SOLO DRUNK STRIPPER CHINESE FIRE DRILL

Yesterday morning, I saw a drunk stripper fall out of a car in morning rush-hour traffic. Let me explain. I got up excruciatingly early and started along my day, but couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something melancholy was gnawing at me. I was lost in thought when I found myself on the highway, behind a mid-sized sedan. I noticed little about it, other than a man was driving with a the sensible haircut and the woman in the passenger seat had pretty big hair. I zoned back out, thinking about my life, my brain, my heart, my work-- all that shit-- when suddenly, the passenger door of said mid-sized sedan flies open and the woman with the big hair spills out, headfirst, into the lane. She stands, stumbles to the back of the car, falls, flings a slingback off of her foot, spills the contents of her tiny, sparkly evening bag, stands, gathers her things and scurries to the rear driver door and hops in. What the...? Was that a stripper? She looked like a stripper. Why else do you carry an evening bag and wear a corset and hotpants with heels at 7am. In traffic. In Chicago. In February.

I cocked my head to the side, kind of like dogs do when they don't know what the fuck you're saying to them but desperately want to understand, and looked at the driver to my right. The young, ambitious-looking BMW driving Broham also cocked his head to the side. He turned his torso to face me, shook his head, laughed and shrugged.

Was she a stripper? Was she drunk? Was that a solo Chinese stripper fire drill?

I zoned back out, mostly sifting through my own potential prejudices about strippers-- maybe, after all, she was just very sparkly for work?-- as I moved forward enough to see the source of the traffic. Blammo. This wasn't just crappy rush-hour nonsense. There was a fucking corpse on the highway! But, you know, I have to admit that I didn't find it creepy at all. Death fascinates me probably more than it should. I've even been pretty gung-ho lately to volunteer with a chevre kadisha (Jewish burial society) just because of this interest. Anyway, there the corpse was, under a sheet, on the highway. I wondered first about the cause of death, then I wondered what might have happened in this car accident being dealt with, then then then I wondered about who the corpse belonged to. Who was he before? I wonder if he thought his life was okay. Sometimes being okay is all you can ask from a day. Or, as my friend Nicky said, sure a day can be crummy, but sometimes just being okay is enough because that's still better than a poke in the eye. Tooooooo-shay!

Tonight, I have a date with Manic Panic. Sure, the little black flippy hairdo is all fine and good, but whenever I feel the weird little tug of coming change, I get antsy. A few things are on the horizon that are nothing short of badass and I have to have the hair to match. The black flippiness stays, but not without the company of magenta and red stripes. When I color my hair, which is pretty often, I wear this fucking beat-to-fuck Greenpeace t-shirt. It was stolen from a trustafarian ex and survived grunge, industrial and punk shows before being retired as my hair's resume, Jackson Pollock-style.

Have I mentioned that my Chairman Meow is actually a dog trapped in a feline body? No? Well, have I mentioned that my mother is the most apathetic person I've ever met? She yawned on the phone today as she told me, in forty-five minutes, that a thief and two cops ran through her fucking yard. Good times.