Normal.

Or...Is a Face Tattoo Ever a Good Idea?

I just read an article in Vanity Fair about Kanye West’s permanently nude wife, Bianca Censori, and found myself… envious.

Let me be clear. Kanye West seems like a horrible human being who has said horrible things, and I don’t know much about “Bianca the Unicorn,” but I’m guessing our values are not aligned. So this is not about them.

It’s about the fact that it’s Saturday and my big plans are to go to Lowe’s to buy three different kinds of light bulbs.

I am so painfully normal.

I suddenly want to go in my underwear just to feel not normal. In fact, I Googled: is it illegal to go to Lowe’s in your underwear? Apparently, it’s a gray area.

I don’t want to be so regular. I read about eccentric, bold people doing big, weird things and wish I could be that wild and free instead of worrying about billable hours and when we’re going to get that tissue-box-as-book-character school project done.

Is this normalcy excruciating for anyone else?

“It may surprise you, but me fostering seven cats wasn’t exactly me thriving.”

That perfect line, flawlessly delivered by Howard in Season 5 of Only Murders in the Building, had me spraying Topo Chico out my nose. I had just finished fostering kitten #7, and… yeah. Truth.

(I do love fostering. You get to cuddle with an itty bitty adorable fur baby for free with no commitment and people call you noble. But that’s not the point.)

I’m not trying to create unnecessary drama. Lord knows the world has enough of it right now. When you look at the horrors in the news and these evil, terrifying monsters running our country, may we be so lucky that our biggest crisis is:

DAMMIT WHOLE FOODS DELIVERED ME THE OLIVES WITH PITS INSTEAD OF THE PITTED OLIVES. I SAID NO SUBSTITUTIONS. WHY DO BAD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?!

But hell if I don’t want to be naked up on a horse like this Censori woman in her photo spread. Not literally, of course. I am highly allergic to horses and imagine there are places one would never wish to stab an EpiPen.

But I do want to be wild. Different. WEIRD BARBIE, even. Free of the shackles of stale white bread normalcy.

It comes out in micro-rebellions.

Like the time I was spray painting with my kid in the garage — harmless craft project, paper on an easel — and suddenly I lost my noodle. I turned the cans away from the paper and toward the interior walls of our surprisingly clean, pale-blue garage and just went to town.

My daughter went wide-eyed at my temporary insanity and immediately joined me, thrilled by the sudden permission to misbehave. We were laughing hysterically, jumping and spray painting with reckless abandon like deranged lunatics. My desire to create an impromptu abstract mural like a wild artist — circa Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona — armed with my very own Target-quality spray paint was very strong.

I loved it. The freedom. The madness. The memory in the making.

Twenty minutes later, reality crept in. It did not look like a whimsical abstract mural. It looked exactly like someone had been brutally murdered in multi-color.

We spent the next hour scrubbing neon “blood” off the walls and ceiling. You can still see faint streaks. My midlife-gone-wild residue.

Do you feel it too? The urge to shake it up and maybe swing from a chandelier? What are we rebelling against? Monotonous routine? Societal expectations? TARDIES? The need to do everything perfectly as a mom with no breathing room?

Remember that Seinfeld episode when Jerry dares Elaine to walk up to someone’s table, take a French fry off their plate, say nothing, and walk away? She asks George if he would do it and he says, “Are you kidding? For twenty dollars, I would put my face in their soup and blow.”

That’s me. I want to blow in all the soup.

I think it’s a “shake awake” desire. Wake myself up. Wake others up. Do the unexpected. Feel alive.

I’m curious if it can be done in small doses (a feather hair extension) or if it needs to be dramatic (public nudity). Like life swings the pendulum so far toward ordinary that maybe you have to swing it back hard every once in a while.

Too often, it’s about going with the flow. And yes, there can be ease and comfort in that (and privilege, to be sure). But I also feel like we numb ourselves in that state — just coasting through as we inch closer to death. Damn.

A few years ago, I read the novel Under the Whispering Door by one of my favorite writers, TJ Klune. The first book I read of his was about magical children, which I am SUPER INTO. In fact, I contemplated adopting six children as soon as I put that book down (but I didn’t — because I’m just normal). This book was about death, so a wee bit darker. It’s about a man who spends his life chasing success, status, and nice things — then dies and realizes none of it mattered. He only learns how to live after he’s already dead. (It sounds like a downer, but the story is beautiful and set in a cozy “purgatory” tea shop to soften the death bits, so please, do read it!)

It’s poetic and lovely in fiction. But I sure as shit don’t want that to happen to me! Or you!

Death is the greatest teacher of life. We Westerners avoid thinking about it at all costs, but it’s the only inevitability that can give us true perspective on how we want to live.

Are you good? Is this enough for you?

Is it just me?

Speak now before I throw my light bulb plans out the window and go get a face tattoo.

—
P.S. These sentiments started as a text to a few dear friends. One just replied: “I really don’t think you’re normal, if that helps.”

It does, Emily. It does indeed.