6.25.04-- Heidi Fleiss is my hero.

There is the midnight screening of Farenheit 9/11 tonight. I would love to go but I decided to spend my day off tomorrow with my friend Diana. We are taking a pilgrimage to Exotic World in Hellendale, CA. It's basically a museum of burlesque dance history. It's totally this crazy Thelma and Louise road trip thing we decided to do last minute. I feel so cabin feverish here in LA and I want to get the hell out.

I am taking a burleque class. I figure it's the most feminist way for me to knock out the unrequited stripper fantasy I had as a little kid that still is with me today. If I become a burlesque dancer, I can be socially subversive and all that crap, still get my street cred in with the feminist academics and prance around in pasties. I am still trying to pick a burlesque dancer name. Diana says my name idea of "Lolita Mongolia" doesn't work. I welcome your name suggestions. Please email them to me.

I'm so excited about our road trip tomorrow. I feel like it will be my first day out from prison.

Anyway, I am going to bitch about Ross Dress for Less for a second.

So, a couple of days ago, I was feeling like my body was all hot shit because I've been biking so much and everyone has been telling me I've lost weight. Plus, even the high school students I work with were like, "Damn Kristina, you have a nice booty."

So I was like, "Fresh! Time for Kristina to bust out in her first bikini."

I've never worn a bikini before. My mom told me when I was 10 or maybe even at birth that I was never ever allowed to wear a two piece bathing suit, and it took until last week for me to finally shake that off.

When I was 11, my mother actually bought me this size 10 swimsuit and said, "Kristina, you have to wear this for the rest of your life." Anything my mother spent more than $10 on for me, she would say to me, "Kristina, you have to wear this for the rest of your life." She purposely bought the swimsuit several sizes too big for me so I could even grow into it in my older adult years. It had all these lame ruffles in the front to cover my cleavage. There was intense padding so my nipples wouldn't show underneath (it was very important to my mother that my nipples didn't show) and the leg holes were cut super low below the butt. It was a swimsuit for an old fat lady, but for some reason it was a size 10 and fit me and I was a size 3.

Anyhow, so I think that swimsuit is now lost off in swimsuit heaven. And ironically, she bought it at Ross.

So anyway, I was biking past Ross in Hollywood a couple days ago and was like, "Oh cool, I will try on some bikinis and bras since I'm such hot shit now."

Ok, first of all. I don't know what the hell was up with the bra section. Everything was like size 44 and up. Even in the 34B section, it was like all these 44 EEE bras. What kind of people live in that neighborhood that they have hundreds of humongous bras? And big bras in the little boob section? It was like looking at watermelon slingshots for row after row. And everything was from the Delta Burke collection. I was like, "What universe am I in?" as I went through all the bras.

And then I went through the swimsuit section. And I guess apparently what's stylish are these drawstring top bikinis (that in my opinion, only the anorexic can fit). The kinds with two little triangle squares on top. and bikini bottoms held by strings. They don't have the underwire ones. I thought I'd try this sparkly green one on and brought it to the dressing room.

YIKES! What is up with the lighting in the Ross Dressing Room? That lighting absolutely does not replicate any kind of lighting that exists in the rest of the world, save for a nuclear halocaust. The walls in there are so drab and depressing. And there was trash on the floor. How can anyone get in the mood to buy clothes there? I couldn't believe how completely sallow and yellow my skin was in the mirror. And every brown mark or skin discoloration was brought into rich plain view under those lights.

And something about this bikini and this dressing room brought to existence a couple of spare tires around my stomach and thunderous thighs. The bikini struggled to stay on around my body, and it managed to pinch out a few new buldges where I got it to stay on.

It was horrific. I was reminded of that Jim Carey character from "In Living Color". I think her name was Vera de Milo and she was this female body builder who bulged out of her bikini and looked like a gorilla.

I looked at my body in the mirror and thought to myself, "I need to diet, do crunches, swim, and see a nutritionist. I need to fix this. My body is horrific."

As I gave the dressing room attendant back the bikini, I wondered if Ross was haunted by the spirit of my mother. I biked away from the Hollywood Ross Dress for Less hearing my mother's voice.

"Kristina, you have to wear that swimsuit for the rest of your life."

So, me and Diana were wandering around Hollywood Blvd the other day and we ended up at Hollywood Madame. That's Heidi Fleiss' new boutique. I didn't even realize it was her boutique until we got inside. I was like in middle school or something when those trials went on. All I knew about her then was that she was a woman who was in big trouble and it had to do with sex. And that she was mysterious and perhaps evil. But anyway, the store attendant was like, "If you buy something, Heidi will come out and sign it and take a picture with you."

And so me and Diana were thumbing through her new book called "The Player's Handbook". Dude, that book is so awesome. It's got amazing art on the inside and just some really no nonsense discourse on relationships and dating. We totally bought her book. I read and re-read it every morning. And I bought a poster. And she came out from behind the store and signed it.

I was awed by her beautiful store and how she is playing with the idea of "pandering" and being sexually aggressive within her book writing and clothing design. I think it's so cool that now she's an entrepreneur and uses her rise and and fall to do her art, writing, and design. She's pretty amazing, and dare I say, feminist. She totally was talking to me and I was like, "Uh... oh my god...you were a PIMP."

And she still is. When we took this pic she put her arms around us and said, "You are Heidi's girls."

Ok, more later.

Kristina