http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/ This is not that novel. en Copyright 2008 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:35:12 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss I got a pedicure yesterday, and right now my feet are clean and lovely and my toes are painted hooker red. I'm not wearing sandals, though, which might make the pedicure seem wasted and the bright polish pointless. But my shiny red toes are like a secret that makes me smile every time I remember it's there. I just slip a foot out of its shoe under my desk for a moment, wiggle my toes, and instantly feel happier. It's like wearing expensive sexy lingerie during the day...no one knows it's there except you. It's being an exhibitionist without an audience; or an exhibitionist with an exclusive audience of one - the exhibitionist flaunting herself to herself. In any case, my hidden display has been a little wellspring of delight that I can tap into whenever I feel myself starting to worry or inwardly grumble. It's good to know I've found a new pick-me-up, and that it only costs 3.99 at CVS. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/a_safe_and_legal_mood_enhancer.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/a_safe_and_legal_mood_enhancer.php Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:35:12 -0500 This is the time of year when Philadelphia fills up with out-of-staters; college students, families of college students, late season tourists. One of the easiest places to identify an out-of-stater is a state store. They don't even know what a state store is; they just realized there was no wine at the grocery store, and someone told them they had to go here. That's when they learn about the "Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board," and they start to wonder what kind of stick this state has up its ass, exactly, as they had been under the impression that the Northeast was a pretty progressive part of the US. Their irritation at having to make a second trip for a bottle wine becomes outright indignation when they learn that they will have to go to a third location if they want to purchase beer. Surrounded by aisles of wine and vodka and whiskey, they become combative with the sales staff. "What do you mean you don't sell beer?" And all they get is a shrug, because here in Pennsylvania we've resigned ourselves to this fate. It's like our own special taste of socialism. Once the out-of-stater becomes resigned, they go on to become confused. Because while there are designated wine and liquor stores, beer sales are not so straightforward. There are distributers, where you go if you want to buy beer by the case or the keg. The distributers are usually in a slightly shady or at least out-of-the-way locale. If all you want are six-packs or forties, it gets even trickier. Most pizza and sandwhich shops will have coolers with beer, although not all of them will. Many Asian delis will carry beer, although not all of them will. Your best bet is to wander around until you find a deli or a pizza shop with neon beer advertisements glowing in the window. And by the time the out-of-stater has located a six-pack, what they really need is a shot of something strong, so its back to the state store. And when they learn about the city's smoking ban, they're wishing they had gone to Jersey. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/this_is_the_time_of.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/this_is_the_time_of.php Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:51:32 -0500 Some people meditate, some people pray, some people listen to music. When I can't go for a run, I read through the Ikea catalogue. When life gets stressful, I run to the comfort of hundreds of images of perfect organization. It calms me and clears my mind, as if I'm filing away my cluttered thoughts in the Svetborg bins or the Bafrinko boxes on the page. Everything has its place in an Ikea room; even the oddity all makes perfect sense. It's a vivid world of color and imagination; at the same time, its a world of perfect order. It's like a world I long to live in, where even the strange quirks turn out to be brilliant useful features. I have always been passionate about organization; it's a strange thing to be passionate about. I suppose it's just a manifestation of the need to feel in some kind of control. I may feel helpless and confused in certain situations, but damn it if I can't get all the books on the shelf into alphabetical order. The need to create systems is a rebellion against the reality of so much randomness. Even when I have a spat with the Russian lover, or when the Russian lover is having a crisis at work, the first thing I long to do is clean something -- anything. Dishes are good, because there are always dishes in the kitchen. The Russian lover hates this tendency of mine; my twitchy artificial busyness just makes him more aggrevated. One time during a fight he baffled me by doing all the dishes; I think in retrospect it was an effort to thwart my default settings and get me to develop a different response. In any event, I managed to stay calm for a record 30 minutes before I had to clean a bathroom. But so help me, that 30 minutes where I was able to just sit and go about my business was a milestone. I experienced conflict, and even though I didn't immediately start cleaning up something around me, the world didn't end. But my Ikea catalogue habit I'll keep, I think. It's like my holy book; reading it just makes me feel a bit better, like the universe might turn out to make sense after all. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/some_people_meditate_some_peop.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/some_people_meditate_some_peop.php Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:59:11 -0500 Someone has left their car parked on the street in front of our apartment building for over a month now. It hasn't moved once, and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon. It has a valid parking sticker, however, so until someone comes and claims it or until the sticker expires, it appears we're stuck with this car. Unless one of our neighbors snaps and takes a baseball bat to it; which by the look of the front left bumper recently, I think one of them already has. The other day I came home from work and saw a note tucked behind the windshield wiper. It was scrawled by hand and said "YOUR CAR ALARM HAS BEEN GOING OFF AT ALL TIMES DURING THE DAY AND NIGHT FOR THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS. IF YOU DO NOT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, I WILL!!!!!" Despite the fact that car alarms are useless at this point, whoever dumped their car on our doorstep did so with the car alarm set. And it is one of those hyper-sensitive car alarms. You know, the kind that goes off anytime a car with a subwoofer drives by, or it thunders, or a child screams, or a grasshopper sneezes. The best part is the fact that our street is a bus route, and there is a bus stop on the corner. Anytime a bus driver hits the gas? You guessed it! Our abandoned car goes into a frenzy. If I wanted to hear an obnoxious racket everytime something audible happened in the universe, I would get a dog. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/some_has_left_their_car.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/08/some_has_left_their_car.php Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:04:18 -0500 Summer is a celebration of laziness; when it's not just appropriate or permissable but almost mandatory to spend swathes of time accomplishing nothing but the enjoyment of simply being alive. Not that that is a trivial accompliment. With the Russian lover I have learned how to simply be, and how to be content with that. It isn't complicated; I didn't have to take a meditation seminar or see a therapist. Instead of trying to get to certain momentous occaisions, treating pleasure like a fuel station I occaisionally stop at, I allow myself to experience pleasure always - for all reasons and for no reaons at all. Nothing is special, yet everything is sacred. Maybe this is part of the reason I've never felt urgency to marry the Russian lover; I don't need a special day to celebrate being together or to express a desire to stay together. Sitting with each other on the balcony as the sun sets every night, sipping wine and talking for hours, is a daily ritual that means more, affirms more, than lighting a unity candle or swapping jewelry. Everything we could ever need to say to each other is said in how we live our lives together. Our newest summer ritual is an old ritual with an upgrade. Our favorite summer brunch spot is an unassuming little French crepe cafe, and while the weather is warm we are there every weekend. It is a BYO, but in the past we never bothered to bring a bottle of anything with us. One Saturday early this summer, however, we decided that the day called for a good bottle of champaign. Why? Because we were alive, because it was a beautiful Saturday in June, because we had no plans for the day except to enjoy it. So we had our crepes with a bottle of champaign, and after an hour or so the bottle was empty but we were so content sitting in the cafe that we looked at each other and agreed the day called for a second bottle of champaign. Hours later we strolled home, fell into bed, and dozed away the heat of the late afternoon like a couple of cats. We decided that it had been a perfect summer day, and when the next Saturday rolled around we repeated the previous week's indulgence. And we have most weeks since, dubbing them our "Champaign Saturdays." Sometimes people, obvserving a young couple popping expensive champaign, ask us what we're celebrating. I think they expect that the answer will be an engagement, an anniversary, a baby, or a birthday. We look at each other, smile and shrug, before telling them "It's Saturday!" They're not sure what to do with this answer, and they seem uncomfortable with the fact that there is no obvious occaision behind our bliss. Because what is the world coming to when people celebrate all of life, instead of just its milestones? Most people seem to be in the business of simply logging mileage; living life like Asian tourists, hopping off the bus to take pictures of things of designated import before jumping back on the bus to get to the next stop, ignoring everything in between. It's not even about stopping to smell the roses; it's just figuring out that roses exist between the bridal bouquet and the funeral florals, and that often the days with nothing marked on the calendar turn out to be the best days of all. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/champaign_saturdays.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/champaign_saturdays.php Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:06:18 -0500 The Onion. I keep expecting a retraction from NPR to make the news, or at least some kind of editorial error statement. In fact, all they did was change the headline of their story so that the photo of two morbidly obese chronic welfare recipients was no longered featured next to the words "Even Meat is Out of Reach." The jokes wrote themselves all week, and even when NPR changed the headline to a more generic "Economic Woes," the damage was done. They must have a covert conservative operative among them; there is no way even the most devoted disciple of socialism could not see the irony in a story about 300lb women lamenting that they are consuming less meat and ice cream than they used to as evidence of "hard times" in America. We food shop at a market where you can buy tomatoes and onions for less than 50 cents a pound, where you can buy any kind of fresh fuit or vegetable you could want for a fraction of the best supermarket price. The market is within walking distance of many low-income neighborhoods, and buses regularly run by. Lots of urban "poor" go there, but mostly they are waddling around buying chicken wings and ribs and ground beef and turkey bacon. So I don't for a second believe the "poor are overweight because they don't have access to good food" excuse. Every week I stand there watching 300lb people walking past the asparagus and carrots and the apples, all of it at prices that could feed a family for ten dollars a week. And I also don't believe the whole "poor fat people don't understand that carrots are healthier than BBQ ribs, and even if they did, they don't know how to make meals consisting of healthy alternatives anyway." I can't even believe I hear this excuse from the same people who vehemently claim that poverty has nothing to do with stupidity. I don't want to live in a country where my income is taxed first to house and feed creatures that are barely mobile, and then further taxed to cover the creature's medical bills as they eat themselves to death. I simply don't care about saving the whales. ]]> http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/liberal_myopia_reached_new_lev.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/liberal_myopia_reached_new_lev.php Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:00:42 -0500 Since hipsters are basically the product of baby boomers' access to easy credit and home equity, I'm thinking they're going to start dying out rapidly. Or, if not exactly dying out, at least slinking away to lurk in their parents' suburban basements now that their folks can't afford the rent for their urban lofts. Forced into hiberation, as it were. I've been seeing fewer of them around town, although it's still too early to be optimistc. They might all just be summering at a family vacation home which hasn't been foreclosed on yet. The ones that are in town, however, are working hard to keep up to standards. Today I passed Total Hipster Couple Cliche on my way home from work; they, presumeably, were on their way to a dive bar in search of cold PBR. He had shaggy hair, a fedora and white plastic sunglasses; he looked like he hadn't eaten since high school. She was wearing a little girl's camisole tucked into denim shorts in a way that emphasized her beer gut. The zeitgeist of Angry and Entitled gave us these creatures, who take out their inflated grievances on society by punishing us with their bad fashion. If I see one more anorexic guy wearing skinny jeans and sporting a handlebar mustache I'm going to snap...so OK, you win! We will close Gitmo and all become vegetarian! Hipsters seem to believe the world will somehow change if they whine about it enough. Or if they get their law degree. Or if they resurrect enough trends from the eighties. Which is one thing we can agree on, actually: I would LOVE to resurrect a trend from the eighties. It's called Ronald Reagan. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/since_hipsters_are_basically_t.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/since_hipsters_are_basically_t.php Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:14:45 -0500 parents) can afford to let you spend your summer begging the legitimately employed to give their money to some cause or other, then hey - go for it. But get out of my way, because I don't want to hear about it. One day I was walking home, talking on the cell phone to a friend. I was quite obviously holding a cell phone to my ear, and quite obviously engaged in a conversation. However, a green-shirted youth took it upon himself to walk up to me and ask me if I would like to help save the environment. "You DO see that I'm on the phone right now, don't you?" I snapped back. "Have a nice day, Ma'am," he said. I nearly made an endangered species out of him right there. Lately I've been having more than a few of them approach me with the opener "How are you doing today, you look like an environmentalist!" And my first thought is, oh god, do I? But I shave my body hair and I'm carrying a leather bag! Then I realize that it's probably just because I'm under 35, and this is just a line in their script, and I shouldn't take it personally. Typically all I say to people with clipboards is "no thank you" as they approach me, and I don't stop moving. Ignoring them doesn't work, because it just makes them want to try harder to get your attention. Firm and fast rejection is the easiest way to get away. But by now I'm getting so tired of hearing that I look like an environmentalist, I'm ready to demonstrate my ire. Lately I've just been growling "not even remotely" as I walk by, which prompts them to shout banal things after me as I cross the street, like "Today is a great day to become one!" So, a short list of possible things to say in response to "You look like an environmentalist!" - "No, I'm a realist." - "You look like a waste of natural resources." - "I used to be, but now I'm a taxpayer." - "Why, did I forget to shave my legs today?" - "You look naive." ]]> http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/there_have_been_a_lot.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/there_have_been_a_lot.php Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:17:56 -0500 I've experienced the stomach-dropping, sudden-lusting version of falling in love. It's like a thrilling three-second free fall, marvelously disorienting. He approaches you, and when he leans over to say a few casual words in your direction it's like he's lighting a match to your loins. And the heat spreads slowly until you are flustered and flushed in the face and you blabber something just before you bolt in an effort to escape the vertigo overtaking you. So the moth has met her flame. She'll return, helplessly, only to be singed again and again. And it takes some time for her to realize that really the ride was over as quickly as it began; that she's been effectively sleepwalking, unwilling to wake up from that first swoon and face the reality. She's not in love; she's just someone who got high on pheromones. He's not wonderful; he's just a guy her instinct propelled her to sleep with. And when the dose wears off, there will not even be affection between them. But I've also experienced the slow-moving, gradually-consuming version of falling in love. After I learned that love isn't necessarily what's left when sudden-lust burns off; urgent desire can be found with strangers and doesn't immediately signify anything deeper. This kind of love doesn't make your stomach drop the moment you meet him, it doesn't make you see your children in his eyes when he introduces himself for the first time. At first you may not even be sure you like him. But because you never feel that sudden jolt, you don't know you're even falling. Infatution is an elevator with a ground floor destination; it makes your heart flip, but almost as soon as you start moving you realize that it's already come to a stop and you're getting out. But the love that takes a gradual approach has no destination, and you don't feel it happening because it doesn't slow down and it doesn't suddenly accelerate. One day you simply understand that you are somehow floating, and you wonder how long this has been the case. You are floating along in love now, not falling, and you look back and try to pinpoint the moment this happened the way you could everytime you "fell" for someone, but it's impossible. I don't know when for sure I knew I loved the Russian lover, but it was some eight months after we started dating. I vaguely sensed that things had shifted somehow, that things between us had become weightier and more entangled. I realized that I cared; not in some general sense, but intimately. And I suspected that he felt the same. I wondered when the words "I love you" would slip out; not because I needed to know it, but because I was ready to be able to acknowledge it. I started having dreams where he told me he loved me, and I would wake up sighing with relief. After a few weeks of these dreams, he finally did say the words. We were having an argument, something about the safety of my car as I was getting ready to leave, and finally in exasperation at my frustration over his concern, he nearly shouted "Because I love you, silly!" And I said "Oh. I love you, too." And he said "So just let me check the fucking oil." The only thing nicer than loving someone is being freely able to tell them so. And while falling in love is exhilerating, actually being in love is a million times better. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/falling.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/falling.php Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:38:29 -0500 Him: "Hey there." [I want to fuck you.] Her: "Hello." [Will you buy me a drink?] Him: "Can I buy you a drink?" [I want to fuck you.] Her: "Sure." Him: "So, what do you do?" [I don't care; I just want to fuck you.] Her: "I (blah blah blah). What do you do? [What's your annual income?] Him: "I (blah blah blah)" [Will you fuck me now?] Her: "Are you single?" [Are you rich enough for me to fuck you?] Him: "Actually, yes. Can I just say that you look beautiful." [Actually, I'm married. But I want to fuck you.] Her: "Aw, thank you. So, are you here with friends?" [Can you introduce me to men who make more money than you do?] Him: "Yes, they are around somewhere." [I want to fuck you; I have dibs on fucking you] Her: "Well, thanks for the drink. I have to get going." [I can do better than you tonight] Him: "Sure. It was nice to meet you; maybe I'll see you around." [I want to fuck you. I will keep trying] http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/the_notsosecret_languages_of_m.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/the_notsosecret_languages_of_m.php Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:02:57 -0500 The Russian lover and I had a knock-down drag-out fight last night, a one-off action spiraling into a series of miscommunications and dramatic gestures. It is so hard sometimes, when we fight, for me to figure out how to say what I want to say without somehow making things worse. I have a natural talent for making things worse without trying; for making things worse the more I make every effort to the contrary. Five minutes spent contemplating the best way to phrase a text message only results in something that comes across as passive aggressive and bitchy, when I was going for mature and thoughtful. And instead of diffusing a tense situation, I inflate it to epic proportions. I'm still learning how to have conflict in a way that is constructive instead of destructive; I'm still learning to communicate instead of trying to manipulate. And all I need to do is simply say what I have to say without trying to hide it or color it or sneak it in somewhere, and this is something I have gotten infinately better at while being in a relationship with someone who will not hold my trivial opinions and preferences against me. The Russian lover is, in some ways, curing me of being a "woman" in the worst senses of the word while slowly helping me to become a woman in the best. I think the better a relationship is, the bigger the occaisional arguments are. Or at least, the bigger they feel. Some relationships are mostly about conflict, with latent friction surfacing almost constantly and fights about laundry as intense as those about infidelity, but all of it on the same frequency of general unhappiness. But in a good relationship, where things are pleasant and comfortable and even wonderful most of the time, the disappointments are more jarring and upsetting. Conflicts are ruptures, a departure from the normal state of things, and both parties are as angry at the argument as they are at each other. No two people will ever coexist without arguments, as much as we might wish it otherwise. But it's whether you allow the arguments to become simply rifts, or whether you allow arguments to teach you about yourself, your partner and about your responses to your partner, that determines whether two people survive their arguments and grow closer after them or are merely separated by them. Thus the importance of fucking; sex is like the kiss and a bandaid for relationship boo-boos that make them all better. So even though we had sex a few hours ago, I'm here at work thinking that I just want to spend the rest of the day sitting on the Russian lover's penis. And if we could figure out the logistics so he could continue getting work done at his computer while I did so, I might do just that. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/difficult.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/difficult.php Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:40:59 -0500 Hell's Kitchen. It's a terrible network reality show, but I love it. I think mostly I love it because I love watching a ruggedly sexy British man having fits. Much of the dialogue on the show is bleeped out, because every other word out of chef Gordon Ramsay's mouth is "fuck" or some variation on the word thereof: fucking, fucker, fucked. He also uses "shit" a lot, as the general lack of talent on the show means there is no kinder way to describe the substances being plated. Fuck is a word I learned relatively late in life; I remember a second-grade discussion where we were comparing "cover" words we were allowed to use in place of swear words. Darn, heck, gosh, etc. You could easily figure out what "bad" words they were substituting for. Then one little girl shared that she was allowed to use "fudge." This made no sense to me; I ran through a mental tally of all the bad words I had ever heard and none of them remotely resembled "fudge." I finally heard the word sometime in middle school while riding a bus with kids from a public school. It still didn't register as a bad word for quite some time; I simply had no knowledge of its existence and therefore no awareness of its social stigma. Eventually I caught on that some of the words being bleeped out in television could only be this word, and I also saw my first R rated movie. A whole new world of obscenity was open to me. The first time I dropped the f-bomb in the house in front of my parents, it was indeed as if a bomb had dropped. I didn't even say "fuck you." I just said something like "I hate this fucking bullshit." They didn't ground me because I didn't have a social life and I preferred to stay alone in my room with books; there really is no way to punish a socially deprived teenager who has no interest in technology because what are you going to do, take away the library card? But I did get yelled at like I'd never been yelled at, and I was delighted to have found something at last I could do that would thoroughly disappoint and enrage my parents. In addition to being religious, I had no interest in cigarettes or drugs or alcohol or parties, and I was a timid virgin who had never been kissed and had no immediate prospects for sexual experimentation. I had perfect grades and a part-time job. So I became a connoisseur of cursing, eloquently foul-mouthed. I had found something I enjoyed that also drove my parents nuts, and was thus finally able to become something of a normal teenager. I continued to take satisfaction in swearing, so I kept at it. I still appreciate it. It's one of the best expressive outlets I've found, and I think that if I cursed less I'd just end up throwing things more. Cursing has probably saved me hundreds if not thousands of dollars in broken windows and busted merchandise. Frustration has to find a way out, and I release mine in strands woven of blasphemy and obscenity. Once when a coworker friend of mind heard me growling ever louder at my computer, she politely asked me what was wrong. "Bloodyfuckinghell, this goddamn piece of motherfucking shit is being a fucking bitch-titted ass, that's what's wrong. Jesusfuckingchrist I can't even get this goddamn stupid fuck working long enough to get up and take a piss." She was very quiet on the other side of the cubicle wall for a moment, and then she simply said "You are an artist."]]> http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/tonight_is_the_season_finale.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/tonight_is_the_season_finale.php Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:14:14 -0500 The past few months I have been slighly more disorganized than usual, ie what other people call "normal." Instead of filing my credit card receipts by month in a mini accordian-style file folder, I've been letting them accumulate in messy piles on my desk and allowing them to slowly take over most of the space in my purse. My wallet had grown obese (not with cash, sadly), and I had crammed so many receipts into it that I had to wrestle them back out. But eventually, my mild OCD wins out and I have to straighten it all out. This weekend I sat down and sorted out about 8 months worth of receipts -- a mind-numbing if deeply satisfying task. It turned into a kind of trip down memory lane, as most of the past year of my life flashed before my eyes. I could practically reconstruct my days with this paper trail; where I had gone for happy hours and what I'd had to drink, when I had splurged on clothes or makeup and what silly over-priced stuff I had bought. Receipts from a vacation, a dental emergency, a big hair makeover. Dinners eaten out and taken out, quick trips to the grocery store for a last-minute ingredient, and endless receipts for wine. I am the designated wine-buyer in our relationship, as I pass the wine store on my walk home from work. We would buy wine in bulk if we had the space or inclination, but until we do I pick up a bottle or two almost every day. In Europe, people who drink wine with dinner every evening are considered "normal human beings." In America, people who drink wine with dinner every evening are considered either "Europeans" or "alcoholics," depending on the drinker's country of origin. This means that my boyfriend is a European and I am an alcoholic. The American way is to drink water or milk or soda with your dinner every evening. Then, on Friday and/or Saturday night, go to a party or a bar and consume an entire week's worth of alcohol. This is not unlike the American tendency to not have sex all week, and then sleep with either a random stranger or the S/O on a weekend evening after consuming an entire week's worth of alcohol. I can only conclude that Americans do not actually enjoy either sex or alcohol, since they seem to be trying to get them both out of the way with one swift weekly binge. If Americans truly enjoyed both alcohol and sex, they would spend most of their time drinking and fucking. And then they'd just be Europeans. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/and_you_shall_know_me_by_my_re.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/and_you_shall_know_me_by_my_re.php Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:06:53 -0500 Me: ... Russian lover: @$#&%*#$! Me: But...! Russian lover: $%*&$*#! Me: Ok then! Fine. Russian lover: !!!! Door: Slam! Some arguments are like a hit deep into left field with two outs and two strikes...they are the last rally of some lurking bad mood, the last efforts of an off day. You didn't see it coming, although you felt that it was possible. And nothing is worse than a lovely evening molested by a petty fight sparked by divergent expectations or mismatched dispositions. Having spent an evening traveling parallel, it is a harsh awakening to see that somewhere between the street and the bed you've gone in opposite ways that come round to a collision. And then you stand stubbornly locked until one of you breaks the tensile moment and leaves. Time and space deflate hostility, and later sex will reinstate the effortless congeniality between lovers. Until then, words hang over heads like jagged icicles, looming menacingly but mostly merely dripping until they disappear. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/late_evening_exchange.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/late_evening_exchange.php Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:33:01 -0500 Me: Shoes that look this good are too painful to wear by the end of the night. Russian lover: That's OK. Me: What do you mean, "That's OK"? Don't you care that my feet will be hurting? Russian lover: I do care, but they won't be hurting. Me: Why not? Russian lover: Because by the end of the night you won't be on your feet; you'll be on your back. http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/early_evening_exchange.php http://www.sheswritinganovel.com/2008/07/early_evening_exchange.php Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:44:12 -0500