Screengrab by Various Today in Nerve's film blog: Holiday special - 35 people, places and movies we're thankful for.
The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
Dave banged my forehead into the carpet when we did it this afternoon — he kept picking my head up in his two hands and slamming it! I wonder if, after all, he has some hostility about me having the hots for my contest winner (we had to move the date to September 16th). I didn't bother to ask him outright because 1.) that man is so in denial, the whole world could know he's mad and still he'd smile and say, No, he's fine, and 2.) he might think I'm complaining and not bang my head anymore, and I kind
of liked it.
Yesterday I wanted a divorce. I told Laura and she said everyone wants a divorce right after they buy a new house. I feel like all the decisions for my whole life have been made. All the things that I love about Dave — his evasiveness and pretended innocence, his easy charm — these are the very things I despise now, when I realize there's no chance of getting away from them. At least not for thirty years — that's when the mortgage is paid off. Rachel just got dumped by a surfer, and I envy her uncertain world so much. We went out in her canoe and she was rowing and crying, looking so beautiful against the darkening sky. She's miserable, yes, but misery never bothered me much. Feeling trapped, though, I can't take. I know I won't, but I feel like I'll die. Ever since we signed papers for this house, and started spending $1,000 a day on furniture and rugs and paper maché tigers when always before I just sat on the floor because I knew I'd never be anywhere long, I've been having weird body complaints normally reserved for old people and young, guilty, religious people. I couldn't move my knee this morning, and yesterday the tops of my thighs got painfully tingly. It's as if I wanted to be inside a novel about the middle class, and along with the china cabinet I took on the worries and housewife-repression — sort of to be the whole book. I've even been fantasizing about getting a Valium prescription. But then I realized it was real, this is my real life. And now, $300,000 later, I want out of the book. This is the most expensive joke I've ever told. I take it all out on Dave, and he smashes my head when he gives it to me from behind.
September 5
I have been masturbating like a madwoman. My work habits are disrupted, my stuff is all in boxes, my heart is in distress. I wander about the house wondering what to do and I am overwhelmed, and leap into the walk-in closet with my pink, veined vibrator. (The reason I could find the vibrator, which I normally only use on Dave's vein between the bum and the balls — oops, was I not supposed to say that? — is because the last thing I packed was "the sex drawer." Right before we moved we were still getting along and I thought we might need it . . . little did I know Dave would need nothing but a bare floor upon which to have his vile way with me.)
I wonder what other people see when they come. Today in the walk-in closet, I saw — well first I saw nothing, just a blinding white light, like in the "documentary" about afterlife I saw as a kid. But then I saw eight compartments clamp down around my vagina, which looked like a badger. They were metal pods within pods like that spaceship in Aliens. Even my orgasm is trapped. Really trapped — if it somehow managed to get through the first seven locked steel doors, there would still be that final eighth one . . . and orgasms only have a life span of about twenty seconds within which to break free.
I've been masturbating so much due to nerves and workermen. Vanloads of them stream shirtless up my driveway and through my house, ripping up carpet and laying down wood, doing things with oil and wires, getting dirty and needing my lemonade. At one point I looked out my office window and saw them coming, and in my excitement I leapt up and banged my head so hard — this time on an upturned desk — I thought I'd either throw up or pass out. In my woozy, starry concussion, everything was that much sexier. Dave has two jobs now, and Wolf's at school all day. It's just me and the men all alone in this big house, me and the men and my veiny pink friend.
September 6
Today I saw on VH1 that Celine Dion spent $2 million to renew her vows. It inspired me to spend $2 on spraypaint and write I LOVE YOU DAVID CHARLES GOOLKASIAN all over the white, white walls of our bedroom, and when I saw how I'd messed everything up, I felt better.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
