Geraldine DeRuiter's Blog, page 7

My Memoir is Out in Paperback Today.

It has been two years since my memoir came out, and the reality of that dream coming true has both sunk in and managed to become surreal. Sometimes, I need a reminder that it all actually happened.

And then someone will mention it to me, or email me to tell me that they just finished it, or I’ll see it on a shelf at a bookstore and it’ll hit me: Oh, yeah. I wrote a book. I actually did it. That was the whole “life goal I’ve had since I was 8” that I realized.

And then learning that my book was coming out in paperback? Well, that’s sort of started the whole sinking-in-surreal-wait-I-really-did-that process anew.

As my editor told me about halfway through the editing process, you only really learn to write a book by, well, writing a book. And you can usually tell – usually about half or two-thirds of a way through a book – when the writer figures out exactly how to do it. Because like everything else, writing isn’t just about some innate talent: it’s about practice, and learning, and revising, and staring blankly at your computer in a state of existential grief (sorry, I wish that last part went away. But after ten years of blogging and thousands of posts and one memoir: nope).

The same is true of actually selling and publishing a book – you only really learn by doing. I found out what it’s like to have my book go to auction, I stressed out over the terms of different offers, I worked with an amazing editor who got what I was trying to do, we discussed different covers with a designer, and suddenly: there it was. My book. Out there in the world.

My super adorkable husband, shown dancing with the hardcover copy of my book when it first came out.

Mine came out first in hardcover, which was sort of miraculous thing. A lot of writers don’t get the hardcover treatment their first time around. I kept running my hands over it, over this weird collection of words that I’d somehow written. Hardcover books were always inaccessible to me growing up. They were too expensive and cumbersome, and besides: The Babysitters’ Club series didn’t come out in hardcover.

 

And now, after 2 years, my book is coming out in paperback. Which is also its own kind of miraculous. A lot of writers don’t get a paperback release after their book comes out in hardcover. Paperbacks are more affordable, so it means that more people might buy it. Plus, my love of reading and my dreams of writing began in paperback books: Running my hands along the glossy unbroken spines at the store, seeing what new Christopher Pike release had come out, what Lois Duncan novel I’d managed to miss. So this feels particularly special.

My editor explained that paperbacks always have a different cover than their hardcover counterparts (I don’t really know why this is true, but after thinking about it, I could think of example after example). So while I loved my original hardcover design, we needed something new, and the designer decided to take inspiration from my Instagram account. So the images on the new cover are from there.

I was initially a little nervous about this. It’s already surreal enough seeing your book in print. And then seeing your face on the cover of your book? That’s a whole ‘nother level of bonkers. I feel like I’m in some sort of alternate reality where everything went sort of weirdly right.

The books arrived a few weeks ago, but I haven’t shared the cover until today, because it’s now officially available on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

And, okay, I cracked up a little when I first saw the new edition, because maybe, maybe that image of me in the lower left-hand corner? The one where I have a finger against my lips and I’m contemplating raiding that bakery window I’m standing in front of? Doesn’t it sort of look like … well, I’m picking my nose? I mean, just a little bit? Which, obviously, is the most on-brand thing ever. And it’s also made all of this sort of seem like it’s real. Because maybe I do realize my dreams … but I look like I’m picking my nose when I do it.

Rand, of course, didn’t notice any of this. He just saw that there’s an image of us in the upper right-hand corner of the cover, kissing. This was his reaction:

So, yeah. I’m a paperback writer now. It’s a miraculous, surreal thing.

Happy 10th Anniversary To This Weird Blog

Ten years. It’s been ten years since I started this blog.

Ten years since Rand accidentally named this site because he misheard me when I suggested “The Everywhere List”. Ten years since we registered the domain. A decade of writing posts – some good, some utterly embarrassing, some very, very outdated.

The wormhole created by a project that spans ten years of your life is no small thing. You go from being twenty-something to nearly 40. You go from being newlyweds to the couple that people come to for advice, because you’ve been together since God was a boy and everyone wants to know how you make it work (short answer: assume that your partner has the best intent, and acknowledge when you are hangry). Your hair changes a lot. You go from wondering where your career is going to wondering where your career is going (but you know, now you’re a published author with a James Beard Award).

There are days when I think I haven’t changed – that time has simply elapsed. As though the passing of a decade is no more significant than the passing of five minutes. But then I reread those early blog posts – me, a newborn foal trying to balance – and I cringe. It’s a deeply uncomfortable thing to be confronted with precisely how much you’ve grown. But then again, what’s the alternative?

Children are tiny mile markers for our own mortality, little walking reminders of the passing of years. The delta between 30 and 35 never feels that vast – but the one between 4 and 9 seems to stretch forever. Rand and I don’t have kids. And so different things become our reference points for the passing of time. Projects. Friendships. Crimes against Fashion.

MY SKIN WAS MADE OF SILK AND DREAMS AND NOW IT IS MADE OF SPIDERS.

Remember when you only had 10 employees? Remember when I wore those low-rise jeans? Remember how we looked when I started this blog?

I marvel at how young we were.

At how skinny I was and how round Rand’s cheeks were.

“When did we get so old?” I ask him, and he laughs.

 

But then again, what’s the alternative?

“I never agreed to any of this,” I say, annoyed, pulling the corners of my brows up, the way my mother used to, the way that I hated, to see if I can get my face back to where it was. But it just looks strange. So I let it go, and it all falls back into place.

Maybe everything is where it should be. I know I’ll look back on these photos, these photos taken today, yesterday, the day before, and marvel at how young we looked.

And I realize: I did agree to this. I agreed to quietly sitting at my computer during the day, trying to make something. And seeing him in the evening, smiling as he says “Hi, baby!” when he comes in from the shed where he spends his days, working on his next big thing. And on his face, he has this look. It’s the delight of someone who hasn’t seen you in ages and who has missed you terribly. Even though, of course, it’s only been a few hours.

 

Just a few hours. That’s all it was.

I agreed to the steady passing of time because it’s been with him.

 

I don’t blog the way I used to. I don’t blog with the hunger of a young writer trying to figure it out, with the frenzied panic of someone who needs to prove themselves. I’m still not certain where I’m going, I suppose – but I guess that doesn’t bother me so much anymore.

I still love this blog. I still love writing. I love everything it’s brought into my life. But after ten years? It’s hard. Stephanie Yoder wrote about it brilliantly on her own blog. A decade is usually the expiration date for things like this.

Days and weeks pass and I don’t write at all. Rand gets annoyed.

“When you write,” he tells me, “wonderful things happen.”

And I remind him that wonderful things have already happened. And maybe, maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s okay to slow down as you get older.

“We’re not old,” he says, nudging me. “Go write.”

And so I do. And here I am. Perhaps not for another ten years, but for a little while longer, at least. Because honestly … what’s the alternative?

I Tweeted About The Joker Being a Woman Who Was Tired of This Shit and It Now Feels Auto-Biographical

Recently my Twitter replies were doused in gasoline and set alight. It’s been both somewhat alarming and interesting. (Uncontrollable, raging fires usually are.)

I wrote this tweet in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Seattle after I’d had a day. An exhausting, emotionally draining day filled with some of the more intense stuff you can deal with in a family dynamic (I’ll just leave it at that). I was waiting for Rand, and leaning with my head tilted back against the wall, and just trying to hold it together.

The Joker should have been a woman. And she finally went insane because too many random dudes told her to smile, so now she perpetually smiles while terrorizing Gotham.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) June 1, 2019

 

Have you ever been there? Where your entire body feels like it’s made of wasps, and if someone just jostles you the tiniest bit, they’re all going to come streaming out and it’s going to be a mess because there will be yellowjackets everywhere?

(Maybe not. Maybe I’m the only person made of wasps here.)

But I was doing a good job. Keeping the wasps in. And trying not to think too hard about my dad, and what it was like when he died, and what it means to say goodbye to people. How you can say it a thousand times and try to ready yourself as much as you can and nothing will prepare you for the gut punch that is losing a parent. How when my mother’s house burned down not too long ago I realized how close I was to losing her, and I realized how I’d lost so much of what I had left of my father (the letters, the photos, the tiny Russian nesting dolls he bought me when I was little), and how I was just desperate, desperate to hold on to some part of both of them. (Like I said, it was a day.)

These were the thoughts that were buzzing in my head and in my chest as I sat there, holding it all in because damn it, I’m not messing up good a good winged cat-eye at 4pm. Nope. Besides, I knew: once the wasps get out, you can’t put them back in.

And some guy walked by, some nondescript middle-aged man in a suit, and he saw me, sitting there, my face chiseled from stone itself, and he just had to say something, because lord knows a woman can’t be left alone with her thoughts. And so he shouted – SHOUTED – across the lobby to me.

“Awwww, that’s way too serious a face!”

Now, I should note: this comment alone would not have been enough to release the swarming nest. One comment, dear reader, is never enough, and I’m sure you know this well. But there is always a breaking point, there is always a final comment, that thing that happens that causes a buzzing hoard to come spilling out. When they do, it is the culmination of days or weeks or years of this trash. It is every time we’re told to smile when we feel like shit, every time that we have our own jokes or experiences explained back to us because we’re apparently too stupid to understand them. Being told to smile when you’ve had a fucking shit day, and maybe a shit year is just another example of how, for some men, our bodies aren’t really ours. They are things that are supposed to be pleasant to look at. And a woman whose eyes could bore through concrete is not that.

I did not unleash the wasps on him. I just scoffed, as he doddered past, and thought about how my compulsion in that moment wasn’t to smile, but to laugh. Not happily, not coherently, but madly. An unhinged sort of laugh. And then I did imagine releasing the wasps. I mean, of course I did. What else are wasps inside your chest and brain for?

And all of this made me giggle a little as I sat in the lobby of this hotel, while the yellowjackets hummed inside my rib cage.

So I wrote a tweet about the Joker. It was meant as a joke, of course, but also as a commentary on all the shit that we as women deal with. How we’re constantly told to smile. The microaggressions that add up on a daily basis. How if you are a woman of color or disabled or trans or any of the places where those Venn diagrams intersect, you deal with this shit exponentially more. And how it’s just enough to make you fucking lose it and, I don’t know, take over Gotham’s water supply.

I wrote a couple more tweets, and it was clear that my Joker wasn’t really a villain. She was more of an anti-hero, a delightful metaphor, an allegory for being driven mad by misogyny and trying to regain control as a result. How everyone thinks she’s unhinged but really, she’s just fucking tired. of. this. shit.

I didn’t intend for the tweet to go viral (I’ve been on Twitter long enough to know that’s not how virality works). Most people got the joke. They found it funny. And some people … well, they did not.

This is not new to me. I’ve had my mentions flooded like this before, had to mute the replies to countless threads because Twitter had just become unusable for me, because wading through graphic images of mutilated bodies (which people like to reply to my tweets with for some reason) or comments about how I’m a fat ugly aging whore become a little tiring after a while.

And while the comments themselves were not that different this time, it felt different for me. It may be that I’m finally getting used to being sprayed with the shit fire-hose that is my Twitter replies. It may be that unlike so many other tweets I’ve written that have gone viral, this one felt less personal – most people who were angry were upset about the inherent notion of a female Joker, missing most of my point.

But as the replies rolled in – hundreds, if not thousands of them – I realized something: all of their hateful comments just supported and fed into my argument.

I JUST GOT MISOGYNISTIC TWITTER BINGO! pic.twitter.com/R3hnwj4zot

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) June 2, 2019

This bullshit is everywhere, and women deal with it constantly. I had people telling me that I was a fragile weakling for getting mad that someone had told me to smile, while they were positively losing their minds because I said that maybe the make-believe clown villain should be a girl.

My favorite was the guy who told me to get back into the kitchen, and when I replied with this, HE INSTANTLY DELETED HIS TWEET.

LOL, why, you want me to win another James Beard award? https://t.co/rjRAlodv7E

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) June 3, 2019

I was being accused of weakness by people who, when they had to deal with a tiny bit of clapback – a teeny tiny percentile of what I got in an hour- immediately ran into hiding. These idiots who were dishing out abuse wouldn’t survive a day with my mentions – with the bullshit and the death and rape threats. With the guy on a plane who, for some reason, yelled at me to “CALM DOWN” when I politely asked if he could let me by so I could go pee.

And to be clear: I have it easier than so many women.

The original origin story for the Joker usually involves him having one bad day. A whole lifetime of systemic misogyny is a much better reason for snapping. And just like that, my throwaway joke had shifted in my mind. I was now super invested in the idea of a woman so fed up with bullshit that she becomes the Joker.

People were quick to make the same arguments over and over again. I’ve replied to a few on Twitter, but it’s easier for me to talk about them here:

 

“We already have a female Joker! Martha Wayne was one in the Flashpoint series.” 

Oh, wow, really, thanks for telling me, I haven’t heard this a thousand times. It’s amazing that there can be a half-dozen Batman franchises in my lifetime – all of them essentially the same, all of them sticking very close to the source material. Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Val Kilmer, Christian Bale, and now Robert Pattison. Christ, there isn’t even a blonde or a redhead in the mix. But god forbid we have more than one female Joker. Noooooo. That’s far too many. We’ll have to, like, buy extra tampons or something.

 

“The Joker is a homicidal rapist, I can’t believe you want a woman to be that.” 

This references The Killing Joke, a 1988 comic by Alan Moore that was the basis for Christopher Nolan’s Joker arc (and while I realize that I don’t need to prove my comic prowess, because fuck you if you think that women need to prove themselves in this area, I should note that I didn’t need to look any of that shit up. I just know it.)

The refutations I have of this are many, but let us begin with this: I do not, and have never liked, The Killing Joke. The treatment of Barbara Gordon in that narrative is terrifying for a lot of reasons. Barbara getting shot by the Joker is canon (sometimes). Barbara getting raped by him, is not, in my opinion. But what bothered me most about it (I remember reading it probably close to 15 years ago, so forgive me if my memory is fuzzy – I’m not revisiting that comic), was that Barbara wasn’t really treated as anything but a prop. Her rape was simply used as a device for one man to antagonize other men, furthering the narrative that women aren’t really people unto themselves, and we should only care about them in relation to men. (Just think about how many times you’ve heard a politician say they care about a feminist issue because they have “a wife and daughters.” Maybe if you were unmarried and only had sons, you should still care, because women are people.)

So let’s be clear: if I were to envision a female Joker, she wouldn’t be a rapist. The Killing Joke was written by men, for men. It doesn’t speak for me. But you do need to ask yourself something: why are you okay with the canon male Joker being a rapist?

And before you say something like, “Well, he’s a villain!” then ask yourselves why you didn’t complain when he was in the LEGO Batman movie. Or when people dress up as the Joker for Halloween. Right. Obviously those Jokers aren’t rapists. It only comes up when we want to discredit the idea of a female Joker.

Secondly, the Joker has always been a rather pliable character. His sanity and cruelty have always fluctuated. Just fucking look at Caesar Romero’s Joker. (And for the record, I love Caesar Romero. I bring him up all the time in conversation, as my husband will attest. And I love that he refused to shave his mustache for the role and they were like, “Okay, whatever,” and just COVERED IT UP WITH WHITE FACE PAINT. I love him.)

 

The point is: characters are rewritten all the time. And nobody seems to have a problem with it, as long as those characters remain male.

“UGH JUST WRITE NEW STORIES, WHY DO WE NEED TO REWRITE THE OLD ONES?” 

This argument is interesting to me, because it’s not a zero-sum game. New stories are important. New art is important. Celebrating the work of artists whose work has not been given the amount of credit or attention it deserves is a wonderful thing. And making sure we have more diversity in comics and movies and literature and music and art is hugely important.

So why can’t we do that AND reclaim old stories? Oh, right. Because some people don’t want us to. They don’t want female Ghostbusters. They don’t want a black Batman or a multi-racial Spiderman. Because they don’t like the idea of something they think is exclusively theirs suddenly including other people, like women and PoC. Because all of history has been about them, and they don’t want to share it. I remember going to see Tim Burton’s Batman in the theaters, and thinking it was magical – but also feeling somehow left out. I want that story to be mine.

Comic books have historically been very white and very male. And there are a lot of ways to challenge that. One is by telling new stories. And the other is by rewriting that history. We need to take a big diverse flag and stick in right in the middle of those old dusty comics – because they belong to us, too.

 

“This idea is stupid and not well thought out.” 

Lol, bro it was a fucking tweet written while my chest cavity was full of yellow-jackets. There is no way you could have half as coherent while in my shoes.

ALSO, YOUR PARENT’S CONTRACEPTIVE PLANNING WAS STUPID AND NOT WELL THOUGHT OUT.

 

 

It’s been a funny two days – my replies have been full of toxicity, but also full of some amazing love and support from both men and women. It’s been unreal.

Can we start a petition to have DC make this a real comic?

— Jon Leo (@TheRealJonLeo) June 4, 2019

@everywhereist If I ever get time and a new drawing tablet, I’m drawing you as your joker concept.

I’m not all that great, but I just gotta.

— Dracarys on Your Ancestors (@Shteyr) June 4, 2019

I have been browsing your Twitter for the better part of two hours and You. Are. My. Hero.

— Bloodied Porcelain (@BloodPorcelain) June 4, 2019

You’re the hero we need right now.

— Oliver More (@TheMostOliver) June 4, 2019

Comics really can bring people together, if you let them.

As for the people who are angry about me suggesting that the clown villain in their comic book be a girl, well …

They were like that when I got here. https://t.co/SXjtTJFvcT

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) June 2, 2019

Become Invincible. Then Make Cadbury Creme Egg Mayonnaise.

The problem with any writer who happens to experience that rare, fleeting phenomenon known as “external validation” is that for a few moments, we go a little mad.

Which is to say: we start believing our own hype. And for a writer, truly, what greater madness is there than believing in yourself? Don’t get me wrong: I’m still a neurotic bundle of frayed nerves, unsure of my own role in the grand scheme of things, powered mostly by nutritionally-devoid snacks that have come to replace meals. I am basically a frittering raccoon poorly masquerading in an ill-fitting skin-suit.

But for a few ephemeral moments now and then I think that maybe I can do anything. It doesn’t last long, it’s wholly born of madness, it’s dependent upon the opinions of others (which is a whole other thing), and yet: it’s there.

It may very well be part of the human condition, these brief moments of self-permitted greatness. If we’re lucky enough, and privileged enough, we may even capitalize on those moments and share our work with others. My James Beard Award (yes, I am still talking about it, shut up) is a symptom, but not the cause. For a second, I was delusional enough to think that my work deserved something. You all were a big part of me thinking that.

In those narrow windows of time where we are invincible, we can do amazing things. I’ve baked layer cakes and used a pressure washer to clean my deck and started writing counted books (I even finished one.)

And one time, I made Cadbury Creme Egg mayonnaise. This was, to be fair, a … less amazing achievement than the other things. But it happened during one of those brief moments when I was invincible, and so that seems miraculous enough in and of itself.

It was Chuck Wendig who put the damn concoction into my head several months ago, when he tweeted about it. I happened to be flying through London at the time, and I spent my layover in Heathrow walking from shop to shop in search of the creme egg mayo, to the horror of several Duty Free workers.

I couldn’t find it anywhere, and felt that strange mix of both relief and disappointment that follows when a delightfully bad idea never comes to fruition. But then I won a damn James Beard Award. And that shit does not happen to frittering raccoons without them having to pay a karmic debt to the universe. I figured I had to make homemade Cadbury Creme Egg Mayo as some sort of penance to Julia Child and the gods of cooking.

Did I even have mayo in the house? No, of course not. Mayo is the chosen condiment of demons and the GOP. At this point, I should have given up, but I was temporarily capable of great things so I had to make candy mayonnaise I heard about on the internet. Obviously.

I decided to make mayo from scratch.

 

If you are drunk on your own elevated feelings of self-worth and feel like you need to make a novelty condiment in order to pay a karmic debt to the gods of food writing, well … here is what you will need to make Cadbury Creme Egg mayonnaise at home:

one Cadbury cream egg
one chicken egg
a total disregard for the culinary achievements of the last 500 years
canola oil
the intoxicating thought that maybe, just maybe, you are fucking amazing
a pinch of salt

You will also need an electric mixer.

This was about to become increasingly difficult because – and I am still unclear on how this happened – someone recently, and presumably accidentally, destroyed my electric mixer by dunking it in water after a dinner party. I figured that someone either dropped it into a sinkful of water without telling me (which feels off-brand for my friends) or someone dunked my electric mixer in water in an effort to clean it because they were drunk (which feels super on-brand for my friends).

So I was left with the task of making mayonnaise – an effort which absolutely requires an electric mixer – without one.

I started by beating an egg with my immersion blender, but that didn’t really work because the whole thing was too shallow, so I switched to my food processor.  I added some oil, and that did a wonderful job of making whatever the hell this is:

Awful? Yes. Possibly becoming sentient and plotting to murder me? Yes. But not technically mayonnaise.

I poured it all out into a bowl and beat the damn thing by hand, which is something that my electric mixer could have done had someone not dunked the damn thing in water. (Okay, but seriously, the thing had an electric cord, why would you wash that? I swear to god some of my friends are either aliens or time travelers and our 21st century human ways are just confusing to them.)

At some point, it held together in a gloopy, pus-like blob that feeds on the nightmares of children.

I HAD MADE MAYONNAISE.

Now I just had to add this thing.

 

For the record, cutting open a Cadbury creme egg is supremely satisfying.

I scooped out the insides of a Cadbury creme egg and mixed them into the mayo. (Note: it should look like the by-product of a pulmonary infection.)

 

Then I chopped up the chocolate shell and threw that in along with some salt. The addition of the sugar and chocolate meant that mayo started to break down a little bit and lose consistency. But I was undeterred. There was no reality in which this wasn’t going to work. Because I could – for a little while at least, do anything. And I’d decided that I was going to do this.

 

 

The result was … runny mayonnaise with chocolate pieces in it and the occasional chunk of fondant.

 

I had to try it, right? I mean, I couldn’t go through all the trouble and then not taste it, right? Did I mention it was first thing in the morning? And that this was technically breakfast? A meal which does not – at least in my house – regularly include mayonnaise or Cadbury creme eggs but does apparently include terrible judgement?

 

I made a GIF of my reaction since there are moments for which words fail us.

 

If you are wondering what it tasted like … it was like someone mixed a Cadbury creme egg into a bunch of mayonnaise. And honestly it was both repellent but … weirdly compelling?

Like when you taste something terrible and your first impulse is to share it with someone else? It was that. This entire product’s tagline could have been, “Ew, gross, try this.” Of course, there’s only one other person who screwed up badly enough in a past life that they now have to live with me in this one.

If I ever make this face around you, run.

As soon as Rand came downstairs I shoved the bowl in his face because I didn’t want to be the only one to experience this culinary atrocity. I would later tell friends about this experience and I wanted someone to corroborate my story.

Also, my sincere apologies to my husband for putting a photo of him in his pjs with morning hair on the internet but really, he knew I was a goblin when he married me.

Here’s a video of his reaction, in which I asked him how he felt about this whole thing:

http://www.everywhereist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/VID_20190430_094718.mp4

 

Yes, the results were terrible. But they were exactly what I’d set out to make, in that brief window of time when anything was possible. Perhaps I’d squandered my invincibility this time. Perhaps my temporary superpowers went to waste. But I figured I owed the universe something, to say thank you for thinking that maybe this frittering raccoon was good enough.

The artist contemplating a second taste.

 

And honestly? The stuff wasn’t all that bad.

 

 

P.S. – I’m not one to waste food. So here’s a tip: if you do decide to make this, note how much oil you are using. A lot of cakes require eggs and oil, and creating an emulsion with them beforehand doesn’t adversely impact a cake recipe.

 

I made this chocolate cake with the Cadbury creme egg mayo (I just subtracted 3 tablespoons of sugar from the recipe, which is roughly how much sugar is in one Cadbury egg. I don’t even know how that’s physically possible, but it’s true).

Consequently, Rand forgave me for making him a human guinea pig.

The Tragedy of Monica Geller

I graduated high school in 1998, either (depending on which arbitrary marker you choose) the last of Gen-Xers or the first of the Millennials. Like so many of us who came of age in the 90s, Friends was a delightful, aspirational glimpse of the future. (I had no perspective to realize that my friends of color weren’t represented. A TV show featuring six friends in one of the most diverse cities in America, and not a hint of melanin among them. But hey, Joey just said something funny and Ross is stressed out! Pass the Jamocha Almond Fudge ice cream, because I am 18 and impervious to calories and my own privilege.) One day, I was going to live in New York and drink coffee constantly and have a huge apartment.

I’m now nearly 40, and none of those things came to fruition (not even the coffee), but I still quote Friends more often than I would like to admit. I know that the TV guide is addressed to Miss Chanandler Bong. I know all the words to “Smelly Cat.” (And I’m not alone – 25 years after its premiere, Friends is still the most watched show on Netflix.)

Ask which character I am, and the answer is swift. Despite having had nearly every iteration of the Rachel haircut one could imagine (the chunky layered cut, the sweeping mane with the face framing wisps, even the shocking sleek bob that followed), I was and am a Monica. Neurotic, loyal, responsible, fastidiously cleaning everything. Oh, and I make a good chocolate chip cookie.

Monica Geller was never marketed as “the sexy one” – that role went to Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel. Though Courtney Cox was and has always been beautiful, Monica was too set in her ways, too Type-A, too determined and ambitious and too demanding of a partner to be the desirable one. Where Phoebe and Rachel’s romantic relationships were often brought down by their own insecurities or incompatibility, Monica just couldn’t find a guy who would commit to her. Pete was too childish, Richard was too flaky. Or maybe she was just too much.

And of course, there was the fat suit. The allegory almost feels lazy. Monica had an ambition that couldn’t be satisfied. She was the one who always wanted more from life. She was the one who was always hungry, and so the writers of Friends made that hunger literal.

The fat suit first appeared in the second season – revealing that Monica in her younger years was pudgy. She was dubbed Fat Monica, even though the suit was a lightly padded thing, such that if we take it out of the realm of 90s Hollywood bodies, it is exceedingly average (my hips and thighs have always been closer to Fat Monica’s than Monica’s). To describe her as “Fat Monica” feels sort of absurd, until you compare it to the silhouette of the skinny-but-not-quite-to-the-point-of-intervention-skinny Cox. In one episode, the gang is watching an old home movie in which Fat Monica stands, eating a sandwich in a high-collar, late-80s prairie style prom dress, waiting for her date. She’s delightfully unselfconscious. She seems happy.

But the audience laughs, because a fat girl eating a sandwich is somehow funny.

Joey, who is only familiar with the current iteration of Monica, all lean-muscle and sharp cheekbones, is shocked, pointing to the TV screen and shouting, “SOME GIRL ATE MONICA.”

 

In another episode Fat Monica yells that no one had better have sat on her KitKat, and the audience cracks up, because now a character’s well-known neuroses have been channeled into a fat woman possessive about food.

Monica’s weight was a punchline – made possible not only because the fatness was part of her past, but because it was a fiction for even the actress who played her. Cox has been skinny ever since she entered the public eye. Her first touch of fame was being pulled on stage by Springsteen in his Dancing in the Dark video, where’s she dressed just like him, short hair and tight jeans and sleeveless shirt. She has the unattainable beauty of an 80s ingenue: twinkly eyed, slightly boyish, completely off-tempo.

 

And so the audience has an excuse to laugh comfortably at Monica’s fatness, because it was something that never reflected reality for the actress (even though it reflected reality for so many people). They weren’t really laughing at a real iteration of Cox, so it was all somehow okay.

In season four, when Rachel’s old high school boyfriend calls to ask Monica out, Rachel is slightly bothered by the idea but softens when Monica tells her how much it means to her.

“The fat girl inside of me really wants to go,” Monica says. “I owe her this. I never let her eat.”

The audience laughs, but it is a singularly heartbreaking sentiment. Monica is a chef, constantly surrounded by food she will never touch. It’s a modern-day Greek tragedy. The idea is never said explicitly, but it is there: that no matter how kind and loyal and giving you are you are, fatness will make you an outsider, fatness will make you weird and flawed. And even if you lose the weight, you can’t get rid of that.

As Naomi Wolf writes in The Beauty Myth, our cultural obsession with female thinness “is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience.” Monica suppressed a part of herself that was never problematic to begin with. And she genuinely seemed less joyous as a result.

In a two-part alternate reality episode (“The One That Could Have Been”) the show explores what would have happened if all the characters’ lives had taken a different course. For Monica, this bizarro world explores what would have happen if she never lost the weight.

She’s dating a kind but boring doctor, and at the age of 30, unwillingly still a virgin. Because in the world of Friends, fat women might be lovable but apparently they can’t actually be fuckable.

She is still fundamentally the same person – still fastidious, still passionate about things that other people aren’t invested in (though in Fat Monica’s case, the hill she is willing to die on is that low-fat mayonnaise is not real mayonnaise). And by the end of the two-parter, she ends up in bed with Chandler, who is clearly smitten with her in both realities. (Truthfully, I always loved their storyline – it  carries with it a sort of “meant to be” romantic fatalism. Schmaltzy? Yes. But I’ve always been partial to schmaltz.)

The real problem with these episodes isn’t Fat Monica – she is, in so many ways, wonderful. She knows who she is. She knows she’s fat and knows that she deserves love. She never body-shames or slut-shames herself for a fleeting second.

The real problem is how Fat Monica is treated. It’s that for some reason, we were told that her joy, and self-confidence, that her mere existence was something to be laughed at. That the idea of a fat woman happy with herself and wanting to fuck people was somehow ridiculous enough to be funny.

And perhaps there is the saddest thing about Fat Monica – that in the world of Friends, she was simply a part of the past, never more than a joke.

Imagine if Fat Monica had simply been Monica – not Courtney Cox in a fat suit, but an actress with – to paraphrase episode 2 of Shrill – a fat ass and big titties, someone who got to make the rules. Someone whose fatness wasn’t reduced to a punchline. Imagine if that girl had been let out. Imagine if she got to dance and fuck and play in the damn fountain and drink coffee at Central Perk.

Imagine if she got to eat, and no one, not a fucking soul, laughed at her. It would have been a gorgeous thing.

I Have a James Beard Award and I Think You Are So Great.

My writing pitches don’t get accepted often. Sometimes an editor will contact me directly, and I’ll send them a piece, and if it gets published, it may do quite well (my piece on bullying for The Washington Post was an example of that), but it rarely gets to that point. More often than not, I’ll send stuff out and either get a rejection or, worse still, I’ll hear nothing at all. Those are the days when that little voice that is constantly chirping at the back of my head – the one that tells me I’m terrible – is loudest.

Sometimes I’m able to ignore it. Other times, I just pout and check Twitter and then do laundry (this happens a lot). People always ask me if it’s difficult to decide what to save for The Everywhereist and what to pitch, and I’m tempted to laugh, because no, no it is not difficult. It is very easy, because there is usually no alternative. It is here, or nothing.

I published my essay about Mario Batali and his shitty cinnamon roll apology on this site because I assumed that no publication would want it. It ended up getting a James Beard nomination for Journalism in the Personal Essay category.

And then it won.

This doesn’t fall into the schema of dreams coming true, because this was never a dream I’d had. It’s not something I thought was in the realm of possibility. It’s up there with “Getting a Grammy for flossing properly” or “Winning an Oscar because you just had a very satisfying poop.” Like, these things just don’t exist.

My blog was up against publications whose editors don’t even reply to my emails. In the intervening weeks, Rand (who, if you’ve been playing along at home, adores me and thinks the world of me) and I had many discussions about how just getting nominated was an honor. And that was true, of course, but it was also designed to set my hopes appropriately. Because even we didn’t really think I’d win. My entry was filled with cuss words and amateur photos taken in my tiny, poorly lit kitchen. It didn’t feel like it was in the same category as the other pieces. I was going to lose, and that was fine. I’d already achieved more than I could have ever dreamed.

(Note: I do not want your takeaway to be that this is some triumphant underdog story, because that is self-serving and not really accurate. I am a woman with a hell of a lot of privilege. I have a safe place to write, and a strong internet connection, and a supportive spouse, and nearly unlimited time to devote to all of this. I don’t have to deal with systemic racism or ableism or transphobia or homophobia when I put my work out there. The only thing I have to overcome is my own damn self. And institutional sexism.)

I couldn’t go to the awards ceremony, because Rand and I were speaking in a conference in Victoria that weekend. I told myself that this was for the best, because I couldn’t really afford to go all the way to New York and get a hotel just to attend a party where I wouldn’t really know anyone. Plus, the voice in my head, the one telling me I sucked? It can be so loud, y’all. And when Rand’s not around, it’s even louder.

We took a seaplane up and I got to sit in the co-pilot’s seat and holy hell was it neat.

So we went to Canada. And we both gave our presentations, and I’d temporarily forgotten about all of the James Beard stuff for a little while. On Friday afternoon, Rand and I walked along the waterfront in Victoria, and the wind was so brutal it somehow felt personal. We took refuge in a coffee shop and I remembered that the awards were happening at that very moment in New York and there I was in Victoria with hair that had been ravaged by the wind.

Me, trying to look cool and pretty much failing.

The winners were being announced, and I fastidiously checked Twitter for a while.

“That’s it, I’ve lost.” I told Rand three separate times, because I’d forgotten what category I was nominated for. And then I put my phone away, before I descended further into madness.

But Rand did not.

He was watching the livefeed of the awards when my name was flashed on a screen.

“You … you won.”

“No,” I told him. “They’re just listing the nominees.” I didn’t consider the fact that up until now, they hadn’t listed a single nominee – they’d only announced the winners.

“But … they just tweeted your name.”

 

Personal Essay, Long Form: Geraldine DeRuiter for @everywhereist #jbfa

— James Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) April 27, 2019

 

“No,” I said again. “They’re just tweeting the names of the nominees.”

(Note: impostor syndrome is a hell of a thing.)

“BUT THEY AREN’T TWEETING ANY OF THE OTHER NOMINEES,” Rand said. And then he showed me the tweet from the James Beard Account, with a tiny little medal emoji next to it. And I noted that it did seem weird that they’d do that just for a nominee and –

“GERALDINE YOU WON.”

“I won?”

“You won.”

We reacted pretty much how you’d imagine.

Seen here, freaking out on the sidewalk in Canada

I Bumped Into a Guy From High School And Would Now Like to Speak to The Manager

Hello, hi, yes, I would like to speak to the manager please?

No, I don’t think that this is something you could help me with … okay. Okay, fine. Yes, so I’ve been shopping here for several years, and it’s always been a really positive experience. But yesterday I was walking down the freezer aisle and someone called my name.

It was a guy I knew. From high school.

Yes, thank you, I’m glad you understand the gravity of this. And in this case, it was particularly terrible because, see, I looked like this:

What. The. Fuck.

I know. It’s unfortunate. And no, I’m not trying to make things look worse in these photos. These are undoctored. I really looked that bad. I’d just spent the morning in the pottery studio, and the kiln was on, and it was really hot, and my hair got all greasy, and I was like, okay, I’ll just run to the store really quickly, it’s not like I’ll see anyone I know.

I actually thought that. I thought, I won’t see anyone I know.

I mean. This is bad.

I wonder if this is my brain’s way of messing with me. Like, perhaps I’m secretly clairvoyant but rather than use this power for good, my brain is like, “Let’s just fuck with her. Tomorrow she’ll see someone from high school and she will do so while looking like she just wrestled a fried chicken sandwich.”

I bumped into a guy I knew from high school in the freezer aisle of your store and he insisted on making small talk. There wasn’t any sort of warning posted anywhere before I entered. Like, there should have been a sign above the aisle.

And yes, I know, I know – my appearance is entirely irrelevant. It should absolutely not matter how I look when I bump into someone from my past. Logically we all know this. As a feminist, it’s probably sort of even offensive that I would bother to think about this. But. BUT. We also need to acknowledge that women are constantly judged for how they look, and even if we personally have moved beyond that, society hasn’t. We are constantly bombarded with make-over shows and advice on how not to age and how to lose weight and how to look like we’ve got a sun-kissed glow without actually seeing sun. We’re simultaneously told that our skin should have a dewy look while at the same time being sold products that remove oil from our skin. We’re told to remove hair from some parts of our body and encouraged to stimulate hair growth in other, seemingly more attractive parts. It’s exhausting. Sometimes it creeps into our brains by osmosis.

Even if we know that none of that shit matters, ask us if we’d like to bump into someone while looking like we just drank a mug of cooking oil and the answer will unequivocally be no. No, we do not. We would like to at least look showered.

Like, this? This would have been nice and on-brand.

And I did not.

I just think, after so many years of shopping here, that that sort of thing is entirely unacceptable, you know? And this is not what I was promised by movies and television and every pop culture reference ever and also society at large. That is not how it is supposed to go down. I am supposed to look cute, and self-possessed, and triumphant in front of a boy who was mean to me in high school. THAT IS HOW WE SING THE BALLAD OF THE NERDY GIRL WHO NEVER QUITE GREW INTO HER FEATURES.

I’m supposed to nonchalantly walk by while having an animated cell phone conversation, explaining to the person on the other end of the line that despite his many, many advances, “I just want to be friends. I hope you are okay with that, Jeff Goldblum.” And then I accidentally drop my Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. THAT IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO DOWN.

And so I would like to speak to the manager.

Look, I’m not asking for my money back. I don’t want a refund. I would just like them to remedy this situation. I would like some sort of do-over.

What do you mean you “aren’t sure what that means”? How could I be any more clear? I NEED A DO OVER. I’ve been shopping here for years. I would like to continue shopping here. But this has been really unacceptable, and we need to find a way of fixing this, otherwise I’m going to have to move to another state.

Yes, of course I understand that you can’t tamper with the spacetime continuum for everyone who requests it. That sort of thing would be a huge strain on your team – I get that. Of course. Look, I don’t want to be unreasonable here. I’m nothing if not reasonable. I’m just asking for a tiny bit of time-travel, or maybe some drug-induced selective amnesia, or at the very least some kind of light witchcraft.

Yes, I understand that you normally work behind the deli counter and that this is not really your area of expertise, *Cameron*.

But did you see my hair? Did you see it? It’s been twenty years since I last saw this person and my hair looked like I combed it with a McRib. Actually, my entire aesthetic that day could be described as having been inspired by a seasonally-available McDonald’s sandwich with a cult-like following. I glistened like a … meat patty? (It’s a meat patty, right? Technically? Dear god, what are McRibs, even?)

TWENTY YEARS. DO YOU HEAR ME? TWENTY YEARS. Yes, I understand that you usually don’t work the floor and have very little experience with the dark arts. I get that. But these should be easy spells. Honestly, this should have been part of the onboarding when you started working here. What to do when a customer needs to return an item, what’s the code for organic brussel sprouts, how do I selectively obliterate a memory from someone’s mind. This should not be complex.

You … you can’t do that? Not even one teensy little spell? Seriously? Okay.

No. No, it’s fine. It’s fine. I understand. I’m … yeah, you know what? 20 years is a long time. And it’s kind of okay. I mean, the only part of me that’s at all uncomfortable right now is 17-year-old me. I feel like I owe her is all. I feel like she needed this. But I’ll just have a talk with her. She’ll be okay. I tell her how things turn out. I’ll tell her about all the things that happen in her life. All the good things. The travel and the career and the friends and the love.

 

Things turn out okay. And then one day she’ll bump into a boy from her past and her hair will be greasy and her clothes will be a mess. She’ll probably laugh. 17-year-old me had a lot of struggles with greasy hair. She’ll be pleased by the advancements in dry shampoo technology. She’ll be so excited that we own a leather jacket.

Anyway, thanks for listening. Hey, are these cookie pieces samples? Cool. I’m taking a whole bunch, is that okay? Great. Thanks.

How to Become a Better Public Speaker (When You’ve Just Bombed on Stage)

(Pictured above: me during a far less neurotic presentation.)

I am standing in front of a crowd under blinding fluorescent lights. They appear to be listening to my every word.

And I am positively bombing.

The room is too bright, and I can see everyone’s faces, but I am absolutely unable to read their expressions. Are they bored? Disgusted? Concerned? Is it because the content I’m presenting is distressing, or because I’m just bad at this?

I am giving a presentation on online harassment. It’s one I have given before, but this time I am stumbling. I am jet-lagged and exhausted – the night before, I was so nervous that I’d somehow sleep through my start time, I kept waking up in a panic. It now feels like my brain can’t keep up with my slides.

It’s been a while since I’ve last given this talk, and I’ve changed a few things around, and now I can’t remember what I intended to say and where.

I have forgotten my glasses and can’t see the screen behind me, so I don’t know what slide I’m on. I am wearing a shirt that I’ve never wore before (bad idea) and it is stiff cotton. The room is too warm, and sweat has pooled in sticky little ovals underneath each of my armpits. For some reason, I feel the need to mention this fact to the crowd.

I have told them that I am profusely sweating and that I have forgotten my glasses and also that I am terribly jet lagged. It isn’t merely that I am bombing – it is that I can’t stop drawing attention to the fact that I am.

When it is over – an interminable 40 minutes later – people will line up with copies of my book for me to sign. My friend Rachel – one of the few familiar faces in the crowd, will hug me, ignoring my warning that I am a sweaty mess, and tell me how wonderful I was. Ashley, the organizer, is effusive in her support. My friend Laura will send me a text in all caps, screaming at me that I was wonderful (she was unable to make it in person and watched the presentation on the company’s internal livefeed, oh god, there was a livefeed).

Me after the talk. Not visible: my sweat stains and crazy nerves and my forgotten glasses.

One woman will tell me how she’s followed my blog for years, and how wonderful it is to finally meet. Several people will take photos with me. I will make a crack about my armpits. People will laugh.

When it is all over, I am hit with the anxiety of having bombed. But also the realization that based on other people’s reactions, perhaps I wasn’t as terrible as I thought I was.

After dissecting my public speaking experiences for far too long, here’s what I’ve learned about what to do when you think you’ve absolutely tanked on stage:

You aren’t as bad as you think you are. Trust me. You just aren’t. I once went completely blank on stage – I could not remember what I was doing or why I was there. The hiccup felt like it lasted a solid minute and a half at least. Later, when I watched the video of it, the silence lasted for (literally) about two seconds. And it simply looked as though I was pausing to collect my thoughts.

–
This is all new for the audience. They have no idea what slides you are messing up, what cues you are missing, what points you’ve forgotten, and how much worse you are doing this time compared to last time. So maybe, you know, don’t point those things out to them.

–
No one will remember the awkward parts but you. If you stumble over a word or get confused as to what to do with your hands, fear not: in two minutes, absolutely everyone will have forgotten. It’s the upside of social media giving everyone the attention span of a goldfish. So just move on – one slip up doesn’t necessarily lead to another.

–
Set a time limit for how long you are allowed to dwell on it. Rand once met an Olympian who had been the favorite to win a gold medal in his sport. And then he messed up during his event and didn’t made the podium. Rand asked him how he dealt with it, and he replied that he gave himself 48 hours. During those two days, he locked himself in a hotel room, and absolutely wallowed in it as much as he wanted to. Then, when it was all over, he put it behind him. He wasn’t going to feel bad about it again. Now, does forgetting what you were going to say warrant 2 days of self-flagellation? Probably not. But if you are one to dwell, set aside a few minutes to feel badly about it. And then move on.

–
Accept that it kind of had to happen. I’m absolutely convinced that you have to spend some time screwing up while on stage. It’s like a sacrifice you have to make to the public speaking gods. No matter how much you practice or how comfortable you are, you will mess up at some point. And then you’ll learn from it, and it’ll happen less and less.

–
It will eventually be a funny story. A lot of my friends do public speaking for their work, and whenever we talk about a particularly mortifying experience, I tell them about how I kept talking about my pit stains on that afternoon in Boston. And everyone laughs. Including me. Hell, it can even be a story you tell on stage one day. Because that sort of vulnerability is a great way of connecting with an audience.

–
Messing up will tell you what parts of your presentation need work. Odds are, there were parts of your presentation that you absolutely nailed – and some that you didn’t. The latter are clearly what needs work – so spend time fixing those spots. Correct that typo. Ruminate on those stats until you can express them in a clean, concise manner.

–
Charge through your mistakes like you know what you’re doing. I’ve watched a lot of people present over the years – professionals, celebrities, authors, amateurs. And the thing that separates the great speakers and the, um, less-than-great ones isn’t whether or not they make mistakes. It’s how they recover from them. The people who do a great job just slide over their errors, the way you would in casual conversation. It doesn’t throw them off, because they don’t let it. They’re just having a breezy chat with a group of several thousand people.

–
Screwing up will make the audience like you more. No, seriously. It’s called the Pratfall Effect, and it’s a known psychological phenomenon. When someone makes a mistake, we feel like they are human and vulnerable and we like them more as a result. So remember: the audience is on your side (unless they’re sociopaths, they are in the audience because they like you), and those little mistakes are just going to endear you to them. (If you want to know more about the Pratfall Effect, I talk about it in a presentation I gave a few years ago at Hubspot’s Inbound conference .)

–
 Don’t over-rehearse. If you have your entire presentation memorized, like a script, then it becomes easier to get thrown off. One word out of place and the rest fall like dominoes. Instead, try delivering your points lots of different ways – like a story you’ve told time and again. That way you won’t get tripped up if you can’t remember exactly what you said last time.

It’s been a while since that fateful day last year that I felt like I completely screwed up on stage. I’ve winced a couple of times at the memory, and moved on. Just recently, I even pitched the company again about speaking at a conference they’re holding this summer. They said yes.

Oh, and if you want to see samples of me making a fool of myself on stage, you can find some on my About page.

What is Left When We Go.

We went to Germany, and I cried.

Not right away. It wasn’t until the last day that I finally did. Rand asked if I wanted to rent a car to go down to see my father’s grave. He asked me in the early hours of the morning, when jet lag had us both exhausted but somehow wide awake, and rather than reply, I broke down. But it had been there all along, quietly simmering.

I cried until my nose was entirely clogged and I couldn’t breathe and Rand and I were almost laughing because it was just so, so much. It was the kind of sobbing that leaves you winded, like you’ve just ran to catch a train, the kind that makes your eyes well up even when you remember it later. Rand said nothing, and I couldn’t see his face, but he simply pulled me towards him in the dark and I soaked his chest with tears. I realized that I missed my father, broken as he was, and that I was so upset that I had nothing left of him, except, of course, as Rand continually reminds me, I do. I have so much left.

Even though my mother says, “You are so like him” and means it as decidedly not a compliment, I find something comforting in the idea.

I’m so like him. But a lot less broken. Or maybe just broken in different ways. That is what remains, even now that his workshop is dismantled and his books and model planes are gone. The bend in my nose (as though it suddenly realized it was supposed to make a turn it forgot about), the tendency to scowl, the blue of my veins under too-thin skin. Sometimes when someone I love takes my picture, my instinct is to smirk and flip them off. I never knew why. And then it hit me that this was my father’s signature move. I hated when he did it. I hate it when I do it. But it comes out, like a reflex. Throw away everything he owned and reduce him to ash, and these things remain.

I showed someone a photo of my father when he was 11 or 12, and they noted that he looked much older.

“It was the war,” I explained. And perhaps that’s true. I can almost pinpoint the moment when my father stopped smiling, and he must have been around eight or 9 years old – just as the war was ending. Every now and then I’ll find an image of him with a half-grin, but that’s as far as it ever got. I suspect that’s the most he ever allowed himself. Even those rare times felt like an accident –  like he was suddenly breaking character.

I love this photo because it is so on-brand for my father (left). The 70s were happening around him, but he simply did not care. His shirts remained tucked in, his hair remained short.

Those of us who knew him learned to read his face in other ways. We learned which of his expressions counted as a smile.

When I was small, I had the same problem – I could never get the hang of smiling. I remember strangers flashing wide grins at me in an effort to get me to reciprocate while I stared at them impassively.

I told Rand that I didn’t want to go to my father’s grave, or see the empty place where his workshop had been. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready, but that I wasn’t sure what the point was. So instead I cried in the quiet of our hotel room in the middle of the night, feeling the tears roll down my face and into my ears and onto my husband’s arms and everywhere, just everywhere. I thought about all the things that I tried to hold on to after my father died, the things that slipped through my fingers. The memories of him, the pieces of his life that I couldn’t hold on to because distance between us – both geographical and emotional – wouldn’t let me.

Rand reminded me that these things weren’t important. That these things were just things, and having my father’s models or his cardigan or any of the letters I’d sent him over the decades of our relationship wouldn’t actually change anything. I simply think that they will because they are gone.

We are home now. Rand told me that we don’t have to go back to Germany any time soon, and I told him that I was okay with that. I look through the photos from the trip – the few that I took – and see my face, not smiling really, but still, not entirely not smiling, either.

And I about how when everything is gone, when everything is dead and buried, this is the thing that remains. My father’s eyes, staring back at me, and that same damn smirk.

I Got a James Beard Award Nomination and Heinz Made A Creme Egg Mayonnaise (No, Really.)

I was recently nominated for a James Beard Award for journalism, and statement which makes as much sense as saying “I was nominated for a Grammy for this cookie that I just ate.” The other nominees in my category are – I kid you not – The New York Times and The Atlantic. I submitted my application on the very last day (a few hours before the deadline), for my Mario Batali cinnamon roll piece, and just found out that the committee had selected it as one of their finalists. To recap, in case you temporarily lost consciousness from how absurd this all is, I was nominated for a James Beard award, and the list of nominees in my category are two legitimate publications, and this blog.

I should know by now that the universe gets drunk. This is a thing that happens. What I didn’t quite understand is how often the universe would hit the bottle, like, at 11am on a Monday.

As you might suspect, this honor, which I never, ever, I mean ever, imagined I would receive, has completely ruined me, and I have now become an untenable monster. I mean, even more so than before. When news of the nomination came in, I started laughing so manically that I broke down in tears, all of which deeply concerned my husband. It did not help that when he asked me what was wrong, my reply was, “THE COSMOS IS VERY INTOXICATED.”

Which is not a thing that normal people say.

I then proceeded to demand that he address me as “James Beard Award Nominated” and then my name, or whatever pet name he wished to bestow upon me. Being a long-suffering and obliging fool, he did precisely that, further destroying whatever humility I may have had. I told Rand that while I realize that this nomination is already a remarkable thing, I very much want to win for one very specific reason: I’m pretty sure the award is a round medal on a ribbon. Which means you can wear it to a fast food restaurant. While still in your pajamas. And when people ask what it is, you say that it is a James Beard Award for culinary excellence which you got because you were really mad at institutionalized sexism and also Mario Batali’s cinnamon rolls.

While I do not think that I will win (because I am hoping that someone will take the universe aside and say, “We need to talk about your drinking”), the nomination is an absurd honor unto itself, and I am abusing it to the fullest extent that I possibly can. Mostly by screaming it at my friends and loved ones when I want to win an argument. It is particularly useful when a friend is feeling down and needs a pick-up.

“Listen to me. You are wonderful.”

“Yeah, but-”

“NO, FUCKER, I HAVE A JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINATION AND I THINK YOU ARE GREAT.”

Perhaps I have misunderstood the concept of tough love. I don’t really know.

I now feel uniquely qualified to weigh in on all culinary matters, both appetizing and nightmarish. So when Chuck Wendig (who is basically a real-life version of Wash from Firefly) tweeted that he wanted to try the gastronomical abomination that is Heinz’s creme egg flavored mayonnaise, I felt the need to comment.

Okay, somebody get me a jar of this. I’LL TRY IT AND REPORT BACK https://t.co/LD7j5RFoI0

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) April 5, 2019

I have a layover in Heathrow in about 2 hours. Ew. I’ll see what I can do.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

I think it’s only available at that pop-up!

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) April 5, 2019

I thought that was just the free samples.

At any rate, Chuck, you may have to make your own.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

oh no

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) April 5, 2019

You will need:

Creme eggs

Mayo

A blender

A total disregard for the culinary advancements of the last 200 years

A spoon

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

BUT I AM NO ARTISTE

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) April 5, 2019

Chuck, listen to me: I have a James Beard Award nomination and I am telling you that you have the capability to make this … substance.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

is there a training montage

also one assumes there are… unholy ingredients

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) April 5, 2019

At which point Lin-Manuel Miranda weighed in because Twitter.

pic.twitter.com/hwyquZ2b2Z

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) April 5, 2019

 

Anyway, I’m off to Heathrow and probably going to get myself banned from Duty Free for you, Chuck. You’re welcome.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

Lin needs some too pic.twitter.com/poCzZG0Z4a

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) April 5, 2019

The bad news, of course, was that Chuck was right, and that they don’t actually sell this stuff in stores, because I think that EU regulations prevent you from selling the culinary equivalent of a slumber party dare and that’s why we now have Brexit. Thanks a lot, Angela Merkel. I did find a lot of Cadbury chocolate, and I did ask one Duty-Free employee about the mayonnaise and he was so incredibly helpful while he slowly backed away from me like I was a raccoon holding a flamethrower.

I asked if they had mayonnaise.

Guy gives me a look reserved for a child who has just cut their own hair.

“Mayonnaise, madame?”

“YES THE KIND WITH CANDY IN IT.”

*blank stare *

“No, madame.”

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

He told me to go ask at a restaurant.

“They can give you mayonnaise, maybe?”

He then backed away.

“IT IS FOR MY FRIEND CHUCK, THE WRITER, AND LIN-MANUEL.”

*more blank stares*

“LIN WAS IN THE HARRY POTTER SEQUEL”

(I meant Mary Poppins but got confused)

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 5, 2019

I briefly considered mentioning the James Beard Award nomination, but I felt like that would have pushed the story just too far into the realm of absurdity. I sadly left Heathrow without any success. In the meantime, I’m wondering if I can make this abomination at home. I mean, I have the technology. And a James Beard Award nomination.