november 3
I let out a couple of lame huffs and watched my hot breath briefly condensate on my laptop screen. As I wiped my screen down with the tank top that I wore last night to sleep that was still on my bed, I noticed today’s date at the top of the screen. November 3, 2024. That means it’s two days until the election, and it’s been exactly a month since National Boyfriend Day, which occurs on October 3; it’s sort of like February 14, but a little more on the nose. I remembered my friend called me crying that day. It made me sad, and I wished I could have given her a boyfriend to make her feel better.
My screen didn’t look cleaner after I rubbed it with the tank top. It actually looked worse. I have a thing about cleaning my laptop—nothing deep; I just hate doing it. It looks so bad that often people tell me I should clean it. I always laugh and say, “I know.” I secretly wish that one of those people who cared enough to comment on it would just clean it for me.
It’s kind of weird because my room is very clean, and showering is one of my favorite parts of the day. I don’t need someone to clean my bedroom or tell me to do it; I find vacuuming the floor and wiping the surfaces down with my grapefruit-scented multi-purpose cleaner satisfying. I also don’t need someone to put in more work to clean myself. I love my shower routines consisting of lavender-scented soap and body scrubs with a scent I imagine they’d have in a resort in Cancun.
I notice I go through my shower products faster than my three roommates. I think I clean my room more and do more laundry than they do as well. They are not messy people, I just like clean things more than them, I guess. It makes me feel good. Put together. Something like that.
But I don’t want to clean my laptop. I am hyper-aware of other people’s computers, and I now know (against my will but also completely by free will because I’m nosy) that they are always cleaner than mine. Always. Which means I really need to stop my little cleaning superiority complex. It’s cringe. And makes no sense.
A week ago, when a girl told me to clean my laptop in this one class I despise, I was more embarrassed because she saw me actively not taking notes in the lecture. I was reading an article about how you can get mercury poisoning from eating farmed salmon. I quietly laughed and smiled at her, “I know.” I said as I took mental notes about how I was never going to eat farmed salmon and that she should keep her eyes to herself. I chewed my gum a little faster.
One of my best friends taught me that “embarrassment is a choice.” Which is accurate, but truthfully, I was kind of embarrassed. This wasn’t someone I knew well. I thought to myself, “Well, she doesn’t even know how meticulous I am about changing my pillowcases and taking off my nail polish when it’s chipped.” As though her telling me to clean my laptop screen, which I do believe was a comment that had my best interest at heart, meant I was gross and dirty.
But it’s not like the remark was impactul to me and made me want to change my ways. Because I still didn’t clean it. Does that mean I’m not a sheep or just stubborn?
I could have, though. I remember later that day buying purple shampoo for my hair, which I dyed blonde with tin foil, at CVS and seeing the canned laptop cleaner people inhale like drugs out of the corner of my eye. But I didn’t need to buy it, it wasn’t an emergency. My hair looking brassy was more important. I didn’t want to go into the aisle with phone chargers and extension cords anyway, I felt far more at home in the hair care aisle. I like the feeling of being surrounded by colorful bottles arranged by brand. I even like the fluorescent lighting and grey carpeting. I compared and contrasted the shampoos, even whipping out my phone to see if the ones I picked out had good reviews on Reddit.
When I was leaving the store, I saw the laptop cleaner again out of the corner of my eye. The receipt clutched in my hand evidence of what I truly cared about. Maybe I didn’t care about technological cleansing because it wasn’t a part of my physical. Was I that shallow?
On my walk home, I tried to justify it. I mean, who cares if my screen is dirty? But greasy, brassy hair? Forget about it. I wondered if my hair was greasy and brassy and if other people would comment on it the way they did my computer. I bet they wouldn’t. It takes a rare person to actually say that to you. Most people are scared to say something critical about how you look to your face. No one wants to get canceled nowadays. I’m not really any better, though. I mean, I probably wouldn’t tell someone their hair looks greasy and brassy to their face. And I also probably wouldn’t tell someone their computer screen was dirty. Because I literally don’t care about that at all. As I was a minute away from my apartment, I wondered if I ever will. I also wondered if I was a bad person for laughing after seeing a photo on Instagram of a girl who bullied me in middle school who got fat. But no one knew that, so I guess I’m safe.
It’s hypocritical to be phobic of greasy hair but unafraid of a dirty laptop screen, right? It’s technically not, but something about it is just really stupid and superficial.
My inner monologue about clean hair vs a clean computer made me feel like it was time to come to terms with who I truly was: a massive hypocrite. I can be a hypocritical person. That’s just my truth. What I like doing and don’t like doing doesn’t always make logical sense, even to me. Sometimes, I think about the choices I’ve made throughout my life, big and small, and I confuse myself. It doesn’t quite all add up. I feel like I’m always surprising myself a little bit, but does that actually make me unapologetically myself?
Maybe that’s also just what it means to be a human. Maybe it’s good that I can’t always predict my choices because other people can’t either. It’s not like anyone has ever said that life is predictable. So, should I be predictable to myself?
I do predict, though, that one day, my frontal lobe will fully develop, and I will start cleaning my technological products. And caring less about brassy hair. And less about what people think. And that a clean computer will make me feel good and put together. Something like that.
