I'm Not Dancing With You Until You Calm Down

2004-07-16T11:27:00.000-04:00

The ERA, It Turns Out, Is Not 40 pages of Dense, Confusing, Dissembling Man Hating Propaganda Designed to Trick Everyone Out of Their Money and Dignity

Holy freaking crap. I just found out that the entire Equal Rights Amendment is only 3 sentences long. Momma, can this be true? When I was a teenager my mom and I would argue about whether there was any good reason for Regan not to ok this and she would say "All these people who are for it, have they even read it? There's probably something in there that's not cool." And I was all "Um, it's for women's rights. How can that not be cool?" And she was all "I'm sure he has a very good reason for it." And I was all "Yeah, like he hates women." I guess I was right after all!!!

http://www.smartwomenvote.com/play.html#question2

2004-07-16T09:44:00.000-04:00

Excuse Me, Are You Retarded?

When is it okay to ask someone if they are retarded? Like if they yell "Excuse me!" all super loud and worried about ten minutes before the elevator gets to their floor, can I just ask "Are you retarded?" Not condescendingly or insensitively; just inquisitively. Also, is it okay to ask "So...that's what you're passing off as hair?" to a lady with fried blonde turned wispy white hair plug style shattered bits of decimated once-we-were-protein strands that would make a pile of metal shavings feel all sexy and soft. I mean, I just really want to know: has she given up, or does she fully expect people to accept what's going on up there as the concept of "hair" we have become so accustomed to? Or would she be like "Oh no, sweetie. Please. I know that shit's a mess. You see, four months ago my husband left me for my sister and instead of resuming my anorexia habit from my dating years, I decided this time it was my hair not my thighs that was the problem. I got beyond fixated about making each strand so blonde it would glow in the dark. I would be like an angel, you know? I have no sense of what hair should even be like anymore. So wait...actually yes, I am asking you to accept this as hair. I knew you was looking at me and wondering.” I mean, I’m just asking questions here. And I really want to live in a society where it's okay to ask these things. Let's do it okay? But part of the deal of asking is that you have to answer so motherfucking honestly it will send chills down everyone's spine in the elevator. I can't wait to see what I get asked. Yeeeeeee!

2004-06-30T16:36:00.000-04:00

Sistah my Sister: How My Teenage Sister Became Black Without Trying

My sister is fourteen years old, white, and lives in some tweak-addled shit town in Oregon you never heard of. She says she’s actually black, and I’m starting to believe her.

There’s a variation on a stale joke that gets thrown around whenever a white person displays a little soul, supposedly so uncharacteristic of their people. Something like “Hey, lookatme - I’m a robust black mow town singer trapped in the body of a skinny white person playing the banjo. Haaahuh! Crazy!” But this kind of joke has yet to be invented in the suburbs, where there isn’t a high enough population of minorities to create this humor. A hip white person does not automatically become imbued with some black street cred, because who even knows what that looks like? Yet my sister says she is black. And the more I observe, the less lame this sounds.

But how do I confirm my sister's latent ethnicity without reducing this to a 'my cousin listens to Babs Streisand so he's gay' situation? Well...I haven't figured that out yet. So far all I have is a bunch of ever accumulating cultually reinforced stereotypes.

Case in point: Baby Got Back. At only fourteen she already has an amazing, womanly body. It’s thick and curvy and I feel like an anorexic boy with no hips when I stand next to her. I also feel like a creep when I envy how you could literally stick a fork in her butt. Everyone always thinks she is older than our middle sister, which unnerves the middle sister to no end. But booty beats out bondage belts and punk rock sass for seniority I guess.

Baby Got Soul: She is the best fucking dancer possibly ever, never mind for her age. She makes up the raddest hip hop moves and then pulls them off with all the ease of a veteran booty rap video dancer. Literally, I’m like wait, how did you move your hips and butt like that? I think she's got like a triple jointed pelvis or something.

Baby Can Be Loud: She has no trouble speaking her mind, which can include full on yelling at the parents that in a million years I would (still) never have the nerve to pull off. And while she wouldn't seek out a fight, she would kick your ass if you brought it. I wouldn't even go anywhere near starting a rumble with her personally, cause for one thing she can beat me at mercy in .02 seconds flat.

Baby (Usedta) Get Bent: By age twelve she had already started and kicked smoking cigarettes and boozing. And as for pot, which she waited until the ripe old age of 11 to try, well that’s way old news too. Please don’t be dumb and think that I’m suggesting that my sister is culturally black because she has an ass and did drugs. It just means she’s a little hard, which could be parlayed into some white trash cool, except that she's too black for that.

Baby Got Belief: Straight up, she loooves god. I've often thought that if I could trick myself into believing in God I would be a lot more successful. Everyone who wins awards on BET or at the Grammys always thanks God first and foremost, so I have to assume that all the losers in the audience were probably just going to thank their moms. Hell, amazing American Idol singer Fantasia thanked God every week for a 30 second performance, and she won. Anyway, this would not be a problem for my sister, who actually truly believes in God.

Baby Is Strictly Business: Currently she is dating the only non-white boy she could find in her church (he’s Indian). My sister once told me that she cried thinking about the idea of marrying a white man: “It just seems so…depressing” she lamented, slipping into a well of despair right before my very eyes.

Finally, Baby Is Feelin It: In the throws of teenagedom, a time when many white girls can develop eating disorders to fit with the image of idealized thinness they are presented with, my sister asked me who had a bigger butt: her or our other teenage sister? Black teenage girls don’t fall prey to the skinny shakedown as much because they have strong moms who tell them that if they feel fucked up about who they are, it's just society messing with their heads. Also, crucially, their culture has a physical ideal that is more in line with how they actually look (see the work of esteemed sociologist Carol Gilligan and some interview I read with sexy model Tyra Banks online). So not having a clue what kind of response she wanted or what Pandora’s Box we might be tempting, I decided to test our bond and go with the truth. So as neutrally as possible I said “You do. You have the biggest butt out of all of us.” She looked at me solemnly, almost teary eyed, and said, quite sincerely and gracefully “Thank you.”

But I really became a believer when she was able to help me get how extremely fucked up race relations are in America. That’s right Al Sharpton: not you, my sister. Not Jesse Jackson, not bell hooks or Spike Lee or Angela Davis - not no one but my lily skinned baby sis. One day she was talking about how much she “loved” studying slavery in history class, which totally creeped me out as a weird fetishistic way of putting it. But then she broke it down for me, and her own thoughts on it were so right on that I realized it was more about someone being excited about finally getting their “dues” in class. (“At last,” I imagined her thinking, “we are getting to my people.”) She pointed out how slavery was only abolished within the last 150 years. And that civil rights movements most momentous strides happened a mere 50 years ago. That means there are people of my generation whose parents clearly remember officially not being regarded as an equal citizen. Officially! And by officially, I mean legally! From her own consciousness she wondered aloud how the feelings and resentment that experience must carry with it could possibly be erased in one generation? And we’re surprised we have race issues in this country? I know this is like, Life’s Basic Contemplations 101, but seriously I’m from Whitey Whitesville and I never really thought about it. But the fact that my sister has, and does, and was able to get me to see it so simply for the fist time (despite having a 10 plus year lead on her with my own supposed liberal education and life experiences), says something about her ability to align herself emotionally with a group who may be her missing people.

The problem with my sister looking white but feeling black is that she say some really whacked out sounding things when talking about her crew. Once she told me how cute 50 Cent is because he looks like a bunny. “I call him a chocolate bunny rabbit.” I almost chocked. Wait…doesn’t everybody know by now that no matter what you are not supposed to compare black people to animals – of any sort (even cute fuzzy ones)? Well actually, why the fuck would my sister know that? In a state with 1.6% black population, it’s safe to say there is not a lot of opportunity for consciousness raising. She is living in the kind of un-P.C. bubble where even my mother, who has dated interracially, does things like use the term ‘Oriental’ when referring to Asians. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where my own racism ends and where/if hers begins. And so I looked at 50 Cent. And you know what? Those are some really stand out, high cheekbones. And if my sister can say that I look like a monkey, why can’t his facial structure remind her of a fucking rabbit? Another time she pointed out how black people have flared nostrils. This sounded like a racist statement to me. To point out a physical difference. What takes away even a possible hint of slander is that my sister intentionally flares her nostrils in photos because she thinks it looks more beautiful. What I worry will be learned racism continually turns out to be simple observation of differences.

I think my trepidation over her remarks can be traced the historical inheritance of the concept “Separate but Equal,” a debauched legacy of social intolerance that casts a long, haunting shadow over my generation. Not wanting to repeat the horrendous mistakes of the past, where being perceived as different clearly lead to being treated as unequal, we try to preempt this pitfall by falling into even deeper one: where we refuse to acknowledge our differences at all. We are keenly aware of our negative tendency as a culture to label people who are different from us as ‘other’ and therefore ‘bad,’ which leaves us with the unworkable solution that the only way to be equal is to be exactly the same. But we can’t all ignore each other’s idiosyncrasies forever. And if you think white people are secretly (or not so secretly) obsessed with how black people are different, you should go to a Hot 97 sponsored comedy show sometime, cause all the jokes were on me. So I’ve learned to coat-check my fears and actually just listen to what my sister is saying…and it’s pretty good. I mean, where else can I get a breakdown of which style braids Bow Wow (née Lil Bow Wow) looks best with?

The way my sister talks about ethnicity seems like the next level. Whereas I have all these rules and knee jerk P.C. reactions to any race related conversation, her generation gets to just chill the fuck out and make observations (more) free of any cultural/ societal baggage. It leads to conversations that don’t feel safe, but that are sure as heck a lot more honest. My sister would be very surprised to hear that she shouldn’t liken any black people to animals because we used to do that and it’s really bad and she’ll sound like an old man from the hills. It’s progress that she isn’t even aware of this racist concept in the first place – because that means no one in her generation is dragging it into the present. This breakdown and rebuilding of communication is similar to the overhaul feminist rhetoric requires, where it’s been pointed out that young girls don’t understand the intent of a second wave statement like “Whatever boys can do girls can do too!” Since (theoretically) they have not been taught otherwise, to say something like this is just sort of Huh? What does that mean? It's a fucking given. We’re still trying to put our old band aid on their new problems, without noticing that the bleeding may have stopped, or has at least started dribbling from some other location. But just as I see feminism as far from having achieved all its goals - rape stats and economic disparity are still up for grabs, for example - I'm not naive enough to speak for others and say that racism is anywhere near A-OK over. But I do think that, however slow, there is a loosening of the racist fabric that holds this great nation together. And I think it’s time a distinction between fetishizing another culture and embracing it was made. Cause sometimes I worry that my sister will be that girl from the Real World who gets a smackdown for not knowing you’re supposed to say Asian instead of Oriental. With no one bothering to find out that she probably has the least amount of hostility or hidden racism of anyone else on the show. This week alone she took her friend to a Luau at the local college, went to Quinciera practice, and convinced her family to get dinner from the only Indian restaurant around, two towns over. For growing up somewhere that does not have a lot of diversity on the surface, she manages to find events and people not everyone else cares to know about.

Another really big way my sister cracked my head open was making me realize I was totally freaked out by the kids in my own New York neighborhood. I’m taking a definite risk saying this because the fear is that now I will be that girl from the Real World who gets the beatdown for not knowing what’s what and sounding dumb as hell. But I take store in the fact that I am in good company, since I worked with a Puerto Rican guy who told me he used to be scared of all white people because he grew up in the Bronx and was never around them, so they just freaked him out. This admission helped me frame my own ignorance in a more understandable light. Before hanging out with my sister, I wouldn’t look a group of black teenage boys in the eye; they were menacing to me. I would just sort of let my gaze go over them and figured they had nothing to do with me and I had nothing to do with them. These are the same boys my sister might have a huge crush on, and everything about them that was invisible to me has meaning and potential heart flutters attached to it for her. So now when I see these boys I really look at them, and actually notice how they are interacting with each other. It’s not aggressive like I imagined when I didn’t really see them. They are usually talking to each other and making each other laugh, and I try and pick out which one my sister would think is the cutest. I have to say, more than any other kind of personal experiences, art I've seen, books I’ve read or friends I’ve had, the basic tenet of the crush has led me to break down my own unknown assumptions about what black people are really like more than anything else.

I hope what my sister finds when she leaves her small town is not anger for not knowing what she could or should, but respect for being a person who cares about people from cultures other than her own. Now when my sister cites differences between black and white culture and aligns herself with the former, I see that it’s like a whole new playing field, where we can't just tell kids what the rules of engagement are supposed to be, because they are observing and speaking their own truths. And the freaky truth is that my sister is black. So fuck all y'all.

2004-06-29T12:31:00.000-04:00

Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Weird?
Funny Beautiful.

[Confidential to T.B.: notetakingpizza
Furthermore, why is everything you say funny just because you say it? Do you even prepare any material or do you just open your mouth and make me lose my shit? Oh, that's how you do it? Ok, thanks.
We saw D.C. on the way home. He seemed cranky. Perhaps because he has to work at it a little more than you. I'm just saying.]

2004-06-21T09:59:00.000-04:00

Who has the cutest little kitty ever? I wasn't kidding.

Please see the next post wherein I take on the sexy mantle of 'Cat Lady.' Then read on to find out what kind of adorableness it takes to keep the world spinning on its axis: The little dickens almost caught a squirrel this weekend. It was so cute I basically vomited all over myself. She was such a pro about it and totally had the mangy brown thing within her reach but then was like wait a second, I don't think I really want that near my mouth or messing up my pedicure, so she just sorta relaxed and casually waltzed behind it as it scrambled away in a frenzy, dignity barely in tact. The whole scenario reminded me of when I was 8 and was chasing a pig at a rodeo inside a muddy round-up ring with a bunch of other kids. Yeah, just chasing a pig. I totally had the curly tail within reach when I thought "What is the f-ing point of this? Sure, I’ll be the 'winner' but I’ll also have to sit here the rest of the day covered in mud. And I'm wearing short shorts so that can't be even worth it. No thanks." I fell back into the teeming mass of more dedicated but slower children, and let them soak up both the glory and the manure infused mud. I always hoped the rough-hewn crowd noticed that I could have 'captured the pig' if I had only chosen to. That squirrel and that pig will always have a sort of pardoned sacrifice in common that way. Well the pig has probably long been eaten but you know what I mean. Me and my baby kitty are both benevolent kind creatures (who don't want to catch trichomoniasis or squirrel lice). Sometimes it hurts to be so good at heart, when you see God's good glory go to others.

2004-06-16T15:00:00.000-04:00

Baby/Kitty

First off, I know everyone says the same things about their pets (as they will their future babies) - that they are fucking fucked up cute, hot shit, but in my pet's case it is total, objective, truth. Before the heavens parted and bestowed me with my disgustingly cute cat, I was not in favor of myself or anyone else having these shedding dirtballs around the house. But after my little sister (who wants to be a veterinarian) said that she didn't ever want to live without pets in her life, as that was a sad and pathetic existence at best, I realized I was living a sad, pathetic existence at best. Sometimes it takes a village.

So then I was like, ok, I’ll get a cat, but I'm not gonna be a fucking freak about it. I drew some quick lines in the sand: I won't ever, EVER, even talk about the existence of it to anyone let alone take rolls of film of it sitting on a pillow or go home early on a Friday night to eat ice cream and throw a cat nip infused yarn mouse around with her. Because then I will be an official Cat Person - and thus rendered completely grotesque to the opposite sex. And I’m a little too young and not suburban enough for that to happen yet. Yet. Oops but then I got the little librarian kitty and what can you possibly do but bring meaning to people's lives by telling the silliest stories ever about her and bail early in the evening on all your friends for some q.t. with the little hussy? But more than yammering on to others about my cat, the most satisfying part of hanging out with the saucy strumpet is attempting to respond to her scratchy breathy whiny fevered meows.

When trying to soothe the hyper little chatterbox, I've found solace (for myself if not for her) in a few key phrases:

It's all happening now. (I like to say this somewhat prophetically as I feed her wet food, which from what I've observed, must be the equivalent of having your insides lined with a special morphine laced powdered sugar cake icing that gives you super powers, including invisibility and flying).

Really? (Said with curious interest. This is pretty much in response to any plaintive meow, for which I can only guess at what she is attempting to communicate in her base, archaic way ).

And then what happened? (Again, I’m basically mocking her. My tone is that now I'm so interested I'm going to explode if I don't hear what happened next, but this could be the completely wrong response for what she is trying to tell me. It's like reading a baby a book when they are screaming at the top of their lungs for you to change the tv channel - as if we can translate that shit.)

Uh-huh, yeah. I know (consoling). (Um, yeah, I don't. But don't tell her I said that, cause I think she sees me as really compassionate and sensitive)

All this fake intimacy leads me to the real question: are puppies and kitties just the gateway drug to babies? I once had a horribly irresponsible roommate who had a chain-smoking, crack talking, belligerently alcoholic English boyfriend. She also had a little dog that was the sunshine of everyone's life. Once she told me that having the little dog made her want to have kids - it was like training, she told me. I got really frightened on behalf of all her future children since I spent more time playing with her dog than she did noticing it existed. What naive thinking to draw a connection between taking care of pets and taking care of children, I thought.

Although I do plan to also mock my children to the full extent of the law, I seriously doubt the similarities between raising kids and raising cats extends beyond picking up their crap and mildly noticing when they seem ill. And yet, I must say I do feel an edge over the competition in preparing for the great baby race. After all, I now know what it means to want, really want, to feed a little whiny furbag who is totally in my face the second I get home before I do a single thing for myself. I know what it is to feel guilt when leaving her with a babysitter. And based on the emotional arc of changing cat litter, I can pretty much guess that at first I will be really psyched to change my baby's diapers because they are fucking alive and healthy and isn't it amazing they have a such spunky digestive system, but then I’ll be like um, yeah I’ll be outside if that's what you're gonna smell like - do you want to get potty trained yet or what?

And yet, the words of my roommate are starting to haunt me. Pet = Baby. Baby. Kitty. Kitty. Baby. Circle of life. Aaaaaaah! And perhaps unfairly, lately when I talk to my cat I find myself being disappointed with her limitations. After all, unlike some unrealized-as-yet future kid, she will never ever be able to tell me in words what she needs, how she feels about things, or later on that she hates my guts and I am ruining her life. So the other day, after another somewhat stilted conversation of increasingly fevered meows in response to my cooling, cooing tones, I wondered if the point at which you should upgrade to children is the point at which you consistently wish your pets could talk back to you?

Maybe it's not so much preparation for children having pets blesses you with, as it is the desire to have them. Oh, wait, maybe that's just everything in life at this point. My bad.

2004-06-07T10:30:00.000-04:00

Too Much Information

I'm just gonna make this a special section cause I love it so much. I forgot to mention in the PMS lament how I ovulate so fucking hard that every time the miracle of potential life making happens I think I am either having the worst gas of my life or my appendix burst. Ladies? Well, once again I was neither going to fart out my small intestine nor had I accidentially swallowed a balloon filled with acid that was now trying to make safe passage through my spleen. No, just the gift of an egg that I can't do jack with from my ovary to me. Thanks, marvelously enchanting reproductive evolution!!!

2004-06-04T16:59:00.000-04:00

Honestly: The Hardest Part

How cute is honesty?

What about honesty that is self effacing without being self flagellating? That's super hot. Case in point: I recently entered into this dicey conversation with a boy I like where he could have totally gone one way and made himself seem like a total catch and I probably would have believed it, but felt very uneasy. At the last second he swerved and went headlong into total honesty at the peril of his own self image. It was so disarming and adorable. I realized how amazing honesty can be when you're not expecting it. How cute is honesty? So fucking cute. It's the new baby bunny. And the new cashmere hoodie. It's a fucking newborn bunny wearing a pink, well fitting, monogrammed cashmere hoodie.

In general I’m a fan of telling the truth in my own life, occasionally to the point of tactlessness. But in the realm of crushes, that shit gets real murky real fast. I defy anyone to make a coherent set of guidelines for the yellow plastic slip and slide of bikini bottomed truth making contact with some hosed down scrap of plastic that is dating. It kills me when public personas like Drew Barrymore (yeah, I get my psychological baselines from celebrities on tv, fine) jump on their highhorse and excitedly assert that we shouldn’t hide who we are from our boyfriends/girlfriends because they’re going to figure it out soon enough anyway. Easy for you to say, Drew (sweetie), your dirty laundry has already been made public for you. You really have no choice about when/if ever to bring up your so-cute-as-a button-face-down-blottoed-in-Max’s-Kansas-City-toilet-you-couldn’t-make-it-to-homeroom-the-next-day type of childhood. Nor, I’m sure, are your paramours particularly holding such endearingly eccentric beginnings against you, maybe in part because you have the status to get backstage whenever you fancy the drummer of your new favorite band. Drew is wise to the fact that she can blab her secrets, flail her insecurities with wild abandon, and the only consequence will be total endearment. Some of the rest of us aren't so ready to let go. Some of the rest of us have secrets. Some of us want to hide the fact that we…

When I’m faced with the potential treacherousness of trying to get close to a crush but impress them at the same time, I find myself disappearing into a vortex of paralyzing self analysis when asked the most basic but potentially most intimate question humans can ask of each other: How was your day? My lower lip drops open and a totally spacey stare takes over the place where my eyes should be as my mind buckles under the possibilities. Do I deliver pure honesty, or perfectly selected finely manicured moments that leave me with a sheen of success? Cause early in the dating game the real question is, what makes you the most attractive? The fact that you had a shitty day and are honest about it, or the fact that you had the good grace not to have a shitty day? Part of what sends me into a retard coma is what I feel the facts about my day mean about me as a person. I fear that saying I had a wrist slitting day means not that I am simply human, but that I don't have my shit together enough to avoid crappy living. And if I can honestly answer that I've had a great day, then I am somehow worthy of the question being asked in the first place, and entitled to all the benefit of the doubt about my character I desire (cause I am cashing that in when stuff gets ruff).

Some engineering folk find ways to unburden their secrets in a tidy manor by shirking off the very mantle of shame that is meant to accompany telling said secrets. Like our touchstone Drew, they do this by refusing to see their secrets as liabilities. I have a friend who has a sort of confessional verbal waterfall when you first meet her. Anything bad about her or her family she wants you to know, stat. She finally told me that she likes to get all her secrets out herself, cause that way no one can hold them against her. I for one appreciate her immediate honesty, because I know that for once my own family drama will not be drama. It will just be what happened. With her there doesn’t ever have to be a big unveiling, a goddamn confessional. Because really, precious honesty is bores snores. Just unload it or keep it to yourself, but don't give me the fucking baby seal eyes about it.

I think she is unfortunately mistaken, however, that you can take away someone's power to judge you simply by beating them to the punch. Like if they somehow discover dirt about you on their own (exactly how I’m not - microfiche?) you suddenly transcend the power of your secrets to wreak havoc on your relationships. If someone I knew had killed their dog, it probably wouldn’t matter to me if they told me themselves or I heard about it from the upstairs neighbor – I am holding that shit against you either way. These sorts of psychic wounds are best divulged and handled with a straight shot of good timing. Close to my wedding day a revelation like that is going to raise issues of acceptance within the context of knowing this person in their entirety vs. upchucking this on a first date, which will just make me wonder why on earth you want me to know that - like, why can’t you just find a therapist, first college roommate?

Whatever personal ills you have closeted away, it’s hard to know if and when it’s necessary to tell someone who you are trying to be honest/get down their pants with what you think your bad parts are. One could easily fall into the trap of dishing up too much negative stuff in an effort to be more honest. Because honestly, sometimes honesty can be creepy, and no one wants that. And sometimes, what masquerades as honesty is simply a lack of boundaries. I don't want that either. How do you know which revelations will endear you for their candor, and which ones will scare the dickens out of the person who's dick you are holding? No, I’m asking you. The worst case scenario is you realize their reaction means you have bad judgment and have expunged one too many vital organs. Actually it can be even worse: the other person's reaction is a comment on your compatibility. Cause then you gotta deal with the fact that you're not meant to really hang out with this person, cause the core of who you are is too much now, and too much 4ever for them. Only now they got your secrets and alls your left with is some concerned looking droopy eyed coney island stuffed dog of rejection as a going away prize. Good job, chump.

Personally, I tend to be very slow to divulge personal information with crushes, but with other people (people I aim to be friends with rather than kiss, actually) it's like okay, bam, here ya go. I guess that means I’m taking my sharing cues in part from the people I date, which seems kinda smart, cause what else are you going to base it on? But also, don't people need their own internal timeline for sharing? Or is that just trying to operate in a sharing vacuum? And what about opening your mouth when no one is asking you to? Where are the instructions for that? Like if you're hanging out with someone and you feel happy about kicking it with them do you say that or just try and like...smile or something? Is holding back early on with where you're at the emotionally smart thing to do or the emotionally withholding thing to do? Is it okay that I wait for someone to say they love hanging out with me ten times before I will say it once? Is that cool aloofness or cold-heartedness?

I thought perhaps if not from the ebullient former child stars turned golden in my life, I could always glean some boundaries from the radio. Did anyone hear Alanis Morissette on Howard stern? I woke up to him trying to wrap his mind around the agenda of her new song. Like a recently beaten child he was asking her so slowly "So...you...really want ...someone...to love you...for all ...of you? You want...someone to know...every part...of you?" I kept waiting for him to make a crack about her vagina or tell her to take her top off and sit on his lap, but instead he had this totally out of character awe and respect vibe emanating from him. Didn’t he think the song was cheezy? Or like, even gross and unnecessary? So far from it, he was in deep emotional rapture. You could tell he was trying to comprehend what that would even feel like to be with someone who knew every last thing about him...and was still right there on board. I guess that is staggering, I don't know, personally I’d rather just see her take her top off than hear about someone's attempt at soul barring.

Sometimes I cringe when I listen to the little boy lost lyrics of Bright Eyes, for example. I mean all the time I cringe, because it's a little how you say...self absorbed with his own perceived injury to the point of being embarrassing. Partially I don't like it cause I feel like there is an agenda of self pity going on there. And accusation. And I’m like dude, I don't even know you I was just listening to this cause someone said it was good. But I imagine he feels his soul vomiting is beautiful...and it seems he's able to get chicks like wound licker Winona Ryder to agree, at least for a time. And if what's too much info for me is like a shining beacon of humanity for others, obviously there is no one size fits all party dress of sharing.

"Statistics show that people tell, on average, seven white lies a day, from saying "I'm fine" when they're having a terrible day to complimenting someone on a dress they actually dislike. You are no exception." These are the middle of the road results I got from some dumb online personal honesty test I took. I did it 2 other times to get the opposite ends of the spectrum and it's one of those kinds I hate because the only way to get a "perfect" score is to be perfectly average. You can only be the best you there is when you are like everyone else. The person who was completely honest got chastised for being unnecessarily harsh, and the liar - well actually that didn't seem too bad because they were like you realized at a young age that lying is easy and fun and makes others love you. Wait a second...

2004-06-03T11:37:00.000-04:00

my thoughts after seeing a show last night, and a film the night before

pj harvey: what the fuck. you put all your emotions up there. i mean really, really gifted gave them up. so much i felt just by seeing what you felt...how exquisite to be human. that song where you were all alone onstage...gentle evisceration. thank you for that. i had to bite down hard on my bundled up shirt in order to transfer my gratitude to a physical plane. how could you not have existed? you repeated the word shame in a way that was like windows breaking with the beauty of it. i never thought to hear that word before.

lars von trier: ha ha. how right i was about you. you're like that little kid with the magnifying glass tormenting ants in the sun. you want us to feel by inflicting your punishment. i ain't taking it. does my arm not break if you smash it with a sledgehammer? yeah? big deal. easy. you jangle like an angelic pig trying to mire in it without letting it touch you. but your shame is fairly dripping off you - get a mop - and stop trying to get us to help clean it up.

2004-05-28T11:54:00.000-04:00

angry

So there is something really scary about being called scary. Partly I think cause it means you are ugly. Ugly like a gorilla. Gorillas are scary and ugly. In college my friend told me her friend was "scared of me" which really hurt, eventhough I tried to chalk it up to the fact that the girl was Japanese and quiet. A cultural gap. Oh you mean the girl who acts and dresses like Strawberry Shortcake is afraid of me? I reasoned you probably didn't have to be too raw for that to happen. I did my best to ignore the fact the friend wasn't saying it about anyone else.

Who is to say what is scary and what is sass comme il faut? There aren’t enough ‘scary’ women role models. I never understood why Scary Spice was supposed to be scary. Her name held the promise of a no holds barred attitude, but I think that only manifested itself in having the biggest baddest raddest hair of the bunch. I mean Sporty Spice is the one I wouldn’t want to rumble with, and in the end Scary Spice is too pretty to be scary. If you look afraid to muss your makeup, how terrifying are you?

I grew up with an adult who was really scary and angry, so when people use these words in reference to me, I have the worst associations in the world. I mean, not that I think I’m misinterpreting comments meant to be complimentary, but it’s like telling someone they seem authoritarian when their father was Stalin and your father is Mister Rogers. It’s a severe condemnation to the person who has experienced this characterization to the max, and I don't think the babied Mister Roger's offspring can understand the full spectrum and connotations of tossing out a word like that. For them the authoritarian continuum probably ends at 'didn't get kool aid after school on wednesday and wasn't give a proper reason' as opposed to the end of the spectrum extending out to 'dad killed a million zillion people and no way in hell am I going to ask for a reason, at least not while I’m hiding under this desk.'

Another good friend in college once told me that I was scary when I was angry. Which was scary to me because I couldn't remember being particularly angry in front of her. Oh crap, I thought, it must just seep out through my pores at night resulting in a greazy film all over me that everyone is trying to avoid getting on them.

I don't really have girlfriends who I think are scary. There was one girl in college who was amazing because she really did not give a fuck if you thought she was nice. She always had the best comments in our class because you could trust her to be totally honest about your art. I'm sure my own menace to society was a blip on the radar compared to the number of people who feared her, and most people had a really hard time being her friend. I thought she was so in control of who she was, but she was also on lithium and tried to kill herself before she left. Maybe it was hard on her to be so honest...or to have that genuine part of her interpreted as less than heroic. Cause really, I think it was the best thing about her. But it also kept people really cagey around her. Once I saw a list she had made of things that kept her up at night. The Spice Girls were on it.

I kinda don't give a fuck if people think I’m too angry, in part because if you say that to me I’m probably going to think you are a wimp. But then obviously I do care, cause my feelings get hurt when people act like my emotions are something to recoil at. I'm not a snake people. I'm not a gorilla. I'm just more outspoken than you'll ever be. Nah...ha. No really, I have no ending, cause how do you figure out what is the best part of you and what is truly ugly?

2004-05-25T11:31:00.000-04:00

Entitled: My Baby’s Daddy

So last night I was riding my bike home along the river and I passed this cute chick with a humongous belly and I got to thinking: When is it my turn? Oh, did I mention she is pregnant, not just chubs - I had that turn in the mid 90's and it was fun but I’m over it. When is it my turn to do what half my high school friends did the second they graduated (high school)? So, far from my usual “Keep the Focus on the Self!” battle cry, I realized I totally want to devote my life to a fat little baby. I realized with profound profound seriousness that if I got pregnant right now I would have to keep the baby because, hello, it would be so fucking cute how could I kill it? I immediately thought about those who might object. Well you know what, people who frown upon bastard children? You can't shame me into giving up this baby!! You can't make me strangle this bundle of joy with your supposedly voluntary tools of cuteness obliterating, AKA forceps, Planned Parenthood!!! Besides, the other great thing about popping out a miracle is that I wouldn't have to work anymore. I mean I couldn't work because even now I feel incredible self loathing over the fact that my cat is totally home alone crazy bored. I also feel incredible self loathing about my shitty job. So, back to the fantasy: I would be an awesome, stylishly dressed stay at home mom with a super cute baby and....shit, what would I buy diapers with? Even Eminem knows you can't use food stamps. That's when it dawned on me I would have to have an abortion because I literally CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE A BABY. The thought of this was so crushingly depressing that my mind immediately turned delusory. Maybe divine intervention would take over and I would find help where I least expected it. I imagined that when I went to get my abortion and the wackadoodle anti-choicers got all up in my constitutional rights I would tell them that I really did want the kid (yes, technically a fetus) but that I couldn't afford it. Well do you know what those nice people are going to do for me? They said they'd give me a million dollars to raise my baby with. Wasn't that a stroke of luck? Who says anti-choicers are all crabby crabs? But then I remembered how those people only trick you into having your baby and then once it's an actual fleshy thing outside the womb they get grossed out and ditch you. And the father is not rich. That is, none of the boys who I have crushes on who I imagine being the father is rich. It's so hard to get pregnant without a baby daddy or financial security I don't even know. But I’m so so ready...Thanks, hormones!

Speaking of: My Hardcore Masturbation Fantasy: Idyllic Domesticity

Ladies, can you get with me on this?
The usual string of sexy movie stars I parade in front of my libido has lately gotten kinda wacky, kinda crunked the fuck up. Kinda like how some people need handcuffs and a punch in the face to get off, I need a classic tan Volvo in the garage and a host of modern appliances quietly humming away in the glory that is my ecstatically clean kitchen to reach orgasm.

[On a technical note, I'd like take a moment to pay some respect to my vibrator. I'm so thankful I never again have to do the laborious work of using these boxer's hands to bring myself over the edge if I don't want to. Thanks for that, Third Wave Feminism!]

Anyhoo, so in order to get accomplished, I used to picture, let's see:
A once quiet, shy indie rocker, now seemingly insane egomaniacal asshole: OK fine, it's Jack White. Sorry people, I know it's nazsty but this is going back to 2001 that I used and abused him ok? Yes, before MTV, before opening for the Rolling Stones or God or whatever, before turning a deeper shade of pale. Think: cute boy singing Dolly's Jolene with enough balls not to change the pronouns. And to my own credit, I would only let him bone me a few seconds. But mainly that was cause I would get the idea he didn't like me. I could never picture him not scowling. (The next time we make a movie together, I’ll hafta ask Rene if he does this when he's with her.)

Joaquin Phoenix, circa Liv Tyler's influence. This was appealing because his fucking scar and dead brother make me think of him as a little injured bunny. This wasn't plushie sex but you know he's going to be all shy and tender. Shit, maybe I was raping him, I dunno.

Local bartender with curly hair and perfect combo of chubby/muscley arms: I shit you not that I used one (pleasing) interaction with this dude for a plethora of fucking hot, fucking all-in-my-mind, sex.

Hot gay literary celebrity: Okay, I think this had to do with, I don't even know. But this is sort of in the Jack White crossed with Joaquin Phoenix camp cause half the time I was like Yes! I’m getting fucked by someone who is repelled by even having his penis in proximity to me! That is so hot! Take that, self esteem! And the other half of the time it would be about him overcoming his (homo)sexuality through my extreme molten desirability. And then it was just a huge ego boost cause he would be all over-the-top reassuring like 'Oh baby, I only want you. You're the only woman I want…the only person I want, Blah Blah Blah.' And yes, even though I knew he was lying to me, I let myself believe it.

Random cute Vespa riding boy I met at a picnic like a thousand years ago - okay, this is the one that is important to our storyline. Because, I guess because he's a real boy? Um, no I’m sorry I meant cause he also has curly hair. Fuck it people. But when I would have sex with him, I HAD to picture us being blissfully married and living in a high design, amazing, clean, quiet home (probably in LA - cause I need a garage and a garden and an infinity pool). And more often than not, the sex was for making babies. It was baby sex. Straight up old skool, penis + pussy = baby, style sex. Could life be any more simple, any more classic than that? And he was just as excited about having a baby as I was, if not more so. Sometimes, as he was plowing away (gently) into me, he would cry thinking about how we were making our baby simply by screwing our brains out. In order to bring myself into the homestretch, I would picture everything in our house and the absolute perfectness of it. I’d picture the car, and how it was calmly waiting for us in the immaculately clean garage. How in the morning he would leave in his suit (why he's wearing a suit when he has to be an artist I’m not sure), and leave me sleeping in our huge billion thread count bed. I’d picture the kitchen and how we could eat off the sparkling imported Italian customized tiled floor if we needed to, but we would never need to because all the fresh locally grown organic produce in the sleekly designed fridge would look so much nicer atop our 800 pound antique wooden dining table. I would think about...jeez, I think I only ever really thought about the garage and the kitchen. But sometimes I would think about our dog (a big Golden Retriever- which I do not want in real life) and the first child (a girl, natch) sleeping quietly in her room while her parents made her a little brother or sister. At first I was a little distracted by the potentially disturbing inclusion of a child in what has become my most juicy masturbation fodder. But I chilled out when I realized her presence is merely to symbolize the absolute good fortune and tranquility of our lives. She is simply a character in this masterpiece, just like the dog and the flokati carpeting. The whole thing is really like watching a movie, with the camera gliding peacefully past our first born daughter’s room on the way to the beautiful cherry wood staircase leading to the twelve foot high windowed art filled living room, where one stray toy lays out on the crayon and drawing paper covered dining table. Kids, a deep sense of harmony and safety, a doting, deeply good, deeply handsome man at my side...it all means nothing without a spectacularly clean kitchen and an absolute lack of dust on any surface. It's my raunchiest envisioning and I think unfortunately (unfortunately because I think I’m pretty far away from any part of this) my most unrealized, dirty, hardcore fantasy.

Can you feel me people? I want the whole fucking picture and I want it now.

2004-05-20T09:58:00.000-04:00

The Girl Can't Help It

So I had all these really lofty ideas about this blog. Mainly, that it would be entertaining and not simply so much navel gazing. Well people: fuck it.

Try as I might, I think my first post has to be about my all consuming, boy repelling, so-girl-it-hurts, cartoonish, committed, absolute fucking horrible, P!M!S! What kind of Cathy comic strip has my life become that the most clichéd cliché is my reality? What the? Anyone?

The worst part is, it's not just that having PMS sounds totally lame, it's that everything about it is, like, totally lame. It's having a panic attack because the boy you like doesn't hold your hand and you think he must hate you, it's crying when someone asks you if you caught American Idol last night, it’s...all really lame and really embarrassing. Or at least, I would be embarrassed if I wasn't so busy being angry and yelling at people to get the f out of my way.

A tipping point happened the other day though. As I was getting out of the elevator, a fellow employee who had been riding an elevator 3 across from me asked if I had heard anyone screaming. I told him "Yeah, that was me. I was screaming 'I hate my fucking job.'" And eventhough his response was jovial enough – “Oh, I could have joined you” - he did follow it up later by saying “I think I’ll stay away from you today,” to which I whinnied girlishly and protested oh no! ha ha ha. But in reality, if this guy had been my friend and said that I probably would have said “Fine. Fuck off.” (Only those that really love me are subject to my more tender side.) The problem was, it was only 9:30 in the morning, and I hadn't even actually started work. Which technically, I don't need to do to know I hate it. But a meltdown the night before, which turned into a full on panic attack, got me wondering if it's in fact PMS, rather than what I was coming to view as an angry, insecure personality, that was turning me into a mood-a-second Houdini.

Could my panic attack really be related to my impending blood letting? Was yelling in the elevator (something I do quite often) not actually the most soothing way to start and end the work day? A quick perusal of the acclaimed this thing called google led me to the magic bullet: Sarafem. It’s a pill made specifically for raging PMS, which when it's more than just your run-of-the-mill crying at commercials style PMS, but rather your pulled down by your hair, drag out, suckerpunch style PMS, gets the technical name of PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). Just for fun, I guess.

Oh Sarafem...it has a cute name, makes everyone love you (again) and is available by prescription from your happy to oblige doctor. All just for me! Was I disappointed to find out Sarafem is really just a low dose of Prozac? I won't lie to you; I don't fancy myself in need of brain meds. Did I really care at this point? No. If they had said it was mashed up teddy bear fetuses, I would say, give it - I'll shove those amputated paws straight up the vag if I have to. So I quickly booked myself some gyno time, which turned into a total witch hunt. The witch being me. Also, the hunter being me. Instead of a hastily written prescription and empathetic doctor eyes, I was informed that I have to become my own private dick in this Jeckyll/Hyde Salt n'/Pepa situation. Basically, I have to prove via "documentation" that my symptoms constitute medical intervention. Besides looking for satanic rorschach blots on my tampons (I’m not kidding) I have to have 3 months of notes stating my starry highs and my crashing lows.

Waaaaaait a minute, you mean I just took two hours off work and rode my bike in the blistering sun for you to tell me you can't fucking give me drugs right this fucking minute? Are you telling me that eventhough I started my period and therefore my symptoms are supposed to have disappeared I still want to kill you? Is that what you're telling me doctor? That rather than make your star patient feel better you want physical harm to befall you? So very cooly I was like, excuse moi Miss MD Bitch, but my main symptom right now is that if you don't prescribe this for me I’m going to leave this place, acquire a gun license, and come back and shoot your arm off. Your prescription writing arm, that is. And don't even think you can do a pelvic exam left handed, cunt. That shit is ruining your career. But because I don't have PMS, I was like, fine I already have the documentation that stands between me and alienating everyone I know, and I’ll bring it in.

Do I really have 3 entire months of detailed mood notes? No. Do I recall feeling really shitty and hating life right on cue for a week out of each of the last 300 months? Yup.

I plan to retroactively hobble together the occasional I’m-going-crazy-maybe-I-should-write-that-down-incase-someone-goes-missing notes I've kept into a Frankenstein like Hall of Famer Who’s-Who of pre-menstrual symptoms. To see if there was indeed a pattern, a method to my madness if you will, I had been half heartedly (like I’m going to be all 'on top of it' during this maelstrom) jotting down the highlights of my emotional life, resulting in a calendar that has 'migraine,' 'yelled at so and so' or just plain ole 'craaaanky' splashed across it. But mostly, for some reason, it has taken me a decade and a half to realize that my depression, extreme anger and hostility, and super extraordinary emotionality are pretty much based around the week before my period. Every time I feel suicidal I’m like shit, I though I was cured, I haven't wanted to kill myself for 28-30 days. Every time I slip down the rabbit hole I become convinced that I had merely been skating on the thinnest of mental hygiene ice the preceding 3 weeks and that this new suicidal self is my true self. Only really in the past year have I started to notice that these feelings keep coming back at the same time each month. But before I realize what's going on, I still think this is it: I'm finally cracking up. I’m finally having my Anne Sexton moment (which I define as thinking you are going to be okay cause you’ve gotten this far, and then you kill yourself in your mid forties anyway). I think: I thought I liked myself enough not to die, but I guess I was so, so wrong. And, who can I take with me?

The most annoying part was when the 'doctor' asked me how I had been treated for PMS in the past. As if anyone really takes this shit seriously. As if anytime I have surprised myself by yelling or crying at a friend out of nowhere and tried to explain that I think I might be getting my period they believed me. As if anyone asked if there was a problem when my cramps were so bad I had to go to the emergency room and get morphine injected into my ass for some relief. All they said was 'You don't have endometriosis. Don’t ask us how we know, but we do.' Not once did anyone say, well if your actual period is this bad, how bout telling us about what happens before this? And how could I ask for a cure for something that so far has been huh? whud you expect runnin' round with them ovaries all up inside ya? Sarafem is the first drug to be prescribed for PMDD, and it only appeared on the scene in the middle of 2000, by which time I had screamed at countless strangers and friends alike to hurry up, leave me alone, get out of my way, or to stop breathing in my presence cause it's really, really annoying and totally fucking retarded.

The best part was when I asked what exactly should be in my 3 months of notes we are going to pretend are good to go no matter what you say, and she was like "Look. Basically they have you document it because we don't really know what it is and they're trying to figure it out." The backwardness of it is absolutely spellbinding. We developed this medicine for you, but we can't tell you what it's for. How bout you tell us, and if it sounds good we'll let you try it? I mean, if I don't need this crap, who does? The fact that I would never have to go through so many hoops to get a prescription for full on prozac strikes me as...hysterical. I don't mean hysterical funny I mean hysterical sometimes I wonder if a hysterectomy is the answer. The fact that I am excited to start my period, which turns my bowels into a watery grave, leaves me bedridden with cramps, has ruined my favorite sheets, and forces me to purchase painkillers in bulk, should be all the proof I need that this is obviously not a frickin cake walk. I finally actually look forward to my period starting (which mind you only makes me feel like shit in a myriad of physical manifestations rather than emotional ones) because everything leading up to my period is an abysmal wash and you're telling me I have to prove it to you with a dissertation? I call bullshit.

If I don't get these meds, or if I do and they don't work, I don't even know what. Maybe I’ll file for disability and commit myself for a week out of every month. Or maybe I’ll bet it all, win big at a local casino and use my money to go to Club Med and get serviced by hot young waiters and get lower back massages every day for a week once a month. Those are the two options I see at the moment, which I think means I’m not out of the fog. Just don’t hand me a handful of sleeping pills or a megaphone while I’m in here, cause, baby, you ain’t seen me act up until you’ve seen the real road rage of our time: P fucking M to the mother fucking S. Believe dat. This shit is real, and it is COMING FOR YOU.

For a definition of the real OPP PMDD go all detective like to:http://www.drdonnica.com/display.asp?article=1086

2004-05-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

how weak is it for my very first post to say testing testing?