Maria Diaz

Tumble Less, Blog More

The problem with spending most of my time blogging for a place that's so niche is I run across so many interesting things all day and I have nowhere to put them. Tumblarity is an abusive relationship and I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't bother me just a tad to post something there and then have no one like it. It's too much, ya'll. My fragile heart can't take it. So I'm going to try to post stuff here, where it is less important to receive validation. This blogging thing is such an addiction. When will I ever stop?

My headline today reads like a dieting thing. I will blog-diet my way to a more... readable Internet persona? What does Internet fame even get you these days? Besides a blog that analyzes your every move and has dozens of people calling a normal sized woman fat for not having visible ankle bones? Speaking of cankles (as someone who has a pair), I was SO HORRIFIED when I learned that term. Great, one more thing to be judged on. Trust me, I do not care about that at this point, but I do admit that I don't ever wear shoes with ankle straps.

Anyway. What did I come here to talk about again? Oh, here, a few interesting things of note:

1. Why We Keep Dying.
I'm not cool enough to know who Dash Snow was, but apparently he died and a lot of people have things to say about it. This is an interesting blog post on how drugs keep killing people off in "the scene" and how angry the writer was at Dash for leaving a daughter behind.

2. Mixtapes for Hookers celebrates Mary Magdalene, one of my favorite ladies to study.

3. Amazon bought Zappos. I'm only telling you this because apparently everyone on Twitter feels it is their duty as an Internet Citizen to tell you this. Now I'm also telling you.

My favorite, favorite thing today is something I did post over at BravoFan. It's Padma Lashkmi in Glitter, the Mariah Carey movie! The movie so bad that even watching it in college, WITH A FORTY (yes, you were there too once) wasn't enough to salvage it. It was turned off in about 30 minutes. Anyway, here it is. I love the "80s" music at the beginning:

A Walking Culinary Cemetary.

Last night, I lost my literary reading virginity at Rachel Kramer Bussel's In The Flesh reading series (that photo is from the special table reserved just for "the talent"!). It was an honor that Rachel allowed me to be a part of it, especially along side such talented writers like my friend Melissa Gira and Jezebel's Megan Carpentier (who I fangirl-ishly introduced myself to and felt really embarassed. But how weird to meet someone after reading so much of their writing on a daily basis!).

The piece I originally proposed reading was a story from an e-book I contributed to that Rachel also edited, but the thought of reading something so melodramatic in public filled me with such a sense of dread that I knew I had to pick something else. Or bring my own karaoke machine. Without access to a Magic Mic, I decided to read the following piece, originally published here on an encounter I had last May. It went over super well.

Thanks to Rachel for letting me read and to all the nice people who've found me on the Internetz and told me they liked the reading. Perhaps this will inspire me to finally start working on my much-dreamed about online show.

When my friend turned 30, she met it with her usual positive attitude, incredible sense of humor, and lots of Jager bombs (don't judge until it's 1:30am and you get offered one, okay?). It was me, at 26, that lost it. Here is how it started.

Her party was going to happen at a new restaurant and due to San Francisco's draconian alcohol lisencing policies, the restaurant had no booze available for purchase on the night of her birthday. So, instead, we had to bring our own. 50 guests, each yielding about three bottles of alcohol. I was determined to drink it all.

By the end, with everyone drunkenly saying goodbye, and about to split a cab with a friend back home, I decided, as so many obnoxious drunk bitches before me, that the night was not done yet. I asked a friend to wait while I went inside and found something/someone else to do while everyone went home, and with those famous last words, found someone. What did he look like? Older, taller, and most importantly, alive and wanting to actually do something. And by something, I mean have sex as soon as possible. I had never laid eyes on this person before, and all of a sudden, it was imperative that we do it.

As my friends went away, no doubt talking about me via their goddamn iPhones, I made out with him while we waited for a cab. Once in it, he grabbed me and whispered in my ear, "I really want to fuck you." I rolled my eyes, why do all drunk dudes say the same thing?

The rest of the night was fairly boring. All I could remember was that he would open his eyes wide and shake his head in a circle while he was trying (emphasis on trying) to make me come, and I had to turn away to stop myself from laughing. Eventually, we fell asleep.

The following morning, I braced myself for the typical sobering post hook-up awkwardness, that same conversation I’ve had so many times before: where you list all the things you're doing so you can avoid spending more time there, talking about how fun it is, etc.

And then he says to me:  “I wonder if anyone saw me leave with you. That wouldn’t be very good for my reputation, after the whole vegansexual thing.” “Vegansexual?”, I ask. “Yeah”, he says. I just wrote about vegansexuality for my column.” I laughed. He was being 100% serious. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, a “vegansexual” is a vegan who only has sex with other vegans. Me = not vegan. )

He was so serious that a while later, over cups of green tea, brewed for just the right amount of time (naturally, he was too good for coffee) he showed me the article. Here is a little snippet:

"Non-vegetarian bodies,” said one female subject, “(are) literally sustained through carcasses – the murdered flesh of others.” If you really are what you eat, then the body of a meat eater is, as one vegan commentator put it, “kind of a graveyard for animals.” You don’t need to be a certified sexpert to appreciate that some vegans would be turned off by the thought of exchanging bodily secretions (like sweat, spit, scents, and…well, you get the picture) with such walking culinary cemeteries. "

I’ve always thought of myself as an adorable beacon of adorableness wrapped in a black hoodie and smelling faintly of dark chocolate, espresso, and sunflowers (or bourbon, but it depends on the time of day) but I guess “walking culinary cementary” works, too. The fact that he went so far as to show me the piece was off-putting. Why did he even invite me back here when the first thing I slurred at him was : “I’m totally NOT vegan, dude!”?

The kicker, however was really at the end:

"Yet I persist in hoping because the heart wants what it wants, and I know, in my heart, that I want to be with someone with whom I can enjoy the ineffably unique bond that only exists in the coupled soul of two deeply bonded vegan lovers. "

Except for you know, that unique bond that is shared between two hammered people at a party who talk to each other for 10 minutes and then decide to go home together. I mean, I get it. A drunk ho is a drunk ho whether or not she stuffs her face with goat cheese and fried chicken or Teese and Boca Burgers but if a dude can rise above eating steaks, can’t he rise above the call of easy sex? I guess he can say that while his brain is vegan, his dick was merely vegan-flexible.