I spent today escorting a French publisher, fresh off the plane this morning from Paris, around Beijing. Apparently they want to make a french version of our magazine, which could be fun. Since the publisher is a she, we spent the entire day shopping my balls off.

In other news, below is by far the best Valentine's Day gift I have EVER received. And it's not even from my boyfriend. Although, Jameson is certainly a man friend, and my very best one at that. LOVE YOU J!

                                                                             "Happy 6.08 years of friendship!
                                                                          I must say that I am quite impressed
                                                                      with my Photoshop skills. Thanks to YOU."

In honor of Jameson’s departure, I am holding a Winter Spring Cleaning. He was right (damn). I have SO much stuff. Not like I didn’t know that before, but now those boxes sitting in my living room are just starting to irritate me. Because they’re there, and because I have no idea where to put what’s in them. And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to because I would know that there would be purposeful pockets of space everywhere in my apartment that I forced stuff into. Personal things should fit intuitively into a living space; there is a given place for everything, and I just don’t have enough surface in my figurative, intuitive counters and drawers and shelves and closets and corners.

For a while there, I did rationale that throwing away stuff in China was too tragic since they don’t have Salvation Armies here. But, much to my dismay, garbage bins are veritable stop-and-go’s, because people have full-time jobs picking through that stuff here. They even make money on it. There is no Recycling-Bin God in China because any plastic bottles you toss get picked out right away. Any clothes or cardboard you trash becomes an old person’s treasure. Seriously. It does. Great sub-economy.

So, since my Salvation Army plea didn’t pan out, I’m getting rid of it, along with a shitload of my stuff – as much as I can, as quickly as I can. If I didn’t miss them while they were in boxes, I might as well just get rid of the whole shebang.

Since high school, a time spent frolicking within circles of rich Daddy’s brats, closeted lesbians (it was an all-girls’ boarding school a step, hop and skip away from Wellesley College; let’s honor the cliché) and minorities on student aid (me), the holiday season always meant that I would be away from someone or something. Counting down the days until Christmas, my roommates and I would try to salvage as much holiday togetherness as we could, before packing our bags and going separate ways for the coming of the New Year. I would fly 1.5 hours south to Maryland and make gingerbread houses with my mom while my step dad wrestled our giant, surprisingly resilient, fake Christmas tree. College was no different, except then I drove 13 hours north from Nashville, in my Ford Escape, speeding through ice patches and stealthily pausing in front of poorly hidden police cars.

Between the ages of 18-21, I spent holidays trying to justify to my mom why evenings out (with the few non-college friends I scrounged up at home) didn’t start until 11pm and that she should feel lucky I wasn’t a wild child (at home, anyway) who boozed and drugged in dark alleys with shady characters. It wasn’t that my mom was so strict; in fact she firmly believed in my independence. It was just that home behavior could never resemble school behavior, which was my normal life. At home I had to check my coat of youth at the door; holidays were just a restful and somewhat restricted break before I returned to school.  

Reaching the end of college, my holiday habits gradually began to shift toward more mature partying. (Mature=getting effed up with friends and not having to be home by midnight) Since then, it’s been a mixed ride, but I’m still trying to figure out what Holidays=

Five New Year’s Eves ago was spent with my mom, stepdad, Jameson, a raw seafood bar, and plenty of Karaoke at my parents’ golf club while B (boyfriend) somehow didn’t get the invitation and wound up crossing into the New Year alone at some bar.

Three New Year’s Eves ago, I was in Ocean City with B, Jameson, Glitterati, Mr. Glitterati, Black Beavis, Ugly Betty, Jailbait and Girl-of-Amazonian-proportions. Before I delve into the actual story (a long one: brace yourself), I have included brief character sketches (of characters at time of three New Year’s Eves ago) for full effect.

B
Boyfriend for about a year at this point. Musician. Used to be in a band called Buck Naked Blues. Gentle, carefree, owner of a 24lbs cat named Leopold. Funny but has tendency to slightly overuse slapstick humor.

Jameson
Instant friends since freshman year, after he borrowed my notes in Philosophy 101 because his were taken on single sheets of loose leaf paper that blew away in the wind; quickly rising to best friend status. Easy-going, upper-middle class, elitist from Pennsylvania.

Glitterati
Sushi soulmate. Met as counselors to rowdy, genius art kids at Maryland Summer Center for the Arts; fell in love during a joint performance project involving her words and my photographs; vivacious spitfire with sparkly sapphire eyes.

Mr. Glitterati
Boyfriend of Glitterati. Stand-up comedian trapped in the body of a Marriot slave. Currently Ex-Glitterati, floating around somewhere in Maryland.

Black Beavis
Friend of B (and mine). Talented painter, drinker and Vice President of the whitest-black-boy-I’ve-ever-met clan (B is the President). Strange taste in women.

Ugly Betty
Uninvited, unexpected date of Black Beavis. Small, rotund, socially challenged Latina plus glasses sans personality. Nice enough. Strange taste in men.

Jail Bait
College friend. Rich white boy from Georgia. Thin upper lip, doe-like eyes. In love with Girl-of-Amazonian-proportions since freshman year; followed her around like a puppy all through college. Smart but unmotivated.

Girl-of-Amazonian-proportions
College friend. Extremely book-smart, ex-Mormon from Salt Lake City. Daughter of ex-Congressman. Uses obvious flirtation to manipulate men into falling in love with her.

Me
Responsible for the evening’s guest list. Spending first New Year’s Eve away from parents. Feel guilty for leaving mom home with party-pooper step dad.  

End character sketch.

My weekend ended late because Jameson stayed and played with me at work on Monday, which we officially deemed to be “Take your (Jame)son to work day.” He even sat quietly next to me, at my desk, designing my company’s new website and waiting hopefully for me to give him the lunch cue. I’m glad he decided to stay an extra day, especially after the notorious Jameson-Jenny quibble we had the evening before:

“My tongue scraper is so awesome. Have you ever scraped your tongue?”

“Ew. No.  I brush my tongue, though. Ew. Let’s not talk about that.”

“No, seriously. It is soo cool. I never knew how dirty my tongue was!”

“Ew. No, really. Stop.” I shudder. Body residue is just not my thing.

“You wanna see?”

“NO.”

“Oh, come on! Let me show you. It’s so cool!”

“Ahhhhh! No! I’m serious. Leave me alone.” I run into the bedroom. Jameson is chasing after me, tongue-scraper in hand. “Get away from me!”

“Why?”

“JAMESON. Stop it. I’m serious. That’s SO gross.” I lock the bedroom door.

Jameson scoffs.

“I only locked the door because I don’t want to see your dirty tongue goo! I don’t do things that YOU don’t like!"

Jameson scoffs again. “It’s not fair! You’re not a good friend! You NEVER do anything I hate!” I hear the bathroom door slam. End Scene.

One minute, we’re laughing two-decibels above appropriate laughter volume while wildly gesturing in the middle of Beijing’s crazy streets, and the next minute, we’ve each banned ourselves to separate rooms in my apartment, one pouting that that she is being forced into thinking about unwelcome tongue goo, and the other pouting because he never gets to be forced into thinking about other people’s tongue goo.

I was looking into my wallet today, and as those little colorful “Mao’s” peered back at me, I thought (maybe for the hundredth time) What is the point of money? All it is is fancy slivers of nonsense stamped with fancy art, and supposedly backed up by vaults and vaults of gold coins I always imagined you could dive into (like Uncle Scrooge did on Ducktails). How did we let The Man convince us into cheating, lying and killing for this stuff? If I sold one of my photographs for $1,000 USD, that seems like a lot of money. But when you turn around and convert it into material worth, it doesn’t even get me a plane ticket back to America. I would be 700 little pieces of fancy art poo or 7/10 of a second photograph short. Money only has worth because you can convert it into something, right? 

That’s why I think we should bring back ye ol’ practice of bartering.

Bartering would force us to prioritize our material wealth. Spring Cleaning would be a default action since we would always be trading old things for new things. And granted, that’s one of the reasons why people like money so much – you’re essentially trading paper for purses and you don’t have to give up that old chair if you don’t want to. But really folks, what’s more important here – exponentially extra stuff or a society that doesn’t desperately cling to inanimate objects? A full closet or freedom?

In other news.

Jameson (aka best friend since college) is here for the weekend, from Tianjin. He’s the one who suggested we have our own TV show because we’re oddly hilarious (think The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Juno), which we have yet to figure out, since the buying and maneuvering of cameras is somewhat off-putting, especially in China, where we already receive a massive number of stares. Regardless – show or not, we are still always laughing.

One of the reasons Jameson came to Beijing was so that I could take a model-like picture for his new passport. His current picture makes him look like a sun burnt Mexican with a mariachi mustache. There is nothing wrong with Mexicans or little black mustaches, but Jameson is a blue-eyed-white-boy from Pennsylvania with a tendency to burn in the sun and avoid burritos. And there is something you have to understand about my friend; when it comes to image and design, I might just have found the male version of myself. We are complete perfectionists when creating, viewing or constructively critiquing (insert “judging”) anything that is, could or should be aesthetically pleasing. We are both image elitists and cannot for the life of us understand things like why hotel carpeting is so tacky. Whose job is it to choose that stuff and why are they so terrible at it? We get the fact that hotels need to choose flooring that can camouflauge messy patrons and their wine spills, but there must be a practical and chic way to do it. We also obsess about hair and clothing, though not always our own. For example, if China’s fashion issues could be narrowed down to two categories, they would be Pomeranian Hair and Pretty+Pretty=Pretty.

Pomeranian hair is gorgeous black silky Chinese hair, bleached one-inch from barnyard hay, poofed for volume, spiked on the top, and rat-tailed on the bottom. The look resembles a dry Chia Pet with a permed mullet. Pretty+Pretty = Pretty is what I have observed to be the general direction of young Chinese fashion philosophy.

“This orange suede jacket is pretty! These pink and white-striped Adidas sweat pants are pretty.  I should wear them together – they must be pretty together.”

And it’s not even high-fashion mismatch. It’s just plain wrong. Anyway, we don’t get it. Jameson and I – we are stuck in an aesthetically-mediocre-majority-rules world. Every time we spot a Pomeranian poof bobbing along the sidewalk, it kills us inside a little bit. We should seriously open a door-to-door consulting business, where we tackle every less than stunning victim, breathing or inert, and work our magic.  

Okay, serious parenthesis. The real story is this. Perfect model-like picture was taken but when we brought it to the Kodak store, it didn’t fit the right dimensions. Jameson’s head was too big and in passport photos, there are strict requirements for head to shoulder proportion (these are the things we international travelers have to worry about, instead of deciding which high-priced gas station to go to). So, we made them let me take his picture in their little Kodiak studio because only I know that the secret to taking the perfect portrait is doing it from a higher angle, so as to cut out any lingering neck fat. Piece o’ cake.

Picture taken by Jenny. Check.

Perfectly proportioned head and shoulders. Check.

Even-toned white skin. Check.

Removal of Mexican mustache. Wait. NOT checked.

 “Everything looks okay, but I still have a five o’clock shadow.”

His voice sounds carefree but when I look up, Jameson' entire face is masked in a resistant frown, eyes completely gray with disappointment. His Eeyore expression reminds me of a little kid on the verge of tears because the ice cream just fell of his cone. However, I stifle my giggle, because traumatic mustache-face, for a second time, is no laughing matter. “Well, what do you want to do?”

“We can’t take anymore pictures because I still have un-shavey face.” Sigh. Double sigh.

“We can go back home and shave it. I have a leg razor. Want to use that? It’s pink though.”

“Noo. Then I’ll look like cut-up, un-shavey face.”

“Oh, sorry. I know nothing about shaving faces. But my razor is new. Will that help?”

“It’s just that this picture is going to be in my passport for like, the next 10 years.”

Silence.

“And it’s the whole reason I’m doing this in the first place.” Triple sigh. More lost-ice-cream face. Meanwhile, the Kodak girl is staring at us like we’re crazy, and Jameson’s frown is starting to droop.

“Okay, let me try this.” I bop Kodak girl off the chair and slide into designer-mode. A few clicks of Photoshop “Clone-Stamp-Tool” later, and . . . Presto Chango! Mustachio is off! A clean, white, perfectly proportioned Jameson smiles up from the computer screen, the real one standing in relief next to me.

Oh the wonders of the digital world.

So, that’s what I did today.

Long story short, I de-mustached my best friend. Fun times.

*

A brief return to monetary contemplation.

Below is a fun way to lighten your mood, should you also find yourself burdened with the heavy deliberation of why our lives are run by little men inked on flimsy, flammable slices of custom-blend cotton and linen. (Did you know that??)

Try it on Washington or Lincoln.