1. The gum graft surgery I got at age 20 wherein a periodontist cut a swath of gum tissue from the roof of my mouth and re-adhered it to the front of my lower gums to stop gum recession. I wore a bloody retainer for two weeks as I healed from the surgery known best to senior citizens, and somehow this was less painful than watching Miranda Hobbes explain How to Be an Antiracist to her black professor.
2. Getting my eyebrows microbladed at a salon I found on Groupon. “Salon” is actually, in hindsight, a generous word – this was a one-room office located in a warehouse-looking building in a dodgy part of Hell’s Kitchen. The woman ran out of numbing cream and took her exacto knife to my forehead with black dye and a vengeance. I would pick this over watching Mr. Big performatively masturbate for Carrie in a second.
3. The time I slipped and fell while running through a parking lot in the rain in college, skidding six feet on my knee and ripping my skin open. One chaotic urgent care visit, twelve stitches and one leg brace later, I was told to not bend my knee for three weeks. If told to choose between watching the AJLT writers slip ill-fitting woke references into dialogue or picking bits of gravel out of my festering kneecap wound, I’m leaning towards gravel.
4. The time I got an actual second-degree burn on my buttcheek and finger tip from the janky shower in my East Village studio. I now regularly bring my oven mitt into the bathroom to turn the faucet when the shower water reaches scorching levels of heat to preserve my precious fingertips – but that’s NYC living for you. Watching Mr. Big make sex faces as he rides his Peloton into the sun made me wish I was nursing an ass burn instead.
5. Experienced period cramps, nausea from food poisoning and motion sickness all in tandem as I rode a rickety bus through the dirt streets of Bangladesh’s capital city as whiffs of human feces and mysterious foods wafted through the windows to tamper with my fragile state. Somehow this is preferable to watching the AJLT writers slip in mentions of Samantha living in London to hide the fact that actress Kim Cattrall wanted nothing to do with the franchise and turned down the offer to join the reboot.
6. Popping a blood vessel from heat exhaustion and dehydration my sophomore year of college as I helped freshmen move into dorms as an Orientation Leader. I popped a major blood vessel on my sternum and had to drink solely Gatorade for hours to recuperate, but somehow find this preferable to watching Miranda walk out on her twenty-year marriage with no explanation.
