Saturday, I ran the Endless Summer 6-Hour Run, hosted by the Annapolis Striders and the flyest race organizer on two legs, Mosi Smith.

Photo by Denise Hyde

BOING.  He’s OK, I guess.

The race went a little something like this.

Before the race

Wake up, brush your fangs, put on a bright ass outfit.  Quietly eat a boring wheat bagel.  Drink hot tea while dropping some hearts on your friends’ Instagram pics. Double-check your bag to make sure you have everything you could possibly need, including 3 changes of clothes.  Forget a towel, but remember to bring an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  Priorities. Drive to Annapolis by yourself, blasting “The Humpty Dance” in your roommate’s Honda Accord.  Regain composure and park the car.  Apply Body Glide and Band-Aids under your sports bra to prevent chafing that makes you scream in the shower. Obsess about when to pee.  Wait for the airhorn.

Race Start

Start your Garmin watch and trot delicately like a cartoon cat burglar.  Decide this is fun, you love running. Meet Kathy and Jenny during their twelve-mile training run.  They ask if you’re a student.  Act flattered (fan yourself like being courted by a Southern gentleman in July, 1908), laugh, and explain that you’re 30.  Exchange high fives and say, “Thank goodness for running, right?”

Complete Lap 1 (4.15 miles) 

Take your shirt off.  Eat a bunch of Shot Bloks.  Drink even though you’re not thirsty.  Run with new friends Perry, Crystal, and Phil.  Surprise!  They’re delightful.

Photo by Denise Hyde

Talk about favorite races and distances.  Make self-deprecating jokes about your sanity, pace, and imminent death by running.  Usually, you’d be like Yo, shut up, I’m trying to run right now.  This is the fucking quiet car, bro.  Let’s keep it library.  You usually like to keep it solo dolo.  But today?  You need to keep your pace in check.  BE EASY.  Talk to humans.

Complete Lap 2 (8.30 miles)

Eat a handful of pretzels and a full banana.  Wonder if this is how Ben and Jerry come up with ice cream flavors. Meet Amanda. She has run “a few 100 milers,” just got into med school, and is going to Africa tomorrow. Realize you’re not that cool.

Complete Lap 3 (12.45 miles)

More bananas.  Watermelon.  Gatorade. On a different day, actually cry for running a half marathon in over two hours, but today it means you did a good thing.  Remind yourself to BE EASY. Fill your handheld waterbottle and add a packet of Hornet Juice because that’s what Mosi would tell you to do.   Run behind a shirtless dude with a ponytail.  Wonder if it makes you sexist that you think men should not have ponytails.   Decide it’s a “live and let live” kind of day, but you draw the line at long braids.  Just cut that shit out.  Reconsider when you think of corn rows.  Feel warm inside, like gender equality just took a step forward.  Realize it’s actually just the sun having its way with you.

Complete Lap 4 (16.60 miles)

Eat an ice pop, flavor: blue.  Have life-altering experience.  Forget that you’re running. Some dude relaxing in the shade tells you, “You must be doing the relay,” as you run past.  Consider mooning him because that is your signature move.  Instead, smirk and tell him you’ve been running for three hours, fifteen minutes.  Realize you’re more than halfway done.  Be unsure if that’s a good or bad thing.

Eat two Oreos.  WOW ARE THOSE THINGS DELICIOUS.  Remember that you haven’t had milk all week.  Miss it like the deserts miss the rain.

Complete Lap 5 (20.75 miles)

Eat a Gu.  Shudder in disgust, likening its texture to 3g of runny boogers.  Decide to stick to bananas and pretzels forever.  ZONE THE F%$# OUT.

Complete Lap 6 (24.90 miles)

Run down the big hill.  When gravity makes you run faster, boldly announce, “But I don’t want to.”  

Note that you complete 26.2 miles in 4:12, which is faster than your first marathon time, back in 2008.  Remember that your goal was to beat Diddy.  Give yourself a little a Harlem shake.  The real kind.  None of this new age bullshit.

Complete Lap 7 (29.05 miles)

Fight every urge to walk or stop because you know once you do, it’s over.  There’s no getting back on this train.  

Chug more Hornet Juice.  Chug Gatorade.  Be endlessly thirsty.

Explain to your competitive instincts that you’re going to have to be OK with running 11+ minute miles for a bit.  Pat yourself on the back!  You’re actually reasonable for someone who voluntarily runs for six hours in 85-degree heat.  

Complete Lap 8 (33.20 miles)

Notice you no longer feel your quads.  Notice that the bottom of your braids look like dreadlocks, which are unacceptable on white people.  Add this to the endless list of reasons you wish you weren’t white.

Notice you did not chafe because of your preventative Band-Aids.  Get called “The Band-Aid Girl” by someone at the timing table.  Wonder if that’s as cool as Harry and Marv, alias The Wet Bandits.  Continue patting yourself on the back as a distraction from the audible grunting sound you involuntarily make.

Almost complete Lap 9 (37.00 miles)

Talk to yourself in the woods, confirming once again that you’re a beach person.

Obsessively check your Garmin every minute like you’re on a treadmill.  Ask out loud, “Who runs on those hellmachines?!”  Be proud of yourself because hellmachine is a great word and you think you just invented it.  You’ve already accomplished something great today.

Hear an airhorn.  Stop running.  Plant your flag in a pile of leaves.  

Begin walking as if your shoes are still held together by a plastic ziptie, like when you buy them at TJ Maxx.

Post-race

Administer four thousand high fives.  Eat two hot dogs, stacks on stacks on stacks of baby carrots, potato chips, watermelon, and gummi bears.

Remain standing to avoid whatever the living version of rigor mortis is.  Stretch your legs, which feel like someone hit them repeatedly with a meat tenderizing mallet.  Wipe the dried salt from your face and disappoint anyone who thought you might be attractive.

Wait for official results.  Accidentally win your age group and place second for all women.  Immediately strategize how to win the race next time.  Then tell yourself to shut up.  You did it.

Sometimes you forget who lives here.

Who are these people and why do they all have such ugly mouths?  Watching the news, you see the same faces.  Figureheads.  The President who makes decisions, good and bad, a mile from your doorstep.  Whose eyebrows are now permanently raised in impatience or disbelief.

Congressional leaders looking frumpy in their power suits or utterly queer – the real definition, not the one you’re thinking of – in their puckered seersucker and dated, swooping haircuts.

Lobbyists and spokespeople, the sultans of spin, who have turned influence into currency, spending it on Bermuda shorts and bowties and wearing the outrageously conservative fashion outrageously liberally.  

Sometimes you assume it’s all monuments and museums.

The skyline is a modest shortstack, expressly prohibited from growing taller.  From a distance, the only recognizable buildings are the ones you’ve seen as the backdrop behind your favorite newscaster.  From a distance, no one actually lives here.  There’s only room for the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court.  Lincoln and Washington and Jefferson and Roosevelt.  Korea and Vietnam and World War II.  Smithsonian after Smithsonian after Smithsonian.

There are plenty of buildings for Great Men, but where does everybody else belong?

Sometimes your friends from New York would have you think you’re missing out.

They’re so proud of their 4am Chinese food runs, aren’t they?  They rave on and on about the gallery openings and thriving bohemian community.  About Broadway and the Yankees.  You’re so used to hearing them call it the greatest city in the world, validated by such credible sources (Alicia Keys and Jay-Z and Sinatra and Billy Joel) that you almost believe it.  And then they tell you — no offense — that your city is full of nerds and squares, that there’s no life anywhere, that you don’t have your own culture.  That it’s “a city of transplants,” with no heartbeat of its own.

But hold on just one chest-thumping, exaggerated, overcompensating-for-the-cost-of-living minute.  I’m sure they can brief you about the next annoying, useless, overhyped food craze.

But I’ll eat my fucking shoe before I let them tell me about my city.

She was radiant on Saturday night.

I had just finished a writing session at my favorite spot, my head spinning violently, tossing ideas around like a tornado.  I paid my tab, opened the door, and immediately entered Oz.

Hundreds of young people on the corner of 14th and U, where a go-go band blasted their horns and banged on the drums.  There was nothing polite or subtle about the affair, and it sure as hell was not the kind of performance where you drop a dollar and walk away.  You — yes, you there – YOU had a responsibility to participate.  We were all counting on you.

The band played “Ain’t Nobody” but we disagreed.  So they played “Poison” and “Livin It Up.” And it was, so we did.

The sound of brass and drums, so full and lively that every person, even the seemed to be keeping time, marching in-step.  Homely white dudes in ripped khakis danced next to the most beautiful black women you’ve ever seen.  A group of gay men surrounded and freak-danced against the 52 bus.  And the bus driver literally didn’t miss a beat.  She threw her hands up and started clapping.  

With the help of a little lo-fi percussion and a thick-bodied trumpet player, we fucking showed you.

No we don’t have bodegas on every corner, but if you’re that desperate, we can go get you some Jumbo Slice.  And yeah, our Metro closes at 3am, but our bus drivers get down.  And maybe the President lives here, but so do we.  And summer isn’t over.

If you thought this city was stodgy and jaded, you must not have been there.  Because Saturday night, what you assumed was black and white was in full-color.  Highly saturated.  High contrast.  

If you’re looking for Kansas, Dorothy, you’re in the wrong place.  This is the District of Columbia.

I really had no business laying my head in his lap like we were something.  And he had no business holding my hand the way I resist from everyone else.  After all, he was going out with one of the white girls who pretended to be Puerto Rican, and I pretended I wasn’t going out with an actual Puerto Rican.

I doubt he remembers it, but I do.  It was a scene that would have made those white suburban moms double-down on or reconsider the racist beliefs they pretended not to hold.

Silly white girls.  Always pretending we’re something we’re not.

Zaidis played with my fingers, swiping his thumb across my hand and squeezing them with the same force you’d use to pick berries without bruising them.  My comically small hands, made even more ridiculous inside his giant bear paw.  Everybody was so goddamn loud on the bus that it vibrated, but Zad and I sat quietly in a three-seater, my head resting in his lap and our gym bags piled on top of the wheel well.

I’m not sure what was eating Zaidis, but I was done smiling for the day.

The Boro had just won the District track meet.  Handily.  Cleaned house against the five other schools in our little corner of New Jersey.  Schools twice our size and net worth, a fact they were just tacky enough to show off.

In Manalapan and Marlboro, they didn’t drink tap water.  They had cleaning ladies.  Seventeen year-old students drove cars that made my mom’s Taurus station wagon look underdressed in the parking lot.  Lex coups, beamers, and Benzes, which their parents gave them on the condition they made honor roll and turned down that goddamn rap music.  Who the hell are the Lost Boyz anyway?

At the Boro, we couldn’t compete with their German cars or designer labels, but we all read The Great Gatsby.  We knew how New Money loves to sparkle.

But you’ll have to trust that it wasn’t jealousy.  Honest.  When Bruce Springsteen is the marquee alumnus from your high school, you know better than to resent your working class roots.

But you also know that rich people see money as a quantifiable metric that measures exactly how much better they are than you, which is utter bullshit, and God knows you don’t put up with bullshit.

Bullshit like last year, when their perfectly manicured parents fought against redistricting that would have sent their sons and daughters to my high school.  They rushed to the school board meeting — from temple, or CCD, or Wall Street, or their McMansion with marble countertops and ugly, angular modern art that someone told them was a great accent piece for the living room — to tell the superintendent that this just wasn’t going to fly.  You would not send their pride and joy to a lesser school.  You would not force them to go to the Boro.

But Manalapan was at one hundred twenty percent capacity.
Irrelevant.

But Marlboro was bursting at the seams.
Immaterial.

But the Boro was one of the top 500 high schools in the country, ranking higher than Marlboro OR Manalapan in some statistical index, which seems totally arbitrary and meaningless to me, but you people seem to care about status and rank and hierarchy and what other people think.
Pfffft, are you kidding me?  That’s not possible.

Because, you see, the Boro had black kids.  They’d try to tell you that wasn’t the reason, but we knew.

Real black kids who looked and acted and talked and dressed black, whatever that means.  And Latino kids.  Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Salvadoreños who spoke Spanish and salsa danced and laughed loudly and got offended when you assumed they were related to the DeJesus family.

We had more than one or two token minorities, the ratio that lets white people feel safe but not discriminatory.  The ratio that lets white people make one joke a year without feeling racist because – hey! I have a black friend and he laughed at my stupid fucking watermelon joke.  The ratio that Republicans rely on when they’re giving their misleading pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-and-get-an-education-then-a-job-because-it’s-as-simple-as-that-and-there-are-no-complicated-systemic-issues-that-we-have-a-responsibility-to-address-as-a-nation pep talk.  (Don’t even get me started. Another day, another blog post.)

At the Boro, black and Latino kids were on every team and in every group project.  In every class and every club.  In the locker room, the poor, defenseless white kids had to compete with their naturally sensual curves or their naturally gigantic penises.  You couldn’t change classes without seeing twenty of them.  They were our lab partners and our prom dates.  Or, in my case, both.

Blacks and Latinos, everywhere.  Can you even imagine?

And so, yeah.  Taking home that trophy was a deep and vindicating kiss my black ass.  An enormous, ball-grabbing, middle finger-waving, pelvis-thrusting Fuck You.  Finally, the underdogs were having our day.  

The Boro’s finest athletes gathered on the infield of the track, chanting BUR-ROW! BUR-ROW! BUR-ROW! like we were digging for the gold we already had around our necks and in our hands.  To hold that trophy over our heads, where they’d always held everything else.  The same jerks who assumed we weren’t good enough had seen us prove we were.  And God, did that feel good.

But after the buzz wore off, I felt like dogshit.

I looked down at the gash on my knee, knowing wasn’t the cause but the effect of what hurt.  I came in seventh.  One position away from placing.

I had been leading my heat in the 400 intermediate hurdles until I tripped.  I still cleared it, but clumsily.  It was the last hurdle, so I landed with no room to recover and no gas left in the tank.  It didn’t matter that I ran my PR.  I just wanted to contribute something of substance to our win.  One goddamn point would have been nice, you know?

It’s the hurdles, asshole, you have to stride long, not fall short.

I blew it.  I fucking blew it.  I watched her hair streak past me, taking my spot on the podium.  Next to two of my teammates, both underclassmen.  I know there’s no I in team, but I wanted to be up there with them.

It felt wrong.  Blatantly unfair.  I always worked harder than anyone on the team.  I never complained, never skipped a workout, never got injured, never scratched a race to rest my quads.  How could this happen to me?  How come no matter how hard I worked, I just couldn’t get up on that podium?

None of us want this to be true, but it is.  Sometimes, no matter what you do, you’re just not good enough.

I walked on the bus with a convincing smile on my face.  I over-laughed and started braggadocious chants so no one would notice that I was a tiny, swirly bouncing ball of emotion.  The kind you get for twenty-five cents from a gumball machine.  The kind you lose or forget about or throw away three months from now when you’re cleaning your room.

Instead, I radiated fake sunshine like a tanning bed.  A great sport, a team player.  That’s who I was.  That’s what I was supposed to do.  

I was so goddamn tired of being the mascot.

I don’t know why I sat next to Zaidis.  It’s not that we weren’t friends, but it’s also not like we were.  I barely knew him, aside from admiring his V-shape and the kind of shoulders that would have made Dwight Howard jealous.  Standing a leggy six-foot-two, he was one of the lucky guys who matured early but still   kept his baby face, with prominent cheeks and a mischievous smile.

Zad ran sprints and was on the wrestling team, but was mostly famous for getting so angry during a home football game that he took off his pads and started sprinting toward the locker room.  Just took off.

Everyone in the stands watched, stunned, as “Mike the Trainer” took off in his golf cart and caught up with Zad.  I don’t remember if he came back to the field, but I’m also sure it didn’t matter.  Watching him pump his long legs, not giving a fuck about what you or anybody thought, was one of the more memorable, exhilarating athletic achievements I watched from those bleachers.

On the bus with me, he sat quietly and held me while I stared at the seatback in front of us, letting myself get smaller and smaller and smaller.  In Zaidis’s hand, I felt warm and safe and unbroken.  I felt so small that there was nothing I could do but grow.

The bus slowed then stopped in the parking lot.  A hundred thousand smiling faces surged toward the door, carrying on their unfinished congratulations all the way to their cars or the locker room.  I waited for the swell to die down before grabbing my bag and getting off the bus, Zaidis trailing me.

The parking lot glowed with the kind of insufficient lighting that prevents insects from swarming but does nothing for actual visibility.  The same orange glow from chase scenes in the movies, where the cops can’t find the villain because everything looks like a shadow.  In a different context, this is the kind of parking lot where you walk with your head on a swivel, carrying mace or with your keys between your fingers like that’s some valid kind of defense.

But contrary to what you might have heard from the Marlboro PTA, no one here was all that concerned about crime or safety.  Not even when their pint-sized, blonde, virgin daughter was all alone with a fully matured black football player she barely knew.

We said goodbye, the point of the story where you’re supposed to exchange phone numbers or AOL screennames or maybe get bold and go for a kiss.  But I was as likely to kiss him as I was to give him my heart, the whole of it, which is to say not at all.  This was the end of the story.

Zaidis did hug me.  But then he walked away.  We weren’t even friends, but somehow he knew.  

Watching his figure meld with the darkness, I was so grateful for puberty and track jerseys and how this terrible lighting made it easy for me to stare at his shoulders, his beautiful shoulders, broad and strong.

And I wondered.  Do you only get a chip on your shoulder if you’re strong enough to carry it?

Every step, his shadow seemed to occupy more and more of the parking lot until it vanished entirely.  And then I was alone again.

Since the ripe age of twenty-nine, I’ve prepared an annual list of things I know or things I’ve learned from the past year only to learn that I know enough to know that I don’t know anything. Gulp. Vexing, right?

So what’s a girl to do if I don’t have any more answers about the way of the world? I guess the only fair thing is to turn the lens back on myself and just level with you. Thirty-one. A prime number, right? And a prime number, by definition, has no positive divisors other than itself. So if anyone’s going to break it down and do some division, it’s going to be me.

So here it goes. Thirty-one facts about me, ranging from lighthearted to cold-blooded. Nothing easy.  Things I like and hate about myself. Things that keep me up at night, well after the caffeine from my eleventh iced tea has worn off.

1. Sometimes I laugh in my sleep.
2. I’d like to be prettier, but I’m not. Most days I’m OK with that. Other days, I look in the mirror and think my face is a solar system of ugly scars and asymmetry and odd shapes. I worry that your instincts are to tell me otherwise, to defend me from my own meanness.  You’re sweet, but that’s not what I’m asking for. It’s OK to feel ugly and imperfect as long as you like yourself.
3. I love the moment before something happens more than I love the moment itself. The promise, the hope, the optimism. The potential, the expectation. I believe what if? is better than yes.
4. I’ve never had a bloody nose.
5. I’ve never had stitches.
6. I love small, meticulous activities like plucking eyebrows and copy editing.
7. Aside from a passing cold, I haven’t been sick since I had my tonsils removed in 1997.
8. I’m surprised and delighted how quickly people become meaningful to me. People I meet at races or during the World Cup, or friends of friends who eventually become more important than the original friend.  I think a lot of people romanticize the idea of not trusting anyone, of being hard to reach, of being inaccessible and skeptical and hardened and deceptive.  I’m over it.
9. No matter how many times I have the conversation, I still feel weird explaining to people that I don’t drink. I never feel like my explanation fully satisfies anyone, leaving them to wonder or guess at my motivation. I worry that they think it means something it doesn’t. I worry they think something terrible happened to me or that I’m a Puritanical twat.
10. I wish I would make more time to learn about science and practice Spanish.
11. I resent privilege, which is probably unfair since no one can control the circumstances into which he/she was born. But I’m also pretty sure that people of privilege don’t notice how much I resent them, and I resent that.
12. I don’t have room in my life for all these new things.  I don’t want things, I want experiences.  I don’t want a car or new phone or a whole new wardrobe.  I want to keep wearing the same clothes I’ve had since 2000. The only things I want are sneakers, cookies, and trophies.
13. I love surprises. I think that people who ruin or foil or uncover surprises are annoying know-it-alls or scaredy cats.
14. I want to look better and be healthier at 45 than at 25. I’m not sure if that makes me more ambitious, shallow, or naive.
15. I wish I would move to the Equator (where it’s warm and sunny and where tropical fruits and darker skin are standard) to write the rest of my novel. But I’m scared of leaving behind the people and sports that matter to me. I’m disappointed in myself.
16. I don’t like my seemingly involuntary, lazy instinct to check Facebook all the goddamn time. I envy people who don’t have accounts. I think they’re all cooler than I am.
17. I worry that this list and other blog posts are just narcissistic over-sharing drivel. I worry that it’s simplistic and cheap and self-aggrandizing. I worry that I sound like Donald Glover in a Residence Inn, but then again, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with honesty and brutal disclosure every now and then?  Why do we feel like honesty is a cry for help? Why do I have this paranoid feeling that sharing, being genuine, and telling you about myself gives you the upper hand?  What kind of world do we live in?
18. I like flawed characters.  Yunior, I’m looking at you.
19. I have become more disillusioned and less heartfelt since high school. I think High-School-Me would think I gave up. Current-Me thinks I’m pragmatic, but there’s a nagging in my brain and heart that knows I’m just scared and distracted and lazy. I’m taking the easy route and if I’m not more careful, it’s going to completely ruin my big dreams.
20. I want you to think I’m clever and funny and memorable and athletic and smart. God, I want to be those things so badly.
21. If I’m talking to you and my ears wiggle, it means I’m being emphatically honest and probably very excited. It’s this crazy thing I can’t control. But my ears just emote sometimes.
22. I love Thanksgiving.
23. I read fiction probably three times faster than I read non-fiction. And I think that people who view fiction as useless are equally useless. Have some goddamn imagination, you pedantic robot troll.
24. I don’t like sleeping and am obsessed with my own productivity.
25. Sometimes I nod as if I know a band or musician that I’ve never heard of because I feel like I’m supposed to know that band or musician and if I don’t, I’ll be viewed as uncool or lame or stupid. But it is much more uncool, lame, and stupid to pretend like this.
26. I am terrified of being average and mediocre and the same and unremarkable and unmemorable. Why else would I be so loud and wear so much goddamn neon?
27. I look dumpy as hell in dress pants.
28. My five favorite songs are as follows: “Cabron” – Red Hot Chili Peppers; “Love That Girl” – Raphael Saadiq; “This Must Be The Place” – Talking Heads (or MGMT, if you really want to have a good time); “Having a Party” – Sam Cooke; “All I Want for Christmas Is You” – Mariah Carey. Act like you don’t like that last one. I know better.
29. I have strange compulsive rituals before going to sleep.  For example, I cannot sleep on a pillow that is under a blanket or sheet.  It needs to be fully “liberated,” so I can have my shoulder at a 90-degree angle against it.  My pillow must also be at a very specific height or I won’t be able to fall asleep.  I will add blankets and sweatshirts to top the pillow until they reach that very specific, albeit lumpy, height. To wit, I have never found a pillow that is naturally the correct height.
30. I believe that snark, bullshit, and poor grammar are the most destructive forces in communication.
31. Fuck dry cleaning.

Major League Baseball spans three seasons, none of which are winter.  So then tell me why I couldn’t watch the World Series without Maya Rudolph and Will Arnett hawking Best Buy products beside the fire, backlit by the glow of a perfectly manicured Christmas tree?

The leaves just turned yellow, for crying out loud, but commercials are already snow-capped and evergreen.  I wasn’t even ready for Halloween, so how could I possibly be ready for Christmas?

By the time I’ve raised the flag to say whoa, whoa, whoa it’s too early! it’s already too late.  It’s Christmas season.  Not because it’s actually Christmas season, but because some greedy ad executives declare it so. 

These commercials pretend they’re being helpful.  Don’t forget, old sport, Christmas is right around the corner!  

Thanks Gatsby, but Christmas is one of three holidays that I actually know by heart. The other two are New Year’s Day (pretty literal) and the Fourth of July (literally literal). Thanksgiving, on the other hand?  Thanksgiving is always changing its shit up.  I could use a reminder about Thanksgiving.  But until selling turkeys is as lucrative as selling to turkeys, that seems highly unlikely.

Christmas commercials warn you that if you don’t shop soon, you might miss the biggest sales event of the year.  Maybe that’s a risk you’re willing to take. Maybe you have a mountain of expendable income. Or maybe you remember the big “Last Minute Shopper” sales from every single year in history.  But what if this is the first year they stop doing that?  Or worse!  What if the thing you wanted to get your loved ones sells out?  Is it worth the risk?  Fear, panic, anxiety, hysteria!  They’re all gonna laugh at you!

One if by land, two if by sea, three if by flying reindeer caravan.  Christmas is coming!  Christmas is coming!

Look, if Paul Revere could travel on horseback to alert of an imminent invasion by the greatest military superpower of the Eighteenth Century, we don’t need three-months of warnings from every retailer in the developed world to adequately prepare for Christmas.  I’ll take it one step further.  Unless it’s the Apocalypse (and you better be absolutely certain — none of this 2012 Mayan calendar garbage), I don’t need three months notice for any event.  Period.  You can keep your Save the Dates.

At the risk of sounding very Scroogey indeed, I don’t care about Christmas.  Not right now, at least. I’m not ready yet, and I don’t like being rushed. So, stick with me, The Ghost of Real Christmas, as I run tell ‘dat on this whole operation. You’re on blast, Early Christmas Advertisements!

Fuck Miss America.  Fuck Buzzfeed.  Fuck MTV.  I want more Jack Andraka in every form of media.  I don’t want to watch shitty television with terrible people who happen to be beautiful.  I want Jack Andraka to be a cultural hero and icon.

Watch this.

He’s everything good and pure in this world.
He’s Charlie Bucket and I want to give him a chocolate factory.
I think Jack Andraka is fucking dreamy, and he makes me hate everything snarky and bitchy and not earnest in the world.

I want to go to the prom with him.  Or maybe this lady should go with him because she’s dope as hell (no one has ever looked better or cooler in a hospital gown).

I had to share this because I need people like Jack Andraka to know that his work matters, his passion matters, and that his guileless, irrepressible smile is the best I’ve ever seen.

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* Hat tip to my mom (who probably wouldn’t know what it meant if I said “h/t,” and good for her.  These abbrevs are really starting to get stupid.  I’ll bet Jack Andraka speaks in full sentences.) for sending this video.

While other hostesses give the impression that they sashay through the kitchen, effortlessly preparing dinner for fifteen in heels and a stylish quilted apron, my mom has no such interest.  She’s not coy or charming.  She won’t pour your drinks or welcome you to our home with demure, selfless gestures and batting eyelashes.

Hang up your coat, grab a beer, and make yourself comfortable.

She’s less Ginger Rogers than Aaron Rodgers, a metaphysical presence who takes over the game at-will.  She can smell your fear: it has savory notes of thyme and the brightness of lemon.  She’s using it to baste the turkey.

This is her house, her kitchen, and if you’re not blocking for her, stay out of the goddamn way.

Dinner is supposed to be at three.  I don’t know why.  I’m the only one who seems shaken by this strange and arbitrary time.  It’s the best meal of the year, and I really don’t want to screw it up.  What time do I eat lunch?  Should I just power through?  If I just delay gratification a few hours, great riches await.  It’s a big risk considering last year, I lost focus early and spoiled it all by binge eating cheese and crackers like a noob.

At two o’clock, my aunts, uncles, and cousins march right in without knocking or ringing the doorbell.  Their arms are filled with warm dishes: mashed potatoes, pumpkin muffins, and green bean casserole.

Total power move: My dad is still in the shower.  Maybe he just wants to make an entrance since this is the one time a year that he wears a shirt with sleeves.

By the time he’s ready, most of the guests are already sitting at the kitchen table cramming their mouths with traditional Thanksgiving appetizers.  Just like the Pilgrims, we have shrimp cocktail and limp spinach dip.  It’s a failsafe prelude to the best meal of the year.

Between bites, my Uncle Jimmy (think: jolly Nick DiPaolo with a union card) tells us stories, pausing for laughs as if it’s a bit from a stand up comedy set he’s never performed. The only person not laughing is Aunt Kathy, who provides comedic gold of her own, sputtering out her catchphrase, “Jimmy, you’re an asshole,” between sips of Miller Lite.

In my family, being an asshole is as much an insult as a term of endearment.  It’s who we are.  Loud, raucous, and opinionated.  Brash and offensive, rash and defensive.  We’re a bunch of third graders; we tease you because we like you.

The assholes lay on the floor in the family room watching the Detroit Lions, who are usually irrelevant because we’re Jets fans.  The moms stay in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes, stirring the gravy, and talking about grown up lady things.  I don’t know exactly what that entails, but I assume it includes coming up with catch phrases like “Jimmy, you’re an asshole” and my mom’s signature, “I’m going right to heaven.”

Though dinner was supposed to be at three, it’s now five o’clock, and the turkey is not up to temperature.  Roughly ninety pounds of potentially fatal bird bacteria, and serving it prematurely would be biological warfare.  Instead we wait, grumbling quietly to each other but never to my mom: that would pose a more immediate threat than eating raw poultry.

While waiting, I overeat shrimp cocktail while everyone else overdrinks real cocktails.

Our volume escalates with every clanking can or bottle into the recycling bin.  Everything we do is animated and out loud, which makes it virtually impossible to hear when my mom finally shouts that dinner is ready.  We crowd into the dining room, which has been vacant for an entire year.  But this is Thanksgiving.

We heap mountains of food onto our plates and sit quietly for the first time since dawn.  We fold our hands and wait.

Call us heathens if you like, but saying Grace was not a daily occurrence at my house, so it carries certain amount of pageantry on Thanksgiving.  It’s awkward and out of place, not unlike the silver cutlery and fine china.

Before I learned to cut my own turkey, I was content to yell “Grace!” from my seat at the kid’s table, chuckling to my cousins who had already accidentally eaten some of their mashed potatoes.  We didn’t care about this weird speech except when we got yelled at for horsing around.

As I got older, that changed.  My dad gets our attention now, because this is Thanksgiving.

My dad is a man’s man.  Not the kind who makes demeaning jokes about women drivers or fails to tell you he loves you.  The kind who doesn’t trust anyone who won’t look him in the eye.  The kind who always drives an American car, quietly suffering through a gridlock commute every morning and afternoon so he could send his two daughters to college.  The kind who turned down promotions if they meant he wouldn’t make it home in time to see my basketball games.  That kind of man.

The kind of man you want leading your table in saying Grace.

He thanks God, and my mom, for the feast she prepared, for being a great mother and friend.  He looks around the table, noting how grateful he is that we’re all here and in good health.  He welcomes new babies, says goodbye to the family members we’ve recently lost, and remembers Aunt Barbara, who we can’t forget no matter how much time has passed.

My dad is not afraid to make eye contact.  To thank you, specifically.  To tell you he loves you, that he’s so grateful you exist, to tip his beer bottle in your direction until you blush or look away because you’re not built to endure this much heartrending honesty.

It is so profoundly personal, so brave, that I am physically uncomfortable.  I shift in my chair and fidget with my napkin as my dad gives thanks for family and friends who have become family, for the roof over his head, for the food on the table.  The very things that he helped to create, maintain, and build.  He’s so genuinely grateful, as if he didn’t have a hand in it all.  It’s a humility I suspect you learn when you realize just how lucky you are.

I want him to end it with a joke: a knee-slapper, a corny “dad joke,” anything that will let me swallow this lump in my throat, but he doesn’t.

There is no hi-hat, no punch line.  That would be a cop out.  He speaks from his heart, sharing humility and yes, grace, with a room full of assholes, including my mom who called him an idiot before she banished him from the kitchen.  But that was before dinner.  And this is Thanksgiving.   

Amen. 

This is my nightmare. 

Jacoby Ellsbury, who previously held the NUMBER TWO spot on my list of hottest dudes, joins Oscar Pistorius as the second man whose membership on this elite list has been revoked for shameful acts.

After six years in a Red Sox uniform, Ellsbury turned his back on his fans, the organization, and his teammates. After two World Series titles, he’s decided that money is more important than winning.

Ellsbury signed a seven-year, $153 million contract with the New York Yankees. Literally the ONLY team that’s off-limits. If the Sorting Hat puts you in Gryffindor, you can hang out with all the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs you want. Slytherin is not an option. When the Dark Lord comes asking for you, you tell him to piss off. That’s just the way this goes.

Before you jaded motherfuckers come at me like I’m some naïve idiot, pump the brakes. I understand this is business. I listened to my fair share of The Lox in the 90s, so the concept of money, power, & respect is not lost on me.

But no one respects a sell out, a turncoat, a traitor. And there’s not an honest-to-goodness ballplayer in the world who thinks it’s “just business” to go from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees. If you grew up watching America’s pastime, there’s no way you could feel that way. This storied rivalry, these timeless ball clubs, The Curse of the Bambino for crying out loud!

Jacoby, you beautiful son of a bitch, this cut me deep.  You could have stayed with the Sox, but you didn’t.  You could have chosen any other team, but you didn’t.  And there’s no amount of money that can make up for the fact that you sold your soul to The Evil Empire.

If you do things just for money, it doesn’t make you smart or savvy or logical. It makes you a hack. Where’s the regard for your legacy? Where’s your respect for the game?

Be honest.  Could you look a ten year-old in the eyes and explain your decision to him without feeling like you desecrated the game he loves? What about the game you love?

I’m betrayed and disappointed. Jacoby, you were the one dude who had the potential to unseat Cristiano at the top of the list, but you spoiled it. You broke my heart.  You’re dead to me. Enjoy the property taxes in Bergen County, you Herb.

And now I’ve got a spot to fill on this list.

Unlike last year when I hemmed and hawed about who would replace Oscar Pistorius, ultimately choosing Josh Freeman (who is only slightly more useful without a concussion than with one), this is a no-brainer.  I didn’t even consider other options.  There is only one.

Not just to spite Jacoby, I’m taking another dude from Oregon.

Someone who’s not so injury-prone. Someone who is clearly not in it for the money because if he was, he would have picked almost any other sport, considering how goddamn athletic he is. Someone who would never turn his back on his team because his team is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Without hesitation, I submit to you The World’s Greatest Athlete: Ashton Eaton.

His pedigree is perfect.  The son of a football player and a dancer. Competed in football, basketball, running, soccer, and wrestling, finally settling on the decathlon because when you’re so good at everything, how can you possibly choose?

Naked long jump: #YOLO

He’s built for speed and strength, measured over ten events: 100m, 110m hurdles, 400m, 1500m, long jump, high jump, pole vault, javelin, shot put, and discus. And if that’s not enough for you, he’s got the World Record in the men’s heptathlon, too.

Eaton’s proportions are perfect. Six feet, one inch and weighing 185 lbs of lean muscle.  Fight or flight?  How about both.  The Fibonacci Sequence never looked so good.

And then there’s his perfectly engineered skin tone from having a white mama and black papa.  I’m not sure why white supremacists are worried about racial purity because this is what happens when people mix races.  

Ashton hugging his mama.

He’s fit, fly, and fit to fly.  He’s a complete stud with a brilliant smile, a flawless body, and athletic talents that exceed everyone on the planet.  In retrospect, it was a complete oversight to not include him on my first list.  I’m ashamed of myself.  I’m sorry everybody.

Ashton Eaton, I’ve been hurt but I’m ready to love again.  I’m in a very vulnerable place, but I need you.  America needs you.  So, please get your perfectly sculpted ass up here on this podium and assume the position of the second hottest dude in the world.

By now you already know that I finished.  So let’s cut to me, folded in half, leaning on a railing inside a Wendy’s in Alexander City, Alabama.

I have been awake since 4:37 A.M. yesterday when a crack of thunder preempted my alarm.  I looked out the hotel window and cursed the falling sky.  The rain came down so hard and so fast, I half expected Ke$ha to yell timber.

That was a full 32 hours ago.  If my sleepless hours punched a timecard in a Henry Ford workweek, it’s quitting time on Thursday.

“I’m not doing so well,” I say aloud, to no one.

There is a very Alabaman family in front of me, arguing over whether their ten year-old son can have a Frosty.  He’s twenty pounds overweight, though not with a potbelly.  Like the Frosty, he is just thick and gloppy all over.

My eyes glaze over.  I’m experiencing a brownout, like when it’s too hot in the summer and your air conditioning doesn’t work.  Only this is my body, and it’s more than just a minor sweaty discomfort.  I shuffle forward to the counter, unsure if I’ll pass out or vomit.  House money is on both.

“You doing okay honey?” asks the cashier.

I don’t even know the answer to the question.  Instead, I force a smile, which I’m sure looks more like the bared teeth of a cornered animal.  I order a big honking fried chicken sandwich with french fries and a large coke.  I don’t even remember saying thank you.

I see her give me the once-over, either concerned for my health or assessing whether I’m hungover or stoned.  As someone who’s never tried alcohol and whose drug experimentation begins and ends with ibuprofen, this is a hilarious predicament.  And somehow, the answer is simultaneously neither and both.

A runner’s high lifts you into the sky, but we’re far beyond that.

We’ve shot right through the atmosphere.  We’re up in space somewhere. Where it’s dark.  Where there’s not enough oxygen.  Where we’re not sure if we’re alone or if there’s life somewhere.  Where it’s kind of scary but also kind of exciting.

Not a lot of boots have traveled this far.

Cut to me at mile 32 at the top of Heaven Hill, eating peanut butter and jelly squares and feeling just terrific.  I live for this shit.

My feet are caked with mud, so I change socks.  Though the trails are tougher than I expected, I’m still fresh.  It’s a long race, but if I stay hydrated and keep up my nutrition, I feel confident that I will walk away holding a coveted belt buckle.  A 100-mile finisher.

The smile on my face is real.  I’m enjoying myself.  I love the struggle.

This is Part 1 of a four-part series.  Please check back tomorrow for more.

Cut to me at mile 50.  It’s 7:02 P.M.  The sun has already put on its pajamas and gone to bed.  It’s dark and getting darker, and the course is getting lonelier by the minute.

Already, more than half the runners have dropped from the race, but I’m still feeling strong.  I apply Vaseline basically everywhere.  Arms, inner thighs, inner butt cheeks, and the classic chafe zone under the sports bra.  If it’s gross, I don’t notice.  I don’t need to carry your judgment with me for the next 50 miles, but thanks for offering.  I strap on my headlamp, put on a long sleeve shirt, and prepare for a long night.

Not to get too Robert Frosty, but I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.

To replenish electrolytes and stay warm, I choke down some ramen soup, obviously burning my tongue in the process.  To treat it, I eat an Oatmeal Cream Pie and a banana.  (For those of you who have never run an ultra, this is completely normal eating behavior.)

The race organizers tell me I look fresh, like I just started.  They commend me on my attitude.  I can’t tell if they mean it or if it’s something they say to all the gals at this dance.  Because I’m vain and at this point both vulnerable and impressionable, I assume they’re being forthright.  It really doesn’t matter.  The positive reinforcement works.  I’m refreshed, if only temporarily.

I hit the trail again.

Cut to me at mile 75, sitting in a horse stable next to my drop bag filled with sweaty socks and spare batteries for my headlamp.  It’s 3:44 A.M., and I’ve been running for over 21 hours.  I still have 25 miles to go.

At this point, my plucky personality starts to wither.  I’m tired of mud.  I’m tired of running.  I’m just plain tired.  There’s a small (and very logical) part of me begging to stop.  But there’s an overbearing superego – in both the Freudian and narcissistic sense – telling that nay-saying loser to pipe down.

Rookie error.

I’ve already run out of clean underwear, so I’m flying commando for the rest of the race.  It feels kind of liberating and marks the exact point where I stop being polite and start getting real.

“I’m doing this,” I tell myself.  Over and over and over and over and over.

I become obsessed with finishing this goddamn race.  Singularly focused.  In a way, I lose consciousness of anything but the finish line.  I am in a trance-like state of momentum where my legs keep moving because my brain gives them no other choice.  I press on, living the mantra of my favorite ultrarunner, “Perpetual forward motion.”

This suspended reality lasts for several hours, where miles pass without my even noticing.  I am alone.  Beyond the glow of my headlamp, the woods are dark and eerie.  The only sounds are the wind and my footsteps, which sound like your aunt who chews with her mouth open.  It’s so muddy, so wet, so relentless out here.  I keep my head down, eyes focused on only the steps immediately in front of me.

In these dark hours, I learn a lot about myself.

I learn that a mixture of Coca-Cola and water is my new signature sports drink and that quesadillas are my favorite aid station delight.  I learn that muscle pain is like whining: if you ignore it, it will stop.

I also learn that I’m a selfish and solitary runner.

In my real life, I’m a hammy, enthusiastic extravert.  I make fast friends with anything that smiles and have meaningful conversations with bags of brussel sprouts.  But as a runner, I’m a lone wolf.  I spend all year training by myself.   Why should today be any different?

Unlike most, I don’t have a crew or a pacer with me here.  I do have one friend who entered the race with me, but I haven’t seen him since I took off at mile five.  When he drops from the race at mile 50, I feel guilty but not guilty enough.  If I were a better person, might we both have finished?

I barely give it a second thought.  I don’t run for charity and I don’t run for camaraderie.  I run for myself.

This is Part 2 of a four-part story.  Please click to read Part 1 and check back tomorrow for more.  I try not to write with exclamation points because they feel girly and disingenuous, but if I used them more liberally, it would be to say thanks for reading (!).

Cut to mile 83.  I check in at the Heaven Hill aid station, where a red-headed guy with a beard greets me with such contagious enthusiasm that my droopy eyes perk up.  I’m tired enough to believe he is Leif Erikson or at least Leif Garrett before the drugs.  Leif has been working this aid station since the race started and shows no signs of fatigue.  He is clean and dry and stationary.  He is everything I want to be.

He makes me an amazing egg sandwich and tells me I’m his favorite.  I don’t realize it at the time, but there are fewer than 20 runners from which to choose.  Everyone else has dropped from the race and headed home to shower and sleep, which sounds like an absolutely brilliant plan after running more than 24 hours.

“You have to get out of here.”

Leif doesn’t want me to fall victim to the same siren song.  He forcefully sends me on my way.  He closes the cap to my handheld water bottle and pushes my shoulder in the direction of the trail.

“But let me congratulate you now,” he says.  “Because you’re absolutely finishing this.”

It’s exactly the kick in the ass I need to keep going.

I listen to my body, which tells me it hurts just as much to run as it does to walk, so I pick up the pace a little.  I feel remarkably self-aware, which is good because there’s no one else around me.

These long stretches where I’m alone are the toughest, but they are also the most enjoyable.  Perhaps it’s the result of practice or familiarity.  Maybe it’s because I prefer to just squat and pee without excusing myself.

Maybe it’s because at heart, I am a wild animal who just needs to run free.

Cut to mile 87.  The sun stretches its long arms across the forest floor with a patronizing, “Rise and shine!” after a full night’s sleep.  I had heard many ultrarunners talk about the jolt you get when the sun comes up, but to feel it is something different altogether.

Holy wow.

It provides such overwhelming power that I wonder if the night has turned me into a plant, experiencing photosynthesis for the first time.  No time for hallucinations, dummy.  Keep running.  Suddenly, the trails feel less lonely, less ominous.  I’m almost embarrassed by how literally the sun has brightened my prospects.

But the next few miles wear on me.  Heavily.

For motivation, I think back to how I got through some of my most miserable training runs.  Running Blowing across the 14^th Street Bridge with sand in my eyes and a scarf over my mouth, wearing two layers of pants that still didn’t hold out the -3 degree windchill.  Playing a soccer game after running 30 miles, only to wake up at dawn the next morning and run another 20.

The person who does that does not quit just because it is hard.  I am a finisher.

This is Part 3 of a four-part series.  Please click to read Part 1 and Part 2, and check back tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion.

When I check in at the last aid station, I have seven miles to go.  Let me make this unmistakably clear: I hate every single one of them.

I feel muscle pain basically everywhere.  My lower back, my haunches, my hamstrings, even my face.  My feet are tired and waterlogged.  I am filthy.  How I’ve managed to avoid blisters and keep all my toenails is one of life’s great mysteries.

My quads suffer most of all.  They are the unwilling participants in some cruel sci-fi torture experiment.  When I amble downhill, it feels like someone poured battery acid into my veins.  They are completely shredded.

My muscles beg me to stop, but I am the evil stepsister forcing them to clean the cellar.  I am a tyrant.  I am a dictator.  I am in control.  I am finishing this race.

And then I see it.

A small, humble sign on the path ahead of me.  An 8.5×11” sheet of laminated white paper on a stick.  It reads “Aid Station this way” and has the most beautiful arrow I’ve ever seen pointing me home.

I have been walking for miles because I didn’t have the strength to keep running.  But I hear a cow bell, which means the race directors and volunteers are calling me home.

They can see me.  I’m so close.

I finish the race the way I started it: running.   A smile on my face.  Optimistic.  The darkest miles, the mud, and all 100.38 miles are behind me.

I am a finisher.

It took me 28 hours, 43 minutes of guts and stamina and quesadillas.  The race director hands me a belt buckle and congratulates me.  I am only the second woman to finish the Lake Martin 100, and I’ll soon learn that there are no other women out there.

Sixteen women started the race and only two finished.

There is a very ugly side of me that wants to start pounding my chest talking about how tough I am.  How mentally, physically, and emotionally strong I am.  How I’m built for this.  How I’m the meanest and the baddest.  How King Kong ain’t got SHIT on me.  But I’m also good at math, so let me choke down this monster slice of humble pie:

Second place is also last place.

I am more humbled than I am proud to accept this distinction.

Anastasia, who took first place – crushing me by an hour and forty minutes – literally passed out after the race.  KO.  She rests on the floor of the stables, taking in calories, trying to sleep, and elevating her feet.  I’m literally the last woman standing, so at least I have that going for me.  For now.

Cut back to me, on the verge of extinction, at Wendy’s after the race.

I am face-deep in my chicken sandwich and feel like I might die.  I had expected to drive to the airport, but my body has other plans.  Specifically, dying.  I expect the cashier to read me my last rites over these french fries.  Goodbye cruel world!

But Anastasia shouts over to me from an adjacent table.

“Hey, you ran Lake Martin?”  I nod.

“Yeah, I can tell by the way you’re walking.  Did you finish?”  I nod again.

“Oh my God!” she says, full of so much life and excitement it’s hard to believe that just two hours ago she was passed out.  “You’re the other finisher!  We’re the only two females!”

She’s as bright and vibrant and as the streaks of pink in her platinum blonde hair.  She tells me about how difficult the course was, about passing out, and about how this is her thirteenth 100-miler.

Anastasia is a bad ass.  She is immeasurably cooler than I am.

I keep nodding, enthralled, and so happy that she fills the quiet spaces with joy.  I finish half my meal and suddenly feel better.  It might be the calories, but it might also be sharing the experience with someone who understands what it feels like to come back from the dead.

As I drive to the airport, I ask myself a thousand questions.  Did I even enjoy that experience?  Why do I love putting my body through such agony?  What is it about pushing myself to the limit that makes me love this sport?

Simply put, why do I run ultras?

The answer was with me all day, all night, and all morning.

Because it’s easier to keep going than to explain why you didn’t.

Thanks for sticking with me through these 100 miles.  If you get lost, click to start from Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.

I can’t sleep anymore this morning, both because it’s after 6am and because I have this little blip of nervous energy that won’t let me rest. Ordinarily, I would go for a run, but today it is pouring.  In Recife, it has rained a little bit everyday, a cloud strolling by on its way to the theater, before the sun came back out and ruled the day.  But today, it is straight up pouring.  If I stepped outside right now, I’d be soaked within 10 minutes.  Mix in the puddles, the splashing drivers, and the limited number of sneakers I brought with me, and it’s just better that I sit here in bed and write instead.  You’re welcome.

There is something bouncing around my empty morning stomach, angling off the walls like the ball in a game of Breakout.

I’m very hopeful that it’s not some incubating Amazonian parasite, but something much more recognizable and benevolent.

There’s a reason that I want to run out the feeling in my stomach.  When I was thirteen, my middle school track coach pulled me aside to talk about how it was always OK to be nervous before a race, no matter how many times you’ve toed the start line.  About how it should feel like something big is going to happen because something big just might happen.  Not everyone gets butterflies, you know.  You have give them a reason to come.  So I embraced them.  Those erratic bursts of adrenaline carried me when my skinny little pre-pubescent legs were tired and begging for mercy.

Butterflies.  I has them.

Today, the US Men’s National Team plays against Germany in a match that will determine whether they continue to the Round of 16 in the World Cup.  As they finish their breakfast and pile onto the bus wearing their oversized headphones, I’m sure they all have butterflies.  I know I do.  And I hope you do too.

There aren’t many of these pivotal, do-or-die moments.  Moments that mean something.  Moments that say something about who you are as an athlete or a team or a nation just trying to get some respect on the pitch, goddammit.   Moments that send you home to safety, comfort, and consolation that you “tried your best” or send you back on the field to die another day.  Valiantly.  Or to not die at all.  To live forever and ever a hero, Amen.

It’s possible that we could lose by a small margin and still advance.  And we could almost certainly tie and advance, but that leaves something to chance.  It puts our heads and our focus on another team in another game in another stadium.  Does that sound like fun to you?  Does that sound like something a winner does?

Don’t you dare forget for one second who we are.

We’re the United States of America.

We don’t dive on the pitch, looking to the referee for his whistle or his cards or his mercy.  We aren’t the most glamorous or the most talented or the most meticulous.  We are scrappy, hard-nosed players who stay on our feet.  We are a team that waits for nothing and goes for everything.

We are a team that can build or dismantle an empire. I want to see us storm the shores of Recife like this is fucking Normandy, 1944.  I want us to destroy Germany.

Let us leave no doubt as to whom advances.  We’re not here for fun.  We’re here on business.

Today, I hate my face.

The shapes and colors are all in the wrong places. Like a toddler abandoned his booger-coated toy for daddy’s glamorous iPad, leaving the stars and triangles and cylinders on the floor for you to clean up. Like he gave up.

Best of luck, sister, but Picasso couldn’t make sense of this fucking thing.

It’s the same face every morning, but today, I just hate it. I stare at the various components individually, running through roll call like attendance counts for twenty-five percent of the grade.

Surly blue eyes?  Here.
Medium-sized lips?  There you are. I almost missed you, too caught up disciplining my biggish teeth and the spaces between them.
Dark, prominent eyebrows?  Present.

And then I see it. Right there in the middle of it all. Just look at that thing.

My nose, the Greenland of my face. Cold, boring, and taking up space. A round, unremarkable landmass that can’t tell if it’s Old or New World.

Last week, it was my skin, but right now? It’s you, nose. You’re fucking the whole thing up.

I try clever new ways to arrange my hair that might draw interest away, but bobby pins and braids can only do so much. The face continues to sit there, looking vaguely rabbity.

I imagine looking like someone else. Not entirely, just in a subtle way. Like myself, only better. In a way that wipes off clean with a damp cloth if it doesn’t come out the way I intended.

Maybe all it takes is just a touch of eyeliner or some lipstick in my most hated shade of pink. Something called Madamoiselle or Softened Rouge or Blustery Rose or some other overthought phrase that could double as a euphemism for vagina.

Maybe I should just mask these uneven tones and scars with some cover up or foundation. But wait, is cover up the same thing as foundation? And while I have your attention, what exactly is concealer?

The things I don’t know. The depths of my ignorance, darker than the circles beneath my eyes. Ugh. I’m like your grandmother trying to set up her Facebook profile.

Too lazy or stubborn or stupid, I can’t tell.

A magician might try some sleight of hand. A thief might go for a distraction. But certainly not me. No, of course not! I puff out my chest, smugly dismissing such a shallow, vain suggestion.

I don’t bother with makeup because I’m too honest, too real to deal in deception.
I declare myself the facial ombudsman, a tattletale waving my arms hysterically so you’ll listen to me.
Excuse me, gentlemen, but Beyoncé is lying. She most certainly did not wake up like this.

But as I stare in the mirror obsessing about my nose, it’s not lost on me that I’m every bit as vain as the next one (at least the self-reflection prompts some self-reflection, no?). It’s not that I’m too honest. I’m too terrified that someone will find me out. A fraud, a phony, a fake. A generous 6, posing as an 8.5.

Who needs blush when your cheeks are so flushed with embarrassment?

And so I resign, walking away from the mirror, hopeless. Like it or not, I’m stuck with this face. This blotchy, heart-shaped container for brains.

Sigh. What’s an average gal to do?  I’ve grown so weary of my vast talents and this delightful personality.

In January, I ran 30 miles in the morning and then played in an 11v11 soccer game that afternoon, on knee-knocking turf, in 30-degree windchill. The next day, I added another 12 miles. My quads were rock solid, sturdily descending from my hips like frozen brisket in a meat locker. Tough.

I went on to run 100 miles in March, in which I was one of only two women to finish the Lake Martin 100. Tough.

So why was last weekend’s Marine Corps Marathon so hard? Why did 26.2 hurt so much? Why did I run a slower time than I have in years? And more importantly, why am I not collapsed into a pile of self-loathing, defeat, and disappointment?  What happened?

To answer all of those questions in a word: Science.

To many, it is inconceivable that you’d spend three months training your balls off for one thing, simply as an experiment. And that experiment could fail, leaving you with nothing but exhaustion, wobbly legs, the feeling that you might pass out, and a heavy finisher’s medal you want to throw onto the highway.

Of course you don’t. You keep walking toward gear check, wearing a paper jacket and shoving food into your face hole. Watermelon and water and bananas and chocolate milk and granola and fruit snacks, handed to you by the tall, strapping, bad ass United States Marine Corps.

For runners, this is just kind of the way it goes. It’s the scientific method.

Try something. See if it works. If it does, you might PR. If it doesn’t, you might be disappointed.

Behold!  The beauty and the agony of endurance sports.

I experimented with two variables in this marathon, and as a researcher, I can conclude that neither of them produced favorable results. In other words, they both stunk.

Hypothesis 1:

I will run faster with a training plan in which my legs are less fatigued.

For the past two years, every marathon I ran had been a part of training for a longer race: a 50 or 100 miler. To train for those ultras, I put up substantially more mileage each week, including back-to-back days of high mileage (e.g., 20 miles on Saturday, 12 miles on Sunday).

Regular marathon training requires fewer miles than ultra training because a regular marathons is fewer miles than an ultra. Duh. So, I figured there was a chance my speed would increase if I went back to a regular marathon training plan, where my legs would be better rested and less fatigued each week, and then even more so on race day.

Outcome of Hypothesis 1:

False.

Nope. Didn’t happen, guys.

Here’s what I know. When it comes to running, my body recovers quickly and I’m the opposite of injury-prone. For this, I’m really, really lucky. As payment for this good luck, my body expects me to put up more miles. And who am I to protest? Running is my favorite timesuck.

Hypothesis 2:

Running with a pace group will ensure my splits are consistent and on-pace.

If you’ve ever watched a marathon, you may have seen a cluster of runners, surrounding a very kind and generous human holding a balloon-adorned stick. This person is a pacer, who aims to run consistent splits that will allow anyone within that pack to hit the goal time listed on the balloons.

It’s an important job. There are a lot of people running down a dream, a PR, or a BQ, counting on the pacer to get them to the finish line. And because of this huge responsibility, the pacer must be a proven commodity, who can run substantially faster than the pace they’re setting.

In my particular case, I decided I should run with the 3:35 pacer, knowing that I had successfully run that pace in three previous races, and that I could pull away after mile 20 if I felt particularly Boston Strong. While I’ve considered and tried running with pace groups in the past, I have never actually stayed the course. I thought I should test it out, see if I could gain anything from sticking with the pace group.

Outcome of Hypothesis 2:

False.

Yeah, this was a bad idea, and I should have known that already.

I am a lone wolf.

I almost never run with a partner or a group when I train, so why would I want to do it on race day? I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to hear other people talking. I want to get in my zone and grind.

When I run alone, I’m fully attentive to my pace and body. I know when and what I need to drink or eat. I monitor my pace closely, noticing when I’m too fast or slow, and if I need to make any adjustments. Mostly, I’m just highly present. Locked in.

When I run in a group, I have to fight the urge to beat everyone or go faster. It’s a stupid relic of being competitive.

In real life, I don’t give a fuck about Keeping Up With The Joneses and their dumb cars and their ugly kids and their stupid houses/jobs/faces, but when I’m running next to them, I just can’t help myself. I just want to win. It’s a tremendous waste of energy and the easiest way to lose focus on what’s actually important in a marathon.

And this is how I disobeyed the first rule of running a marathon: Don’t go out too fast.

The leader of our pace group was running at a blazing speed, and I’m not sure why. While a 3:35 requires a pace of 8:12 per mile, my Garmin clocked us at 7:45-50 for several consecutive miles. That’s almost 30 seconds too fast, per mile.

I found myself trying desperately to keep up but also to maintain my own pace, and the back and forth was strategically stupid. In running as with driving, it is much more fuel efficient to just drive 35 than to speed up, then slow down, then speed up, then slow down.

By mile 16, my legs already felt fatigued, which shouldn’t happen. I tried to maintain pace until mile 19, but by then, the damage was done. I had to reset my strategy, dialing back my time expectations not out of cowardice or pain, but because I knew my legs just didn’t have it.

That is a severely un-fun realization, but it does prevent you from having to be carted away in an ambulance.

Other Things That Were Scientifically Un-Great:

• We, the runners, fought gusty, sustained headwinds heading into Crystal City for miles 19 through 24. At that point in the race, this kind of feels like someone jumping on your back and asking for a piggyback ride. It’s uncalled for and straight up rude.
• And while 70° and sunny makes it a delightful day to be a spectator, it is a little warm for a marathon runner. Please don’t mistake this as complaining; I would take 70° over 40° literally every single day of the year. But if we’re talking science (and we are), just understand that it has a significant impact on cumulative time (optimal temperatures for running a marathon are in the mid-40s).

While I’m not happy with my overall performance, I still ran a respectable time and race. And I learned more during this race than any other, which is important and leaves me with more than just the fire to crush the next race and totally redeem myself.

Perhaps the most important lesson is one of humility.

Sometimes, it’s just not your day. You have to run the race you’re in.

Can anyone explain why I just went into a Mexican restaurant and spoke English to their servers, who not only were Latino, but were speaking to each other in Spanish?  Can anyone explain why I blushed and got embarrassed when I accidentally said “por favor,” instead of “please” at the end of my order?

My stupid mouth skipped ahead, ran faster than my brain.  It spit out Spanish before my consciousness could slow it down, could think about the consequences and implications of my carelessness.  But wait.  Why would it ever be a problem to speak to someone in a language he speaks?

I shook it off.  Just a simple mistake.  I could recover.  I could get back on track.  Maybe he didn’t notice.

But wait.  Notice what?  That I know Spanish?

I knew I was screwed when he came back and tilted a pitcher toward my glass, asking, “¿Más agua?”  Now, it was my move again.  So, can anyone tell me: why did I respond in complete white girl English?

“I’m OK, theeeeankssss!”

Blarrgggh.  Maybe I’m not fluent, but I can more than get by.  Hell, I even know the demonic, semi-impossible subjunctive.  Kind of.  OK, I take it back.  No one knows the subjunctive.  But, look, if you dropped me in the heart of Oaxaca, I’d not only make it, I’d come back tanner, happier, and fatter.  Believe that.

Ordering a simple meal?  Yo la tengo.  So if I knew how to order in Spanish from the jump, why didn’t I just do it?  What was I waiting for?

I still don’t know the answer to this question.  I don’t know what my hang up is, only that I do, in fact, have a hang up.

What’s more inexplicable is that it’s not a universal aversion or fear.  Like, when I travel to a country where Spanish is the primary language, no hay problema, chica.  I switch into Spanish mode and just go J.A.M.O.N.

So, then what the what?  What exactly is my deal?  What am I so scared of?  What do I think is going to happen?  Do I think this dude is going to make fun of me for the mistakes I make? 

Do I think he’ll label me a fraud, tar and feather me, and send me home without supper?

Damas y caballeros, I’ve solved it. 

I have an inexplicable and very specific fear of speaking Spanish with native speakers here in these great United States.

How fucking dumb is this?  What is driving it?  And when I become friends with someone who does speak Spanish, why do I ask for fucking permission to practice with them?  When was the last time I ever asked for permission to speak?

This realization has been humiliating.  Why?

It’s more than just how long it has taken me to figure out.  It’s also because to me, communication — sharing ideas, moments, and experiences — is a panacea.  There is nothing more comforting than feeling truly heard or understood.  And there is nothing more human than showing that concern and consideration.

There are so many times that I could have done more to help a struggling English speaker or extend some warmth and familiarity to someone who probably doesn’t get enough of it.  And the idea that I’ve been too scared and lazy to try harder on something so fundamental to human interaction is personally shameful.

And I call myself a writer?  A strong communicator?  Maybe my thoughtful waiter won’t call me a fraud, but he doesn’t know me as well as I do.

Our first full day at the beach in Dar, we wake up early. The sun is bright, the breakfast is hearty and fresh – eggs, pineapple, watermelon, papaya, toast, yogurt, and muesli – and then we’re on the beach. Not long after we settle into our beach chairs, a small rainstorm arrives, drawing us into an A-frame beach hut with the same palm-thatched roof as our bungalow.

In this shady hut, we meet a couple from London, aged in their mid-sixties, but of a designation I’d describe as “killing it.” They’re fit, tan, and completely comfortable with themselves and each other.

They don’t seem to bicker like an old married couple. They seem to actually enjoy each other, even after three kids and all these years. They joke about memories and recall them with great fondness, bordering on expertise.   Despite having every defensible reason to “hang it up,” they have not resigned to a life of boredom, complacency, and sameness.

They’re still actively exploring the world. The more remote, the better. With their posh accents, they describe travel as “a true passion.” At this point, I begin to call my life crush on them “a true passion.”

They’ve been to East Africa more times than they can recall, with great advice on where to go on safari (southern Kenya) and advice on how to climb Kilimanjaro (don’t worry about being in great shape; the fat people seem to do the best anyway). They’re sure they’ll come back not long from now, but exactly where? Best to leave that decision for a later date and just enjoy the moment they’re in.

We listen to their adventure stories – the mundane to the profane – and I tell them more than twice that they should write a book. No no no, they call me off, saying they work so they can travel; they’d never travel so they can work. I’m still naïve enough to confuse the two.

As the rain passes and the sun blazes again, the husband stands up and excuses himself. “I’ve got work to do,” he says, which seems to conflict with the principle we just discussed.

But he doesn’t go back to his room or pick up a device. Instead, he carries his towel over to a lounge chair, taking the care and effort to angle it toward the sun for maximum impact. His wife joins him and does the very same. I think it’s more than coincidence that all the shadows fall behind them.

This just in. A male friend emailed me to ask my thoughts on the whole Gronk lap dance with Julie Stewart-Binks.

The Question:

Do you blame Gronk for that lap dance? If so, did you get to see the full clip where the female reporter asked him to dance? Is this not one of the most embarrassing things for women in sports, to either have her think “this is what will get me popular” or whether her bosses, etc. requested she be a prop?

tl;dr RESPONSE:

Honestly, everyone should have known better.
Ev-Er-Y-One.

Longer response:

More specifically, here is everyone who needed to know better.

The producers – That was clearly a part of the show. Don’t front. That was intentional and on purpose and a part of the script. To borrow from Kanye, “FS1 doesn’t care about [women] people,” but what the fuck else is new? Who does? Name a network other than Bravo or Lifetime and I’ll send you an Amazon gift card.*
(*I won’t.)

The talent – Stewart-Binks told him to dance, encouraged him, put dollars in his damn pockets, and then promoted it on her social media feeds. If she doesn’t have standards, no one else is going to have them for her. I promise you that.

The guest – If Gronk is too dumb to have a line he won’t cross, he’s still responsible for backlash when he does something dumb that crosses a line. I’m not sure he thinks it did cross a line. But I also don’t think he thinks a lot about how he could help or hurt women in sports media. I don’t think he thinks a lot at all. Do you think he knows that Syria is a country?

Go On, Go On

I don’t know who is less-more-most responsible. I think they’re all kind of sloppy, cheap hacks as TV entertainment. Now, Gronk is not a sloppy, cheap hack as a tight end, but everyone else is pretty bad at his/her specific job. If nothing else, this will add to his Yo Soy Fiesta brand/legend. Enjoy.

This is where things tend to get a little bit murky and slippery-slopey, so I want to be clear. For me, it’s not a “boys will be boys” and therefore “Gronk will be Gronk” thing, with Gronk being the boyest of all the boys. Yes, we know he’s a big, lovable dummy. But if he had done something truly offensive and egregious to Julie Stewart-Binks (and I concede that others may think this was offensive and egregious, but given the circumstances of her asking him to “show her some Magic Mike,” I’m not one of them), I don’t think he should get off the hook just for being a big, lovable dummy. That’s not fair.

To be clear, I hate the Patriots.  And yet, I still don’t think Gronk did this lap dance to demean Stewart-Binks or because he doesn’t respect her. In fact, I think that he would have done that same thing to anyone who wasn’t a small child. I have no way to prove this other than his general pattern of behavior, but I kind of think he would have done that to a Betty White, to a Tom Brady, to a Joe Buck, to a sorority sister/frat bro if dared in the same way. That’s my opinion. I have no way of substantiating that. The comment section is below and I enjoy threats of all kinds.**
(**I don’t.)

But I also think that Gronk is a vestige of a different era of sports, when men were men and tits were tits. Right? We love him because he’s stupid, not in spite of it. We love him because we don’t think he needs to be responsible for anything outside his physical body. Run the route, block the rush, catch the ball, don’t get injured. So, the social impact of his attitude, actions, and demeanor (especially on women***)?  That’s not what society is worried about.
(***I’m editorializing here, but this whole piece is an editorial, so it’s not much of an aside.)

And while Gronk is mostly harmless as a singular dummy (not mean-spirited or knowingly disrespectful or oppressive or violent), I also think that thousands of very rapey guys idolize him and would gladly show an unsuspecting woman their cocks and say misogynistic things and chant SHOW YOUR BINKS or whatever. No, Gronk is not responsible for that (in the same way that Eminem isn’t responsible for angry teens and Marilyn Manson isn’t responsible for Columbine). But I’m stumped that we fucking tolerate it as a society.

I think this stunt was exactly what FS1 wanted. And, sadly, I do think Julie Stewart-Binks thinks this will help her career. And if she plays it a certain way, it might. We’re all talking about it and about her, after all.

One last point.

When was the last time a female sports journalist was a part of the national conversation? Did the story center on something about how she looks or what she was wearing or how someone treated her? Was it when someone tried to kiss her on a sideline or put nude hotel photos of her on the internet? And was that the only time anyone cared or even knew her name?

I used to romanticize the process of art creation, assuming that great words would just fall out of my head in perfect sequence. Assuming that every single one of my thoughts and sentences should touch the page in perfect form, achieving Nirvana and changing the world simply through being. I wanted to be a genius.

And then I heard a podcast about the evolution of the term ‘genius.’ Today, when we want to tell someone that she is smart, we tell her, “You are a genius.” You ARE a genius. It’s an attribute, a personal characteristic. It’s internalized. An entitlement.  It belongs to you. It’s a permanent condition. Like being a Senator, once you have the title, it stays with you forever.

In previous centuries, centuries in which people died of diseases that scientists pretty much eradicated until Jenny McCarthy convinced housewives that vaccines cause autism, there was a much less egotistical concept of ‘genius.’ It was far more fleeting. It needed to be captured and treasured and appreciated. Instead of simply bestowing a title, people said they were ‘visited by genius.’ Said they ‘had a genius.’ Like it was a pet or a sidekick. It could leave you. It could go on its own adventures. It was its own external entity. It lived outside of you. You had to feed it. You were responsible for fostering it.

I only recently figured out how to stoke and stroke my genius. He’s here now, sitting with me. To be honest, I’m terrified every time I see him and every time he leaves.

My genius doesn’t drink coffee. My genius likes black tea and black people. My genius does not like when people talk to me or are engaged in loud, distinct conversations nearby. He’s very shy. He hates having the TV on. Truly hates it. Wants me in another room, far away from the TV. Thinks it’s for softheads and time-wasters. Is offended that I even consider it sometimes. He doesn’t say so out loud because he doesn’t really say much, but I can see it in his little angry face and his telltale gestures. He sucks on his paw and puts his back to me, letting his tail whack against me on his way. I try to tell him it’ll only be a few minutes, or that this is ripe fodder for me to explore in my next thinkpiece, but he ignores me and soon enough, he leaves.  Oh, how I hate it when he leaves.

My genius loves classical music and the clinking sound of dishes, plates, and glasses. He’s always hungry and prefers me when I’m well fed too. He is easily distracted and has worse focus than I do. So, if I venture off-course to do some internet research or scroll through Twitter or Facebook, he’s gone for the next however-long.

I have no idea where he goes. Maybe to the bathroom, maybe to visit someone else who’s creating something more interesting. But it’s hard to keep him engaged. I do my best, but he keeps me on my toes.

My genius doesn’t care what I’m wearing. He doesn’t really have a preference of subject matter.  In that way, he’s unopinionated, and he grunts at me when I employ those excuses for why I’m not feeling clever.  The grunt sounds almost like he’s calling bullshit.

He thinks it’s very funny when I curse. He urges me to do that a lot. He thinks it’s part of my personal writing style, and I tend to agree with him. I sometimes try to find replacement words for fuck or goddamn, but he looks at me like “what are you afraid of?” and then hits Command + Z very deliberately while staring me in dead in the eyes. He doesn’t say a word, but his body language tells me I’m stripping the power from that sentence. Neutering it. Taking all the fun out of it. And so the curses make their way into the final draft, virtually every time.

You really can’t argue with genius. He makes a very compelling case.

My genius haaaaaaates the ‘delete’ key. Sometimes he sits next to it with his hand hovering above it, waiting to slap me every time I reach for it. He lets me go when I correct misspellings or specific word order, but if I spend too much time there, hanging out and obsessing over word choice, he grabs my ring finger and bends it all the way back to the wrist. I mean, it’s painful and kind of abusive, but he’s right though. He knows that the longer I dwell, the less I create. And then he’s just going to be bored. And then I’m not even going to have anything to say to the world. He hates wasting time, but he doesn’t hate wasting words or stray thoughts. He hangs on every word when I’ve got momentum, even if the words and phrases are senseless and bland and non sequitur. He brings his two front paws to his face like in prayer, and his eyes are rapt on my screen or notepad. He sits back on his hind legs in a deep squat, his knees are nearly at his eye height, and he’s folded up like a catcher stretching his hip flexors.

It’s funny, though. He’s so disinterested when I’m editing my work. I mean, he gets it, knows that it’s important, and doesn’t get cranky and selfish. He doesn’t discourage me or roll his eyes at me or slap my fingers when I dwell. He just quietly naps beside me, and it’s kind of nice. He just sits there making little snoring sounds, occasionally scratching his ears or his nose. Sometimes he gets comfortable, laying in my lap or wrapping around my feet. I’m not sure it makes much difference that he’s around, but I’ll admit with a little bit of self-consciousness that I am comforted that he isn’t visiting others. It kind of makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing. It kind of makes me feel like we’re friends.

But we’re not friends. This is entirely utilitarian. It sounds very sweet and all, but it’s exhausting. He’s very needy, and so am I. We have this symbiotic relationship. But that’s really being generous. It’s mostly a codependency. It’s a little gross and destructive and pathetic, honestly. For both of us. It’s like watching two addicts pull each other into the abyss, away from our friends and family and deeper into solitude and madness. It feels so good when it happens and when it’s done, but the next day? The next morning? It’s just a sadness and an emptiness that needs filling.

The Invite

Oh, Mary, that’s just lovely. Of course I’d like to come for dinner tonight. We had such a wonderful time this weekend at the farmer’s market. It got a bit warm, though, didn’t it? When I got home, my Moby wrap was so sweaty from carrying my sweet Tallula all day. Good thing I sprung for the organic cotton! I mean, can you even imagine?

At any rate, I’d love to join you and Donald for dinner. But if you don’t mind, might I ask what you’re serving?

No, I’m not picky per se, but I just have some limitations.

Well, why don’t you just tell me what you had planned on serving and I’ll let you know.  I think it will probably be easier this way.

Course 1: Soup

While crab bisque does sound delicious, I am not so sure if that’s a wise idea.  You see, a few years ago, I had a bad experience with some lobster ravioli.  Sure, it went down just great, but then my throat closed up in anaphylaxis, and I got hives all over my body.  It was just terrible.  But you and Donald should go on and enjoy the crab bisque.  I’ll just join in the fun after the soup course.  Besides, I’ve been having trouble shedding this baby weight.  I’m not going to stand here and preach, but we all could stand to skip a few courses now and then!

What’s that you say?  You’re making your own baguettes!  Well, that’s just divine.  Knowing your cooking, Mary, I’ll bet they’re perfectly crusty and when you tear them with your two hungry mits, the steam rises and butter melts on sight, like a teenager seeing Zac Efron.  He’s a doll, isn’t he?

I wish I could partake and enjoy the baguettes, Mary, really I do.  But you see, when I eat gluten, I get dippy and autistic.  I have trouble righting myself in a world that’s so wrong as it is.  You don’t actually call someone who suffers from celiac disease a celiac. That’s really insensitive, Mary. Why does everyone want to put people into categories, into boxes? I’m a person who just happens to have trouble digesting gluten. It’s relatively common, you know.  I’m not even sure people are supposed to eat gluten, really.  I’m not going to stand here and preach, but you should try a world without gluten.  You might think you’re low energy for a few days, but it’s all in your head.  Carbohydrates are almost entirely unnecessary once you’ve unlocked the energy of navy beans.

Course 2: Appetizer

No, potatoes don’t contain gluten.  They’re gluten-free.  See, this isn’t so hard to accommodate.  What did you have in mind?  Oh.  Hand-cut potato skins with cheese and home cured bacon.  Mary, that’s not going to work on so many levels for me.  But it’s alright!  Oh, don’t be silly.  We can figure something out.

Well, something I didn’t tell you but wanted to chat through tonight is that I recently got in touch with my spiritual side, and I’ve really taken a liking to what I’ve learned from the Jewish faith.  So, I’m all in now.  Earlier, when you said crab bisque, I didn’t want to mention because I didn’t think it would come up, but I only eat kosher now.  So, there’s no shellfish and there’s no pork products of any kind.  The adjustment hasn’t been too bad.  I’m not going to stand here and preach, but there’s something really cleansing about removing bottom-feeders.  What’s ironic about that, Mary?  I’m not sure I get your joke.

Course 3: Salad

Ah, yes, the salad course.  This time, with confidence, Mary!  We can do this!

Oh, a wedge salad.  No bells and whistles.  Simple food.  Hmm.  No, I’m not disappointed.  I’m not.  Well fine, I’ll just say it.  I’m pretty sick and tired of salads.  It’s like, whenever I go to a restaurant or meet with friends, they’re always shoving salad on me.  It’s not the only thing I’ll eat, you know.  I’m not going to stand here and preach, but there’s a whole world out there beyond lettuce.  Iceberg, dead ahead, indeed.

No, I don’t want to just try some other night.  Let’s not count me out just yet, Mary.

Course 4: Main Course

You would go to a kosher butcher for your steak, just for me?  I’m so flattered, Mary.  That is so incredibly kind of you.  Truly.  Well, now I feel like a real killjoy, don’t I?  Well, there’s something else I forgot to tell you.  When you were talking about the crab and the bacon and the butter and cheese, well, I should have just said it then but I wasn’t sure it would matter.  I’m vegan, Mary.

I’ve been avoiding animal products for about two weeks now, and I’ve never felt so good.  Well, I guess I have felt this good before,  but I’ve never felt so ethically clean and consistent.  This is a lifestyle choice that I’m unwilling to compromise.  I’m not going to stand here and preach, but you can’t spell righteous without right.  And might doesn’t make right.  So now I’m fighting for animal rights.  And I’m right.  And that’s what’s important.

Course 5: Dessert

Ice cream?  Mary, were you listening?  Well, I’m sorry to be brash, but hello, I just told you I’m vegan.  Ice cream would just be introducing things to my system that my body just doesn’t need.  Sorry I’m not sorry that you don’t understand.  This is important Mary.  There must be another something.  No, I’d have trouble digesting a pie crust, remember?  Sure, I’ll hang on while you check your recipe book.

Oh, well, that’s wonderful.  Your peanut butter cookies don’t have flour?  That’s very accommodating, but I’m afraid that just won’t work.  Well, I’m deathly allergic to peanuts, Mary.  Like, if you thought the shellfish allergy was bad — woof!  Wait till you see me jam an epinephrine pen into my leg at the dinner table.  Did you just say you’d like to see that?  That isn’t funny you know.  This is very serious stuff, Mary.  It’s nothing to joke about.  Besides, those cookies probably have eggs, don’t they?  Yeah, I thought so.  How many times do I have to proclaim it? Mary, I’m vegan.

The RSVP

You know what, you’ve been really unaccommodating and inhospitable about this whole thing.  I expected a friend like you to be more understanding and supportive.  I’m not going to stand here and preach, but you can just mark me down as an RSVP for no.  I’ll be home eating couscous and drinking a superfood smoothie — hold the yogurt.