Weird but Normal

by Mia Mercado

  If you’re waiting for the twist, there is none. I brought in the blank CD. My professor believed that there’d been an error in transferring the files. He bought my feigned panic, and it cost me none of my “I’m a good student, please think I’m a good student” reputation. He may have even apologized to me in the process. I finished writing the speech that night, saved the PowerPoint onto a CD (as I’d done correctly dozens of times before), and presented it at the next class. I probably got a three out of five on my speech. I probably made up for it in extra credit. I think I got an A in the class.

  The thing about real life is sometimes your stories don’t have any immediate moral. Sometimes you chalk something up as a triumph and then immediately try to forget about it. Sometimes you sit in the back seat of your mom’s car, years later, half-laughing about the time you tricked your teacher, and your sister says, “Oh my god, you did that?” Sometimes you ignore that sour stomach feeling of regret for two, three, ten years. Sometimes you take a literal decade to finally reexamine those stories, to replay your self-proclaimed victories, to pause at a moment you only now realize was pivotal. Eventually, you sit quietly through your life’s credits wondering, “Who did I really defeat?”

  Mr. Y, in all his gentleness, was not stupid. Kindness and sensitivity don’t automatically render someone inept. I wish I’d learn to adopt his quiet compassion. I wish I realized sooner that most teachers want you to evolve, not acquiesce. I wonder if he knew I’d given him a blank CD. I wonder how he remembers me, if he thinks of me at all.

  My Dog Explains My Weekly Schedule

  My dog is named Ava. She is a four-year-old Havanese, which is the kind of dog that looks like a cotton ball came to life. She is my coworker in that I work from home most days and that is where she resides every day. She is perfect, and if you met her, you’d love her almost as much as she would love you. Here, in her own words, is what I do on a weekly basis.

  * * *

  It is a Monday. Or maybe a Wednesday. I, a dog, have no real sense of time. All I know is that She has put on a good smell, which means She is leaving. She only does this in the rare moments when She leaves. Thus, it is time for me to Panic-Whine.

  She says “Go” and “Sorry” and puts on Shoes that I know are for Outside. She doesn’t touch my Leash. I do a sad Lie Down in a fluffy blanket. I wait for somewhere between an hour and three lifetimes.

  When She comes Home, She smells like Outside and carries something that looks like Food. “Coffee,” She says and I sniff. “No,” She says and I still do a sniff but more sad. She picks me up and I wag. She knows I can’t stay mad.

  She sits at Table, which means I can’t Sit in her lap. I realize then that I need to Sit in her lap. I say this again and again until She lets me Sit in her lap.

  She carries me to a different spot: the Man Chair. This is the chair where Man sits when he comes Home. Most days, Man leaves and then comes back. She doesn’t. She stays with me to stare at screens and eat Food and watch screens and talk to me and Sleep and look at a little, second screen in front of the main screen and Lie Down and Go Pee Pee and that’s all.

  * * *

  Today is Bed Day. I love Bed Day! That’s the day of the week where we both get to Lie Down and Lie Down and sometimes Pee but mostly Lie Down until Man comes home. Some weeks have one of these days. Some weeks have more. This is the second Bed Day this week.

  * * *

  She turns on Bath. I hide. She gets in Bath. I miss her already. I go to the basket and get Stink Underwear. I bring it up on the Bed with me to keep me company while She is in Bath.

  She gets out of Bath and starts to put on Good Smell under arms. This means She is leaving but for a longer time. Maybe this means I will Go, too! I get very happy and excited. We could be going anywhere! To the Car! A Drive-Thru which gives me Treats! To the Backyard! To a Park! To another Drive-Thru for Treats! Anywhere!

  She grabs a bag but not my Leash. I am so, so sad. I am betrayed. I will not eat. I will not drink. I will sleep and make my eyes sad and that is all. I sit on Bed inside and watch her go to the Car outside. She is gone.

  I miss her already!!! I panic and go to the basket. I get every Stink Underwear I can find with my tiny, little baby corn teeth. Some Stink Underwear is connected to Pants but that is OK. I will make a Shrine and Lie Down in it and not rest until She comes Home.

  I wake up to the sound of the Door. (Okay, so I must have done a tiny rest.) I bark really scary and big (I am eight entire pounds!) until I see She is home! I do a tiny pee because I am so excited and because She will see my Stink Underwear Shrine!

  * * *

  Today is a Half Bed Day. This is like regular Bed Day, but instead we move to Couch eventually. She looks at her screen a lot today. I sit on her lap so I can see the screen, too. She moves me away. I love this game! She says something Happy and Good and my whole body becomes one big Wag. She puts her face near my face and I try to eat her Stink Mouth Air. She says “no” but not Very Angry. I try to sit back on her lap. We repeat this until Man comes home.

  * * *

  She gets up. Goes to Bath. I get Stink Underwear. Same routine, different Day. She puts on a Good Smell, gets a bag and my Leash, puts on her Shoes.

  Wait . . . my LEASH!!! We are going Outside! I dance and dance and wag and dance. She takes me Outside and I get into the Car with her. We could be going anywhere! Every time the Car slows down, I try to stick my entire body out the Window in case it is a Drive-Thru for Treats. She puts the Window up higher, and I smoosh my snoot against the glass and sniff.

  The Car stops. She goes Outside but I am still in the Car. I bark and whine because She forgot me, I am sure. After a long, long time or maybe only seconds, She walks around to the other side of the Car and lets me out. I Smell and Walk and Run and mostly Walk. She holds my Leash so She doesn’t get too far away from me.

  I don’t know where we are or what we are doing, but I already like it here. Wherever She is, I like it.

  Part 3

  On Being Domestic and Beautiful

  These are stories on faking your way through beauty, fashion, and homemaking. Or maybe you’re not faking. Maybe you walk well in heels and are the only person who can keep a strapless bra up. Maybe you know how to make a pie crust from scratch and own at least one apron. Maybe you have pretty hair in the places where you’re supposed to have pretty hair. It’s weird that any of us are expected to be good at these things.

  Mustache Lady

  The second time I realized I was hairy, I was ten and in the changing room of a juniors’ clothing store with my mom and younger sister. “Maybe I should teach you how to shave your armpits,” my mom said, noticing the tuft of hair peeking out below the capped sleeves of the shirt I was trying on. We’d come to this particular store because it’s where Brittany S. had found the cool top she always wore, and I, too, wanted to be cool like Brittany S. All the Cool Girls I went to school with were named Brittany or Lindsay or any of the one million spellings of either name. I was the only Mia (this was 1999, before I shared a name with millions of toddlers and lap dogs across the country), and being different, as per Extremely White Elementary School rules, was not something that made me cool. I had not gone to Fashion Bug, this Midwestern mecca of preteen clothing, for a turning point in my adolescent life; I went for an ill-fitting gingham shirt with a popcorn bodice and capped sleeves. However, I only left with one of the two.

  Not to toot my own puberty horn, but I was something of an early bloomer. By fifth grade, I was already sprouting mad armpit hair and had a small collection of bras that were less supportive garments and more something to flatten the weird little boobie buds my body had started forming. Pre-boobs are, to put it scientifically, very hilarious. It’s like you wake up one morning and your nipples are just like, “Hey, you know what would be fun? If I looked like I was drawn by a cartoon artist. Watch—I’m gonna turn myself into these slightly oblong, lowercase c’s. Yay! Fun!” I don’t remember being either exci
ted or embarrassed by my boobs. They felt inevitable, like how my fingernails would get longer or my shoe size would change regardless of what or how often I thought of it. My body hair, though? Definitely not something I wanted any attention drawn to whatsoever.

  The first time I realized I was a Hairy Girl, I was in third grade. A boy named Christopher J., whose body weight was 90 percent bowl cut, took to commenting on the dark hair above my lip to pass the time during social studies lessons. “You’ve got a mustache,” he would say. Of all the ways to berate a person’s body hair, this was perhaps the laziest. Like, no shit, I’ve got a mustache. I’m half-Filipino and my body is getting ready to fuck me up with puberty hormones. Also, maybe you haven’t noticed, but I am what you call a human, and humans are covered head to toe, crease to chin, with body hair. You ever look at your toe knuckles? Like, really look at your toe knuckles? There’s hair there, my dude. What evolutionary need do we have for hairy toe knuckles? Who knows! Probably the same need as my hairy upper lip. So why don’t you mind your own hairy toe knuckles and turn that bowl cut around, Chris J.

  Of course, I did not tell him that. I went home and told my mom what he said, and cried.

  My life has been surrounded by fairer-haired, lighter-skinned friends. I remember Brittanys and Lindsays in high school complaining about how thick they thought their arm hair was, detailing the process of shaving their forearms and asking each other to “feel how smooth!!!” their arms were after shaving earlier that week. Not to play Oppression Olympics: Body Hair Edition, but if I shave my armpits at night, there will be stubble in the morning.

  I have always had a weird relationship with my hair. It has been societally deemed my best and worst feature. Long, luscious hair on top of my head? Good! Beautiful! Would pay money for! Long, luscious hair on my legs, around my belly button, and on my upper thighs? Bad! Terrible! Would pay money to never have to see! Whenever people say they wish they had hair like mine, I say that they can for the low, low price of having more pubes than they know what to do with.

  My mom taught me how to shave shortly after that trip to Fashion Bug. We bought a pack of pink disposable razors and store-brand shaving cream scented like some nondescript, alcoholic berry that would get you drunk enough to forget the state capitals. When we got home, she introduced me to the female ritual of Shaving.

  She showed me how to wet my underarm skin a little first, how much shaving cream to squoosh out into my hand, how to gently spread it around my armpit. She showed me how to hold your arm up enough so your skin would be taut, how to shave with and against the grain—both are necessary when braving the forest that is my armpit. (Multiple coarse hairs grow out of each follicle under there. It is a personal bodily feat that is impressive to no one except myself.) My mom helped me wash away the foam and fallen hairs, both swirling down the drain until there was no trace of this undeniably weird yet completely normal ceremonial ritual we’d just performed. It’s equally strange to talk about an act that my mother taught me out of love and that I continued doing out of hate for parts of myself.

  Later that week, I tried to shave my legs for the first time—“try” being the operative word here. It was, to put it gently, a massacre. I abided by all the rules my mom had given me for Shaving 101, not realizing she had only given me the tutorial on Armpits, intentionally trying to shield me from noticing the dark hair covering my legs. I’d already noticed, though, and thought I’d get an early start on ridding myself of these thick, little sprouts that had taken up residence on my lower half.

  What I didn’t realize was that the amount of shaving cream you need varies according to the body part. Not sure why I didn’t realize that: legs very clearly have more surface area than armpits. I was in the Gifted program for math (thank you, please hold your applause) and somehow I thought, “This li’l dollop will be good for all body parts large and small!” I also was unaware of the variables in play while applying pressure to your razor. Under your arm is fleshy and soft and harder to nick. Your shins, though? Oh, baby. Shins are Nick City. Shins are like the bridge troll of the legs, like, “Come, if you dare, try to navigate these boney peaks covered in the thinnest, most delicate layer of flesh! Test your knowledge of grooming on my labyrinth of patchy hair and bones!” Knees are even worse, but I didn’t get to my knees the first time I shaved.

  The very first swipe of my razor removed my leg hair as well as the thin, top layer of skin on my shins roughly a quarter of an inch wide and four inches long. I remember looking at my razor and thinking, “Huh, I don’t remember my shaving cream having long, thin chunks in it?” When I looked back down, there was more blood than leg.

  My mom was mortified. Not by the blood—my mom, a mother of four, has seen more bodily fluids than the black light in Room Raiders. However, the sight of your fifth-grade daughter bleeding from a self-inflicted shaving wound while essentially saying, “Mommy, do I look pretty?” is basically a scene from a horror movie. She helped me patch my leg up, apologizing over and over again for not teaching me that shaving my legs and armpits wouldn’t be exactly the same. To this day, I think she still blames herself a little for what was entirely my overzealous doing. If anything, she should’ve been more disappointed in my public school math and science education. (Seriously, how did I not realize that Leg is bigger than Armpit???)

  I spent the next two years (from fifth grade to halfway through middle school) too terrified to use a razor to shave. So I stopped shaving altogether, and here I am, a fully Evolved Woman basking in my body hair.

  Just kidding! Instead of using sharp blades to get rid of my body hair, I turned to literal chemicals!!! Nair became my best, most stinkiest friend. If you haven’t ever had the honor of Nairing, bless your hairless soul. It is a pinkish cream that smells like a rotten fruit came to life and puked in your face. You apply the cream to the hair you want removed, let it sit for a while—but not too long or it will give you literal chemical burns! Being a woman is fun!!!—and watch as each strand curls up into this wavy, dead, wiggle of a hair follicle. Then you wipe away your dead wiggle hairs and are left with smooth, gorgeous, stinky skin. Just describing this gave me flashbacks to sixth grade, when I clogged the toilet with Nair-soiled toilet paper. As I said, being a woman is FUN.

  Eventually, I started using a razor to shave again. Time heals all wounds. Except the ones left by a disposable razor, as evidenced by the faint seventeen-year-old scar on my leg. Shaving with a razor again was like going back to an old boyfriend who I knew wasn’t good for me, but everyone else was like, “But you’re soOoOo cute together!!!” What can I say, I was in seventh grade and sick of wiping gross, pink Nair gunk off my upper thigh. So I ran back into the arms of my Bad Boy Razor.

  Around the same time I started shaving again, I became reacquainted with a nickname I had been given years before: A boy in my seventh-grade class began each day by addressing me as Mustache Lady. Good morning, Mustache Lady. How’s it going, Mustache Lady? Hey, Mustache Lady, fine weather we’re having. At least I had been given a title this time around. I was a Lady. Mustache Princess or Duchess of Mustache would have been preferable, but I took what I could get.

  I wish I could say that this nickname didn’t bother me. That I ignored this dumb, dumb boy and his bad, bad insults. That I had been made wiser by the years between Christopher J. first pointing out my upper lip hair and this new boy dubbing me Mustache Lady. That I had been hardened by years of leg shaving and other body-hair removal. At this point, my body hair had caused me blood, tears, and Nair chemical burns. Whatever harm the nickname “Mustache Lady” had meant to do to me, I had already done to myself tenfold.

  I wish I could say I definitely didn’t cry to my mom when he called me that. I wish I could say I didn’t immediately look into whether shaving your upper lip would make the hair grow back darker. I wish I didn’t know that they make Nair specifically for upper lip hair removal, that I didn’t know exactly how long to leave it on to get rid of the hair without causing my skin t
o become red and tender (four minutes and thirty seconds).

  I wish I could say that, today, I don’t even remember the name of the boy who called me Mustache Lady, what he looked like, or anything about him. I wish I could say that I, a twenty-eight-year-old adult woman, remember nothing of thirteen-year-old Justin K. with the frameless glasses and gelled spiky hair and his painfully uncreative teasing. I wish I could say my current Google search history doesn’t include “eyebrow threading hurt more than wax or no.” But I can’t.

  I shaved my mustache this morning, in the year 2020, as a financially independent, fully grown, adult woman. It has become as routine as putting on deodorant and brushing my tongue until I gag a little. (Maybe if my breath is minty fresh, no one will notice the hair that grows extra quickly around the corners of my lip?!?) It’s not like I recite the names of all the boys who’ve insulted my facial hair as I complete this task, even though I can easily call their names to mind: Christopher J., Justin K., College Guy Who Said I Had “Stubble” but Not in a Way That Sounded Impressed. This routine would probably be a lot more satisfying if I did, though.

  My younger sister—also a fully grown, adult woman—once told me she plucks her upper lip hair as her preferred method of hair removal. My response was not to immediately tell her how painful that sounded, to ask how long such a tedious and terrible task took. I did not give her older sisterly advice, telling her to preserve her precious youth by not bothering with upper lip hair, to live and laugh and, yes, even love. My response was to be jealous. I WAS JEALOUS! THAT MY SISTER! ONLY HAD ENOUGH UPPER LIP HAIRS! THAT SHE WAS ABLE! TO PLUCK THEM! INDIVIDUALLY!!!