After ‘Self’ magazine declared Long Beach women are miserable, we wanted to find out what was missing. It’s a bike

“AT LAST” by COURTNEY OQUIST

One day, it just kinda showed up: a cherry, chopper of a bike; long and lean, cooler than anything we’d ever seen and we saw Loverboy open for Styx.

Our good friends at Nirve made the bike, the “Cannibal,” and were nice enough to give us one, but we had no idea what to do with it. After telling Theo Douglas for the umpteenth time that we would not be using the bike’s hollowed-out frame to transport black market Faberge Eggs, someone, probably me, came up with a great idea. Why not give the bike away in a contest.

But what kind of contest?

And then, one day, it just kinda showed up: Self magazine’s “Healthiest Cities” issue. In it we found out that the least sexually healthy women are in Oklahoma City (duh) and the worst place to have a baby is Texas (duuuuh). We were surprised, though, when the magazine said the least happy women in America were from Long Beach and Los Angeles.

This seemed odd since all the women we know seem fairly happy, when properly medicated. We wanted to find out what made Long Beach women unhappy and/or happy . . . and we had our contest: On our website, we put up a prize—the insanely valuable “Cannibal”—for the best answer (1,000 words or less) on the theme: What’s it take to make a Long Beach woman happy?

Out of the many responses, we decided on these five finalists. Some contestants were able to use their real names; for obvious reasons, others, like winner REDRYDER, were not. REDRYDER’s Day-in-the-Life piece bemoans not only hard-ass bosses and competing with young chicks, but the pervasive feeling that you just don’t measure up. Also, she’d like to meet a fella.

But all of them are good. Some are funny (“These are my tomatoes! You can’t eat them”), some are insightful (“Barbie sucks”), others are poetic (“White skin hips [and ass] bound with electricity as girl laughs about lotto-scratchers and bubblegum”).

Katie Wynne wrote one of our favorites, a practical laundry list of things a woman can do to ensure happiness (ironically, doing laundry was not on the list). Unfortunately, Katie wasn’t eligible to win because she’s dating someone who works at the District. Katie didn’t know that was a condition of the contest, probably because we neglected to mention it in the rules. Because it’s so good, we ran Katie’s piece anyway. We hope that makes her happy.

REDRYDER
Happy? I’m sorry, did you really say happy? Okay, I’ll play along. What does it take to make a Long Beach woman happy? First, I’d like to tell you what doesn’t make me happy.

I work for a passive aggressive boss that sometimes makes you feel two inches tall, then gets upset at you for feeling that way. I spend most days toiling through lunch, only to get the evil eye because I’m leaving early, which by any standard means exactly on time. I am surrounded by eager beavers who take it upon themselves to stay late and look good for the boss, because they are new. Come on! I put in my time, almost three years, and where did it get me? I was one of them.

I finally get home just in time to finish my homework and go to bed. Going back to college is my light at the end of the tunnel.

Friday rolls around. I’m trying to get my career in order, but as if that were not enough, I’m getting pressure to find a mate. So, Alex’s? Second Street? The V-Room? All places I used to love, but with this new pressure, am I supposed to start going to museums, book clubs, dare I say, church? By this time I play with the idea of going out.

What do I wear? If I go too young, I end up looking stupid, cover it all up and I look matronly. Then of course there are always the 21-year-old bubbly girls. I see them out, they look great in everything. They are not jaded yet. They are new to the scene and really haven’t lived many of life’s experiences. I hate them but secretly admire their zest for life, poor things, they have no idea what’s about to hit them. So I am not going clubbing—hate that now, just another side effect of getting older. More.

You know what would make me happy? I’d like not to live almost pay check to pay check. I’d like a little more joy in my everyday life. Even small things make me happy, like having time to have dinner with friends, or meeting for a cocktail. I’d like to take a tango class.

I’d like not to receive the animosity-filled eye every time I pass my employer.

I’d like to be able to leave at five and enjoy lunches without feeling guilty. Writing this all out makes me think, hmmmm, perhaps I need a new job. Hell, if you print this, I may have to get one.

You know what else, I’d like a real man to take me on a real date. I’m tired of these men with the Peter Pan complex, who seem to run rampant all over Long Beach. It’s not that I am looking to be a soccer mom with the minivan and rug-rats in tow. I’m not sure I am ready for the marriage part, but it would be nice to meet somebody who you simply just like spending time with. Someone who will take me somewhere other than where they know their ex-girlfriend will be. Yeah, that happened to me.

What would make me happy is a little less stress, a pretty new dress, and a date with a real man. And to top it all off? A shiny new bike I can ride around town, shouting how absolutely happy I am now.

EDEN MYLES
(For Maggie)

When my baby is happy she is; in her clothes—but sometimes naked.

When my queen is out she smiles behind her dark sunglasses as her lips shine with gloss.

White skin hips (and ass) bound with electricity as girl laughs about lotto-scratchers and bubblegum.

The lady loves it when the music is loud (Bad Brains) and when she is first to spy a sweet parking spot.

She is sipping “middle” coffee with a nosh of lox, bagels and one to two things of cream cheese.

She likes it when I choose the movie (and that I know she will most likely fall asleep before the title sequence begins).

This woman (in this town!) enjoys seeing her tattoos on (“semi-reflective”) surfaces while cruising downtown at night on her punk bike.

She digs good sex, good bottled water, a good conversation with god and sometimes she likes to be left (the fuck) alone.

Really, her passion is relationships and friendships and pirate-ships.

Love your heart Long Beach Woman.

KATIE WYNNE
Oh Self magazine, thank you so much for telling me—once again—what I already know. Long Beach women are unhappy?! You’re kidding? You mean that the lady who drops off my mail, who always ignores my greetings, has a permanent scowl on her face and insists on smashing my important letters into little contorted paper balls isn’t just playing around with me? You’re saying that the gal who works at Vons—the one who scans things twice, never smiles, never laughs, never makes small talk—is unhappy?

Thank you for opening my eyes.

For argument’s sake, what makes a Long Beach woman happy? I can tell you that this is the definitive list. I did a study of the city’s happiest females and these are the answers they gave explaining their euphoria. It’s science.

• It takes a warm shower in the morning. Cleaning off the smell of everything else—the night, her boyfriend, husband, boss, all of the above—and knowing that she is starting fresh as just herself. No excess.

• It takes a good bar of soap.

• It takes an iPhone.

• It takes hearing a few kind words, sincere words.

• It takes knowing that when someone asks how her weekend was it isn’t just so that they can tell her about theirs.

• It takes a couple of really solid friends. Friends that will be around when she falls down the stairs for the third time in one day. Friends that will eat the food she makes when she decides on a whim that she’s going to quit her job to become a chef in France, and who will laugh when she tells them she’s serious—then talk her out of it. She needs her job, she’s broke.

• It takes money.

• It takes a Jane Austen optimism and Virginia Woolf realism.

• It takes a great dress that always fits her, even after three helpings of tiramisu.

• It takes good health.

• It takes some clean ocean water for crying out loud. For once she’d like to buy a nice bathing suit and not have it be ruined by the green sludge of the misleading blue shore.

• It takes an imaginary cruise on the Queen Mary during a lunch break. The seagulls screaming, the wind blowing the salty air through her hair, and the sound of a champagne bottle breaking on steel—not the sound of her phone alarm telling her that lunch is over.

• It takes a family that loves her. Whether it’s a family of wolves, or trolls, or people she works with.

• It takes the understanding that there are some things that she can control, but others that she just can’t. Knowing that she can’t control the way other people perceive her, traffic jams, no parking spots on Pine Street, the weather that makes her hair go flat or frizzy, or the color of her eyes, her skin or the sky.

• It takes an occasional slow dance with the opposite sex.

• It takes hope for happy endings.

• It takes a warm shower in the evening. Cleaning off the smell of everything else—the day, the imaginary lunch—and knowing that she is going to bed fresh, just herself. No excess.

• It takes a good bar of soap.

NADINE TULL
Happy is important. True. But first, allow me this digression: Barbie sucks.

I say this, because 15 years ago, my mother was afraid that Barbie would distort my self image. Possibly, she biased my opinion.

Barbie: an obnoxiously top-heavy doll made of plastic that comes in a box. Even as I played so convincingly the role of irrational teenager, I saw the disconnect between beauty standards and the little doll on my bedroom floor.

But that was then.

Now, Barbie has been replaced by the real people we read about in magazines and see on the web.

NOTE: “Real” denotes actual humans who have or (worse! have not) been enhanced by surgery; who have been dressed by, and shopped for, and done up by an army of professionals; people who have been photographed in fake rooms, with lighting and make-up by an army of professionals who know how to produce Fabulous.

Except that then we see neighbors who look just like these real people buying groceries and walking their toy pets down to Liberty Park. And then we really know that these people are real. Just like us. Living. Breathing. Except skinnier. And prettier. And happier.

And the magazines love to report how these real people are just like us. They take their dogs out for strolls. They drink coffee. They . . . except that I shouldn’t know this because I shouldn’t be reading these magazines. I should be deeper than that. If I had any substance at all, I wouldn’t read the magazines because I wouldn’t really care.

I have a war to worry about. People in the world aren’t eating. Web 2.0 is the wave of the future and I can’t figure out RSS feeds. I’ll get fat. I’m already fat. I’ll become obsolete. I work too hard. I’ll never make anything of myself because I’m lazy. I’m wasting my money on rent. I should buy a house. I can’t afford a house. I’ll succeed professionally only to find myself alone and unfulfilled. I worry too much.

But if I’m not out-prettied, then I’m out-cooled. It’s Long Beach, after all, which means I know people who know so much more about everything in the world that it’s all I can do in a day to pretend, to keep my fingers crossed that today won’t be The Day I’m Found Out. Because you’re either pretty or smart. Or you’re cool. Three choices. That’s it.

But I’m not cool. I don’t shop at Fingerprints. Instead, I listen to the radio, gladly, commercials and all. Shhhh.

And I’ve never been to any of the amazing vintage stores on Fourth Street. You know, the ones where people get fabulous clothes for nickels? I do Ross.

And I spend my lunch break reading about RSS feeds instead of imagining all the fabulous places the Queen Mary might take me. Shhhh.

And I subscribe to the word of the day from dictionary.com, but have yet to learn wit. I read wit and hope that it’s catching. But the wit of the “LindonLolyGagger,” and The District and {open} bead off me like water on latex.

And I don’t go to the farmer’s market. Not on Fridays and not on Sundays. And when I finally went to the Richard Goad Theatre to see Shakespeare, I left after the second intermission because I was tired and it was late.

I also missed those indie twin sisters who sang at the Prospector that one night they made exception to their L.A. fans and played in my town. Please don’t tell.

And to be honest, I have never found a signed first edition copy of the Bible at Acres of Books as so many others seem to have. When I went there to find graphic design books, I could find nothing other than dated Communication Art annuals. I left empty-handed, because I’m not a fan of the ’80s neon aesthetic.

But I should be. Because Que Sera has Sucka Free Sundays every Sunday. And Sucka’s not till Sunday PM, which means that I should really stop by Alex’s Bar first for their BBQ’s. But until I do, I’ll keep my mouth shut and send the ambiguous half smile when the subject comes up.

I live in Long Beach, which means that any night of any week there’s something to do. There’s coffee to drink, on Second or on Pine or in the East Village Arts District. Or we’ve got bluffs in which to view the sunset, and a Ferris wheel on which to take a date. We do, but I have Netflix and a couch. And after nine hours at the office, nothing sounds better.

But it should. Because I live in Long Beach.

Right? Because in Long Beach, we’re eclectic. Diverse. Anything goes. Be yourself.

Barbie’s bust be dammed. That I can handle.

You want to make us happy? Either tell us that none of it really matters, or promise, just promise, that we’ll never be found out.

RUGGRATTY
What it takes to make a Long Beach woman happy?

• Finding a first edition Truman Capote at Acres of Books for just five bucks.

• Any time spent at Fingerprints

• Seeing a woman at House of Hayden pull two tomatoes out of her bra, lay them on the counter, proclaim, “These are my tomatoes! You can’t eat them!” Then put them back into the depths of her shirt.

• The random installations of public art throughout Long Beach, yes even the sperm sculptures in the East Village.

• Reading The District Weekly. I’m serious. Well, except for the issue when Debro Saad and Star Harris were on the cover. I mean, University by the Sea was happening the upcoming weekend, but their crack story makes the cover?

Tags: acres of books, happiness, iphone, Long Beach, Self magazine, soap, women