take my vodka.

It is good vodka.

On Market everything is too beautiful. The bums, even. I draw deep, diaphramatic, atheletic breaths. These are not breaths i take on a daily basis. Forgetting the vodka, i feel drunk on crisp autumn air. Drunk on oxygen.

Ross asked me as i was leaving, “You’ve got to find something to do outside, huh?” I answered that i don’t know how to do anything outside, except walk.

So i walked home.