Dump the frump: Casualties of the mommy wars.

First of all, I don't condone the phrase "the mommy wars". It's stupid, uncreative, and perpetuates the problem I'm about to attack.

The problem I'd like to talk about today is pandemic frump. The wide, high waist-banding of American women. American women are voluntarily re-juvenilizing themselves after having children, despite the location and compensation of their major toil. American women with children, by and large, after that first head through the vagina, seem to begin a process by which the number of seams in their clothes decreases, leading to the sack-effect, and the number of stretch fibers increases, leading to the perpetual gym class effect. Most American women, by the time they've completed childbearing, have plunged so deep into the creeping frump that they own several varieties of matching sweatsuits; including 'nice ones', which are for going out, not working out.

A woman I work with has regained about 85-95% of her swerve after having her third child. It's not just about losing weight, which she has (and she looks like the smoking hotness- I say this because her husband occasionally reads this blog), but about dying her hair. Reading grownup books. Successfully coming to work with a swipe of well-selected berry lipstick. Saying "fuck" and "shit" occasionally. Reading books clearly meant for an adult audience, that have nothing to do with raising her child's IQ score by 3 1/2 points, or the benefits to the family bed. She is a mother, and yet retains her identity as a thinking, complex, sexual, adult. And I salute the hell out of her.

Yet she is rare.

Most of the women in her closest demographic seem to dive with great speed into the fanny pack and factory second sweatpant rack and never come up for air. They wear disney characters. Warner brothers. Pink and blue and baby yellow sweatpants with frayed bottoms and sagging asses.

This is a larger problem than it seems to be. Why shouldn't busy women wear whatever they want? Why should a woman with other things on her mind try to put on a certain aesthetic front? Why shouldn't a woman who runs after kids, does endless errands and chores that would disgust and bore a sensible person like me- get to wear whatever she feels like?

Because it's not really what she wants. It's what she feels is her default setting. Her uniform. What she is expected to wear. Wearing a matching sweatsuit, unflattering high-waisted jeans, or a t-shirt with a cartoon character on it isn't anymore comfortable or practical than wearing clothing that is considered acceptable for the nulliparous american female; it's just become expected.

It has become expected that a woman, having begun or completed childbearing, should begin to divorce herself from her former life, and throw herself entirely into the mommy world. Thus: Mommy wars. It's not a war about women's lifestyles, women's choices, women's guilt, or women's achievement- it's a war about what is and is not appropriate for a mommy. A woman is increasingly judged on how much of a mommy she becomes. Can a mommy be a mommy when she's still working? Can a mommy be a mommy while she tries to maintain a romantic relationship with her husband? Can a mommy be a mommy while she pursues her own interests?

Fuck that shit.

A woman is a mother to her children; she will remain a mother to her children until they die or are given or sold away. Mommy is how her children see her, regardless of how she is seen by others. Children are little narcissists. They see their mother as mommy, and mommy only, no matter if she continues to work, or fuck, or wear adult clothing. Because that is what children do.

So why mommify women with children? Who benefits from the rampant mommification of women? Who has an interest in guilting women into becoming, not just mothers, but full time mommies?

It's a post-feminist backlash. I normally get a kick out of post-feminist backlashes. Because, in general, post-feminist backlashes happen when the protections of feminism get out of hand, and begin to confuse adult women with adolescent girls. When protectionism threatens agency, sometimes a backlash is needed. However, this is not the case with mommyism. Mommyism is a post-feminist backlash that juvenilizes. It simplifies the complicated lives of women into one issue. It nullifies the complex internal lives of women into cookies and cartoons.

I think the root is from the children of feminists. Something jarring happens, when growing up, when we realize that our mothers (formerly mommies) are people. With all the strengths, weaknesses, foibles, hopes and yearnings, failures and vices, that we recognize in ourselves and our contemporaries. This happens sometime between 16 and 24. It's a good thing. But it can be uncomfortable and upsetting. Suddenly, mommy is gone. And someone new, a human being, is in her place. My mom and I have a great relationship, post mommy. We drink red wine and laugh. But it was hard, and weird, to learn that she was more than I had ever thought she was.

So this is natural. It happens. It will always happen. But maybe it happened a little too early for this past generation, women just older than I am. Maybe their mommies got divorces and boyfriends, and it was hard. Or maybe they felt betrayed and upset when learning that their mommies were people, and never really got over it. And maybe they blamed this transient dissonance on feminism, and swore never to put their kids through it.

And so.

Women became mommies. Housewives became stay at home moms. No longer head of household operations, in charge of serious adult business that included amounts of caretaking and nurturing, everything became in service of mommyhood. Forget cooking and cleaning and housework; household tasks are not what mommy is here for. After all, cleaning and cooking are for the adults in the house. Mommy is here for her babies. And her babies only.

The mommy uniform, the defiantly frumpy, the elastic waisted, the ugly and pastel and indistinguishable from outsize toddlers clothes identify the mommy's priorities. Children first. It's as if they dressed her, even. Then sundry other developmental and educational priorities for the children. Then, midway down the list, her own interests are. The less she exists, the better mommy she is. The less time and energy it looks like she has spent on herself, the better mommy she is.

This is bullshit.

Yes, putting children's interests first is important. Children should be clothed, and fed, and nurtured. But children's whims should not come before adult needs. When that happens, a dangerous imbalance occurs. Adults vanish. I've been reading debates on whether people with children should have alcohol in the home, whether they should smoke, even far away from their children, whether they should own pornography or sex toys or R rated movies and books with naughty passages. Should adults have parties children aren't welcome at? Should adults go to restaurants their children wouldn't enjoy? Should adults go away for a weekend? Lock their bedroom door? Have sex? The answers, by the significantly mommified, to all of those questions, is no.

Apparently, the best thing a mommy can do for her children is become one of them. Forgo the privileges of adulthood entirely. Become a creature whose motivations and cognitions are entirely comprehensible to a three year old. Mommy's here. Mommy loves you! Anything that would appear, even momentarily, confusing or (horror!) rejecting to a preschooler is out.

"Why would mommy and daddy want to go away without me?"

"Why do mommy and daddy lock their door?"

Mommy would never lock her door. Mommy would never go out without her babies. Mommy would never even own anything innapropriate for her babies to see or chew or know about, because mommy's babies are her only thought, ever! And this continues.

And this is not sustainable. Certainly not. Because, like it or not, Mothers are adult women. Adult women want what other adults want. Some amount of sacrifice of instant gratification is necessary in parenting. Some amount of economic, or aesthetic, or even physical sacrifice is inherent to parenting. But the complete sacrifice of adult identity, evident by creeping frump, is uneccessary and uncalledfor.

Please. Ladies. Dump the frump. For your own good. Buy some pants with belt loops. Get a babysitter. Go watch an R rated movie. Have a little sex. Drink a little wine. And please, for the love of god, throw away that goddamned kitten sweatshirt.

I have made...

a bad decision.

That bad decision- to stay up, through the rest of the morning, through two classes, until three pm or so. At which time, I will be at my boyfriend's apartment, and I will crash. For a mijillion hours. In a half hour, my coffee shop will open. I'm not working, but I will visit. I will make them give me a hot chocolate. Then I will wait until it is reasonable to go to cvs, and I will buy those little paper corners to stick my graphs onto papers, and I will staple my paper, and print my paper, and go to school.

Then I will go to substance abuse, and be tired, and try not to fall asleep. Then, I will go to animal behavior, and be tired, and try not to fall asleep. Then I will come home, get on my bike, and ride around the neighborhood, and try to not fall asleep. Then I will drink an insanely large coffee, and drive to providence. And then I will try very hard to fall asleep.

I like to make bad decisions.

I used to make these bad decisions with my friend Will. We would stay up all night, and I was never sure why, talking. He may be the last person I stayed up all night talking to without ever attempting to show him my genitals.

I miss that guy so much. So much. Aw. Now I'm tired enough to get weepy. Here's the secret, though. I haven't slept in two days. Because last night I was working on a different paper.

Soon enough.

I won't be a hobobarista anymore.

I'll be a hobohobo, then a hobolawstudent. My hobo love of canned goods shall persist through any career move. I'll live my hobolife less suburban. Less easy. Less middle class. More impoverished student.

I think I decided on a quit date for my job: June 23rd. It's the last friday in the second to last week of june.

Too poor to fuck.

It's official.

My pill just went up to fifty dollars. That's with my insurance. See, my insurance only covers generics for ortho products; I'm not on an ortho. I'm on yasmin. It's a lovely monophasic pill that comes in a fake purple suede cover and costs more than a gym membership, cable, my phone bill, or groceries.

My nurse practitioner never told me why I'm on yasmin, and not what I was on before, a generic that cost me ten dollars a month, or something else that would be affordable. I can't ask her, because last time I went in, I was charged 230 dollars in lab fees that my insurance doesn't cover. Also known as most of my rent.

There is a there are two three problems with this. One. A person should be able to afford prescription medications. Two, a person should be told why they are prescribed one medication over another, and, if there is an economic or personal reason to choose another pill, that should be heard. Three. If the pill were available without all those fucking tests, maybe I wouldn't be having to decide whether to take my pill tonight, or save this pill pack, to make my prescription stretch until I can afford a pap smear again.

It is so fucking expensive to be a woman.

Women's clothes are more expensive, and more cheaply made. Women are expected to look cleaner and smoother than men, despite having relatively similar distributions of sebacious glands, and a similar epidermis. This requires a hell of a lot of fucking money. Women need to own more clothes. More shoes. More things, period. And we're brainwashed into thinking, feeling, beleiving that shopping is fun. Are there more things for women to buy because women want to buy more things, or are women buying more things because there are more things for women to buy?

I own mascara. Eyeshadow. Nail polish. Hair dye. Face wash. Exfoliating face wash. Body wash. Moisturizer with and without spf. Razors. Depilatories. Contraceptive pills. Deodorant. Powders. Foundation. Lipstick. Lip gloss. Lip stain. Tweezers for my eyebrows. Separate tweezers for splinters. Nail files. And I'll never know exactly how to use that arsenal to manufacture a consistently innoffensive facade.

My boyfriend owns soap and condoms. And toothpaste.

If men are clean, entirely clean, they meet expectations. Women need more; whether it's for men or women's eyes- they need more. Clean and hairless and current and smooth and pert.

On top of these crap expenses, that any sensible hippy, lesbian, camper, or poverty stricken barista knows in her heart that she can do without, there are the real costs of being a woman.

Pap smears, every year. STD screenings, whether you want them or not. Contraception, and the consequences of not using contraception. A man can live his life in any manner he sees fit, without ever seeing a doctor. A woman is lead to believe that without once-yearly undercarriage maintenance, she will die or lose the ability to have children.

And that's always the way they put it. You may die, or become infertile. Slickly sliding that infertility jab in there, as if a woman may play fast and loose with her own health, (and not believe that getting poked in the vagina by a professional once a year really has a significant protective effect not found in amateur vaginal proddings), but if she can't have some fat, drooling baby produced by her very own cooter and cooter annex, life is really over.

"Don't you want to be tested for STD's? You could get PID and become INFERTILE?"

"You need a pap smear, or you'll DIE!"

1. Fine. Good. Get me some chlamydia. Immediately. I want the clap. I will leave it for a long time. Until my organs get all crusty with scar tissue. Then I won't need the pill anymore. And it will be very cost-effective.

2. No.
Thank you, very much, but I'm able to judge my own risk factors for cervical cancer. As I don't smoke, have no family history, and have only had one partner- my risk is very low. Not absent, but very low. Close to my risk of colon cancer, as meat eater only recently on a high fiber diet, with a family history of polyps and cancer in that area. Lower, probably. But you don't want me to present my camera up the ass card to get a burger at McDonalds, do you?

Ivy League Trash.

My boyfriend and I walked around the east side of providence. We thought it would be fun to photograph things like this forty ounce malt liquor, which we found, just as pictured, nestled near the ivy-covered halls of Brown.

Olde English 800. 40 ounces of escape, reasonably priced and available at package and convenience stores in neighborhoods much discussed, but never visited, by Brown students.

No matter who bought it or drank it, whether out of a desperate need to divest sobriety inexpensively, or out of shrunken-tee'd, skinny jean'd, bright sneaker'd irony, it was left just as we found it: Trash of the ivy league.

Which brings me to Kaavya. A 19 year old Harvard sophomore, she's recently been caught plagiarizing her first novel, a teen lit-piece that was first thought to be semi-autobiographical and is now known to be a high-strung, overdone, overwrought retread of a similar novel, with a jaunty subcontinental flavor.

Her parents paid up to twenty thousand dollars to get her into Harvard. A set of coincidences hooked her up with book packagers- author handlers that turn an attractive person of any talent level into a hot property. Privilege potentiates privilege. And the location of that potentiation is the ivy league.

Harvard. Brown. Yale. Occasionally, the children of the middle and lower classes get onto these nepotism factories, but that only serves to perpetuate the illusion of a meritocracy. The poorer you are, the less likely it is that you'll get into an ivy league school. The poorer you are, the less likely it is that if you'll get in, you'll finish.

Her parents so wanted to secure her a place in the class I can only assume they occupy themselves, they spent tens of thousands of dollars on consultants. They had the connections to help her get an agent, and get their attractive, ethnically distinctive, charming daughter to the right handlers to get her a very lucrative book deal. She had everything going for her. Everything other people- regardless of talent, ability, or skill, would kill to have. And none of it, other than the workmanlike manner in which, I'm sure, she got the grades and test scores that got her in the door- was a product of her striving. It was a product of connections and consultants. Her edge was not her own.

I'm smart. I'm driven. I'm a super writer (!). I'm talented. I'm graduating from a third-rate university, skin peeling off my hands from work. My classmates from my third-rate liberal arts college have faired not much better; those who came in with connections left and met with success. Those who had no connections left and went to work for the New York City Public Schools. Talent had nothing to do with it. I have friends who could write a screenplay that would blow Sofia Coppola's ass out through her pussy; but they don't have famous daddies. Or even rich ones.

It's hard to know what Kaavya's intent was. She may have genuinely been stressed out, and recapitulated bits of someone else's work. She may have thought she wouldn't get caught; although, I recommend Harvard add a course in common sense and reading comprehension if that is true. When one plagiarizes, one should pick a novel more than five years old, and one without a sequel currently on the best seller list. She may have wanted to get caught. She may have not wanted to write a novel, and not known how to get out of it. She may have been misled by handlers.

It's easy to know what the problem is: there is no reward for merit or talent in this society. Connections matter first. Knowing someone gets you in the door; it doesn't guarantee success. However, this is no great comfort to those waiting in the hall. I will never be a writer, or an artist, or an actress, or a journalist, or anything with any specific cachet. These careers are too attractive to the children of the rich and powerful to be available to any but a lucky few of the children of middle class. Also, I'm too fat for like, three of those careers.

I've given up on writing, lately. It's too hard to be told that you do something well, and have to explain to people why it doesn't matter.

I wonder if Kaavya values the things she does well, whatever they are. Poor girl. She's been consulted and packaged and marketed for years now. I wonder if she shits by committee. I wonder if she wipes by consensus. I hope she isn't able to parlay this plagiarism into success in any field. I hope she learns from this, and finds something entirely satisfying to her, that she doesn't even want to take short cuts in- and does that.

Third Acceptance In

Drake University School of Law.

Full scholarship. All three years.

Why yes, I am planning to go to the only law school that didn't offer me a full scholarship. What do you think about that?

Women and children.

Women and children.

People can't seem to be able to differentiate between these groups. I'm watching a Penn and Teller show on legalizing prostitution. Most of the anti-prostitution groups seem to believe that if prostitution becomes legal, children will be forced into prostitution, or young girls will be forced into the lifestyle.

A lot of the anti-legalization energy that does not confuse adult women with children comes from two camps: economic and feminist. The economic camp are basically classic nimbys. They don't want prostitution, gambling, adult video stores or all-night diners anywhere near them, because it might bring down their property values, bring in an unsightly element, or might lead to uncomfortable conversations with children, when they catch sight of an unfamiliar business establishment.

The second camp is the feminists. Feminists see prostitution as an instance of female exploitation. And it is. In most of the world, prostitution is a degrading, dehumanizing state. It is commonly forced. Sex slavery occurs. Children are sold, male and female. In the United States, women addicted to drugs, impoverished, or otherwise open to exploitation may become prostitutes by economic coercion. They become virtual slaves to pimps. This is wrong. Both situations are very wrong; however, because a situation exists in which people are vulnerable to exploitation does not mean that a similar situation may exist where no person is exploited. Their second argument is that if prostitution exists, women who are destitute, undereducated, or naive will be forced into that life out of necessity.

One of the miraculous, lovely, wonderful things in the United States is that, by and large, our laws and legal system protect workers from exploitation. Even in the garment industry, mining, and farming industries, where many workers are exploited world-wide, the United States manages to create a climate of safety relative to developing countries, and manages to balance business and individual interests better than many E.U countries. We've got this labor law shit down.

It could be argued that legalization of prostitution in the United States would extend that climate of safety to sex workers. Which would be a good thing.

Safety + People = Something I like.

It could also be argued that women would be no more forced into prostitution than other relatively unskilled professions, such as garment manufacture, food service, and home health services. Women without skills will always be more prone to filling the physical needs of others than men without skills or women with skills; whether that need is sexual or medical should be a choice that a woman can make. Home health services are grimy, often demeaning jobs. They, like prostitution, are a shunting off of personal relationships onto professionals. Health aides turn the elderly, to prevent bed sores. They change the diapers of the profoundly retarded. They wipe stomas. They empty colostomy bags. This job seems much more horrible, to me, than providing sexual services. I couldn't do it. However, it is one of the jobs available to unskilled women, and taken largely by recent immigrants and the similarly disenfranchised.

I'd rather give handjobs than wipe somebody's grandpa's ass- wouldn't you?

My shower smells like baloney.

this doesn't bother me.

When the zombies come.

When the zombies come, many people will not realize what they are. Those people will get bitten quickly, and turned into zombies. This will be sad, as they go to bed at night, feeling slightly sore where that strange man bit them, saying goodnight to loved ones, and wake up with a terrible complexion and lust for blood.

After those people, who didn't expect there to be zombies, become zombies, next will come the people who do not want to believe. These people will see their children, their wives, their co-workers, acting strangely. They will be concerned. Mothers will reach for their children's foreheads, to feel for a temperature, and have their arms ripped off.

And they will become zombies, too.

After a while, either the zombie problem will become acute, and most people will become zombies, or it will be managed as a chronic problem. Like homelessness, or immigration. But zombies are the only thing that can solve homelessness, and immigration. If the problem is acute, the few people left over will band together, have adventures, learn about themselves and each other, have gritty sex in post-apocolyptic urban wastelands, and fashion a makeshift life for their small tribe, all the while strategizing, waiting, and planning.
T
here will be a moment of hope, as it seems they've found a solution. But, alas, in-group fighting, jockeying for power, and banal human frailty will lead to their getting picked off, one by one.

If zombies become a chronic problem, the following things might happen, that may be interesting to watch.

• some guy will get scratched or bitten at a zombie fair, and, not realizing it, or not believing it, will go to the post-apocolyptic gay porno store, and sit down in a booth. He'll start up a loop, and start going at himself, hoping for someone to get into the next booth. Feeling ill, he'll pass out. He'll zombify. Too late, someone will go into the next booth, and poke an optimistic dick into the glory hole. Which our new zombie will bite off. This also works at rural rest stops. With gay zombie truckers.
• people will have to explain zombies to children, in a non-traumatic, yet firm manner. This will resemble the "stranger danger" presentations of current society, yet more colorful, and with a sense of urgency. "Remember, children- If our mommies and daddies get all pale and stinky, what should we do?" "Cut off the head or destroy the eyes!" "Very good! Gold star!"
• zombies will become a fixture of scientific inquiry first, documentary next, politics after, and pornography last. After it's realized that becoming a zombie, consuming zombies, or implanting parts of zombies has no medical, military, or aesthetic value, filmmakers will start setting up blinds in zombie-blighted areas and making films about their quiet dignity. After "Silent Uncle" wins an academy award and spurs on both non-zombie Baldwins to advocate for the creation of a zombie preserve in wyoming, pornographic spin-offs featuring living people who can pass for zombies performing drippy, gory, slobbery sex acts on up-and-coming starlets, gonzo porn will push the envelope and start featuring actual zombies. Becoming a zombie will be considered a reasonable career move.

Know what I haven't had in a long time?

Lobster pie.

Normally I'm against recipes that disguise expensive foods- truffle mashed potatoes, lobster neuburg, crab quesadillas.

But lobster pie, a relic, not of jaded chefs seeking novelty, but thrifty new englanders stretching ingredients, and eating something previously thought of as inferior bait. As is common knowledge, lobsters were once so cheap, only the poorest and most protein-deprived would eat them.

Thus. Lobster pie.

It's buttery, breadcrumby, sometimes cheesy, sometimes creamy. And these days, it's far too expensive to be worth it. But the weather is getting warm. And with warm weather, the new england girl's thoughts turn to seafood. And as a middle-class new england girl, my seafood cravings tend more to the fried, broiled, and baked than the mango-chutneyed, sashimi'd, grilled, stylish fishes that well-to-do pregnant women despair of eating, lest their well-to-do fetii get some very lower-class brain damage.

I'd love clam strips, broiled scallops, fried scallops, broiled cod, fried haddock...schrod, even, whatever it may be at that moment. Crab cakes. Clam cakes. Summer time, greasy face and smile food. Served openly with corn and potatoes in any incarnation.

But lobster pie is what I'm thinking about, right now. I haven't had any in years.

Another easter at work: Uneccessary Post About Penis Size

I worked today. I've worked, now, since starting my current job-

Three easters.
Two christmases.
Two christmas eves.
Two thanksgivings.
Two halloweens.

And countless arbor days.

It was dead tonight. Mostly it's busy on holidays. Next to the pharmacy, we're the only thing in the neighborhood open on holidays. The first thanksgiving we were open, we sold more milk and cream than coffee.

My coworker told me a joke, because it was so dead. Normally, we can't say vulgar, obscene, funny, critical, controversial, etc- things in the cafe area, but tonight there were hours at a time where no one came in. We tried to stay away from the doors so people might drive by real quick and think we were closed.

Q. How do you tell when a woman's having an orgasm?
A. Who cares?

It could just as easily be, or more honestly be, "How can you tell if a woman is happy?".

Who cares, who knows, who can even judge the criteria these days. It's a dark, damp, and scary subject. Who knows if a woman is happy? Who knows what a woman is even getting out of a relationship? Who knows if she's enjoying herself in bed?

You can't know. You have to depend on her for all of it. Men are easier. Even if they hide their emotions and motivations, anyone can tell if a man is enjoying himself in bed. Anyone can tell if a man is grossly unmotivated to perform sexually. His body is a fairly reliable indicator (see how I resisted that pun there? See. I'm such a grownup. I'm an intellectual) of his level of arousal, and the effectiveness of any sexual technique used on him.

Women- there's no way to tell. They can lie. Their bodies can be out of sync with their emotional state. They can be mentally aroused and sahara down below. They can display all indicators of emotional and physical enjoyment of the sexual act, while trying to watch televison in the reflection in the bedroom mirror. How frustrating!

It is the male dedication to the sexual act, and only the male dedication to the sexual act, that makes it possible. A woman can be entirely passive and unaffected, while theoretically participating in the exact same experience.

The penis size debate, penis size anxiety, mostly grows from the paradox of uneven sexual requirements. As a measure of sexual success, it bypasses mutual enjoyment entirely. It reframes the debate- rather than a question of sexual ability and talent, it becomes about capacity and potential. Filling, rather than fulfilling.

By making length and girth the measure of himself, a man takes his sexuality back into his own hands (as it were). Female arousal and enjoyment is abstract, unreliable, easily misinterpreted or falsified. The size of the erect phallus is a constant. No woman can, during a break up, flippantly declare that she faked your penis size for the entire relationship. Your penis size is unchanged by the time she tried to change channels during sex. Your dick doesn't get smaller when she leaves you for a woman.

It's actually quite liberating, when you think of it. And, it explains why men are never comforted by such platitudes as "It's the motion of the ocean, not the size of the boat." Of course it's the motion of the ocean, not the size of the boat. But if you can't tell whether you've got a Tsunami or not, or if that's a good thing, or if lapping waves are really the way to go- maybe you'd be happier knowing it's a canoe.

Mysteries of Suburbia and Fat Children: Reprise

So.
I have no time right now.

(then why are you blogging?)
(shut up)

So I've been eating off the fat of the land. I live in a suburb, so the fat of the land comes wrapped in paper and handed through the window of my car. Tonight I went to KFC. By the benificence of Yum Brands, my local KFC is also a Taco Bell. Being naturally perverse, I can't order just KFC, or just Taco Bell, or any rational, suggested, combination of the two. No crispy strips and tacos combo for me.

I got a bean and cheese burrito, a small mashed potato, and a biscuit. And a pepsi. Diet. Because diet tastes better. Hippy. I got home and unpacked my colonel/south of the border booty on the floor. They pack the biscuit in a little envelope now. As if you're going to eat it like a hamburger, on the go. When I'm actually in a can't-stop-can't-sit-down hurry, I don't go for a biscuit. I don't go for pudding or yogurt, either. I go for foods designed for convenience. A stick of butter wrapped in bacon- something sensible like that. Makes its own lube.

Anyway. I unwrapped my saturated and trans fats, and found, at the bottom of the bag, something bizarre. Four little packets of ranch dressing.

I ask you: What was I supposed to do with that ranch dressing? Before you jump to conclusions, remember, KFC mashed potatoes come pre-drenched in gravy. To compound the absurdity, the total volume of ranch dressing exceeded the volume of any food item ordered, excepting the burrito. It was less a condiment than a terrifying bonus side-dish, or beverage.

Hidden valley.

Goes down easy.

Last night I saw a new show on TLC. I really, really shouldn't watch anything from the discovery channel family of programmes. This was called "Honey, We're killing the kids." I was so delighted to be able to watch this show, as it's basically just an hour of belittling families with fat children, without even the warmth, efficiency, effectiveness, or british accent of any of the nanny programs.

I missed the first few minutes of the show, because the celtics were just finishing their brutal, fourth quarter humiliation at the hands of the evil, evil New Jersey Nets. When I tuned in, the thin and perky nutritionist/hostess of the show was giving the family some rules and suggestions for how to make their kids be not such dismal little pigs. (Although, as dismal little pigs go, these were a little more endearing than most. I would have recommended against the etiquette classes, though- they were already tending towards mamma's boyishness)

The new family rules included: Five fruits and vegetables a day. No junk food. No tv in the rooms. Be good. Have a block party and share what you've learned. Seems sensible. Seems like things the british nannies would endorse.

But this program doesn't seem to be engineered for impressive success, like the nanny show. Because impressive success in not making your kids dismal little pigs can't happen in two weeks; behavioral interventions for selected problem behaviors can show success in that period. Punishment and reinforcement act more quickly than caloric restriction and lifestyle change. The other family projects (block party, etiquette lesson) were just gimmicks, to fill time.

And since there could be no success demonstrated in such a short period of time, TLC was left with a boring show. So, like the fine people at Fox (who, if you recall, nearly employed me, so they must be getting pretty desperate saints), they manufacture drama.

How?

By making the program the family must follow deliberately more difficult than it needs to be. The first night with the new diet, the father is instructed to make something called "Tofu-onion-bok choy stir fry". Which wouldn't be gross to me, but certainly would be gross to any eight year old who didn't grow up on it. The fat twelve year old rebels. The fat eight year old rebels. The still-miraculously-skinny six year old vomits.

Children don't need to eat Tofu to eat right. A much more palateable program would be more sustainable in the long term- breaded baked chicken tenderloins, roast potato wedges, and a fruit plate would have been a better balanced meal. It's also a much better lesson to learn about portion control with foods that actually taste good.

They also could have substituted the world of cheap indulgences- cookies, mini-muffins- much more successfully by introducing small amounts of great-tasting foods, as a treat- instead of the large volumes of over-sweet crap we pawn off on kids. You find me a kid who would rather mini-muffins for breakfast, oreos with lunch, and an ice cream sandwich for dinner- to a huge, warm, fresh baked cookie right after school. Just one. But a good one. And that's what fat kids have to learn- it's not about volume. Fat kids don't know there's a tomorrow, a later.

And, they could have done more to get active. They could have introduced the kids to a ton of sports and activities to see if they find one they like. Kids like to move. Trampolines. Hikes. Swings. Bikes. Rollerblades. Give a kid a new bike on the day you take away the TV- that works better than just unplugging it.

But unplugging the TV and taking away the cookies sure does cause colorful tantrums.

I think I've shown that "Honey, we're killing the kids" won't really stop anyone from killing their kids.

We can't even stop from killing ourselves. I went to a fast-food restaurant, didn't order anything fried, but didn't even delude myself into beleiving that my meal was healthy. But it wasn't fried. It wasn't buttered. It wasn't covered in cheese. So what did I get, by default?

Four packets of ranch dressing.

Yikes.

My shoulder hurts.

It looks like, because I like to make poor decisions (good decisions), I will end up going more than 100,000 in debt to go to law school.

Whee. So if I seem a little more resentful than usual, that's why.

There was a rally/protest/thingie on campus the other day. It was about the high cost of higher education. Massachusetts is one of the only states in the nation without a public or semi public law school. (Rhode Island is another, Vermont is another). Here in New England, we like our education liberal, well-reputed, and private.

I'm at this moment lucky to only be about 18,000 in debt from my first go-round. Which means that I'm better off than most of the people I started undergrad with. I had a very fortuitous combination of circumstances- briefly wealthy parents, a hefty scholarship, and a nice early expulsion.

So I'm going to be signing loans, and getting cosigners (if my parents can- they may not be able to. My sister defaulted on about 60,000 of student loans. Go Sis!) for an amount of money I can't even picture. I'll spend most on tuition, and the rest on living expenses. In America's most expensive housing market, you can't get anally raped for less than 1,025 a month.

I actually may have to start renting out my vagina as an ocean view condo (great neighbors! Cozy charm!) It'll actually be illegal, because there's no real second means of egress, but I could put a little exit sign in there, and a fire escape, and just learn how to do splits and spend a lot of time at the beach. If I stand on my head, there's a skylight. But I'm not putting in wall to wall carpeting. That's where I draw the line. Too tacky.

I broke a hundred posts.

My hundredth post was titled "Show Me Your Pussy"

Which, I think, sums up the entire purpose of this blog. Stranger's vaginas, and what should and shouldn't be done in and around them.

Temple, by the way, sucked.

A lot.

A LOT.

It was like....

I can't even describe.

Sucked.

It is hard not to hate people.

Especially when looking at real estate ads in Boston.

It's hard not to think that all landlords are selfish, price-gouging carpetbaggers, when looking at real estate ads in Boston.

It's not that everyone wants to live in a few good neighborhoods, or wants specific amenities, like dishwasher or screen porch or covered parking. It's that people want a place to live.

And landlords weep that it's not their fault rents are obscene. Their houses were expensive. Their property taxes are expensive. Their mortgages are expensive. Labor is expensive to fix things. Materials are expensive to build things.

Yeah, right. You know why things are expensive? One day, many years ago, some asshole price gouging evil motherfucker decided "Hey! All these fucking college students don't know shit! And they can't help but need a place to live! They can't move! Approximatel 73% of all colleges in the world are in the immediate Boston Area. I'll charge $2000 for a two bedroom!"

And all his friends did it, too. And the goverment caught on. And they decided that if rents were higher, even though the housing stock was the same unimproved crap that it always was, they'd value the property higher, and charge higher taxes. And all the assholes who sold their houses and bought new ones sold for as high a price as they could, and took the biggest mortgage they could...all to gouge people some more. And all the rents got higher. And the houses more expensive. So things became more expensive, because things are made by people who live in houses.

I'm going to be fucking homeless, because I've picked a law school in an expensive urban area. I'll be in roommate hell for the rest of my life. With loud televisions and strangers fucking. For the rest of my life. Because people are fucking selfish. And want the most money they can get. And because my roommate is selfish. I can't fucking go to law school and live here- I can barely get enough quiet to do my studying for undergrad.

"Are you going to use that computer all night?"

Yeah, I'll use MY computer all night. Are you going to keep bringing men home in the middle of the night, and watching TV at extreme volume, and filling the fridge with such a bulk of items you won't eat that the door doesn't close properly and my milk goes sour?

Landlords should be publicly humiliated for what they've done. Flippers and condoizers and snob zoners and fucking real estate speculators should be hung. Anyone who puts a 200 dollar appliance into an apartment and expects to get 750 extra in rent for it, for the rest of their lives, should be fucking trash compacted into a tight little ball.

Fuck it. Fuck life. You just think that things will be O.K, and then you realize nothing ever will. Because people want so much to grab as much as possible of anything they could even possibly have a right to, that the whole world is fucked up.

All I want is evidence that I can live somewhere within five miles of school, without four strangers.

<===Inspired by this guy. I've decided to write a list of ten movies that must be seen. I do not claim, as he wouldn't, that they are all good, nor do I claim that there is any sort of redeeming value, as I'm sure he wouldn't. But, as he's probably equally unlikely to claim with his list, some of them contain some qualities that resemble...well-done, thoughtful, filmmaking and screenwriting. Others don't. Movies to See and Perhaps Enjoy

1. Dead Alive. Peter Jackson before he got "fat" and "rich" and "popular" and "a budget" . Highlights include: The Lawnmower scene. "I kick ass for the lord!" "Your mother ate my dog!" and a tender moment when he takes the baby to the park, for no reason.
2. The Idiots. Dogma 95, but without Bjork, and with a completely unneccessary, completely nude, real penetration, birthday gangbang scene. Also, a scene where a biker holds a guy's dick for him so he can pee. (The guy is pretending to be retarded at the time)
3. M.1931. Fritz Lang directs, Peter Lorre stars. No real characters- it's the story of a criminal community trying to catch a pedophile child-murderer. Vigilantism. Hysteria. Thrilling conclusion.
4. La Strada. 1954. Fellini. Anthony Quinn stars as the constantly abusive strong man Zampano. Poor Giulietta Masina stars as Gelsomina, his clownish victim/wife/assistant/slave. People say this movie is a vindication of the rights of women; I think that's bullshit. If I wanted to assign a deeper meaning to it, I would call it a post-neo-realist allegory in response to Boccaccio's last tale in the Decameron, of an abused wife who turns out to be humanity, and an abusive husband that turns out to be god. Fellini turns that paradigm on his head by having Gelsomina die as a result of her devotion to Zampano, turning allegory into an atheistic fairy tale. But I really just think it's a story about hobo circus people.
   
5. Night of the Living Dead. 1968. Romero. The best zombie movie, ever. The first time, in history, a black man is able to slap a hysterical white woman without immediate consequences. And the leisurely pans over the crowd of zombies- some in wedding dresses, some in nightclothes, some scantily clad...chowing on cadavers like KFC. Tasty.
6. Dark Passage. 1947. Humphrey Bogart. Really weird movie. If you do get your hands on this movie, and you're a person who knows me, would you please invite me over?I'll bring popcorn and alcohol. Because I didn't get to see the end. Three times I didn't get to see the end. So I can't vouch for the ending. But it's a pretty cool movie. Lauren Bacall. Plastic surgery.
   
7. Return of the Living Dead 1-3. 1985-1993. Not worth seeing apart, but the perfect snowed in/ sick day/lonely weekend trilogy. It shows just how far you can run with a premise. It's actually pretty great. Totallly fucks with your idea of what a zombie is, how they make more zombies, and other conventions. Zombie Gas, canned zombies, and the military figure large. The third one features a goth girl who cuts herself, as she turns into a zombie.
8. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and her Lover. 1989. Very fucked up movie, with very bizarre production design. It was a huge indy cult hit at the time, but recently has been exposed as a post-modern, slick, fraud. But it features a scene in which one main character is cooked by another main character, and served to yet another main character by Helen Mirren. At which point she says "Try the cock- you know where it's been". Features Tim Roth as a low-level gangster. A good companion movie, that ends up in an orgy of cannibalistic gore like this one, is Titus, 1999. Anthony Hopkins in Shakespeare's worst, goriest, most gleefully violent play. Directed by Julie Taymor, who later went on to design the costumes for Broadway's the Lion King.
9. Cry Baby. 1990. If John Waters did Grease- actually, this is John Waters doing Grease. It's pretty great. Hatchetface is my hero.
   
10. Debby Does Dallas. It's porn, with a plot. It contains a scene in a candle store. Owned by a man named Hardwick. Cheerleaders with ceasarian scars. A scene where an actress chokes on a dick, and the actor says "Don't choke, baby...I want you to live.". Do you want to be the only person who hasn't seen Debby Does Dallas? I don't. So I did. And it was worth it.

Here are seven movies you shouldn't see, don't have to see, and should actively avoid.

1. Exorcism of Emily Rose
2. There's Something About Mary
3. These Hands. (A documentary. About women. Breaking rocks. With their hands. For 45 minutes. No narration. No subtitles. No plot. Waste of time)
4. Man Bites Dog
5. The Notebook
6. Old School (sorry.)
7. The Thin Red Line

Show me your pussy!

Actually, please don't.

But my friend made me a cd with that song on it, so it's in my head. It came on as I was driving my mom to the grocery store. She laughed.

So there's this court case that was in the news the other day; they called it Roe v. Wade for men. Which is mostly bullshit. In this case, a woman who said she could not get pregnant had sex with a man who did not want to get her pregnant. She got pregnant, had the baby, and sued for child support. He doesn't want to pay.

This is not Roe v. Wade for men, by the way. If masturbation, condoms, and coitus interuptus were illegal, because it kills sperm, and a case made it legal for men to masturbate, or pull out, or spoo in a baggie- that would be Roe for men.

Because Roe isn't about having or not having children. Roe is about the bodily integrity granted to a woman by the laws (or founding principles) of this nation. A human being has the right to bodily soveriegnty; what is within them is assumed to be of them, and under their control. Thus, a woman has the right to have another person, living within her and entirely dependant on her, removed. Even if it causes the death of that person. Generally, pro-choice people don't talk about the fetus as a person. I don't like to, either, because I don't fully believe that it is. But, for the purpose of argument, and the purpose of explaining why Roe isn't really about stopping a reproductive process, I'm calling it a person.

A person has the right not to allow another person to parasitise their body, no matter if it is (and it is) their only means of support. That's it. That's Roe. Forget fetuses. Forget bone growth and dilation and extraction vs. dilation and evacuation vs. dilation and curettage. A person has the right, inviolable, to their own body.

A woman having an abortion doesn't sever her parental rights, or prevent the birth of a child- her primary act is one of medical self defense. Not becoming a parent, not bearing a child, are side effects of abortion- not the primary aim. It seems absurd, but consider: If perfect artificial wombs were invented, and a procedure perfected that transfers a fetus at any stage of development into that artificial womb- would any woman with a healthy, normal pregnancy have an abortion instead of a transfer and adoption?

A man cannot find his body suddenly in the service of another body. It's unfair (ish), but in this case, biology is destiny. So he can't have an abortion. He can't force a woman to have or not have an abortion because that, in itself, would nullify the woman's proper somatic soveriegnty.

So this can't be Roe vs Wade for men. Men don't need a Roe vs Wade. They are granted, by virtue of the cock and balls rather than the clit and ditch, an impregnable border. There's no chance that they will end up in anatomic obsequy to an unformed human.

So what is this case really about?

This case is about the voluntary abdication of parental responsibilities to a child, based on the pre-natal conduct of the other parent. A man was lead to believe that he was not engaging in acts that could lead to conception, as conception would be against his wishes. Conception occured, a child was born, and he became a parent with all responsibilities inherent to that. He wishes that, since he was unable to convince the woman to have an abortion, that he be relieved of responsibility, as she didn't.
Doesn't work. Forcing someone to undergo a surgical procedure is as much a violation of somatic soveriegnty as forcing someone to continue with an unwanted pregnancy. So he couldn't have made her. Totally wrecks up the point of abortion. Unless you think the point of abortion is killing fetuses. Which I wish it were. I like gory shit.
And, since she didn't have an abortion, and since the child was born, it has a father, and has a right to support from that father. I'm pretty sure he'd have the same right to support from his father even if his mother raped his father. Because the child was uninvolved in deception or conception. And cannot lose or waive his rights.

What should this case be about?

Fraud. If a person uses another person to concieve a child, under false pretenses (especially ones that would lead a person to believe an unsafe sex act was safe), it should be a crime. As far as I know, it isn't. But, it should be. Perhaps it's a crime if the person was doing it explicitly for the purpose of obtaining child support payments from the other party. However, despite the crime commited by one parent against the other, that does not relieve a parent from the obligation to the child, who was not involved.

So in summation:

1. Both genders have control over their bodies.
2. Both genders have equal responsibilities towards children that are born.
3. Fetuses=crunchy

The Death Of Romance

Romance is dead.
Or persistently vegetative.

Either way, its time has past. And that's fine.

It's cute to pretend that sweeping gestures, breathless vows, and hearts, flowers, and passionate self-sacrifice are not only relevant, but appropriate and effective methods of conducting sexual business contemporarily.

It's also cute to pretend that a pretzel is a cigar, and your finger is a gun, but try developing a sourdough carcinoma, studded with kosher salt, or defend yourself from a mugger with a fresh French manicure.

Not gonna happen.

Romance is an adaptive response to sexual inequity. Despite what the fine departed Ms. Dworkin made a career whinging about, American society is currently suffering from a dearth of sexual inequity. While it may be true that women bear more costs of childbearing and rearing, hit glass ceilings now and again, are finding it harder to get into college, and are beginning to lose control over their own bodies, the experience of an American woman is more similar to that of an American man than that of an American man of today to an American man of good ole' Scotty Fitzgerald glittering 1920's.

Similarity of experience results in common ground between the sexes. Common ground between the sexes and the contraceptive revolution (which granted the possibility of shared interests in heterosexual relationships by distributing more evenly the consequences of recreational coitus), has drawn creaking romance down into obsolescence.

In English-
Romance is what there was before men and women had things in common.

Picture Tristan and Isolde. Romeo and Juliet. Desdemona and Othello. Portia and Bassiano. Dante and his Beatrice. Petrarch and Laura.

Did they linger over coffee, sharing stories, hopes, memories of childhood, and fall deeply in love upon finally finding someone who, like themselves, is deeply moved by iams, trochees, spondees, and gets off on dying young? Did they share a single common interest or ability? Even in the one example, above, where the female of the couple had both a character trait and an ability, the guy didn't. (Portia and Bassiano- she's a brilliant princess, whipsmart with a talent for law and oration, he's a pretty social climber with credit problems and a venetian sugar daddy). There's a story in the Decameron about the most desireable woman in the world- men kill, die, and go to war over her- and she's entirely mute and passive.

Lest you think I'm a feminist, about to go on about the male gaze for two hundred words and finish up with a chorus of recriminations on the publishers of hustler and barely legal...I remind you...I hates the womens. But I go on.

At the time our modern/premodern/postmodern/zblarb idea of romance was born, women's worlds were entirely separate from men's, at least among the aristocracy and high bourgoisie, where there was the cleanliness and leisure time to engage in the practice. Secular men were becoming educated, becoming consumers of media and literature. Women were still having babies and running households. There were two solutions to the intellectually mobile man searching for the sexual companionship of someone to have a conversation with: concubine or catamite.

But buttfucking and paying for it aren't systemically sustainable. Energies, money, and genetic material spent on boys and unmarriageable women are time, spoo, and ducats lost to the family.

So romance was invented. Romance is the interest men have in women when they have nothing in common, and the actions and gestures that interest manifests as. (Genders did reverse occasionally, by the way. There's some lovely romantic poetry written by women during the early rennaissance period, and Eleanor of Aquitaine made an honest effort to codify romantic interactions during her time in France.) Romatic love is what you do when you love someone you can't have a real conversation with. Flowers, candy, dancing, even standing underneath a window with a tape player- our contemporary gestures that reference old cadaveric romance all share one thing in common: in general, they suit one individual as well as another. Romance dresses up in ribbons and meter a completely irrational obsession with someone you don't know very well.

But now, there's no excuse.

Men and women have as many things in common as men used to have with their catamites. Plans and freedoms, responsibilities, concerns and toils are gender non-specific. Instead of writing a sonnet about the sweet breath and silky hair of a beloved, there's an opportunity to find out if that cute waitress likes Star Wars, nougat and titfucking as much as you do.

You can suck it up and say "Hey, how 'bout I buy you a snickers and slip my wookie between your death stars and see if I can make it a milky way?" And if she doesn't hit you, you've found some common ground.

Conversations must happen. Entertainment. Recreation. Consent. Love can grow out of familiarity and shared goals. Just like between a greek man and a willing young boy.

So romance is dead. That's why trashy magazines redefine it every month, in between a hardhitting piece on hemlines and some thoughtless fluff on date rape. If romance was a necessary componant of interaction between sexual partners, we'd know what it was. Instead, we try to redefine it, in a post-modern, new-age, consumerist sensibility that turns it inside out: romance is now finding something the person you're fucking has said would be significant to them, remembering it a month later, and buying a present based on that.

Of course, with all of this, you have to keep in mind, that I'm entirely full of shit.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But it exists.

And it's not a big deal. But it is a quality that some women have and some women don't. It is a current myth, nearly as potent as "there is someone for everyone", that all women are beautiful.
To those who genuinely believe that, I have one thing to say: Ride a fucking subway.

One time.

Not all women are beautiful. And it's fine. The current myth, the current platitude, the current Eve Ensler-type self-love, girl power, "Every girl is beautiful" is a lie. And it's a damaging lie. And that lie, meant to comfort girls, and women, who are not beautiful, just perpetuates the power that "beauty" has.

I am not beautiful. I am fat, but that wouldn't exclude me, automatically, from being beautiful. These two facts, when I acknowledge either of them, cause people to immediately pipe in with free-to-be-you-and-me choruses. It's as if I had said "I am worthless" or "I want to die", or another entirely self-negating statement. I am many things. I am smart (very). Funny (very) Kind (sometimes). Charming (occasionally). Sexy (damn straight!). Fun. Tall. Brunette. I make a great cappuccino. I'm a decent writer. I have lots of friends, never been hurting to find a relationship. At times I'm cute or stylish. Once I was well-dressed. I am a lot of things.

But people won't let me be what I am. They have to make me believe that I'm something I'm not. Why? If appearance isn't important, why can't people let me be not beautiful? I have a big nose, often red, easily flushing skin, bucked teeth, and a round, soft face, and my eyes are very close together. So? This won't hold me back. I'm loved. I'm secure. I clean up good. Let me be.

Why do we tell little girls that appearances don't matter, but keep it so paramount, so sacred, that not being beautiful can't be mentioned? We tell every little girl she will grow up beautiful. I'd rather tell them they'd grow up smart. Because if they fail at smart, if they keep trying, they might at least be well-read.

Beauty is a certain symmetry of features and clarity of skin, indicating a lack of parasites, accurate gene expression, fertile, robust health and good nutrition, combined with several cultural factors that vary from place to place and person to person. While the cultural factors may influence a narrowing of the most accepted definitions of the height of beauty, a general lack of the trait can be observed in a plurality, if not the majority, of individuals in any given population. This variation is natural, defineable, and not deleterious to individuals if we do not place such obscene emphasis on it that we refuse to acknowledge it.

Non-traditional students.

Depending on where you go to school, the words "Non-traditional" mean different things. If you're in western massachusetts or the pacific northwest, it means someone who smokes a lot of marijuana, dresses inappropriately for their gender, and designed their own major to incorporate their twin passions: ceramics and maoism, from a post-foucalt psuedo-neo-modernist perspective, and expects to graduate without taking freshman english.

However.

At large, urban universities, the term "Non-traditional student" means "old fucker, getting a degree for no discernable reason, probably with undiagnosed asperger's syndrome"

I've got two in my animal behavior class.

One is a very, very sweet woman in her mid forties, dressed with the confused good-nature of a blind four year old raised in the basement of a k-mart. She wears the type of sneakers without fasteners designed for the elderly and stroke victims who have lost the manual dexterity to do laces or velcro, despite daily displaying the flexibility to take painstaking notes in four colors of pen, of everything the professor says regardless of the relevence. I once watched her take down the professors personal, off-topic reverie on the subject of how nice it is to have a classroom with a window.

She is very, very concerned about the topic of animal behavior. As it relates to her cats. She was openly disappointed that the professor considered "Why don't my cats like it when I bring men home?" an inadequate topic for a term paper. She was very frustrated that, deciding to do a project on Chickadees at the bird feeder, that no one had done any serious scientific studies concerning backyard birds in her neighborhood. Not that she could read any, because she doesn't have high-speed internet at home, and doesn't have the time to download PDFs over dial up. In fact, she's very confused as to what a PDF is. And, not too clear on the whole "database" and "scientific journal" and "peer-reviewed" or, for that matter...the scientific method.

The other is an eager yet slow man in his late forties. He has the resentful, passive-agressive air of a deeply immature individual, crushed by high expectations, leading to an unspoken distrust and objectification of the opposite sex. What I mean is, I'm pretty sure he's about one more thwarted gesture away from murdering a prostitute, covering her body in the snapped stems of thirty years of long-stem roses, and being discovered by the police at his mother's house, nude and sipping tea in the kitchen as she launders his blood-stained clothes.

In other words, He's the type of man that would describe himself as a nice guy . He's probably once divorced and since can't understand why 18 year old girls don't find his sweaty, desperate attentions charming, or so terrified of the purported machinations of females that he's a an angry virgin at 47. He has the chubby, grimy childishness of a priest. If he read Lolita, he wouldn't know not to be on Humbert's side.

I don't dislike him; it's just that he's so discomfiting.

Normally I don't get so much insight into the psychosexual dynamic of strangers. However, for the past few weeks, we've been studying sexual selection, mating systems, and the like. Evolution is about sex and death, and animal behavior is about evolution. It's a small class, and the professor runs it openendedly enough that human behavior and unspoken prejudices are easily observed.

Very early in the class we read a study on out of pair mating in mountain bluebirds. It was meant as a diagnostic critique. As students, we were meant to notice deficiencies in the article, chief among them the unfounded comparison the author was making to adultery in humans. This guy was visibly confused. The thought of cheating on a partner not being adultery, even in bluebirds, or being natural...was upsetting to him. He couldn't understand it. He has trouble not referring to mating pairs as "Mother and Father" or "Mummy and Daddy" whatevers...

As we've been getting more into sexual selection, mate preference, and mating systems, he's seemed more and more confused and upset. He can't quite understand how differing mating systems work. He's carrying his rigid romantic structures into the animal kingdom; he can't beleive that, naturally, some males never mate, and almost all females will. He can't imagine mating occurring in a value neutral world. He's constantly asking "What kind of sex ratio would lead to that system- (polyandry, polygyny, polygynandry)?", no matter how many times the professor reminds him that in nearly all animals, there is a 1:1 sex ratio.

He can't believe that polygyny would occur when there are enough males for each female to have their own mate, because that would go against one of the founding principles of the great American self-comforting romantic myth; that there is someone out there for everyone. It's a fairy tale for children, fat girls and short boys, and acne'd and awkward adolescents of both genders, administered sparingly to adults after breakups, like neosporin after a bagel-slicing accident.

And the reason he's going to kill a whore some day (et cetera, lipstick, weeping, mommy, the house is surrounded 'not my baby!' by the time the police got there he'd already, foreskin in a jar, religous upbringing, sponge baths, real doll...he was always so quiet, the perfect neighbor, really) is because he's unable to distinguish the natural world from his personal world. He gets this look on his face when the professor discusses the female need for resources and the male need for mating- it's as if you can already see the green glow of the public school surplus 386 computer monitor as he's posting to usenet later that night, about how science proves that all women are whores, but not all put out.

To him, a crop full of partially disected insects and a kenmore microwave are the same, and should entitle the givers to the same priveleges. But, he'd never be honest enough to use an escort, and pay and tip her, and understand the limits of the transaction. No. He'd pay her, and expect her to fall in love with him. He'd present some flowers from the supermarket, or his mother's yard, stems partially crushed from a death-like grip in his palm. He'd be polite, nervous. He'd do things he'd think of as chivalrous. But he'd expect her to bend the rules, treat him as special as his mother told him he deserves. He'd expect her to stop him on the way out, give him back his money, kiss him deeply and be his. And when she didn't, because it's her job, he'd strangle her, blank faced.