the chommo chronicles

.heavenly gift.

I seriously believe that one day God was thinking of me, thinking “Hmmmm….I want to send Chommo a little present to show her I care. I’ve already sent her french fries, Louise Erdrich books, Prevacid, and the movie French Kiss.  What other gifts can I send her?”

Et voilà! The Lifetime Movie Network was born.

.follicular emancipation.

Four weeks ago, on a lovely, late-summer Friday afternoon, I posted the following Facebook status update: 

[Chommo] is about to get her hair cut by a non-Dominican for only the second time in her life. Hold me, I’m scared. 

Well. By the tone of the responses, you would have thought I’d announced I was becoming a Red Sox fan or something.

Don't do it! I'm scared for you!!

You are asking for trouble!!! Nooooooo don't do it. Where are u? I will find you a dominican hair salon.

Ay mi amor - be brave!!!!!!! …Then again, I get my hair cut by a Japanese girl with pinstraight hair and she rocks my world!

Um...good luck...I'm not even Dominican and I hesitate to let non-Dominicans touch my hair.    

You should be. Good luck!

Have you lost your mind????!!!! Last time I did that I went from having thigh lenght hair to looking like curly q.  

Um, way to set my mind at ease and give me that virtual hug I asked for, ladies.

.stomach ache.

Stomach aches, low-level nausea, and I go way back. Way, way back to when I was but a wee lass. I think I inherited it from my dad, he of the famed unstable intestinal tract. I go to the doctor periodically and they tell me to take Prilosec,or they tell me that I suffer from gastritis and that I should go on the god-awful BRAT diet, or that I need to consume more fiber, blah blah blah, crap that doesn’t really work because more days than not I am doubled up in pain, wanting to throw up all over my desk/couch/bed. I soldier through the tough moments thanks to a cocktail of Pepto-Bismol, Tums, seltzer, lukewarm ginger ale, and toasted whole-wheat bread but man, it still sucks.

This latest bout of stomach-aches and nausea has been going on for more than three weeks now, and my husband has just about had enough with my complaining. Yesterday, in the midst of another epic complaint session wherein I blamed the mini tootsie roll (wait – do they come in other sizes?) for my latest stomach ache, Kim Jong-Illmatic hissed at me that I needed to make an appointment with the doctor already because it’s not normal when your stomach hurts for three weeks straight, and besides, didn’t my mother also tell me to go to the doctor? (He knows I am terrified of my mother – in a very loving way – and will usually do anything she commands).

Well! That wasn't very supportive now, was it? Immediately after I hung up the phone on him as he was calling me "exasperating" (me? exasperating? never!), I sent him an email - complete with visual aids - calling him out on his callous treatment of me in my delicate condition. Behold:

From: Chommo

To: Kim Jong-Illmatic

RE: Why are you so mean to me?

When I feel like this?

****************************************************************

From:  Kim Jong-Illmatic

To: Chommo

RE:RE: Why are you so mean to me? 

Great picture. You are retarded. Seriously, if I complained of the exact same pain, day after day, for nearly 1 month, wouldn't you tell me to go to a doctor? I'm not being mean, so grow up. Make an appointment with the doctor, but it's probably just your gastritis acting up. 

But I lurve complaining. It's my life force.

For the record, he's totally right and I do need to make an appointment with my doctor - if only to confirm that I am not in danger of becoming one of the featured idiots on the Discovery Health channel’s I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.

But I swear to God if all they tell me to eat is bananas, rice, applesauce and toast, I might have to do like Wayne Brady and cut a bitch.

© Chommo, 2009.

.monday meet-up.

Welcome to .monday meet-up., a brand new feature on this here blog. Why? Because I make it a policy to only befriend interesting people; because my friends are awesome and you should learn more about them; because, as much as I love writing about it, my life is actually not that interesting.

Today you get to meet The Thespian (pronounced “Thessspiahn). She’s not really a thespian – she’s a formally-trained theatre stage manager – but every time I utter the word “thessssspian” she starts laughing, so I figured it’s a better moniker than any. 

.new york silhouettes.

I don't think it's paranoia: people really do look at me weird when I walk down these mean NYC streets. But listen - they've got cause. If I happen to have my iPod on, then I am singing along with a lot of force but with zero sound. Like, I'm really feeling the music, it's touching my soul, I'm rocking out with my non-existent cock out, and I am singing along, but I'm actually mute, so all I can do it mouth the words with a lot of feeling. If my hair has chosen to misbehave that day, well then, it's time to get disapproving looks from my lovely Latin ladies. Also, I have extraordinarily sweaty eyelids, which means that unless I've applied an industrial grade mix of powder and eyeshadow that day, chances are pretty high that my eyeliner will have smeared all over the place, leaving me looking like a junkie straight off a three day bender of the good isht.

These days, though, I think the weird looks are directed less at me and more at my new-ish toy, the Fuji Instax camera Kim Jong-Illmatic gave me to cure my analog photography blues. It looks like a Polaroid camera (kinda), it sounds like a Polaroid camera, and it produces instantaneous photos with a technology you'd think people have never seen before.

It doesn't help with the people-staring-at-me-all-weird business when I abruptly stop at street corners to capture random scenes. My current obsession are late summer/early autumn  celestial-architectural silhouettes, both because they're pretty (I think) and because they're pretty hard to mess up, but mostly because I tend to take them between 4pm and 6pm, that magical hour where the skies above New York City are straight out of a fantastical painting.

.of sweet things and poofy dresses.

Two weeks ago, my ginormagantuan family gathered to celebrate my niece’s sixteenth birthday, dancing into the early morning, taking advantage of the open bar, mugging for a million cameras, and thanking Sweet Jeebus that we’d moved sufficiently along the immigrant arc that we could now start having parties catered rather than having to bring in our assigned dishes in aluminum containers. (That last part may just be me.) The event itself was a sweet mixture of old world and new – it was a Sweet Sixteen rather than a quinceañera, but my niece still had a gaggle of teenaged friends and family serving as her “court”; there was no mass, but the birthday girl still wore a (slightly) poofy white dress and conformed to the old rituals involving shoes and a tiara; the color scheme (red and black) was more Twilight than blush and bashful, but there was still something indescribably sweet about this cultural rite of passage, this firm demarcation between childhood and (young) adulthood.

Being exactly 16 years older than Caro, I find myself wishing I had a similar occasion to gather my friends and family around to celebrate my entry into a new phase of life. This may be because I myself never had a Sweet Sixteen and have in my life had scant opportunities to wear poofy gowns; even my wedding dress was exceedingly simple. In fact, the last time I remember wearing a poofy gown was sometime in the mid- to late-1980s, when I served as junior bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. And really, if all your poofy-dressed memories consisted of this image, wouldn’t you want to give it another go?

A few years ago I did threaten to organize a Sweet Sixteen Times Two party for myself, but that was purely motivated by my longtime wish to hold a party where the DJ played only 1980s-1990s R&B, hip-hop and freestyle. I also wanted to see whether Kim Jong-Illmatic would make good on his promise to act as my chambelán whilst wearing a baby blue tuxedo with matching cummerbund, bowtie and ruffle shirt. It was more of an idle fantasy than an actual plan, and I never really pursued it. Plus, I had no idea it was so expensive to rent a hall in NYC.

But now that I’m actually here, with my 32^nd birthday less than two weeks away, I find myself wishing that there was a rite of passage for people my age. This being the age of big decisions – the age when the full weight of the what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up question manifests itself – there would probably be a little less sweetness to such a ritual. It’d be more like a Tense Thirty-Two, a This-Is-What-It’s-Like-To-Be-An-Adult Thirty-Two, a Terrified-At-My-Bank-Balance Thirty-Two, or, for those lucky ones, a This-Is-Right-Where-I-Want-To-Be Thirty-Two.

This is not to say that I am unhappy with where I am right now. Quite the opposite, actually. There is something incredibly fucking awesome about finally being old enough to really not give a shit what people think about you. I feel like I am closer to my family than ever before. I’ve finally learned how to deal with my hair. I've decided on a signature cocktail, and finally learned that my absolute red wine limit is two-and-a-half glasses. 

Still, I’ve been doing nothing but coasting for the past few years, pretending to be an adult – a mujer hecha y derecha, as my mom would say – while all the while secretly convinced I was still twenty-three years old and capable of living a fancy-free life. For the first time I feel like I am on the cusp of actual adulthood, that it really is time for me to ask myself those hard questions, to give due consideration to the BIG ISSUES! around which I’ve been cutting a wide berth for the past few years. Do I want to have children? Should we get life insurance? Do I really care about owning my own home? Is my current profession really what I want to be doing for the rest of my life? How can I save more money than I spend? How can I make my dream to Paris a reality?

Yes, there are many people my age who’ve started answering these questions, and, as Ramona Singer would say, koodooze to them. I mean that sincerely, because I am terrified. Excited, but terrified. Excited, terrified, and out of breath. Excited, terrified, out of breath, and apprehensive. Excited, terrified, out of breath, apprehensive and curious. Excited, terrified, out of breath, apprehensive, curious, and….Eh, you get the picture. It’s scary as hell, but I feel like I’m up for the challenge. Maybe. Hopefully.

And yes, I realize that I can’t just sit down one Saturday and go through my check list of important life questions, answering each one in turn and heading off into the sunset confident in my decision. It’s a process. But wouldn’t it be nice to kick off that process with a kick-ass party?

So yes, I would like to celebrate this momentous occasion, my one-woman rite of passage, with a poofy dress, a rented hall, specialty single-malt scotch for everyone (and sure, fine, some clear liquor for the rest of you pansies), and my friends and family dancing up a storm all around me.

And I think I’ve found the perfect dress for it, too.

But the dress would have to be in in baby blue, not red. And I would wear gloves. And my hair up with wispy, hairspray shellacked curls cascading down the side. And of course, a tiara. And a corsage. Because I keeps it real like that.

 © Chommo, 2009.