Job Interviews, Plus Why I am Different from Margaret Atwood and What I Don't Gain from Humping Duvets

Two Job Interviews Today.

I am in the process of assembling a reasonable combination of hair, make-up and clothing that will convince my potential employers that over the past year I have worn Other Items besides sweaty, and often mildewed yoga clothes.  This endeavour is turning out to be a strenuous challenge.  I hate make-up.  It makes me feel totally incompetent.  And like a clown.

The good news is that when the interviewer asks me how I aspire to elevate myself in the future, I will not blow it like I did at Lululemon, admitting something embarrassing and fatal,  I'll just say: Eyeshadow.

Today, as I used my finger to rub luscious colour onto my eyelids, (I must have lost the brush the last time I wore make-up six months ago), I was taken back to a rainy Tuesday evening in Montreal involving eyeshadow, alcohol, Margaret Atwood and my lime-green turquoised daisied duvet. These days that duvet is collecting mildew in a trunk in the Boatman's basement. Despite this, my level of sobriety and sexual satisfaction have significantly increased.  And I live on a street where they never forget to pick up the recycling.

 

Which brings me to the Last Time I will EVER recycle the  Margaret Atwood Duvet Humping Eyeshadow story EVER again, UNLESS I am getting paid for it. Here we go:

Why I Am Different from Margaret Atwood and What I Don’t Gain from Humping Duvets

By Erica J. Schmidt   

 

Me and Marg

I have nothing to show for my evenings humping duvets.  Surely Margaret Atwood never spends her evenings humping duvets.  When such evenings occur, the nervous-void, anxious-boredom evenings, Margaret Atwood gathers her creativity together and amalgamates familiar objects and universally deep occurrences in order to produce stunning and poignant similes.  Her similes become poems.  Her poems are recited at shrines.  Margaret Atwood would not open a bottle of screw-top wine and roll up her lime green, turquoise-daisied duvet and hump it profusely so that she wouldn’t be too horny for her date with a man she has no desire of sleeping with.  She does not go on dates with men she doesn’t want to sleep with.  She does not live on streets where they forget to pick up the recycling.

I get up from my time with my lime green, turquoise-daisied duvet.  I decide that I am about as aroused as possible considering that it is not an extraordinary occasion and that I am not extraordinarily drunk.  Once, with Simon, I ejaculated liquid goo.  We were on a biodegradable blue yoga mat.  Margaret Atwood would not find this very interesting, but it’s the most aroused I’ve ever gotten.  And I was too drunk to remember.  Even though I ejaculated and started crying before he could ejaculate liquid goo all over me, afterwards Simon was more compelled to fuck me than I was compelled to fuck him.  We were supposed to write a bilingual epistolary novel together, but I told him I was too uninspired.  He told me that he didn’t want to hear from me ever again.

My cheek has pale pink foundation on and it appears redder than my cheek without make-up.  Once Simon wrote me a poem in French about kissing my ass cheeks.  And how I got his face cheeks wet like the morning.  Maybe one day I will be famous for my ass cheeks.  I wrote Simon a poem about plants and spines and wet roots.  It didn’t rhyme.  Simon didn’t like it very much.  I am preparing my eyelids with a four-part eye shadow paint-by-number kit by Maybelline.  Eye shadow for Dummies.  Something Margaret Atwood wouldn’t use.  There are four squares of different colours.  The medium purple square is labelled LID. Light pink is BROW. The CREASE square is dark glittered purple.  I have a crease and I am not yet twenty-five.  Margaret Atwood did not have creases at my age.  There’s another dark, brown square that reads CORNER.  I don’t bother with the dark brown.  If I screw up, I will look obscene.

My mascara comes in two parts.  The wand undoes at both ends.  Inside the end marked “step one” there is clumpy white liquid.  It is probably thicker than the wet morning goo I watered Simon with, but I don’t know because I never got to see it.  Step One looks more like white out.  Liquid paper.  Between Steps One and Two, I brush my teeth.  I regret this immediately, and pour myself another glass of wine.  Margaret Atwood would have more foresight.  Step Two is Pro Black.  I coat it over the white out. Steps One and Two are waterproof.  I will look somewhat groomed for at least seventy-two hours.  Or else I will look somewhat like a racoon.  I finish the wine, but do not brush my teeth.  Brushing so soon after drinking may cause enamel erosion.  My enamel already erodes in my dreams.  At night, my teeth collapse. 

I look in the mirror at my red and pink cheeks and multi-processed eyes.  Yes, I say. You’re good.  You’re drunk enough.

For Margaret Atwood, alcohol is not a remedy for disappointment.  Or a pre-buffer for future disappointments.  It doesn’t matter for me if my date and the music and the beer are lame, because I’m drunk.  It doesn’t matter for Margaret Atwood, because she’s Margaret Atwood.

I am reading Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood. Once I saw Margaret Atwood, I tell my date.  Twice, actually.  She’s witty.  Intelligent.  Remarkable.

You’re that smart, too, he assures me.  When I look at him, my vagina stays dry.

He says that smoking gives him what I seem to have naturally.  An ease of expression.  A grace of movement.  I feel guilty because I had to drink three glasses of wine before I met with him.

It’s over.  I can have cereal, then go to bed.  Margaret Atwood would have washed her face before going to bed.  She would have flossed and brushed her teeth.  I do none of these things. I insert my night guard on top of my decaying enamel.

I am not compelled to roll up my futon and hump it.  I fall asleep quickly.  I hope that I won’t smell like beer at yoga tomorrow morning.

The End.


This is the lime-green turquoise-daisied duvet. After three years in the basement, the mildew took over. We put it on the curb. Rest in peace, duvet.

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I Let Go by Erica J. Schmidt 

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