I could be a diva if I really tried. I have the right tools, aesthetically: am thin, tan, with hair that's the jet-black version of the Donnatella Versace long-straight-and-platinu m look, a good face, an affinity for kohl eyeliner smudged into smoky rings and enough spare money (now) to get some cool (though not designer) clothes. I have a beautiful boyfriend and very nice fake boobs that I like very much. I am vastly more comfortable in platforms or six-inch heels than in sneakers. I own not one but two pairs of knee-high high-heeled boots. I think I have a certain amount of personal charisma.

And yet I don't have it in me to be a diva.

What's a diva?

Gorgeous, carefree, the center of everything and the center of attention. Not just having a great time but bringing the great time with her wherever she goes. Tiny lap dog optional but much preferred.

I understand, of course, where this longing to be a diva comes from. To be a diva represents absolute freedom from the restrictions imposed by what other people might think; it's about total self-expression. It's about feeling that it's just fine, peachy, to, as Simon Doonan so adorably put it, "leave the house looking vaguely offensive" and not caring what others will think. Essentially, I want to be a diva to escape the neuroses and self-consciousness that in actual fact prevent me from being a diva.

What is modern life for a girl my age except a quest to unleash one's inner diva?

There's this girl I recently met, E, a friend of J's, who makes me so sad and increases my resolve to really try harder to be my inner diva, because the alternative is to be her, and that is a singularly frightening concept.

E is, I think, completely beautiful and feminine, the kind of girl who's always wearing a pretty thong under a gorgeous skirt and keeps her eyebrows free of even a single stray hair. She's stylish and pretty and very well-maintained. By all rights she should be a superdiva, unstoppable, unforgettable, a force of nature, a Middle Eastern juggernaut.

Instead, E is, quite simply, a very sad case. Her boyfriend is in prison; she knows she's sacrificed so much to be with him while he hasn't given up a damn thing for her or made any effort to maintain the relationship (I don't mean now he's been stuffed in the slammer but before), and she still pines for him. She's completely miserable without him; she's adrift; she doesn't know what to do or who to be without him.

She told me her time with this idiot was the only time she'd ever been happy: he bought her presents, let her drive his BMW, etc., etc. Never mind that, as she herself admits, the months she spent with him in Phoenix, where he'd gone for business, were mostly spent sitting at home waiting for him. She knows all the unpleasant, unhealthy, un-fun details of their relationship, and she still wants to go on waiting for him; she's not capable of making the cognitive leap that would allow her to realize that IT WAS A CRAPPY RELATIONSHIP EVEN BEFORE HE WENT TO JAIL AND SHE'S BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIM.

We were talking about how she needs to find her own happiness, but guess how she plans to move on? By finding another boyfriend (and she always goes for the shitheads).

This kind of girl, this kind of mentality, totally frustrate me. Her own personality's been completely smothered in her overwhelming desperation for the validation of male attention and affection (you can see my writing skills are rusty; it's been a while since I've written anything more than a customer's sushi order). She has no idea of who she is or what she wants in life outside of men and, ultimately, "a rich husband" (her words). Such anti-diva behavior must be stopped!

Step #1 to unleashing the inner diva: Stop believing that happiness only comes through boyfriends, and start living for yourself!

At the beginning of this year, after my boyfriend's and my two friends N and T left for a trip to South America and then away from L.A. forever, we lived with Y the Drunken Irishman ("I can drink a bottle of Jameson's a night!") and G the Sociopathic Englishman ("Two hundred and fifty dollars? I don't know what you're talking about!"). Now, though the antices these two got up to, financial and otherwise, bothered the hell out of The Boyfriend, I happened to adore Y -- never had such an agreeable drinking partner in my life! -- and to not mind G too much. Then Y and G absconded for the lovely British Isles and the rest of their lives, and we got landed with...The Ass.

I didn't mind The Ass so much, either, although he is a neat freak, seems always to be around, is marginally employed at best, needs constant attention and has a bad habit of letting his hideously annoying fancyboy friend M (whom I instantly disliked from the moment I met him) eat all our food, drink all our drinks and trash our living room.

I liked The Ass okay...until the incident of the television.

The Boyfriend had a spare TV, which he'd been wanting to sell. We never use it anyway; between my 32-inch and the big-screen, we have too many TVs already. At last The Boyfriend found a buyer, a guy he works with. The guy came over, coughed up a fifty and carted the TV off; the deal was done.

That night The Ass pitched a fit. He was going to use that TV, he said, how could The Boyfriend have sold it without first consulting him, blah, blah, blah.

God, the sheer nerve! It wasn't his TV in the first place, not by a long stretch; what claim did he have over it anyway? How dare he yell at The Boyfriend for selling something that belonged to The Boyfriend anyway!

The Ass is the kind of person who's always going on and on about how full of justice he is, how fair, how righteous, how he's this and that and in general better than everyone else. In reality, though, he's just another pompous, self-absorbed, self-justifying, passive-aggressive prick.

I once heard a story from a friend of his, J, that perfectly illustrates The Ass's true nature.

When The Ass was preparing to come to L.A., his friend J's mother asked him to do her a favor: she wanted to bake J some of the cookies he loves and have The Ass bring them to J. She slaved for four hours to bake them, then packed them up and entrusted them to The Ass, along with some other things.

Guess what The Ass did. He separated everything he was to bring to J into two piles: stuff he'd bring, and stuff he, for whatever reason, didn't feel like bringing. The "stuff he didn't feel like bringing" pile included those cookies. His sister ended up eating them.

Naturally, J and his mother were a little upset. If The Ass hadn't wanted to bring the cookies, he could have just said so, saving J's mother the effort of making them, or at least given them back.

Now, whenever anyone alludes to this incident, he gets all huffy and mad at whoever brought it up because they embarrassed him (he never properly apologized to J or J's mother, even).

That's the kind of person he is, always demanding the utmost consideration from everyone else and never giving any consideration back in return. He takes up the only parking spaces we have despite the fact that he doesn't work, so that The Boyfriend, who's a mover and spends his days lifting refrigerators over his head, and I, who work sixty or more hours a week as a waitress at a sushi joint and a desk clerk at a tanning salon, have to park blocks away, ending long days with long walks and beginning long days the exact same way. I've just spent more than an hour washing every single dish in the housebecause he who constantly moans about how messy the place is left the dishes in the sink for so long they actually grew mold (though he complained daily about the dishes). Now, I don't cook and rarely eat at home; the dishes aren't mine; The Boyfriend is the exact same way. Only The Ass cooks and eats off of the dishes in our place -- but he hasn't got the wherewithal to clean up after himself; all his energy's spent on criticizing others.

Watch this space. If The Ass doesn't clean up his act, some serious drama and trauma are going to come down on his head.

Ever since I lost all the money I had by being incredibly stupid and gullible (long story, I may tell someday but not today), I've been working like hell. I no longer have the time or the energy to sustain work on any kind of short story or novel, but I desperately need to write something, so for the moment it's this blog.

Also, I like attention. If you've read this, let me know! ^_^