Stupid things we’ve overhead Americans saying

Boys walking behind us

BOY ONE: They were pouring people drinks over the balcony, into their mouths and some random dude came up and was like ‘Hit me!’ and he opened his mouth wide and put his head back so Chris pissed in his mouth. And then at a party some chic wanted a drink, and they’d run out of mixer, so they just pissed in with the tequila. Duudddeee. She didn’t even notice! She like threw it back!’

BOY TWO: Shit man, that’s like, bad karma.

Girl and boy sitting on bench at uni

GIRL: I’m just telling you the truth. She’s really shallow. And I promise I’m not being mean but there is absolutely no way she’d be into you.’

Old man trying to get into an art shop to the young female artist

MAN: So if I were born a woman you’d hire me?

Overweight woman and toddler

Woman: Girl hide your triangle. Shut your legs! You’re showing everyone your buisness. If you want to wear that dress you got to hide your triangle.

Girl: You’re warm.

Woman: That’s because I’m fat.

How much free shit can a housewife get?

It all started with a broken bread roll. Pulled from its package with the top half of it shedding skin in crumbs. I had a brain wave. I should tell the bread people, that their bread is not tiptop. That it’s crumbling and disappointing and overpriced. Just because I can, and I don’t have to say it to their face. And because it means I can postpone study. So I took some photos and sent a rather awkward slash eccentric email off.

‘Your food is delicious, but the rolls I just opened looked like someone sat on them. Please send me some delicious treats to make up for my disappointment.’

A week later a box of bread arrived on my doorstep. As in, eight packages of bread and a packet of cheese flavoured mice shaped chips. Actually the chips were really smashed up, but I thought I’d be pushing my luck to complain about that. It was just too easy, and housewife me turned to the Internet, with my newly found internet-Dutch-courage and a list of foods I found tasty. I’ve received three letters with vouchers for free things and apologies. Part of me feels embarrassed, but not more embarrassed than joyous. I mean who doesn’t love free food? It seems to be a whole new level of procrastination. Because somehow, I feel as though, perhaps, pause ‘maybe you know, don’t you think?’ I’m being productive. As though I’m hunting and gathering on the Internet. And the companies feel good about themselves too. Irene (the middle-aged woman manning customer service) feels generous and I get something free. Its win win for us all.

Somehow though, inside of me, I hear my mother sort of tutting. As if what I’m doing is morally void, or below me. I’m morphing into an uber eccentric elderly woman with a pension, an old IBM and a stack of time on her hands. From the crumbles of some gluten free rolls comes a ridiculous obsession. There is no play writing going on here, just scamming. But hey, by the end of it I will be play-less but fat. Pro, con, pro, con, pro, con.

Football, brothels and American culture

I left the house yesterday. I shouldn’t have, I knew that at the time. But I needed to get out. Hop on a bus somewhere. Look at something. Depart from the inside so I could feel like a day had passed. So I left the house. Except it was football day and the streets were packed with the shirtless smell of beer, team branded hotpants, testosterone. Lines of people outside pubs blocked the footpath. So the pedestrians had to venture out onto the road. Debunked of their walking rights. An elderly Jewish man nodded to me, both of us bobbing along the edges of the happenings, neither of us sporting a themed t-shirt.

The night before we’d left the house after dinner and ventured down towards the town centre. The place was flooded with youth. People stopped in the middle of the footpath to sing a football song and clap and cheer. Young girls kerfuffled along in groups of eight. They actually call each other bitches.

Come on bitches a small pause as she looks at the other girls Lets puts some pep in our step. A gabble of grunts. Little lady hooves click approval. Bitches advance slightly faster.

I mean really, it’s not actually true is it? That educated young women spend their weekends in dresses that finish just above their crotch calling each other bitches and waddling around near frat houses. Aside from all things feminist, it’s some sort of strange face falling off merging of a grandmother saying and a cross, outer suburb slut. I’m using the word slut playfully there see, mainly because most of these girls definitely wouldn’t get paid for sex.

Feminism is dead here. In this little American town. Or maybe it’s just dead around football games and frat house parties. I tried to get us into a few of those parties. About five men stood at each door with a list. If you knew someone you got in. If you had little enough clothing on, you got in. Apparently we we’re neither. So we laughed on the front lawn. Slightly ashamed we’d tried. Someone near us asked loudly where all the old people had come from. We called our cultural night to an end and departed. Joining more scantly clad women on their pavement march. In Pennsylvania they don’t have large or comparable sororities, if more than twenty women live together here it’s considered a brothel. It seems a bit outrageous really. Not that I’m advocating the sorority. Just common sense. And if the men get to do it, why can’t the women? Maybe they’d find some empowerment in hosting their own skanky parties and standing at their own big old sorority house doors. But I guess they could start asking for money for their sex with the fraternity boys. Because they’ve got their own beds now and a big empowering brothel house. And the state would have a huge prostitution epidemic on their hands. Thousands of sorority brothels popping up everywhere. So probably Pennsylvania are being savvy. I just wish they’d make the law about men too.

Canoe bed and the night time

Our bed wants to be a canoe. Or at least that’s what it feels like when we lay down at night. It pushes itself inwards. So we end up horizontal sliding towards each other. It got so bad the other night that we tried sleeping on the floor. Except as I lay at the foot of our bed, all I could imagine were dead children’s faces, peering at me from the depths of the underneath part of our canoe. Hoping I might help them. And then I started thinking about getting stabbed and how hard the floor was and whether or not the microscopic carpet bugs were feeding off my dead skin. Around four we ventured back to the canoe.

We didn’t buy the bed. I think there must have been a widely obese person sleeping in the middle of it for several years. Because the bed loved them. And now when we hop in it tries to recreate that person. Tumbling us inwards.

I believe it is the source of my insomnia. Though I could be wrong. It could be that I’m consuming caffeine for the first time in years and getting up late. I’ve not felt like this before though. This eyes open face awake unable to imagine sleep insomnia thing. It feels like my twilight zone, the night time, when my brain starts functioning and I feel like I’ve misplaced my eyelids. There is no anxiety attached to the sleeplessness. There is a joyfulness in my awake-ness. And the quiet darkness.  And as Simone tosses her body around beside me I feel very peaceful.

Except I get up late, and I miss the morning. I guess the bed is holding me awake. Hoping I might share my thoughts with it. Maybe it wants to tell me how much it misses its old friend. And how it always feels stretched in the middle. I’d prefer if we didn’t have to retire to a boat every night, maybe we’ll try sleeping in the lounge room. It so uncivilised leaving the bedroom though.

Diet Pills (the quest for the real American dream)

I started looking yesterday. And I had an aspirin with caffeine in it so I could have stayed up all night to continue looking. Diet pills, I’m not even sure I need to lose any weight. But I found them, somehow, a link of a link? And now I wanted them. And to find them one must read every diet pill review site that exists. Without fail. Because what is the point spending money if you can’t do the research? Plus I’m on a budget and I wanted to make sure I got the ‘you only need to do this one time, I’m a bit like speed’ pills.

I ordered. It struck me as a very American thing to do. Order a diet pill. Somehow I’d found them on the internet, them and the myriad of their diet pill friends and the myriad of review sites that run alongside them. It’s confusing. And messy, all the sites look like shit, like some old fat woman is making pills out of parsley and caffeine in her suburban home and posting them directly to you. But I didn’t mind. The whole thing seemed vaguely romantic, so I bought in. The real American dream. Being fat and losing weight. I’ll probably update you when they don’t work. Or the caffeine makes me happy.

Three weeks

It has been three weeks now. An American three weeks, which means it has felt longer, bigger, obese-r. I’m shacked up the Pennsylvanian countryside for several months which means online shopping, diets, attempts at getting fit and feeding. But mostly feeding. This is me reaching out to you uber web, waffling about the above.