i am busted

on the game of love, coffee, and femininity

I am busted.

Face down ass up mother fucking busted.

Caught with hands so red my palms are bleeding into the compostable paper cup i spent $5.79 on: $3 for coffee, 79 cents for tax, and $2 for each of the chiquita bananas who remember my order and sprinkle my dogs with glitter and googly eyes like every pup cup i order is their last.

The husband looks at me like an adorable drunk who just stumbled into his trauma bay. Bloody and stupid. In need of resuscitation - his.

This is what I get for marrying a military medicine man. McSteamy in matters of crisis, McNugget in matters of coffee cultivation.

Rancid and delicious. My god i am so in love.

But you see my pretties, i had to get the $5.79 this morning. The kaka’ako cafe just got new cups and they are very excited about it. And so it was important to me that i show my support.

Banana #1 tells me they are better because they are doubled lined for heat retention or something like that so they don’t need to use those stupid cardboard sleeve things anymore.

Banana #2 chimes in that they still use the sleeves though because Mary, Jane, Francis, Doe are complaining about their fingers burning through the lining.

I roll my eyes as i fill my double lined yum with hot kona and half & half that has certainly been sitting out too long because i know Mary, Jane, Francis, Doe personally. They are tiny old japanese women with immortal silk skin that live in my building above the cafe. They have lots of money and that’s what makes them important.

Every tuesday afternoon they gather in this weird dingy cement room called “the clubhouse” on the 6th floor by the pool with mirrored windows that you can see out of but not in. They sit like jail birds perched on metal folding chairs around a long plastic table like the one we used to play beer pong on in ZBT.

ZBT (zeta beta tau for the non greek acquainted) was one of my favorites. It was the top jewish frat house on walnut ave filled with rich, short, skinny, “nice jewish boys” (meaning minimal STDs) from jersey. Except for a few like Tanner. Their honorary jewish black pledge.

Tanner was one of my good friends from year 1. He is super tall and super hot and super not jewish and a rare gift to us all. He fit in perfectly.

I think he married a blonde girl from back home he was dating at ‘cuse but i’m not sure because we fell out of touch.

Regardless, ZBT was only kinda creepy sometimes and had great themed parties and was very generous at heart. Never short on key bump offerings or warm xanax juice. Which again, was very generous, but not really my thing because my sinuses weren’t built for blow and Laney was prescribed adderall anyway.

ZBT was great. Like leaving school for summer camp on the moon.

ZETA BETA TOMATAAAA

Anyway, as i was saying, the little old japanese women gather in the clubhouse during the hottest part of the day which is usually around 11am to forage for seeds on how they can siphon more money out of us tenants. The entire operation is chaired by my nemesis. The littlest bitch ass pecker of them all… my gay building manager.

He is so angry and so stuffy all the time because he’s committed himself fully to the exhausting bit of being a seething straight in suede james perse loafers and tantric mala bead bracelets stacked halfway to his elbows.

And so the tiny old women gather in the clubhouse and yell in japanese at my gay building manager whose name is TRACY(have i told you that yet… his name is fucking TRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!) to do more things better and so tracy begrudging does in his own fake cis white masculine way. It is incredibly offputting and weird and fake as FUCK!!!

He makes our lives hell which he loves to confuse with power. And so he stomps around the building in his own repressed homosexual way in his gorg italian suede and horny healing bracelets with the stare of a man on an edibles bender, terrorizing his sweet maintenance minions who are forced to put up with him but secretly talk mad shit behind his back.

That’s why i’ve created an alliance with emily.

Emily works the front desk. She is a 4’10” zany asian woman in her 40s or 60s. She is an absolute firecracker with boxy orange hair, taylor swift bangs, and a surprisingly excellent ass.

Her voice is high yet monotoned and feels like a fluorescent light slapping you in the face in the most comforting way. I only understand about half of what she says though this hardly matters because emily usually ends the interaction by telling me how sexy i am which i very much appreciate.

Once a week i bring emily soft serve ice cream at 7:30am because it’s her favorite and because that is the earliest kaka’ako cafe will sell me soft serve and it’s very important that emily gets her ice cream since she has become my secret informant inside tracy’s regime.

i love it here

For example, like that one time he tried to tow my car after i parked overnight in guest parking because i had too many groceries and forgot my key fob and used the closest entrance because i am not a pilgrim. And so tracy girl saw this as an opportunity to impose suffering upon me personally (as i am a perfect target resident for hemorrhaging money).

BUT thankfully, EMILY <3333, blessed be her name, stopped the entire operation before he could swing his small pish in my face and cost me a $250 day from hell.

I told the bananas about this and they were PISSED. Word on the street is tracy has “a thing” for the guy at express towing off queen st. which i cannot yet confirm except to say that it does support my speculations on all accounts.

So as you can see it’s very important i get emily her ice cream.

And i know all of this to be true because every tuesday i walk down to the 6th floor pool with my $5.79 to tan for exactly 35 minutes front and back to maximize the UV and minimize my wrinkles because whatever fucking girl math that is it makes more sense than lathering in 50 spf and baking all day. Which i cant do (even though i can because i have the time) because i’ll go MAD. MAD I TELL YOU… MAD!!! And because being pale is a non option, this is my system.

So i sit like a wet seal basking in the hawaiian sun, staring at myself in those creepy reflective windows where they can see out but i can’t see in long enough until i realize how fucking creepy that actually is and notice the old ladies beginning to gather behind the glass. Then i listen to everything.

And so you see i’ve figured out this entire ecosystem that i pay a pretty penny to inhabit and this is what my husband does not understand. That i need to do this investigation work every single day because it is my job and i take it very seriously and so while he does his whole emergency doctor combat boot shtick i must be out here in the field dissecting the humdrum and reporting my findings back to freaks like me on this hellhole internet.

SO this is why i must pay the $5.79 each morning for my coffee and put us at the brink of death by a thousand cups. Because there are things happening on the 6th floor inside gay tracy’s old lady junta that require my attention.

And so i giggle and tell the husband he’s right and let him type things on the calculator while i cover my mouth to suppress audible laughter so i don’t irritate him further while he does excessive number stuff that i truly don’t care to learn because that’s what i have him for.

I suspect this is why the divorce rate is so high. People don’t want to pretend anymore. They underestimate how much of relationships is just tactfully pretending to care about the other person’s little projects. The husband and i are very good at this.

I pretend to care about his need to golf and drink a minimum of 4 beers so he can hit ’em straight on the back 9 and he pretends to care about my need to spend $350 on a psychic in connecticut to align my chakras to improve my fertility over the phone. Because what we both know and never say is to play the game is to be so fucking embarrassingly devoted to each other that love and delusion become indistinguishable.

And so we have become very good at forming our faces into expressions of interest that strangely enough are starting to become real. It’s a very interesting development and will therefore be added as a branch of this investigation.

There is a fine line between oppression and division of labor and i love to walk it like a dog. This is why i will never knock a woman for leaving men to do the boring stuff. They love boring things! They yearn for taxes and war movies and dave ramsey podcasts.

And i do not.

Life is too short and i’m beginning to believe it’s okay to be shallow at the expense of feminist remorse. I see no advantage in pretending otherwise.

And so i say you’re so right babe and tell him that i will buy less $5.79 and give him a kiss then tell him about this grey lady bug that has been visiting me all week with spots that look just like hearts. Can you believe that?! Heart spots!!!

i call her lady ♡

He smiles and says it must be good luck! then thanks me for hearing him out.

I say of course babe but i really need to go now because i have to write and so i prance off in my black little low rise pants and crop top tank with my floppy little tits and get back to my investigation work from bed.

It’s 9:04am and i’ve already saved the day!

I slide under my freshly fluffed Piglet In Bed linen and sip on my double lined $5.79. Oh if only the husband knew how much that duvet cost us…

You see my pretties, men just want to feel heard. Which I honestly find beautiful when they’re not saying anything stupid.

The day is mine again!!!! I am rich!!! I am freeeee!!!

Now back to work.

xoxo