She's Writing a Novel

I'd never seen a bidet in real life before. Bidets, to me, were like chocolates on pillows and room service bringing up champaign for two - part of a lush hotel experience that I had only encountered in movies. So when the Russian lover and I arrived at our B&B to find a bidet in the bathroom, I was thrilled. Not just because I had now joined the ranks of people who stayed in rooms with bidets, but because I could satisfy my curiosity about this foreign bit of plumbing.

I approach most thing in life with caution; slowly and deliberately. A water fountain for genitalia was no exception. A braver soul might have simply plunked her bottom down and turned the faucet, but I put the lid down on the toilet next to the bidet and sat down to look things over. It wasn't hard to figure out, so I reached over to turn the knob a bit. A gurgle of water emerged from the tap at the bottom of the basin, barely leaving the surface. Underwhelmed by this initial display, I did what any logical-minded woman would do. I tried the opposite extreme.

I turned the knob as far as it would go, and immediately a geyser of water six feet high shot out of the bowl, splashing the bathroom ceiling and spraying me with water. I squealed and shut the thing off, sputtering and wiping water from my face. The Russsian lover ran in to see what the hell was going on. I stopped laughing long enough to explain to him, at which point he just shook his head and walked out, muttering something about "Americans" and "women" and "crazy."

But I was pleased with the results of my experiment; at least I had learned the parameters of the water shower aimed at my vagina before I aimed it at my vagina.

I've lived with the Russian lover for almost two years. When I first moved in I felt like an awkward and temporary house guest. It was hard to settle, and nothing really felt quite like mine.

But slowly, I started to feel at home. He will tell you that he knew I started to feel at home when I started to move his things in order to "put them away" in "someplace logical." That place being logical only to me, apparently. Because logical to him is "wherever I put it in the first place."

So you see, if he leaves his pants on the desk and throws a map on the floor, he will know exactly where his pants and the map are. But if I come in while he's occupied and put the pants on a hanger, and the map in a drawer with the rest of the maps, it causes immediate confusion. Where are the pants? Where is the map?

And then he all but needs a map to find the pants because why on earth, woman, would you put my pants on a hanger next to my other pants when it is so easy for me to find the pants thrown across the desk?

And maybe it's the impulse to nest, because it's not like I stop there. No, I'll move the dishes in the cupboards around to make them "more accessible in terms of how often we use the various items." And then I'll completely reorganize the closet in the name of making it organized. This was probably the real moment of becoming a couple, living together, when we had the following conversation:

"Where is the flashlight?"
"In the closet."
"I can't find it."
"What do you mean you can't find it? I just organized the whole thing."
"Well, I can't find it. Maybe I would be able to find it if you didn't keep 'organizing' everything!"
"It was just a huge messy pile before! You wouldn't have been able to find it in there before anyway!"
"Yes, but it was MY huge messy pile and I knew where everything in that pile was!"

And at this point we realize we sound just like every other man and woman trying to live together and share the same space. He makes meticulously disordered piles and she comes in and tries to make order out of his piles and put them away. And men can't understand why women do this, and women say we do it just because we want to have a clean and ordered house. And I think that's part of it. But maybe there is some subconcious part of us that does this because we know that if we're the only one who knows how to find the flashlight, they're not letting us get away.

We love them. And they need someone who knows where the flashlight is.

There's a blonde he calls "Dixie Chick." She's from the South, and she's tall and gorgeous and poised and her voice pours over you slow and warm in that drawl. She rests her hand on his arm when she laughs at his jokes, and she does laugh at his jokes, as long as they are simple and straightfoward. That means she appreciates the punchline only if it doesn't reference politics, literature, geography, history, or current events. She sparkles, but she isn't bright. But when you are a tall blonde Carolina girl and you sparkle, that's OK. The Russian lover will still stop you on the street to tease you - and to tell a few jokes, and maybe insinuate something about enjoying that infamous southern hospitality on some future encounter...

There's a petite dark angel he calls the "Hot Goth Mess." She's got black hair to her waist and moon-pale skin; she is never without blood-red lips, and black-rimmed eyes. It's rare to spot her before 10pm; she's usually lurking outside a diner with a cigarette, scowling. But when she spots the Russian lover, she straigtens up and and pouts her lips and strokes her hair until he notices (and he inevitably notices, pouting and stroking notwithstanding). She probably mastered the art of coy at age 12, in some suburban mall. She pretends to be insulted by his obvious advances, pretends to be indifferent to his attention once she has it...always hoping that she will be dragged home with him at his insistence. And he'll consider it, idly, while he idly plays with the fringe on her leather bag.

There's the med student whose appeal is less obvious...always with a coffee cup and hair in a scrunchee. Pretty girl, smart but distracted, too busy for things like flirting and dating. She writhes under his suggestive compliments and his teasing, partly with embarassment but partly as if he's just reminded her that she'd rather be in bed with him than studying immunology at a coffee shop.

There are more of them: "Barely Legal" and "Bar Maid." He has toys all over town...little diversions he likes to bump into, to stop and play with. They are without exception beautiful; the head-turners on the street. I think I know about most of them, but probably not all of them. And some of them know about me, but probably not all of them. But we all have our eye on him, and who he has his eye on...

I turned 26 this week. It was easy.

Turning 25 was hard. It felt like a milestone. A significant number that must therefore signify...something? But that's the thing about birthdays. They just are...a record of your trips around the sun since you've been born. They are not helpful markers in trying to understand this life of yours.

In good years, years where you feel accomplished or content or just plain optimistic, birthdays remind you of how far you've come, how much you've done, how well you've lived. In bad years, when you've lost a love or gained 10 pounds, birthdays remind you of how much time has slipped out of your hands like sand...life getting away from you while you were busy doing something else. More than anything else, birthdays remind you of how you are trapped in your body, in this chronology...and even in this fucking orbit. But nevertheless. You've got to celebrate sticking around for however long you have, because that is an accomplishment in and of itself. And you shouldn't need Darwin to tell you that.

Today while I was waiting for some files to upload, I randomly perused some ancient blog entries of mine. I came across this one post from a November day 4 years ago (almost to the day today):

"the movie was called amy's big O! i just wanted amy to have an orgasm, not fall in love!"
see, even when all you're after is a little soft-core pseudo-porn to ease the tensions of life, you end up being tricked into watching a romantic comedy. on my not-so-good days life seems like a conspireacy at every turn. so i go listen to the latest sarah mclaughlin and cry over a sink full of dishes; it feels like such a quintessentially early-twenty-something thing to do, and as such it is deeply satisfying. in five or seven or ten years, when i am stylishly settled in an urban environment with my metrosexual partner, i will look back on my days of girlish angst and laugh and laugh and laugh. yes, while we sip cognac...we'll laugh at the days when life seemed complicated and love seemed hopeless and sex seemed impossible...

And while I was reading this, what came to mind is all the times I've had with the Russian lover, sitting in a bath or curled up in bed, sipping whiskey -- and sometimes cognac -- and talking about the strange, strange life I used to have and the confused girl I used to be. And we laugh and laugh about it.

Thankfully, I am not laughing and sipping cognac with a metrosexual. What the hell was I thinking, a metrosexual? Metrosexuals are the worst kinds of things. They're not men, and they're not gay. What are they!?!

I guess metrosexuals are what you get when you castrate an entire society of males...when you make masculinity offensive. When you put a pair of trousers on femininity and sell it to boys...don't fight, don't win, don't shout, don't lust. Don't be aggressive, be agreeable. Take up baking and conflict resolution and women will flock to you. If you want to attract women, act like a girl who just happens to have a penis.

And for awhile, women seemed to enjoy the novelty. Oh look! Men who coordinate their scarves and make a perfect creme brulee! Men who paint watercolor pictures about their childhood insecurities to the light of scented candles!! Men who take longer to get ready in the morning than we do!!!

Suddenly, it was like women could actually date their best girlfriends. This was great, right?

Except, now women are remembering why they didn't just go ahead and date their best girlfriends in the first place. Sure, it's great to have someone who is as interested in bed linens and pomades and shoes as you are. But the thing about matchy-matchy interpersonal dynamics is that it kills tension. When you both love antiquing and plucking your eyebrows, there is no abrasion between you. And that constant rubbing between two imperfectly compatible beings is what creates the spark of sexual desire.

The metrosexual is nowhere near women's idea of the ideal man, if the massive market for paperback romance novels is any indication.. A metrosexual would never rip your bodice open because oh my god, that would ruin a good blouse! A metrosexual would never thrust aside the china and glassware on a dining table, sending it smashing onto the floor simply so he could have his way with you right then and there on the hard polished wood surface (the china -it's Tiffany! the table - don't scratch it!). A metrosexual would never strip you down, tie you up, and whip you with his belt because - oh dear - that would violate your 21st century egalitarian dynamic!

While a metrosexual might be a perfectly acceptable partner when it comes to picking out the 500 thread count sheets for the bed, he is perfectly useless once you have him in it. I for one want a man whose only preference for the bed is that there is a naked woman waiting for him in it.

Yesterday the Russian lover and I went for dinner at this Belgian ale house, and found ourselves seated nearby the friend of a former fling of his. The friend, apparently, had hated him from the time she first met him; the Russian lover had excused himself to her before turning to the other girl she was with and picking her up. The friend was blonde - a professional dancer or cheerleader - and the fling-to-be was brunette.

I have never yet met a blonde who doesn't expect to receive all the male attention when she is out with her brunette friend; I have also never yet met a blonde who doesn't become petty and pissy when, by some fluke, her brunette friend receives the attention that should be going to her. You would think that this would discourage brunettes from hanging out with their blonde friends, but the reality is just the opposite. Blondes tend to leave a social vaccum in their wake, yes; but as a brunette you can appreciate this vaccum. When an attractive blonde walks into a room, she sucks up the attention of every male in the room. Every average, uninteresting, and generally neanderthalithic male, that is. But the most interesting guys are the ones who eyes lilt over the blonde to observe the brunette beside her. Blondes are like magnets for every chuckleheaded joe in every bar, and as such they spare the brunette of having to identify the chuckleheaded joes, or intereact with them. It streamlines her social experience; the brunette can quickly locate an interesting guy or two that's noticed her, while the blonde can enjoy basking in the attention of a court of admirers. Everybody wins!

Unless the bar is almost empty, and the one attractive male sidesteps the blonde to get the brunette's phone number in order to later engage her in a brief but exciting and expensive whirlwhind romance. Which is exactly what the Russian lover did, and this blonde had apparently decided to hold it against him indefinately.

So it was very strange when we sat down, and they locked eyes, and the first thing she did was immediately take both of her hands off the table and hide them in her lap. Then she all but wrapped her left hand up in a napkin, and it was while she was doing this that we were mometarily flashed by 4 carats worth of diamond. I suspect that if she had not been sitting next to a loud, obnoxious man with his arm around her, and across from a woman who was obviously his mother, she would have pulled off the ring altogether and slipped it in her pocket. But such as it was, she diligently kept her left hand obscured. She did not, however, make an effort to hide her obvious boredom with the man beside her and the woman across from them.

(She had also, it must be noted, gone brunette.)

I guess she didn't realize that engagement rings, on most women, are like wearing a sign that says "easy." Engaged women are desparate to be talked out of their decision, or desparate to have one last fling, or ten last flings, before they give themselves up to chaste wedded bliss with One. Guy. Forever. So they pounce on any flirtation - affirmation that today, at least, they are still desireable single girls on the market, weighing offers and taking bids. Today, at least, they are still free women who can run home with anyone they want and it's still just cheating, not yet adultery (and a potential threat to the alimony).

I know some people have these romantic ideas about engagement rings symbolizing "a promise" or a "bond." I guess I have never been much of a romantic, then, because I have always considered engagement rings to be a down payment on a pussy.

A guy drops a few thousand, give or take, to lock in a particular woman for his future exclusive use. She accepts the down payment, and agrees to this future of exclusive exchange of goods and services. Voila - the socio-economic transaction we call "marriage" is completed.

Cynical? No - I just don't believe in applying institutions to human relationships. The second you start trying to live up to an "idea" of a relationship is the second you stop having a genuine human relationship. Marriage is a concept that people try to conform to, and that is probably why most of them fail. If more people were concerned about just being happy with another person on whatever terms work for both them, and less concerned about having a good thing called a "marriage" - well, perhaps more people would find themselves capable of partnering for life.

Which is not to say I wouldn't love having about 6 carats on my finger someday. It's just I will have to be clear with the bloke that his down payment has not secured him exclusive rights and priveledges. He cannot become sole proprieter, but merely a majority stakeholder, of my person and my pussy. If you think a man wouldn't agree to it, remember that the arrangement goes both ways.

Find a man that wouldn't agree to that, and I'll show you a guy that is probably busy chasing the blondes.

While our apartment is filled with hard drives and servers and cables and all manner of technological accessories, the Russian lover and I own a surprisingly minimal amount of gadgetry.

I managed to not own a digital camera, or a super-cool cell phone with a camera, the same way I managed not to own an ipod. I just failed to care enough to acquire one. The Russian lover shared custody of a digital Nikon with his ex-girlfriend, which was good enough for both of us. We had a camera on standby when we wanted it.

But when the ex-girlfriend had a baby, it was a lot harder to get our hands on the camera. It felt lame to ask to borrow the camera from someone who was recording their child's first smile so that we could take pictures of our cats, or our genitals. And more and more often we found ourselves thinking, wow, too bad we don't have a camera right now to take a picture of the cat falling off the bookshelf, or of me standing there half-dressed against the bookshelf. Or kissing some girl at a party. You know, the precious memories of young single urbanites, the candid moments you want to hang on to forever so that, should I ever be involved in a beauty pageant, there will be sufficient photo documentation to create a salicious scandal.

So we finally got ourselves a camera; the Russian lover decided the Black Friday was a good day to shop for electronics. I decided that it was a good day for him to shop for electronics, and for me to sleep late. He came home with a sleek new camera just as I was getting in the shower, and this is when I realized that there is going to be a novelty phase with the new camera, and this novelty phase will mostly involve a lot of naked pictures of me.

Which, to be fair, I completely expected and totally encouraged. I am a bit of an exhibitionist, after all. And the Russian lover doesn't want to have to pay for porn when he can upload his own, and have it starring a woman he gets to screw later. And I would not mind having evidence of my twenty-something body, so 50 years from now when it is only a memory, and becoming a myth, I can whip out some photos and appreciate the tight-bodied and loose-moraled woman of my youth.

Assurances from customer service people over the phone are among the least reassuring assurances you can receive. The person who assures you of the co-pay cost of a medical procedure, the person who assures you that your payment has been processed, the person who assures you that this erronous charge has been removed from your account. There is a space of uncertainty between the time they tell you something, and the time the evidence that what they have told you is true becomes available. Even if that space of time is only for a few minutes after you hang up the phone and refresh your web browser, it feels like an eternity of trust when your money or your records or your electricity is on the line.

And I have learned, with time, that the customer service people on the phone have no business with my trust; that just because a call is being monitored for "quality assurance" does not mean the call is being monitored for the fact that those assurances may turn out to be utter bullshit. And so now, when for some reason I cannot get the internet to do my bidding and I must resort to interacting with a human on the phone, I am sure to insure my assurances.

The surest was to insure your assurances is to grab your reassurer by the balls. And make them aware that you are holding them firmly in your fist, and that should their assurances fail to be true you will yank down. Hard.

I had an interaction of this kind just the other day when making an urgent credit card payment. I was assured that my payment would clear by 8am. To make sure of my assurance, I asked for the name of my assurer. I was told it was "Xandar." He even spelled it for me. I think to myself, awesome name, Xandar. And you will rue the day you ever introduced yourself to me if my payment doesn't clear by 8am.

When I asked Xandar his last name, he became confused. As if he wasn't sure if I was trying to hit on him. He stuttered something about a policy of not being allowed to give out last names. Which is, I suppose, a good policy given that there are people like me out there who, if our payments don't clear at 8am like you promised, will Hunt. You. Down.

So then I explained to Xandar that I needed some way of being able to report him to his superiors in the event that my payment did not clear at 8am as he assured me it would, not that that would happen. But nevertheless, it was very important to me that payment cleared at 8am and if it did not clear, I would need to talk to somebody at the credit card company about him. At which point he might have been slightly relieved or slightly more terrified, but he told me that he had been assigned an employee number for just this purpose, and he would happily give that to me. I said I would happily take it. And he told me he would happily waive the fee of processing my payment over the phone. And I told him I was so happy, and that I looked forward to my payment clearing by 8am.