Dear Juan from Sierra Weir on Vimeo.
I think we have more in common than a fish and a person should. You can’t have friends in your bowl; you’d kill them. That’s the thing. I don’t have many friends anymore. I’m no beta, but my bowl is empty. I have acquaintances, but I’ve given up on the idea of having a best friend. I’ll save that for when I get to pick out my first dog. It’s really a funny thing when friends that you think the world of start to melt from their pedestals. Everybody goes through rough patches. I feel that I’m the only person who has to go through full editing when it comes to friends. My mom and dad have disagreed about the types of friends that I keep and are always pointing out more suitable kids to associate with. “Jennifer just got a full ride scholarship AND she works at the soup kitchen on her weekends. You should call her up!” Jennifer probably would have loved to ingratiate me into the scrapbooking groups and Future Homemakers of America meetings. The truth is I had always strived to spend time with other girls who were more…exciting. I worked six to seven days a week over the summer waiting tables in order to afford to be frivolous with the girls I admired. It’s safe to say that mothers really do know best. I’m a bit unsatisfied in the friend department these days. You know my mom, Juan. Every time you come home for the holidays with me, she has the tap water conditioned for you already.
Let me just tell you more about my mom. She is a smart lady. She grew up in a very Jewish family. She had to go to Sunday school and read Hebrew and eat brisket with kraut. Her family only drove Cadillacs. She got bat mitzvahed, and I’m glad I wasn’t there, especially for the Torah reading because she sings like a drunken man. My mom is the head of our house, no question to it. I go to my dad with fingers crossed when I need new privileges or raises in my allowance, hoping he doesn’t say, “Take it up with your mother first.” But he always ends up saying that. She proceeds to purse her lips, shake her head, and sigh audibly. My sister storms out of the room whenever she does this. Tell my sister she takes after her and you’ll get a reaction as violent as shaking baking soda and vinegar in a bottle. My mom is extremely pragmatic. We shopped at second-hand stores up until fourth grade. I was liberated from leftover Gap and allowed to look over the clearance rack at Ross and Marshalls when I started complaining hard enough. Jesus, I hate those places. The smell and organized chaos alone is enough to knock out a small Labrador retriever. My mom gives good advice. I once dated a “project,” giving up most of myself in the process of changing him. It didn’t work out. I have learned never to use the word boyfriend around her or to bring boys home to my parents. When my mom recently asked about a boy I told her about, she firmly reified that I shouldn’t get distracted. “It’s ok, Mom. It’s an amorous friendship.” It actually worked. My mom is all about school and character building. I used to joke in high school that she would prefer me to get pregnant then get below a B in any of my classes. I ended up getting a D in Precalculus. I was shunned for a week and nagged for a lifetime about that grade. “Oh you didn’t get in that program? It must be that math grade, Myrtle.” She calls me Myrtle. It’s weird, I know. No one knows that either. Naturally she monitors my friends. She likes kids who have good eye contact, manners, and little idle time. When I got in trouble last year with friends that never made her cut, she said, “When you lie with the dogs, you’re bound to get fleas.” Yes, Sensei Sue, young grasshopper has learned.
I decided to change my lifestyle after the run-in with the law last year. I chose not to drink on the weekends anymore, stay up late, or take my wallet out for walks in the mall. I also chose to stay out of touch with the friends who landed me in the legal situation in the first place. No need to elaborate on that one other than it was a mess and left me with trust issues. I was slowly becoming less of a wannabe-socialite and more of the Old-Woman-in-a-Shoe.
I figured out that I was losing favor with my old roommates when I was no longer part of their inside jokes. Don’t you hate that about girls? They always have inside jokes and sort of nudge each other and flash their mascaraed eyes about like cats on the prowl. I think that was the problem initially; their girly-girl tendencies. These friends used to chastise me for speaking in high vocabulary. I would lament that they would ostracize me for it. They then would chastise me for using the words chastise and ostracize. Excuse me for not dumbing down to be more attractive. I feel that that’s where the most value is placed for those girls. Now I do love getting gussied up occasionally and being called beautiful and definitely shopping, but when I invited these girls up to my home in the mountains, my mom told me after the menagerie had left that she had never heard so many hairdryers going off at once before. She also didn’t care for all of the powdered makeup caught in the bathroom counter grout. I just shrugged.
Now that I’m away from the lifestyle that I used to call typical college, I see the façade my friends put up. I deleted my Facebook account because that’s the worst contributor to social appearances. I don’t care how many shots Claire and Lindsey took last Wednesday night. Why are they talking about it still, on Tuesday? Walking back from the art studio late Thursday nights and seeing the Thirsty Thursday spectacle makes me happy that I won’t have to deal with a hangover. I mean what are these kids doing in school? Needless to say, their planners probably don’t look like mine. They are clowns: the cackling girls in five-inch stilettos hobbling around like Snookies and J-Wows, the boys addressing me, ”Hey biddy, where the party at?” and when I don’t respond I get, “Bitch.” First of all, I don’t respond to biddy and secondly, I can tell you’re not my type even in the dark. I rather sleep well and get back in touch with my prana the next day on a run or in the yoga studio. I like hanging around my clean apartment with my roommate who shares the same feelings about the importance of school and success and using big words. She laughs every time I come by your bowl and sing my own rendition of Louis Armstrong’s, “What a Juan-derful World.” Sure I might be a cat-lady when I’m older or come off as too serious to my peers now. I just really don’t want to mess up anymore, and I’m sick of friends that don’t seem to understand.
At least I have you, Juan.
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