In Which We Take A Few Deep Breaths

The Second Act

by MEREDITH HIGHT

It has now been a year since I moved to Los Angeles. And I still don’t know how to drive on the freeways. A couple of weeks ago I attempted to get on the 101, hook up to the 110 and then jump on to the 10, which sounds kind of sexy and uber Angeleno when you say it all together and really fast.

When I first moved here, I would just look at the freeway veterans who would toss out these combinations in one quick breath and wonder what they were talking about. Then I would smile and nod, pretending to understand.

Admittedly, I only tried to pull this 101/110/10 thing off because I was supposed to take something to La Brea to Hollywood or something, and I got turned around and wound up seeing a sign for the 101. I thought it would make for a good alternative.

Trapped by traffic on the 110, though, I began to think I had made a terrible decision. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was and there weren’t any signs and we weren’t moving and I was panicking at the thought of having to turn around and start all over. My iPhone was telling me to take exit 38 which was just a quarter mile away, but that didn’t make any sense because I was at exit 6 and I was supposedly going the right direction.

This is the point at which I started crying. Getting lost is a metaphor for life. Where am I? How did I end up here? How do I get home? Where is home?

So I pulled off the freeway and got reoriented, only to determine that I had been going the right way the whole time. The iPhone was telling me the right thing – but since I can’t see small print and don’t understand numbers, I had mistaken 3B for 38.

I drove home cursing the traffic and congestion in Los Angeles. But the next day I went to the beach and was reminded why I live here. In the end, Los Angeles redeems itself with its proximity to the Pacific.

But all that beach time means a girl needs to keep her business all trimmed up, nearly year round. No one wants to see a burrito hanging out of that Speedo, OK. These people in California mean business about taking care of your business.

I decided to try sugaring over my usual waxing, because it’s more natural and supposed to be less painful. Also, there was a coupon on Daily Candy. I need to take advantage of any opportunity to save money here in Los Angeles, because the cost of living is unreasonable and I am going broke. Actually, I’m not even going broke anymore, I am just broke. Mostly I don’t mind, though, because the weather is so good.

I arrived at my appointment prepared for a relatively painless procedure. "So what you are going to need to do is take off your shorts and your panties and shoes," she said. "Then you can lie down."

"OK," I said. "Is there like a sheet or cover or paper panty or anything? I mean when I went in for a trim in Texas, they practically draped me in blankets." But this girl just started laughing. "How am I supposed to work on you, if you have anything on?"

I see her point but quite frankly I think she saw more of me than my own gynecologist has ever seen or will ever see. Not only that, but once she started the sugaring I began to realize this procedure was not as painless as promised.

“I don’t think I can do this!” I screamed. “This fucking hurts!”

“It’s OK!” she shouted back. “You can do this! Just hang in there!”

All of a sudden I felt like Mary Lou Retton or I don’t know, Nancy Kerrigan. I just had to do it; I had to power through.

I took a few deep breaths.

I closed my eyes and thought about the Kardashian sisters. They have dark, long, lustrous locks, and I bet they, too, have to endure near agonizing pain and torture to keep it trim down there.

"So do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

No, I said.

“Any prospects?”

Must I constantly be reminded that I am not getting any?

Then she started trimming around the edges. Weedwacking, I suppose, is the best analogy here. But in her efforts to be thorough, well. I am pretty sure she fingered me at one point.

The sad thing about that is that is the most action I have gotten in months.

No really, it’s OK. I have a plan and his name is Adam Brody. I did a little research on the internets. He’s approximately my age, he lives in Los Angeles and he dated Rachel Bilson for three years. This leads me to believe that he likes brunettes with brown eyes, so theoretically, I have a real shot at this.

The only issue is that he is an actor, and actors need a lot of attention. I am too self-absorbed to pay that much attention to anyone other than myself. However, he is probably away on location a lot, which means I would still have plenty of time to myself.

So that could work out really well.

What?

I’m not crazy.

The truth is, even though I have been molested by the freeways and purported experts in painless lady trims, I do love living in Los Angeles.

There are moments so magical, they defy description. In fact, they are not moments; they are scenes. Like sitting on the fake lawn outside the Standard Hotel in Hollywood with a smattering of friends one night, as a slight earthquake shakes the ground beneath us. Some of us feel it, but some of us feel nothing. We continue to talk about Flannery O’Connor and dresses and Roman Polanski. Lying in the grass and laughing underneath the stars in Palm Springs at four in the morning, in front of a mansion formerly frequented by Marilyn Monroe. Going to the Farmers Market for lunch with coworkers and realizing that I was eating at the same table, sitting in the exact same place just a year ago. Yet, I was in a completely different place.

Stopping by the gourmet market for french macaroons afterwards and standing in line, somehow knowing that however magical it has been, the best is yet to come.

Meredith Hight is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

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In Which We Wonder Who Else Is Going To Love Precious

Born Into

by MEREDITH HIGHT

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

dir. Lee Daniels

109 min.

You should not go see the Tyler Perry/Oprah Winfrey-endorsed movie Precious for the novelty of seeing Mariah Carey sans makeup and Lenny Kravitz sans sunglasses and the sassy comedienne Mo'Nique stripped of any semblance of soul.

You should see Precious because it’s not just a movie about abuse or even triumph; it’s a movie about love that isn't told from the point of view of a helpless victim or a courageous survivor. It is told from the point of view of Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), who is given up on and at times wants to give up herself.

Precious is not just a victim, not just a survivor, not someone who is defined solely by her circumstances. Which yes, are bleak and relentless. But when you define anyone by what they have been born into, by what has been done to them – you are looking past who they are, stifling their spirit and denying their humanity.

Precious avoids this trite and predictable depiction by showing us who Precious is. And Precious is smart. She is funny. She is charismatic. She is strong. She is a good mother. She is loving. She is so much more than we would ever expect her to be.

She is everything she is not supposed to be, because she has been raped and abused and mistreated and kicked around in the streets. She is this person, despite the fact that the very people who are supposed to love her and care for her and protect her have taken advantage of her, in the most despicable of ways.

Oprah and the reviews keep saying what a monster Mo'Nique is in this movie, as Mary, Precious’ hateful and abusive mother. Yes, she is an evil, venomous, and selfish woman. But we see Mary, too, as a person. Someone who wants to know – who will love her? Who will take care of her?

To her detriment and certain demise, Mary never does learn what Precious learns. That you have to be able to look after and love yourself, before love can be given to you. It is Mary's weakness that allows such abuse to nearly define and consume Precious. But it is Precious’ strength, built from within but also through the love of a social worker, teacher and her classmates, that helps her to transcend her situation.

This urban family loves her through her aggression, her mistakes, her education, her triumphs, her failures, the birth of her second baby by her own father. And that is what family does, biological or not; they love you through life.

What this movie does differently is show us that Precious deserves this love. And that it’s possible for her to receive this love even though her own family has failed her so miserably. The film is all the more compelling because this love does not arrive in the form of a romantic relationship.

Throughout we witness distinctly original cinematic sequences: the dark humor and richly powerful scenes of Precious’ imaginary flights that allow her to remove herself from the present moment. The very moments when she is being beat up, forced to perform sexual acts on her own mother, or when she is being raped by her father as he says “Daddy loves you.”

When Precious arrives in the classroom and begins writing, her teacher asks her, how do you feel now?

I feel here, she says. I feel here. That is the beginning of her story.

Meredith Hight is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.

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In Which Sometimes I Wish I Wasn’t a Woman

This Is The Second Sex

by MEREDITH HIGHT

I was supposed to be eating some salmon sashimi, some California rolls. Instead, I got an earful of cock.

Let me be precise.

I walked around the block to the sushi place in my neighborhood. It has been hot in Los Angeles, wildfire hot. Maybe you heard. So I just threw some clothes on, but not a bra. This alone is probably asking for trouble, because I was wearing my Reading is Sexy t-shirt. And I don’t know how it happened, but I'm a D-cup.

It didn’t used to be like this. I was a B, then a C, and now a D. I thought it was being on the pill for so long, but I went off of that a few months ago, and still – D. It is what it is, but if you ask me, it’s a little unnecessary. But an adolescent girl who is lamenting the state of her flat chest might be inspired by my story. I don’t hope that she is, I am just telling you how my thirteen year old self and Judy Blume might think.

I usually just order at the counter and take my miso soup and my edamame, and my sushi, to go. But there was a seat at the bar, so I took it. As I sat down, the sushi chef enthusiastically clinked a beer mug against a customer’s, like a Japanese Cheers, like Norm. I read the menu, I drank some water.

The waitress brought me my miso soup and I sat and listened. Two overweight lesbians sat next to me, wearing camouflage and wedding rings and bandanas. We were married before the proposition, they were telling the pair of fortysomething men next to them. The men were congratulatory, emboldened, they wanted to know more.

You can feel the loneliness at a bar sometimes, practically see the veneer of sadness that lies just beneath the convivial small, smaller, smallest of talk. The men were not wearing Ed Hardy, but they should have been. They represented a faded California, their time had passed, the tans had turned to leather, the t-shirts were too small, all of it so tired.

They said to the lesbians, can I tell you a story? Sure, they respond. One of the men lights up and begins. OK, this one time I was in Thailand. And this guy comes up to me and wants to show me his tat. He pulls down and his pants and shows me his cock. And it says, right there on the head, “No Mercy.”

Can you believe that?!

Raucous laughter amongst the men, restrained smiles amongst the lesbians.

They wanted the lesbians to come out with them later, to someone’s house. It will be sick, they said. The lesbians politely declined, they were practically an old married couple after all. They paid their check, and then the twentysomething Asian girls sitting next to me left, and there I was, a sitting duck.

I could still hear them, saying something about she seems to be enjoying her solitude, something about pussy, something about something. Worse than hearing them, I could feel them.

How was your sushi? they asked, from across the bar.

Quack.

Fine, I said. I paid the check and I left.

Just the day before, I met some friends at the beach, at Will Rogers State Park. Well, they rode their bicycles, and I drove my car. Because I can’t ride bicycles, I fall off. So I got there earlier and I laid down my towel and took off my tank top and shorts. Like I said, it has been hot, and I was wearing my green and white polka dot bikini.

A mere moment after pulling the sunscreen out of my bag, a sixtysomething man appeared. Well, hello, he said. How are you doing today? Fine. Where are you from? Texas. Oh. You like it here? Yes. Are you a single lady? Yes.

He looked something like John McCain, or Betty Draper’s aging father on Mad Men. I stopped slathering my sunscreen on and looked at his small, pale blue eyes, set against his weathered, woven face, eagerly searching me.

Well, I’d like to get you know better, he said.

No, you don’t. You just want to fuck me.

That’s not what I said. I held back my laughter and I said, no thank you, I am flattered, but I am not interested.

I walked, I fell into the neutral, welcoming ocean. I returned to my towel only to discover that I had had set up camp next to a group of presumably gay men. Or at least, they were talking about the local gay interior designers and they were not looking at me like the sixtysomething man was looking at me. “Are you still living on Dick Street?” one asked. “No, it’s too hard to live on Dick Street,” he answered.

My friends showed up. How did you know it was her? a friend asked. Because of her booty, she said. I could see it from across the beach. Plus I know she has that green and white polka dot bikini. It’s true, I have a booty, applebottoms, badunkadunk, according to the Urban Dictionary. It is what it is, and it has always been this way. Every summer, as a little girl, my mom would sigh as she tried to find a swimsuit that would cover my entire bottom.

Having boobs and a booty suggests something sometimes. The problem is, sometimes you are just a person, and you are not trying to say anything. You are just trying to live, to go about your business, to be who you are and do what you do.

Years ago, in Sacramento, I went for a run. I was just there for a summer, for work. I didn’t know the neighborhood, I didn’t know the area. It was a Saturday, probably sometime around four o clock in the afternoon. I had stopped at a busy intersection, and hit the light to cross the street. It was a long light, and I stood for a minute or two.

I happened to glance over at the car parked on the street. There was a man inside, sweating. He was wearing plastic glasses and his bare, pathetic penis was in his hand, peeking out from below his sloppy stomach. He saw me, I saw him. The light changed. I moved apartments and neighborhoods the same day, disturbed.

Someone said, well you shouldn’t go running there. In broad daylight? At a busy intersection? I need to be concerned with perverts who might be jacking off?

Sometimes I hate being a woman. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a woman.

Meredith Hight is the contributing editor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.

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