humour

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Standard party conversation, or perhaps late night talks under the stars, or stoned moments of clarity: if you could download any skill like they do in the Matrix, what would it be?

Some people need time to think. They either haven’t thought of their answer before or perhaps they’re searching for the answer that will make them seem the most… intellectual? Or the most virtuous? Or just the most. These people eventually come up with answers like “infinite patience” or “the answer to ending world hunger.” Which makes them sound much more like a contestant in a Beauty Pageant than having their desired effect.

Other people have quick answers. And I would be of the that category: Guitar.

“But Rebecca, guitar is something you could pick up and learn at any time.” And to that I would say, you are right. But then I would present to you my 15 year-old acoustic guitar that I have had re-strung 3 times by three different men, all of whom I had a crush on. I would follow it up by saying when I was 16 I took a few lessons, and then again when I was 25. And every year it appears on my list of new years resolutions and vision boards acting as a regular reminder that I have been failing at this goal for fifteen years.

Like I said, you’re right, I could learn guitar. But then I’d have to learn guitar. And I don’t want to learn guitar. I want to be able to play guitar. I want to go over to a girl’s apartment for the first time, see a guitar that happens to belong to her roommate, pick it up and play a few chords. She’d melt. I’d shrug and put the guitar down. Fire would ensue. And I don’t mean to say I’d like to be able to play guitar so I can get some, although yes. What I mean is that I want to be able to play guitar for the social benefits. Music is universal. Tell me you’ve never been envious of the person with the guitar around the campfire? If you haven’t then it’s because you were THAT person. Heeding requests and controlling the vibe of the evening, all eyes on you waiting to fulfill their individual musical desires. I wonder how that feels? Is it a partnership? Are you every bit as focused on the people listening as they are on you?

To the people concerned about what their answer says about their character, I feel you. Not being consumed by what others think of me is a day to day struggle. Let it be known that I don’t judge you. So when you say, “I’d want to download the ability to perform any surgery so that I could heal the world” the most you’ll get from me is a knowing smile.

Then I’d follow that up with, “I’ve been thinking about learning the guitar, any chance you know how to play?”

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Ingredients:

1 cup English Breakfast Tea with unlimited hot water top-ups to stay caffeinated
20 oz of Water in enviro-friendly water bottle that sends the message that you are a nerdy, strong feminist – pretentious peacocking
1 Bic Pen
1 Notebook with quote that makes you feel equal parts generic and accountable
1 Coffee Shop that has private restrooms because all that caffeine is going to go RIGHT through you
1 set of Headphones because the coffee shop playlist has too many recognizable songs that distract you from writing

Substitutions:

1. Substitute the Tea for Coffee

2. Substitute the Notebook and Pen for a Laptop (Note: this may result in decreased productivity due to: (1) lack of generic and yet TRULY inspirational quote, and (2) easy access to distractions like social media and online shopping carts. Both can lead to an underbaked script).

3. Substitute the Coffee Shop for Park Bench, Library, Subway, Home Office (Note: Home
office may have increased distractions like cats, laundry, and/or a bookcase that totally needs reorganizing this second because who could get any writing done with the chaos that is THAT shelf?! This may also lead to a Pinterest board full of other beautifully baked scripts and an accompanied self-loathing due to how much of a stupid procrastinating shitty script baker you truly are).

4. Remove Headphones all together. (Note: Be wary of uninvited conversations from other coffee shop (or library or subway) goers that may cause an allergic reaction resulting in red face, rapid heartbeat, twitchy eye, and an urge to shout at a stranger
because SERIOUSLY, don’t they know you’re writing the script that is FINALLY going to let the world see how amazing you are and that you’re the writer Hollywood has been waiting for and this script of yours will probably also cure world hunger and save the planet and that their trivial conversations about how their husband just doesn’t get that women prefer romance over porn IS LITERALLY KILLING THE FUCKIN’ PLANET!?!

Directions:

Mix all ingredients.
Repeat everyday until the script is done. Then re-bake script starting from the very beginning over and OVER until you’re certain it can’t be baked any longer.

Congratulations! You’ve just baked a First Draft.

Bake time: ~3 months to 3+ years… with no assurance it will actually ever taste good.

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People have long lists of things they don’t approve of being done in public and many of them centre around indecent exposure. You shouldn’t pee in public. Though people do. Don’t whip out your dick in public. Though they do. Sure going topless for females is legal in Canada but still don’t do it. And we generally don’t. (Which makes me sad but let’s save that for another day). No shoes, no shirt, no service. You must stay covered up at all times.

On top of that are the distasteful conversations. Don’t swear, there are children around. Stop talking about your penis in this coffee shop. Your bartender is not a therapist, your problems are boring and tragic. Mom, stop singing in the checkout line, it’s embarrassing. That one might just be for me. But the list of taboo topics in public goes on and on. Which raises the question, why oh WHY do aestheticians think it’s okay to give me dating advice while they pluck stubborn hairs from my labia?

It’s as if you clear the threshold of whatever hair removal room you choose and suddenly social norms no longer exist. You’re allowed to be naked. In fact they prefer it, because that blue paper thong they give you to calm your bashful nerves really just slows them down. Now you’re naked on the table with all your bits exposed save for the small section you’re able to keep covered with the supplied hand table. They throw on their protection goggles if it’s laser or gloves if it’s waxing and get to work. The lavender room atomizer and sounds from the ocean do little to relax you, so you close your eyes and try not to focus on the heat of the laser and murder-rationalizing pain of the wax strip.

“You’re very beautiful, do you have a boyfriend?” Your eyes shoot open and you wonder if she is referring to your face or your pussy. “Thank you, and no.” She launches into a speech about how unfortunate this is and then starts describing all the avenues to getting a boyfriend that are really quite easy if you just try. “My boyfriend first messaged me on Facebook saying I was the most beautiful woman he ever saw, it was so sweet. We started talking and then eventually met up and now we’ve been together for three months. Do you ever reply to guys when they message you on Facebook?” Hell no. “Um… no?” Apparently I’ve been living my life all wrong.

“For your full body laser service today, we’re doing arms, legs, armpits, and Brazilian, correct?” Except read that as if the woman speaking has a thick Russian accent. “Yes, and areolas.” She looks back shocked and appalled. “No, no, no, no, no. Breastfeeding.” Shit, as if getting my nipples lasered wasn’t discouraging enough. I already get it from my parents, my friends, and society, but now YOU want me to have a baby too? “It’s okay, I don’t want to have kids, also I’m pretty sure it doesn’t harm my milk ducts should I change my mind.” She winces. “Seriously, it’s fine.” Begrudgingly she wipes aloe on my nipples and mumbles something in Russian that I can only assume is a prayer begging for forgiveness for her part in my shameful choice.

It makes me wonder if the topic hadn’t come up organically or I had asked her, “do you want to breastfeed some day?” how SHE would react? Or to the other woman, “you’re very beautiful,” I’d say as I pull my butt cheeks apart so she can remove the hair from around my anus. What reaction would that get? I imagine it would sound much more like an inappropriate flirting technique than pleasant conversation. Basically, if you’re naked on a table, at a time when you’re the most vulnerable, it’s open season on life advice. But don’t you dare ask the aesthetician anything about her life because she is wearing clothes and it’s hella inappropriate to be that intrusive when the person isn’t naked too!

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An ex of mine was a bit of a self-proclaimed renaissance man. Sometimes it was fascinating like when he could accurately predict if a person’s parents were still together based off a few random questions. Times like those, it was like dating Sherlock Holmes. But other times, like when he’d correct my pronunciation? That’s when it was like dating Ben Stein (just in case that’s appealing to anyone, no judgment, but I meant it in a bad way). Those are the times when I would clench my teeth so hard, two veins would protrude from my neck. I’d be thankful I wasn’t born with Cyclops’ optic blast ability otherwise I’d be taking the stand pleading “your honour, I didn’t mean to kill him, my protective glasses just FELL off.” And then I’d tell the jury that though they couldn’t see it through my lenses, I was definitely batting my lashes in a cute and totally innocent way.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed but many people, at least in Toronto, have dropped the “c” out of the word “picture.” So when I ask, “hey babe, can you take my picture?” I sound as if I am asking my boyfriend to grab a pitcher of something (probably wine ’cause that’s how I roll). “PIC-ture. PIC-ture. PIC. There’s a c,” he would say. You know what else there is? A pedantic man making his girlfriend feel stupid for no reason other than to make himself feel better. Was my dropped “c” hurting anyone? No. Did it make me stand out from the crowd or make me seem of a lower level I.Q.? Hell no. Did it give me a complex and make me want to speak less around him? Absolutely.

There’s a famous anonymous quote, “never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word, it means they learned it by reading.” If I was a betting gal, I’d say I probably learned the word “picture” in grade school from a teacher and not from reading. And somewhere along the way, much like the second “t” in Toronto (re: Turonno), the “c” just dropped out. But the lesson still stands: don’t be a pronunciation bitch. It doesn’t make you look smart, it makes you look like literally the worst person ever. PLEASE stop talking, then go die.

But seriously it’s ba-gel. Like BAY-gel. Not bag-el. You idiot.

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Rifling through my “memories & keepsakes” box the other day, I came across a collection of photobooth strips. While many were of me and my ride-or-die best friend, there were an equal measure of me with ex-boyfriends. I looked at one specific set of 4 black and white 2.5 x 1.5 inch squares showing me and one of my exes seemingly in love and all I could think was, “ugh, I look so cute.” Is that weird? Most people would be reminded of that failed relationship and think any number of damaging things like, “you cheating fuckin’ asshole” or “how could I have been so clueless” or even worse, “I miss you.” But, nope. Not me. I feel nothing. Except vanity of course. Seriously though, so cute!

And it’s for that very reason that I never throw photos like these away. In a perfect world, I would be in that photobooth alone and when it got to the fourth photo where we are oh-so-adorably smooching, he’d be replaced by some fierce individual like Idris Elba or Cara Delevingne. Babe. And then the photos would cease to be of me and my ex, but me and my future. DREAM BIG PEOPLE.

In a world with 7.6 billion people, the odds are that I am not alone in this form of photographic memory hoarding. And it goes deeper than just photobooths. Three laptops, each spanning about 4 years of my life from the age of 19, that wreak of exes. Kisses, dinners, holidays, trips. Disposable cameras developed to include a CD copy so those kisses could be immortal. Did I really think we’d be together forever? My pride doesn’t want to let me say yes because it means admitting that I was stupid enough to make the same mistake over and over. But, it’s the truth. And whether it’s considered “healthy” or not, it’s something I will probably never stop doing. My only hope is that the next person is actually the real deal.

DISCLAIMER: If we have ever been in a photobooth together, YES I still have the photos, NO you cannot have them back, NO I will not throw them out, and YES it’s possible that I’ll post them with you replaced by someone more deserving of my time.

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Dr. Dre’s 2001. In grade 7, I remember dragging my mother to HMV with the goal of getting the album. I tirelessly pleaded with her to buy me the CD because it’s cool and I’m cool, and because she’s not cool, she could never know how cool it was. Ah, the logic of a twelve year-old. Finally, she gave in. I like to think it was because I was so persuasive but it was probably more because she secretly knew what table I sat at during lunch. We get to the cash and the nice-nice-oh-so-nice man behind the cash looks from me to my mother and back to me then says, “did you know we have the clean version?” Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? My eyes drilled holes into his head as he showed my mother where to find the PG album. I felt so betrayed. What gives, dude? Retail workers don’t get tips. And even if they did, joke’s on you, she tips the same no matter what the service is like. Having since worked at HMV for a 3 year stint, I can say with confidence I never showed the same douchebaggery to underage folk. That is until they came the listening booth with five CDs. This isn’t the buffet of music, all-you-can-listen, get the fuck outta here!

Walking proud with my new CD spinning in my discman, I took my usual seat in the cafeteria only to be interrupted by Christianne: self-proclaimed rebel from the grade 8 class. She asked me what I was listening to and when I replied, she yanked the headphones off my head and hit play. Right off the top things get suspicious when Snoop turns into one of those faceless adults from Peanuts and starts talking gibberish, “Da da da da da, It’s mwa-sner-der-fla D-O-double-G!” If you weren’t paying attention or you were say, in a large cafeteria full of 1200 students, that one may slip by you. It isn’t until the song finishes and the iconic words, “EYAT WYERMS EVERYDAY!” hit your eardrums that you truly know something isn’t quite right. Eyat wyerms? Like eat worms? Oh please no, Dr. Dre, not you too. Or maybe Wyerms is an acronym for some new diet of diets spreading through the Hip-Hop crowd and Dr. Dre is getting paid to advertise? Not having heard the uncensored version, I didn’t dwell on it too long. But Christianne knew the original very well. And nearing the end, at around the two minutes and thirty eight seconds mark when Dre reminds gardeners everywhere that they’ve been doing it wrong, she heard it: “HOLY SHIT! It’s the clean version!” She proceeded to run around the cafeteria and tell everyone about my profanity-challenged CD, which had the added sting of her having to point me out when she was met with “who’s Rebecca?”

It sucked. But isn’t that the way when you’re motivated by vanity? Murphy’s Law. I like to think that the spike in censored album sales thanks to yours truly (or maybe thanks to mommy dearest) gave Missy Elliott her inspiration to “Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht [reh] tup.” It’s all how you look at it. And I’m taking this one as a win. But also, like, fuck you HMV dude.

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Braces. My top teeth were always straight and though my bottom teeth were a little mangled, they didn’t show that much when I spoke. Despite them being mostly hidden, I begged my parents for braces because all the cool kids were getting them in grade seven. This may have been my first foray into pain for pleasure and let me tell you, no fuckin’ thank you.

The oral torture device was set to be in my life for 1.5 years. Not so bad. I can handle the pain for that long if it means my smile will look as much like a set of train tracks as all the popular girls. And in the meantime I can make the pain fun with colorful rubber bands! YAY! On a side note, here’s some colours to stay away from: brown for obvious reasons, silver because it just looks like more metal, and yellow because the color variation between them and your supposed white teeth is not that much.

Here’s something I didn’t know, 1.5 years is an estimate based on the assumption that you will follow the proper elastics regimen. While I was big on following in the footsteps of the popular girls, I wasn’t big on following plans specifically laid out to better my way of life. Just like that, 1.5 years turned into 3.5 years. And if you’re thinking that would mean two more years of being cool, you would be wrong. So very wrong. Except that one time in grade 9 science where I figured out that my braces were able to conduct electricity to illuminate a light bulb. That day I was definitely cool.

I was a metal mouth until my junior year of High School. The upside? I now have straight teeth and two metal bars behind them that make sure they stay that way. Another upside is that I never needed head gear (though this girl at March Break camp had it and she was really cool so again there was a solid week where I envied the apparatus).

In fear of having to revisit the device, I monitor my wires to ensure they never fall off. I’ve heard way too many stories from people saying they had braces but their wire fell off so now their teeth are crooked again. Oh hell no. Surprisingly, braces don’t have the same allure of popularity that they once had. Who’d have thought? Instead, they bring ideas of pain for pain’s sake. And I can think of way more fun ways of exploring that route that don’t include cut up cheeks, a forty minute flossing routine, and elastics causing my teeth to snap together any time I opened too wide like a noise maker with all the sound and none of the fun.

Braces: reaffirming my belief that I was, am, and will always be #anythingbutcool.

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I love making mix CDs for people. I become John Cusack in High Fidelity, skimming through my music collection to find all the songs that sum up our history together. I recall the atmosphere of the night we met, inside jokes we share, a song from that movie we saw together, artists I think they might like but haven’t discovered. Sometimes I’ll also include a mutually hated song just for fun. Nothing fills my heart with more joy than thinking of them blindly listening to the CD, laughing when reminded of that inside joke, tearing up when they remember the sad moment the movie song is from, the look of awe when they hear their new favourite song they never knew existed. I wish I could be there. Capture the moment without influencing it. But alas, that’s not possible. I know because I’ve tried.

It was Christmas in my early 20s, my best friend and I sat in his room, which was the last ode to what he was like in High School and nothing like the guy who sat in front of me. We listened to the CD start to finish. Every new song I would turn to him and wait for the realization to hit his face as to why I chose it. Some, like Queen’s “You’re my Best Friend,” were easier to pin down than others. Mostly I got nods and “cool”s. Um, excuse me. This is when you tear up. The CD ended with Nickelback’s abysmal hit “Photograph” during which I produced a framed photo of Chad Kroeger holding a photograph of me and that friend. I know: META. He let out one single, lonely, chuckle that echoed in my mind against the silence of the room. AHEM! THIS IS WHEN YOU DIE LAUGHING. We spent the next hour making his XBOX avatar burp while I awkwardly sat in the funk left behind by me and Freddie Mercury. Then I went home. We’re no longer friends. AND I’VE NEVER MADE A MIX CD SINCE. I’m just kidding. About the never-making-mix-CDs part, not about the friends part. Fuck that guy.

Mix CDs: the present to give when you’re okay with it being about the journey and not the destination.

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Roll over and hit the home button on my iPhone. No notifications? Whatever. Enter passcode and open Instagram to see if the photo of that inspirational quote I posted before I went to bed hit at least 20% of my followers. Nope. 12 likes. Resolve that the next photo must be a surefire hit: my cat or a selfie. Correction: selfie with too much makeup. Scroll Instagram and like the first five photos I see.

Hit my inbox next. Eight new emails? Holy moly, Ms. Popular. Oh. Nevermind. Six are from Screenwriting Blogs and Festivals I subscribe to and two are UGG outlet spam emails that I can’t for the life of me stop receiving. Check junk to see if anything important accidentally got filtered there. Just an Urban Outfitters sale notification. By no means junk but I hide it there as a means of wallet preservation. Next up is Facebook messenger. I scroll through a muted work thread and find nothing important but feel a twinge of satisfaction by being kept in the loop in little spurts of my choosing.

Last is Facebook. Notifications include a casting notice for a non-union project seeking “really funny comedian-caliber models who are real people, relatable, but with an edgy style.” I then spend a few minutes staring at my headshots wondering which one meets the breakdown. The answer? None. But I send one anyway. I spend more time than I’d like to admit scrolling through my newsfeed watching videos posted by a mixture of my Aunt, coworkers past and present, and some guys I’m pretty sure I never met.

Productivity: zero. Self-worth: low. Addiction: all time high.