Hot to Not to Hot Again

Once upon a time many moons ago, I was hot. 

It was a glorious time. Pencil skirts, sky-high stilettos, high self-esteem, and free drinks abounded. I ate all the Oreos and drank all the wine I wanted, the minimal weight gain only making me more curvaceous and delicious. 

At the age of thirty-two however, all the Oreos and 6 (to 8 (to 10)) glasses of wine a night curiously started catching up with me. Within six months I had gained fifty pounds. 

INCONCEIVABLE. 

At the time I had a sweet puppy dog of a boyfriend who thought I was beautiful no matter what (sucker), so I simply relished in the fact that I had an excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe at Ann Taylor. How's that for finding a silver 40" lining? Besides, at five-foot eight and with a naturally meaty build, my frame could take the hit--or so I told myself. 

For eight years. 

You'd think I would have lost a lot of the weight when I got sober and stopped drinking those oversized big-ass 1.5 liter bottles of wine every night, but nooooooo. Recovering alcoholics commonly cross-addict to some other vice such as food, and by all the glory of saturated fats, that is what I did. 

Cheese! Salami! Gouda cheese! Bacon cheeseburgers! Sharp white cheddar cheese! ChikFilA even though I was against their homophobic ways! Smoked gouda cheese! Pizza (strangely enough, NOT with extra cheese)! Brie! 3-entree servings of Panda Express with only two pieces of vegetable in sight! Goat cheese! Oreos! Queso with questionable cheese purity but queso all the same!

At my heaviest, I weighed more than my beer-bellied six foot five college boyfriend did at HIS heaviest. A few strangers congratulated me on my pregnancy, and depending on my mood I either hissed at them or smiled and said 'thanks' sweetly so as to avoid publicly outing myself as a fatass.

Don't get me wrong, it has been a very merry eight years full of the aforementioned menu items and not giving a shit, which I cherish almost as fondly as the previous years of hotness. Almost. 

So what prompts a lazy fatass to finally put down the towering bowl of ice cream and dig out the running shoes? I'll let you pick your favorite reason from the list below:

1. An impressive amount of underboob sweat while undergoing absolutely minimal physical activity, especially impressive considering they aren't that big compared to the rest of me
2. Sweating from places that didn't exist ten years ago
3. I do one day after covid want to start dating again, and sadly a lot of people refuse to go out with chubsters in spite of how lovely their personalities may be (and I used to be one of these assholes, so I should know)
4. Being the one overweight person under seventy in my family (and they make their opinions about "the fatties" well known)
5. I'm not cute enough to attract attention based on the upper 40% my face alone due to facemasks, although I didn't do so great with the other 60% being on display before the pandemic. I wouldn't say I was ever a butterface, but I would say it was my body that attracted attention more so than any prettiness I ever deluded myself into believing I had
6. I only own six shirts, three pairs of pants, and two pairs of shorts that actually fit and I wear regularly because I refuse to buy clothes for a size that is "not my true size." 
7. Seeing that the hail damage aka cellulite that used to only be on my ass now goes all the way down to my knees
8. My self-esteem has tanked so badly that I am actively looking for ways to improve it, which has included things like shaving every day, reading a new self-help book every three days, and giving myself a pedicure for the first time in four years. Which went very badly, by the way. Apparently my artistic thinking has made it impossible for me to stay in the lines in any context whatsoever. 
9. It was fun back in the day to post sexy pics for you on Twitter (shut up, yes, I finally joined Instagram so I'll be crossing over), not to mention immensely validating since I was once the nerd girl no one in prep school paid attention to. 
10. I miss feeling like all the rap songs were written about my luscious peach of an ass.
11. Exercise is known to be excellent for mental health, but I honestly I'm only mentioning this because it's what my mother kept spouting out at me. And wouldn't you know it, after a month of exercising for forty-five plus minutes a day I do feel a spring in my step and a slightly more focused mind when I write, but that is strictly coincidence. Mom can't know she was right. Why does she always get to be right about everything? So infuriating. 

Okay so "for my health" is not listed as a reason. I know it should have been, but let's be honest: I miss being hot. 

The lower blood pressure and decreased risk of type II diabetes are just a bonus. 

Big Magic

One of my favorite books on creativity and writing is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author best known for Eat, Pray, Love. One of my all-time favorite books, which I do not say lightly, is Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear because it is full of gems that every artist and artisan needs to hear at least once in their life. 

In it she asks, "Do you love your art?" And of course, every artist is going to say yes. 

But she then asks, "Does your art love you back?" and she says everyone is always like, What the fuck does that mean? 

I have this beautiful crystal butterfly, about three inches long, made by Swarovski. It's gorgeous hanging in the sunlight, refracting every color of the rainbow on the windowsill next to my desk. 

I pretend this crystal butterfly is my creativity, my muse, my daemon. My magic fairy godmother of the imagination. It is always with me, waiting for the right times to inspire me with its ideas and grace. 

Because art is magic. Inspiration is divine. I don't necessarily mean God-given (although I don't necessarily mean it's not, either), but it is something ethereal. Art is so far beyond the understanding of science that it is otherworldly. 

From Big Magic:

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us--albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human's efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. (34-5)

Isn't that such a mindfuck of a concept? That ideas are alive? So that's how I imagine my little crystal butterfly, as flying around my apartment bestowing me with ideas as big as a book trilogy and as small as a tweet. Art loves me. It loves everyone. It wants to share its ideas with as many people as will listen, pick up a paintbrush, knit a sweater, write a song, and build a table. Even when art is dark and twisty, it still needs to be brought forth or else the soul will fester underneath the weight of suffering. 

On days when writing doesn't come easily, which unfortunately is most days since I'm still freshly through the murky swamp of writer's block without my feet having a chance to dry off yet, I look at my little crystal muse and remind myself that art loves me for a reason. If inspiration has faith in me, shouldn't I have faith in me too?  

Because magic is in the air. Always. 

I Could SO Be a Model. If You Squint.

Another favorite from the OEN archives.

What? I’m dead serious. I could SO be a model, if I really wanted to.

You know that Katherine Heigl girl? Izzy Stevens, aka “Dr. Model” on Grey’s Anatomy? Well I look exactly like her.

Ok, sure, I know I’m not all model skinny. I mean, I’d have to lose fifteen pounds. Twice. But other than that, I look just like her. The similarities are eerie. Or they would be, if I were blonde. And had better hair. And maybe if I were a little taller.

It would also help if I were pretty. Then I would be the It model. Forget Victoria’s Secret Angels®, it’s time for Vix’s It’s-No-Fucking-Secret Dominatrix®©¥ line of lingerie to run those glamazons off the fucking runway. Everyone knows leather and lace are the new blush and bashful.

So the skinny thing, and the pretty thing. Those are the only two tiny little things keeping me from a fantastic career in modeling, and then retiring at the old age of 32 to become a judge on America’s Next Top What’s Her Name Again?, cycle 27 and making mad whoopie with Nigel on top of the judging table.

Dude, it could sooo happen.

You still don’t believe that I can be a model, do you? Well I’ll have you know that when Barbie and I went to watch the girls auditioning for America’s Next Top Fugger, there was a lovely young man with a clipboard who came over and asked us if we were models. Being the smart cookie I am, I did not trust this young fellow and therefore asked to see an application. He stammered and asked for our phone numbers so he could send us applications. But the clipboard!! HE HAD A CLIPBOARD. THAT MUST MEAN HE HAD SOME SORT OF MODEL-MAKING POWER.

That’s ok, I can become a model on my own. I don’t need Mr. Clipboard Man. I have natural talent! I have personality! Per-son-AL-I-TITTY. I am a great conversationalist. 

Ohhh crap. The hips! Because, like, I have them. Damnit. Okay well they can airbrush those out. And while they’re tinkering with my photos, they can also clear up my skin. So many pimples, where the hell do they come from?. Oh and that mole. It’s gotta go. Not the discolored one on my shoulder, the other one–no, not that one, the big one. The one with the hairs growing out of it. They may need to fix the eyes too. One is a different color than the other one. Dunno, birth defect yada yada the doctor said it wasn’t that big a deal and eventually they’d be able to focus on the same thing without one veering to the left.

Also, my lips are kind of thin. Not very DSL-y at all. I can’t afford collagen injections, at least not yet, not until I sign my huge modeling contract. So until then, I suppose I’ll have to pinch my lips repeatedly to make them puff up. Or maybe I can have a dear friend punch me in the mouth every day to give me big luscious lips. Oh yes, that’s brilliant. I’ll have to remember that tip for when I write my first book, I Am So Much Prettier Than You: How to Look More Like Me Without Being a Reality TV Show Victim.

I’d need to buy boobs, of course. The ones I have now are lovely, but they don’t compare to the twin Heigls on the cover of Maxim. –looks down at breastises– Okay so that’s one, well, two little things that aren’t exactly model-ish either. Hmm.

Did I mention my toes? I forgot my toes. I would need toe replacement surgery. My little piglets are not the cutest things to get bright red nail polish slapped on them haphazardly (not to worry, I can pay someone to do all that for me once I get my big modeling contract). But glittery paint can only do so much. I need model toes. Make that model feet. My feet are kinda wide. And they sweat a lot. I can’t have sweaty feet. Not to worry, I can pay someone to find a way to make me stop sweating.

Okay, I hear all you bitches out there laughing at me. That’s rather rude, don’t you think? If the skeezey guy with the clipboard at the mall thought I was a model, I could be a model. Well, you know, except for that whole super skinny pretty thing. That’s a bit of a pisser.

Fine, maybe you would be able to see my modeling potential if you just closed your eyes. Then I look exactly like Katherine Heigl.

Existential Do-Over

Last night, I dreamed that I woke up on September 7, 2005. I shared an apartment in the Museum District of Houston with my live-in boyfriend, Aussie, and had just gotten my first architecture job after graduating. 

Except in my dream the apartment was far grander than the loft we'd had in real life. Two bedrooms, an enormous kitchen with a dozen cafe tables and pairs of chairs ("for when we entertain, dah-ling!"), and fantastic natural lighting in every room thanks to twelve-foot ceilings. Gasp! We were rich. 

As Aussie proceeded to act as if it were an ordinary day and I had not just gone through a time portal ("shall I wear this shirt or this one? The blue one is so fetching" (yes, he really did talk like this)). I suddenly knew that I was being offered a choice to have a redo on the previous fifteen years of my life.

I sat perched, traumatized, on our lusciously decorated bed as Aussie went about the business of getting ready for his job as a tech genius, talking about who-knows-what because I was preoccupied with having an existential crisis. 

What would life be like if I had a do-over? Having a rich boyfriend would be a great start, for one. I could make sure I passed all my architecture exams for my license this time around (surely easier to do if actually sober). I wouldn't have to become an alcoholic. Fewer bad one-night stands. I never would have given up on the OEN blog. Not waving off multiple psychiatrists' theories that I was bipolar, not just depressed. I would have put more of my money into savings instead of Kate Spade purses and Coach shoes. Trying harder to find a good guy for marriage and kids (although not with this Aussie yahoo who would eventually make me want to stab myself in the ovaries). Getting fat. Maybe staying in Texas to be near my family, even if it came with road rage and sweating profusely in the middle of winter. 

Imagine, a chance to fix all my big regrets. Sure, I'd have to relive fifteen years to accomplish that, but wouldn't it be worth it?

No. FUCK no. The sentiment boomed throughout my body and soul like a gong. 

An instant later I woke up, alone in bed in my apartment in Portland.

Yes, I thought. I chose right. 

My life may not be the traditional one with a family and a mortgage and a job as a cubicle monkey, and it certainly isn't glamorous (although these pjs I'm wearing in the middle of the afternoon are quite glittery). I did make all those mistakes in my life, every one of them. Probably more. People I hurt with casual sex like the Marine and others whose names I couldn't be bothered to remember because I was "sexually empowered." Making people I care about worry every day that they'd get a call from the police or a hospital because of my drinking. Unleashing my selfishness and immaturity upon the world without giving a shit about the repercussions. Hell, there are probably mistakes I made that I'm still too naïve to understand were mistakes. 

How can this life I have now be better than one where I had the opportunity and foresight to fix everything before it happened? 

Because I love the life I have now. It's not perfect, not at all, but it's a life I fought for for so long. 

I never married someone because it was what was expected of me. I never had children because I felt like I was supposed to. I left a corporate career that was killing my soul one meeting at a time. I left the humidity-belching south. Manic depression became a gift instead of a curse because it gave me a brilliant idea for a book series. 

I mean, come on, I get to write. Every day. In my beautiful apartment, overlooking a street full of old maple trees. Every day feeds my soul instead of destroying it.

If I'd spent my life maneuvering easily around hardship, who would I be now? Probably someone less wise and far less interesting. 

Here's to the next fifteen years of my mistakes being just as worthwhile.

Fuck Prince Charming

Occasionally I will be posting goodies from my old blog, such as this popular one which still very much applies today.

With each new guy I dated, I was always waiting for that magical first kiss, the one that (I’m told) sends tingles down your body and makes you lose yourself in that precious moment.

I have never experienced a first kiss like that, or any kiss. I am told it happens, and not just in the latest clearance-sale chick flick. Or maybe I’ve never felt that happy feeling because I’ve never been in love. I thought I had been with my last boyfriend, but maybe not.

Orgasms and being in love follow the same line of questioning: “Have you ever been in love?” “I’m not sure.. I think I have.. once…” “Then you haven’t been. You’d know for sure if you had.”

Well, shit.

So maybe I’ve never had that magical toe-curling kiss because I’ve never been in love. Or maybe it simply doesn’t exist. Is it one of those urban relationship myths? A modern day fairy tale with a Jennifer Aniston movie character living happily ever after? Because most of those go straight to DVD.

Not that any of that will keep me from going to frog to frog, hoping this one will be the one who makes me weak in the knees with his slurpy fly-flavored kiss. I may be a cynic, but I’m not a hopeless cynic.

I gave up on the whole idea of Prince Charming years ago, well before I hit puberty. I was quite the precocious cynic. Although it may seem like it sucks that I have little hope in happily ever after, I think it leaves me far better off. How many women have you ever met who describe their Prince Charming as tall, dark, handsome, super super smart, has a PhD, travels all over the world, reads Gourmet magazine, speaks five languages (three fluently), has a trust fund but makes six figures a year “for fun”, volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, and can cook a mean lasagne (from scratch of course).

Yeeeeeah. I tell ya what. While you’re looking for Prince-Fucking-Charming, I’m going to be over here kissing frogs. It’s not like I expect “our blossoming love” to magically transform my frog from an idiot into the perfect guy. Life doesn’t work like that. I’ve finally learned that no matter what you do, you can’t kiss a boy into a man. He has to do that on his own while he’s out in the wild eating bugs and wondering why he’s alone.

I am also (finally) not naive enough to think that some wonderful prince will kiss me and turn me into the strong independent woman I knew was down in there somewhere. Girls come in ugly frog form too.

Say all the wonderful things you want about love, it’s not magic. It takes more than love and a helluva lot more than a kiss to transform someone.

The next time I’m ready to look around the pond, all I want is a cute little boy frog who will look me in my big bug eyes and tell me “you’re the greatest girl frog I’ve ever met.” And then we’ll smooch and I’ll eat flies off his plate and he won’t mind because he knows me well enough to order extra.

Why Blog Now?

I'm sure that all three of you readers have wondered "Why is she returning to the blogosphere after all this time? Why now?" 

Here are my myriad answers. Some may or may not be fabricated for the sake of my own entertainment. 

1. Covid. Because covid is to blame for everything being FUBAR and so much of the population hiding safely indoors away from the plague that is anti-vaxxers. We all need something to smile about, even if it is my crinkly ass you're reading about. Which you will be.
2. I love talking about myself. Come on, we all love talking about ourselves regardless of how fascinating we actually are/not. The trick is to find a way to make even the most mundane things interesting, like about how I still had my Christmas tree up in July because my dog loves scratching her back on the branches. It's the only damn thing she'll play with, so BOOM she gets a year-round Christmas tree. I can't wait to explain that to dates in the future, assuming it is ever safe again to kiss someone without a mask on. 
3. I can only spend so much time with fictional characters before I start talking about them in conversation as if they were real people.
4. Blogging about my misadventures in exercising and dieting means that I have publicly stated to all three of my readers (I'm kidding of course for the sake of earning your pity, I really have nine) that I am engaging in these activities and am therefore more likely to continue doing them to avoid embarrassment. (Please do not bring up NaNoWriMo as evidence against this because I HAVE WRITER'S ANXIETY AND IT IS VERY SERIOUS OKAY. GOD.)
5. I miss blogging. It was very satisfying and therapeutic and most importantly, validating. My self-esteem is so piss-poor these days that I will take validation in any and all forms, please and thank you. 
6. Sometimes I write things on Twitter that I need more than 280 characters to explain properly. Such as this recent tweet: "I’m attempting yoga. Meanwhile my dog is peeking at me from behind the ottoman like Mommy’s gone mad." Imagine this as a play-by-play along the lines of Twister but playing by myself, trying to stretch muscles I haven't used for anything outside of sex in 15 years (and haven't even used for sex in far longer than I will admit to on the internet at this moment in time). 
7. Because when I grow up I want to be like blogger-to-authors Jen Lancaster of Bitter Is the New Black or Samantha Irby (of We Are Never Meeting In Real Life). Thems are some badass bitches who prove you can earn money by writing in your underwear in the middle of the day.
8. I love making people laugh. When I was a cashier at Whole Foods for my sober job I made it a point to get the grumpy people to laugh (assuming I myself was in a good mood, but if I weren't they could all just go fuck themselves in the armpit with their $7.99 biodegradable deodorant). Making someone especially someone grouchy laugh is like making the world a nano-bit better. The world could use more laughter in it, especially in the wake of such torrential countrywide fuckwittage.
9. Vix the blogging OEN was a badass and I could kind of really use some of her mojo these days. My self-esteem has slowly slid into the Pit of Despair as my waistband has expanded and list of life accomplishments hasn't moved in years. Vix had a lot of double-dog fuck you in her [expression borrowed from my role model, memoir writer Mary Karr] that I desperately covet.
10. The most important reason I started blogging again is that I am suffering from severe writer's anxiety because I have built this book I'm writing into THIS BIG HUGE MASSIVE TEXAS-SIZED THING in my head that has to be good enough and famous enough and bestselling enough to compensate for the fact that I left my architecture career to become a writer. And not a regular writer, but a fantasy writer at that. Like, it is literally my job to write nonsensical, made-up crap and then trick people into buying it. So I am hoping that by writing something that has no pressure, like none at all because only nine of you will read it and that's only if I publish on a Friday afternoon when you're working and all "oh hell to the no, I can't do another lick of work without my face imploding from boredom," that will loosen up the writing in the ol' noggin and things will start flowing right toward a spot on the New York Times Bestseller's list. That's a logical thought process, right? 
11. RIGHT??? Tell me I'm right or I'm going to go eat an entire wedge of gouda cheese and not put it on my calorie counter app.
12. Because my mother told me to socialize more. So this is me, socializing. This counts in the same way my mother used to tell me to go outside and play so I'd take my book outside and go read quietly by myself under a tree while other children played rudely nearby.

Return to the Blogosphere

​It's been ten years since my blog the OEN was up, and I have missed blogging dearly at times. I mean, I'm SO funny and SO interesting and have SO much to say about this amazingly fucked up world, after all. Meaning, I'm SO full of crap. But the craptacular can make for some pretty entertaining reading while you pretend to pay attention in a meeting full of millenials, am I right? 

Enter Vix, v2.0. More like 8.0, because since OEN faded from existence with a whimper I became a big fat wino, was diagnosed bipolar, moved from Texas to Oregon, got sober, quit my architecture career, and became a full-time fantasy writer. That's a lot of iterations of selfhood. Maybe that's why I have ballooned in size so much? Because there's no way it has anything to do with my consuming half a package of Oreos at a time since discovering my teeth were good for more than biting my baby brother.

OEN was largely about dating and sex, which I'm sorry to say probably won't be the focus here on ATPHP (which now that I type out the acryonym sounds like a futuristic form of ADHD that mutated from excessive psychopharmacology exposure). I plan on writing about life in general with glimpses into what it's like to be a virgin writer (can I say that considering that technically I am a published author, even if I did so under a pen name and it sold only a hundred copies? Oh, and also, I am not a virgin, although by this point it's highly likely it has grown back, much to my dead grandmother's righteous delight). 

Then again once I start dating (hopefully after omicron tapers off, cross your fingers and uncross your legs on that) and having sex, you probably won't be able to get me to shut the fuck up about it because I will be a floodgate of horniness being reawakened and unleashed on the greater Portland area. 

In the meantime, I plan to write about getting my former nympho body back (no small feat, as I am currently quite the chubster, as my level of underboob sweat likes to inform me on even the most chair-bound of days), dieting without giving up bacon, cheese, or ice cream, what it's really like to be a full-time and under-accomplished writer, and generally writing about life in a way that would make Samantha Irby want to be my new best friend (although strictly over Facetime, because we're both too hermit-like to leave our homes except when under contract (not that I have any contracts requiring my public presence, at say book signings, food truck endorsements, or episodes of Shrill--YET)). 

To answer a few questions that may not have even occurred to you: No, I do not know how often I will be posting (actually, yes I do: whenever I damn well feel like it, and not a minute sooner). Yes, I will be sure to post links to new posts in my Twitter feed so you don't have to check my blog ten times a day (although please do that anyway so you can drive my visitor count up). No I will not fuck you to practice my out-of-practice blowjob skills. And yes, I really am blogging again, which I know has been your greatest dream come true since they made gluten-free Oreos. 

(And no, I cannot guarantee that future posts will not have excessive parenthesis usage. You'll just have to gamble on that one, my grammatically judgmental friend (why judge the parenthesis? They're hugs for words!)).

It's good to be back, my beloveds. xoxo

Vix