Summertime approaches.

For me, that means sleeping in tight black wifebeaters and long-legged pajama bottoms that I roll up past my knees in my sleep.

The last couple years, couch-surfing aside, I've been living in beach towns. This isn't purposeful- I don't "do" beaches. But something about the people, constantly out of doors, jogging, bodies vibrant, and the creativity that ocean winds seem to bring... I like it.

I've finally hit the goal I set for my body, however many years ago I fantasized about getting back to my nineteen year-old weight, pre-desk job, pre-medication that fucked with my metabolism so hard so quickly.

I look at myself in the mirror and it isn't enough.

I want to see leanness.

As lean as I can get with this bone structure. I'll never be my modelesque sister but, on the other hand, I have an ass and a rack.

My clothes are... no longer fitting. My pants hang off my hips, my favorite belt has run out of holes to use, so is of little use until I find another or punch an extra hole in it to use in the meantime.

Years ago, when my body started changing, I didn't realize it. I should have, but you see yourself every day in the mirror. You don't notice those extra pounds building. One of my friends mentioned that we have a body image so set in us of what we look like that our mind clings to it, even after the body has changed so much it's near unrecognizable.

I'm not sure if that's true.

When I finally realized that I would no long be able to fit into my clubbing clothes, my fun work clothes, I went to Target and bought some storage bins, loaded them up with an entire wardrobe and shoved them into my parents' attic, swearing I would fit into them again one day.

So many people do that. Save clothes they'll never be able to wear again. Buy clothes that don't fit and promise themselves that if they buy that dress or pair of pants, that'll be the motivation they need to lose the weight.

I'm not sure if that's true. I do know that very, very few of my friends have ever met the goals they've set for themselves.

It's a hard thing to do.

We have time we allot for certain things. It's such a limiting factor to what we accomplish, and the things that we spend time on are those that are important to us in some way, even if we don't enjoy the activity... otherwise we wouldn't be doing them so often. It might simply be habit, afraid of changing, unwilling to change.

Which is why, as I mentioned to Aldonza in an earlier comment, I don't ever think of myself as smarter than another person. I'm quick, yes. But there are so many different kinds of intelligence, intelligence formed on how we lived (and continue to live) our lives. IQ tests are rubbish, in my opinion. The idea, sure, is good. The math behind it is... odd. But what do you expect from a social science?

I like the idea that there are different kinds of intelligence. That everyone has something, no matter how odd or apparently useless, that they are a genius at. Because they learned how to be through exposure, through repetition. We teach our brain how to do these things, adapting and adjusting through experience.

So when a friend tells me they are going to lose weight, or build muscle, and then they don't, I don't think of them as lazy failures. They just didn't allot the time.

And, really, there are many other things out there do be doing with our time than obsessing about our appearance.

When I moved to this apartment, I got those boxes out from the attic. I figured I would be needing them soon. I spent an afternoon whooping with glee as I tried on clothing I forgot I had ever bought, outfits six years old that I could still wear and would still be fashionable because of how I dress. Almost everything fit, or was too large.

That was the beginning of January.

Now I'm stuck here at April. My clothes no longer fit. My favorite pair of ass-hugging jeans is loose. I don't have a pair of slacks to my name. No tight sweaters, no cute blouses, nothing.

And it's April.

I don't shop during spring and summer. I don't wear bright colors, and I certainly don't wear pastels. I refuse to wear light colored jeans. Floral prints? Christ, no.

I usually load up on "summer" clothes at the end of winter, when things are shifting into clearance. That wardrobe lasts me through the season, until "normal people" clothes come back into season at the end of summer.

It makes me feel like a dip. This whole post kinda makes me feel like a dip.

I have to valet when I get my hair done.

I broke two nails when I was out at June Lake a couple weekends ago, and I whined about it.

My fifteen year-old self would punch me in the face if she heard me whining about my nails, or handing over my keys to the parking attendant at the salon.

But here I am. Finally where I wanted to be with my body, finally able to get into the clothes I loved so much, and I'm enjoying it.

I did notice, looking back, once I lost that extra weight, how easy it was to slip into a sexless zone. Not that you're not having sex, but that you are not viewed with sexual desire. You become, essentially, without sex. Having no sexual impact on the people around you.

I often wonder if that's what it will be like when I hit my late thirties or mid-forties or whatever age it is when I stop being considered sexually desirable by the mass, whenever my body starts creating those cues that indicate to the rest of the world that I'm no longer the bright and bouncy girl that I was.

I enjoy things right now. Reading about physical desirability on the part of women and the accessibility that affords them for high status males, looking back over the months and watching my dating pool open to men I would have had a hard time accessing a few years ago. Wondering how far I'll be able to go with this body project, and what that will allow me to accomplish in the end.

And I'm exhausted. Tomorrow is a glorious day we like to call "Friday" and I plan on enjoying it.

Poor Leno...

I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona for the first time last night.

Typical Woody Allen mood permeated the thing, I must say. I'm not the biggest fan of his style, but I did enjoy the film.

Juan Antonio's constant sincere self-disclosure was excellent. He truly meant every word, with both women. I've yet to see mention of self-disclosure as a means of seduction in the PUA community, save for brief allusions to it in The Art of Seduction. I suppose I'll have to keep digging.


I decided to skip the audition today. I read into it further and realized that there was no way in hell I was going to be part of any show that would want me to act as if I were someone else, to shrug off my mellow exterior for some dramatic persona to entertain masses I can hardly stand on my best of days.

My sister was disappointed, but ever the pleaser, hid it well. Unfortunately, she's a talker. So I'm sure she told anyone who would listen to her about how I chose not to go at the last minute.

Can you blame me?

I'm not part of her world. I have no interest in being part of her world. Our entire lives we've been each other's opposites. While we look alike, we're built completely different, we think differently, we engage differently. I'm quite content with her being who she is, and me being who I am, but she constantly feels like I should be more like her, and is constantly disapproving of my choice in clothing and how I interact with people.

She reads a single book every two or three years.

I read somewhere between one to five books a week on average, depending on my schedule.

She dyes her hair blonde. Various, but continuous, shades of blonde.

I've dyed my hair red, brown, gold blonde, bleach blonde, red with black tips, blue, chocolate, before finally settling on this soft black with brown and red highlights.

She's built like a couture model: almost no curves to speak of. She's the fashionable rail.

I'm built like a pin-up model: my entire body is curves.

Her eyes are blue and gray, while mine are blue and yellow.

I've got around 13 hours of ink on my body.

She pierces her ears.

I spend fifteen minutes in the bathroom in the morning. Make-up is for when I feel like bothering, and is generally an annoyance and cramps my already hectic schedule.

She spends anywhere from forty minutes to an hour and a half in the bathroom. Make-up is a necessity. Make-up is how she zens out. She doesn't mind getting up an hour earlier just so she can be pretty when she goes to the store.

My room is organized. Even though I recently moved, everything is in its place. No clothes on the floor, nothing strewn about.

Her room looks like a landfill in Beverly Hills. Shoes, make-up, clothing, fashion magazines, jewelry exploded. You need a bulldozer to shut the door.

The majority of my disposable income goes towards books and events.

The majority of her disposable incomes goes towards Nordstrom and dining out at fancy restaurants that she can't really afford.

The main guy (GV8) I'm seeing is a childless, wealthy businessman in his early forties, who happens also to be a sexually dominant swinger. He plays beta to cover up his colorful history, but switches into alpha when pressed.

Her boyfriend is a 24 year old father and divorcee, who barely makes ends meet (has moved into my parent's house, actually) and is constantly procrastinating on everything he possibly can. He also spends most of his money on clothes and fine dining. He'd be an alpha male, probably, if he'd just deal with his damage. He has social skills, but he lets himself be railroaded and controlled so easily.

I'm plagued with depression and social anxiety. In fifth grade, I was such an emotional wreck, my doctors thought I had begun to develop ulcers because of what the stress was doing to my body. It just continued from there. No ulcers, though.

Somehow, the family depression skipped my sister. Even though both sides are strong carriers, she missed that bullet. And anxiety? None.

In high school, I was a loner. The outcast oddball. I almost flunked out of my junior year, then skipped my senior year, graduating a year early through independent study so I could get the hell out of there.

In high school, she was a cheerleader, on the dance team, choir president, dating first the rebel indie guitar player a grade above her, then moving onto the choir director's son. Straight A's.

In college, I took to drinking, drugs, and lots of wild sex. I was kicked out of my first college because I managed to flunk or drop all but two classes through three semesters. Too busy getting high and drunk, or playing cards at the local indie coffee shops, smoking cloves and boning those who interested me.

In college (going to the one I was kicked out of), she continues to get straight A's, while working part-time in a very social environment. The stress of carrying 12 units a semester and working 18 hours a week really gets to her.

When I returned to school, once I got out of the community college system and into a regular university, I was working 50 to 60 hours a week in a high stress job and carrying 12 to 15 units a semester, perfectly happy, not at all stressed.

She goes from serious long-term relationship to serious long-term relationship. She's had three boyfriends (on the third now), and went out with two other guys possibly twice each. She's not at all sexual, and even though her current man lives with her, I'm not even sure if she's had sex yet, though if she has, it's been a recent development.

I don't remember what age I lost my virginity because I really didn't care. 15 or 16? Probably one of the two. Sex partners? Again, don't know. Oral, I can't even guess. Boyfriends? 6. Lovers? Many. How many times have I been in love? 4.

My sister has kept pretty much the same social group since she was in elementary school, though now she's picking up a new one at her place of employment.

I can't even begin to count the number of social groups I have had in the past and continue to have.

Anyhow, I think that list more than illustrated my point, even though I could continue to add to it.

We have the same parents. It's very physically obvious that we're both our father's children. We both are overly sensitive, though she's more likely to show it. We went on the same vacations, spent time with the same family members. But we were parented very differently and it shows.

She wants me so badly to be part of her world, her lifestyle, with the focus on presentation and external development.

And, sometimes I wonder if it is for her or for me.

When she goes out with our mother, especially when they're meeting up with more recent friends of my sister's, or going to her place of employment, she always wants my mother to dress right, to do her make-up right, to wear the right shoes, make sure the jewelry matches and her hair looks fine. She comes into my mother's bedroom as she's getting ready and helps her pick out clothing, makes sure everything looks right.

This has been going on for years.

She has a tendency to make my mother feel bad about how she presents herself, about what she wears. My mother has a very intense life, working her own job, helping my father run his business, scheduling large family events, keeping the house clean, and maintaining my father on an emotional level. She wears t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers.

My sister finds this embarassing.

I've offered to take my mother clubbing with me in the past, wearing whatever she likes because I really don't care. I want to spend time with her, and none of my friends would judge her for her casual wardrobe. And, really, few of my sister's friends would judge my mother's choice of clothing or make-up either.

It still bothers my sister. She doesn't realize how condescending she is to our mother, how bad she makes her feel about not looking good enough for my sister's friends.

I like to rock the boat.

My sister has mostly given up on my choice in clothing. I keep towards the dark colors, keep things simple and elegant. The pronounced curve of my lower back and my "ghetto booty" make it hard to shop for pants that don't bag out in the back. My chest gets in the way of button-up shirts ever fitting properly. I don't get to wear "normal" fashions because they don't fit. Even if I was rail-thin, I would still have to hunt for stores that allow for my curvy bone-structure.

In public, I push things with her. Most of the time she's okay, but when she feels the need to impress, I have to throw her curve balls. Sometimes she laughs, sometimes she gets embarrassed.

But it feels so much like she still hasn't settled on reforming me to her lifestyle.

It's something I think about often, obviously. I try to get to the heart of the issue, my wish that I could be normal, that I could blend, that I was built like her so that I could wear the fashions she does. That if I had her body, maybe I would be more confident.

The other day, I was walking with GV8 down Sunset Blvd and someone honked and stuck out their head to yell "Yeeeeeahhhh!" at me. GV8 laughed and shouted at him, "That's right, she's with me!" I'm used to being honked at, whistled at, yelled at when I'm out walking. I'm not used to it in Hollywood. I don't have the Hollywood body. I'm too heavy, too curvy. I'm not fat, not even chubby, but I do know that I have extra weight on me that does not fit the Hollywood ideal. Having those guys do that was incredibly disconcerting.

As I told GV8, "Do they realize that they're in Hollywood, and that because we're here in this city, I'm considered an obese cow?"

I believe he just laughed at me.

But it does bother me, occasionally finding her laundry. Size 0? It does hurt to know that most of my boyfriends found her attractive. We're so different, it makes me feel inferior. Like if we could move my brain into her body, they'd be happier. Because she's got a normal, socially desired body.

Maybe I'm compensating. Maybe I've been compensating for years, trying to be different than she is so I'm not just a weak shadow. So something makes me desirable in a way she could never be.

It's funny. I sleep with incredibly attractive men, I tend to always get the guy I want, I'm desired by most of my male friends, and yet I still can't get over this hump.

But I hear that's normal for women.

I must be female after all.