Friday, April 08, 2011

An Open Letter to the Naked Ladies at the Hollywood YMCA

Dear Naked Ladies at the Hollywood YMCA,

I hate to sound anti-feminist or something, but- who ARE you people? How are you so brazenly comfortable with your bodies? You stand around, naked as jaybirds, and just... CHITCHAT for long chunks of time without making even the slightest move towards getting dressed. Sometimes one of you will put your towel on the bench and straddle it and keep talking while brushing her hair or texting, boobs all out in the open as though you're about to breastfeed a baby or something. We get it, you have very nice boobs, but who is so important that you MUST text them before you get dressed? And all of you are always standing right in front of my locker, so that I have to navigate an awkward array of blithely gossiping bodies in order to get dressed myself. Don't you notice how quickly and efficiently I do so? You can be quick and efficient too! Please, be quick and efficient!

It's not that I hate the female body or mind naked people in the locker room, but when you are not using the locker room for typical locker room functions (LIKE GETTING DRESSED), I mind. I mind when I have to hear all about how awesome that spin class was, or how much your boss sucks, or oh my god how you wish so-and-so would just dump her boyfriend. These are conversations that can be held IN THE LOBBY, where there are LARGE COMFY CHAIRS.

And don't even get me started on the times when one of you decides to make idle conversation with me. I'm just trying to get my stuff and get out of here- I have no interest in hearing your impassioned ode to your pilates instructor.

The least you could do, Naked Ladies, if you're going to traipse about the locker room, is be fatter than me- but NOOOOOOO you all have to be model/actress types, don't you? I have noticed many of you have back/torso/hip tattoos- do you stand around naked to show them off? Then why not get a tattoo that is easily seen? Go to hell, all of you.

And please move away from my locker.

Sincerely,
Cameron

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

DON'T PANIC

Ah, the immortal words of Douglas Adams. They come to me often, these days.

Hung out with Deirdre and Sarah tonight, and we watched The Business of Being Born, which is a really interesting documentary about how the medical industry has made having a baby into something rushed, scheduled, and overly medicated, which is something it shouldn't be. You may call me a hippie if you like, but the fact that 1/3 of deliveries in the US are by C-section and a significant percentage of THOSE are pre-scheduled is pretty fucked up.

But that's not the point. The point is that afterwards, we got to talking- these are my former Suitebonders, so of course we got to talking- and we talked about all the changes that are starting to happen with everyone: Deirdre's married now and is "half-moving" to Phoenix (that is, she's moving but Karl isn't and they're keeping their Los Feliz place), where she got a tenure-track job as a professor at ASU, and Sarah is parting ways with John as a roommate and moving in with Zoe. And I- well, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. I have vague notions about things like "in May I'm probably going to Texas" and "starting in June I'll be in Chicago for 6 weeks" and "in August we have a family reunion," but I have no big life plan like most people seem to. I don't even have a semblance of a life plan, and it's scary. It's what makes me think I need to get away from LA, just for the sake of starting my life.

But then I think about all my friends here, and my Book Club, which is finally starting to coalesce and become a staple in all of our lives, and how can I possibly watch the next season of Glee without Steve and Kirk? How can I not see Kevin every few weeks? Will my AFI friends, who I hardly ever see and who basically (I'm not counting you, Letia!) don't give a shit about me, cease to care about me at all? What about all those random boys I had/have crushes on who I never had the guts to approach? And I never made my documentary about the desert. How can I do that from San Francisco? How will it feel to not be involved in making movies AT ALL?

In short: is being unhappy a large chunk of the time really a reason to give up some of the few things that do make you happy?

Also, I completely fell apart over the weekend as far as exercising. I blame baseball: there were too many games to watch/listen to/go to. I went to my first game at Chavez Ravine last night, and even though we lost, it was a good game, and I hardly ever see Kevin Chatupornpitak and Dave Dittell anymore, so it was a lot of fun. Tomorrow I'm hopping back on the exercise bandwagon. The good news is that I've been eating fairly well- lots of yogurt and fruit, to be honest, but that's a hell of a lot better than "lots of chips." Deirdre made roasted veggies for dinner tonight, which is something I have to do more often, because it's so damn easy.

And finally, a plea: if any of you know anyone who needs a 2-month sublet in LA for June and July, Kara and I are looking for a subletter to take over my room between the time I move out and the time she moves out. This is, honestly, the main thing that's stressing me out at the moment, because I don't want to leave her hanging with no subletter. I'm going to be clearing out my room quite a bit in the next week, and then taking a lot of stuff home in a couple weeks, so hopefully it won't be too hard to find someone, but I know she'd rather live with someone that we know at least vaguely than someone random off craigslist. So please, if you know anyone, pass them on. Rent isn't bad and it's a cute apartment in Los Feliz.