Long Time Caller First Time Listener #10

Welcome to Long Time Caller, First Time Listener, a column where we, Trixie and Katya, give you, the reader, advice. Our answers may not be valuable, but they will definitely be irrelevant. 

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Want your question answered by us? Email goopedsubstack@gmail.com. Please include a name/pseudonym and your pronouns!

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Question 1: Hey ladies, what's your advice for a great college application essay? I don't want to blend in with all of the other basic bitch applications and I figured I'd ask two strong, inspiring female authors. I'm planning on studying music education btw.

Yours,

Academic Flop

Trixie: I honestly don’t even remember what I wrote for my college admissions essay. I also have no way of verifying if anyone ever read it. Sometimes I think that such asks are only worked into the process as a way of weeding out the truly lazy. Writing a personal essay doesn’t require competence as much as it requires baseline desire to achieve. Obviously the grammar must be immaculate and the word choice must be precise but not overly decorative. Keep it personal–“I discovered my passion for music when my mother would play The Beatles on family road trips.” But not too personal–“My father was an astronaut and when his body was raptured by the recesses of the black beyond never to be seen again, I knew I should pursue some sort of Science.” Focus on good grades and community service. Colleges are equally interested in what you do outside of school. Don’t perpetuate false interest in charity and definitely dont have your mother Lori Loughlin photoshop a picture of you on a fictional rowing team. Good luck!

Katya: Instead of getting wrapped up in anxiety and indecision about what to write, I like to consider the other side of the situation: What would YOU want to read, especially since your essay will be just one of hundreds if not thousands of hastily-penned ingratiating treatises about achieving goals, self-discovery, and “the hardships that I’ve sailed through the ocean of pain where I hope to dock at your school.” Blah blah blah. My advice is keep it short, treat it as an elevator pitch, for you and your personality. Allude to some trauma if that’s legit, but also conjure some mystery. The first sentence is the key here: You need to have their bloody, tear-stained eyeballs in the palm of your hand before they hit that first period. Something like “I didn’t understand what the shaman had been screaming about, but once the fistful of bloody teeth were thrown at the dying woman’s feet, it became clear.” And fulfill the word count if there is one, but brevity is important;  not only for a compassionate respite from all the other long ass shitty essays the other prospective students will write, but it will also leave them wanting more...that is, wanting you. And then out of sheer fascination, perhaps from an incredulous cliff-hanger, they’ll have no choice but to accept you!

Question 2: A couple of weeks ago, I dyed my hair blonde (I'm a brunette flop). I do it every summer myself. But this time my boyfriend suggested a hairdresser. I did, but the bitch burned my head, with chemical burns grades one and two. At the moment I told her my head was burning and when I left nothing was visible, but now after 20 days, I can see a scar on my forehead (I used every treatment possible). She refuses to give my money back after I showed my medical records for the burn or pay for my expenses for my skin care. Should I sue the bitch or what?

-A guy who still thinks having platinum hair is a thing on 2021

T: Mary Dugan, Mary Dugan. I don’t even know where to begin here. Was it a cream bleaching agent? Powder? Did she use a barrier cream to protect the skin surrounding the hairline? How much did you pay for it? 

Given that you are male and the hair is most likely short,, I would recommend continuing to color your own hair. I would also recommend taking a minimum of four months off from the bleach. Use baby shampoo for a few weeks too to as to not further irritate the scalp. I might even recommend a scalp massage using a gentle almond oil or coconut oil to help restore the scalps natural lipid barrier and protect it during the healing process.

If you are suddenly bald from this experience, welcome to the club! Some of us don’t even have hair to complain about. Harry Potter had a forehead scar and it made him a celebrity–and his scar resulted in his parents deaths. Just some perspective.

Katya: I don’t exactly have any advice per se,  however I did find myself in a similar predicament once upon a time in middle school. For whatever reason, it came to pass one day that I needed to bleach some god-awful dye out of my hair. There was some ill-advised pink semi-permanent hair dye mishap and so the natural solution seemed to grab some bleaching kits and just bang away until the color was stripped. Well, the color got stripped, and my scalp got burned by the fires of Hell, AKA powder bleach with level 40 developer, three times in a row. I had scabs on my scalp for the next two weeks. But there was a silver lining–I quickly discovered that the tedium of classes at school was broken up by my new favorite activity: picking off my scalp scabs! And there were some nice juicy ones up there under the layers of fried barn hay that was now my hair. The point is, I guess, that one’s man's pain is another’s pleasure, so yeah, go ahead and sue the bitch. 

Question 3: I’m a lesbian and I would say I’m out of the closet for the most part, but my hind quarters are still inside. I haven’t told my family, and I don’t know how to bring it up casually in a conversation. I don’t want it to be a big deal and I don’t do well with potentially emotional situations. What would you say is the best way to let them know without it being a big deal? 

Thanks!

-Kate Bush

Trixie: Now I would like to help you but I must warn you–my point of view when it comes to coming out to your family is rather unconventional or perhaps even problematic. If you were straight, you wouldn’t feel the impulse to tell your parents who you have sex with or what type of sex you enjoy, so why overshare? As queer people, it’s nice to feel comfortable enough with your loved ones to share this information if you wanted to. However, it’s also lovely to leave your family in the dark about your in-the-dark activities. As soon as a gay man tells his dad he is gay and introduces his boyfriend, the father can only ever picture the son having violent anal sex. This can only be explained by the fact that straight people are more obsessed with gay sex than gay people are. Open up to your family if you want to but don’t view it as some penultimate final phase of coming out. You don’t owe anyone in your family anything. Their lives go on the same whether you eat pussy or suck dick. In their eyes, you’ll always be Baby Jessica anyway and even wholesome hetero sex would scandalize them on some level.

If you do decide to tell them, let them flip out mildly. But then cut them off after a few days of nonsense. Straight people tend to hear a gay person’s coming out and immediately make it about them. Instead of allowing you to unfold the information in your own intimate way, they tend to turn inward and focus on how it affects them. This is because straight people have never had to even once worry about conducting the exact conversation you are having. Ultimately, sharing such intimate details with someone is an act of trust and friendship and they should feel honored that you are so open. But again, they are straight. Expect a shitstorm, be delighted by only a small pee sprinkle.

Katya: Yeah this is tough. I always turn to Hollywood for these kinds of difficult social and family problems. I believe your solution can be found in the movie Steel Magnolias. Claree is in the salon, and she’s telling the girls how a gay man came out to his not-so-accepting parents. This was his technique: He sat them down very dramatically and said  “Mama and Daddy I have something to tell you. I have a brain tumor, I have 3 months to live. (then pause for effect) Just kidding, I’m only gay,” should work like a charm. Good luck, Lez!