The Book of Questions: Parents, Urine and Torture.

It's time again to delve into Gregory Stock, PH.D's borderline-inappropriate collection, The Book of Questions. Today we take the Whitman's Sampler approach:

Question 139. Would you rather spend a month on vacation with your parents or put in overtime at your current job for four weeks without extra compensation?  

Wow. Do people really hate their parents this much? Call me naive but I think my parents are great. I wish I had the money to take them on vacation. If I could I would fly us to Italy for a month and I would eat cannoli with my mom and go to a Parmesan factory with my Dad and we would drink wine and laugh and they would fall asleep by 9pm and I would have feverish late night rendezvous (is there an Italian phrase for that?) with a steamy motorcycle-riding local named Nico who has magic stubble that doesn't slice your face when you kiss him. Seriously, even if you aren't tight with your parents, vacations naturally allow for doing your own thing so you wouldn't have to spend time with them if you just organized your schedule well. And isn't anything better than working overtime without getting paid?? I don't know about you but I'm salaried and I clock out at 5pm on the nose. Anything more than that and the Resentment Calculator kicks in. "It's 5:22! That's $12.87 down the drain if I left RIGHT NOW" I’m sorry, even if you can't stand your parents, this question boils down to Vacation vs. Work and vacation must win. 

Question 61. Can you urinate in front of another person?  

First of all, um, yeah, duh, I'm a girl and we are biologically engineered to gather in restrooms and speculate about the intentions of attractive men while taking turns peeing. Also, football and concerts and camping are pretty much my favorite things, so double-duh. However, I don't think this is the answer you had in mind, Dr. Gregory. I think you are creepy and weird and although I am perfectly comfortable peeing in front of another person, you asking me if I'm comfortable makes me uncomfortable. Now I feel gross and there is an imaginary-yet-overwhelming urine smell in my nose.  

Question 54. What is the worst psychological torture you can imagine suffering? 

Easy!

 

Dating in Los Angeles. 

You want answers about Benghazi? Find the one girl in the group who is single and in her thirties. Plant her on a first date in Venice at a candle-lit corner table made of reclaimed wood. Pair her with a smart, creative, attractive professional who makes her laugh and smiles dreamily at her and simultaneously displays emotional maturity and boyish charm by confessing that he really likes her. Have them excitedly discuss all the possibilities for their second date: Restaurants they want to try, shows they want to see, meals they want to cook, hikes they want to take. Finally, have them part ways, have him seal this enchanting evening with an adorable goodnight text and BOOM. He will mysteriously never contact her again and within a week she will have clawed herself raw trying to make sense of it and will divulge anything you want to know if you can please just explain the enigma that is The Awesome LA Guy Who Is Obviously Into Me But Then Disappears. Done! I would like a consulting position with the State Department, thank you. Also, I would like a creative, professional thirty-something year-old man in this godforsaken town to date me for the love of all that is good and holy I'm in the prime of my life isthattoomuchtoask.  

Now I need a cocktail. Well played, Dr. Gregory. Well played. 

Lists!

I love lists. This will probably be a recurring entry theme, since I get a thrill out of making bullet points. The following lists the contents of my purse. I think this is a fun, minimally invasive way to get insight into people. It appeals to the amateur detective in me, who still dreams of starring in the Nancy Drew film franchise. 

• Keys with plastic monkey head fixed on my house key for easy identification because I love efficiency. And monkeys
• A paperclip
• An unreasonably expensive yet wonderfully luxurious Fresh Sugar lip treatment stick
• Laura Mercier lipstick in Poppy
• Three lip glosses that I took from a Borghese promotional modeling job. They were brand new and supposed to be testers. Whoopsy! They're actually really silky and awesome so everybody go out and buy one to make up for the three that I stole
• A somewhat melted Pacifica solid perfume in Lotus Garden
• Keys to my brothers’ apartment building
• Keys to my friend Chel’s apartment building
• Wallet with $3 and way too many dining and bar receipts. At a glance, the first two are from back-to-back meals at Lulu's Cafe. If you've ever eaten breakfast there, this needs no explanation 
• Iphone headphones
• Iphone charger
• Iphone
• Makeup case with Advil, Emergen-C, Benefit luminizer, Visine and other essentials one requires when one shows up to work hung-over. Also 2 tampons because I'm a girl. And ear plugs because I'm an old lady disguised as a girl
• Two tea bags because I love tea and what if the car breaks down and I have to fend for myself for days in the wilderness? A cup of Lady Grey will sooth me as I listen to the howls of approaching predators, obvs
• Wine key. If you have to ask why then you don’t know me
• A dime
• A thumb drive loaded with all my writing as well as TV and movie scripts I want to read
• Deodorant because I sweat all the time. Nervous, excited, whatever - basically anytime I'm doing anything not boring, I'm sweating
• 3 Pilot Precise V7 roller ball pens in blue. They are my favorite and I have three just to be absolutely certain I will always have one on me, because I’m obsessive like that. I also carry a cheap black ballpoint from the Tropicana Las Vegas that I offer when people ask me if they can borrow a pen
• Tiny Moleskine for jotting down funny things that happen to me. Also for ripping out pages to stick stale gum in
• 3 brain teaser puzzles, torn from a 2009 Puzzle Master desk calendar
• A roll of pink doggy poop bags
• Paper coupons held together with a giant binder clip. Coupons include: 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond, a Living Social voucher for a facial in Santa Monica, a Groupon for $40 at Amoeba Records, a Victoria’s Secret coupon for $10 off any purchase, 25% off at World Market and $1.50 off any size bottle of Wellness Formula capsules  
• Wintergreen Altoids because the normal flavor makes me gag
• Two-month old issue of Los Angeles magazine
• A hair clip
• Prescription glasses
• Non-prescription sunglasses
• Travel-sized Neutrogena sunscreen

And there you have it. I feel so vulnerable! Meh, no I don’t. I mostly just feel like I need to clean out my purse.

Dream On

I keep a dream journal. There’s a Black n’ Red and a pen tucked down the side of my mattress and the first thing I do when I wake up is write down everything I remember. I have incredibly detailed and cinematic dreams, I have since I was a child and it wasn’t until I got older and started sharing them with others that I realized I wasn’t normal – that while I’m dreaming about evil music boxes that form a militia and I’m the only force keeping them from total world domination*, most people are dreaming about their grandma or (this kills me) don’t remember their dreams at all.

My dreams are always very complex. They have story arcs and act breaks and climaxes and cliffhangers. They are also closely tied to whatever is going on in my life: When I feel happy I might have a dream about me and my best friend strapping on vests with tiny hot air balloons attached and soaring around my neighborhood. When I feel stressed I might have a dream about my ex boyfriend and I being trapped in the unhinged car of a roller coaster that is suspended miles above the ocean and the only way to stop from careening off and plummeting to our deaths is to throw our weight around in a way that keeps it on the tracks. And when I have really acute anxiety about something, I have my recurring nightmare that someone is stalking me to kill me and we play cat and mouse until eventually the killer (always cloaked in black) corners me and I try to scream but can’t find my voice until just as he lunges to strangle or stab me (always one of those two); I’m finally able scream but it’s too late because I’m being brutally murdered. That’s a fun one for boyfriends because I wake up screaming in a cold sweat. Fortunately it’s rare and generally reserved for major life transitions, like when I’m contemplating changing jobs or moving or ending a relationship. I actually have a great appreciation for that dream because it’s a very clear knock on the head that I’m unhappy with my life and need to change things up. On a few occasions it has happened unexpectedly, which is fascinating-slash-alarming because then I have to go on a psychological witch-hunt to identify what’s bothering me so that the nightmares will stop. Good times!

Sometimes I dream in other languages. If I’ve been reminiscing about Peace Corps, I’ll dream in Arabic that night, which I love because I don’t really remember any Arabic so as soon as I wake up I jot down all the vocabulary I can recall. The other day I downloaded the Wunderlist app for my Iphone and just for kicks I decided to navigate all the settings and features in French. Right on schedule, that night I dreamed in French that I was the headmaster at a prestigious boarding school nestled among lavender fields and there was a visiting headmaster who wanted to observe the school to get ideas for his own up the road and I wanted to run him off because he was my competition but also I was secretly in love with him.

Like the French boarding school, most of my dreams are purely entertaining. Like the one I had a couple weeks ago where I was on a guided tour of Buckingham Palace and I got separated from the group and Prince William struck up a conversation with me and before I knew it we were having a clandestine affair but I was also staying at the palace as a guest of the Royal Family, playing tennis and acting like everything was normal. I felt so ashamed about it until Kate Middleton took me aside and told me she knew about the affair and that it was fine, that everyone in Europe has mistresses and that she was glad Prince William had chosen me because she really liked me and enjoyed my company. This dream is a little disappointing because I don’t find Prince William the slightest bit attractive but it’s nice to know that my brain is comfortable justifying extra-marital affairs.

In the words of my father, after I described a dream over the breakfast table in 8^th grade: “Jeepers. Even in sleep you have a flair for the dramatic.”

I go through phases logging my dreams. I haven’t done it for years but I started up again last January because I was experiencing a really damaging artistic block and I hoped that recording my dreams might harness the creative juices that were flowing while I slept. At the time I thought they could be the catalyst for a screenplay or a character study or some short stories but after 10 months of steady tracking they have established themselves as nothing more than deeply bizarre snapshots of my psyche so now I mostly record them so that if I die suddenly in a car crash, my friends and family, entrenched in a grief that only wants to remember me as vibrant and beautiful, will have something tangible to remind them what a loon I was.

And now you can, too! I’ve decided to open up my dream journal to you so you can enjoy the inner workings of my cracked-out subconscious. Instead of revisiting dreams I’ve already had, we’ll start fresh together and I’ll report the most interesting ones to you as I digest them. So none to talk about yet, since the clock starts with this post but I’m sure there will be some doozies as the holidays draw near. Sweet dreams!

*All the dreams I mention are real. This one occurred in high school the night before my AP English exam.