The only time I'm really treated like the adult I am is when I'm wearing makeup.

  First, concealer.  If I don't do it, all I look like is tired.  No, really.  Then foundation.  Just because I see my freckles and sun spots in the mirror every day is no reason you should too.  Powder over all, just to lock everything in place, and I'm done with making my skin look perfect.  Hallelujah.

  Bear in mind, I'm still going to look like a kid when I'm done, but it's worth a try.

  Now to fill in my eyebrows so I don't wind up looking like a cancer patient who miraculously still has a full head of hair or at least is wearing a heck of a custom-made wig.  (Okay, it is a custom-made wig, specially home grown since the day of my birth, cut to fit my specifications and preferences.  Happy?)  Check.  Light eyeshadow from browbone to lashline, medium shadow from crease to ditto, dark shadow in the crease and only in the crease.  (So sue me, I'm stealing someone else's technique.  Sheesh!)  Liner, check.  Curl lashes, check.  Mascara, check.

  I have a confession to make at this point.  Mine is what people in the biz call a "baby face".  That is, I look younger than I am, and eight times out of ten others will make assumptions about my intelligence and capabilities before I even open my mouth.  You call that saving time, I call it stereotyping (patients from psychiatric hospitals supposedly sport baby faces with smooth, even blank, expressions, which is stupid since not all of them are like that in real life).  Fine.  Different strokes for different folks.  Big wide-set eyes, check.  Snub nose, check.  Moderate-to-full kisser, check.  Overbite, check.  Freckles, check.  Right, moving on.

  Um!  Blush.  Right.  Basic color on the apples of the cheeks, brighter pop on top.  (It's a girl thing.  If you're a guy and you're reading this, better if you don't ask, okay?)  Woo!

  Lips... Uh, cover your eyes if you can't stand reading any more.  Fill them in with liner that matches the natural lip color.  Slather on the lipstick or lip gloss.  Blot.  Repeat.  This is the PG-13 section.  All innocent parties please leave the room.

  I'd have done this on camera with a friend to help me upload, but this is what I had to hand.  I'm really sorry.  Other than that, I recommend the following:  Shave off dem goddamn eyebrows.  Paint your face dead white.  Draw on dem eyebrows in a skin-skin-skinny line with a dark pencil.  Smear powder blue eyeshadow all over your eyelids and then some.  Put two little red dots on your cheeks because this looks really beautiful.  (wicked grin) Overdraw de line of your lips and really fill it in with lotsa red leepsteek.  Now look at dat poor guy you vere crushing on...and vatch him run avay as fast as possible.  Don't say I didn't varn you!  (evil maniacal cackle)

HitRECord hits TV.  I've heard about that story by now.

  The truth is, all I have to contribute in the end is my sole blessing and curse mixed up in one snarled, frayed package--my eloquence.  Which, much to my mortification and never-ending chagrin, is often turned against me by those who want to cut me down to size.  Joe, I'm begging you, don't even think of so much as glancing at this one.  While I like to think of myself as a riled-up American female version of Samuel Johnson for the twenty-first century, my vocabulary, my tastes, my biases and my prejudices don't suit equally at all points with everybody.  True, I'm not currently using Shakespearean English or speaking in iambic pentameter, but my speech patterns and even the words I use mark me out as different, a freak, an outcast, a relic washed ashore on this modern-day Barbary Coast from the mid-Atlantic of another era altogether.  My articulateness and diction render me unreal, and thus, in your mind, I am a ghost, never quite existing in the same reality you know and are familiar with.

  All right, so I've had my pity party.  What could I possibly talk about now?  Well, I'll get to that shortly.

  Shoes.  I mentioned those in the headline.  I have an abusive relationship with shoes.  That is, I use them, I abuse them, I complain when they refuse to do what I ask of them anymore, and then I throw them out.  And then I do it again.  I am the dominant partner in this relationship.  That they are cheap shoes proves me a sucker--so okay, it works both ways.  Their revenge is to torture my feet, to inflict blisters, calluses, and rough heels, to (in other words) make me bemoan my want of a good pedicure.  You see, my secret dream, besides going in drag to the Academy Awards (I can hear the lesbian jokes starting now) and swooping in to give Al Pacino a giant kiss on both cheeks in addition to calling him "dearie", is to put on a pair of sparkly, pretty high-heeled sandals without someone muttering, "Oy, who just escaped from the Tranny Circus?" before flouncing away in perfume-fueled disgust.  Okay, that one was a joke.  I'd save the sparklepants stuff for fancy events.  The truth is...I dream of Ferragamo ballet flats.

  Okay.  I think I might have driven the proverbial car off the cliff with that one.  Sorry.  Actually, my dream is a pair of luxurious socks that make mad passionate love to my feet and give them screaming orgasms, as opposed to the distinctly holey pair I'm sporting now which are incongruous with my black-and-white spectator ballet flats from Payless.  Um, right.  Too much *cough, cough* information *cough, cough*.  Excuse me for a moment while I cover my face in shame.

Back now.  Whew!  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, dream conditions for my feet.  Pedicure, Don Juan socks, and killer shoes.  Or was it Don Juan tights?  Stockings?  Pantyhose?  Oh, whatever!

  Seriously, though, Don Juan socks, people.  Silk, cashmere, or Egyptian cotton--top-notch nylon will do in a pinch.  Forget fuck-me pumps--make way for fuck-me socks!  That's where the action is at!  And they should be either black, navy, gray, burgundy, or just a range of pretty colors so I won't get bored looking at my socks all day long.  No, no--I'm going to steal some luckless Lothario's cashmere argyle socks!  Woo dog!  Oh yeah!  Let's party!  Hit it, boys!  Oh, damn, I got carried away again.  I would marry those socks if they were a guy, though.  Just thinking of those socks is getting me all excited... Whoops!  Not again!  This is what I get for nerding out over the socks. 

  Sample dialogue:  "Take me now, big boy!  Yesss!"

                             "Give me your feet, baby, and we'll go places you've never been before!"

  Right.  I'm ending off.  *huge blush*

Deja poo, n.  The feeling that you've heard this crap before.

--Anonymous

*                                                                *                                                         *

Give me your brand-new, your in-between, your holey and worn to bits... Give me your socks.  Give me your socks, your knee-highs, your stockings, your pantyhose, your orthopedic foot cushions!  Whoops, there I go again.  I have this nasty habit of speechifying, you see.  I hope I can get past it.

  Given the above, however, I can't help wondering how the movers and shakers of this world swathe their feet in order to stop those bunioned, callused, corned, blistered, crying tootsies from leaking all over their shoes like so many badly housetrained puppies.  I'm fairly positive, though, that few of them experiment with color--most of the ankle glimpses I've seen showcase a maddening montage of black, black, black.  Or navy.  Never burgundy, never colorful patterns, and certainly not anything the girlfriend, fiancee, wife, or otherwise significant other would have chosen.  A few flash red socks.  Pffft.  All due respect to those who flash red south of their ankles, that shtick is wearing thin.  I mean, come on.  Don't you ever get bored staring at your feet all day?

  A recent case in point:  Mikhail Prokhorov.  He stands six foot eight, makes Putin and other fitness fanatics look like midgets, and can intimidate holy hell out of most people just by standing there and doing reps with his head.  You would think he would distract people with what he puts on his feet just to give, say, a five-foot-nine shrimp a sporting chance by having something close at hand to look at.  That's not what I saw in a recent issue of Forbes.  In a word, black.  To be fair, he does have big feet, and that wouldn't give a man as many options, now would it?  But you would think he'd at least trot out a silly pair of bunny slippers once in a while!  Why, why, why is it that huge and powerful dudes have no sense of humor when it comes to footwear???

  Once again I got carried away in the heat of the moment.  I digress.  Girls are also guilty of lacking a sense of humor when it comes to footwear.  I do grant, though, that it can be funny, in the sense of schadenfreude, to watch a hapless young lady stumble and trip over her new stilettos, which she obviously doesn't have the rhythm of just yet.  I've since learned how to balance in four-inch heels, but this is why I wear flats so often, albeit with a sense of whimsy.  I cannot, alas, say with equal conviction that I've found the perfect socks to love and caress my feet.  I wear out my socks, and then my shoes, and both keep a vigil in the night, weeping like maidens betrothed to Bluebeard or some other monster.  So I keep hunting for Don Juan socks, the ones that toss my feet about on the sheets of comfort and warmth, and sad to say the ones I've found so far are beyond my present means.  O faithless socks!  But then, I knew on buying that they'd be cheap, and I'm not just talking about the price.

  No more on socks!  Avaunt!  Farewell!  And may you never read this again.

As I fill my fountain pen, as I swim in black India ink,

I am perpetually dismayed by the invasion of the pink.

Why not azure?  Why not crimson?  Why not classical cream?

The glory days of other colors now seem a distant dream.

*                                     *                                     *

I dream of India yellow, imagine silken veils in burnt umber,

But alas, Veronese green and Nattier blue are in a deep slumber.

I'll deck my frame in bronze, swathe my room in Chinese white,

But this phenomenon called pink simply fails to delight.

*                                     *                                       *

Peach I'll bathe in, Prussian blue wallow in, flirt perhaps with salmon,

But pinkest of pink is for ladies with not enough taste and excess mammon.

Chartreuse is permissible, jade green far, far more than acceptable,

But I cannot, will not, shall not permit shocking pink at the dinner table.

*                                       *                                     *

A pox on pink, a plague, a whirling cacophony of devils on pink,

And how I dearly wish it were dumped right down the kitchen sink!

How it regained popularity I cannot begin to even conceive,

And the number of girls and women who wear it one just cannot believe.

*                                       *                                     *

It thus becomes a necessity to wash my battered mind clean

In the depths of the darkest blues and the purest cerulean.

Failing that one imitates the nuns and dons starkest black

For those times when vulgar pink goes on a raging attack.

*                                        *                                     *

Down with pink!  Be damned to all shades of pink!

When that hue is around I lose my capacity to think!

Begone, begone, foulest pink, do thou begone,

Lest in umbrage I should wind up going on and on!

Dear Imaginary Ex,

  It's not working out.  You're not my boyfriend anymore.  I'm not your girlfriend.  Get out of my bed, get out of my apartment, and get out of my life.  Your socks are on the windshield of the car to remind you to pack.

  I don't want to play your stupid convoluted games anymore.  I don't want to play the guessing game of "are we/aren't we?" when I know full well you've been seeing the woman your family picked out for you at the same time.  I'm not your toy.  I'm not simply your latest fling, another notch in your belt.  I am a woman, and right now I am disgusted and angry at your behavior.

  I'm tired of nursemaiding you, tired of chasing you, tired of wondering why you don't call, tired of settling for something "better than nothing", and tired of playing the masculine woman to your girlish man.  I'm tired.  And so I quit.  And that, Imaginary Ex, is hardly anything for you to puzzle over.

  Don't get me wrong.  I appreciate the depth of your interest in films, music, and books.  I love that you can be moved by the latest play or symphony.  But, Imaginary Ex, I am not exactly looking to spend the rest of my life with a woman trapped inside a man's body.

  Early on in our relationship you gave me red roses.  I thanked you for them, yes, but then I told you never again to give me red roses unless you meant it.  You didn't mean it then and you don't now.  In return I gave you a posy of bachelor's-buttons and yellow gerber daisies.  I had to explain to you about the language of flowers.  And then you abused it.  You abused it with me and with this other girl you felt you had to keep dating to please your parents.  But please, Imaginary Ex, spare me the maudlin sob story about how it wasn't your fault.  You had a choice, ergo, it was your fault.  And so goodbye.

  You'll be reading this over your nice luscious breakfast that for some reason I made for you myself:  Pancakes, scrambled eggs, leeks, and potatoes julienne, the same that I made the first time you stayed over.  Enjoy your breakfast.  Have a nice life.

The Woman

P.S.  Along with this letter you'll be getting back the following:  The dried orange lilies, a ticket stub for Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, the bottle caps from two bottles of root beer, a pewter whistle, more dried flowers, a paper crane, a poem in Chinese calligraphy, a blue ribbon, and a lock of your hair.  And that really is goodbye forever!