Place Your Bets, No Regrets

I'm not much of a gambler.

Except of course the gamble I made following my acting dreams.

Or the gamble I made with my life that night I consumed half a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Or the recent gamble I made this past weekend taking my crazy in-financial-debt ass on a trip to Las Vegas.

Okay so I gamble all the time.

It just wasn't until this trip to Las Vegas that I actually GAMBLED gambled, like at a table with chips, and a dealer, and some middle-aged cocktail waitress in an ill fitted outfit that's basically had it with your shit before she's brought you your first cocktail.

I have previously had no use for trading my hard earned cash in exchange for multi-colored monopoly pieces to partake in a game of chance. A game that's designed for the house to win and everyone else to loose. I guess this time I figured 'if you can't beat them, join them' and seeing as all my friends were gathered around the Black Jack table, the thought of going off alone to pull lever's for pennies seemed unappealing. And yes, I'm talking about the slot machines.

So there I was in my shorts, crop top, and a neon pink mesh back hat that read THE GOAT (rewards from a conquest the night prior). A rather frail, mild mannered Indian woman stood behind the table seemingly misplaced for all the power she now held over us. I threw down a crisp hundred dollar bill onto the plush, vibrant colored table and was handed a stack of red colored chips. The cards were dealt by her swift, professional hand as I took a sip from my free beer, feeling like a BOSS ASS BITCH.

That was until it disappeared faster than most of my previous relationships.

I'd like to say I had any willpower and decided to cut myself off but by this point several Heinekens have made their way into my bloodstream and my inhibitions were down.  What was really the harm, I thought, in pulling out another 40 bucks...in fact while I'm at it why not 60?

Good thing I don't have a gambling problem (or any money to my name), but it didn't stop me from pulling out another hundred bucks the next night as well.  I can't say I didn't have a blast though. Every time I won I jumped (literally out of my chair) for joy and started hooting and hollering like the obnoxious, easily excited, child I am. When I lost there was the excitement of possible winnings on the next hand. The problem was that while I was playing by the 'book' I wasn't paying attention to what was on the rest of the table. And the cards weren't really in my favor. So much for beginners luck.

I won in other ways this weekend. Swimming in our glorious pool under a giant Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel in the Vegas sun. Free entrance to the hottest clubs on the strip. Sneaking past security to meet Ne-Yo. Consuming a delicious steak dinner at the sister restaurant I work for with VIP service. Overall the real win, what made all the money I gambled and spent truly worth it, was getting to spend time with my favorite people in the world, trampling around Vegas like we were going to die young.

I don't regret any of my losses, but I find myself sitting here now a BROKE ass bitch, trying to pick up doubles at my godforsaken job, the looming ghost of a career dream still breathing down my neck. Post Vacation Depression is a real thing and it has always hit me pretty hard. The thrill of travel sends me soaring and I can soak up all it's beauty and excitement and feel truly fulfilled. Then when I am back, I realize my life is exactly the same as I left it. A mess.

A beautiful, adventure filled, raging mess.

There's a part of me that wants it this way, that likes it this way. It's a mess I made after all and I am completely aware of all the wrong turns and backing up out of it I have made through the years. Part of me just feels ill equipped to even handle life at all. I have a vagabond spirit that doesn't innately like rules or responsibility or a sense that I can't at any moment drop it all for something else.

It's why I live in New York. It's why I don't have a boyfriend. It's why I don't partake in the 9-5 grind.

I have a soul that most days is urging me to take off all my clothes and run stark naked through the streets of New York causing mass chaos. Let's face it, even in my right mind I've pushed the acceptable limit of running around partially clothed in public a few times.

Life to me is most poignant when shit is fucked up.  Who needs neat piles and pressed shirts and dull conversation from timid lips? In the end it's all over and what did any of it mean anyway? Why are we even here? And why is it so hard? And why don't any of us seem to ever have an answer?

And so my mind begins to fall down it's slippery slope to my ultimate anxiety attacks that leave me paralyzed in my bed starring at my ceiling like I did this morning.  No clue what to do because I don't really know what I want.

What I do know is as exciting as uprooting my life and moving out to Vegas seems it won't take me away form the key to all my problems. Myself.

And while I can run around making money, partying around the globe, dancing on tables, or stages, or poles, after all the excitement wears away, the only thing I will have truly lost is time. Time I should have spent making something of myself.

You know, right now I'm not really sure what that something is. I thought I knew but all my childhood dreams seem to have betrayed me. Or maybe I betrayed them.

All I know is once I figure out what it is I truly want, I won't be scared to place my bet, and take a gamble.



A Broke-ass-thank-you-Vegas Record.

Like Mother

For as long as I can remember I have harbored a deathly fear of three things; spiders, the execution of mathematical equations, and becoming my mother.

A prime example of freudian behavior, I grew up idolizing my father and resenting my mother. Maybe it's because my father would take us to Six Flags while my mother nagged us to vacuum the house. My father introduced me to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. My mother tried to put prunes in my oatmeal. My father would make us watch films of great directors such as Stanley Kubrick, and Quentin Tarantino and gave us books by authors like Tolk, Robbins, and Vonnegut. My mother fell asleep during action flicks.

My father was the coolest. My mother was the bane of my existence.

I would like to note here, that between the ages of 13-17 I took this resentment and used it to sharpen my vicious vocabulary in the emotionally scaring battles that took place between my mother and I.  We all know woman are the great goddesses of things said between breaths that make you wish you'd never been born, but this emotional manipulation takes on new forms when between mother and daughter.

The things I have said to my mother are actually atrocious and I have forgotten most of them for good reason. I like to think we have grown out of the "epic fights" stage but even now, a simple phone conversation will start with "Hey just wanted to see how you were?"and five seconds later I'm rolling my eyes shouting "MOM WHY DON'T YOU EVER LISTEN! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND."

It's like I HULK out on her. Who the hell was that talking to her own mother like that? Me? Oh, yeah. Me.

I should be ashamed. I should be disowned. But not by my mother.

You see, my mother has an uncanny ability to forgive. She is possibly the most self-less, caring, loving person I've ever met.  I mean, maybe everyone thinks that about their mother, but I'm talking from a third person perspective.  She is so damn good, and I mean that all encompassing. It's damn near saintly.

You would never know I shared that woman's DNA. Even she doesn't always believe I'm hers.

My mother, while I was home this past week, handed me this little journal she used to write in while she was pregnant with me. I sat down to read it, flipping through the pages of her barely eligible script. I stopped at this one entry written the day of my first birthday. She writes,

"I really want the best for you, and I want you to grow into the best person that you can be, whatever you decide to do in life be happy doing it. Be kind and considerate of others. Be unselfish and giving. Try to treat others the way you want to be treated. I'll try to teach you everything I've learned about life but I'm sure there will be times when you won't want to hear me tell you about things. You'll want to discover them for yourself. But I'll be here for you always when you need me. I hope that I can hep you in the struggles that we all have to encounter from time to time and I hope that I can be there for all the happy and momentous occasions that you have to look forward to. From the bottom of my heart. Happy Birthday to you!"

Tears came pouring out. I openly wept on my childhood bed, in my childhood room as it really sank in just how much my mother loved me. How as of late, I have grown into this kind of monster that writes about all her scandalous thoughts and actions on the internet and how she continues to be there for me with her undying support. Her love has been so strong and steady and unassuming that I think I have barely taken notice. But that's my mother. Never the one at a party to stick out with a loud mouth or obnoxious dance moves, but usually the one behind the scenes making sure the whole party runs smooth.

And here I am just tearing it up on the dance floor, not giving any fucks.

When I started this blog I have to say I was fully prepared to get a swift slap to the head. I knew that if I was going to do it right and spit the honest truth about where it was I had been and where it is I am going in this twenty-something post-grad stage things would come up I'd really rather the mom and pops not know. But now they know.

And instead of disowning me, they gave me support. Okay, so they flipped out for a second. But now I know I have their support. My pops even commented on the last publishing of the Lost Boys post

"Unfortunately, all these losers can never approach the all-around greatness of the first man in your life, your Daddy!"


Very true Dad.

I know I don't always say it, but Mom and Dad, I love you and I thank you for being the best parents a kid could have asked for. I know all those rules and "restrictions" you placed on me was for my own damn good and let's face it, I wouldn't have been a normal kid without having broken a few. At the end of the day though, I don't know another pair on this planet who could have better cared for and loved me and my big, fat mouth.

I used to say I got the worst of both worlds from you guys. But if I really think about it, I got the best.

So before this blog of mine continues further, I need them to know that I thank them for my life, I thank them for my overall nature, I thank them for that American Girl Doll I begged for who now resides in the attic.

Mom, I know you always say "you can't be my daughter" when I tell you about my liberal ideologies or that I just booked a flight to Asia on a whim, but I am here to tell you I most certainly can.

And I can only hope when I grow up, that I'll be a whole lot like you.




Thanks for giving birth to this Broken Record

A Ride or Die Bitch

A decade ago, while most of us were still in the bra training game, The Spice Girls said it right.

"If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends"

I may have a secret talent for attracting the most unavailable of men into my life, but I seem to also have a knack for attracting some of the best humans to walk this planet when it comes to my friendships.

Unlike in the dating game, we don't always seek our friends out based on a certain look, or walk, or talk, or our body's pheromones and what not going crazy over their body's what not when they're within a five block radius.

We don't bop around like pre teens in our living room, belting out "Call Me Maybe" on repeat after our first introduction. We don't wait patiently for them to text us for the first time and then spend HOURS trying to craft the perfect response back. We don't sift endlessly through outfits to figure out what to wear on dates, consulting third person parties to make sure our overall outfit says, "I won't fuck you tonight, but you should definitely want to fuck me in the future". 

Friendships just develop. Two people happen to be in the right place at the right time feeling equally sad or happy or stressed about their lives in a similar way and a bond is formed.

Sometimes it clicks instantly. A stranger you just met just GETS YOU. And you both are jumping up and down, white girl wailing "OMG I FUCKING LOVE YOU WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!?"

Sometimes it's your worst enemy. That chick you despise? The one who just irritates you for no good reason really? Yah. I'm sure you both could gab all day over pumpkin spice lattes because we all know hate and love are identical twin brothers from the same mother and you could easily mistake one for the other in the dark.

Whatever the situation these relationships between two humans come to be through the repetition of meeting and finding your SELF grooving with another self. A spiritual connection. A soul mate. 

Whoever said you get one soul mate in this life was severely unlucky. I've found them all over. Or maybe my soul's just slutty.

This weekend I celebrated the birth of one of my soul mates and she can tell you, I wasn't always her favorite. In fact, she didn't really have much use for me when we first met.

Of course that was back when I was a whiny, freshman girl crying over boys and now…well...I'm an older, still pretty whiny girl crying over boys, but somewhere in there she saw the real me or what not and fell madly in love. 

We were sitting at her kitchen table eating breakfast Saturday morning when she expressed her true feelings. 

"Lauren's my ride or die bitch". 

And it's true. I'm a die hard friend. But I am only that way because she's proven herself to be my die hard friend. And I've had die hard, tough as nails, would probably take a bullet for me, friends in the past that have taught me their ways in 'How To Be A Great Friend for Dummy's'.

The birthday girl for instance, is a force to be reckoned with. We are different in a million ways. She wears lovely dresses, I insist on dressing like a 12 year old boy. She is a lady in every sense of the word, and I have a mouth like a sailor and run around like a post pubescent boy who's just figured out how his penis works. Through all our differences though she has let me be me and me has always been enough. 

This weekend we cruised down the highway with our other two best friends in the car, "Oops I Did It Again" Pandora Radio blasting our way back to the past (how the hell do we still remember every word, riff, and odd late 90's pop drop that ever was?). The windows were down, the sun was warm through the chill of the fall, and the four of us were belting the lyrics subconsciously engrained in our brains forever, off key, in each other's faces. No fuck's to be found. 

Now that's true love.

I just want to state that this particular post has taken me days and days to write because I keep trying to include all the names and situations of all the people I love and have loved and I want to cry because I could write a short novel dedicated to people who have come into my life so unexpectedly and have been and continue to be a security net for all my crazy anxiety ridden breakdown and breakups. I trust they know who they are anyway. They have pulled me back from the cliff when I am insistent on jumping off. They have held me as I cried and never judged me for any of my weird, loud mouthed ways and words. They have always been at my birthday parties while I run around intoxicated from too much to drink and too much love from all the random and exquisite beings that gather in the same room at the same time for the sake of me.

They are the loves of my life.

If I ever meet a man who is set on boarding my crazy train, he better be ready to board their train too because I'm never letting them go. So it's their way or the highway. Like literally if you're not down for a N*SYNC sing along they'll kick you out of the car.

You ride with them, or you're dead to me.

Sincerely,

A "Break your neck if you mess with them" Record

The Island of Lost Boys

If you are close to me, or hell, even if you're just meeting me, you will probably gather quickly that I don't have the best luck when it comes to men. 

Let's start from the beginning. My infatuation with humans of the opposite sex started when I was just a wee little tot trampling through the planet. My mother told me that I would just go up to little boys on the street and try to hold their hands. Or kiss them. And in kindergarten, I even came home exclaiming that I had married one of them.

The point is I have always loved boys, I always will, and whether I like to admit it or not, they take up a good 25% more of my brain space then they ever should.

The problem here lies in the fact that as much as I love boys, I have let few boys who truly love me into my life.

At 23 the list of men I have accumulated  in my dating history is advanced to say the least. I have been on (and off and then on again) OKCupid at least five (? I really don't know) separate times. I have kissed upwards of a hundred men randomly found in streets and bars and venues all over the globe (yes, the globe). I have flirted and teased and admired from afar. Just today I saw this man walking past me and I actually stopped mid walk, and followed him with my gaze like a giant creep-o because he was SO DAMN ATTRACTIVE LORD HELP ME WHERE ARE THIS MEN FABRICATED?! 

I'd say I probably fall madly in love at least three times a day.

But while I find myself constantly falling in love with these men of the world, there are very few that I have actually liked. I mean really liked. These men cause a stampede of butterfly's through my core that give most the delight and euphoric sense they are falling in love.

It gives me indigestion. 

I have spent years building up a titanium fortress around my heart so they can't get in again. Who do you think you are just knocking all that down in five minutes? I SAID WHO SIR?!

Let's note the wonderful (and I say that because they really are) men I have fallen for have always chased after me first.  They have not been the most handsome, the funniest, the most financially (or physically) well endowed. But for some reason I can't help but becoming obsessed with every single part of their being. Things like how that one tooth on the bottom row, right in the front, is crooked or the sound of their laugh or the fact that they put coffee in their cereal because they don't like the taste of milk.  These traits and attributes are permanently seared in my memory and are no more exceptional than any other human's weirdness except for the fact that it is THEIR'S.  

These men pursue me for a said period of time while I try to run far, far away (because I already know where this is going) but can't seem to pick my feet up from off the ground. I am emotionally paralyzed. Aware of what's to come but succumbing to the delightful and semi-nauseating feelings of all those butterflies frenzied in my soul.  

Until one day, just like that, they're gone. 

We spend an amazing day, or night together. Maybe I had just bought them a bagel and kissed them goodbye as they were boarding the train home for Thanksgiving. Or we had just slept together on my friends daybed talking about what we've done that we've been most proud of in our life to date. I've stared into their eyes as I've said goodbye. Kissed them. Watched them walk away. Never to be seen again. Never even heard from them again. Even if in the days following I had the stupidity to text or call and say "Hey, whatsup? Where have you been? Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong?" 

Am I doing something wrong? 

My lovely girlfriends say things like "No, Lauren, you're just picking the wrong men" "They are just intimidated by your greatness" "Boys are just dumb"

My male friends would say "They're just not interested anymore, Laur".

And after one, maybe even two mishaps any girl could easily delude herself into the pointing the finger at the penis clad child or just brushing it off to a lack of interest.

But at this point, I know there's got to be something wrong with me.

And not me in the sense that I did something WRONG because I didn't.  I've always been nothing but the COOLEST MOTHERFUCKING HUMAN (I said coolest, not calmest). But there's obviously a problem. 

There's a pattern. It's so calculated I could draw up the blueprints. I don't even know how my friends have been so gracious with me through all of these. 

Even my therapist has had it.

The meeting, the falling, the obsessing over, the disappearing act.

Just call me the Houdini of the dating world. 

I'll never truly know why these particular men just fall off the planet the way they do. I mean they'll never have the courage to say why, that's why they felt the need to disappear in the first place. 

And I know I'm not alone in this. My girl friend told me she calls it the "Island of Lost Men" but anyone who disappears from a relationship (no matter how casual or serious) with another like that isn't a man so I'm reclaiming it. 

My most recent disappearing act was this kid who came up to me at a festival and asked me to dance, with the most innocent of intentions, who I spent a wonderful hot, sweaty, three days in a tent with. I have let him sail off to join the rest with a pain in my heart but an understanding that there's nothing more I can do if they want to go. 

And with that I have gathered what's left and sailed off to my own Island of Lost Souls to search for the validation in my own life. That is, again, so apparently missing.

Because no boy, no matter how awesome, or stupid, or just plain ignorant should have the ability to send me tumbling into these black holes of depression and self loathing. 

Where's my undying love for myself?

The only undying love I have had in my life (besides from my terrific and seriously under appreciated parental units) has been from my friends. My gay best friend who'll have my favorite wine and cheese plate already waiting when I visit him at work. My insanely fierce girlfriend who inspired me to write this blog (see: chelseatwentysomething.blogspot.com). My other insanely fierce girlfriend who came up with the name for this blog in five minutes while I had been mulling over it for a week with no success. My incredible roommates who I am have been blessed to make a home with and my life long girlfriends who knew me before I even grew tits.

They are gems among gems and have provided me with a stable and constant love. Every story of me meeting a guy, allowing said male to bend, break, rip, kick, spit at my self worth leaving it cold and lonely in a ditch is followed by my friends picking it back up, feeding it love, and repeating- until I get it through my thick skull-- that my self worth is not defined by the actions of these men.

And that I should probably get my shit together.

And having the love of these beautiful humans is always enough for me to get back up and try, try again. Because if they're still there at the end of the day, than I must be doing something right. 

Until next time, 

Your (maybe) Broken (but very hopeful) Record

Starting From Scratch...Again.

What is it about that first, crisp, smell of fall in the air that makes the gay best friend in my head go "look at your life, look at your choices"?

Perhaps it's the fact that for 18 years of my life fall brought with it newly sharpened pencils, fresh pages of Five Star notebooks, and the highly anticipated "first day back to school" outfit that had been very carefully debated, chosen, and friend approved during the week prior. This outfit alone was a personal statement to everyone in school that you were cooler, hotter, and WAY more mature than you were just two and a half short months ago. It was a representation of how far you had come and just how far you wanted to go in terms of the adolescent social ladder of success which, let's face it, for a lot of us was top priority back then.

Now here I sit, two years after my schooling has been complete. Sipping my black coffee, the chill of fall creeping in through the screen from my  window. I should be loving this. I usually adore the fall. My birthday is in the fall. Thanksgiving is in the fall, the holiday devoted to stuffing our faces (and giving thanks and stuff). Pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin munchkins, pumpkin scented candles, pumpkin french toast (is there anything that hasn't been done with pumpkin?).

Yet I can't help but yearn for the start of another school year. Not because I miss schooling really, but because I miss that feeling of getting a fresh start. A redo. Fall used to signify a new beginning...and nowadays I can't help but feel stale. A new year in my life (my birthday remember?) is approaching and I'm not really sure what I've done in the past 24 years of my life. And I'm not really sure what I want to do with the next 20. I was hoping my poor life choices would cut me off at like 30 and then I wouldn't have to worry about the rest.

I knew this would be a problem two years ago when I graduated with my basically useless degree in what I like to refer to as imagination (Musical Theatre) and was handed the reigns of my soon-to-be rest of my life. From here on out I was going to be held wholly responsible for whatever happened in the years to come. Would I be famous? Would I be broke? Would I be that crazy homeless person on the 6 train reeking of piss and singing "Under the Boardwalk" deliciously off key ? Would I be the 50 year old, overly enthusiastic, barista at the Starbucks who is WAY TOO HAPPY for 6am?

Like, didn't anyone KNOW me? I am, at my core, reckless, eccentric, over analytical, afraid of commitment, and just a big ol' HOT (hot being the key word) mess. Y'all want me to be responsible for my LIFE? I didn't even like being responsible for my roommates plants when she was away on vacation this month. 

In the two years since graduation I have made a beautiful, wondrous, ABC Family worthy life for myself. I have drained my bank account, traveled the world, fallen in love with strangers, almost killed myself with alcohol, raged my face off, ingested a multitude of substances (separately and all at once). 

Yet every fall I start to get the sense that my life is going nowhere and I should, in fact, start picking my shit up off the floor and getting it together. 

So with this new blog I would like to grant myself a new beginning. I have fallen off the metaphorical horse a multitude of times and to be quite honest my ass is fucking sore and I'm over having to hop back on. But hop I must because otherwise I'm just going to "hands up pants down" this life and become one of those crazy people who abandon life and society as we know it and just shack up in some abandoned house in the woods for eternity. Like Thoreau.

I invite you now, dear reader, to follow me on my developmental journey of twenty-something. Lost and confused and desperately seeking a clue as to what the hell I want to be doing with this life I have been so recklessly cast to care for. 

It will be filled with lots of question marks, commas, run on sentences, and parentheses. I will not be politically correct, socially correct, grammatically correct, and the only reason this isn't littered with spelling errors is because of auto-correct.

However I can promise to provide you, precious audience, with tales of my ever adventurous life. Some sexy-time tales of a single, overtly sexual female living in Manhattan. My 30 day trial with Bikram yoga in an effort to find zen in this ever racing mind of mine.

Essentially this is my own little personal experiment, seeking answers, seeking validation, seeking to record the mistakes I have made and continue to make so maybe I can be held a little more responsible. To finally make some changes and stop sounding like such a ... a.. 

Broken Record.