Michelle Markowitz

My Greek coworker/best mate lives with her Aunt and Uncle on Staten Island.  Her Aunt loves her being there.  They watch Lifetime movies together, eat together every night, and she can monitor Neffy's every decision.  Nefeli's Uncle Mike however, is of the old school.  He is Irish, loves smoking, and this is probably really surprising, but he is really into having his own space.  Neffy recounted a date she once had with a New York City cop.  He picked her up in his sweet car, took her for a steak dinner, and rolled up his sleeves after he met her Aunt and Uncle to reveal his sleeves (cool people speak for tattoos).  No one could be more excited for this date and wanting it to result in love and marriage than Uncle Mike.  Uncle Mike is so motivated for Nef to be in a good relationship and get married that he is basically the 60 year old tough Irish equivalent of  45 year old single woman who has given herself one more date to make a go of it before harvesting all eggs and stopping by the sperm bank.

Below is the model and star of 1995’s Foxfire, Jenny Shimizu.  Also, she is the woman who made both Angelina Jolie and Ione Skye, among no doubt thousands of women, think for the first time, “Hmm, be with a woman?  Me?  No.  No way.  If I never did it in college, I sure as hell am not gonna start now.  This doe goes for the bucks.  I really don’t see that happening at all, but there is something about my co-star Jenny.  There’s just something about her.  You know what?  Screw it.  I just have to be with Jenny just as soon as I put down this dagger/leave my husband Ad-rock (whichever the case may be).”

Think about it.  Angelina Jolie left behind her safe world of cutting, experimentation with heroin, and that bo-hunk Jonny Lee Miller to be with her.  Bad example.  Ok, Ione Skye has been with such masuline powerhouses as John Cusack (in his most lovable role of Lloyd Dobler, no less!) and Ad-Rock, my favorite and most arguably most talented of the Beastie Boys!  Ok, perhaps they are not the most masculine upon further reflection, but we all have a type and I like my men masculine yet emotional.  Like Harry Connick Jr. in Hope Floats.  Still, she has been with what most girls would have as their top 20 all-time 1989 crushes, and Jenny Shimizu still lured her away from all that…

Therefore, for the sake of the Banal Fixation readership, I am willing to participate in an experiment!  That’s right.  I want five minutes alone with Jenny Shimizu, just to test myself, see what all the racket is about.  I am fairly 100% confident she could not change me. I’ve been going on almost 27 years of liking the menfolk - well if you consider various film and comedy boys, writers, Argentinian gamblers, and grizzly World War II Vets to be menfolk, which I’m sure you do.  Who’s with me?

According to Kelly Cutrone of Bravo’s “Kell on Earth” new book, If You Have to Cry Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You, if you are a professional woman at work it is best to not sit at your desk with a quivering lower lip and blotchy red face. Rather, buck yourself up and gather all dignity and hurriedly walk to the nearest ladies room. You must put toilet paper on the toilet seat first since you are a proper kind of girl and then sit down making sure your H&M business dress does not fall in the toilet.

The tears are streaming down your face now. Ahh, that feels better. Go on, grab some toilet paper and blow your nose, but be careful not to wipe your eyes since it feels so good as they fall off your face, onto the sludgey floor and into the toilet bowl itself. Now your head is in your hands grabbing fistfuls of your pony tail you carefully blowdried this morning.

Someone just walked in. Is it a coworker? Is it someone else who works on the floor? Can they hear me? Does it matter? Please let them hurry up doing their business and leave. You are holding everything in, and can’t breathe. You wonder how Sting can have tantric sex with Trudie and dozens of groupies for 8 hours straight while your brain is going to explode as you hold in these tears.

She finishes washing her hands. You hear the clack-clacking of her heels as she leaves. This time it is full on sobbing. You feel like Matt Damon when Robin Williams tells him it wasn’t his fault and he is finally ready to let go of his past and move to California to love Minnie Driver.

You brace yourself. Maybe this is your Come to Jesus moment. The low point. You walk back to the sea of boxes and in the distance you see the Statue of Liberty. You think about your Great Grandparents coming to this country with an aching hope in what was to come ahead, years from then, after the tenements and sweatshops and meal after meal of the most depressing parts of the cow that were edible. You thought about their dreams for your parents and for you. And if they came to this country so you could end up crying in the bathroom of this job. And like your ancestors before you whose only legacy lives on in stoic wedding day pictures in basements and in your middle names, you too will be largely forgotten. And all these boxes and filing and Excel and papercuts and jumping when your name is called will have all been for nothing.

This is the last for awhile and then I will begin talking about wellness/fitness/blogs/up-and-coming bands/16th century dudes, etc.  Our office recently moved locations, and during time in our temporary space I had the great honor of sitting next to my favorite person ever.  M.  M is extremely blunt, does not tolerate fools, and does not enjoy the art of music.  At all.  Even the Beatles ("too sentimental").  I have never met anyone like her before.

Three girls in our office returned from getting coffee.  M turned to me, "Do you ever feel like when they come back from getting coffee, the three of them look like Charlie's Angels with their long hair flowing behind them?"

"Uhh.  Really?  What do you think with Nef, T, and I come back from getting coffee and we walk in?"

"I definitely don't think Charlie's Angels."

"Thanks M.  Awesome.  So when you see us coming back,  you think we look more like say .... (think of a reference she will get since she last watched regular television for Watergate coverage)... Hogan's Heroes?"

"Ahhh, Hogan's Heroes.  Ahh yes.  Well not quite..."

"Awesome.  Thanks.  Just gonna get back to the old TPS reports..."