I’ve been back home in New York for a week now and things have been just as staggering awkward as I expected. Apparently every teacher, ex-boyfriend, and nemesis I had in high school is now just dying to share an uncomfortable silence with me in the frozen-food section of the supermarket. “You know, I would love to stay and have a good ol’ reminiscing session with you,” I say through clenched teeth as I slowly back away, “but unfortunately I’ve got important plans to tear the skin off my face with a salad prong this evening, so I’ve gotta run.”
I’m seated in my grandparent’s living room. If any two people have the power to make me feel sweaty and uncomfortable, it’s them. Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandparents dearly, but spending time with them is about as productive as repeatedly slamming your head against a brick wall. First of all, they are both almost completely deaf. Communicate anything to them means physically screaming it at the top of your lungs into their faces. They also have trouble remembering anything for longer than about thirty seconds. Every time I’m with them we just end up just having the same maximum-volume conversation over and over again for hours. It’s very rewarding.
“What da heck is dis garbage?” my grandfather shouts as he takes a sip of the Limoncello liqueur my parents brought back from Italy. “Who bought dis piece-a-crap?”
“That’s the gift we brought back for you from Sicily,” my father answers patiently. I am impressed at how calm he is, considering it’s the fourth time he’s said this sentence in the past hour.
“Oh,” my grandfather answers, taking another swig. “Well thank you very much.”
I’m too busy watching Oprah to add anything to the stimulating conversation. Today’s show is about genital self-confidence, and I can’t take my eyes off the screen. It’s just so good. “This is for real ladies!” smiles Oprah’s big-haired, expert guest. “Women that feel good about their vulvae are going to have better sex lives!”
“She is so right!" Oprah agrees, raising her arms into the air. “If you don’t love your vulvae, who will?!” The crowd applauds triumphantly, as if they’ve just learned the single most valuable piece of information of their entire lives. My grandmother claps along with them, completely unaware of what’s going on.
“Is it really necessary to watch the television right now?” snarls my mother angrily as she walks into the room. “You kids drive me crazy sometimes.”
“Chillax mom,” groans my brother. “What are you, like, going through menopause or something?’
“As a matter of fact I am,” she shoots back. Her eyes are wild and evil and she’s staring at my brother as if she is trying to melt him with her retinas.
“Well how long is it gunna last?” he asks, looking terrified.
“I’m not sure,” she answers, smiling. “But I hope it lasts as long as possible. This way I have an excuse to be a bitch.”
It's a dark day when you realize your parents are more fucked-up than you are.
There’s nothing on this Earth I despise more than a free-spirited extrovert with an acoustic guitar. Ugh… it makes my skin crawl. No, wait. I thought of something worse- a free-spirited extrovert with an acoustic guitar and his cretinous sidekick on the bongos. Nightmare. You know the kind I mean- those baggy jeans, that scraggly beard, that long, flowing ponytail- he's the poster-boy in a race of evil bastards, put on this Earth to torture us with their hymns of love and revolution and their “vibes.”
I am all too familiar with these types of people, as they appear to follow me everywhere I go. I swear, every time I turn around these days there’s some creep whimpering Redemption Song in my face. It’s terrifying. Just last night I was hanging out at Squallyoaks with some friends when, on cue, one of these minstrels strolled in, eager to destroy everyone’s fun by serenading us with a horrific rendition of Stairway to Heaven. Apparently he thought he was some sort of white, second-coming of Bob Marley. I don’t know. But his seemingly never-ending performance somehow managed to veer from cheesy to eerie to nauseating and all the way back to cheesy again before finally settling on complete and utter hell.
After about a half hour of suffering at the hands of this satanic flower-child, I finally decided to take things into my own hands and sing a little song of my own. You know, to demonstrate both the severity and the utter arrogance of the situation. It went a little something like this:
And while we’re at it, here is another video filmed in Squallyoaks recently. It's Darren demonstrating our favorite new way to play with our cat, DogEgg. The highly skilled editing was done by my flatmate, Dazzle, who, by the way, has started a blog of his own: The Dazzle Diaries. It’s good, but no where near as good as mine.
Warning: No cats were harmed in the making of this video.
Being American is so hot right now. Seriously, everybody’s doing it, including myself. No longer am I embarrassed to say oregano instead of oregaaaano. Nevermore will I say aluminum instead of alumiinueunmb. Goodbye snidey remarks about my nationality from elitist British snobs who think the sun shines out of their Parliamentary, liberal-minded a-holes. Nope, the United States is a magical place where dreams come true and miracles fall from the sky like droplets of acid rain, and I’m happy that I was born in the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave. I haven’t felt this much pride toward my country since Wendy’s added the baked potato to their dollar menu. That was amazing, but this—this is something else.
I’m seriously feeling the love at the moment. I love the American people for electing a black president. I love the world for believing in a country that repeatedly let them down. I love all the people who cared enough about our future to wait hours in line to cast their vote. And I love Barack Obama, for wanting to change the world, and for being open-minded enough to name both gay and disabled people in his victory speech as being equal—as part of our whole. It feels like the world is changing, and strangely enough, I feel optimistic. And that’s saying a lot from someone whose chief emotions rarely veer beyond anger, hatred and general disenchantment.
And last but not least, the number one most super important reason I’m overjoyed that Obama won this election is because, seriously, I think I would have died of disgust had I been forced to look at John McMain’s hideous face for the next four years. Ugh. The man is a mutant. That transparent scalp, those tiny little turtle arms, those spirals of deceit lodged within his retinas. He belongs in a cage for Christ’s sake, not on television. Television is for beautiful people, not people who’s heads are sinking into their huge chests. But Barack—he’s got it going on. Now that’s what the leader of the free world should look like. He’s so sleek and sexy and new age. I’d totally do him.
OMG… how would I know what to think if I didn't just immediately judge people based on the way they look?
I’m wearing a diaper. You know those diapers designed for old people who can’t hold their poop in? One of those. And to be honest, I don’t know how fond of it I am. For one, it’s not very flattering. It makes my butt look massive. Secondly, whenever I move it makes this crunching sound, like as if I’m hiding my own illicit stash of plastic bags inside my vagina. And to make things worse, it’s not even that comfortable. I have to waddle a bit when I walk. All in all I would have to say this diaper is a massive disappointment. I can only hope that by the time I’m old and incontinent the diaperologists of the world will have made advances in human-waste-absorboration-technology, because this is just downright unacceptable.
I’m wearing the diaper because I have my period. I got it earlier this afternoon while having a nice, peaceful nap on my boyfriend’s dad’s bed. I awoke to find the massive bloodstain on his immaculate, white satin sheets. Bad vibes. I then quickly and sneakily put the sheets into the washing machine, saying a little prayer to the universe along the way. Dear universe, please don’t let my period blood stain my boyfriend’s dad’s bed.
In high school I always had really mild periods. Unlike my friend Ashton, who literally bled all over anything and everything. From ninth grade onward everyone knew her as “that bitch with the heavy flow.” Her tag line was, “Wait… did I, like, get my period all over myself?” I swear her mother came into class at least once a month to bring her a new pair of clothes after she soaked hers in her own uterine lining. Just few months ago, her lung collapsed and she had to have surgery to fix it. She got her period in the middle of the procedure and bled all over the operating table. I keep reminding myself of these events to downplay the whole white satin sheet disaster. I’m not sure if it’s helping.
After searching the house unsuccessfully for tampons, I was contemplating whether to create a makeshift pad out of toilet paper, or to just shove a sock in my underwear, when my boyfriend walked in to find me distressed.
“I got my period all over everything and there are no tampons,” I said, frantically.
“Umm… I think we might have some old sanitary towels of my grandma’s,” he said, looking mildly disgusted. He returned five minutes later, his hands full of white cotton.
“This is not a sanitary towel,” I said, lifting the garment close to my face for inspection. “This is a diaper. I will not wear this.”
“Just try it,” he said. “Who knows? It might be sexy.” That is so fucked up, I thought. I swear, there is something infinitely creepy about this guy I call my boyfriend. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know him at all. Just the other day, while we were making out, he pulled away from me, looked deep into my eyes and said, “I would still love you if you were a boy.” I don’t know what that means exactly, but I have a funny feeling it has something to do with him wanting to stick his penis inside boys’ buttholes.
Either way, I had no other options, so I surrendered to the freak and am now wearing a pair of Maximum Dignity disposable underwear. God, am I feeling sexy or what? Oh, and keep this to yourselves, will you?
My name is Karley Sciortino. I'm 23. I was born in upstate New York, though at the moment I'm spending my nights in a dirty squat in south east London with 12 other artists / alcoholics. This is a blog intended to trick strangers into thinking my life is more exciting than it actually is.
