Over the years, I've learned about at least ten false perceptions of me that are floating around out there. And obviously none of them are true, but they're all more interesting than I am.
In the bonus episode of Old Bodies Excisions, I talk a little bit in a disjointed fashion about this suicide girl, this bitchy bartender I know. Or I don't even know her, that's actually kind of the issue. When I moved to my new neighborhood, I didn't drink for about a year. And then when I started going out to the bar, I met a bunch of new people. Those new people knew her, of course, it's because she's a bartender that I hadn't met yet. But she sure thought that she already knew me in some way. From the minute I met her on Christmas night, when me and our mutual friend were the only two people in the bar, and she still didn't want me to stay for after hours… To the time that, again, I was the only person in the bar, so I heard her ask the door guy if I was cool, or what my deal was, or something to that effect. And I know that she said that because I heard him respond, oh, she's cool. And I wondered then, what's her problem with me?
Like, on Christmas, I thought it was weird that she didn't want me to stay, even though both our mutual friend and the door guy were vouching for me? That was, like, a little offensive. But then, the way she acted every time since then, like she had some pre-formed vendetta against me. And I wasn't even dating my super hot man at the time, so it's not like she had a reason to be super jealous about that. (But certainly, when she realized we were together, she acted a little bit cunty then, too.) Like, not only did I have people vouching for me, I was trying to be her friend. I was not being a fucking jackass, I don't think, anyway. All I've ever done was smile at her, and in fact, last time I did, while she was pouring a drink, she turned and said what? to me. And I was like, well, I’m never going to smile at you again.
I don't live in that neighborhood anymore, and I very rarely make it down there to go back to that bar. But if I do and she's working, I walk right back the fuck out. I don't know what the fuck I did back then to have her not like me, but I'm saying it now: You penny-faced bitch, tell me what I did to make you not like me.
I mean, I know I have at least one doppelganger because I've seen a photo of her. And I know that other people have too, because I actually got a text message from a friend of mine that was like, hey, I went and got my hair cut today, and I swear I saw you in one of the photo books. And you would assume it was me, because I was modeling at the time. I remember when I first saw that hair catalog photo, and I had to think, was this me? Did I do this? I never had my photo taken for hair like that. And it was just so funny that somebody had created my look for a photo shoot in, like, Oklahoma or something. I have, like, Ohio in my bones, I guess. I almost wish I had an infant to show that picture to, so that I could film their confusion for TikTok.
Also, while being out here, it's been a common occurrence for me to get confused for people who expressly do not look like me, but we fit in the same general categorization of person. For example: woman I don't want to fuck because she is over 130 pounds, or because she has short purple hair, or— Let's just say that there's more than one purple haired woman over 130 pounds in the world; Some of us are five foot six, others are six foot tall. Dudes don't know the fucking difference. All they know is that if they wouldn't stick it in, they can't really tell you what we look like beyond kind of round and a little bit purple. I used to get a lot of return clients that weren't actually for me after all, because of the confusion when they walked in.
When I was dating on the apps, I had a very sex-forward profile because I didn't have a lot of time to waste. I was a full time student and I was also working, so I just didn't have a lot of time to fuck around… in looking for fucking around. And I think that because of my candidness, dudes thought they could say whatever the fuck they wanted, which is not true. Sometimes they would even say things that were completions of thoughts that they'd begun inside their own heads. As a conversation starter, I would ask open ended questions like, what is one fun fact that you've learned this week? Or, what was the highlight of your week? Something positive.
And I don't think it was in response to my conversational opener, but at one point somebody said something about fucking in an alley, to which I responded, that is also a thing that occurs? I'm sure people do that a lot. It's pretty hot. Okay.
Probably a day and several paragraphs later, he realizes— and tells me that he realizes— that he had confused me for somebody else whom he had seen fucking in an alley during a show, and he thought it was interesting that she was then on the apps. At the time, I hadn't known why he said that, so I'd brushed it off. But then it started to make sense, that there was some girl out there who looked like me who was fucking in the alley. In my profile, I had said that I was already married, but I didn't say to my green card husband. I just wanted to put that out there for people who wanted that kind of future, that this wasn't going to be it, if there was any kind of future at all. And because my profile had said that I was married, he, I guess, just kind of assumed that that's what poly people do. Which, I guess, to a certain degree, it probably is, but also— The poly blend lifestyle— I guess it could in some way, I'm sure exhibitionism does play a part in why people seek other lovers. It just wasn't me in the alley.
And I wondered why he would swipe yes on me if he had been put off and disgusted by that woman, or angered that he had seen her in public and then on the app. It didn't make a lot of sense. But now, I guess I know that men are usually attracted to the things that they are repulsed by, because they want to learn how to control themselves and the object that obsesses them.
Once when I was in hair school, I was called to the interim dean's office because he had been told that I had been inappropriate in front of clients. And I said, what did I say? What did I say that was so inappropriate? Because I'm wracking my brain trying to think of any of the stuff about the apps that I could have possibly said to my friends, in front of anybody who didn't deserve that conversation. And I'm pretty sure it was not. I even started texting people. Hey man, when I was talking to you about butt stuff, were other people around us?
And I told the guy, I told the interim dean, I said, I cannot recall anything that would be inappropriate. And he said, well, what did you and your client talk about today? And I said, she's a psychologist, so we talked about my bipolar disorder. We talked about her son's math degree. We talked about narcissism. We talked about bowel diseases because we were both sufferers of such things. Now, we didn't talk about any of that stuff in graphic context and there were no swears.
Because, despite what people fucking think, I do have a bit of couth. I think that certain portions of the population call it code switching. I don't know if I'm allowed to. But I'm not going to swear in front of a client until they do it first. When I told the interim dean everything that I had said, he started to back down because he realized that he was wading a little bit into legal trouble here if he said that it was inappropriate for us to discuss our health issues.
I still don't know who had an issue with my conversation, but I do have a guess. I'll talk about her later. Basically, he was sorry that this happened to me, to be inconvenienced in such a way. It's just another example of somebody, whether purposefully manipulating the situation, or being too panicked about somebody else's life, the story they spin.
A long time ago, I was fired from a salon because I— it was the first salon that I had an apprentice license with— Oh wait, no, it was the second. Anyway, probably about a year into my hair career. No, that's not true. Maybe around two years into my hair career, I was fired from a salon, the second salon where my apprentice license was registered which, after that, means that I had one more chance to make it through about two years without getting fucked over by the next salon I worked for. I still don't really know why I was fired, because when I was let go, I was told that I knew why, even though I didn't. In order to protect somebody I don't know, or perhaps because he didn't actually have that information, my boss said somebody overheard me talking about something and it was offensive. I thought, what could I have possibly motherfucking said that was offensive? I didn't even really fucking talk to anybody. And he responded with this smile on his face that was like a Cheshire grin, like he knew something that I didn't. And he did know something I didn't, which was what I supposedly said.
You know what you said.
If you aren't going to tell me— Like, it was clear that he had already decided that he didn't want to deal with it, whatever it was, that he believed this person. But if you aren't going to tell me, how am I supposed to improve as a person? Whether this statement, this offensive statement was out of my lived morals, or was— I don't even know what could possibly be so fucking offensive to be worth a firing, but I guess it was. So, if you can think of one of those things, then, well, I guess you just don't think people change. I don't know. And I still don't know who said what, and what I even said that could have possibly been taken as offensive. But that's okay, that joint's closed now.
I once knew a guy who was accused of raping his roommate, and when he showed up to the bar, I told everybody. One of those girls told him that I had said that he raped somebody else, and he showed up with that person, who I had never met before, and confronted me about spreading rumors about him being a rapist of this particular person.
And I said, oh no, that's not the girl that I heard you raped. And that resolved everything. For some reason, that clarified a few things. But isn't that interesting? That this person, somebody in the group of girls that I was warning about a rapist, went and told the rapist that I was telling people about him raping people. Which I guess is actually the only true thing, but she was wrong about the person I said. Isn't that interesting?
My fantastical fictional reputations are a burden that I don't understand, but here we are. So, if you think you heard about me: No, you didn't. Like I told Susan: unless it comes from me, no you didn't.
[~*guitar solo*~]
Doppels Et Rumours