I've been reading/listening to a lot of Dan Savage, and it is mind boggling what people freak out about. Straight boys hitting on their gay friends by accident! Girls who want semen in their nose because they live for the rush of the unperformed sex act! College students who have fallen in weepy, snotty love with men a generation older than them! It's all so fascinating. I love human sexuality, and the cross-section that Savage Love features is hairy and juicy. Insert your own joke and grimace at the attendant mental image here.
My favourites revolve around porn and cheating - people are nuts about that! Wives and girlfriends worrying that, if their main men partners like to look at naked ladies (or naked gentlemen, if their men have some complicated sexual preferences), it means that they're cheating degenerate bastards with some sort of mental disorders and they need to be Clockwork Oranged into not watching it anymore. Porn is dangerous, say these ladies. Futhermore, porn is cheating.
Okay, I might be more lenient about the definition of "cheating" than most people, but I would argue that most of the sex-having population isn't getting their panties in a bunch over the idea of pornography. It's a slippery slope, the anti-porn people might say. Porn leads to strip clubs, and strip clubs lead to hooker, and hookers lead to...I don't know...the clap? Getting knifed by a pimp in a dumpster? Or porn leads to thinking about other women, and that leads to kissing other women, and that leads to bending them over the chesterfield and having sweaty midafternoon cheater sex with other women.
Bullshit. Porn leads to masturbation, the most innocuous of all flagrante delictes. I'll hold a warning finger up to silence the people who would argue that masturbation isn't good in a relationship; my body, my choice, right? I can't catch anything from my own sex toys, my partner can't impregnate his hand, and people's rocks need to be gotten off. Sometimes partners get out of sexual sync with each other, for whatever reason: busy work schedules, the flu, a bad few months, an infant, whatever. I've been blessed with friends who can concur that a high sex drive is a blessing and a curse; sometimes, when the sex isn't quite as forthcoming as we'd like, we tap into our bodies, ourselves. As we all should, regardless of relationship status or sex drive, when we need to.
My pal and I, years ago, joked about making hipster porn: heavily accessorized topless girls making out on some disgusting house-party couch. I think it works, actually. There's also soft-core fixed-gear bike porn, for your cycling pervs. Everyone needs a niche. There's also the whole gamut of pornography that is people having sex, getting tied up, being pregnant, sucking on each others toes, getting splashed in the face with veritable bucketloads of semen, and whatever other disgusting and totally normal things like to think about when they pleasure themselves. Some things are porn in disguise: I remember being, like, eight years old and seeing a drawing in a magazine that wasn't sexual in the slightest...except it make me feel strangely excited.
Looking at naked people doing naked stuff on a screen, or in a magazine, isn't stepping out and having sexual relations with those people. It is a form of sex, sure, but it's sex that everyone is entitled to, no matter who else is bringing them pleasure. In the same way that not all porn looks like naked bodies and penetrations, not all sex is PIVMO sex. Every couple needs to define cheating for themselves, but too narrow a definition and you'll end up with a frustrated partner. Putting the kibosh on porn, or worse, making it some pathological flaw, does a disservice to your partner. They are no longer the master (or mistress) of their own sexual destiny.
Is there a time and place for porn? Sure. Your kids don't need to know your sexual tastes, nor do your roommates or your parents. If you're electing to look at porn and masturbate in lieu of an interested and willing partner(s), you might want to think long and hard about why. If you and your beloved are in a rocky romantic patch, it might be insensitive to load up the DVD player and let 'er fly in plain sight. But let 'er fly at some other time; when you have the house to yourself, when he's in the tub, when the kids are at grandma's and it's just you and your pleasure device of choice. It's your right. If you don't need porn, scrunch your face up and think your filthy thoughts. That's your right, too.
And if your favourite person happens to walk in while you're mid-scrunch, invite them to join you, if you want, or finish up and get back to the vacuuming. No sighs, no deprogramming, no accusations of cheating or gnashing of teeth. Just a realization that your partner is the owner-operator of his or her body, and that sometimes porn is the fuel that gets the engine to turn over.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
This Tastes Terrible
I have to confess something. No, I'm not pregnant - unless it's with some sort of fruit salad, which would be just disgusting - nor am I secretly married and/or divorced, a la Emmy Rossum. Although, can you imagine having, like, a secret husband? Would you pretend not to know each other at functions? Would it be a turn on, the secret marriage, or would be it be a huge pain in the ass? What does one wear to a secret wedding? (Actually, I've been to a semi-secret wedding, and if that event was any indication on how things are done, brassieres are optional, and the hangover is pretty much guaranteed.)
I digress. No secret weddings over here. No, my confession is this: I have terrible taste. I have bad taste in music, comic books, clothes, hairstyles, dates, alcoholic beverages, movies, hobbies, and paint colours. My only saving graces is that I have excellent taste in books and friends. Everything else? I suck.
Take, for example, the song I've been listening to on repeat for most of the week: Raghav is a Indo-Canadian pop star most successful in the UK, and his latest single is a flossy piece of summer fun. This is on the heels of that ridiculous "One Life Stand" song, which is a total club anthem and therefor awful by definition. I've been listening to that a bunch lately, too, because I hate my ears and my brain equally. But the songs are so much fun! They're dancing songs! Dancing is fun!
I have a huge crush on comic books generally, but I have to admit that some of my very favourite sequential art (I hate that pretentious term, and myself for using it) is the family-friendly newspaper strip Foxtrot. Don't judge me! I bought the anthologies secondhand, although I would have gladly paid retail for them, because I love them. And I, hipster jerkbag that I am, am ashamed of that love.
We judge each other based on our likes and dislikes. When I find out someone likes the Beastie Boys, or Firefly, or The Walking Dead, my brain starts pinging and saying, "This person is cool!" because I like those things, and because they have a certain amount of cultural currency and credibility. We can talk about zombies, or License to Ill, or some other cultural touchstone that defines us as idiot hipsters. When someone pipes up with the fact that they love Celine Dion, there's an awkward pause as we try to parse it out. Like, for real love? Or ironic love? It's confusing. Is Celine Dion so uncool she's...cool?
Other things? Not so much. I find my clothes in other people's closets and on the side of the road. Normal people shop at The Gap; I scrounge for my outfits like an animal. My last haircut was a DIY affair, a product of boredom and done with my dad's mustache trimming scissors. I think I look great, but I am notorious for thinking I look great when, in reality, I look the "before" picture on a makeover show. Because I'm sartorially dyslexic, I can't really tell the difference.
One of my friends read those hideous Twilight novels because she was interested in them from an anthropological perspective: what are these books? She didn't read them because she was looking to be entertained or because she thought Stephanie Meyer was really going to rock her world or whatever. She was reading to see if the books had merit, if the current fooferaw was based on anything actually, you know, good. Her report to me is that they are total garbage, which I could have probably guessed. But I'll admit to devouring The Babysitter's Club when I was in elementary school, and reading Sweet Valley High novels well past the age when I should have (I read them into my twenties. What's up?); if I was 15% dumber, I bet I would be all over those stupid books.
I think everyone has their bad-taste moments. My dad loves terrible beer; my sister has tipped me off to a lot of crappy music. I have friends who, by their own admission, dress like "lesbian gym teachers." I feel bad for people who are always in good taste. It must be exhausting to be that with-it all the time. My forays into bad taste are like little vacations from my usually awesome state of being. Tacky little cruises into the sea of bad taste, where the souvenirs are gauche jewelry and earnest comic books. Y'all should join me sometime; the water is just fine.
I digress. No secret weddings over here. No, my confession is this: I have terrible taste. I have bad taste in music, comic books, clothes, hairstyles, dates, alcoholic beverages, movies, hobbies, and paint colours. My only saving graces is that I have excellent taste in books and friends. Everything else? I suck.
Take, for example, the song I've been listening to on repeat for most of the week: Raghav is a Indo-Canadian pop star most successful in the UK, and his latest single is a flossy piece of summer fun. This is on the heels of that ridiculous "One Life Stand" song, which is a total club anthem and therefor awful by definition. I've been listening to that a bunch lately, too, because I hate my ears and my brain equally. But the songs are so much fun! They're dancing songs! Dancing is fun!
I have a huge crush on comic books generally, but I have to admit that some of my very favourite sequential art (I hate that pretentious term, and myself for using it) is the family-friendly newspaper strip Foxtrot. Don't judge me! I bought the anthologies secondhand, although I would have gladly paid retail for them, because I love them. And I, hipster jerkbag that I am, am ashamed of that love.
We judge each other based on our likes and dislikes. When I find out someone likes the Beastie Boys, or Firefly, or The Walking Dead, my brain starts pinging and saying, "This person is cool!" because I like those things, and because they have a certain amount of cultural currency and credibility. We can talk about zombies, or License to Ill, or some other cultural touchstone that defines us as idiot hipsters. When someone pipes up with the fact that they love Celine Dion, there's an awkward pause as we try to parse it out. Like, for real love? Or ironic love? It's confusing. Is Celine Dion so uncool she's...cool?
Other things? Not so much. I find my clothes in other people's closets and on the side of the road. Normal people shop at The Gap; I scrounge for my outfits like an animal. My last haircut was a DIY affair, a product of boredom and done with my dad's mustache trimming scissors. I think I look great, but I am notorious for thinking I look great when, in reality, I look the "before" picture on a makeover show. Because I'm sartorially dyslexic, I can't really tell the difference.
One of my friends read those hideous Twilight novels because she was interested in them from an anthropological perspective: what are these books? She didn't read them because she was looking to be entertained or because she thought Stephanie Meyer was really going to rock her world or whatever. She was reading to see if the books had merit, if the current fooferaw was based on anything actually, you know, good. Her report to me is that they are total garbage, which I could have probably guessed. But I'll admit to devouring The Babysitter's Club when I was in elementary school, and reading Sweet Valley High novels well past the age when I should have (I read them into my twenties. What's up?); if I was 15% dumber, I bet I would be all over those stupid books.
I think everyone has their bad-taste moments. My dad loves terrible beer; my sister has tipped me off to a lot of crappy music. I have friends who, by their own admission, dress like "lesbian gym teachers." I feel bad for people who are always in good taste. It must be exhausting to be that with-it all the time. My forays into bad taste are like little vacations from my usually awesome state of being. Tacky little cruises into the sea of bad taste, where the souvenirs are gauche jewelry and earnest comic books. Y'all should join me sometime; the water is just fine.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Story Of My Upcoming Badass Tiny Scar
A few months ago, I went in for my good-Canadian routine physical, the kind of thing that all women are supposed to get once a year to ensure they're not growing horrible little cells or they haven't contracted an STI. I usually go to a pretty blonde doctor, one who looks very J. Crew and healthily tanned, but this year she had mysteriously vanished and was replaced by a woman who weighed about ninety pounds and had a ponytail. If not for the wrinkles, I'd have thought she was sixteen. Call me crazy, but I like my doctors to look like they might be old enough to be high school graduates, let alone done with all that pesky medical training that comes after.
Anyway, she took my blood pressure and made some brusque small talk ("You're an English major? Huh."), and then I lay down on the paper-covered table and she got down to business. For those of you not blessed with a vagina, or who are too scared to go on the regular, a physical is a minor sort of thing. The doctor spends about five minutes with a speculum, another 90 seconds using her hands, and then "you might feel a pinch," which is the swab being done. It actually feels nothing like a pinch. It's weirdly indescribable, although the closest I might come would be "stabby, but in miniature."
Usually, the whole thing is done in, like, ten minutes, and you wipe the lube off your lady bits and put your pants back on and spend the rest of the day feeling just a little bit weird. This time, though, there was a deviation from the script.
"Are you pregnant?" she asked, hand firmly ensconced in my vaginal canal. Immediately, the mental klaxons started blaring.
"Um, no?" I said. Because my brain had immediately gone into panic mode (which renders it into a totally unhelpful jell-o-like state of affairs), I wasn't immediately able to say it like I meant it. So she asked me again, and I repeated "No!" only this time I sounded panicky. I sounded like I was lying. About being pregnant. To a doctor.
"Well," she said, as she took her hand out of my body (note to the vaginaless and the afraid-of-doctors: that is exactly as weird as it sounds), "your uterus is big. I'm going to order some tests." I shrugged. I was a student. Tests don't scare me. Bring 'em on, I said. I'll get all A's. Big uterus? Pfft. Maybe it's big because it can barely contain all my awesomeness. Why do I carry my awesomeness in my uterus? Dunno, but it's awesome!
There was an ultrasound, which was basically a ultrasonic dildo pinging around in my bits, and no less than three technicians who were concerned at their inability to find my left ovary. They kept coming into my little fabric-walled cubicle, peering at the monitor, looking at me, and then leaving to get someone who hadn't left their X-Ray Specs at home. I left feeling unsettled, mostly because I didn't fit the demographic in the waiting room: youngish and pregnant, or older and cancer-bald. Me and my big uterus and my AWOL ovary slunk outside and had a little cry on the steps of the building, because apparently things were not okay in there.
When I went back to the doctor a week later, she was mystified. "This isn't really what I deal with," she told me, which is fine. It's not really what I deal with either. I asked about cancer. She sort of shrugged and was like, "Er, probably not. But I'm not promising you anything," which my jell-o brain interpreted as yet more reasons to freak out. While she was saying things about follow-up appointments, my brain was yelling "YOU HAVE CANCER, IT'S EVERYWHERE, IT'S ON YOUR HAIR, HOLY SHIT," so it was sort of hard to hear. My brain apparently reacts to the possibilty of cancer the same way it reacts to getting pooped on by a bird.
I went to the gynecologist, a person who does deal with this shit. He was like, "Well, there's something in there, but I can't tell what it is." He then threw a bunch of words with -oma and -oid on the end of them into the conversation, but I was so addled I could barely sit up. My friend Liz, who just got accepted into nursing school and who was my number one pick for dealing with this kind of medical mystery tour, was nodding and asking questions and being a grownup, while I was clawing at the neckline of my shirt and turning gray. Turns out, he doesn't know what it is either. He was like, "Surgery will tell us!" which I said yes to, and then he mentioned that it's the size of a grapefruit.
Next time you're at the grocery store, pick up a grapefruit. It doesn't have to be one of those Floridian monsters; just a regular old grapefruit will do. Now imagine this thing embedded in your abdomen, two inches to the left and one inch down from your navel. Weird, yeah? After I left that appointment and some of the blood came back into my head (and cried a bunch more), I went out and bought a grapefruit. I was going to eat it, to show my abdominal lump who was boss, but that idea grossed me right out. I eventually threw it away.
I'm having a hard time conceptualizing this mass. While it probably looks fairly gross, what I'm picturing is, like, a Diet Coke can just wedged in there. Or maybe a lost and hibernating bat. Something foreign. Something sort of repulsive and sort of cute at the same time. Conceptualizing the mass in vaguely gross and hilarious ways is distracting me from thinking about the surgery. I'm oscillating between pretending to be blase about the whole thing and feeling fucking terrified. I've never had anesthetic before. I've never had morphine before. The nurses told me I couldn't ride my bike for a month after, which, like, hello: that's what I do. The only time I've ever had stitches is when I ran my face into a wall playing tag at a friend's house. I'm not afraid of blood or pain or stitches or throwing up in the recovery room; I'm afraid of feeling crappy, forever.
My Bill Cosby pudding brain keeps shrieking about all the bad shit that could happen, and that is getting super tedious. My more rational and tender and, frankly, better brainparts all keep trying to remind me that this is getting dealt with. The lump, whatever it is (I'm rooting for bat, just because it would freak my gyno right out), was found. The surgery, whatever that's going to be like, is happening soon (August 12!). The shitty feelings of post-surgical recovery are fast approaching, but that means they'll also be going away that much sooner. And the fear of the unknown will disappear, because these worries will become known entities.
I know this is long. Thanks for reading. Sometimes it - the lump, the fear, the story - just needs to come out.
Anyway, she took my blood pressure and made some brusque small talk ("You're an English major? Huh."), and then I lay down on the paper-covered table and she got down to business. For those of you not blessed with a vagina, or who are too scared to go on the regular, a physical is a minor sort of thing. The doctor spends about five minutes with a speculum, another 90 seconds using her hands, and then "you might feel a pinch," which is the swab being done. It actually feels nothing like a pinch. It's weirdly indescribable, although the closest I might come would be "stabby, but in miniature."
Usually, the whole thing is done in, like, ten minutes, and you wipe the lube off your lady bits and put your pants back on and spend the rest of the day feeling just a little bit weird. This time, though, there was a deviation from the script.
"Are you pregnant?" she asked, hand firmly ensconced in my vaginal canal. Immediately, the mental klaxons started blaring.
"Um, no?" I said. Because my brain had immediately gone into panic mode (which renders it into a totally unhelpful jell-o-like state of affairs), I wasn't immediately able to say it like I meant it. So she asked me again, and I repeated "No!" only this time I sounded panicky. I sounded like I was lying. About being pregnant. To a doctor.
"Well," she said, as she took her hand out of my body (note to the vaginaless and the afraid-of-doctors: that is exactly as weird as it sounds), "your uterus is big. I'm going to order some tests." I shrugged. I was a student. Tests don't scare me. Bring 'em on, I said. I'll get all A's. Big uterus? Pfft. Maybe it's big because it can barely contain all my awesomeness. Why do I carry my awesomeness in my uterus? Dunno, but it's awesome!
There was an ultrasound, which was basically a ultrasonic dildo pinging around in my bits, and no less than three technicians who were concerned at their inability to find my left ovary. They kept coming into my little fabric-walled cubicle, peering at the monitor, looking at me, and then leaving to get someone who hadn't left their X-Ray Specs at home. I left feeling unsettled, mostly because I didn't fit the demographic in the waiting room: youngish and pregnant, or older and cancer-bald. Me and my big uterus and my AWOL ovary slunk outside and had a little cry on the steps of the building, because apparently things were not okay in there.
When I went back to the doctor a week later, she was mystified. "This isn't really what I deal with," she told me, which is fine. It's not really what I deal with either. I asked about cancer. She sort of shrugged and was like, "Er, probably not. But I'm not promising you anything," which my jell-o brain interpreted as yet more reasons to freak out. While she was saying things about follow-up appointments, my brain was yelling "YOU HAVE CANCER, IT'S EVERYWHERE, IT'S ON YOUR HAIR, HOLY SHIT," so it was sort of hard to hear. My brain apparently reacts to the possibilty of cancer the same way it reacts to getting pooped on by a bird.
I went to the gynecologist, a person who does deal with this shit. He was like, "Well, there's something in there, but I can't tell what it is." He then threw a bunch of words with -oma and -oid on the end of them into the conversation, but I was so addled I could barely sit up. My friend Liz, who just got accepted into nursing school and who was my number one pick for dealing with this kind of medical mystery tour, was nodding and asking questions and being a grownup, while I was clawing at the neckline of my shirt and turning gray. Turns out, he doesn't know what it is either. He was like, "Surgery will tell us!" which I said yes to, and then he mentioned that it's the size of a grapefruit.
Next time you're at the grocery store, pick up a grapefruit. It doesn't have to be one of those Floridian monsters; just a regular old grapefruit will do. Now imagine this thing embedded in your abdomen, two inches to the left and one inch down from your navel. Weird, yeah? After I left that appointment and some of the blood came back into my head (and cried a bunch more), I went out and bought a grapefruit. I was going to eat it, to show my abdominal lump who was boss, but that idea grossed me right out. I eventually threw it away.
I'm having a hard time conceptualizing this mass. While it probably looks fairly gross, what I'm picturing is, like, a Diet Coke can just wedged in there. Or maybe a lost and hibernating bat. Something foreign. Something sort of repulsive and sort of cute at the same time. Conceptualizing the mass in vaguely gross and hilarious ways is distracting me from thinking about the surgery. I'm oscillating between pretending to be blase about the whole thing and feeling fucking terrified. I've never had anesthetic before. I've never had morphine before. The nurses told me I couldn't ride my bike for a month after, which, like, hello: that's what I do. The only time I've ever had stitches is when I ran my face into a wall playing tag at a friend's house. I'm not afraid of blood or pain or stitches or throwing up in the recovery room; I'm afraid of feeling crappy, forever.
My Bill Cosby pudding brain keeps shrieking about all the bad shit that could happen, and that is getting super tedious. My more rational and tender and, frankly, better brainparts all keep trying to remind me that this is getting dealt with. The lump, whatever it is (I'm rooting for bat, just because it would freak my gyno right out), was found. The surgery, whatever that's going to be like, is happening soon (August 12!). The shitty feelings of post-surgical recovery are fast approaching, but that means they'll also be going away that much sooner. And the fear of the unknown will disappear, because these worries will become known entities.
I know this is long. Thanks for reading. Sometimes it - the lump, the fear, the story - just needs to come out.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Thank Someone It's Someday
The whole concept of Thank God It's Friday kind of cracks me up. In Dubai, the standard work week and deity are different (Sunday through Thursday and Allah, respectively), leading its office drones to proclaim TAIT! As a waitress, my work week runs from Tuesday through Saturday; since Monday is traditionally a nothing-doin' kind of day in Stratford (come for the theater, stay for the mind-numbing dark days!), most of the bistros close. This tends to result in the bars in town having boozy Sunday nights, as all the waitstaff in town shamble out to get epically drunk, a by-product of having to deal with demanding elderly customers and psychotic kitchen staff all week.
However, even though TGIF doesn't apply to me and my service-industry brothers and sisters, I appreciate the idea of a marker for the end of the work week. When I was in elementary and middle school, ABC used to run the TGIF Friday-night lineup, which was a great way for tweens to blow off some steam at the end of a hormonally fraught week of school. It was like, science, sex ed, horrible lunch period of existential despair and unpopularity, French, math, interminable Guantanamo Bay bus ride, Boy Meets World. Ahhh. The comforting world of Cory and sexy Topanga, narcotizing the week away. Bliss.
There's even a restaurant chain devoted to the idea of making Fridays into a celebratory casting-off of the work week. Granted, I hate T.G.I.Fridays and its plastic food, but they've absolutely been able to expand the concept of the Friday night treat over seven nights: oversweetened daiquiri slurries paired with jalapeno cheese poppers have, for a large segment of the population, come to represent the "dinner" in the "dinner-and-a-movie" algorithm that is a wholesome Friday night. Or, in the case of some lucky Sydney office workers, a productive Friday afternoon.
I look forward to Friday, even though it's not the end of my work week, because everyone else seems so relieved. My parents kick back with a couple beers, my sister visibly relaxes, my friends regale me with stories about their work week. Some of my favourite websites leave little Hansel-and-Gretel treats to peruse over the weekend. Fridays means dinner out, a chance to stay up late and be on our own time. Friday at 5:01, the whole weekend is ahead of you, shining and glorious. I love that feeling of possibility. Maybe it's a movie night, or a date. Maybe it's a trip to the cottage for the weekend, or the city. Maybe it's a barbecue on the back deck, taking the kids to grandma's for the weekend, a whirlwind trip to Vegas, or simply just a chance to grab some takeout and watch some DVDs. May I suggest some Boy Meets World? It pairs very nicely with the start of a weekend. I know from experience.
However, even though TGIF doesn't apply to me and my service-industry brothers and sisters, I appreciate the idea of a marker for the end of the work week. When I was in elementary and middle school, ABC used to run the TGIF Friday-night lineup, which was a great way for tweens to blow off some steam at the end of a hormonally fraught week of school. It was like, science, sex ed, horrible lunch period of existential despair and unpopularity, French, math, interminable Guantanamo Bay bus ride, Boy Meets World. Ahhh. The comforting world of Cory and sexy Topanga, narcotizing the week away. Bliss.
There's even a restaurant chain devoted to the idea of making Fridays into a celebratory casting-off of the work week. Granted, I hate T.G.I.Fridays and its plastic food, but they've absolutely been able to expand the concept of the Friday night treat over seven nights: oversweetened daiquiri slurries paired with jalapeno cheese poppers have, for a large segment of the population, come to represent the "dinner" in the "dinner-and-a-movie" algorithm that is a wholesome Friday night. Or, in the case of some lucky Sydney office workers, a productive Friday afternoon.
I look forward to Friday, even though it's not the end of my work week, because everyone else seems so relieved. My parents kick back with a couple beers, my sister visibly relaxes, my friends regale me with stories about their work week. Some of my favourite websites leave little Hansel-and-Gretel treats to peruse over the weekend. Fridays means dinner out, a chance to stay up late and be on our own time. Friday at 5:01, the whole weekend is ahead of you, shining and glorious. I love that feeling of possibility. Maybe it's a movie night, or a date. Maybe it's a trip to the cottage for the weekend, or the city. Maybe it's a barbecue on the back deck, taking the kids to grandma's for the weekend, a whirlwind trip to Vegas, or simply just a chance to grab some takeout and watch some DVDs. May I suggest some Boy Meets World? It pairs very nicely with the start of a weekend. I know from experience.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Enemonic
The title of this blog, "Hipsters Are Boring," was originally intended as a slam against Chuck Klosterman, whose books made me totally crazy. Not even crazy in a grab-strangers-by-their-lapels way - I am that nuts about David Foster Wallace, Brian Lee O'Malley and Coke Zero, for all of which/whom I would organize parades - but not about Klosterman. Him, I would cheerfully fight. I've long felt that women have "people we don't like," while men get to have enemies (I think it's a holdover from that whole nice-woman bullshit from before my time), but this woman has some enemies.
I love a good loathing. Not mano-a-mano type stuff: that gets too weird. I have friends...former friends...people who exist in a gray zone between awkwardness and anger....but they're not really enemies, they're just people who make me sad. No, enemies are people who have wronged you on an epic, inarguable scale. People like, say, Margaret Atwood.
Atwood is my enemy because she gets all these accolades and awards, and as far as I can tell, is terrible. I don't mind terrible. I'm often terrible myself. But Atwood offends me because her prose is so often stolid and her dialogue reads like it was run through Babelfish, and yet she still gets nominated for everything under the sun. Kudos! Why? She still gets to look all coy, and offer her opinion on stuff, and people gobble it up like she's some sort of Canadian feminist oracle. Look. I know she looks like a witch (a look I embrace), and yeah, The Handmaid's Tale was sort of entertaining in a post-apocalyptic vein, but Oryx and Crake? Seriously? No. That book was weak sauce. And it gets taught, in real universities, with professors and shit. Like, it got treated like a real piece of action. And it's not.
Atwood and Klosterman are enemies of mine in a particular genre, "the writer who seriously for real doesn't deserve it," which, as a semi-sort-of-aw-shucks sort of writer, totally burns my brisket. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of writers who inspire me. They produce work that isn't perfect (nothing ever is, right?) but manages to transcend imperfection to become some other kind of perfect. Their books are smart and sassy, lovely and lonely, gorgeous and gross, and they form my connective tissue. Atwood? Klosterman? Please. Their words fail to connect with me, and because they've been lauded as "must-reads" and we've been told that anyone who hasn't read them should just throw themselves on their swords right now, so much shame should we feel, I'm pissed off. I feel like that jerkwad who pointed out the emperor has no clothes.
What makes it worse is that maybe everyone else is looking at a bespoke suit, and I'm gazing at Klosterman's (probably) hairy ass. What I mean is, maybe I don't get it. And I'm the only one.
That's the thing about enemies. Each of my enemies has been carefully culled from a large pool of contenders, selected for their unique ability to totally enrage me. I might be alone in that rage. Mark G. Yudof, the president of the University of California school system, made my list because of a particularly douchey interview in the New York Times Magazine, but people clearly think he's worth talking to, or else the interview wouldn't have run in the first place. Michael Cera used to be on my enemies list, but he's been begrudgingly downgraded because of his involvement in the (fingers-crossed) awesome Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. His nebbishy one-note characters irritated me greatly; maybe in this flick he'll have grown some stones and figured out how to rock.
Enemies aren't easy to dismiss; there's a respect layered in with the irritation. While Atwood makes me roar with rage, I understand her appeal. Same with Chuck Klosterman. Both have a charismatic style and a look-at-me attitude that, as a writer, I wish I could tap into. Both writers, and Yudof, and Cera, have charm. They can work a room. They believe wholeheartedly that what they do is fucking amazeballs. Do I have that kinds of unshakable belief in my writing? No. I'm jealous of that, and professional jealousy makes me feel mentally ill and like I need to go eat my body weight in Dreamsicles. Hence the enemies list.
It's not like I'm going to show up on Atwood's doorstep with a homicidal glint in my eye. For one thing, after all those Dreamsicles, I'm not going anywhere fast. But also because, while I would love nothing more than to have all her books be revealed as the cause of obesity, and for scientists to discover that reading Klosterman while pregnant leads to stupid babies, I also need them. They make me push myself, just a little. They give me something to aspire to. If I ever get there, I'm sure some horrible quarter-life crisis blogger will be calling me terrible and uninspired, with bad writing and deep personal flaws. And then I'll just look over at my mantle full of "undeserved" awards and smile like the Cheshire cat. Much like Margaret Atwood does now.
I love a good loathing. Not mano-a-mano type stuff: that gets too weird. I have friends...former friends...people who exist in a gray zone between awkwardness and anger....but they're not really enemies, they're just people who make me sad. No, enemies are people who have wronged you on an epic, inarguable scale. People like, say, Margaret Atwood.
Atwood is my enemy because she gets all these accolades and awards, and as far as I can tell, is terrible. I don't mind terrible. I'm often terrible myself. But Atwood offends me because her prose is so often stolid and her dialogue reads like it was run through Babelfish, and yet she still gets nominated for everything under the sun. Kudos! Why? She still gets to look all coy, and offer her opinion on stuff, and people gobble it up like she's some sort of Canadian feminist oracle. Look. I know she looks like a witch (a look I embrace), and yeah, The Handmaid's Tale was sort of entertaining in a post-apocalyptic vein, but Oryx and Crake? Seriously? No. That book was weak sauce. And it gets taught, in real universities, with professors and shit. Like, it got treated like a real piece of action. And it's not.
Atwood and Klosterman are enemies of mine in a particular genre, "the writer who seriously for real doesn't deserve it," which, as a semi-sort-of-aw-shucks sort of writer, totally burns my brisket. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of writers who inspire me. They produce work that isn't perfect (nothing ever is, right?) but manages to transcend imperfection to become some other kind of perfect. Their books are smart and sassy, lovely and lonely, gorgeous and gross, and they form my connective tissue. Atwood? Klosterman? Please. Their words fail to connect with me, and because they've been lauded as "must-reads" and we've been told that anyone who hasn't read them should just throw themselves on their swords right now, so much shame should we feel, I'm pissed off. I feel like that jerkwad who pointed out the emperor has no clothes.
What makes it worse is that maybe everyone else is looking at a bespoke suit, and I'm gazing at Klosterman's (probably) hairy ass. What I mean is, maybe I don't get it. And I'm the only one.
That's the thing about enemies. Each of my enemies has been carefully culled from a large pool of contenders, selected for their unique ability to totally enrage me. I might be alone in that rage. Mark G. Yudof, the president of the University of California school system, made my list because of a particularly douchey interview in the New York Times Magazine, but people clearly think he's worth talking to, or else the interview wouldn't have run in the first place. Michael Cera used to be on my enemies list, but he's been begrudgingly downgraded because of his involvement in the (fingers-crossed) awesome Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. His nebbishy one-note characters irritated me greatly; maybe in this flick he'll have grown some stones and figured out how to rock.
Enemies aren't easy to dismiss; there's a respect layered in with the irritation. While Atwood makes me roar with rage, I understand her appeal. Same with Chuck Klosterman. Both have a charismatic style and a look-at-me attitude that, as a writer, I wish I could tap into. Both writers, and Yudof, and Cera, have charm. They can work a room. They believe wholeheartedly that what they do is fucking amazeballs. Do I have that kinds of unshakable belief in my writing? No. I'm jealous of that, and professional jealousy makes me feel mentally ill and like I need to go eat my body weight in Dreamsicles. Hence the enemies list.
It's not like I'm going to show up on Atwood's doorstep with a homicidal glint in my eye. For one thing, after all those Dreamsicles, I'm not going anywhere fast. But also because, while I would love nothing more than to have all her books be revealed as the cause of obesity, and for scientists to discover that reading Klosterman while pregnant leads to stupid babies, I also need them. They make me push myself, just a little. They give me something to aspire to. If I ever get there, I'm sure some horrible quarter-life crisis blogger will be calling me terrible and uninspired, with bad writing and deep personal flaws. And then I'll just look over at my mantle full of "undeserved" awards and smile like the Cheshire cat. Much like Margaret Atwood does now.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Dirtbag Love
Dirtbags. I love 'em, even though they freak me out. There's something so intensely appealing about the I-don't-give-a-shit ethos of a true hipster dirtbag, something that can't be explained away. At the same time, there's something almost comically off-putting about dirtbags. The collision of the attraction and the repulsion? I can only conclude that hipster dirtbags are like magnets. Gross, dirty, awesome magnets.
I blame Vice magazine for the rise of the hipster dirtbag in the first place. Vice, with its influential "Dos and Don'ts" street fashion section, fronted this minigeneration of hipsters an aesthetic that celebrated street fighting, tank tops on men, scraggly hair, cheap beer, girls who shoplift, dancing all night in dingy bars, smoking cigarettes instead of eating food (food! It's delicious!), sleeping on a dirty mattress with no sheets, and rustbucket bikes. The vibe is a mishmash of DIY punk, lines of cheap coke, 7" vinyl, and binge drinking. Vice was a huge promoter of this party-til-you-puke way of living, which, to someone in their early 20s with no money and no real handle on how concepts like "jobs" and "bosses" work, is totally sexy.
To be honest, it's still kind of sexy. The appeal lies in the Peter Pan-ish qualities of the dudes and broads who eschew the corporate grind and treat their flophouse apartments like a clubhouse. The downside is, those folks often develop a crushing drug habit, a police record for petty offenses, or, more likely, just never throw away the crusty clothes. What's charming and hilarious at 22 is dodgy at 32 and downright icky at 52.
Caught in an in-between phase, I'm both attracted to the filthy hedonism and and put off by it. The hipster dirtbag has always been good for a fling, either romantic or criminal, but as I get a little bit older, I find myself questioning my motives re: dirtbaggery. Am I seriously attracted to dudes with drinking problems and bad haircuts? Or is this just a romancing of the stoned: these guys always seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of early punk music, Danish bicycles, druggy memoirs from the 1960s, and whose nerdiness is patinaed with glamour. Plus, they don't seem to give a shit either way if people like them or not: self-confidence bordering on lunatic hubris can be very appealing.
But as I get older, I'm realizing the dirtbag is not a sustainable crush. For one, they seem to change addresses every few months, as the rent money gets spent on pitchers of beer and cigarettes. They rarely hold down jobs that pay actual paychecks, instead preferring to focus on their imaginary careers as "photographers" and working as dishwashers in restaurants. They make terrible boyfriends, since they have drug-fueled rages or crying jags that are prompted by their father's fourth marriage. It's impossible to take them anywhere - they want to clean up, but it's tough when all you have are Felix the Cat tee-shirts from 1979. And parents hate them, because the dirtbags have the kind of black-eye sex that makes parents lie away in the dark at night, worrying.
I love them: I want to cradle them in my arms, smooth their wretched hair, and whisper sweet nothings into their ears. "You'll be the next Ryan McGuinley, darling. You'll be the next Dov Charney." But I'm also so over them. I want to shake their skinny shoulders, beg them to get a steady paycheck, stop sleeping with the psychopathic Berliner who set fire to the photo of them with Joe Strummer, and just get with the program. Stop giving each other neck tattoos. Stop living off burritos - I know they're delicious, but eat a vegetable! You're going to get scurvy, and I'm going to laugh at you! Take your knowledge of the dirtbag years - all the cut corners and smart-ass charm - and apply it to your lives as grownups. Dirtbags, you can parlay your special skills and delights into a huge variety of lifestyles that don't require you to fall down the stairs drunk on a Monday. And then I can love you even more.
I blame Vice magazine for the rise of the hipster dirtbag in the first place. Vice, with its influential "Dos and Don'ts" street fashion section, fronted this minigeneration of hipsters an aesthetic that celebrated street fighting, tank tops on men, scraggly hair, cheap beer, girls who shoplift, dancing all night in dingy bars, smoking cigarettes instead of eating food (food! It's delicious!), sleeping on a dirty mattress with no sheets, and rustbucket bikes. The vibe is a mishmash of DIY punk, lines of cheap coke, 7" vinyl, and binge drinking. Vice was a huge promoter of this party-til-you-puke way of living, which, to someone in their early 20s with no money and no real handle on how concepts like "jobs" and "bosses" work, is totally sexy.
To be honest, it's still kind of sexy. The appeal lies in the Peter Pan-ish qualities of the dudes and broads who eschew the corporate grind and treat their flophouse apartments like a clubhouse. The downside is, those folks often develop a crushing drug habit, a police record for petty offenses, or, more likely, just never throw away the crusty clothes. What's charming and hilarious at 22 is dodgy at 32 and downright icky at 52.
Caught in an in-between phase, I'm both attracted to the filthy hedonism and and put off by it. The hipster dirtbag has always been good for a fling, either romantic or criminal, but as I get a little bit older, I find myself questioning my motives re: dirtbaggery. Am I seriously attracted to dudes with drinking problems and bad haircuts? Or is this just a romancing of the stoned: these guys always seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of early punk music, Danish bicycles, druggy memoirs from the 1960s, and whose nerdiness is patinaed with glamour. Plus, they don't seem to give a shit either way if people like them or not: self-confidence bordering on lunatic hubris can be very appealing.
But as I get older, I'm realizing the dirtbag is not a sustainable crush. For one, they seem to change addresses every few months, as the rent money gets spent on pitchers of beer and cigarettes. They rarely hold down jobs that pay actual paychecks, instead preferring to focus on their imaginary careers as "photographers" and working as dishwashers in restaurants. They make terrible boyfriends, since they have drug-fueled rages or crying jags that are prompted by their father's fourth marriage. It's impossible to take them anywhere - they want to clean up, but it's tough when all you have are Felix the Cat tee-shirts from 1979. And parents hate them, because the dirtbags have the kind of black-eye sex that makes parents lie away in the dark at night, worrying.
I love them: I want to cradle them in my arms, smooth their wretched hair, and whisper sweet nothings into their ears. "You'll be the next Ryan McGuinley, darling. You'll be the next Dov Charney." But I'm also so over them. I want to shake their skinny shoulders, beg them to get a steady paycheck, stop sleeping with the psychopathic Berliner who set fire to the photo of them with Joe Strummer, and just get with the program. Stop giving each other neck tattoos. Stop living off burritos - I know they're delicious, but eat a vegetable! You're going to get scurvy, and I'm going to laugh at you! Take your knowledge of the dirtbag years - all the cut corners and smart-ass charm - and apply it to your lives as grownups. Dirtbags, you can parlay your special skills and delights into a huge variety of lifestyles that don't require you to fall down the stairs drunk on a Monday. And then I can love you even more.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Bored Of Directors
Allegedly, boredom is good for you - some sort of mental palate cleanser to help folks keep on their track of splitting atoms and designing wearable birdcages - but long stretches of it makes me want to put my head in the oven. Granted, my oven is electric, so it would just be me, mushing my face against the cheese stalagmites from a decade's worth of pizza prep, but at least it would be something to do.
I usually love being bored. I mean, "love" is kind of a strong word - but I sometimes sort of relish boredom. Tonight, I was at work, doling out an epic lean on the bar. I had served three customers and had already scrubbed the whole damned place from top to bottom. That restaurant is clean, yo. And as I was leaning, watching uninterested people bypass the heavy Italian food we serve in favour of menus that include exotic ingredients like vegetables, my mind was wandering. Thinking about if I should invest in more comic books and if so, which ones; how I'm going to decorate my new room in the fall; and what I would say if I ran into my ex-boyfriend (the fantasy usually involves me being much taller and leggier, while he's gone completely bald, developed a hunchback and has basically morphed into Richard III. In reality, what I usually say is "Guh," with a blush that makes me look like I'm having a coronary); how I can incorporate plants into my new room without having to water them; whether or not my head is too small for my body; and various places I'd like to make out with someone.
There's no rhyme or reason to a good boredom session. It's usually forced upon you, stranding you with nothing to do while you wait for the good people of Service Ontario to take your health card picture. Or at work, waiting for the customers, the orders, the system to come back online, or the photocopier to stop barfing toner all over the floor. These are moments devoid of tasks, so your brain stops paying attention to what it should be doing. Instead, your mind tells itself breathless little stories about things you might conceivably do one day, and for a split second, you've convinced yourself that you're the next Mags Atwood. Then your neurons snap back into place and you resume the nit-picky but tedious job of arranging the clip-art on the biweekly company updates. Atwood remains safe as the queen of Canlit and one of my personal enemies.
But boredom, day in and day out, is a major mental drain. I like the occasional boredom jag because usually my job, and life, is interesting enough that a little bit of dazed staring is a mini-vacation, not a permanent mode of existence.
Waitressing is considered "unskilled labour" in a lot of job markets, but I would love to see the government official who described it like that handling a full section on a busy night when everyone wants separate checks, the kitchen staff has gone nuclear, and the dishwasher is sobbing. Unskilled, my ass. It's fast. But it's also tedious. Serving tables has the same basic to-do list each time a new customer is seated - which works - but it's also relatively easy to forget yourself in the sheer physicality of hauling hot food to people and wiping up condensation rings on the table. It's challenging, but serving tables doesn't exactly hot-wire the creative, problem-solving side of your brain. It is, in a nutshell, boring.
While I wouldn't return to the dreary reading lists of my university life, I'm craving a job that asks me to make thoughts. I'm not interested in mindless file-'n'-fax office jobs, or any job that requires a script, be it telemarketing or just starting every interaction with, "Can I start you folks off with a drink?" That kind of boredom is not good. That's when people start dressing their pets up like food products and experimenting with hallucinogenics on the clock.
Our minds are supposed to wander. It's good for us, it allows creativity to flow and outside-the-box thinking to happen. I applaud boredom, daydreaming, imaginary conversations, sexual fantasies, planning outfits, reminiscing, reconstructions, and reimaginings. If bored, I can easily amuse myself by thinking about the last person I kissed (or the first - hi Jordan!), the pros and cons of terrariums as a solution to the waterless plants I so desire, and how much my feet hurt in my stupid Payless shoes.
But too much boredom just pins you against the wall. Too much boredom and I start worrying about things, silly things, things that, in the context of my insanely bored mind, start looming and growing horns and teeth and generally freaking me right the fuck out. Thoughts about food and haircuts start taking over the easily annexed parts of my brain. My bored brain is like Poland in 1939. I like a little boredom, the same way I like a little dairy. Too much of either and I start sweating and feeling nauseous. So I need a balance. Folks are loathe to admit that boredom is necessary for us. Setting our brainpans on screensaver mode while we wait for the doctor to see us is a great thing. I like daydreaming, letting my mind wander and then come back to the task at hand. As, I suspect, do most people.
I usually love being bored. I mean, "love" is kind of a strong word - but I sometimes sort of relish boredom. Tonight, I was at work, doling out an epic lean on the bar. I had served three customers and had already scrubbed the whole damned place from top to bottom. That restaurant is clean, yo. And as I was leaning, watching uninterested people bypass the heavy Italian food we serve in favour of menus that include exotic ingredients like vegetables, my mind was wandering. Thinking about if I should invest in more comic books and if so, which ones; how I'm going to decorate my new room in the fall; and what I would say if I ran into my ex-boyfriend (the fantasy usually involves me being much taller and leggier, while he's gone completely bald, developed a hunchback and has basically morphed into Richard III. In reality, what I usually say is "Guh," with a blush that makes me look like I'm having a coronary); how I can incorporate plants into my new room without having to water them; whether or not my head is too small for my body; and various places I'd like to make out with someone.
There's no rhyme or reason to a good boredom session. It's usually forced upon you, stranding you with nothing to do while you wait for the good people of Service Ontario to take your health card picture. Or at work, waiting for the customers, the orders, the system to come back online, or the photocopier to stop barfing toner all over the floor. These are moments devoid of tasks, so your brain stops paying attention to what it should be doing. Instead, your mind tells itself breathless little stories about things you might conceivably do one day, and for a split second, you've convinced yourself that you're the next Mags Atwood. Then your neurons snap back into place and you resume the nit-picky but tedious job of arranging the clip-art on the biweekly company updates. Atwood remains safe as the queen of Canlit and one of my personal enemies.
But boredom, day in and day out, is a major mental drain. I like the occasional boredom jag because usually my job, and life, is interesting enough that a little bit of dazed staring is a mini-vacation, not a permanent mode of existence.
Waitressing is considered "unskilled labour" in a lot of job markets, but I would love to see the government official who described it like that handling a full section on a busy night when everyone wants separate checks, the kitchen staff has gone nuclear, and the dishwasher is sobbing. Unskilled, my ass. It's fast. But it's also tedious. Serving tables has the same basic to-do list each time a new customer is seated - which works - but it's also relatively easy to forget yourself in the sheer physicality of hauling hot food to people and wiping up condensation rings on the table. It's challenging, but serving tables doesn't exactly hot-wire the creative, problem-solving side of your brain. It is, in a nutshell, boring.
While I wouldn't return to the dreary reading lists of my university life, I'm craving a job that asks me to make thoughts. I'm not interested in mindless file-'n'-fax office jobs, or any job that requires a script, be it telemarketing or just starting every interaction with, "Can I start you folks off with a drink?" That kind of boredom is not good. That's when people start dressing their pets up like food products and experimenting with hallucinogenics on the clock.
Our minds are supposed to wander. It's good for us, it allows creativity to flow and outside-the-box thinking to happen. I applaud boredom, daydreaming, imaginary conversations, sexual fantasies, planning outfits, reminiscing, reconstructions, and reimaginings. If bored, I can easily amuse myself by thinking about the last person I kissed (or the first - hi Jordan!), the pros and cons of terrariums as a solution to the waterless plants I so desire, and how much my feet hurt in my stupid Payless shoes.
But too much boredom just pins you against the wall. Too much boredom and I start worrying about things, silly things, things that, in the context of my insanely bored mind, start looming and growing horns and teeth and generally freaking me right the fuck out. Thoughts about food and haircuts start taking over the easily annexed parts of my brain. My bored brain is like Poland in 1939. I like a little boredom, the same way I like a little dairy. Too much of either and I start sweating and feeling nauseous. So I need a balance. Folks are loathe to admit that boredom is necessary for us. Setting our brainpans on screensaver mode while we wait for the doctor to see us is a great thing. I like daydreaming, letting my mind wander and then come back to the task at hand. As, I suspect, do most people.
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