Hey guys, it's Jen. I had to pour myself a drink for this one. If you're interested in joining me, run to your nearest luxury liquor store and get yourself a $35 bottle of Rumchata. Then go to your closest dollar store and grab a silicone ice tray that makes large square, aha, cubes.Then go home and fill those with filtered, not distilled, water and let sit for 6 to 8 hours.
Wake up and put the ice cubes into a Trader Joe's jam jar that you didn't take the label off of. And pour about half the bottle of Rumchata into the jar. Not even covering all of the ice cubes though. And then just sip and enjoy.
A little bit too big of a sip. Not really as pleasurable. The smaller sips that barely graze the tongue are indeed most enjoyable. Sorry. Fuck. Okay.
So, what it is today is I wanted to talk about the time I had to get a ring cut off my finger once. And, uh...
Well, the story started in high school. But the ring getting cut off my finger didn't happen until I was 35.
I guess for the sake of brevity, we'll start there. I used to hang out at this bar that is... It's closed. You know how I am about bars. Well, this joint had decent drinks and food, and a really, really bitchy bartender, who just, for some reason, loved me. I don't know why; I really appreciate it, though.
One day... I'm sitting there alone. Like, I think I was literally the only person in the bar. Just the way I like it. And, this just basic girl... Who is one of those people who just kind of— when you look at them, they look like they have braces a little bit? Or, like, they should have braces in a weird way? Like, it just would fit their face?
This girl person with her basic bob haircut, slams into the stools. And then climbs onto them funny. And then she's like, this is how we do it in Chicago, or something like that. I looked over and I was like, oh no. And she looked at me. She had definitely already seen me since I was the only person in the bar…
And this is how much I tell you, I may not have said this yet, but I will probably say it in the future. This is how much I have NOT changed, I am the same person, I was born this motherfucking way, and I will be spotted out of a crowd like this:
This girl turns to me and goes, Jenny Gorman? calling me by my full motherfucking maiden name. And she says, remember me? It's Pamela from school, from high school. You used to take me to all these cool places. Oh my God, you were so cool.
Like she literally— I know it sounds so ridiculous, but she literally started gushing about like, what a cool time we had when she was a freshman and I was a sophomore. And that was the year that I met my boyfriend and stopped talking to everybody, basically, because I dropped out of schoo, now that I had something better to do on the weekdays.
I dropped out of school because I didn't really have a good time then. Great, somebody thought highly of me and thought I was cool back then, but I was having a difficult time and I didn't— It's very jarring to be reminded of things like that suddenly that you thought you dealt with, but you hadn't, especially when you've already moved two different states over a decade.
Anyway, I was perhaps colder to her than I could have been, but I was just like, oh yeah, I remember. I said that's not, you know, my name has changed, meaning that I had gotten married and then divorced.
But instead, she said, oh, I changed mine too. Now I go by Eva Braun— because I can, because this is my story. That's what she goes by now. I was like, okay, you just changed your name for no re - okay. I was like, oh, are you in theater or something? You know, do you do movies? And she's like, no.
That is something I don't understand that I guess I'll have to address some other day, but when people just change their names for no reason. I say as somebody who does hair under a different name, but I have a reason.
So that interaction happens, and I'm like not in the kind of vibe to be interacting with somebody who thought I was cool as a freshman in high school, I'm just not there right now. And the bartender isn't really having it because this girl is kind of talking back to her in a weird way. After she talks to me, she like, asks the bartender, like, where are you from?
And the bartender just goes, hell, which is such a hack bad girl thing to say. But it was, it was pretty accurate coming from her, cuz she means Northern Florida. At some point I just go outside, I don't want to deal with that.
Just a few minutes later, I'm out on the front patio and I hear yelling. I hear two women yelling, and the bartender is chasing the girl from my high school out the door; I can see her little black and white plaid pants disappearing down the street.
In the commotion, I had ducked down under the table and apparently broken a ring onto my finger as I went. The large gemstone that was on it broke off. My finger had twisted enough that it began to swell.
And eventually the ring was stuck. And then eventually my finger was fat and slowly turning purple. The next day, I had to go and get the ring cut off at urgent care, which they had to use this tiny little can opener, basically
I'll tell you what, like a couple months later, Eva Braun showed up again at the bar with a fucking Interpol-ass haircut. Like, just like one of those heavy-bang, short-side-shave situations. And for some reason, nobody fucking recognized her but me. Even the bartender that she threw a beer on, Little Miss From Hell said, no, that's not her, I would know.
And I just felt so crazy, like, I'm just suddenly supposed to accept this girl because she got bangs? Absolutely not. I remember what she did, even though the bartender is too dumb to fucking remember. Elephants are my favorite animal for a reason.
And then this girl went on to steal her supposed best friend's boyfriend and make out with him on the patio right in front of her supposed best friend- slash- that guy's ex girlfriend; and me, the girl she thought was really cool in high school.
Which is not, this is not the kind of influence I would ever intend to have. This is not the kind of bitch you're supposed to be, stealing your friend's boyfriend and making out with him right here like that. So I went up and I fucking told her so. I said, you're hurting somebody right now. And you know that and you're doing it on purpose. So you guys should probably fucking take off. And then I walked away. I don't really remember what happened, but that's what I told them. I just said, you know— and maybe as like a kid, maybe that cool me— maybe cool me got through to her, you know what I mean?
Eventually, I don't know when, the bartender did tell me that she realized it was the same girl. And I was like, of course, you fucking asshole. But thank you for admitting it. It had already been confirmed by the girl whose boyfriend she had stolen. I was like, I swear to God, that's a girl who I saw. And she said, we went to high school, we went to high school together. And then she threw a beer on the bartender.
And this girl's like, yeah, her original name is Pamela. But now she goes by Eva Braun.
And I was like, why? She just works in skincare. Why did she change your fucking name just for that? And then ironically now, again, I do hair under a different name. But that's for a reason!
Now the girl whose boyfriend she stole, I don't really talk to her either because she chose the wrong side in a fight. She can be excited to see me all she wants to. But I'd rather not see her. And I do not consider us on speaking terms. Perhaps more on that some other day.
But, that's the story about how I had to get a ring cut off my finger because of this girl from high school. Really, it's just because I wanted to talk a little bit of shit about all these people. Whatever. Fuck them. Bye.
[~*guitar solo*~]
Broken Rings and Second Meetings