Find Me I'm Yours (2 page)

Anyways (or is it singular ANWAY? I always mess that up—and TOWARDS or TOWARD? Same.) So anywho… I'm sure if I went up to any of these guys, it would be an epic fail. Most boys are looking for someone taller, bustier, and hot pantsier. I'm always the pretty girl's best friend. The one who in her senior year of high school shaved her legs in stripes. The one who can't see the E on the eye chart without her glasses (sure, I find the cutest vintage frames poss, but still…). And my style? I'm known to cut up and sew halves of two different cardigan sweaters together as one (yeah, you ain't the only fashionEEKsta, Tavi Gevinson!).

I've been called “arty,” “interesting,” and “quirky,” which might work for me if I still lived in NYC. But in L.A.? Not so much.

I'm terrified that finding the guy I want to spend my life with will be just like everything else I've started and never finished.

Things I've Started and Never Finished

By Mags Marclay

1). College. Dropped out after a year of community college because I couldn't see how “Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries” would do me any good as an artist.

2). Art school. Dropped out after a year cuz my financial aid ran out and my mother (who has been a single mom since my dad left when I was seven) couldn't afford to send me, and I couldn't pay cuz I got fired from my waitressing job for threatening a customer. Is someone saying, “Let go of my breast or I'll shove this shish kabob skewer up your ass” really a threat to be taken seriously? It would be awfully difficult to carry out (and I wouldn't waste a perfectly good shish kabob on some jerk's ass).

3). Being gay. I tried with Liza in high school, and although we had an awesome time together (and she's still my oldest bestie), I just like boys more. (BTW, Liza DID finish this one and she's been happy with Kelly for three years! Props to them!)

4). Moving to L.A.—all my stuff is still at my mom's apartment in the East Village cuz I thought, “Well, I'll see how I like it before really moving.” That was two years ago. I guess I'm still seeing how I like it.

5). My adolescence. You're supposed to be done when you're, what, eighteen? Twenty? I'm twenty-four now, and still wholly unprepared and unwilling to plunge into adulthood.

6). Every art project I've started in an effort to keep me disciplined and creating work consistently, like my COLLAGE A WEEK website. Which turned into Collage a Month, then Collage Semiannually. Oh well… You can still go see the ten or so collages I managed to post.

www.CollageAWeek.com

Here's a sample:

7). And DIY in the USA, a collection of photos I've taken of weird, random patriotic displays (people are so BUSY in the USA!). I started posting the pics on a Tumblr, then found out I wasn't the only one who spotted these questionable spectacles, so I let peeps submit their own and now I'm much more interested in their pics than mine! So if you've seen (or made?!) anything that looks a little somethin' like this…

…then go to
www.DIYintheUSA.com
and share your find.

8). There are so many more things I've started, but why even bother finishing the list? AMIRIGHT?!

I'd like to think that someday soon I'll cross #5 off, grow up maybe a tiny, little bit, and do something really important. Or at least make a few jaws drop along the way.

So as I was saying, probs finding the guy I want to spend my life with will end up on that list, too. Coco, my best friend in L.A., kicks my ass daily about how there's no such thing as a soul mate. How there's no MR. HIM, only MR. FIND SOMEONE YOU LOVE AND CONNECT WITH, AND FIGURE OUT A WAY TO MAKE IT FREAKIN' WORK. She's married to an awesome guy, Blake, so I suppose I have to listen to her, right?

Wrong. I'm not gonna settle for anything less than a true love story.

Sure, I'll probably end up a lonely bachelorette, living with a chimpanzee. They're good company, and they do speak in sign language. But then I'd have to learn sign language. And buy diapers. And bananas. On second thought, it would be cheaper to raise a sloth. They just eat flower petals and leaves. But then there's the mani/pedi expense I'd incur. Hmmm.

So yeah, I'm a believer trapped in a nonbeliever's body. I'm pessimistically optimistic. I think a happy ending could happen to me, but every time I've tried, my dreams are dashed. It's like a boxer getting up from the mat with arms wide open—“Come on beat the shit out of me again.” Maybe it's better to stay down for the ten count, then go home and nurse my wounds. Or at least get up with gloves poised in protection. Either way does not make for an overly optimistic person. And why, you might (not) ask?
THE NEWMAN CURSE.
Yeah, for reals. My mom and grandma even gave it a name!! (Their maiden name, so maybe it wasn't actually passed down to me, Mags
Marclay
?! Right…) My dad left my mom alone with two children to raise—he played keyboards in some well-known '90s rock bands. Here's something I put together of my father. Uh… that's OF my father, not FOR my father. There's a diff.

Click the pic to watch the video:

That's the most I've seen of him in seventeen years.

Since my dad split, Mom hasn't found anyone else to share her life with. Her mother, my Grandma Dotty, had three failed marriages, and is also alone. They both get through each day thanks to psychotropic drugs, and together they decided that when it comes to relationships, the women in the Newman/Marclay clan are cursed. I've been warned my whole life to “watch out for the curse.”

So why would I ever trust that finding my mate could even be the remotest possibility?
Because of one moment. One life-changing, reality-altering, mind-blowing moment that occurred when I least expected it.

After it happened I had to go gather all my scattered brain matter and mush it back together before I could make sense of what I saw in that moment, and even then, I still couldn't wrap my mind around it.

It started as a series of events that had to have been divinely choreographed. The kind so seemingly mundane and random, yet so perfectly planned—if you saw them in a movie you'd be all, “No fucking way.” But let me tell you, I'm here to say, “Oh yeah fucking way!”

Rewind to two days ago. Here's how it went down.

 

Is it ironic that I'm the only single person working at
Bridalville
magazine? Ironic or just pathetic? I might as well work at
Young Spinsters
.

I've been a graphic designer at
Bridalville,
an online humor mag start-up, for the past six months. And even though it's an irreverent take on all things wedding, every day I'm still surrounded by killer ideas for alt ceremonies, hot grooms, and adorbs couples that make my 8–5 workdays spill into 24/7 of feeling utterly SOLO. At least I get to do cool graphics as opposed to if I worked at, say,
Metal Welders Association
magazine.

Check it out:
www.Bridalville.com

Oh, if you go to the ABOUT section, you'll see Coco. But she was wearing a wig when the photo was taken—
because she didn't want to wash her hair that day
. Seriously. That's exactly why she quickly became my best friend when I moved to L.A. Well, that and the fact she has lines tattooed down the back of her legs to look like she's some '50s bombshell wearing seamed nylons—we both feel like we were born in the wrong era. Coco's twenty-eight and has been married for four years. MY IDOL! =)