What life in college was really like

My friend wrote this explaining how us MoHos entertained ourselves.

With strippers.

It's nice when I have a quiet day at work!

Home Sweet Home

Like a neglectful mother, I only realize how much I love this city when I leave for anything longer than a weekend. I couldn't stop talking about NYC and on more than one occasion referred to it as "the Center of the Universe". Which, if you have lived here, it totally fucking is. Give me my $2.00 bagel with eggs, sausage, and cheese to cure my hangover, the cheap taxis to chauffeur my drunk ass and my subways that smell like urine, and I am home.

However, I have to admit, I adore London. Well maybe its because when I go I stay in South Kensington, drink champagne and sleep until noon and look a lot hotter than the average English girl? But if you are an English girl reader, I am sure that you are much much hotter than your brethren. Please continue to read and pass this along to your friends :) But yea, I really like London. Now if you people only had sunlight over there.

And yes, I am back at work. Easy day since my 12 bosses are out doing client things. And I have to send thank you letters to the dept at the Ox. But yea, London was amazing. Thanks to this girl for hosting my ass.

Well, I am fucking exhausted right now. Back to IMing my friends and listening to Simon and Garfunkle. Will post more tonight.

PS. Uhm, can I say how much I love my readers?! Thanks for the well wishes and offers to take me to Anabel's. I'll prob be over there in a few months anyway. I have a small addiction to London.

Nothing for you

My wine tasting class last night was a little too "liberal" with the pours and the lack of spit cup. Instead I spent the night drunk packing for London and feasting on bread products since Passover has ended.

I had a funny post on my experience with speed dating but...yea. I got too drunk to be productive.

Off to London tonight for a weekend of excess and begging.

So far no offers for Anabel's. Damn you readers. I'll fine my own fun with my friends in London. I'll try to post while I am there, but there is a ghetto internet connection where I am staying.

I am off to London! Wooohooo! I am actually excited. But seriously, I really want to go to Anabel's. Oh, and if you see a busty red head flashing passerbys around Hyde Park. Evidently that is my calling card.

This one is for the working man...

“Shannon, remember, it is just as easy to marry a rich boy as it is a poor one.”

But my hyper-enthusiastic extended family forgot to mention the flipside of that shiny coin, it sure as hell ain’t as much fun to fuck him.

Growing up on the North Shore of LI, like many young pretty intelligent women, marrying a nice rich Jewish boy became an idealized prize. As soon as I shed the ripped jeans, the blue hair and Muppets lunch boxes that plagued my awkward adolescent years, my mother got in touch with the LI gossip brigade and the blind dates of friends’ of friends’ sons began. All of them rich, all of them came from “good” families and all of them were assholes.

My life has been filled with these “catches”, moneyed boys who only had to worry about disappointing mom and dad as opposed to paying for their rent. There was the heir to the automotive throne whom I was practically betrothed to at birth. Mark came from oodles of money, from a good respective family and also asked me point blank to suck his dick after he took me out to dinner at a very chic NYC restaurant.

“Hey, so, uhm…Shannon,” as he is kissing me in my living room, “Could you please suck my dick?” he whispered.

“Excuse me? What the fuck did you ask me?”

He has no game. Boys who ask, shall not receive.
I pushed him off of me.

“Who the fuck do you think I am? I am not one of the prep school sluts that is going to suck your dick because you took her out to a nice dinner! Do you kiss your mom with that mouth?”

“I..uh..” He stammers.

“Is that what you expected? How the hell would you treat me if we weren’t family friends? Throw money onto the table and skip dinner altogether?”

“Please don’t tell your mom..”

“Tell my mom?!” I interrupt, “Why would I tell her that you asked me to suck you off?”

Then there was the London fag who couldn’t find my clitoris even if I handed him a map. Evidently, he never found it important in love-making before. We have the MBA from the University of Arizona who I dated when I was 19 and he was 36. He thought it was cute that I used a fake ID and it reminded him of his summers he spent on the Vineyard. He also kissed like a lizard, pressing both of his lips tightly together as his tongue slithered between his pursed mouth.

No matter how expensive the dinners nor enticing the conversation about their parents’ wealth, their sexual ineptitude left me feinding for my vibrator by the nights end.

The white collar guy is a “great catch” by NYC standards. He makes a lot of money, his family’s connections will get your engagement announcement published in the Times, and after he sowed his wild oats by fucking half of Manhattan and having his herpes scares he will make a great father, devoted to the children that he was brought up to want. But since everything came easily to him, either via SAT prep tutors, daddy’s nepotism, or even the band new car he “earned”, these boys have never had to experience what hard work is all about. If a boy never had to get his hands dirty, how the hell does he know how in the bedroom?

Wouldn’t Karl Marx be proud. Although the blue collar man is a slave to the bourgeoisie he can still fuck better than the white collars who exploit his labor power.

My date with the CL dude brought my sweeping generalization to life. A school teacher who had none of the hand outs that my pampered ex’s had. He sat across the table from me at one of my favorite wine bars recanting stories from his childhood in the city. He told me about the fist fights. The odd jobs he worked. How he got what he had because of his charm and his confidence. As we broke every rule of the first date, talking about dating and mating and post modern feminism, I found myself inching closer to his side of the table.

His self-assurance was engaging. He grabbed the top of my thigh without the usual tentative apology for being a man who found a woman attractive. Unlike my white collar sweeties, who are too afraid to reach out and touch my leg, too afraid that their desire for sexual gratification could be construed as sexual harassment that could end in a potential lawsuit.

I mean, that is the only way I could rationalize why a boy would politely ask for a dick suck.

However none of them could be as bad as the worst case scenario. A rich kid acquaintance I know with so little game and a body that shows how he’s lived amongst excess that he’s spent the last seven years of his life paying for sex because he can’t snag a woman. Including the fat and not so attractive ones with no self-esteem. I mean, that is pretty bad. He can’t even get them to his room to disappoint them.

Looking like a porn star

May I say how hot I look in my new glasses? Slightly dorky, slightly dykey, and very very smart with a wee bit of style thrown in. But since they are only prescribed for distance activities and I use them off-label when my eyes hurt from sitting in front of the computer at hour #11, I don’t wear them often enough for them to become part of my identity. So each time I slip the frame behind my ears I feel like I am playing dress up. I see myself in the mirror but an alter ego stares back. I become the embodiment of Clark Kent, my glasses acting as a mediator to the outside world for my eccentric behavior. Like a girl wearing thick framed librarian glasses can’t say the world pussy. Or maybe its use just takes on a classier more ironic twist. Like when I punctuate every sentence with the word dude as Dostoyevsky sits in my Lulu Guinness bag.

As I’ve mentioned, I got thick framed black librarian glasses. And with my big boobs, I definitely look slightly pornographic. You know, those porns where the busty ditz is interviewing for a job and some how ends up sucking some guys cock instead of explaining the strengths she will bring to the company. Being pornography, the producers of the films can’t dress up the girl to look professional, suit and button down shirt and all. So, the girl ends up wearing a figuring hugging mini skirt, tight sweater and glasses to imply that she is smart and sexy. It’s how I ended up feeling last week when I was wearing a curve hugging knee length skirt and a tight sweater with my smart girl glasses.

And as we have seen in this blog, I have a small problem with censoring the shit that I say. It’s not as interesting altering jokes just because you are in “professional” company. And yes, maybe this is yet another reason for me to quit my job and move to LA to write for sitcoms.

So my boss takes a look at me in the glasses and says how I look cute in them. I tell her that I thought I looked like a porn star:

“You know, when you see a porn and the girl is wearing these types of glasses with an outfit such as mine?”

“Uhm, no Shannon. I don’t watch porn.”

“No, you know what I mean. When they wear these outfits and the glasses and it just looks so contrived…” I wanted to explain the contradiction of femininity and intellect. How we all know that cultural reference but instead…

Insert foot in mouth. In addition to thinking that I am weirdo who hangs out with anarchists, she now thinks I am a pervert who regularly watches porn. I turned an innocent compliment into a glimpse of my sexually frustrated soul.

In other news, I don’t think I will be too sexually frustrated in the near future. Date with CL boy went fabulously. Not only did I look hot because I went for the girl next door with a twist look, but each time he went to get me a drink, another boy popped on over and started to hit on me! Thus reinforcing my hotness for the evening and inspiring a bit of jealously on his end. Especially as I chatted to the guys until he returned with my beer in hand.

“Did you know those guys Shannon?”

“No, but it is a friendly bar. Everyone chats to each other.”

“Shannon, I get up and a guy comes over and hits on you!”

*Smile* “Oh, come on! I am sure he was just being friendly. Why would a guy hit on me if it is obvious I am here talking to someone,” careful not to use the word“date” to keep him on his toes.

But, I think this one will be staying past date #1…especially if he fixes my dresser as promised as his kisses and the graze of my hand live up to my impure thoughts.
***************************************
I promise more postings this week, thanks for understanding the haitus. And a prettier site when I get back from London too.

Oh, and by the way, any readers who can get me into Anabel’s while I am there, I’ll bring you into the infamous fray with me and show you that the shit I write on here is true.

Seriously. Please. I need to feel special on someone else’s dime.

Reality of a blogger...

I have this handy little thing called sitemeter on my blog. It tells me how many people visit my site on any given day in addition to how long they spend and from what company. When I had a total of five readers in the beginning, I saw a lot of DC IP addresses and NYC, places where I know my friends have settled. However, thanks to Gawker and you guys passing the word and linking me, I have noticed a very disturbing trend. This blog love has done wonders for my self esteem but may also lead to my professional demise.

Reading through where you people access my blog, I have noticed a slew of advertising agencies. Places where I can potentially interview one day. Readers who work in my industry, you know how incestuous the biz is, and chances are if you figure out that the busty red head across the interview table is me…well, it may create for some awkward moments. However, this is great fodder for me to get out my thoughts for my stand-up act, so I pass at better judgment and it is staying as a part of my life. Also, the freaks who I have met through blogging are a story in of itself. And now I am finally able to capitalize on free shit I am getting from this. So maybe professional self-sabotage isn’t that bad?

Date tomorrow night with, I think, one of the only normal people on Craigslist. Like, scarily normal. NYC special ed teacher scarily normal. And this one swears that he is 6’1. However, as my sister said, “You know Shannon special ed teachers are patient people and you need a lot of patience to deal with you.”

This is going to be a slow week in the blogging world…working on making the site look pretty. AKA begging my friends to help me make it look cool. Work is intense at the moment with deliverables due in every week until I run off to London. And Passover starts on Wed, and being the good Jew I am off to Great Neck for the first night.

Thanks for hanging in there, and I promise I will resume regular posting in the next few weeks. Just deal with these daily tidbits for now. Oh, and in two weeks I beg Oxford for admission and I need to read some articles so I seem smart for my interview.

Much love,
Shannon

PS Hoyt, if you hate my writing so much, why the fuck do you read my shit? Here is an idea, stop being so obviously either a petit man or a psycho ex of mine and just stop reading. To be perfectly honest, I’ll recruit another reader in your place. It’s one thing to comment upon what I write and another to comment upon my use of grammar and shit. I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL WRITER. I have a job and sometimes, my writing suffers as a result of real life.

Although to be perfectly honest, I like the hate comments. It means I am ruffling someone’s feathers somehow. Even if it is just for pesky shit like grammar and syntax. Things my $120K education should have taken care of…

I was blind and I still don't see

How does the Bible verse go again, "I was blind and now I can see?"

I wish I was talking about finding Jesus and religion because at this rate I think it is easier. After years of ignoring the fact that I need glasses my vision has reached the depths of a new low. It is official, I am blind as a bat. And being the hypochondriac that I am, at first I thought I had a brain tumor. Intense headaches, blurry vision, and neck pain, all symptoms of a metastic growth. The more I ignore it, the less I see.


Hence, why I have not been blogging lately I can't see the keyboard. Typing is giving me bad headaches and making me feel nauseous. Hopefully by this afternoon I'll get my new gucci's and be able to see.

Fucker, I really am getting old. First I turn 25 this year and now I need glasses...fucking A.

Frustrated

My computer is fucked, I need to take it to LI and have my friend work on it.

I am pissed b/c I had a really cute post with pics of me cooking dinner and making fun of my fear of prepared food, but my computer won't let me upload it onto blogger. Grr...

My computer problem also explains my lack of spell check (I can't open another browser), too bad it doesn't account for my problematic syntax.

Hopefully it will be fixed over the weekend. Hopefully my friend will finally redesign my website as he promised. Hopefully I will get laid. Ok, fine, a nice bottle of wine will suffice.

And my apologies for the crappy posts this week. This is what happens when I force myself to write when I am not feeling up to it...Work and life have been bitches. Damn the beginning of the quarter.

London in 2 weeks. 2 weeks and 2 days, I will offer fellatio for admission. My, wouldn't my alma mater be proud.

You knew this was coming...

It fucks with your psyche when you run into childhood friends that you haven’t seen since high school with the exact same face that you remember, but from the neck down looking like men and women. They wear rings on their left fingers along with loafers and Banana Republic slacks, and talk about their respective medicine and law post graduate programs.

I feel that is what life is like in my 20s. The contradictory moments where I am astounded how I find the maturity to handle a situation, and then I immediately take out my pink bedazzled cell phone to call my mom and tell her the news.

When I graduated college, I thought in addition to receiving the degree written in Latin the school would also confer the label “grown-up.” Telling me that I used up all of my get-drunk-during-the-day-and-sleep-till-noon coupons and that I was now ready to go forth and become a productive member of society. But graduation day was anti-climatic. With the degree in my hand I still wore the same ratty MHC sweatshirt as I packed my dorm room into five plastic hefty trash bags that ended up at the back of the family station wagon. The promises of how I was going to change the world falling flat when I had to move back home and couldn’t even change the rules of my parent’s house.

As my generation delays the onset of “responsibility” with postponing marriage and children and moving back home because of the sky high rents in metropolitan areas and taking extra time to “find ourselves”, when is it we earn the title of grown-up? I’m expecting the fan fare of a Bat Mitzvah, then finding a closet filled with Donna Karan business suits.

However, I am learning that I cannot define the term grown-up only along my terms. Much like all of the kids from high school who either directly or indirectly helped shape me into the person that I’ve grown into, their maturation reflects my own. Even if I am not on the path where I thought I would be at this age or acting with the social grace of Jackie O, I am growing up because the people around me are. I have no control over time. But I do have control over what I do with it.

Now, fuck these changing priorities. Why can’t I ever keep anything figured out? Just when I thought I did, I get a curve ball that makes me revaluate my assumptions. Watch, pretty soon this blog will be called “Sober! How I Found the Way With Jesus”

A Say No to Drugs Message for the New Millenium

My father was an old fashioned parent. He heeded childrearing advice from the likes of Maury Povich and other daytime talk show hosts that used the “scare straight” mentality on their dysfunctional guests. Out went Dr. Spock and open dialogues and instead my youth was defined by an over reactive and over protective father. Blinded by wanting to protect his adventurous little girl from the temptations of sex and drugs, the man gave me some stern talks. Of course, being the over reactive and over protective father, he liked to use rifles as props to illustrate his points. Hence, why I didn’t touch marijuana until sophomore year of high school and other substances until late college. I was convinced the man would pop out of a bathroom stall brandishing a shotgun as he captures me mid-sniffle of coke or drag of weed.

And I don’t know if it is because of the trauma associated with the talk that my father gave me, but I never had a taste for most drugs. Any type of upper, including Red Bull gives me panic attacks, downers make me depressed and suicidal, and the wild card that is weed turns me into a fifteen year old white kid from suburbia. I’ve tried to become friends with Maryjane, but we have a contentious relationship. She makes me paranoid, hallucinate, and gives me the most intense panic attacks. Don’t try to out smoke a gravity bong because it will make you high as a kite and in turn give you one of the most intense panic attacks of your life. My anxiety was so bad, I literally almost went to the emergency room. But I didn’t go because I couldn’t find anyone sober enough to drive. But, if I had, could you imagine walking into the ER and telling the triage nurse that you think you are dying because you OD’d on marijuana???

The only time I’ve ever been able to handle smoking marijuana and actually enjoy it was when I smoked it like a forty year old ex-hippie who sold out to JP Morgan: weed mixed with lotsa tobacco along with a few glasses of an expensive red wine while sitting in a ski house in southern Vermont. When I add alcohol to the equation, my paranoia and anxiety disappear and I am left happy, mellow and chill, like a kid on tour with Phish mooching off of a trust fund. However, very rare is the marijuana smoking opportunity that presents itself with my high-end criteria. So, I haven’t smoked in years. I am too afraid that I might die from an OD.

However, a little while ago I learned that my trick to tolerate marijuana has to have those exact ingredients, or I end up a nervous wreck, thinking that I am going to die in the middle of the LES. Cheap beer cannot replace a subtle red wine, I can only smoke a joint when rolled by a European because Americans don’t use enough tobacco, and a shady apartment in the LES cannot double as a ski chalet.

My friends know my stance on marijuana. I hate being around it. It’s an unspoken rule, if they know I am coming over and they want to smoke, they either do it before I arrive or if I am there, they go into another room or sit on the fire escape and get high. Like any other Friday night during the summer, a friend of mine invited me over to his apartment to chill with him and a group of friends.

“You sure you don’t want any?” My friend asked me.

“Dude, you know I don’t smoke. It makes me act like I am a fifteen year old white kid from the suburbs. As long as we are on your roof, I don’t mind if you guys do it. I just can’t smell it.”

Twenty minutes later, like the good house guest that I am, I show up at the door bearing gifts of micro brewed beer that I picked up from my weekend in Massachusetts. My friends and I pound beers and by the end of the twelve pack, me and the two guys are engaged in drunk intellectual conversation, discussing social justice as I tell him about my job working for the devil, aka pharmaceutical market research

We finish up the beer and move onto a bottle of Stoli Raspberry leftover from my friend’s roof party last weekend. I get to the point of intoxication, where I am so drunk that I actually think I am sobering up. But really?! My frame of reference has just been massively screwed. As we are drinking, a joint is lit and passed around. You know when I am getting bombed, when I don’t leave the circle when the jay is passed to me. We drink some more vodka and the second joint is rolled and passed around. Taking his last drag before he passes it, my friend skips over me, and hands it to the person to my right.

Drunk and in one of my moods I grab it from my friend, “You know, I’m feeling really relaxed with you guys, plus I have been drinking. I’ll have a baby drag.”

A few minutes pass and I feel this slight pleasurable head rush.

“Oh now I get why everyone likes marijuana!” And the maniacal giggling begins.

The third joint is rolled. Drunk, and lightly stoned, I decide that it is the third go around to charm, and like Snoop Dog in Half Baked, I go to town on it.

“Hey Shannon, ease up, are you going to pass it?”

With the joint in my hand, I get up and begin to twirl. “Dude,” as I take anther drag, “why don’t I become a stoner? This feels fucking great! I fucking love marijuana! You know what I would love right now? Bob Marley!!”

And it continues like that, for the next thirty minutes. I act like a fifteen year old smoking pot for the first time: giggling, spouting off about social theory and getting progressively more stoned and drunk as time allows the alcohol and weed to hit my body. So far, it’s going a lot like my red wine highs back in college. Giggly, happy, and I am in love with the feeling. However, I move past the light stoned and drunk feeling to the really fucking stoned and lit feeling.

As it all hits my bloodstream full force, I feel alcohol poisoning sick. But I am also so stoned out of my mind that I begin to move in slow motion. Panic strikes. I am afraid that I won’t be able to make it to the bathroom in time because I don’t think I would be able to move fast enoug. The spins intensify. My legs have trouble working because I am so high.

What the fuck did I get myself into? I begin to panic. I convince myself that since I am high I will choke on my own vomit because everything happens in slow motion. The rationale of a drunk with the impaired facilities of a stoner. The night is progressing into my very own say no to drugs message.

As a preemptive measure I go to the bathroom and stand over the toilet. Now, I don’t know if you have ever puked when you were both drunk and high but it is one of the scariest things. I don’t recommend it. At this point I have the alcohol spins and it is combined with a very stoned state. I lean over the toilet, and proceed to vomit. As my head spins and I feel like I am lightly floating.

Normally, I don’t just puke, but I rally afterwards. If there is a party, nothing will make me miss it. However, this time, that vomit didn’t clear the sick feeling. Oh no, as soon as I walk out of the bathroom door, I run back in and vomit again. This time with nothing to vomit, I am puking bile into the toilet. Dry heaving, as I still have the spins, as my body feels like it’s floating, as I am having a panic attack.

I try passing out next to the commode, too afraid to leave it for an extended period of time. However, I panic that I puked all over his toilet, and I proceed to clean the fucker with found cleaning supplies. Momentarily taking pauses to retch into the bowl and continue cleaning. This is the glamour of drugs?!

After that night, I swore I would never smoke marijuana again. Unless I was in a ski house in Southern Vermont, with a nice glass of red wine, with 3 European girls rolling baby joints.

A Weekend of Lessons

I am siting over my computer right now, thinking about running to the bathroom to vomit. Last night, over fifteen hours ago, I drank three 40's of Coors Light and smoked a pack of ciggs. I am coughing up phlegm and have a splitting headache. Now I realize why I have cut back on the drinking when the weather gets warm...I lose my motivation to do anything remotely active when I am this hungover. Plus I am off to London the third weekend of April.

How do you know it's spring in Shannon's world? I spent about $1K this weekend on the following and am heading to London in a few weeks:

1. Fligth to London: $563
2. Adorable Handbag: $270
3. Double strand Jackie O Antique pearls: $47
4. Mani and Pedi for me and my sis: $72

I feel like shit tonight.