life redaction

starting in a couple of weeks, i'm going to be living in a place where there are 24/7 houseboys in my living accommodations. when i first heard this, this is what went through my head:

1. that is so fucking awesome. i won't have to do my laundry for 3 months. (duration of thought: 2 seconds)
2. i can't believe that the economic disparities between my situation and their situation is so great that my being there is creating lucrative employment opportunities. this makes me depressed because i don't know what to do about this problem. (duration of thought: 2 min)
3. shit. i'm going to have to watch myself. (duration of thought: long)

i had to do a little bit of work with some lawyers recently, and they taught me this good word, 'redaction.' it's the word you use when take a sharpie and black out any private information on any documents you produce in court or whatever. like a nice word of 'censoring.'

in any case, i enjoy euphemisms, so i think that with houseboys around, i'm going to have to do a bit of self-redaction. if i were to list a few things that i have to stop doing, they would include:

• running around house in underthings
• eating spaghetti and meatballs for breakfast at 730am on weekends
  
• dancing foolishly to mariah carey and other musical acts that comprise the lexical definition of 'bad pop'
  
• mopping in parisian high heels
• etc etc

none of these things are 'bad' per se; they're just embarrassing. spelling them out is significantly less so than actually being caught in the act of doing any one of them. sort of akin to catching people spelunking about in their noses in the sense that there isn't necessarily anything wrong with it, but it's ridiculously embarrassing to be caught doing it.

at least hearty nasal exploration has a sense of commonality. everyone does it, and anyone who says they don't thinks that using a kleenex over your finger when you do it changes the definition of 'explore'.

the things i worry about are the things that no one else does. i made the mistake once of answering the door for an unexpected guest when i was mopping wearing louboutins, and saw her reaction (what? are you wearing.). i immediately fell over myself to produce a non-retarded explanation for why i've developed this retarded habit (well you see, high heels have a much lower surface area, which means that you ruin less of the mop job. It also avoids the uncomfortable wet foot/sock issue), and felt like an idiot.

boo!

i can hear a few of you cheerleaders already. 'screw them! be yourself! be hooyouwannabe!'

i say, 'hey you. yeah, you. shut up the fuck up already.' there is no possible way that i could have a lower tolerance for people, and i'm getting the redacted versions. if people *didn't* censor themselves, i would have even fewer friends than i do now.

in sum: i'll pretend to be normal you promise to pretend too.