BANISHMENT 22: Sweat-Loving Muscle Men

Tonight I went to the gym. I got home, took off my running shoes, briefly pretended like I was in a Gatorade commercial, and then typed into Google's search box, "Why are people more attractive when they sweat?"

At the time, and even still, this seems like one of the most poignant questions one should ask at the YMCA. Forget about membership rates and appropriate sulk time in the sauna. What is it about the nasty, smelly, bodily beads that make men into horrific monsters of dating lust?

If I'm going to be honest, I have to say that the gym has always scared me. There are lots of foreign objects that have names beginning with Turbo. It's a place where any size person is allowed to wear spandex. Not to mention all the people with nametags who encourage you to punch them as hard as you can. But the scariest part, the most horrific part, is the men. Most of them are very large. They can bench press grandmothers. They eat 76 protein bars a day and think it's really exciting that their muscles are the size of healthy watermelons.

And while their sheer bulk wouldn't really bother me, it's their fish tank eyes that do. They stand there in the center of the gym, toning their watermelons, and they leer. It's as though I've accidentally walked into a single's party for Hulk Hogan look alikes, and they're free to scan as they choose because I'm running in place rather than running away from them.

Most of the time, as I am trying to hide behind my hoodie and magazine,  I wonder what the point is. They aren't talkers. They don't use really bad lines like, "Come here often?" They just talk hover with their friends, point, and grunt, then awkwardly smile at you as though they know your grandmother's secret ingredient in her hash brown casserole. They are visiting the museum of flexible women and awkwardly abide by the leer, but don't touch policy.

For lent if I could, I would rid the world of nasty, unpopular men who are turned on when I sweat profane body odor through my t-shirts. I would bury them all in a hole, cut out their watermelons to use as footballs, and drown them in an unhealthy gob of Pepsi Max. May they rest in sweaty bliss.

BANISHMENT 21: Fixing People with Baked Goods

Today something very normal happened. I was on the phone and asked my friend how his day was. He took a second, a tiny little blip of a breath, and then said, "It was fine."

"Oh," I said. And then came the long, awkward pause. He didn't say anything because he knew he wasn't actually fine, and I didn't say anything because I knew if I did there was a very high probability that I would break out my Mel Gibson Braveheart voice (yes, I have one of those) and shout LIAR!!!! Perhaps while wearing a kilt and face paint.

When you know people really well, you can tell when they're actually fine as opposed to when they only say they're fine. The second fine, the fake fine, is very short and curt. It's said in the same tone you use when you're at the DMV and have waited 10 hours to pay the government money. That fine is a lie for public consumption only. Inside, you know the person is squawking about like a baby bird that just broke its wing. It's not thinking fine thoughts. It's thinking that being a bird blows.

When I ask the people I love how they're doing and they use the second fine with me, I immediately want to run and buy an excessively large band aid that will patch up their internal bleeding. I say things like 'Are you sure?' and 'What's going on?' I write them very long letters telling them how much I love their smile, their slightly southern accent, and their fierce ability to parallel park. I want them to know, very honestly, that they are loved. And that if I could, I really, really, really would buy them a brand new, supercharged bird wing that could never break even under the most severe weather conditions. I desperately try and play doctor even though I'm not always sure where to stick a thermometer. I want to whip up more baked goods than Rachel Ray and fix all of life's broken wings with apple pies and creme brule.

But the truth is, all my hovering, all my kitchen fuss, all my true-but-sappy-to-the-core 'I love you's,' don't make people feel better. They make them feel claustrophobic. Broken birds don't want healthy birds flying about, hovering over their heads with their super flyable wings. Particularly if they are dressed as Mel Gibson. They want, it seems, to go through the long grueling process of physical therapy alone and fly up to meet you when they no longer think that being a bird blows. When they are, truly, fine.

And so for Lent I put my Braveheart away. I stash it alongside my cookie cutters and writing utensils. I will stop following broken baby birds around constantly trying to mend their unmendables, and I will hibernate until they are ready, once again, to fly happily beside me. And I will be totally fine with all of this.

BANISHMENT 20: Bags Under My Eyes

Sometimes, on very, very rare occasions, I get the pleasure of going to bed early and getting up late. I get to fall asleep in my bed as opposed to on the reading chair where I always wake up with things like pencil lead in my teeth and animal-shaped coffee stains on my Hanes shirts. I get to take out my contacts, brush my teeth, and do the normal person thing - I imagine - of fluffing the pillows. This is all very exciting and makes me want to subscribe to magazines like Real Simple where people get eight hours of simple sleep all the time.

In the mornings, after these very fantastic voyages into Beddy Bye Land, I wake up feeling like I was picked first on the kickball team. I am extremely well rested and I don't even care if I drooled the night before because it's evidence that I was down for the count. The palms of my feet coast over the hardwoods on fresh daisies. My coffee tastes better, the sun is brighter, and I have this terrible problem where the corners of my mouth can't stop pointing up toward my ears.

But then I go out in public. And in public, people are mean. They walk up to you like you're their friend, like they care about your heart terribly, and then they say: "Megan, are you OK? You look like you're tired."

Without hesitation, I want to key their car with a sling blade.

I don't know what kind of world you were raised in, but the kind of world where you tell people they look tired is a mean world full of hellfire, brimstone, and continually rotten milk. Everyone knows tired is just another word for very-ugly-human-being, and to tell someone they look tired is to tell them they will be single, alone, and eating microwave dinners for the rest of their life.

When people ask me if I'm OK, I tell them I'm fine. I tell them I've never been better. In fact, the only person better than me is the guy who invented the snooze button because he's probably in bed. Snoozing.

The only thing wrong with me, apparently, is my genetics. Some people get child-bearing hips. Some people get fat fingers. Some people get rear ends the size of Kansas. As for me, I got bags.  Large, dark bags the size of hammocks that hang under my eyes through all sorts of weather. They are vast and deep and sometimes I imagine they could hold small villages. Perhaps Vancouver is hiding in one of them right now, hosting the Olympics.

For lent, if I could, I would give up the kangaroo patches under my eyes and live in a world where people say: "Megan, you look lovely. Have you done something new with your hair?" And I will say, "Absolutely not. I just wake up, on 3 hours of sleep, this perfect."

But as I cannot morph into Natalie Portman and as I cannot imagine seeing a slice and dice doctor to fix me up nice and restful, I will simply smile and say, "Yeah, a little tired. Thanks for asking. How are you doing? You look lovely with all that extra weight."

BANISHMENT 19: Exotic Food

This weekend my dear friend and I decided to try something new. This was a very large, Fourth of July Fireworks caliber decision because we are old souls who like routine. We are regulars. We drink coffee with two creams and will yell profanity at you if you add three. We have our sides of the bed, our staple authors, and our favorite ways to act passive aggressive. To change these things up would be to find a limb and climb on it. And we are very much fans of tree trunks.

But routines, despite their dependability, aren't always good. They kill things like neurons and relationships. So we decided, against our best instincts, that we ought to break out of our homey hole and mix things up. Hence, our expedition to Suzy Wong's House of Yum.

I was very skeptical about the House of Yum. It sounded like a brothel, not a restaurant. And trying to consume anything at the potential grooming grounds of prostitutes is a little unsettling. You have to wonder where the plates have been and if you order a Bowl of O La La, what are you really going to get? But despite the little voices in my head saying 'You will not make friends with foreign objects,' I took the plunge and ordered a peculiar drink concoction featuring ginger and pineapple in addition to the the so-called famous bowl of yum.

I have always wanted to be the kind of person who eats exotic, ethnic food on a daily basis. Those people are so high on the cool chain. They can use words like gyoza, tempura, and shu mai and not be trying to imitate the Avatar language. They can order entire meals that look like art projects and use chopsticks in more productive ways than as tools to poke your dinner guest underneath the table.

But I am not a cool ethnic food eater. I am not good with spices. They leave my stomach in a very irritated state and it lashes out like Nancy Grace on late night television. While my yum bowl bore no evidence of a discreet downtown prostitute ring, and while it entirely lived up to its Yum surname, by the end of the night I was doubled over, sharing the yummy goodness with another kind of porcelain bowl than the meal had started out in. May God rest the little fishies.

BANISHMENT 18: The Marital Status of Unsignificant Others

It was bound to happen. Awkward situations like this always do. One day I was minding my own business, frolicking through the field of Life-is-Fair-and-Simple and then the next day I woke up and he was engaged. The boy I used to date and take pictures with at Mexican bull fights, but stopped dating because we thought our offspring might resemble the exorcist. The boy who was supposed to always be single until I was fully wifeyed up, likely with cantaloupe-sized offspring in tow, went and got himself a misses without asking.

I have officially lost. He has beat me in the game of Surname Shuffle.

I am at the age now where everyone is starting to do this popular thing called marriage. A particularly high commodity in the south with men who wear Dockers and women who want to practice hiring a maid to make the bed. And while most people think marriage is about love and family and finally getting rid of your horrible maiden name, it's really just a grand excuse to buy excessively large jewelry and have a worldwide competition about who can sucker who into liking them sooner. This competition is particularly important in the land of Unsignificant Others - people we dated once upon time, no longer like with an ounce of our being, but still feel compelled to beat to a pulp in all categories including Most Successful, Most Intelligent, Most Attractive, and, of course, Most Popular.

I would say, for the most part, I'm not like most girls. I have never purchased a bridal magazine. I find taffeta scary. I can't understand why spending $4,000 on one-day flowers will ever seem like an intelligent idea. And yet despite my lack of obsession with weddings, I do understand they are the pinnacle of winning and I hate to not win. Nothing can trump engagement.  It's the triple letter score in Scrabble when you have an X and can remember, for the first time in your life, how to spell xylophone.

For Lent, I give up caring about the marital status of unsignificant others. I give up saying, "You got a ring? Fantastic. Well, today I got a vacuum. Retractable cord. Bright red. Now I have suction power. I don't care that you have a diamond the size of an antelope's eyeball. I will dust buster your accomplishments into oblivion and dump you out of my bagless contraption and into the trash compacted landfill of people who say 'I do.'

Instead, I will say, "Peace be with you and blessings on your coming union... P.S. I would like a rematch."

BANISHMENT 17: Masked Men Hiding in my Closet

I have always been a little skittish of the night. When I was a kid, it never had anything to do with Boogie Men or extraterrestrial creatures hovering down from space and carrying me out through the window. All that stuff was silly. "Child's play." What scared me was real people. The men who offered you lollipops before you stepped into their 1987 sedan with black leather interior. They would be so nice to begin with, their voices as soft and deceiving as cotton candy, and then they'd pluck you from the public view and take you back to a dark place where they'd cut you open using at least 47 knives. Those were the ones to be frightened of. And those certainly were the ones who were hiding in my closet. Boogie Man, Schmoogie Man. 



When I was young, maybe seven or eight, my dad was out of town and my sister and I were huddled up in my parents' bedroom reading a book with my mom before we went to bed that night. All of a sudden we heard, with absolute clarity, the sound of the refrigerator door opening. Panic started a marathon in my veins. And then, when I thought it could get no worse, we heard another sound. I hoped I was just hearing things, but I looked at my mom, who I expected to reassure me and kiss my troubled temple, but she was snow white. She had closed the book and was leaning forward, waiting for just one more thump.

She dialed 9-1-1. I didn't hear the person on the other line, but I assumed she was telling my mother that we were all going to die. That the policemen were far, far away eating donuts at the precinct and there was no way they could get to our house in time. I sulked further and further into the sheets, trying to dissolve into them as though I were washing detergent. Undetectable and tiny. 

But my mother did not begin crying. She kept her hand on the phone, kept nodding her head, looked at my sister and I, told us to close the door and stay put, and that she'd be back shortly. Apparently, the police officer was almost there and my mother needed to walk down the long, windy steps all the way to the front door and let him in. I wanted to cry. My mother was going to be murdered by the man who had opened our refrigerator.

Much to my surprise, however, my mother made it to the front door alive and welcomed in a large brunette man with a gun. I had never been so close to a police officer in my entire life. He told my mom to go stay with us while he checked things out, and then he prowled through our den and our kitchen, our dining room and our guest room with his weapon extended. 

The official verdict: no trespasser.

I couldn't believe it. 

After that night, I began a ritual. I compulsively checked that our doors were locked . I looked under my bed  in my closet. I slept with my door closed so I could hear an intruder turn the doorknob, which, I supposed, would give me enough time mentally prepare to obliterate them with my mad people hunting skills. 

This ritual of protection against men with lollipops who drive 1987 sedans continued all the way through college. And then two years ago I moved to Germantown, an area of Nashville that schizophrenically splits its time between being the projects and the new home of affluence. I had just moved into an amazing apartment on the top level of an old, beautiful victorian house. My neighbor, I would come to find out, was an electric wheelchair driving drug dealer who had no idea how to take showers. About a week into new residence, it was 3 AM and I was fast asleep when I heard blaring sirens fly down my street. They stopped directly in front of my window and flashed their lights . I got out of bed, expecting, I suppose, to see someone pulled over, but instead I found three police officers barricading themselves behind their car, guns drawn, pointed at my neighbor's house. They were yelling intensely. "Get the f*** down" Get the f*** down!"

I tried to peer at my neighbor's house and see who needed to get the f*** down, but the window blocked my view. Immediately I broke into a sheer panic. What if the person who needed to get the f*** down escaped behind the house and decided to climb my stairs and seek refuge in my apartment? What if I was going to become a hostage, forever known as the girl who got between the police and the drugs? What if tonight was the night I was going to die? There were so many things I hadn't yet accomplished. I knew I had to do something. I had to stop the electric wheelchair driving drug dealer from breaking in. My move?  I pushed my 100-year-old cherry dresser in front of my door and barricaded myself in the bedroom.

The police rushed the house guns drawn and five minutes later came out, quite nonchalantly, no electric wheelchair driving drug dealer in tow, got in their cars, and drove off as though they were headed to a picnic to eat coleslaw. 



What about me?!? I thought. Where is my memo? Shouldn't you tell me what the bloody hell is happening on my street at three in the morning? Am I still in danger of becoming a newly minted hostage? How am I supposed to go back to bed at a time like this? But they didn't answer because they had long since driven away to eat their pimento cheese on rye and I was left to spend the next 3 hours till sunrise reorganizing things like my underwear drawer and my photo collections.

Now, fast forward two years later, and I live alone. No man. No dog. No newly acquired kung fu skills. Just creaky hardwood floors, highly ineffective blinds and a neighbor with a very unfortunate black sedan. A veritable playground for men who liked to hide in closets. So when I came home last night and saw a glass jar of acorns smashed on my porch, I knew something terrible was afoot. Who would want to put chipmunk food in a mason jar and smash it on my property unless they intended to cause me bodily harm? Acorn smashing must be the new trademark of serial killers and I must be the new target.

Needless to say, I checked the locks on my doors 32 times before I went to bed. I sent intense stay-away-from-here vibes to anyone that might be lurking in the trees or trash cans. And then I got into the covers to wait for the man with the lollipop who drove a black sedan and smashed acorns on my porch to make his grand appearance.

I have to tell you, I am not very good at waiting for death. I do a lot of high-pitched breathing and quick glances of my eyes from left to right. Then I proceed to turn on any sound possible to obstruct my hearing of the forthcoming killer. Bathroom fan goes on full blast. iTunes streaming on the computer. If it were feasible, I'd hire a marching band to play the national anthem in the kitchen all night long.

Inevitably, despite my best efforts to go into early cardiac arrest, I fell asleep. Glasses on. Phone in hand. Band of Horses in the background. I can only presume the Acorn Man broke in, took one look, and left because the take was too damn easy. Next time, though, I'll give him a run for his money. I'll buy a taser.

BANISHMENT 16: Winter

This morning I woke up and felt like I had a Winnebago parked in my nose. My throat is scratchy. My eyes are a bit red. And my head is throbbing. Pulsating like the Krispy Kreme ‘Hot Now’ sign, only with no yummy doughnuts as a result. I have bottles of medicine single file on my kitchen table.  Lineup of “healers” in liquid gel, day/night, or caplet form. My wastebasket is a Kleenex convention, white snotty puffs congregating with other white snotty puffs. This can only mean one thing: I am slowly dying. Keeling over in my apartment-of-one to be found by the FedEx man who creepily peers through my highly ineffective blinds.

I’m not any good at this. I’m good at a number of things - including people watching, boarding airplanes, and drinking java – but I am not good at being sick. It requires such an intense degree of ughness. You’re supposed to lie in bed all day and drink liquids. You’re supposed to overdose on vitamins, watch reruns of Mary Tyler Moore and become a child of four, once again gulping down chicken noodle soup, saltine crackers, and a Lake Eerie of Sprite. This can be fun when you have someone to love on you, bringing you hot washcloths and a movie stockpile from the Red Box. But when you’re alone and sick, it’s the pits. You are the tree in the woods that falls down and no one hears. You have to drive your snotty self to the grocery store, pick up your own cans of chicken noodle soup and pray you don’t spread influenza throughout the greater Kroger area.

This is entirely winter’s fault. It has overstayed its welcome. It’s March. In the south. We’re supposed to be breaking out our allergies to dandelions, not our fire logs. But yesterday it snowed. And today if feels like the innards of an ice cream sundae.

Typically, winter and I are pretty good friends. I love curling up in sweaters and being told to light fires. I like candles and fuzzy blankets and that feeling of stepping into a warm house after being felt up by the cold air’s frigid fingers.  But after about a month and a half, the whole charade gets a little old. Nashville has horrid drivers who become even more severely handicapped when Father Winter sprinkles his dandruff on our streets. I live in an old house that has less insulation than an anorexic girl, and I am so over the gas bill. And now, on top of all of its expensive, dangerous grandeur, the season puts me on my death bed to cough myself into a miserable and lonely demise.

For lent, I give up winter. I adopt spring and sandals and a slightly darker olive twinge to my skin so I no longer look like the ghost of Christmas Pallor. The cold and its flurry friends can consider themselves evicted. Parting gift: my snotty box of Kleenex.

BANISHMENT 15: Long Distance Relationships

It's been a little over a year since I started dating Handsome Thunder. This is monumental news for me. I have problems deciding between mexican or chinese, refried or baked, so one could seriously wonder if I have such extensive commitment issues with takeout, how could I ever settle on a man - something that is far more tenuous and has potential repercussions infinitely worse than diarrhea.

The commitment to Handsome Thunder, however, is even more applause-worthy thanks to a thing called "state borders." Ever since day one of full-on-courtship, Handsome Thunder and I have resided in different parts of the union. I in the State of Music. He in the the State of Corn. Separated by the state of Really Appalling Rednecks.

At the beginning, the distance was fine. It was the I'm-getting-to-know-you-and-am-not-sure-if-we-should-be-in-the-I'm-in-a-relationship-on-Facebook-state-yet, so the miles were a little healthy. It gave us breathing room to figure things out. And just enough space for me to not hyperventilate of claustraphobia. But a year later and a deep dive into Oh Dear, I Think I Love You Lake,  the 561.44 miles, 9 hours and 4 minutes of roundtrip travel (not that I'm counting), are stinky cheese. Over the course of the past few months, I have developed a seriously unhealthy relationship with my car. I could write reports for the Department of Transportation, giving insight into Indiana's highway system. I know which gas stations have the cleanest bathrooms and what exits you can find Starbuckses on. I know where the cops hide, I know what times of day are traffic pits, and I know if I stop once for gas and once for bladder relief, I can likely clock the trip in 4 hours and 6 minutes.

But the worst thing about long distance relationships isn't just the driving. It's the part where you actually miss having a human being in front of you. One who can see all of your You-Definitely-Shouldn't-Have-Said-That Looks and can feel all your I-Love-You-Now-More-Than-Ever squeezes of the hand. Not to mention having to go to awkward professional functions stag because your plus-one is four plus-hours away, or having to call taxis from the airport because your ride is in another state. When normal people are getting off work and going to meet their significant other to make some dinner, watch the game, or do other socially-acceptable couply things, I sit down on the couch and think, "Hmm. Maybe I should read this catalog again. And then perhaps categorize my books by degree of depressive content. And then maybe do laundry one more time because I'm not very sure I got the color load clean the first time around."

For Lent if I could, I would give up long distance relationships. I would compress the state of Indiana to the size of a peanut and force all inhabitants to relocate to the Greater Nashville area. I would rid the world of Kentucky's potholes and not be allowed to operate vehicles for more than fifteen minute intervals. But as this is the real world and not the Truman Show, as Handsome Thunder lives in Indi-bloody-ana rather than You're-The-Only-Ten-I-See, I will continue to pack weekend bags for weekend trips to the Hoosier state and tell you, no fingers crossed, that the 561 miles is worth the 56 hours with my plus-one that lives plus-four hours away. And don't worry. As of yet, no repercussions worse than diarrhea.

BANISHMENT 14: Wearing Pants to Meetings

I recently started a new thing called working from home. This is the new fad. The capris of professional fashion. It cuts down on costs, improves employee morale, and saves you from ever having to talk to a "co-worker" at a "water-cooler" before going to sit at your "cubicle" ever again. It's a better deal than those knives that cut through steel you see on the Shopping Channel at three in the morning.

But working from home, like Hot Yoga, isn't really for everyone. It should only be reserved for people who are extremely self-disciplined and 100 percent OK with feeling more lonely than the Unabomber. There are a lot of hours where the only person to talk to is yourself. Or perhaps those bizarre carved statues everyone seems to put on their mantle. You immediately become the kind of person who stands by the coffee pot, tapping your fingers on the counter, and saying out loud, "So what are we going to do today?" as though you're going to make a plan of attack with the kitchen utensils.

Once you start working from home you will, most assuredly,  start making obscene amounts of lists on post-it notes and leave them scattered around the house. A breadcrumb trail of your day's work progression. You will invest in office supplies and learn all sorts of things you never cared to know about printer cartridges and FedEx shipping practices. You will become attached to your stapler. You will buy a ludicrously expensive business chair for your desk that has leather and levers and a compression air chamber and you will show it off to your friends (if you have any anymore) as though it were your child's first soccer trophy. The days of the week will start to blend together and the only way to distinguish between the seasons will be when you take the time to peek through the blinds and check out the day's weather.

You will also, and perhaps most importantly, forget where the dry-cleaner is located. All of a sudden, you will have no interest in freshly ironed pants. Or, for that matter, hot morning showers. You will buy pajamas in bulk and get the nice silky kind that feels good on your bum. You will hold meetings with important people while wearing dried toothpaste smears on your t-shirt. You will sign contracts in slippers, read files on a porch swing, and conduct conference calls pantless.

I certainly hope that if you're the kind of person who begins working from home that you've already acquired the important things in life like a wife or a husband. If not, your chances of becoming the Cat Person have severely increased and your only true chance of matrimonial bliss will come if the mailman fancies how you look sans shower. I wish you and your silky PJs good luck.

BANISHMENT 13: Self Pity

Do you know what The Worst is? The Worst is spending long stretches of time listening to someone talk about how bad their life is. How their lawn mower doesn't cut their grass at perfect ninety degree angles and how they, poor dear things, have a broken food disposal and a dinner party on Friday night. Self-pity is the redneck step cousin of venting - the normal human release of anger. Venting is letting the steam out so it can frolic in the air and go play with other pieces of oxygen, leaving room for you to do healthy things like bake cookies and alphabetize your DVD collection. But self pity is a whole other breed of human ugly. It's letting the steam out only momentarily until you scramble ferociously to catch it in a plastic bag, haul it back down to reality, and then let it out again. It is the pimple-faced, Venting YoYo.

My friend, who is neither subtle or simple minded, says indulging in self pity is no less than climbing into a pile of your own doo doo, clumping it in your hands, rubbing it all over your face and hair, then sitting there all day waiting for people to walk by so you can dramatically hunch your shoulders and say, 'Look at everything I have to go through!" When, let's just be honest, you could have left the poo on the ground where it belongs, gotten out of Toilet Valley, and taken a long hot shower called Moving Forward. 

For Lent if I could, I would 100 percent buy a remote and press a prolonged Mute command on anyone who began telling me how angry they were that their JCrew sweater frayed after three weeks or how their manicure chipped while they were cutting into a steak at Ruths Chris. Self pity is 1) highly unattractive, 2) pretty uncourageous, and 3) the first thing I would club in the face with a nail-covered baseball bat.