Just wondering, do I look fat or ugly? Because HAM hardly ever wants to fuck me anymore. I have to put my hair in pigtails and do my makeup perfect and dress up in slutty clothes and get him drunk before he wants to fuck me. That's too much work. Why can't he just think I'm cute because he loves me? Why do I have to do so much shit just to get some? It's not that I don't like doing all that - it's fun most of the time, but I don't like feeling like I have to do those things to get his attention. Every night, before I even try, he's like, "Damn, I am so tired. I just wanna pass out." So, I can't even try to fuck him at that point. I really don't want to be one of those girls who ends up chasing some poor, undesiring man around the house. I don't wanna be Peg Bundy. And I don't wanna me single forever. I want to get married. And I may or may not want to have a baby. Not that I'm into the idea of child-rearing, but I am into the idea of having someone to take care of me when I'm old. I'm tired of having a really great friend that I sleep next to and spend all my time with - I mean, I like those things, I'm not tired of it, I just want to be desired, and I feel like I'm not and I can't talk to him about it and it sucks. I miss us fucking every night. Now I'm lucky if I get it twice a week, or once a week, and then he has to have a few beers first. It seems like every time we've fucked in the last couple months, it has been after some drinks. It's really stupid. It hurts my feelings and makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. It makes me want to cry. And I have been doing so well on this diet, too! I eat salad every day at lunch, and vegetables and lentils for dinner. I don't eat sugar or anything bad for me. Not even any gluten. My carb intake is way down. I am looking pretty good these days. But I am too poor to get my hair done and nails done, and I guess he needs all that shit, plus lingerie, to have any desire for me. That's what's lame about dating a young guy. He's so superficial. I've rarely had this much trouble getting sex out of my own boyfriend. I feel totally unattractive. The last time I had this much trouble getting sex out of my own boyfriend was when I was in a relationship with a gay guy. I know HAM's not gay, so that means he just doesn't want to fuck me. And like I said, that hurts my feelings a lot. At least I have shit to focus on now, like this memoir writing class and studying for the LSAT. Yeah, I said the LSAT. BG's latest plan is to be an animal rights lawyer. Let's see how long this plan lasts. If I could bet myself, I'd bet until my next period, so about three weeks. I am so tired of giving up on shit, it gets really exhausting. I just want to stick with something. And FUCK I want to move out of my dad's house. And it seems like I will be stuck here forever. I have no money, my hours are getting cut at work, there are no job prospects out there, and everything just sucks my imaginary balls. Oh, and I have folliculitis, so I have to take long-term antibiotics and I can't shave, can't even trim, you know where. Just one more thing to turn HAM off. Great. His birthday is in two days and I'm giving him a $200 gift certificate from me to redeem for tattoo work. I am such an awesome girlfriend and yet I feel neglected sexually. He is still present in other ways, and still sweet, but he just doesn't want to fuck me. I hate it. I think I really need that to feel attractive and loved. I feel like he doesn't really want to be with me if he doesn't want to fuck me. Sorry for saying fuck so much, but we don't make love - we only did that when we were both high on opiates. It turns out that what people say when they are on opiates is all bullshit. So all the "I want to be with you forever" shit is just that - shit. It's meaningless and I didn't realize that until I read "Scar Tissue", Anthony Keidis' memoir. He was a total junkie and he mentioned all the bullshit love talk people spout when they're high on opiates. I am such a fool sometimes. I actually believed everything he said. But it's obviously bullshit because he NEVER says it now. Who knows if he even wants to marry me one day. If one day, then why not at least make plans now? Why not ask me now and then it will happen "one day". But he won't do that, NO, because he doesn't even want to marry me. He doesn't know what he wants. Maybe he wants a place to stay, a ride, I don't know. Maybe he loves me. But I don't think he has any intention of being with me forever. It was just something he said when he was high. 

Lately I don't even know what to write about. I feel like crap today because I drank three beers last night, which was way too much for me. I'm such a lightweight now. There was a time when three beers would've been an appetizer for me. I was drinking like cases of beer back in the day. Well, I don't know if it was really cases, but it was a shit ton of beer, just sucking them down like fruit punch. But now, three beers gets me pretty loopy and feeling like ass the next day. I still went to counseling this morning, then work, then the gym where I did personal training and cardio, and now back to work again. So I'm not fucking up as far as my responsibilities go, but as far as my general well-being, I'm fucking up. It's just not worth it. It's not that fun. For instance, last night, HAM and I were watching the first episode of Mad Men, and int this episode, one of the guys tells his fiancee, "Of course I love you, I'm giving up my life to be with you, aren't I?" This made HAM laugh, so I jumped on him immediately and gave him a hard time the rest of the night for laughing at this guy's joke about marriage being a trade-in for your life. HAM knows I want to get married. Ever since we first met and he asked me what I wanted, I said I wanted to get married. He said he didn't believe in marriage, and he explained to me that he didn't need the government interfering in his personal life. I understand that. I don't need that, either, but I still want to be married. It doesn't have to be legally bound, that's really not the point for me. I just want the commitment. I want him to declare his undying love for me and make a promise to stay with me no matter what. I don't need the court document, I just need the personal statement during a ceremony where I get to wear a pretty dress and there are witnesses, like his mother. So for me, when he jokes about marriage being the end of his life, I take it seriously. I'm a good girl. I'm pretty, funny, smart, and I'm a great cook. I mean, I have my flaws like anyone, but as far as girls go, there's lots of guys who would feel lucky to have me, and I think HAM should want to marry me before someone else tries to steal me away. There's these two guys who work in the same office park as my counselor, and every time I walk by, they always stare at me. Today, they finally decided to say hello to me and I found out that they work for an engineering recruiting firm that allows them to travel to several different countries. They are both young men, fine looking, with careers, and I know they think I'm cute. Of course, I'm not interested in these guys, I love HAM and only want to be with HAM, but the point is, it's not like I'm some loser that no one else would want. I'm attractive to people. And once they finally talk to me, they discover that I'm not a bimbo, I'm actually interesting to talk to and funny and not at all stuck up. I'm someone that guys want to get to know. And HAM is young. He's only 24 and I'm 31, so I worry he's not ready to commit to me, and I could spend years with him waiting for him to want to get married, and in the end he decides he wants more experience or I'm not right for him, and he leaves me when my expiration date has long since passed. In a lot of people's eyes, my expiration date already passed since I'm over 30 (for some men, 25 is the cut off). It's not that I believe in these expiration dates - I think they're offensive - but they're a reality for a lot of people. Women's stock goes down as steadily as men's stock goes up. As men progress throughout their lives, working their way up corporate ladders or what have you, they continue to increase their value to the opposite sex, meanwhile, women get older and accumulate more fat, wrinkles, and gray hair, making them less and less valuable with every passing day. It is sad, but it is a fact that cannot be denied and it is true in almost every culture. Men are visual creatures and they desire beautiful women. It may not be all that matters, but the fact is, it does matter. HAM loves the way I look today. He loves my big butt and small waist, he loves my makeup and hair and he loves my tan and nails. I can keep up a lot of this stuff, but there is the inevitable aging process that will change the shape of my body, turn my hair gray, and produce fine lines and wrinkles on my face. I want him to love me enough to love me when I'm old. I want him to look at me and not just see a hot chick with a nice ass, but I beautiful woman who he wants to grow old with, who he loves so much that I would be beautiful to him no matter how many years have passed or how many gray hairs I have. I have been with people who have said they felt that way about me before, and I don't really know if it was true or not, but I know there are some men out there who truly love their middle-aged or elderly wives, and I think I deserve a man that loves me that much, too. A man who doesn't see my gray hair or wrinkles, but sees the real me and thinks I'm amazing, stunning, and the only girl he'd ever want. That's how I see him. I imagine him twenty years from now, HAM the man instead of HAM the baby. I see him being just as sexy, if not more so. I see him always being the guy I want to be with more than anyone else in the world, no matter if he develops a gut or stays in perfect shape. Whether he loses his pretty blonde hair or keeps it. I don't care, because I love him as a person, not as a good-looking person. I've never even been with a good-looking guy before I met him. All my boyfriends were toothless, fat, or bald. Or all three. I don't care about looks on a man. I care more about their sense of humor than anything else. I need someone who makes me laugh, and who thinks I'm funny, too. HAM does that, too. He thinks men are always funnier than women, as I've mentioned before, but he does think I'm funny, and I think he's funny, too. But I do have this fear that he'll only love me as long as I'm pretty, and one day if I'm not pretty enough, he'll either stay with me out of obligation but long for someone younger and more attractive, or he'll just leave me. Because when I met him I was physically perfect and since then I've gained like seven pounds. My stomach isn't perfectly flat anymore and I've had months of being pale instead of tan, or I've been too poor to afford to get my nails done so they grow out and look ratty for a while. I'm just afraid how I look is extremely important to him because I looked perfect when he met me and he's really into physical appearance. He loves Katy Perry and he was totally into the idea of my getting breast implants (which didn't pan out partly because of cost, and partly because I read all of the literature that they give you when you go in for a consultation and it scared the crap out of me). Katy Perry has those giant milky globes and I have just slightly more than a twelve-year-old. I often joke that I should shop in the training bra section. So I don't know, maybe I'm just insecure, as my counselor says. I know I'm insecure, but I don't think it's all in my head, I think HAM really has an aversion to unattractive women and wouldn't want me if I was fat or ugly. And I can control fat, and I'm not ugly, but I can't stop time. I will get old, I have no say in the matter. I just hope he'll fall more in love with me and see me as beautiful as I get older instead of just old. I know I have an expiration date, I just hope he'll still want to drink me once I've gone sour.

It was a toss up this evening between tanning and writing. Here I am, so obviously I chose the latter. EP invited me to a barbeque tomorrow and I'm thinking I will go. I don't know anyone there besides her and I'm not very good at parties, especially if I don't know anyone, but I feel like a jerk that I keep avoiding hanging out with her. Even though she's a hot girl, she actually is really nice. I just never know what to say to girls. I've spent most of life around guys. My first friend was a boy. We met in Hawaii when I was one year old. Then, growing up in West Seattle, my best friend was a boy. We used to build homes for worms out of mud and leaves, throw toys around my room, get chased by packs of neighborhood dogs, and torment his twin sister. There was a bit of time, middle school, where I didn't really have any boy friends. But in high school, my best friend was a boy. We talked on the phone for hours every day. He had a crush on me, and since I didn't feel the same way, we became friends for several years. When I started hanging out at Totem Lake Denny's, there were mostly guys there. I became friends with pretty much all of them. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I always had lots of dudes around me. I like guys because they're usually funny and there's no competition. I get to be the pretty one, the one with the vagina, they get to be the ones who settle for being my friend because I won't date them. I'll admit, I've had my share of guy friends who bought me drinks, dinners out, clothes, gas for my car. One guy bought me cable TV. I always got free drugs. To this day, I have no idea how much an eight-ball costs. Although it doesn't matter anymore. I've just had a lot of bad experiences with girls. A girl introduced me to HAM. She had a boyfriend, but apparently she liked HAM, or at least she wanted HAM to like her. When she found out that he and I were seeing eachother, she didn't want to be my friend anymore. That really hurt. I thought she actually liked me but it turned out she liked me until she realized that guys were more attracted to me than to her. As soon as she realized that, she was out. Now she's best friends with HAM's ex girlfriend. I had a "best" girl friend for years. I'll call her TB. TB was pretty cool for a while. Super artistic. She was a poet, and she was funny. We had all kinds of inside jokes and we also spent hours on the phone. Bit drugs eventually tore us apart. She went to prison for a year for international drug trafficking, and I only wrote her twice the whole time she was locked up. We stayed friends after that, but she was really fucked up, and I guess I wasn't much better. Eventually I got sober and I decided I didn't like the state of our relationship, so I basically broke up with her. I've talked to her only one time since then, to apologize for being a total shithead (because I broke up with her through email after being best friends for 15 years). I guess she's living in some ghetto apartment out in Lake City and spends every night in a gross bar getting wasted. So I guess I'm not missing much. Too bad, though, because she used to be really amazing. She was so charismatic. She was the type of bitch who could make friends with anyone, get a job anywhere, convince anyone of anything. She could dance, sculpt, write, sing, and paint. Drugs and alcohol just sucked the soul out of her. I guess they sucked my soul out for a while, too. I'm thankful for all that time I spent sober and for learning how to live sober, learning that "getting fucked up" really isn't that great. I mean, every once in a while, sure, but every day? So lame. Life is too good to spend it high. Besides, I like my job, I love HAM, I love that family trusts me, that I can hold a job, go to school, write, work out, afford to get my nails and hair done, look realistically toward the future. I enjoy a nice glass of wine here and there, and a good old-fashioned opiate session is still enjoyable every now and then, but I'm not trying to spend my life as a junkie. I truly learned from AA that life is better without drugs and alcohol running it. But I have also discovered that I don't have to be a teetotaler to NOT be a junkie. There is a balance. Anyway, I've gone off in a completely different direction here. My cat is staring at me. Girls...that's what I was talking about. I'd love to have some girlfriends, but where the smart girls at? Where the funny bitches at? I miss my college professor, SH. That's the kind of chick I want in my life. Funny, brilliant, eccentric, and darn cute. I guess I really need to go back to school and get my master's if I really want those type of chicks in my life. The ones who understand my sense of humor, who think deeply about things, who know there's more to life than taanning. I get to be that girl who's funny, eccentric, smart, and hahaha, she goes tanning and spends $300 on her hair, isn't that insane? Oh, that BG, what a character. I want to be the only girl in my group of girlfriends who goes tanning and gets her hair and nails done, because usually the girls who do things like that are empty, vacant. There lives revolve around those things and they lack substance. I do those things now more for HAM than for me. I mean, I like being pretty and well-maintained, but it's expensive and a lot of work and time. I can think of about a zillion things that are more important than tanning. Like writing this long, rambling blog about...what is this about? Girls, drugs, and tanning? I guess. My point is, all those superficial things I do, I don't believe in them as worthwhile endeavors, I just can't stop doing them for some reason. I am attache to physical appearance, being pretty, or desiring to be pretty. But I know in the greater scheme of things, hair, nails, makeup, and tanning is all irrelevant. It won't say on my tombstone, "BG - She had fabulous hair". (I guess I could request that if I really wanted to.) I would like it to say something like, "BG - A great writer and a true friend" or something like that. "Loved by many". Right now I have HAM, my mom and dad, and my grandma, who (if things go the way they're supposed to) will probably not be at my funeral. Maybe there would be an old guy friend who would show up, maybe my ex boyfriend, BD, and my homie KH, but other than that, I am not loved by very many at all. "Loved by a few". Better than "BG who?" Oh well, this is getting a bit morbid. I just need to go to this barbeque tomorrow. 

I have too many fat days, ugly days, low self-esteem days, I usually call them. I have fine hair that grows around my upper lip and chin, as do most girls (even the really hot ones) and I used to go to the greatest wax girl ever, but then she got pregnant and decided to take a six month maternity leave. Didn't she think about how this would affect me? Well, anyway, when she took leave, so did I. Once you develop a relationship with a waxer, you really don't want to start all over again. So I have been fending for myself for the last few months, using tweezers here and there, occasionally browsing the websites of local spas, but never making an appointment. Well, the hot girl from the gym, EP, invited us to a barbeque, so I decided I had to do something more thorough. When the sun shines on a unwaxed face and you catch it in just the right light, it's frightening. I didn't want to be that girl, especially around a hottie and all her stupid hot friends. So I used this cheapo wax from the drugstore, and it looked great at first, but a few days later (we never made it to the barbeque by the way), my skin developed a reaction to it. So now I havebig, red, painful bumps on the sides of my mouth. I've already been feeling bloated and fat lately, and now on top of the poor body image, my face is all fucked up. Makeup just makes it look even more ridiculous. I sometimes feel like I missed the day they taught hot girl grooming 101. For years I was unaware that hair grows on top of your toes, above your lip, on your chin, and down the center of your belly from your navel to the area where it is obvious that hair grows (and I didn't know that people groomed that region either). I didn't know I was supposed to shave those areas or have them waxed, and even if I had known, I wouldn't have known who to turn to. I didn't know that I shouldn't bite my nails, or chew the skin around my nails, I didn't know that box hair dye from the grocery store would turn my hair orange or green, depending on it's base. I didn't know what size bra I was, I didn't know that glitter and dark roots made me look cheap. I didn't know how to look good. And now that I know how I'm supposed to look, I don't know how to achieve the desired result. I work out five days a week, sometimes twice a day. I spend inordinate amounts of money on my hair and nails, and I used to spend it on waxing too. I am constantly buying new foundations and eyeliners, mascaras and face masks, trying to get the skin I want, the hair I want, the nails I want, the body I want, the face I want, the youth I wish I could recapture. And that's the worst part of all: even if I achieve the beauty results that I'm always desperately chasing, youth trumps maintenance every time. When I had hair on my toes, dark roots, glitter spread all over my chest, an ill-fitting bra, a half-shirt, bell-bottoms and bare feet, I had one major thing working in my favor. I was young. I was hot because I was young. It just doesn't take as much work when your young. Throw on whatever, you don't need makeup or fancy clothes or a waxed upper lip or a mani/pedi, all you need is your fresh little face and your perky little tits, and a spark in your naive little eyes. The older we women get, the more we try to recapture that effortlessness, but it takes so much damn effort! It's so expensive and time-consuming to look as if "Oh, I just threw this on. I didn't even have time to do my makeup this morning." Skin gets rougher and starts to droop, fine lines creep around the corners of your eyes, a slight wrinkle appears in the center of the forehead, and veins, you know, the ones your mother has, start prutruding from your hands. Time cannot be turned back. It's just one more instance of accepting the current situation. I can't get younger, so I have to work with what I have. Learn how to manage my fading beauty. Learn how to accept that it's someone else's turn in the spotlight, but the spotlight will fade on those girls as well. As we fade, the spotlight fades. It sucks not being the hottest girl in the room. Now the hottest girl in the room is EP. She's 22.