Eyebrows

They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. So, does that make the eyebrows the frame of the window to the soul? My eyebrows have gone through many colorful metamorphoses in the course of my seemingly long but I guess subjectively short lifetime.

In high school, I'm sure like many of you, I became extremely tweezer happy. Each stray hair that I found popping its ugly head out of place, I would violently yank it into extinction. This process continued until I virtually had no eyebrows left and I had to draw them in with powder and/or pencil.

My Mom used to be a jazz singer and drummer in her youth and she toured the country with her expensive sequin gowns, Hair Net hairspray, sparkly iridescent eye shadows and of course, her coveted eyebrow pencils.

"Honey, you've got to always start with a good eyebrow, it's your foundation," she would lovingly say to me as she would gasp in horror at how I had mutilated mine. Like I had taken a machete and violently cut down all the grass.

It became a ritual between us, her rose-petal hands pulling my skin above my eyes to get the angle right so she could fill in all the holes. I always felt so loved as she meticulously sculpted my brows, inhaling her dewy honeysuckle perfume and smelling the faint scent of her famous sweet iced tea on her breath. She would get a crinkle in her forehead, her third eye I guess, and she wouldn't let me go until my eyebrows were done "just right."

"The trick is short strokes honey," she would say. I would turn and look at myself in amazement in the mirror. "See what a difference it makes?" she was so proud.

Over the years, my eyebrows have gradually grown back to normal, but they still seem like abused children, so they have to be filled in for a night on the town or a job or if there's a photo-op. I've learned to kind of do it the way my Mom meticulously showed me, but it's still never the same.

You have to pick the right color. Color is key. "You have to pick a shade that is always lighter than your own shade, that way they don't look drawn-in," my Mom would emphatically say, waving her special brow pencil around.

When her brow pencils ran out, she always bought me new ones, glistening ones that were always perfect, never too dark and never too light...

The last eye pencil she bought me was about two years ago. It was the night before I left to move to New York. I was hunched over in between suitcases stressing about whether I would need my platform stilettos that I couldn't walk in, when she walked in with a new bag of make-up. She had made a midnight Wal-Mart run to make sure I had everything I needed. Among the make-up was the most beautiful eyebrow pencil. It glided onto my thin wasps of hair effortlessly and framed my eyes like no other. I called it the Super Eyebrow Pencil. It was MADE for me. She had found the ONE.

I have been using this same Super Eyebrow Pencil for two years now (I know they say to throw away make-up after a year. But, why waste a good thing, especially since the brand of this pencil has been smeared away from so much use. I have NO idea how to find it again).

About a month ago, I lost this Super Eyebrow Pencil. I have dug through the bottom of all of my junked out purses, meddled through crumpled old bank statements and ridiculous Starbucks receipts. I have scoured the mounds of important beauty potions and lotions in the bathroom cabinets. I have peeped in shoes stuffed to the back of my closet, crouched behind beds and sofas and even clanked through the silverware drawer. I finally resigned myself to the fact that my beloved Super Eyebrow Pencil was lost forever. So, after a week of searching, I went to the fluorescent beauty store and tried to find something like it.

I thought I found something like it. It looked like it. It had the same color, texture and packaging as The Super Eyebrow Pencil. When I brought her home, I began pillowing short strokes onto my brows with her and...and...it just wasn't my Super Eyebrow Pencil. It was slightly too dark, a bit too soft and it made my eyebrows look completely disheveled, sort of like how I feel inside. My brows were uneven, staring in two different directions, running for the hills.

My brows were sending mixed messages, also sort of like how I feel inside.

I've continued using the Shitty Substitute for The Super Eyebrow Pencil, hoping that it's just my technique that's off, and telling myself that it's just something new and I have to get used to it and we all have to try new things and it's good for me to have something new. But, I still am not convinced. It's not my Super Eyebrow Pencil. Just like, that person over there isn't my Mother and that person over there isn't my Mother, but, I'm trying to make room for new people. But, these people just aren't my Mother.

Last night, I finally decided to go buy some toilet paper because I was sick of using the left over Kleenex behind the toilet. I went to the drug store at midnight and found myself mesmerized by the sale on sparkly Halloween candy. After throwing a couple pounds of chocolate drugs into my basket, I started to hear my Mom's voice in my head. I thought I was just delusional from the chocolate cravings.

She was saying: "You just need that Super Eyebrow Pencil to make you feel better! It would make your life so much easier if you had that Super Eyebrow Pencil!"

I quickly dismissed the voice thinking, I thought I had hit the wall before, but this time, I had really hit the wall.

I high tailed it out of the store, anxious to devour my Twix and Hershey's. I got home, grabbed a mound of chocolate and went downstairs to my bedroom. As I was hurriedly unwrapping my fattening sweets, I glanced at the carpeted floor in the middle of the room.

There stood, I kid you not, my SUPER EYEBROW PENCIL. In the middle of the room. On the floor. Where in God's name did it come from? And why was it laying in the middle of the floor? It's as if it had mysteriously appeared out of NOWHERE.

I picked it up, leaping for joy, kissing the waxy barrel, so incredibly grateful to have my Super Eyebrow Pencil back into my life.

It was at that moment, I took the pencil outside and I looked up at the stars and grabbed a cigarette. I took a big puff and wondered, maybe there is NO such thing as death?

Like My Super Eyebrow Pencil, maybe my Mom never left.

"Short strokes honey, short strokes."

I'll get there Mom.

I will.

The Death Club

I have slowly discovered since my beautiful Mom's death, that well, death isn't a fun conversation piece. Who would have thought? What I've learned is that people are pretty afraid of the word death, and people just don't know how to react when I tell them that my best friend and mother died too young at 61, unexpectedly...

My favorite thing to do now is take note of everyone's response when I tell them about the tragic circumstances surrounding her death. I only tell them when asked. If a person has food in their mouth, they will sort of choke, or if they are taking a sip of some expensive cocktail they will quickly spit it up in their mouth and grab an embroidered cocktail napkin. They will then switch to the topic of the weather.

It's become apparent to me that people simply can't be bothered with real life events.

What has happened to our humanity? It's almost as if not talking about death won't make it real when in fact, I think NOT talking about it makes it more real, sort of like the elephant in the room.

It's as if some of us are somehow going to escape death. If you know how you're going to escape death, let me know. I would love to hear your technique.

Why does the topic of death have to viewed as morbid? In some cultures, when a person dies they have a celebration and when someone is born they actually...cry. This makes perfect sense to me because you're taking an infinite soul and cramming it into a body with too many limitations to list.

How do we know what it's like on the other side? How do we NOT know that it's totally amazing, totally better and more fun with lots of parties and dancing and beer and everyone is naked?

Now that I have been touched by death, watching my Mom take her last breath, I feel like I've been officially initiated into The Death Club.

The Death Club is sort of like this secret underground society where we're all sort of dragging our feet and scratching our heads, wondering what the hell happened to us. I like to refer to the periods of my life now as BD (before death) and AD (after death). The things that I would have done BD seem to be completely different than the things I do AD.

When I'm in a reminiscent mood and look back at pictures of myself a year ago, I see a frivolous light in my eyes. Now, I don't see that light as much, and it's almost as if missing my Mom has become transparent. I can't hide it anymore.

Lately it seems rare that I meet people in The Death Club (or if they are, they haven't completed their membership form yet and they're in complete denial about death). There is a subtle energy behind someone's eyes when I talk to them about death, a great barometer of where that person is within themselves.

When they dismiss it and quickly change the subject, it's obvious to me that they're petrified of this thing called death. They are also the kind of people that wouldn't wear white after labor day, gasp! I think white should be worn year round and why not wear white to funerals as well?

I wish there was a way to get kicked out of The Death Club. What if I wrote a tell-all book about the inside workings of death, an expose on the Grim Reaper? Would that get me kicked out? I wish I could just click "unsubscribe" like to those horrific junk e-mails.

It looks like I'm stuck in The Death Club for the rest of my life. I'm hoping someone will come sit inside The Club with me and have a few cocktails. Maybe I should start charging a ridiculous cover fee to get into The Death Club? As much as I say I would like to get kicked out, there is more richness, depth and color to my life that I didn't have BD. I think I can see things more clearly with The Death Club glasses and I'm shielded from shallowness... So, can you believe this beautiful weather?

Best Dating Story EVER.

I have a great story to tell, but unfortunately (or fortunately) this one ISN'T mine. I swear, I swear I'm not writing this from another person's point of view just to make it seem like it didn't happen to me. This REALLY didn't happen to me, but it's SUCH a great date story that I have to share it... A girl friend of mine recently went on a date here in San Francisco with a neurologist. Here it goes, from HER perspective:

"So, we were out to dinner and we were having a really great time. He was super smart and engaging! After dinner, he asked me if I wanted to go for a coffee. I was having a good time, so I thought, why not? So, we get in his car and start driving and it took us FOREVER to find a parking spot for some coffee house he wanted to take me to.

We FINALLY find a parking spot and all of a sudden, I look over at him and he grabs his stomach in complete agony and screams and moans at the top of his lungs. I thought he was DYING or having a HEART ATTACK or something. I was SO scared I didn't know what to do! I started to pat his back and tried to ask him what was wrong! Like, where was the pain? Should I call 9-11? WHAT DO I DO? WHAT DO I DO?

After three minutes of watching him howl and cry, I decided to call 9-11. I reached for my phone and then he grabbed me, violently screaming "NO NO NO don't call an ambulance!"

I was so scared and perplexed about what the HELL was happening to this guy! About a minute later he stands straight up and says:

"I just took a shit in my pants."

I almost fell to the ground in complete disgust. This guy just took a shit. In his pants. In front of me.

He then went to the trunk of his car, got a GARBAGE BAG out and placed it in the driver's seat. Had he done this before??? Is that why he had garbage bags in his trunk?

The guy THEN got a pipe out of his pocket, leaned against the car and started smoking tobacco. Guess he needed a smoke after that long shit.

I quickly walked away and hailed a cab."

And I really thought I had some horror stories. Remind me never to date a neurologist.

A Bio Story

I recently HAD to write my own bio for a publisher. I have been postponing writing the damn bio because frankly, I find bios stuffy, self-centered and boring. Come on, we ALL know everybody writes their own bios anyway, so how do you get the point across without seeming, well, arrogant or "too" accomplished? I tried my best. I really did...


R. is the founder of bunionfever.com. A creative writer for most of her life, she recently moved to the eclectic San Francisco Bay area from New York. She was burned out from the Manhattan corporate, social and piranha-apartment-hunting scene. She has 12 pairs of high heels with bent and/or broken heels to prove it.


In 2005, after returning from a much needed five year escape to Italy, she graduated Magna Cum Laude (whatever that means) from Midwestern State University. She studied mass communication and broadcast journalism, so, she knows a lot… about nothing. Also in 2005, she successfully completed a coveted fellowship with the International Radio and Television Society in New York City. Through IRTS, she was placed in the fast-paced newsroom of WABC Eyewitness News where she worked alongside the talents of women producers Maura Sweeney and Pam Tighe. (Thanks to Pam’s awesome city savvy advice, R. now carries a cute purple mace spray thingy in her purse. Luckily she’s never had to use it).


R. has dabbled in a little bit of everything (except food service, pole dancing and retail) which probably explains why, at 28, she doesn’t have any healthcare benefits or an ornately decorated cubicle to call her own. From 2003-2005 she was an Associate Producer for the NBC affiliate, KFDX TV-3 in her hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas. There, she learned how to eliminate the most interesting facets of the news by cutting every story down to 30 seconds. Also in Wichita Falls, she was an Associate Creative Director for a small boutique advertising agency. At the small agency, which will go unnamed, she was forced to come up with exciting creative concepts for nursing homes and hardware stores, sort of like raising the dead.


Her most recent stint was for a pharmaceutical ad agency under McCann Erickson in New York. She basically did a lot there, including buying lots of photographs of women who had to look like they were menopausal.


Described by friends as “mysterious yet insightful” and “funny,” R. likes to shamelessly indulge in trashy celebrity gossip on her Blackberry as she pets her cross-eyed mute Siamese cat, Espresso.


She is still working on that novel she was supposed to finish eight years ago.

An Interview (From the Archives Series!)

July 25th, 2007

She Likes it Hot

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from Genius Times recently published piece on the lives of New York female bloggers.

Richard Ashnell recently had the pleasure of sitting down for a one on one, tete a tete with Bunion Fever blog dominatrix who goes by the alias of DonnaBella.

RA: So, you've been toying with the idea of emptiness in your blog lately. Why?

DB: I live in New York. (laughing) No, no. I am trying to date in New York.

RA: Who have you been dating?

DB: Losers mainly. And a few liars strewn in there too. But, I like to mix it up and hang out with some alcoholics too on occasion.

RA: Sounds like everyone else here in the city. But what makes you different?

DB: I'm naive and I believe what people really tell me.

RA: So it really has taken you longer to understand that everyone lies in New York?

DB: Yeah. I'm afraid so.

Stuff

I have been unpacking for three days now, removing my stuff from boxes and dealing with all of the...stuff. Where does all of this stuff come from? How did I accumulate all of this stuff?

The past three months have been a gradual process of sorting through all of the stuff. First, all of the physical stuff, then, all of the mental stuff. I'm trying to get my life organized, back in shape, neat and orderly, like a well wrapped Christmas present. But, I dare to ask, what happens when all of this stuff is finally in order? Will I then be able to grieve fully? Does anyone ever grieve fully?

Among the mounds of stuff my brother paid to have shipped here to San Francisco, lies the last shirt my Mom ever wore, a cream-colored thermal Polo. It was the shirt she had on when the ambulance crew forcefully strapped her to the gurney to rush her away to the evil, dark hospital. She kicked and screamed and socked one of the emergency guys as hard as she could in the balls. I was hyperventilating, crying uncontrollably, and unbelievably confused because I didn't know if I had made the right decision to dial 911. She hated hospitals. I guess like everyone else.

It was the day after her first dose of chemotherapy and she was speaking in jibberish, curled into fetal position on the bed. The only words in English she could scream were "Come on baby, let's go! Come on baby, let's go!" She was trying to rip out her 5-FU chemotherapy pump attached to some major vein in her chest. (I like to call it the 5-fuck you pump, dripping bitter, toxic poison into her body over a period of three days). I didn't know what the hell to do or where the hell she wanted to "go". Only in retrospect do I think she meant she wanted to go, like... go. As in, leave the planet. Exit her body. Hell, I would have wanted to. Badly.

My Mom looked like she was in complete, utter gut wrenching agony.

The emergency guys shoved her feistiness into the back of the ambulance so they could sedate her. I kept telling myself that if I was in that kind of pain I would want to be sedated too, in la la land. Give me some goddamn heroin or whatever mind altering drug that would make me float away from the horrific tragedy that had happened to my body. An 85 pound shell of existence.

Little did I know at the time that "Come on baby, let's go!" would be the last words that I would ever hear from my Mother's mouth. In essence, they were her dying words. My Mom, this superb and amazing conversationalist slipped into a catatonic state after the ambulance people injected her with some sleepy drugs and she slept and slept and slept until she passed, three weeks later.

Today, finding her soft, crisp Polo shirt shoots my mind back into this horrible memory and I'm so afraid that every time, every single fucking time I look at this stupid shirt, this shirt that's just a shirt, I'll relive that horrific day over and over and over.

The only reason I kept the shirt was because, well, it still smells like her, like her skin. I never knew that our own skin could smell, almost like we're all different flowers with our own fragrances. I never realized how she smelled until I found the Polo shirt wedged into a hospital bag at the back of her closet after she died. I figured by keeping the goddamn shirt it would help me remember the way she made me feel when she would hug me, like a warm, soothing blanket on a cold foggy night.

To me, she smelled of sunshine, vibrant flowers, sweet honeysuckle, healing incense, and love.

Today, I cursed that stupid shirt. I didn't think of her hugging me when I smelled the stupid thing. I thought of ambulances, needles, respirators, bed sores, hospital gowns, catheters and heart monitors.

I quickly stuffed the shirt to the back of my drawer. I'm hoping the next time I pull it out, I won't be so angry. Since, after all, it is just stuff, right?

If You're Going to San Francisco

I did it. I'm here. The place where my Mom was born and raised, away from the crowded black city grime, smelly subways and the frantic, frenzied paces of New York City. There are layers upon layers upon layers of grief inside of myself that I feel need to be gradually picked away and loosened until they finally can dissolve, but nonetheless, I have taken the leap and moved here because it just FEELS right.

It's the first time in my life that I have made a choice like this, such a big (and costly) move, purely on my gut. If it wasn't for my mom's death, I wouldn't have been RIPPED away from New York, back to Texas. And, if I wouldn't have been RIPPED away from New York and had to witness my beautiful Mom take her last breath, I would have NEVER thought about moving out here to San Francisco. Something is nudging me and I would like to think that it might be her.

Adventures to follow... Adventures to those places that none of us like to go. Adventures inside of my head. Facing the aftermath, sweeping up the dust that has kind of settled, and all of the good and bad stuff that comes when death touches someone's life.

I hate to tell you this, but I'm headed out of here, this place, this earth, this whatever you want to call it, someday, who knows, maybe tomorrow. It's inevitable.

And, my friend, my dear, dear friend, you are too.

Now, the question is, how shall we spend our time?

Changes. Big Changes.

My mom is dead. There is no other way to put it, except for, my mom is really dead. I just got back to New York last week after being in Texas since November and I feel so empty, so devoid of emotion, like something is missing in my life. Like, say, my mom. I can't even put into words how much I've witnessed over the past 7 months. I've been on a bad, bad roller coaster ride.

My brother and I had to make the decision to take my mom off of life support in February after she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and had a severe allergic reaction to her first round of chemotherapy. I really can't make this shit up. Before all of this, I honestly thought I had real life drama to write about, "important" life changing decisions, like which date to go on or which shoes to wear on this superficial little blog. Now, I have real shit to write about, like how my dad crapped his pants the other day because my brother and I moved him here to NY because he had a stroke in 2005 and he can't take care of himself and he's staying in my brother's spare room and the other day he wandered out of the apartment and we called 911 and the whole NYC fucking police force had some special code out for him and we thought we lost our dad too and they found him 12 blocks away, 5 hours later... carrying a box of my mom's christmas ornaments that we had shipped here to keep some sort of memory alive of her from the house that my parents lived in for over forty years.

I don't know how much more I can take.

I'm moving to San Francisco in a couple weeks.