Woefully Human
I can't believe I pee at work
This is my first time posting on here in two months on account of it’s summer and I can’t stand to be inside more than what is absolutely necessary for sleeping and watching my shows. And my laptop battery dies too fast to write outside and also my screen is irrevocably smudged so I can hardly see what I’m typing for the glare anyways. I missed writing on here and more than that honestly I missed having written on here. But the longer I went without having written the more I agonized about what I might write. Until this morning when I got over it* (*myself) to publish that:
I don’t think Abraham Lincoln really talked like that. Or Napoleon, or Queen Victoria, or Marie Antoinette or Beethoven. I will concede that Beethoven was way smarter than me, but when I watch Gary Oldman doing his best Ludwig impression in Immortal Beloved and every single line of his dialogue sounds like it came from a poem, I call bullshit. You can’t tell me he never had a brain fart or said something weird or couldn’t remember the word he wanted to use.
That script, and every script like it, projects the evidence of the primary sources used to inform it. We look at their letters, with all their “ever mine, ever thine, ever ours” as the best, most thoughtful versions of them, and compose a projection of how the brilliant mind who wrote that and “Ode to Joy” would talk.
I don’t write letters, unless it’s just after my birthday or just after Christmas and I owe my grandmother a thank you note. Letters at large have gone out of fashion, our correspondences now resigned to the 10-word shorthand of an iMessage.
So what happens, then, when the artists of four hundred years from now look to build contemporarily accurate sentence structure from the compositions to which we devote the most care? Can you imagine the scripts they’ll write in the year 2525 when they find our work emails?
Like the Gettysburg Address or a love note from Beethoven, our work emails conjure up a version of ourselves at our most erudite, most manicured and capable and competent and purpose-driven. The purpose being, if not to unite a nation or woo an Austrian woman, then at least to earn a raise.
Transfiguration occurs when words pass through my Outlook. A metamorphosis I can’t explain (like whatever’s going on in an Easy Bake Oven) surges from my brain, out of my fingertips and onto the blank canvas of every New Message, translating how I’d normally talk through a filter of office dialect — a word bank full of phrases like “highly performant” and “spare your inbox” and “move the needle.”
Sentences are long and winding, written in the voice of a girl who sounds like such a narc I want to give her a wedgie. Every new paragraph and Oxford comma holds in it a deference for grammar that I hope projects a respect for authority and it feels vulgar, verboten to write simply “okay!” in any response. I must instead write:
Hi!
Okay!
Best,
Kate
If they make a movie about my life a hundred years from now I am going to come off as a complete prig.
This awful art form, the work email, is just one symptom of the vast, unspoken dictum of office etiquette — Professionalism.
The definition of Professionalism is nebulous and circular and self-referential but, like hard-core porn, you just know it you see it. I can tell a professional shirt from an unprofessional shirt. I send only BOF articles to my work friend over Slack, and save the Tik Tok of that blonde baby and her lightning bug “Stinkle” for text. I try desperately to stop the inevitable creep of personhood from entering our open floor plan. But despite my best efforts, I still have to pee.
There’s a dance to the rhythms of our office building’s communal stalls — an etiquette that I know innately, performed in an attempt to apply Professionalism to something woefully human. I will not use the same toilet as a colleague if I make eye contact with them before entering the stall because I don’t want us both thinking about my butt touching the phantom warmth of theirs. I will always wash my hands for at least as long as (if not longer than) my coworker at the trough sink, and I will wash with the rigor of an OR doctor scrubbing in for surgery if that person is my superior.
Just last Wednesday I sat, the bathroom otherwise empty, when a woman with unfamiliar shoes entered the stall next to mine. As I stood up to leave, I heard her call out — she was out of toilet paper, and could I hand her some?
Had I been at a bar I’d have thought nothing of it, I’d have screamed “GIRL YEAH YOU BET” and passed her wads by the messy fistful. But now I was on the clock, and my KPI brain kicked in.
“Of course!” I demurred in a happy high pitch, reaching down to unroll, slowly and meticulously, the perfect number of squares, tearing them away on the perforated line and folding the trail into a neat stack before passing it into her outreached hand — a maneuver executed on autopilot, my movements articulated by the invisible strings of Professionalism, with a deftness that suggested I thought this interaction would be a point of discussion during my annual review.
“Thank you” she said. “All best,” I thought. I hoped it found it her well.
Pony Recommends
1. After drinking too much at a birthday party on Friday, Sara and I floated from one end of Dimes Square to the other to put ourselves at the mercy of god and the hostess at Cervo’s in the hopes we could maybe maybe maybe get a two-top. We swayed in line, watching as the latter turned away three couples in front of us, slowly resigning ourselves to the eventuality of another fine half-chicken at Kiki’s when we heard her say “I’ve got something for you.” We decided she must have seen something in us, and proceeded to order the best food I’ve eaten since whenever the last time I had pecan pie was. Smoky eggplant with marinated anchovies, white prawns a la plancha and YOU GUYS?? THE LAMB BURGER. I SWEAR ON MY FIRST BORN (Joanna Louise <3) THAT I THINK THAT IS THE WORLD’S GREATEST BURGER. MAYBE IT WAS THE FOURTH GLASS OF WINE TALKING but I really don’t think I’m steering you wrong here. Run don’t walk to Cervo’s and just make sure you’re giving off a vibe the hostess will like.
2. I’m getting ready to run the Chicago Marathon in October and my friends at On just sent me their newest running shoes to try which was incredibly generous and made me feel like a professional sponsored athlete, a feeling that I love more than I could have dreamed. They’re called the Cloudboom Max (coincidentally the name I have planned for my second-born), and I’ve really loved running in them. The tread is light and soft, the sole is resilient and they are damn sexy looking as well. I think they will help me to win the marathon.
3. I went on a second date a couple of weeks ago and we saw Sorry, Baby together at Angelika. I’ve gotten feedback that that’s a crazy choice for a second date movie (I’ve also been getting a lot of similar, if more impassioned, feedback about another second date I recently had and my choice to end said date with a fist bump), but I do not regret it one bit. That is an amazing, funny, beautiful movie and I loved it so much. The script is singularly charming, written with such specificity and voice by Eva Victor, the triple threat star and director, and presents a wholly individual human expression of grief and friendship and sexual assault. I laughed so much and cried three times and especially hard during one heart-wrenching moment involving a sandwich.
4. I am at my best when I’m in the mood to drink tea. My best, my most elegant, my most refined, spoon tinkling n the sides of the mug while I stir in the honey. “What is she thinking about” I think about myself. I gaze out the kitchen window. I’ve been through a lot of tea phases, off and on, green and Ceylon and oolong and Sleepy Time, and I’ve just entered my newest with and Indian Breakfast from Raazi and my friend Arjun Narayen. I am drinking it now and I am feeling sooo sophisticated and rich which are two of my favorite ways to feel, and it tastes delicious and unique and Arjun is very thoughtful and intentional about every part of his branding and packaging (I hadn’t even thought to need “plant-based sachets.”) Go see him at the Fort Greene Park farmer’s market for an amazing Chai latte too.
5. My skin has always gotten the job done but it has never been good, per se. I’ve never felt impassioned enough to find the nighttime routine and I missed the day when we all became very knowledgeable about retinol et al., but then a company called Fré sent me their vitamin C and Bakuchiol serums. I’ve been using them morning and night and I felt the effects immediately (not kidding), and now after a couple of months my friends are telling me that I am glowing (not kidding). I know for a fact y’all have routines you swear by because you’ve been doing this since high school and where the hell was I, but if you’re in the market HELL I recommend these.
Thank you for reading that! Seriously. I’m excited to be writing and having written and I can’t wait to do it again in less than two months. Hope to see you there XX Pony
love raazi!
Goodbye stinkle!