She's Writing a Novel

Since the economy is going down the toilet anyway, the government decided to go ahead and take a huge dump on it.

Thanks guys!

Watching the US government in action makes me wonder sometimes just how far we've managed to evolve from our feces-flinging ancestors.

We haven't yet learned that everybody should be responsible for wiping their own ass; most of the population is content to sit on theirs and wait for Uncle Sam to show up with the Charmin Ultra.

Unfortunately, Uncle Sam always leaves a mess. That's OK, though. That just means we'll have more shit left to throw at each other.

Sunday night I was out with the Russian lover and a friend of ours. Said friend is uninhibited; or at least, she becomes uninhibited when were are out together. And the Russian lover and I are never inhibited, so the three of us together can become quite the bawdy ruckus.

We went for dinner at a famous sushi place in New Jersey, and the hostess seated us in a tucked-away corner booth. We opened a bottle of wine, and soon we were swapping sordid stories. The Russian lover was just about to explain something useful about men and their responses to the proposition of a blow job when a woman in the booth next to ours turned around and snipped "Excuse me, you are being very inappropriate. You are out in public, you need to stop talking about things like that."

We'd been so caught up in detailing exploits, we had not even noticed a table being seated next to ours. The snippy interruption came as a suprise, so instead of returning something witty, I only managed a raised eyebrow in amusement while the Russian lover countered with "Oh really? Is that so?" At which point the man sitting next to the snippy woman turned around and stared intently at the Russian lover while removing his glasses the way a father does when he wants you to know that he is Very Serious About Disapproving of Your Behavior. "And? What do you want to do it about?" the Russian lover asked. The man turned back around.

Nothing irritates me more than prudish Americans getting snippy with sexually well-adjusted adults, as if they are entitled to neuter the public sphere. I know that these people probably don't have sex, or have religion and therefore have weird guilt about sex, and so they don't have patience with anyone who not only has sex but is also able to openly express their enjoyment thereof. The group of adults in the booth next to us looked like the kind of people who take sex Very Seriously. Hearing people laugh and joke about all manner of sexual behavior offended their sensibilities; apparently, sex is supposed to be a humorless Friday night fifteen-minute missionary-position appointment, not a rich dimension of one's life and self.

They don't like overhearing attractive young people talking about sex while they're eating in a restaurant? Well, I don't like having to look at ugly fat miserable people while I'm eating in a restaraunt. But that's life, and that's the risk you take when you decide to leave your house. I'm so polite as not to interrupt your table and announce that your appearance disgusts me; maybe next time you could return me the courtesy and keep your disgust with my conversation to yourself.

One night last week after work I caught myself standing in line at the corner supermarket holding a bag of cat food and a pint of ice cream. I was only ten pounds and a faded banana republic suit away from looking like the total cliche of a sad twenty-something professional urban female. For a terrifying moment I envisioned myself in that life; going home to the cat, sitting down with a spoon in front of the TV, wearing pajamas and a college sweatshirt. And then I remembered, hey, that WAS my life. I was the girl who came home to talk to her cat and eat cold cereal and ice cream for dinner. I was the girl whose big weekend plans consisted of taking a shower. I was the girl who hadn't been on a date in three months, who was getting so bored she was in danger of sleeping with the first thing that took her out to a BYO. And then did. And has to live with the memory of putting her arms around a man's shoulders to discover back stubble. Back hair? Bad enough. Evidence that a guy shaves his back? Shudder.

Those were dark times. I think the only thing that kept me going was my naive optimism. Had I not met the Russian lover when I did, I don't know how much longer I could have lived as a broke recluse, letting the wrong men into my life just long enough to disappoint me or bore me to death. I found the Russian lover's ad the second day I started perusing online ads at lunch looking for men to buy me dinner and keep me company for a couple of hours, and heaven only knows what horrors I could have stumbled into if I'd answered any ad but his.

It's strange, but when I opened his ad, I knew. As I read the words he'd written, it was as if something heavy fell down and lodged itself in my gut, and something else took flight out of my heart. I felt a little dizzy. I knew that this moment had changed the course of my entire life, because I knew I was going to answer his ad. I immediately closed the browser window, turned off the computer, and left the office as quickly as I could.

A week later I went back to the site. The ad was still there. There were also a bunch of new posts on the same site, by women taking issue with something or other he'd written; apparently they weren't content just to ignore whatever had offended them. Mostly they seemed offended that he wasn't interested in women like them. I decided I liked him even more for being the cause of so many ruffled feathers. I sent him a carefully worded email.

And when another week passed and I hadn't heard from him, I was surprised that I was so disappointed. After all, it was just a whim. My email had probably been lost in a mountain of spam, anyway, so it wasn't necessarily a rejection. Still, I had thought it inevitable that I would at least hear something back from him.

Then, a week later, after I'd taken up dabbling mindlessly with back-stubble guy, I spotted the email in my inbox. The one I had been waiting for, the one that would start it all, whatever that was. My heart pounded, wondering if his reply would simply be "thanks but no thanks" and more scared to think what if it wasn't.

It wasn't.