She's Writing a Novel

I've only been drunk by accident. I hate the feeling of being drunk, and I hate the aftermath. I never sit down with alcohol thinking "I am going to get so wasted." But sometimes, it happens anyway. Usually if I've miscalculated; number of drinks and potency of drinks over time spent drinking and the amount of food on my stomach when I started. Occasionally, I'll mess up that equation and the drinks turn out stronger than I thought they would, or I didn't eat enough that day.

And I only realize too late that, whoops -- I am drunk.

It happened on Sunday, when the Russian lover and I sat down to have a glass of wine before going home for dinner. We planned to stay maybe 30 or 40 minutes, relax, and then go. But then an acquaintence showed up, so we stayed for another round. Conversation was flowing, so when the acquaintence ordered his second drink we ordered our third. Then another acquaintence showed up, and he bought us a round while we chatted. Then a young couple across the bar bought us a round...and here is where I lose track, and I hope that is all I drank. The wine kept showing up, and I kept drinking it, and then I was smashed.

It's hard for the Russian lover, or anyone for that matter, to monitor me. I maintain control of my faculties somehow, and any casual observer would think I was just lightly buzzed. Even the Russian lover has stopped and said, "Wait a minute. Are you drunk?" I answer, "Possibly."

It might be a talent or a superpower or just some weird genetic thing, but I am Remarkably Composed when Completely Wasted. When I'm sober, my thoughts meander and I'm processing many things simulataneously; all at the same time, I'll be having a conversation, trying to remember an appointment, daydreaming about stainless steel appliances, pondering the existence or nonexistence of God, and watching American Idol. But when I'm drunk, all my mental power is summoned into a focused beam of simple directives: STAND UP. WALK IN STRAIGHT LINE. LAUGH AT THIS JOKE. MAKE WITTY REPLY.

When drunk, the parts of my brain normally reserved for analyzing Victorian literature and deconstructing 20th century poetry rally together in an effort to keep me from drooling. The clever or scholarly portions of my mind seem to sense the impending threat to the dignity of my person, so they abandon their stations of intellectual rigour and rush to my aid to help me remember my name and keep my clothes on.

The only thing my mind won't stop me from doing stupidly when I'm drunk is DANCING. For some reason, the drunk me LOVES to dance. The sober me kinda fears and loathes dancing. This is partly residual from my childhood indoctrination against dancing but also, I think, sober me understands just how absurd I look. Even though I only really dance when drunk, the Russian lover assures me that I never dance drunkenly; I just dance like a White Girl Dancing Badly And With Much Enthusiasm. Rhythm be dammed! The Rhythm will not get me!

And indeed, the Rhythm never gets me, nor do I get it. But by that point, I am experiencing the miracle of being upright and the exhilaration of spinning and the freedom of having my only thought be "This is fun."

Modesty is a state of mind. It's not about whether the skirt is 13 inches long or 30; it's about what you project when you're wearing the skirt. It's about being comfortable enough in your own skin that no one can make you feel bad about showing it. Ok, and it's also about the reality of how good you look. Fifty extra pounds here, or double-Ds there, can take an outfit from playfully suggestive to frighteningly vulgar.

But still, for some reason it is only young attractive women that are reprimanded about modesty. No one will ever say a word to an obese woman whose breasts, each the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, are making an improbable upward and outward break for freedom. While this image is inarguably more horrifying than the mere suggestion of breasts seen on a slender A-cup in a plunging neckline, it is Miss A-cup with a plunging neckline who will sooner hear the word "inappropriate."

The other night when I was out with the Russian lover, I was wearing an ivory satin button-down which, over the course of the evening, became less buttoned. That's the way of it with the Russian lover; if it's a night out on the town, he likes to undress a woman slowly. I'd lost the bra sometime after the second cocktail; it was stashed in my purse with his tie. Of course, nothing was "showing." There was only the hint that, if I moved this way or that, something might show. Walking down the street on his arm, we passed a group of women. The one who was about 300 pounds spoke up and said loudly "Ma'am! Your shirt is open!" The Russian lover and I ignored this. I heard her behind me again "Ma'am!"

Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor, the way you do when you see a woman who has tucked her skirt into her pantyhose, or who has some toilet paper stuck to her shoe. Women help each other out. But let's be honest, ladies. If Gisele walked out of a bathroom with three feet of toilet paper trailing from her stiletto, you wouldn't say a word. You would gleefully hope for her humiliation. When it comes to the uber-females especially, and the competition generally, we are not motivated by altruism. We'll help those we think are our equals, or extend benevolence to those we think are below us. But the competition higher up? Those we'll sabotage, if only passively. So when a total stranger is trying to "help" me out, I have to wonder about her motivation. Because for a lot of women, assisting strange women with alleged wardrobe "malfunctions" can boil down to "let me help you not give men any more reasons to look at you...so maybe more of them will look at me." These instincts are buried in women's subconcious, whether they will admit it or are even aware of it.

The concept of modesty is about control. Control of the sexually desireable by both those who desire them and those who desire to be them. Let's hide it so other won't want what I have and try to take it; let's hide it so others won't want that instead of this; let's hide it so we don't have to acknowledge how vulnerable we are to our own feelings of lust or inferiority or envy. Let's hide it because we resent that we can't have it, we resent that we can't be it, we're afraid of everything our response to it tells us about who we are. When we can't control how we feel about what we see, let's try to control what we see. Let's make it someone else's reponsibility so that we don't have to do the work of reaching maturity in our engagement with the world.

This attitude is why the middle-east is still stuck somewhere in the fourteenth century; this attitude is why America might stay stuck in the twentieth.

Bringing this back to boobs...I didn't acknowledge that I heard the woman. I didn't smile and wink and say "I know." I didn't turn around and say "Ma'am, your mouth is open!" And I certainly didn't button my shirt up to meet the apparent Philadelphia standards of modesty for petite brunettes. I just laughed as the Russian lover put his hand somewhere inappropriate and expressed his appreciation for shirts with buttons and girls without bras.

Before the Russian Lover, I had not gone on many traditional dates in my life; I've had more "involvements" than boyfriends, but neither these involvements nor boyfriends were big on taking a woman out to wine and dine her. They wanted to play video games, or go see unsuccessful bands perform in dirty venues, maybe drink some beer and scratch their balls, and then make out. With guys like this, I didn't feel like they considered me a woman; I felt like I was just in a special category of "dude." I was a dude with boobs.

Eventually I started going on more first dates with relative strangers, and I noticed more effort from these men. These guys bothered to shower before we met; they had credit cards and could pay for dinner. True, they were about as exciting as a No. 2 pencil. None of them thrilled me with conversation or sexual prowress; nevertheless, they raised the bar. I realized that men were eager to try, and it was financially and socially expedient for me to allow them to try as hard as they could.

I went on a reasonably successful first date with someone I'd casually gotten to know, and then decided I was bored enough to bring him back home with me after dinner. He'd been a gentleman all evening, footing the bill and bringing the wine and opening the door. So when he asked me to lunch a few days later, I was expecting similiar treatment.

When the check came, I sat politely. He looked at it, pulled out some cash, and pushed the check toward me. I was confused, mumbled something about a tip, and then he said "Oh, but I'm not paying for this whole thing." I looked at him in surprise. He looked back with equal surprise. "What, you thought I was going to pay for this? We're just out as friends."

"Well, you did ask me to lunch," I said. He became huffy, and I threw down a few dollars and resisted the urge to slap the suddenly queeny expression off his face.

Of course, the "just friends" line only came out with the lunch check, and was forgotten the second we were alone together. But I hadn't forgotten, and he was shocked to learn that he had been completely cut off. Because you pull that shit on a woman, and she will be happy to put you back in the "just friends" category. If "just friends" means that you now split the tab, it also means that you're now the guy who gets to hear all about the men she is fucking who aren't you.

Some men like to use the "just friends" card as a way to get a date for half-price. However, with real friends, and with real men who are real lovers, tabs are something that can go either way but are rarely split. The guy who splits the bill sends one of two signals; either he is so repulsed by the female's company that he wants to penalize her for wasting his time, or he is a guy who wants a discount more than he wants a woman. The latter should be walked out on and stuck with the bill, but not before they are told that, as long as they are not too picky about body hair or herpes, the hourly rate for a woman these days is within any man's means -- even theirs.

I come from a small-townish, very conservative area of the country. 75 years ago it was all farmland, and now it is all subdivisions. Everyone marries young, and marries a high school sweetheart, a high school acquaintence, or someone they dated in college. Mostly, they move back after college to get married. I'm at the age now where there is a sudden spike in weddings back home, as everyone who didn't get it taken care of before is suddenly wrapping up that loose end. Thanks to the internet, and the apparent need for some people to gloat about an impending marriage as if it is an accomplishment instead of a future regret, it's impossible not to know who is getting married and where they are registered.

Out of boredom and morbid curiousity, I will occasionally peruse these wedding registries. A wedding registry is a testamonial to a couple's bad taste in nearly everything, as well as a depressing commentary on the banal conformity with which they will live their domestic lives. Almost without exception, it happens like this:
The couple will register at Bed Bath & Beyond and/or possibly Target. They may register for a few things at Macy's, which will cause some distant relatives of advanced age to think they are getting uppitty. They will register for French White Corningware, Oxo Goodgrips kitchen utensils, and things made of Pyrex. There will be an eight-cup muffin pan on their resistry; it will never be used, but the girl knows that if she didn't have a muffin pan on the registry she would never hear the end of it from her pneumatic great aunt. The couple will debate about registering for anything which suggests they drink alcohol, and probably decide against it to avoid awkardness with the more conservative elements of the family. They will register for many kitchen things they will have no use for, because they have a house with cabinets and drawers that need to be filled. They will register for a matching set of bathroom accessories, because the vulgarity of matching toothbrush and toiletbrush holders has not and will never occur to them. The big splurge will be a Kitchenaid stand mixer, which the couple will simultaneously feel elated and guity about receiving, and they will register for bathroom towels in taupe or navy or moss green. Finally, they will select some scented candles, picture frames, and inexpensive throw pillows; the girl thinks that these will be nice gifts for someone to give them, and the guy know better than to mention something like a toolset at a time like this.

In addition to being a materialistic show of horrors, the wedding registry is also a bit of an economic puzzle. You plan a ceremony and throw a party which costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, and then you walk away with, most likely, less than a thousand dollars worth of merchandise. This is not favorable math; although I suppose most people balance the equation by factoring in the "priceless memories." Bah.

Sometimes when I rant about these things, the Russian lover takes it as a passive aggressive complaint about not getting married. And I have to explain that look, I might also want to stare at an elephant in a zoo and talk about the elephant in the zoo and complain about how the elephant smells, but none of that should be taken to mean that I envy the elphant in the zoo. But the Russian lover has spent too much time with women and knows that with most of them you should take whatever they tell you and proceed to believe the opposite. So when I tell him that no, really, I am happy just as we are and marriage wouldn't add to or change that, he sqints at me a bit as if he's trying to crack some tricky secret code.

I think by now, though, he believes me. We've agreed to revisit the subject in a few years and see if I've changed my mind as I careen toward 30, but as of now I have no burning need to make the Russian lover into my Russian husband. I'd much rather watch other women scramble to acquire gravy boats and matching towel sets as they marry some dufus, not yet realizing that in 10 or so years they'll wish they had registered only for a man worth keeping.

Lately I've burned out on celebrity gossip. I just don't care the way I used to about TomKat or Brangelina or Jessica Simpson or any of the rest of it. Typically, at work in the morning Perez Hitlon is the first thing I check after my email. But these past few days I just can't make myself do it. I may have overindulged for too long.

I have a mildly obsessive personality. When I discover a new food, I will eat only that for lunch for a week. When I hear a catchy song, I listen to it over and over. When I like a book, I won't do anything else until I've finished reading the whole thing. When I discover a new idea, I will read every book ever written about the subject. And then, of course, I will get sick of it and get it out of my system.

So maybe, this is what has happened with my celebrity obsession. I'm just over it, and now I can't really stomach it. I'm tired of living vicariously, of being more enthusiastic about observing other people's lives than about living my own.

On the other hand, I feel like I should do my part to support the papparazzi machine. The paparazzi are the only justice our society serves to the overpaid, overprivelged, and underworked. It's like an existential tax on wealth and fame. If for some reason you have become obscenely rich and well-known for doing essentially nothing but playing pretend, or singing a song, or showing your tits, you'll pay for it by losing your right to privacy in the public sphere.

What most celebrities fail to realize is that the public has funded their existence. They are rich and famous because enough people are willing to pay them to perform whatever tricks they specialize in. This is why the public acts like they own the rights to celebrities 24/7, and in this it's hard to argue that they are entirely wrong.

Celebrities whine that they just want to be left alone, they just want to be treated like everyone else and be allowed to go about their lives. Yes, and we all want to be treated like VIPs and allowed to do whatever the fuck we want thanks to a platinum album or an oscar statuette. LIFE IS TOUGH.

Honestly, when celebrities whine this way I think they should be given exactly what they want. They should be ignored when they want a good table on a Saturday night with no reservation and no grease for the M'aitre D's palm. They should be turned away from the door at the hot new nightspot. They should have to fly coach, sitting between a flatulent obese man and a screaming baby. They should have to wait in lines at amusement parks. It's pretty easy to be ignored by society, if that's what you want - don't be rich and famous.

If they really wanted privacy, they should have gone the path of being rich and indifferent. Typically, however, that path involves intelligence, or hard work, or at least the ability to function without constant attention and validation.

If you want the perpetual spotlight, then be prepared to wear sunglasses at night and jump into your tinted SUV to avoid the flashbulb swarms. And enjoy it, because eventually we'll all be bored of you, and then you'll have all the privacy you could ever want. Then maybe you'll realize that while fame came at a price, it also came with a fat paycheck.

Ok, so that previous post where I was so over celebrity gossip? I'm still so over it...but apparently that doesn't mean I've stopped cold turkey. It's more like a boyfriend I've turned into a fuckbuddy, so now instead of daily sex we'll have occasional trysts.

Anyway, today Angelina Jolie confirmed the rumor that she's having twins, which was not so much a rumor as the only explanation for the fact that lately she looks like she's knocked up with a Buick. It wouldn't suprise me either if the twins thing is just a cover and in a few months she gives birth to an entire fucking village.

So she's talking about the pregnancy in an interview, and at some point she says to the reporter "Unlike most women, I actually enjoy being pregnant..."

Back up the bus a moment Ang, so I can slap your smug face. The fact that everyone on the planet wants to sleep with you might finally be going to your head. Sure, when you are Angelina Jolie, you might as well just go ahead and start every sentence about yourself with "Unlike most women." Or how about just leaving it at, "Unlike most women, I am Angelina Jolie."

I think that most women would enjoy being pregnant if they could spend their pregnancy in a chateu in France, or puttering around on Paul Allen's yacht. Yes, if pregnant women had a full personal domestic staff, a nanny to look after each of their other children, and Brad Pitt to rub their tired sore feet....YES, then YES OF COURSE all women would LOVE being pregnant. If that was what pregnancy was like for most women, we'd be pregnant ALL THE TIME.

But for most women, pregnancy is not a hobby to enjoy while taking a 9 month global safari. It is, in fact, a big fucking hassel to have to do everything that most women have to do but do it with a 20 pound weight strapped to the front. Things like driving and cooking and cleaning and going to work and then actually working. So yes, most women don't actually enjoy pregnancy; they just deal with it.

And I'm sure I'm not the first person wondering if maybe there should be a 12-step program for this whole baby thing, the way Angelina is going at it. Crack addicts are less tenacious about acquiring rocks than this woman is about acquiring offspring. Is this what happens when a nymphomaniac mutates?

Unfortunately, there is no rehab for addiction to reproduction. Eventually this woman has to reach a point where she just gets strung out on kids and is found dead in a hotel room surrounded by onesies and sippy cups.

Today I was standing in line, waiting for a sandwich. The woman in front of me ordered a bagette with sliced fresh mozarella and made it very clear that she didn't want any vinegrette. The guy behind the counter had just started making her sandwich, and out of nowhere she flipped out.

"I thought I said no vinegrette!!! No. Vinegrette."

The guy looked up calmly, looked at the sandwich, looked up again and said "Ma'am, there is no vinegrette."

"Well, it's wet. I can see that the sandwich is wet. Maybe your hands are wet, then, or something. It's definately wet."

"Ma'am" he continued. "These tomatoes are juicy, and fresh mozarella is always wet. That's probably what you are seeing."

"No it's not!" she argued. "I can tell you that fresh mozarella is not wet like that! I know. I eat it practically every day. And it's not wet."

And here I made a decision to bite my tongue, hard. I wanted to tell the fat bitch that if her mozarella wasn't wet, then it sure as hell wasn't fresh, and so god only knows what she was eating but it wasn't fresh mozarella...however, whatever it was, eating it every day had gone straight to her ass. And then I wanted to ask her what else in her life was never wet. And finally I wanted to tell her that she should have recorded her conversation with the young man, so that in twenty years, when she is wondering why she is still alone, she will have an answer.

I worked my way through high school and college in service industries, and I know what it's like to have people shit on you irrationally. When you're being paid to take it, you take it. But now that I'm in the line, and not serving the line, I'm finally in a position to tell these people what I think of them. And sometimes I do; but sometimes, I'm not in the mood for a confrontation. Here is where it would be handy to have little printed business cards which read things like "You're an asshole" or "Stop being a self-important little cunt" or "It helps to act like a civilized human." It would be passive-aggression meets performance art. It would also be really emotionally satisfying.

I would love to have been just like "Excuse me," all smiles, and then slip that woman what looked like a business card. And then continue to look at her with a benign smile as she tried to make sense of the fact that someone had just handed her a printed card that said "Free Coupon to Call Someone Who Gives a Shit."

She'd snark something about it being "none of my business," and then I'd be able to calmly explain that it was indeed my business, as she could plainly see by the fact that I had the business cards to prove it.

When you move to a new place, it takes a while to find your "people." Not just friends or lovers, but all those people that populate a modern life. A hairdresser, a dentist, a mechanic, a vet, etc etc. The people you make appointments with. You're paying them, entrusting them with your car or your cat or your hair, so you want to find good people. A city has lots of people to choose from, but it also has lots of useless scum. It's nearly impossible to find good people without trial and error, even if you have recommendations or reviews to go on.

Finding a gyno is, perhaps, the hardest of all. Malpractice suits have driven ob-gyns out of the state, and women are left to fight for appointments with those who remain. These days, it's easier to get a table in a coveted Manhattan eatery than it is to get a qualified professional to take a peak at your vagina. And while having a personable and highly skilled specialist look things over is ideal, by now most women realize they may have to settle for anyone at all in a white coat who knows which oriface is which.

At this point I think I've gone through more gynos than lovers, but I'm hoping to find "The One" soon. The gyno with whom I can settle down with and have a monogomous relationship; the one my vagina can grow old and gray with.

Ok, so it won't exactly being going gray, considering there is nothing there to turn gray anymore. That was long ago removed by a laser and a delightful gay man named Jonathan. If you're going to have a laser fired at your Special Purpose, I would highly recommend that you entrust that laser to a delightful gay man such as Jonathan.

Anyway, wouldn't you know it, Jonathan's partner turns out to be a well-regarded gynecologist in the city. So now I have a personal recommendation for an excellent gynecologist. During the examination I will see if I can manage to avoid making an awkward joke about his partner getting me all groomed and good to go for him...something about lying naked on my back with my feet in cold metal stirrups turns me into a real comedian.

It is strange to think that both men in this couple will have seen me naked. And while I know it's absurd, I keep picturing them at the dinner table one evening chatting casually about my lady business over gnocchi and chianti.

Sometimes when I'm idly browsing one of the social networking sites, I'll come across long-lost acquaintences. The people I didn't have much to say to then, and have nothing to say to now. But lately I've been noticing something that almost, almost makes me want to speak up.

A lot of girls I know from a long time ago, back when I was incredibly naive and way before I became a heathen strumpet, have gotten married. Predictably so; few good evangelical Christian girls go on to become bawdy fornicating apostates the way I have. But an alarming number of them have gone on to marry young men with raging gayface.

I don't know these young men, obviously, and I know nothing about the couples' relationships. Still, the sexual naivete encouraged by evanglical Christianity means that the young women are innocent, inexperienced, and unlikely to even consider the possibility that the boy who is marrying them might turn out to be gay. To be fair, many of the young men may not know it themselves, having been discouraged from exploring their own sexuality. But a lot of them probably do know it, and also know the social price they would have to pay if they were to come out. Or they just can't accept their own reality, having been taught that homosexuals are hell-bound degenerates. So, the young men marry good Christian girls and everything is OK until twenty years and three kids later he can't take it anymore and gets busted for soliciting a blow job at a truck stop.

I remember reading an article not long ago, where a married thirty-something woman pregnant with her fourth child found out she had syphillis. She was understandably baffled, considering she was a virgin when she was married and had only ever slept with her husband of 15 years. The scenario didn't leave much of a mystery, obviously; she confronted her husband and found out that he'd been having unprotected sex with lots and lots of men. Naturally, she was shocked.

But then she began thinking back on the marriage, and it started to make sense. It had been really easy for them to stay "pure" before the wedding, because he never put the moves on her. And even on the wedding night, he didn't seem terribly enthused about making love for the first time. And then then there was the fact that the only sex position he ever wanted was from behind with her lying face down on her stomach.

I felt bad for the woman. At the same time, I wondered how stupid you had to be to end up married to someone for 15 years and not catch on to the fact that they were not sexually attracted to you or anyone of your gender.

But the reality is that if you've never slept with anyone else, you would not necessarily catch on. You wouldn't know that you were just some guy's beard; if you were an unsullied virgin practicing a homophobic religion, it would not occur to you that a man would marry you to keep his penis-preference on the downlow. You can't figure out you're sleeping with the enemy if you've never slept with an ally; if you've never slept with anything at all, you're not just refusing to try before you buy -- you're leaving the store blind and broke.

Which is to say that I don't actually feel that bad for all these proper Christian ladies having their middle age scandalized by the homosexual antics of their good Chrstian husbands. Most of them would have been quick to judge the women who tried on many men for size before settling down; maybe now they understand that ultimately the women who've been around the block are the ones most likely to know the way.

When I was a young girl living on a pseudo-farm in the far reaches of the suburbs, I remember people talking about the "city folk." City folk weren't even really "folk;" they were a different kind of human species altogether. They were tough, cold-hearted, and cynical. They were unfriendly and suspicious. They were also glamorous, sophisticated, and conceited.

I desparately wanted to live in the city.

When I finally moved here about three years ago, I was still mostly a country girl. It was hard to remember to lock all the doors to my apartment. I left a gym bag on the backseat of my car one time, and the next morning the window was smashed and my bag was gone. I squirmed under the catcalls and comments on the street. I was confused by the belligerance of cashiers and the outright hostility from bus drivers. I was frightened by the aggressive panhandling. With horror, I witnessed people blatantly littering.

The city slowly changed me. In the suburbs, I had assumed the best about people. Now, I daily witnessed the worst. I started realizing that many stereotypes I had dismissed as unfair or untrue were, in fact, representative of reality. Mistakes were more costly in the city, so I learned to make quick judgement calls. I stopped being politically correct and persistantly polite. I learned to ignore everything, while at the same time being aware of everything. I learned there were a lot of people making a living exploiting human sympathy, so I became less sympathetic.

But I also learned to walk with confidence, and to stand up for myself. I learned to pay attention to certain signs and signals, how to navigate social minefields.

I didn't realize I had changed until I went back home to spend time with friends and family...and it felt different. They noticed that I was different; colder, harder around the edges, less generous in my evaluations. I'd become someone who could survive and even thrive in a city, but it came across as something frightening to people who left doors open at night and trusted strangers. And my habits were oddly out of place here; locking the car doors in the driveway, looking over my shoulder in the parking lot. And now all the country's smiles and pleasantries were as jarring as the city's rudeness had once been.

Utlimately, I was neither city girl nor country girl. I was a girl who was prudent at all times, never taking safety for granted even in the small-town parking lots or the comfort of home. And I was a girl with manners and respect; putting my garbage into trashcans, smiling at cashiers even if they only growled at me. I even still responded to bums' requests with a firm but cheerful "no thank you."

Naivete and niceness made way for savvy and shrewdness. I grew up on a suddenly accelerated schedule, and I still feel as though I have not begun to understand what I need to as I swing wildly around this learning curve. Sometimes I still feel wide-eyed and vulnerable, sometimes I still want a hand to hold. But feeling that and plunging ahead anyway made me stronger and more resilient than I would previously have thought possible; holding myself together because falling apart simply isn't an option has shown me that I can pull it together and keep going. And if I can walk a city mile in four-inch stilettos, then surely I can walk through anything.