Vanity

So, I forgot to say that Cringe went really well, better than we’d even hoped, and we’re making it a regular thing. The readings ran the teenage gamut from going to third base with a cab driver in his own taxi to the feelings you have to deal with when you run into Flea or Jesse Jackson while at the mall. There was also a poem read from someone named Metal Head John who called my roommate “Satan’s Angel” and “wicked doublecrosser,” which is now my little pet name for her around the house. Anyway, we’ll probably do the next one in early June, and if you want to read, email me. We especially need boys, since it seems that boys who kept journals of this time are few and far between. Apparently you were all too busy drawing helicopters and naked ladies on the backs of your notebooks. I know this because I saw you.

Earlier today I was looking through some pictures I’d uploaded, and there was one close-up of my own face that concerned me, because it was immediately apparent in the picture that I had a half-blown case of Bleener Eye. Bleener Eye was a condition I knew existed, but wasn’t aware of the technical name for it until college. I used to know this really despicable girl, and her last name sort of sounded like Bleener, and aside from being a liar and a cheater and completely unbearable, she was cursed with a raging case of one eye opening less than the other when she smiled in photographs, to the point that one of her eyes always had a black dot and the other the normal white flash dot. I had always noticed this about her, but it wasn’t until I heard two friends of mine going through a roll of newly developed pictures and saying, “Oh, crap, I have Bleener Eye in that one,” that I realized other people had noticed it too, and actually coined a term for it. If you know me at all, you know I love nothing more than new slang, so I picked that one up and loved it like it was my own.

So anyway, in this picture of me today, my pupils were both normal and accounted for, but I noticed that one of my eyelids was a little thicker than the other, like one of my eyes wasn’t open as wide as the other one. Then I freaked out and pulled up all the most recent pictures of my eyes that I could find, and finally ended up standing as close to my bathroom mirror as I could, leaning in, and then leaning back and leaning in again really quickly, like I was going to catch my pupils by surprise or something. Sure enough, one of my eyes was opened a little less than the other. This either means I had some sort of mini-stroke, am getting early onset Bleener Eye, or God is cursing me for using the term Bleener Eye. Whatever, God. I wasn’t the one who made it up, and anyway, You know that girl was a total cunt.

(There’s also the chance that my eyelids have always been this way, and I’ve just never noticed it. Which is entirely possible, because I am vain only in spurts, like painting my toenails religiously once a week, even in the winter when I wear tights and boots every single day, but then only combing my hair once a month.*

*Not an exaggeration.)