She's Writing a Novel

During my workouts, I sometimes indulge in the daytime cable television offered on the treadmill entertainment systems. I'm shelling out $70 bucks a month for the privilege of running in place for an hour a day in a climate controlled environment; I may as well try to squeeze my money's worth and watch the extra channels I'm paying for.

The best shows to watch while working out are shows featuring fit attractive people wearing not much clothing. Music videos are good for this, but so are shows like Top Model. It's all about finding motivation, and few things are more motivating than envy. Free market economies are entirely dependent on it; despite the fact that most hippies and liberals and broke-ass hipster crybabies will say that the capitalist machine runs on greed, the truth is that it runs on envy. You want what someone else has - their house, their car, their image, their clothes, their body, their girlfriend, their furniture - you name it. Life is about getting what you want, and it's often hard to know what you want until you see someone else who has it first.

That's not a bad thing, and even if it was a bad thing that doesn't change the fact that it's the reality. Fundamentally, we all envy each other one thing: happiness. Everything else we envy is just what we determine to be the means for attaining what we envy above all else. All our trading and bartering, all our advanced cultures and societies built on the discovery of ever-more efficient modes of trading and bartering, are because our species learned not just to need things for our survival, but to envy things for our happiness.

The religious types have to villify envy because if they didn't, more people might realize they have their own roads to happiness that don't involve religion and don't lead to a god, and then religion would be out of job. This is also the reason why religious types have to pretend to be SO much happier than everybody else all the time. I used to wonder why religious people acted like fucking manics, and I've realized now that it's because they know they've got a hard sell on their hands (don't drink, don't fuck, stave off all your appetites and lusts, read this really bad old book a lot, etc). How do you convince people that all the stuff in life that is fun and makes them happy is bad and that replacing it with repressed behavior and banal ideas is good? No one at a dance club is going to envy anyone in a church for a good time...unless the people in the church pull the envy trump card by trying to demonstrate that their religion is the secret to the most happy happiness of all. This is why people in churches act like they've been lobotomized. It fools some people for awhile, but all those "backsliders" that religions talk about are just people who got sucked in by the wide smiles, but after they took a long hard look around the place realized there was nothing there to make these people happy but their own delusions. And some people would rather live in honest unhappiness comforted by pleasure than in false happiness dependent on delusion.

Anyway, envy is what makes the world go round and it's what gets me through the fourth mile on the treadmill. Although sometimes I like to watch shows where the people no one ever envies get a shot at changing that. My favorite of these is Extreme Makeover. People who look like anything from freakishly hideous to just old before their time are completely remodeled -- and while none of them turn out like models, they become average attractive people, something they never could have hoped to be otherwise.

The big reveal at the end of the show is the best part; both because you get to see the final result, but also the reactions from the friends and family to the final result. The first response is shock, followed by smiles, followed by expressions that are trying to hide an expression of envy or lust. Everybody suddenly realizes that their fat/ugly friend or lover is no longer their fat/ugly friend or lover - they are a reasonably attractive, sexually desireable, and blissfully happy friend or lover. They are a completely different person.

The New York Times had an article about the way a person's social circle responds to their plastic surgery; more often than not, responses are not positive:

"...women gave various reasons for less than ecstatic responses to their surgeries:
some said that looking better and feeling more confident unhinged boyfriends and
husbands; a few had relatives who disapproved of the cost; and some said that
friends became jealous and competitive."

What was surprising to me was that people seemed to find this surprising. Maybe plastic surgeons need to warn their patients: you should probably find new friends, you should probably dump your boyfriend, you should probably plan to ignore your family indefinately.

Whatever you feel about it as the case, appearances are a big part of the social pecking order. And when you climb up a rung on that ladder, everyone on your old rung is going to panic. The husband or boyfriend will panic especially, because now his female will attract attention --and therefore options-- beyond him.

Any woman dating a guy who prefers her to dress dumpy and doesn't motivate her to lose those last five or ten pounds --instead of telling her to hit the gym, and to put on a miniskirt -- is dating a guy beneath her. It means she has the potential to land a guy who is a little more attractive, a little more successful, a little more together in life (maybe a lot more) and her boyfriend knows it. So he tries to sabotage her appearance to keep away the competition; a woman with an extra twenty pounds on her is better than no woman at all, or a woman with an extra 100 pounds on her. He'll tell her she looks good when she doesn't; not to appease her, but to deceive her. And if she develops chronic insecurity about her appearance? Even better, because now she is going to stick with him for security. He'll do everything he can do keep her from making an effort to look good, because if she starts to look good -- or worse, realizes that she looks good-- she might also start to wonder what she's doing with him when there are a lot of other desirable men who think she is beautiful.

Envy inspires some people to climb as high as they can and be their best selves. But there are lazy bitches and useless bastards who find it easier to just try to pull as many people as they can down to their level in life. And you can know who they are, because when you try to make a step up in life reaching for your own happiness, they are the ones telling you not to bother. They are the ones standing in your way. They are the dead weight you feel when you try to go anywhere. And they are the ones who will try to punish you for it when you succeed, to try to make you miserable enough that you'll scurry back down to them.

These are the people that, when you stop and look around and see that you are happy where you are, you realize you've left them somewhere far behind.

It has been colder than hell frozen over this past week. It is mind-numbing cold; skin-burning cold; I'm-starting-to-feel-sleepy-so-why-don't-I-just-lay- down-right-here-and-take-a-nap-and-succumb-to-it cold.

It's chilled-to-the-bone cold; it's nipples-hard-as-rock cold. Yes, it's see-my-nipples-standing-up-through-my-sweater cold.

I don't wear a bra. There are a few reasons for this, ranging from sheer laziness to sexual titillation to the fact that no bra at all always looks better than a bad bra. And most bras are bad bras. So there is no line of defense between me and whatever shirt I'm wearing, whether that shirt be a thin cotton tee or a thick wool sweater. And neither I nor anyone else really seems to notice or care about this fact...until a cold wind blows.

What is it about this country that the suggestion of a nipple sends people into spasms about the indecency of it? Is it the fact that the slight bump of erect nipples on a woman's chest reminds us that, wait a minute, those are breasts she's got there underneath her clothes, not just any nondescript mounds of flesh?

Maybe it's offensive that a visible part of a woman's body would have the audacity to become hard, erecting itself into the social field of vision. That sort of anatomical prominance is supposed to be exclusively reserved for men and their dicks, apparently.

I mean, the fear of a nipple announcing itself is so great that beauty stores sell these nipple patches for women whose special occiasion garments require them to go braless. You plaster the sticky-side of the patches over the nipple area of the breasts, effectively taping the little guys down. Now, should a chill breeze blow across your back, or a handsome guy squeeze your butt, you can rest easy knowing that no matter how much your excited nipples strain themselves, they are safely smothered.

What further confused me is why, if a woman is wearing a low-cut, backless, super-short, skintight dress, she feels the need to draw the line of decency at the outline of her nipples. Why are nipples the line between sexy and lewd? Who made this arbitrary designation?

Well, whether it's a result of the residue of a Puritan culture or a conspiracy of the padded-bra industry, the sight of nipples continues to shock and...titillate. And remind Americans that yes, those are in fact breasts women have under their shirts.

The Russian lover claims he only dates bitches, because bitches are the best kind of women to date. Bitches have standards, and boundaries, and spines. They treat themselves with respect; they treat their lovers like gold, their loved ones with concern, and everyone else with indifference.

A bitch will always be a challenge, and anyone who isn't up to it fails to hold her attention. And the people she snubs are the ones who turn around and call her a bitch.

Women are supposed to be self-immolating, self-loathing, and above all - nice. We're not supposed to go around breaking hearts, stepping on toes, and spitting in faces. We should always be kind...to everyone, always. We should be doormats with mild preferences. We should pretend to care about things we don't care about if it makes us look nice. Because we're supposed to be nice..to everyone, always.

But people who are "nice" are just people with a pleasant void where other people have emotions and opinions. "Nice" is going for mass appeal, not a niche market. "Nice" wants everyone to like them, so they water down their responses and dull the edges of their personality. They want to be popular, like vanilla ice cream; they don't want to cause trouble like foie gras. And so "nice" has a crowd of approval but never finds genuine appreciation; it is not an acquired taste, and so it has no connoisseurs. "Nice" can never pair itself with something outstanding; and while it never need fear being spat back out as something foul, it can also never enjoy being relished by another.

At best "nice" people are simply dull; at worst they are monsters. Lacquered in something palatable to exploit the unsuspecting. These are the bland people who chat amiably with you in line at the store, and go off to kick puppies or film kiddie porn. They shake your hand with a smile before they swindle you. They compliment ugly women, they donate to charity, they never raise their voice in anger, and then they get arrested for hacking up a runaway teen in their basement and everyone is shocked. Because they were so nice, you see.

Nice has nothing going for it really, but it's easy to deal with and always unobjectionable. It doesn't leave its mark, but it doesn't leave a stain. The bitches are remembered, even if it's only because you hate them - hate them for insulting you. Or for ignoring you, which is even more insulting. You hate them because you are as nice as can be, and the bitch just doesn't care.

Because she isn't nice, you see.

Today I came across a man griping on a message board, complaining that women these days "give it up" too easily.

A man bitching because he gets laid all the time...that's one I never saw coming. So I read more of his post, and learned that he is upset because women are having sex when they want, with who they want, as much as they want. It's like ...it's as if women LIKE sex for its own sake sometimes, quite apart from any attachments, or games, or bribes. Indeed, this poor guy could not figure out that he was being used for sex quite happily by the women in question. He went on and on about how women were cheapening themselves by "spreading it around." Like women are cars that depreciate with mileage.

I was so irritated that I posted a long and snarling reply. Because honestly, while he might be the first man that has ever complained about getting laid too often, he is certainly not the first man to take shots at women for "giving it up" without a fight.

First of all, what on earth are men implying by the phrase "give it up"? What is a woman giving up in the coital act that a man is not giving up? Men who use this phrase demonstrate that they retain some vague idea that when women have sex, the act is somehow existentially different from men having sex. These men respect their own agency to make decisions about their sexual behavior, and then go on to deny this respect to women. They especially deny it to the women they sleep with.

Secondly, why is it taking so long for men to realize that sometimes women just want a dick? That sometimes we're looking for human dildos, not boyfriends or soulmates. And there are certain times of the month where honestly, we don't even want to be bothered with dinner or a movie or even foreplay. Are men so afraid of and disgusted by primal sexual desire in a woman that they need women to play "hard to get" in order to see her as "pure" and "demure" and --therefore--worthy of respsect?

The idiot on the message board went on to talk about his fears that one day, when he thought that the "right girl" had finally come along, she would turn out to be one of the girls who "gave it up" to guys.

The “right girl” vs. the “girl who gives it up.” The Madonna vs the Whore. Men will never complain about fucking whores, but they’ll never respect them either. They tell you they will respect their Madonna when she comes along, but that respect is contingent on a variable set of sexual expectations. They want to run around and fuck the whores and settle down with a Madonna. Women are one or the other, and the power of definition is in the man’s hands. God help you if you are a woman he thought was his Madonna, and then he decides you are a whore.

Men like this will never respect women or their sexuality, EVER. Men who separate women from their sexuality this way are morons at best, and abusers at worst. (They are also typically really bad in bed). They are incapable of viewing women as human beings like themselves, with natural sexual desires and sufficient intelligence to make their own decisions about how to express and engage in those desires. They will always hold women's sexuality against them, whether they are the Madonna or the whore.

A psychologically and sexually healthy man will see women as neither of these, and respect a woman's right to make whatever decisions about her sexuality she chooses – and he respects the women who choose to go to bed with him all the more so.

Men who call the women they sleep with "whores" are men who are not just insecure, but men who actually despise themselves. Men that resent women who leave them to go on and sleep with other men, and men that resent women who slept with other men before him - these men resent themselves and are looking to deflect their hate. It's much easier to live with hating women than to live with hating yourself, after all.

The women of the world would be much better off if men like this just stuck to self-loathing and masturbation. Unfortunately, they're out there giving it up.

I haven't read The Vagina Monologues in its entirety yet; neither have I ever seen it on stage. I have no burning desire to do so, only a vague morbid curiosity. Friends of mine have performed in it, and I've seen some excerpts. I distinctly remember one about women's body hair, and I thought it was hideous. It was practically a love poem to pubic hair, and I could not understand how any female - much less the liberated feminist types - could have found it affirming. Rapturous odes to the "beauty" of coarse hair creeping down thighs aside, what it boiled down was a woman saying this: "I am insecure without my pubic hair, because it's a curtain hiding my genitalia from me and everyone else. I hate how vulnerable and sexually aware I feel when I am bare. I am uncomfortable when men prefer me without it, and I'm mad at them when they want me to get rid of it because I perceive that as a mysoginistic power play." And so on.

This little essay all but implied that those women who remove their pubic hair are just acquiesing to the oppresive sexual desires of porn-fed and possibly pedophilic males. I guess these women who perish the thought of taking it all off simply don't understand why so many women happily do so. That those of us who made the choice to go bare did so of our own volition. That taking off the hair was about our own sexual pleasure first and foremost. That we are confident enough in our own skin that we aren't afraid of our bare flesh.

I think what fundamentally irked me was that yet again, well-intentioned feminists are dragging politics into the bedroom. It's bad enough that Christians want to drag Jesus into everbody's boudoir, but now liberals are fighting back by dragging academic political statements into the sack. With the way these factions are trying to crowd bedrooms everywhere with ideology, one begins to wonder if there will be any room left for fucking.

Neither Christians nor feminists seem to understand that making sexuality into a political or religious expression results in the death of genuine human intimacy. These groups want to tell everyone what sex is "about," when the reality is that sex is about nothing except what consenting people do with each other. Sex is bodies in motion, and whatever we choose to say to each other with our bodies is our own business, our own decision. Don't listen to the special interest groups lobbying to define your sexuality. Just lay back and enjoy the ride.

What with hollywood writers on strike indefinately, television is going to need to fill the gaps with even more reality and game shows. Fortunately, the economic meltdown of 2008 should provide plenty of opportunities for new spins on social exploitation:

Amazing Race to Foreclosure: Contestents try to outrun their resetting ARMs; they must scour the planet in search of refinancing.

Extreme Makeover: Homeless Edition: Folks who bought McMansions with a $0 down interest-only jumbo loan get the surprise of their lives when the bank comes to take it away.

Survivor: Abandoned Subdivision Project A special housing market bubble collapse edition of the popular show; this time, the contestents are dumped onto 500 acres of a partially-completed housing development.

The possibilities are almost as endless as the number of properties on the market that aren't selling right now. Hopefully television producers jump to take advantage of this..desparate times equal desparate people equals GREAT reality television!

We're all a little bit entitled, now and then. X happens and we determine that therefore, we now deserve Y. And sometimes, we're right. But even if we're right, it usually doesn't change the fact that Y just isn't the reality.

Life isn't fair.

But damn it if people are willing to settle for the reality, no matter how inconsequential. Every day on my walk home from work, I watch irrate motorists get stuck behind cars that don't know how to make a left turn, or how to find the accelerator, or how to tell when the light has turned green. And by the time the car in front figures it out and gets through the intersection, the light is just shy of red. And you would think that motorists would be sensible here - content to curse the clueless bastard and wait out the light. But something other than common sense takes hold - something I call Entitlement Logic.

Common Sense tells you: The light is red; you have not reached the intersection; wait for the green light.
Entitlement Logic tells you: The light is red because the moron in front of you doesn't know how to drive. If it weren't for him, you would have been through the intersection a minute ago. Therefore, you DESERVE to get though the intersection on this light cycle.

No less than half the motorists in Philadelphia operate according to Entitlement Logic, which is why as a pedestrian I never cross an intersection as the light turns to green without first checking to see how many cars are flooring the accelerator to get through on the opposing red.

But if you needed definitive proof that most people operate according to Entitlement Logic instead of Common Sense, just take a look at the present economic milieu. Millions of people taking out loans they don't understand to buy over-valued houses they can't afford. Home ownership used to be considered part of the American Dream; it was something you worked for and saved for, and when you finally achieved it you knew you had only yourself to thank.

Common sense tells you that if you make 30k a year, you really cannot afford a 700k house, and you especially can't afford it with 0 down. Entitlement Logic tells you that you are an American, and therefore you deserve to have the American Dream, and therefore you deserve to have your Dream House, and look here is a wonderful loan that can make it happen!

Everyone wants to leave all the blame with the lenders; and sure, the banks will probably eventually pay for their own operations according to Entitlement Logic. The point is that no person with Common Sense would believe that these loans could change the reality of what they can afford. It's about as rational as a guy taking a pill to make his dick bigger; 4 inches is 4 inches and even if the magic pill promises to give you 8 inches - at the end of the day you're still going to be 4 inches, just $100 (plus shipping and handling) poorer.

The loans in the housing market worked in a way that was like getting a magic pill that did in fact make your dick a robust 8 inches, only to have it fall off altogether a few months later.

There were moments in this housing bubble that you could not even fully pin on Entitlement Logic; for instance, you could only blame insanity for the fact that a berry picker earning 14k a year was able to purchase an 800k home.

But like free markets, reality is self-correcting. Eventually it reasserts itself as that which operates according to Common Sense, and everyone who made gains through Entitlement Logic is handed back to the reality - a reality which may be harsh at times, but is still much kinder when it is acknowledged.

There is not a part of me that feels bad for the people losing their houses to foreclosure. Perhaps because my own Entitlement Logic is that anyone without Common Sense deserves exactly what they get in the end.

It was the homecoming dance my sophomore year of college, and I was going with my boyfriend of a few months. He was also my first boyfriend, ever. I had never been to a dance with a guy, but I had vague daydreams informed by magazine articles and BBC movies; romantic ideas about the way men treated women on these kinds of social occaisions. I prepared for hours - bathing and shaving and plucking and moisturizing. I put on eyeliner and mascara and high heels. I borrowed a strapless black dress from a girl in the dorm; it was short and tight and the kind of thing I never had a reason to wear. I looked good - and I was excited to have someone in particular to look good for.

I showed up at his campus apartment, and found him in the bedroom. He was playing a video game as I walked in behind him. "I'm here" I said as I struck a seductive pose, waiting for him to turn around and smother me with compliments and kisses. And I continued to wait, standing there for several minutes as he continued to play his video game. By the time he acknowledged me, with far less enthusiasm than I had expected, I began to wonder why I had spent hours to look stunning for a guy who couldn't spare five seconds to notice.

The rest of his friends had arrived and it was time to go; we left in a big group for the campus student center. And though there was a mixed dozen of us, I assumed that the boyfriend would put his arm around my waist, or take my hand as we walked. Instead, he chatted animatedly with one of the guys up ahead, leaving me to fall to the back of the group as I struggled to keep up in my towering heels. Telling some jokes he considered particularly clever as the group moved through a set of outer doors, he held the door open for his audience but was eager not to let them get too far ahead. He didn't notice me as he let the door swing closed to follow them; the door swung back on its spring and slammed into me with a force that knocked me to the ground.

And I thought, he saw this happen, he will come back with profuse apologies and scoop me up. I sat there for a minute as stunned by what had happened as stunned by the fact that he was not there trying to make it right, had in fact not even noticed.

He didn't notice that I was gone, either. I pulled myself up and chased after the group, furious and heartbroken. When I caught up to them, the boyfriend was still joking with his boys. I grabbed his arm, and he turned with surprise and confusion at the tears streaming down my face. I told him what happened; he told me my reaction was overblown.

I was miserable for the rest of the night. Finally, he pulled me aside and told me he believed I needed to get professional help for my issues. It took me several years to realize that many of my "issues" were letting men like that into my life.

A few months after I graduated college, I found myself "involved" with a thirty-something unemployed alcoholic. "Involved" is where you find yourself when a guy has a sort-of ex-girlfriend and he won't date you, but he'll let you give him blowjobs and buy him beer. He had mommy issues; I worked as a nanny. He gazed into my eyes and told me we shared a "meaningful connection;" I had not yet learned that charm is just a shiny wrapper on a pile of shit.

One night we were leaving a cash-only beer store in a part of the city that is only slightly seedy. As with most cash-only establishments, opportunist bums sometimes lingered outside hoping to siphon off the change from six-pack purchses, or maybe even a can of beer if people were feeling generous. This particular night there was an aggressive bum harrassing people verbally; we took off down the street as he lumbered a few steps after us. He started shouting to the thirty-something unemployed alcoholic that it was a good thing that I ("hot piece of ass") was there, or he would have...

We were well away from the guy by then, but the thirty-something unemployed alcoholic decided he needed to defend my honor from the cat-caller, or perhaps prove his manhood to the guy insinuating correctly that he didn't have ten cents to spare. He turned around and started shouting back "or what?" Or you'll what, huh?"

I stood where I was, thinking that it was really unnecesary of him to provoke a broke, desperate, inebriated man. I was blind to the fact that I was with a broke, desperate, inebriated man myself and the two of them were a pride-fight waiting to happen. The thirty-something unemployed alcoholic got up in the bum's face, and I watched with horror and amazement as the bum - without a word, and without the slightest movement in his body or his face, raised his left fist and drove it into the side of the other guy's head. The thirty-something unemployed alcoholic went to the ground, and the bum (who I later learned was a former professional boxer) ambled slowly off in the opposite direction. I was already poised to bolt - with my urban escort down for the count, I had no one there to help me should the bum have decided to continue following me. The thirty-something unemployed alcoholic staggered to his feet, spewing incoherant sentences. He finally did what every man who can't take a punch or take down a heavyweight boxer should do if he is going to do anything except get a woman out of there as fast as possible - he called the police. By then I was shaking and he was deranged and the bum was long gone and I was slowly realizing I was with the worst kind of hot-headed fool -- the kind who can't back up a tough-guy act when it counts.

Suddenly I wasn't feeling so safe for having a tall man on my arm, feeling less like a protected female than bait for bad situations. It took me several months to realize that he was the bad situation I had baited.

I was linked to an article today where an aging billionaire was interviewed about his belief that civilization might be on the brink of something Really Bad. It was from a few years ago. He had a Really Bad feeling about oil; specifically, running out of it. Strangely enough, he did not have a Really Bad feeling about a housing sector gone bad and its rippling effect on the global economy. Perhaps it was too early then to see the rapidly inflating bubble bouyed by delusions about home values and sponsored by delusional lending and investing.

I'm fascinated by the doomsday prophets and their followers. How quickly everyone forgets buying generators and bottled water for Y2K...now, everyone freaks out at Al Gore's power point presentation and runs out to buy hybrid cars. But you never get hit by the train you think you see coming. It's the trains you don't know about that take you out. But ducking and dodging legions of phantom trains just leaves you that much more exhausted when, finally, an iron engine finally does come along on a collision course.

While everyone was busy talking about the impending disaster of Y2K, the dot-com bubble was reaching maximum capacity. And shortly after everyone had heaved a sigh and felt a little silly about all the canned food in the basement, the damn thing burst.

While everyone was busy fretting about the possibility of rising sea levels, no one was paying attention to a rapidly rising real estate bubble. People were putting solar panels on over-valued houses bought with ARMs and buying hybrid SUVs with the money they'd taken out in home equity. Consumed with environmental urgency, caught up in the charisma of a former VP and a few celebrities without so much as undergraduate level educations, people vowed to turn out the lights and recycle and stem the tide of environmental degradation. But none of them paid attention to the economic degradation just ahead; the degradation they were contributing to by paying absurd prices for real estate on badly borrowed money.

Of course, now everyone is going doomsday about the economy. And while it is potentially Really Bad, for the majority of people Really Bad means spending $1 for coffee at McDonalds instead of getting a $4 latte at Starbucks every day. It means getting rid of the fancy new SUV because you can't afford the gas and maintence anymore, and driving a sensible fuel-efficient vehicle, bought used. It means fewer if any trips to the mall for new clothes, new electronic gadgets, new music. It means a more modest vacation, or maybe even a year without one. It means buying real food and learning to cook, instead of buying pricey processed stuff, or going out and taking out every night.

In short, a recession is when a consumer orgy comes to a kind of standstill, and everyone reevaluates what they really need to spend money on in order to spend less money. Even though it's easy to mistake the decline of Starbucks for the decline of Western civilization, it's hardly the end of the world.