I just got back from a night and a day in oh-so-not-at-all-beautiful Yakima, Washington.
I was teaching the staff of the clinic there self-defense today, and had to try very hard, when telling them how best to keep safe and feel secure, not to simply say “First? Get the hell out of this town.”
I am relying on Washington natives here to know I need say no more.
My plans for last weekend were pretty mellow: I was going to work on my taxes, do a little housecleaning, maybe get started on my garden now that the sun is back out, hang out with my sweetheart, finish some writing, practice piano and play some Scrabble. I was going to tend to myself, for the most part.
The weekend I would up having was quite a bit different.
Last Wednesday, I raced against the clock — I had to go work at the clinic the next day — to get everything up for our focus this month on sexual assault and abuse as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. That included getting together a page and other materials for the “I Was Raped” shirts which months back, I’d agreed to help Jennifer Baumgardner distribute as part of a project to increase rape awareness, both through these t-shirts and the conversation we’d hoped they’d start, as well as through her developing film of the same name, which will focus on first-person stories from survivors.
The New York Times first covered the project, using a photo of Jennifer — which was appropriate, since this is her project. Then Gawker and Jezebel hit on it, using a photo of me in the shirt without my permission or even a request for it (and still have yet to respond to my requests to remove a copyrighted image they have no permission to use). A few more sites followed suit. Later on Friday, KOMO-4 news contacted me, telling me they were doing a story on it that night and asking for my participation. As is my general practice with television, I declined to be filmed, but did finally agree to have a phone interview.
Before that interview, the reporter and I had a discussion about using my image where I explained why I was not comfortable with my face being put on the television as a survivor. I explained that when I went to get coffee this weekend, I needed it to be up to me if I was “that woman who is dairy allergic, so don’t forget, soy only,” or “that woman who was raped.” I explained that as a counselor for an abortion clinic half the week, I didn’t want to make anything of my personal life so broadly visible that any of my clients might recognize me and doubt that it was their issues which were of the utmost importance in my office. I explained that choosing to show my face with this in one context is not permission for anyone to make that choice for me in others, and that I’m the expert on how much exposure I can handle and want. I was told they don’t show rape “victims” faces on television, anyway (and then wondered, if that was so, why we were even having that conversation in the first place).
Apparently, they do, because my face was indeed shown on the news, coupled with the reporter saying I’d requested they did not show it. My words were edited massively — as is to be expected — and no information on the project was even given. The “I Was Raped” t-shirt was compared to t-shirts reading “Yankees Suck,” and “Boys are stupid — throw rocks at them.” The story spread — the tone of it intact — and the video made its way to other stations, and eventually to CNN (which I only found out about after the fact: CNN never contacted me). The story has spread very largely through the blogosphere, and with some notable exceptions, an awful lot of what’s out there is full of a lot of misinformation about me and the project, and in some cases, some really inflammatory accusations. As of today, I’m about one for one between positive emails and negative ones, and while the positives are very positive, the negatives are really negative and many have been incredibly threatening and disturbing.
I’ve been accused of exploiting myself and other assault survivors just to make money, which would almost be comical if it weren’t so vile. Scarleteen gets five dollars from any shirt sold. Five dollars, which to make, means not only my processing the order, packing it to ship, walking to ship them as well as doing all I’ve done to set things up to sell them, the crazy amount of extra bandwidth all the press has brought on (none of which I courted or chose), and all of this causing technical problems with the site, but also includes putting up with all of the crap which I have over the last handful of days. You’d think it’d be pretty easy for a person of any intelligence to realize that if it was about the money, I could do better by setting up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk, make the same dough, and do so without any sort of emotional stress or difficulty. And flatly, if someone doesn’t want $5 to go to Scarleteen, I have no trouble sending it to a different organization which helps with rape prevention, awareness and healing. But since I’m also the one paying the bandwidth bills for all of this, doing a lot of the work, taking care of all the orders and shipping AND being the whipping boy of choice AND since Scarleteen does advocacy work in this area, I’m not sure what the big problem is.
I’ve gotten letters in my email box from those who came to Scarleteen and read some of our rape content, and felt the need to write me and explain to me all of the ways in which any given kind of sexual abuse was not actually sexual abuse at all, be it because the victim asked for it, because the victim apparently really wanted it but was just ashamed of their own desires, because when the victim is male they always really want it; how for “horny” teenage boys, raping is just something they do naturally, how all survivors need to do is find out what we did to get raped, make sure we don’t do that thing again and move on, how in doing what we do at Scarleteen in the first place, we’re setting girls up to be raped by encouraging them to be promiscuous sluts, or enabling rape somehow by educating youth on homosexuality.
I’ve had the great privilege of being patronized, with other victims, by non-survivors, “experts” on rape, or even other survivors letting us know what they think we need to be doing “for our own good,” how they think we don’t know how to protect ourselves, physically or emotionally, how much more it would scar us to take something “private” and make it in any way public…and how all of these concerns are OF COURSE about us, not about them. I have been told what my personal problems are, by people who know nothing about me, and about how I could do a lot more good if I did more meaningful things with my life than I do, or how, if I stopped doing the work I do now, went and took a corporate job, was able to buy a house and car, and then give money to an organization like…oh, the one I run, I could do more for other “victims.” I have been told outright that while a given letter-writer cares for all other rape survivors, they do not care for survivors like me, and feel that it is perfectly appropriate — nay, quite called for — to shower me with abusive invective.
(Might there be some truth in some of them saying this could be traumatic for survivors because of what I’m dealing with myself and how I’m feeling right now? Maybe, save when you realize that most of this is coming from my being shown wearing the shirt in places that were not of my choosing, and where, following the choice they made for me, I have asked not to be shown. In fact, I think how I’m feeling says a whole lot more about how rape survivors are often seen as everyone’s property — since we’ve already been spoiled, see, already ruined — than it does about how my choices to be public have resulted in my getting upset.)
I’ve read about how any survivor who wears this is being a terrible person to other abuse or rape survivors who might be triggered by it. However, I never see the same concerns voiced about, oh, many media representations of sex or romance, people verbally abusing their children in grocery stores, people who enforce ideas that sex is a duty people owe one another in certain social contexts, people using the word “rape” applied in scenarios like “The IRS just raped me,” or… hey, wait! People deciding to verbally abuse a survivor because she breaks silence in a way they don’t like or wouldn’t choose for themselves. Just a word on that? I feel pretty confident saying that many of us who are survivors will not be triggered by another survivor saying he or she was raped, or having that voiced in a pretty sensitive way on a piece of clothing. More to the point, if you think this is the only way in any given day we might be reminded of our rapes, you’ve got to be kidding. The most benign aspects of daily life are often triggers: groups of men crowding close to us in a bus, the street we have to walk down to get home which was the one we were raped on, being quickly grabbed by the shoulder from someone who had no idea that was a trigger, a chair, a doorknob, a broom handle, someone’s hand, a belt, a given way the light looks at a certain time of day, the smell of a cologne, the very skin we inhabit, or someone, perchance, saying something about rape to us like “Don’t tell a soul.”
I have, of course, had to deal with the nasty kinds of feedback we always get any time we talk about rape. I have gotten email which informs me that women are property and that women are raped because men are superior. I have gotten email that told me I am sexist because we largely address rape at the site of men and women which is perpetrated by men, not which is perpetrated by women (which is only because it is perpetrated by women so infrequently, and because we can only respond, in advice queries, to the questions which are asked: I assure you, I have not deleted or purposefully not published any questions about a person surviving a rape by a woman — I simply have not yet gotten any such questions). I have gotten email informing me that I am making a “disgusting display” to get attention and pity for myself — and to help young women, I am told, make false rape accusations — by choosing to put my face all over the news (which again, was very much not my choice, but one made for me against my express wishes). I have gotten email which informs me that if I was raped, I clearly deserved it for being the terrible, horrible waste of breathable air which I am. Of course, I also got letters from people said they would have supported the work that I do and this project until they found out that not only was I, and the site pro-choice, but that I also am a baby killer who works at an abortion clinic (one such letter also informed me that having an abortion would only add to the trauma of a rape survivor, but going through pregnancy or becoming a parent before a person was ready would somehow be in no way difficult or traumatic). I read a thread discussing if I was “hot, for a rape survivor” or not.
For the record, the gender of those with those responses is mixed. These kinds of sentiments by no means only come from men (and when it comes to supportive responses, we’ve had just as many from men as from women). They come from every kind of person you could possibly imagine. This is one of the many reasons why those who have been raped often stay silent: we never know who is going to react to our rapes like this, and are well aware that it’s possible the people we expect it from least may be the ones who react just like this. I can assure you, for the record, that of the people who have sent me the worst of this vitriol, around one of every two is someone who those who know them wouldn’t even suspect the malice they usually keep hidden, save for people like me.
We’ve had server troubles all day which I’ve had to stay on top of when I still have things I need to do which I had planned to do this weekend, but could not do because I have had to spend most of it on damage control, sending requests to people to please stop stealing my face without asking me, correcting tons of misinformation about all of this flooding my mailbox, having to read through piles of hate to find emails from Scarleteen users we need to tend to, and having to try all I can not to have all of this wear on my relationships with people glad to support me, but who also have needs of their own, and things they need from me. Suffice it to say, since we have had many positive responses, many people want the short, and I wasn’t prepared to have to be processing orders all weekend. I have also been reading the positive mails, which are great, but many of them also contain the writer’s personal rape experience. That’s not to say I am not open to being the person someone chooses to share with, and that I am not very glad if I can provide a way for someone to disclose, but obviously, reading those letters is not pleasant or cheerful.
Obviously, this wasn’t my best weekend ever. Many of these responses and results obviously disappoint and distress me.
But what they don’t do is surprise me. I’ve lived as a survivor for almost 27 years now, and I’ve worked in sex education, including in advocacy for survivors and efforts for prevention, for a decade. When I was a teacher, more than once I had to deal with the travesty that was the justice system for a student of mine who was being abused. I am used to people excusing away all manner of abuses, resenting the hell out of those of us who do our damndest to protest that, and am well aware that denial of abuse, and the amount of abuse which exists in the world, is alive and well and living…well, everywhere.
I am used to statements which start with, “If I was a woman and had been raped…” (as if men never get raped: but really, statements like this start that way because they’re about how women should behave, period), or “If I was a rape victim….” or “If I had been raped…” and with the uselessness that follows all of them. Maybe it’s time for me to start talking about how I might feel and behave were I a woman of color, were I a heterosexual person, were I a person of means, had I survived the Holocaust. Because, obviously, my ideas on how I might feel and behave in those situations would be so very useful, especially to those people who actually are members of those groups.
I am used to hearing that if I want to talk about my rape, if I make it important in any way, even for a limited time, that I haven’t “moved on.” I am used to hearing about how I deserved it, asked for it; I heard it from one of my rapists (and had I been fully conscious for one of my rapes, I am sure I would have heard it from more), I heard it from friends and family, I’ve heard it from others who are oh-so-certain they and my rapists have nothing in common. I am used to hearing that the difference between strong survivors and perpetual victims is this: if you never say a word about it, if no one around you even has to know you were raped, you’re a strong survivor. But if you’re upset, if you want to talk about rape or your rape, if anyone around you has to know what happened, then you’re looking to stay a perpetual victim so that you can live a sweet life where everyone feels sorry for you. I am used to hearing that if I want to speak out about my rape, publicly or privately, that anyone who hears me is entitled to react however they would like, even if that means speaking to me in a way which is abusive, threatening, callous or cruel.
I am used to hearing about how any given thing about me is so awful or distasteful that nothing about me or what I do deserves any sympathy or, — and more important to me, since I don’t really need sympathy — any kind of basic common courtesy or respect. Sometimes that’s been because I’m queer, other times because I do sex ed, other times because I’ve had an abortion (and now, because I also work where they are provided), because I’m Buddhist, because I’m this age or that one, this gender or that, because I look this way or I don’t look that way, because I don’t have issues with nudity, because I’m sympathetic to a given group of people, because I’m loud, because I’m independent, because I have sex I enjoy, because I’m still alive. I am used to every kind of excuse imaginable at this point for why I don’t deserve the same courtesies I have always extended to others.
None of these things are new to me, nor are they much different from what I have dealt with simply in my personal life when it comes to my rapes.
And I am used to hearing all of this so much, that while it never stops being hurtful, what it has long since stopped being for me is particularly powerful. Don’t get me wrong: I have spent a lot of the past few days somewhat shellshocked, but that has more to do with the en masse onslaught and a lack of sleep than it does with any particular thing anyone has said or done. I know the place the craptastic stuff comes from, and I know that that place is one of fear, resentment, guilt, ignorance, violence or self-loathing. As much as I revile those things, as much as I want them gone, and as bad as they make me feel, I can at least identify them, and I know very acutely where my own bad feelings come from and, for the most part, how to deal with them. I can even look them dead in the eye: again, that’s a survivor skill, too — to survive, we all have to learn to do that expertly.
I’m also used to the fact that all rape survivors are different. We are not all the same, our rapes were not all the same, how we’ve processed them or reacted to them has not all been the same. I have had plenty of thanks for other survivors in my email box over the weekend, but I have also gotten emails like this:
“You are a sick fuck… and if in fact you were truely raped you would not be so fucking stupid to even want to do something so damn outrageous on wearing a shirt. And I wonder why you dont want to show your face. You are a sick individual and I am a rape victim and now a survivor but you appaul me on such a horrible suggestion on someone wanting to wear such a dumb remark shirt. If in fact you were raped, you are as sick as i could ever imagine. Of how you want to make money on it… this is not fame this is a sick person like you it saddness me to think there are people in this world like you . Playing on what horrific act of rape , how it kills a person day in and day out. We have to live with that horrible thought of it happening to us. And then we have people like you… SICK.. how do you get up and look in the mirror? May god bless your sick soul.”
By all means, I feel the way that person chose to spoke to me was insensitive and cruel. However, I think that it’s really important to remember that none of us lives in a culture conducive to healing, or in a culture which makes it comfortable to live as a survivor. We can’t even trust each other, as fellow survivors (and when we’re addressing a survivor who is same-gender, be we male or female, an awful lot of same-gender learned distrust is tossed in the mix, something often even more difficult for male survivors since their rapists were usually male as well), in our motives, in how our healing differs, in the different places we’re at in it. Survivors are, justifiably, angry — and also all sorts of people — and can often enough direct that anger just about anywhere: that’s how it is when you’re so angry and so hurt and given so little support. I directed mine inward after I was assaulted, and doing that, on top of having my rape be a thread that wound through other trauma I was living with and trying to survive, nearly killed me and also set me up for challenges in my life — as well as more risks of danger — all of which could have been, if not avoided, strongly mitigated by being able to talk about my abuses, at all, and finding some kind of support. I don’t like getting emails like that, to say the least, but at the same time, I have to take a breath, stop, and recognize that at the very least, someone just got some release of all of that anger, and while I don’t think I’m the right person to direct it to, that that person was able to direct it anywhere — to open up that pressure valve — is a likely positive for that person.
It may well also be — and pardon any pop psychology on my part — that as much as I don’t want this kind of visibility, that survivor does, and resents me for having what she wants. That’s also valid, since we are made intensely invisible as a group of people, particularly if we become survivors, rather than remain victims. While if our rapes were in some way found horrific, we might get some media-based ambulance-chasing, once they’re over, we’re non-issues, and if there is nothing particularly noteworthy about our rapes (and for most of them, the general population will find nothing noteworthy about them), we’ll rarely see address at all. In any case, victims trump survivors, and victims who arouse a pithy kind of pity trump all.
Or, this one: “No body in there right mind would believe that you’re truly doing this to help other people. I’m a real survivor because I’d never broadcast or announce the horrible things that have happened to me. the only people who would wear that shirt are full of shit. NO BODY would wear that who’s really been raped. But I’m sure a bunch of girls will buy it who want attention and want people to feel sorry for them. I do think this should be taken away from you and all the bullshitting bitches who pretend this has happened to them. Millions of women have suffered and worked very hard to over come what you are now trying to profit from. You should NOT be allowed to capitalize on other people’s pain. And even if you were raped that shouldn’t give you the right to profit from it. Did you know when you were raped that you were going to get paid for it? Or did that idea come later?”
What I hear in this — once more, forgive me for being armchair — is that this person needs to be validated in surviving, and needs to have someone let her know that however she speaks out of silence is okay, is brave, is laudable, even if it doesn’t look like someone else’s way. My impression is that she needs for her rape to be made important, because if it already really felt that way, I’m not sure why she’d put so much energy (I got three different emails from this woman before I blocked her address) into telling me how no one’s story is true but her own or those which resemble hers. I hear that she is suffering, and I hear that she is tremendously, and probably righteously, angry. That doesn’t mean I’m going to say she’s not responsible for misdirecting her anger at me, because she is, and I’ve directed no such things at her or anyone else, but it is to say that I can only get so angry back at someone in this space. I know that space: been there, done that, and — literally — have the t-shirt.
Here’s what we don’t often see and hear in the various peanut galleries of the Internet: we don’t see many survivors sharing the stories they have also shared with me both in my email box over the weekend and in other avenues I’ve had them shared with me in my life, both with work, and with the people who have personally disclosed to me over the years. I even got stories in my email box from survivors who were at sites talking about this, where so many people incessantly talked about how they were not silencing anyone, and yet, these people didn’t feel able to tell their stories, or perhaps even share the mere fact of being survivors. people who send me email like the above aren’t posting it in the forums or on the blogs: through the resentment, they also know I’m safe, or else I’d not be hearing this. Everyone else would.
Some survivors do want something like this. It’s okay to want it, and it’s okay not to, and wanting it or not doesn’t determine who was and who was not raped. It’s having been raped, only, which determines that. The two women above were raped. The man who wanted one of these and told me it was because of being brutally raped during time he spent in jail over a misdemeanor was raped. The woman who bought one because she was molested as a child was raped. The person who bought it for their partner who is working on acceptance of their rape was raped.
Saturday morning, I literally overheard my neighbors talking about the news story on the porch (and clearly not knowing it was their neighbor, who could hear them, they were talking about: Seattleites don’t tend to be very familiar neighbors)
So, why would a survivor wear something like this? Obviously, I can’t speak for anyone other than myself and for those who have talked about why they would. I’ve also already said a little bit about why I would here. One of the emails above asks how I look at myself in the mirror.
When the t-shirts got here, and I put one on to take a quick photo, checking in the mirror to make sure that despite the fact that I was two days late on washing my hair, I wasn’t too disheveled, it was an interesting experience. It was like myself was telling myself a hard truth directly, but gently. With a quiet, but clear, understanding. Rape is something that those of us who are raped are told at every turn to doubt happened to us, to explain away with a rapist’s “misinterpretation” of our nonconsent, to do our best to rid our memories of the experience, to the point that even someone like me, who also works with other survivors, who has done an epic amount of personal processing for over a very long period of time can have days and times where I, too, wonder if somehow, in some way, I managed to imagine what happened to me. Maybe that blood was from something else: maybe I just had hemmorhoids I didn’t know about. Maybe that soreness is from falling off my bike and I just don’t remember when. Maybe the reason I don’t remember all of that assault isn’t because I got knocked on the head, but because nothing actually happened. Maybe no one wants to believe me because I’m crazy, and this is all some sort of delusion. Maybe all of those body image issues, that overdose, all that poetry I wrote in my teens was about all that OTHER stuff, and that other stuff caused me to believe I was raped. Maybe when he shoved my head in his crotch, he mistook it for his own hand: maybe while I was choking on what he wanted and I didn’t, he just didn’t know I couldn’t breathe. Surviving rape is a whole world of maybe, but maybe nots.
So, sitting there, looking myself in the eye in the mirror with that t-shirt on did cause me to cry, and even if I never wear it anywhere else, even though I have, at other times, been able to acknowledge and accept what happened to me, that moment was powerful for me. I deeply could look at myself in the mirror and accept the woman who is there and everything that made her who she is, even when some of those things are incredibly difficult and not things I wished for. I was proud of her, and she made me feel strong and able, both for myself and for the work I do where I need to help others find strength and resilience. I can do that at other times, too, but I’m always grateful for any new tool to help me do that, because some days, the ones I have don’t work or don’t take me to a new place.
Over the weekend, when I was talking to an old friend on the phone providing support, he said to me, “You know, you can take this. I know it doesn’t feel good, and you don’t want to, but the fact is, you can handle this.” It might sound hollow, that, but the truth of the matter is that yes, I can. That woman looking back at me in the mirror could. If taking it wasn’t something I thought might carry any benefits for anyone, not only would it all be even more upsetting than it already is, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with this in the first place, or even have been public about surviving rape as I have been over the years. I didn’t need to be as public as I have for myself: just telling people close to me and being able to sometimes speak through my art, for me, has been enough. I’ve been more public in the hope that my doing so will help other people be able to break silence, find strength, and be able to find whatever way is their way to healing.
The biggest bummer with things like this is that unfortunately, one very strong message the backlash sends to other survivors is that it is absolutely best they stay silent: because if they don’t, see, if they speak up like I do, speak up in any way, this, too, is what will happen to them. Some who silence with ignorance, fear or guilt probably have no idea that this is a likely result: others, of course, very much are aware that they are silencing and very much intend to silence.
But here’s the thing: something like this shirt isn’t for every survivor, nor for any given survivor in every environment, on every day. I do a lot with my life, and my rape is not often at the forefront of any of it, but sometimes it is, and sometimes, it’s helpful to others if I let it be, as much as I’d prefer not to. Being able to even just say — even just to oneself — “I was raped,” is rarely easy, even though it does get easier over time. It still always hurts, it always infuriates, it always confuses, it always saddens, especially in a world which makes it so very hard to speak just that simple fact and to have it merely acknowledged. It is never easy, and it will never be easy. Saying it out loud, in any way, to anyone, is almost always scary, almost always risky. But for ourselves, and for others, when we can do it, when we are able — and it’s always okay when we’re not — it’s usually, in my opinion, a worthwhile risk. While it means that we might open ourselves up to all kinds of garbage, it also means we might open ourselves up to the good stuff, too, to connections which are rare and unfathomably meaningful, to us or to others.
I won’t be dishonest: I still want that other weekend that I was going to have back. I’d have preferred that weekend, and I really needed that weekend for myself. I spent a lot of time this weekend very deeply resenting feeling like I was pushed into the spotlight in a way I did not choose and I did not want: up until now, I’ve felt like the level of public I have been has been enough to make things better for enough people that something like this level of visibility wasn’t anything anyone needed me to do. And yet, seeing all that I have seen over the last few days, I can only assume that I was wrong in that, since if things like this were not needed, I can’t imagine I’d be seeing so much of what I had. We’d be past all of this by now, wouldn’t we? So, if that’s what needed to happen, and it did or could net anything at all positive, I can live with that. I can have that weekend I needed another time. I can move past my anger and resentment. I can make time up to my partner next weekend. I can have my life go back to being about all the other things it’s about shortly. Again, I can take this: I may not want to, but I can.
There’s no perfect note to end this on. I’m massively grateful for the support myself and the project have been shown by some. I’m deeply moved by the other survivors who have trusted me to share their stories, and to those who also have offered their care and compassion, and not just because you let me help you heal, but you helped heal some hidden parts of me I didn’t even realize still needed healing. I’m deeply saddened, frustrated, shellshocked and worn the hell right out from all of the backlash — and some of that is surprise in that I was more vulnerable than I thought myself to be and at the same time stronger, but also not as over my rapes as I have long thought — but I’m just hoping that maybe at least some of it will result in something positive, either for survivors, or for the world that we live in when it comes to how survivors are treated, how rape is viewed and in terms of anything and everything which might keep it from happening to anyone at all.
And if, from a Buddhist perspective, there truly is no separation between the self and others, and I am seeing and hearing from so many people who clearly need to work through all of this chaos, who have all of this inside and around them — and if the way I, myself, have been feeling has anything to do with anything — then all of these last few days hasn’t really just been about or for other people: it’s been about and for me, as well.
So, as it turned out, and for as much as it sure hasn’t felt like it, it seems I spent the weekend tending to myself, after all.
It seems appropriate to link this to Carly Milne’s blogging project to benefit RAINN, and I’ll write for that project a few more times before month’s end. We’ve linked to RAINN and its services for years at Scarleteen, so it shouldn’t be new to anyone, but to say it is a worthy place to support is a serious understatement. RAINN has made, and continues to make, great efforts for both rape prevention and survivor support, and if you have some extra cash — especially for many of you who get tax refunds — it’s a fantastic place to put it. I know I certainly could have used what it provides, and many other survivors do as well.
In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea ever to leave the little bottle of carpet cleaning fluid right next to the little bottle of coffee creamer.
I know I’m supposed to feel ashamed about all the 70’s pop music we so often listen to around here, but I just don’t. It’s the music of my childhood, dude and it’s not tacky, it’s vintage: 10CC and The Doobie Brothers are the original Diane Von Fursternberg wrap dress of music. I know I should only admit that I really like P!nk (and enough to care about that little exclamation point) grudgingly and with some apology. But I think the girls a total badass, and see no need to apologize. In plenty of circles — and according to my sweetheart’s ears — the times that I feel the need to sing along tearfully with Kate Wolf, Janis Ian or Holly Near with absolute sincerity should possibly cause me great embarrassment, but I tend to be all “Whatever, man: I can be as crunchy, potluck and lavender as I wanna sometimes, just like you can air-saxophone in the dining room, wearing nothing but your socks, while blaring 25 or 6 to 4.”
But when I find myself raucously headbanging to Avril Lavigne — on repeat ALL DAY, no less — and belting out “You make me so hot/ Make me wanna drop/ You’re so ridiculous/ I can barely stop…You’re so fabulous/ You’re so good to me Baby/ Baby, Baby / BabeeEEEeeee…” I feel like I need more than a few moments of complete and utter disgust with myself. I need a cold bath in holy water, a hairshirt and some professional help.
My great joy this week has been finding a new CSA which is easily the best one I have ever had. All organic, primarily local, inexpensive as hell — all this (I do a 2/3rds share, since Mr. Price is more carnivore than omnivore, and we take care of our own costs separately, anyway, and just share things as we like) and a pound of organic coffee for $35 a week — and they deliver, no less. My first order someone even screwed up, and one of the staffers was willing to bring my bin by on their way home. Most CSAs I’ve been part of have been great, but rarely organic, never delivered (and since I don’t have a car, that can be tough), never year round, and fruit has always been a rarity. The organic produce at our local market is decent, but it’s hella expensive. Heck, even regular produce generally costs me this much there. This is vegan HEAVEN.
So, I open my bin and it is brimming over with a bunch of rainbow carrots, a bok choi, a gorgeous bouquet of chard, a bag of green beans, three big beets, two delicata squashes, five yellow potatoes, a beautiful, big yellow onion, a head of cauliflower, four mandarins, two pears, two apples, and that gorgeous, odiferous coffee…which I am sipping right now, quite blissfully.
I had to cook the night it all came, of course, so I made stuffed peppers and a really swell greens and carrots combo. I haven’t done recipes here for a while — and for newcomers, understand I’m one of those irritating cooks who often does things off the cuffs, so measurements are rarely exact — so here you be:
The Peppers:
• two large green peppers, tops removed, inside scooped out
• four chopped mushrooms
• one small zucchini, chopped
• one half yellow onion, diced
• one half cup faux beefy crumbles (or seitan, or crumbled tempeh, up to you)
• one cup or so of a batch of spanish rice
• saffron, smoked paprika, cumin, red wine, aleppo pepper, white pepper, raw sugar
Preheat the oven to 400, then saute the onions with a half teaspoon of the aleppo pepper. When they’re transluscent, add the beefy crumbles (or other veg protein you’re using), brown a little, then add the zucchini and get it a little soft. Add about a half teaspoon each of the paprika and cumin, a sprinkle of white pepper, a few threads of saffron, red wine to taste, then the rice.
Oil a baking dish, then fill peppers tightly with the mixture, and flop any extra in the pan. Dust the tops of the peppers with the raw sugar and another sprinkle of paprika: bake covered until peppers are soft, usually around 45 minutes to an hour. We served them with this really nummy raspberry-chipotle sauce we keep around (we have a whole shelf of nothing but hot sauces in the cabinet).
I didn’t have any tomatoes lying around, but if I had, I’d have stewed a few and then made the extra rice mixture extra saucy to put around the peppers in the baking dish.
The Roots & Greens
• one big bunch chard (of any kind, but the rainbow chard is always so pretty)
• four or five carrots, sliced
• one mandarin orange, peeled and sectioned
• orange juice and port wine or, a bit of the ratafia I have still managed to hoard from Minnesota (if you’re me)
In a medium pot, boil a couple inches of half water, half OJ. Drop in the carrots and let boil until steamed, then add the chopped greens on top and the mandarins, and steam lightly. Drain and toss with the port or ratafia.
Even Mark cleaned his plate.
Today I’m off in a bit for my weekly coffee klatch with David, a few errands, then back here to clean up a bit and get some baking done before the evening. It was a busy, busy week of lots and lots of work (even by my standards), so I think I may actually take a weekend like normal people this time around, or at least, give it something of a go.
Seven Ways to Cheer Up When You’re Feeling Eight Below
1. Make something completely decadent with items already in your cupboard. Thankfully, even when I’m living extra-lean, there are always baking basics lying around here: cooking and baking are important balms for me. Cocoa, shortening, sugars, flour: check. What else is here? Hmmm…arrowroot powder, a bag of frozen cherries, some pinot noir not so good for drinking, but fine for cooking, and an influx of balsamic. Voila!*
Enjoy the first cupcake, while it’s still a little warm, by yourself and Ooh and Ahh out loud. Then call a couple of people who you know will also delight in a simple bout of vegan decadence, and share cupcakes with them on the porch during a perfect summer evening. Done!
2. Take a bath: don’t rush, and be sure to soak your head.
3. Be Mr. Rogers. Go and see the people in your neighborhood, and don’t be in a hurry. Take the time to have more than a two-minute conversation with the sweet woman at the mini-mart you buy smokes from. say hello to the folks at the coffeehouse. When people on the street stop to pet your dog, let them play with her as long as they’d like. Have your coffee on a chair with the homeless guy who can’t ever decide if his name is Pete or Elmer (I have no idea what that’s all about), but who always calls you “darlin,” tells great (albeit drunken) stories, and who people always rush by. Hope he found the five bucks you put in his hat when you saw him sleeping on the sidewalk last week, as you have before, but say nothing about it: it’d be nice for him to feel he had a secret admirer.
4. Clean and change all your bedding. It doesn’t matter if your sheets aren’t 400 thread count, if there are piles of laundry around your bed, or if there are no fresh flowers nearby. Sliding into fresh clean sheets and closing your eyes always feels like you’ve landed in a posh hotel.
5. Laugh. That isn’t a challenge when in sharing a headslap over this with Sarah, and mentioning that you almost told the questioner that if vaginas could expand so much you’d be thrilled, since you’d FINALLY have a place to keep your keys where they wouldn’t get lost, she shares this gem: “I have a multi-month archive of persistent emails from this 12-year-old kid who was convinced that if I wasn’t keeping things (e.g., an egg, a can of Pepsi, my wallet) in my vagina at all times, I was “wasting space” and was immoral in the same way as people who don’t turn off the faucet while they brush their teeth. Just walking around with this big, empty handbag between my legs, not doing anyone any good. It makes me think their must be some sub-genre of horror writing about empty, cavernous, enormous vaginas? People falling into them, never to be seen again?”
6. Remind yourself that lotuses grow from the mud. If something beautiful can continue to grow in the unforgiving cement of your backyard, then for fuck’s sake, so can you.
7. Open your email and find out you’ve been unanimously nominated for an award that Jocelyn freaking Elders won last year. Dayum.
* Incidentally, the cupcakes are an adaptation of an Isa Chandra Moskovitz’ recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, a cookbook I use much too often for my own good. The changes I made include using balsamic vinegar in the cake rather than apple cider vinegar: I always do that w/vegan chocolate cake; the balsamic makes the chocolate taste richer. I also shredded some gorgeous cherry/vanilla/dark chocolate into the mix and on top that Beppie (that was SO nice, gal) secretly arranged with Mark to have sent to me, and added orange extract to the cake and the kirsch because orange is gorgeous with chocolate, and makes cherry taste more tart. I did the cherry filling a bit differently, adding the red wine and skipping the sugar (who needs it with all that icing?). Too, her vanilla icing recipe is to die for, but I let it sit in the mixer for waaaaay longer than she suggests: a good 20 minutes makes it fluffy as anything. Adding some ground vanilla bean is also a help.
There’s something highly amusing about spending the evening in a hundred-year-old dive bar, and playing poker for (oyster) crackers with my Dad and Mark.
Really, it’s all the more giggle-inducing when you’re “gambling with crackers” while sitting across the table from the whitest guy in the universe (my melanin-impaired boyfriend).
Best exchange of the evening?
Mark (who won big, but refused to throw all the won cracker-chips into his mouth and munch them crazy, crumbly Cookie Monster-style to amuse me): I am the WINNER! You are the LOSER!
Me (calmly): No, I am simply a person without crackers.
Mark (incredulously, to my Dad): Do you see how this goes? Amazing. Even a simple poker win is somehow political. How does she do that?
My Dad just chuckled and shot me a grin. Apple, tree, my friends.
(By the by, when playing for crackers, don’t space out and eat some of yours. It kind of screws you over. This is especially vital when playing for actual chips, especially if you value your teeth.)
At some point, I need to make a list I can keep handy online with happy-making things for those times when I sink low enough that it’s not easy for me to remember what those things are. Sort of an “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass,” but without the having-to-break-anything bit.
When it’s the right time of year, anything to do with the garden helps. Thankfully, I was reminded this weekend of one of the reasons I was glad to move here. Spring in February? That’s the stuff, man. Saturday I was able to work out some angst by ripping up all the dead plants covering the new sprouts, and Sunday we found time to get to the nursery so I could get some new plants for the year. Given last year’s Big Tomato Mushfest — my impression is that it’s just too mild here to for the bigger puppies to grow to their best potential — this year I’m going for mostly herbs and flowers, with a few cherry tomato plants and then the berries: the two blueberry plants I put in last year have hopefully cross-pollinated to keep warm and will result in some big, juicy beauties. I also had a little splurge which involved bleeding hearts (which I have loved since I was a child, but never grown myself) and narcissus.
I’ve also determined that whenever possible, if I can find around two hours or so in any given day to do some yoga, then go whack off, then take a hot bath, and then a long walk, that everything feels a whole lot better for the rest of the day.
One of the beauties of BPAL is that because there is no immediate gratification when you order, given it can take a few weeks for Beth to concoct her artistry, a few weeks later you get a very nice surprise in your email letting you know that pleasant, smelly things are en route to you when you’d forgotten you even ordered them. It would be even better if my beloved Geek hadn’t been a limited edition, but on the other hand, sampling new stuff is a cheap thrill, and since the scents I care for tend to be more boy-flavoured or unisex, if something doesn’t work on me, chances are always good it’ll work on Mark.
My piano, as ever, remains a fine source of solace. Last night, it was a Tom-Waits-a-thon. I try not to let the once-operatic diva in me who used to have the crystal voice be disturbed by the fact that the older I get, the more I sound like Tom doing falsetto. On the other hand, back in high school when I had to sing opera half of every day, I was always irritated that I didn’t have the right voice for jazz: guess I got what I wanted.
Buffy. Over the past three days, I indulged in a marathon. Season Six, if you’re curious. I needed something to indulge my bitterness.
But this should probably top the list. It had us both laughing so hard last night, and unable to stop replaying it, that we ended up nixing sex we’d been nuzzling our way to because we knew too well that one of us would end up shouting “I’m a munchkin!” at the worst moment possible.
* * *
I think I may hate my new camera. Not sure yet, but so far, I’m just really wishing they hadn’t stopped making my last one, because it’s so much nicer to me.
* * *
In spite of my needing some respite time, the fundraiser for Scarleteen is still going on, so a few more shoutouts to folks who have blogged for it: Bitch, Jane, Dacia, Columbine, Irmelin, DivaMommy, Debbie, Jenny, Ariel and my dear Mr. Price (who only lives on MySpace, and yes, as a cultivator of much web snobbery, this is terribly embarassing for me — I often ask, beg and plead with him to drag his cute ass outta the web gutter, but to no avail). Thanks, y’all.
(For the curious, donation-wise, as of right now we’re close to about a third of what I hoped we could raise this time around: so long as things keep chugging along, combined with the grant, we may just be able to get to where we need to be to tackle this year’s expenses.)
* * *
And now comes my big bummer of a question (this is not about me personally, I promise, so no worries). To my readers and friends out there who work in alternative health — in bodywork, naturopathy, chinese medicine, nutritional health — if you’ve got any decent background in managing breast cancer, could you drop me a comment or an email? I was even certain this weekend that I had a reader who worked in an alternative clinic in Chicago, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who it was. Anyone local or nearby Chicago — or who could give me any resources there — would be a double bonus. Bless.
If that paragraph gave you a yucky thud, again, I refer us all back to this.
I expect to be mostly incommunicado over the next week, because my fabulous friend Mya is coming in for a visit from Minneapolis. In addition, we’re finally having the housewarming party we’ve been meaning to on Friday, and I’ve also just had the fantastic joy of spending a day and a couple evenings with Jeyoani (at right).
Big social month, apparently.
It was awesome to be able to finally meet Jey. We have a very similar spaztastic energy and enthusiasm: in fact, her first night here, we didn’t get to bed until 3 because for the life of us, we just couldn’t stop babbling. Great to be able to meet her at last: Jeyoani is the eldest daughter of my friend and mentor Cheryl, and we’ve chatted online and by phone for a couple years now, and she’d also partnered up with me in forming the AGA with Jenny and Becca.
Oddly enough, she met Mark before she met me, by way of rescuing him from a transportation fracas in L.A. about a year and a half ago. (During which I felt like a total ‘net celeb stud, by the way. He’d called me all panicked because he was there for a workshop, and his ride blew him off, so I was all, “Where are you? L.A.? No problem. Let me put out my bat-signals amoung everyone in the whole world I know, who OF COURSE will jump to help my sweetie, and we’ll fix this pronto.” In ten minutes, it was done and he was rendered utterly speechless in the wake of my supershero powers. Good times.)
It’s also a pretty cool thing when you can go out with two close friends who are also mother and daughter. The older I get, the more range my friends have in terms of age and identity, and there’s something really fantastic about that: the wider and more diverse a net I have, the happier I am. Strangely, that was always the case with my romantic and sexual relationships: not sure why with my friendships, until the past handful of years, that was less the case.
Cheesy as this is going to sound, it’s so hard for me to imagine my life without my friendships. That’s life without family. The move has been tough in that regard (it’s always especially touch to forge new friendships when you freelance), but nothing close to as tough as when I first moved to MN. I had near to a good three years there without a circle of friends, and it’s no damn wonder I got whacked with hardcore depression then.
I’m always so saddened to see the teens at Scarleteen who make their entire social lives their partners or their partners friends, and just seem to either not get or space out how important platonic friendships are. When the relationship is still ongoing, they don’t have a real support net, they often have all these troubles with abondonment issues or with giving their partners a normal amount of personal space, and it seems to kind of skew the view of romantic relationships as only one important kind of relationship. Of course, when the relationship ends, they wind up totally alone, since the friends they had were shared and there’s that usual your friends/my friends awkwardness that happens with a breakup when it comes to shared social circles.
We have a user right now who is in that spot, and just feels she’s too shy to make friends, but we’ve heard that before, and oddly, someone the same too-shy’s can cultivate romantic relationships, a disparity I can’t quite figure out.
You never want to tell them, point blank, that romantic relationships, especially at their age, tend to peter out a lot faster than they suspect, and friendships are more lasting, because a) a person only needs so much buzzkill when they’re just starting their lives and b) there are just so many variants there that neither of those things are always true, by a long shot. Truth is, during developmental years most of their relationships PERIOD will often be phasal, will come and go, or will be somewhat temporary because everyone’s identity is in such a state of flux. Note to self: figure out a nice way of explaining this — might help during those years when we often feel like no one will stick by us — without sounding like you’re saying they haven’t got a chance in hell of anyone sticking around until they’re older, and in such a way that supports the value of both their friendships and romances, and makes clear that the cultural notion that any one type of relationship is more vital than the other is hogwash.
That said, there are rooms to clean, errands to run, and still a load of catchup work to continue, all left around in a giant pile from the last few months of book craziness. If I catch up with everything that has fallen behind even by the end of this whole year, it’ll be a bleedin’ miracle.
P.S. And to be filed under the “I Need a Miracle” department (ah, those deadhead years, how I miss’em), until recently, I somehow forgot how insanely happy a bowl of steel-cut oats with raisins makes me. Almost fifteen years ago or so, I had a partner (the one who still holds the crown of my favorite ex, ever) who always made them for breakfast: at first, they seemed so utilitarian and plain, I wasn’t too excited about them. But then, the beautiful texture of the oats made itself apparent, and having someone make you warm, toasty grains in the morning was such a treat. A much-belated thank you to Michael Hays for turning me onto those delightful oats. Yummy.
Finally got the manuscript back from the copyeditor this morning: I have but one week to get all the way through it, make any and all changes, the works. It’s going to be one helluva week.
A style sheet for the CE and myself also accompanies the revised manuscript.
I’m fairly certain that the style sheet for most authors does not include passages like the following:
AU uses “data” with a singular verb.
The words “either,” “neither,” and “none,” take a singular verb (e.g., none of these methods works every time).
The word “feces” takes a plural verb.
The word labia is plural; the singular form is labium.
The word ova is plural; the singular form is ovum.
The term corpus cavernosum is singular; the plural form is corpora cavernosa.
The word “media” is plural; the singular form is “medium.”
The word “criteria” is plural; the singular form is “criterion.”
Because I cannot accomplish any sort of menial task without some sort of running commentary…
10:00: Reason #374 to Decide to Take the Day Off and Clean Out Your Closet: Because, however improbable it may seem, there could very well be two hundred and seventy dollars in cash tucked away in a pocket that somehow your poor-ass, keeps-everything-in-your-pockets-like-a-teenage-boy self managed to space or displace at some point, lord knows how.
Two Hundred. And Seventy. Dollars. I just made more cash in ten minutes than I make in a week.
And here I thought, with sending Mark off to Ohio for ten days (sniff!) this morning, it was going to be a bad day. Dayum.
11:15 I am not sure quite what to think upon the realization that as I get older, my personal style seems is becoming what would happen if Fran Leibovitz and Betsey Johnson spawned. Two women I think rock, for sure, but do I really want to look like them if they got tossed in a blender?
Seriously: first there’s this endless row of every conceivable type of white button down shirt — shadow-striped, sheer, tuxedo fronted (lots of those: hey, they make it easy to look dressed up when you can’t be sussed to bother), plain, ruched, deconstructed — fifty million white ribbed men’s tank tops, a pile of black jackets, old-style trousers galore and an awful lot of jeans. Then there’s this whole other half of stuff for which every item requires an exclamation point. Leopard boots and skirts! A shirt and dress an LSD-laced garden puked all over! Tulle! Lace corset tops! Fishnet everything! Shiny this! Shiny that! Stripes, stripes, and more stripes! My underwear drawer is equally confused and conflicted: there are literally lacy little bits lost inside boxer shorts.
The hell.
7:00 Six loads of laundry and every Liz Phair album later…
Note to Self: You don’t ever end up liking or wearing t-shirt or cotton tankdresses, so why on earth do you keep on buying them?
Note to Naked Lady Partygoers: Not only am I now nearly ready for another one soon, I have t-shirt and tankdresses, should there be someone who DOES actually wear them. I’m also finally ready to part with some shoes. Also, next Friday night, Women & Wine will be here at the house, in front of the toasty woodstove, since I have it all to myself (and there is plenty of room for drunken women here, so, for instance, Anna, if you’re around, you get dibs on the guest room since no one comes from further than you do). I’ll email everyone per usual, but if you’re local, not on the list and interested, gimme a shout.
All in all? Have to say that was a truly productive day. Who knew: there actually IS a floor in our bedroom. It’s covered in totally gross old carpet, but it’s a floor all the same. I found several missing treasures AND even got paid from the powers that be for cleaning al the clothes up. Sweet!
Yesterday, I had a headshot client here: a local actor who I knew before from film work she’d done with Mark. (She was in Sofia’s movie, actually.) My new lights aren’t here yet, so our friend Heath was a dear and brought me over a big light from the studio he works with, since there just isn’t enough natural light here this time of year to do much of anything, let alone provide the sort of clarity an actor’s headshot needs to have.
She had told me that she didn’t think she was especially photogenic. I had told her that generally, I’m not sure there is such a thing, that I think that’s really a matter of the photographer doing their job both technicaly and socially. Plus, she’s got an amazing, unique face and we like each other a lot: I just couldn’t imagine not being able to do great work with her.
I woke up early, prepped the studio, felt as competent as I usually do, despite having a cold. But throughout the shoot, while I kept finding some great compositions and angles, my camera was not cooperating with me. It kept refusing to focus. The lights were giving me trouble, being either way too strong or too flat. I moved them here, I moved them there: I used the tripod, I worked without it. I kept cursing inanimate objects in the presence of a client. All the same, while I didn’t think I was getting as many great shots in a sitting as I tend to, and I wanted to pull my hair out, I thought I was doing alright.
Later that night, I unloaded the card and was decidedly not happy. About 1/3 of the shots were blurry, or I didn’t get the focus in the place I wanted to: I kept getting sharp focus on hair or lips and soft focus on eyes, the latter of which is where you really need focus in headshots. Another 1/3 of the shots were so overlit, half her face was washed out and overexposed. There were some AMAZING shots I’d see in the thumbnail view, get all excited about, then enlarge them and discover that one of the two aforementioned issues fucked the shot entirely. There was an awful lot of “Gah!” “Arrrrgh!” and “Fuckity-fuck-fuck-FUCK!” resonating in my office last night.
That isn’t to say there aren’t some winners (like the shot above at right, which is my favorite). There are, even to the point that I suspect — and hope — she’ll feel she got some of the best photos ever taken of her. But. I am used to having clients, especially paying clients, tell me that they don’t even know how to pick just one or two for their needs because there are so, so many great ones. And I want that to be the result. I feel like if I shoot for an hour, I should have a client walking away with at least 50 shots or so that are technically perfect, very creative, and which all could suit their needs, but in which there will be one or two that are just right in terms of the specificity of what they wanted. I’m just not comfortable giving them less than that, because I feel like I have not done my job.
I penned an email I have never had to pen to a paying client, telling her that for no fault of her own, I clearly wasn’t on my game, letting her know I had some great shots, but not enough for me to feel I’d done the service for her she’d paid for, and offering for her to come reshoot at her convenience if she wanted at no extra charge. I can think of only three times before this, and never with a paying client, that I’ve had to tell someone I just thought what I did was pretty crap per my standards, and I haven’t had to do so at all in a couple of years, paid or unpaid.
Mark called on the way home from working on a reel for a commercial gig he has coming up, and in telling him all of this (and I speak far more candidly with him than I do with all of you), and listening to his reaction, in writing that email and listening to the way I was talking to myself about all this, I started to feel pretty seriously embarassed. The embarassment wasn’t at doing less than my best — okay, some of it was — it was at my total and complete lack of allowance for my own imperfect humanity; at hearing myself honestly say out loud — and sound like a total asshole in saying — that while I absolutely allowed for others to have off-days, and thought nothing lesser of them, I do not feel the same towards myself.
(Mark: Everyone has an off-day, babe. Me: Everyone but ME! I may NOT! Mark: Yeah, okay, Princess. I’ll be waiting at the foot of the tower when you’re ready to come down. Actually, he stopped at “Okay, Princess,” but if HE was on his game, he would have finished with that line, so we’ll let him have it, just to be nice.)
It’s not that I think I’m better than everyone else in some intrinsic way, but I do often think that I work harder and longer than most, that I refuse to stop working at anything less than genius or perfection unless there just isn’t another sliver of energy left, that other people seem to set their standards for themselves lower than I’m willing to set mine for myself.
It’s ridiculous, really. And when I speak these things out loud, they all sound way less sensible and far more pretentious, arrogant and silly than they do when they’re in the confines of my mind.
I think this is part of the problem with working out some of your issues and demons via art and/or work. The part of me that often still believes she’s just not good enough for anything, and that she has to work harder, longer, do better than anyone else just to earn her right to live in this world and at a marginal level of peace and comfort finds a easy soil in which to seed in work. But unlike putting self-loathing issues in say, alcoholism, when you put them in workaholism, people — including yourself — applaud you for your drive, for your perfectionism, for your excellence, even if what’s driving all of that isn’t exactly functional or healthy. They don’t tell you to go to a meeting or put down the bottle: there’s nearly nada in the protestant work ethic and our cultural absorption of that propaganda that tells us to put the brakes on and get a fucking grip.
I may well be the equivalent of those people (who I think are totally insane: those mountain climbing stories creep me right the hell out and keep me awake at night) that climb Everest. Pretty much everyone thinks they’re completely cracked, but at the same time, they’ll cheer them on when they try, when they abandon everything to try, and celebrate them when they get to the top of that mountain, even if they lost a leg or froze near to death in the process.
Will I still reshoot if she wants to? Oh, of course I will. Will I still sit here every day and juggle several Herculean tasks because even just one isn’t enough? Oh yeah.
I’m not one for New Year resolutions, but I think I’d best make an exception this time round and accept that while it’s fine to work hard and aim high, and it’s even fine to enjoy working and feel validated in doing good work, it’s really ridiculous to take it to such extremes that your Sherpa is quitting his gig and heading to work for corporate America because he can’t ethically live with himself anymore in helping crazy bastards like you.
P.S. A word to the wise during cold season: when you think that your thoughtful sweetheart — who, like you, has a cold right now — has left a chewable Vitamic C tablet on your desk for you before he left for work? Email him and ask if that’s what it is first.
Because when you unknowingly pop one of those Airborne fizzy-tablets, the sort meant to fill a whole glass of water, into your mouth and chomp into it, not only does it taste like such ass you will nearly vomit, you will also have grapefruit-flavored foam pouring out of your mouth like a rabid dog for several minutes, which is more than a little unsettling. Trying to make the fizz stop with a slug of your nearby coffee is also not the brightest of ideas nor a fine flavor combination.
Quick! (thanks, Clare.)
To recognize National Back Up Your Birth Control Day at Planned Parenthood, today they are offering FREE emergency contraception at their clinics.
Even if you don’t need it now or for yourself, if say, there’s a clinic on your drive home from work, pick up a pack. Maybe you will have need for it at some point, or maybe a friend, younger sibling, niece or neighbor will. Now that we’re getting to the point where we really can just have some handy, never hurts to have it on hand, especially for free.
One last COPA-related nod before I set it down for a bit, do a quick interview for an Aussie mag about the All Girl Army, then bury myself in the big endgame of my book edits accordingly. My deadline is exactly one week from now, and between now and then I need to finish the initial edits on three more chapters and an appendix, then write a short summary, do the resource list, the dedication, the acknowledgments, update the TOC, then go back through the whole thing front to back for one more spit-and-polish before turning it in.
I expect to sleep and leave the house again sometime next week. I expect to eat infrequently, and when I do, to be unable to discuss anything but Chlamydia, breakup ethics, gender identity and how the hell to address pornography properly in this context.
I just have to say, before I plunge full-stop into this last stretch, that on that whole adventure, my boyfriend was such a rock star.
It’s really not easy to go somewhere as someone’s partner — and really, as nothing BUT someone’s partner — and have absolutely everything be about them and how awesome and important they are. I’ve been in that spot once or twice, and even as someone who dislikes having the spotlight put on me (which is very much not the case with Mr. Price), it’s still been tough.
But you’d never have known it was anything but easy-as-pie for Mark. He was a total pro in dealing with the awful flights to get to Philly and me, with discussions about nothing but this case, with the courtroom time and my moments of neurosis before, with the crazy celebration after. It may as well have been all about him for how damn cool he was about it all.
And really, sparing very old, very good friends, I can’t imagine being comfortable having taken any partner I have had before to this juncture. Anyone who was anything less than My Real Deal, would have felt strange, like taking someone you’ve been dating for a week to a family wedding, you know? It was also so, so cool to have everyone love him so quickly and immediately. All in all, having my very real partner with me made a whole lot of difference throughout. Sure, this love-of-my-life stuff still totally freaks me out sometimes, but most of the time, it is just the absolute thing.
After the trial, after I grabbed a couple drinks with Moe, I headed back to the hotel and we had this utterly awesome couple of hours just curled up under the sheets, gabbing and gabbing amidst many, many snuggles. We lucked out, in general, with both of us being complete snuggle-bunnies as people: these snuggle-fests have happened more than once, to say the least. In this particular instance, the fest culminated with some ungodly good sex, to boot. Bonus!
This is a particular bonus, by the way, when one is going out for a night of drinking. I explained this theory to a couple of our cohorts, but I’ll explain it to all of you out in the cheap seats as well, should you be unaware. Alcohol really inhibits the arousal cycle, and not just from a male not-getting-it-up standpoint: for everyone. It makes it a bit easier to want to have sex, for those who have a hard time sober, but it makes it a lot harder, physiologically-speaking, to bring all the bases home, if you get my drift. So, when you know you’re going to go tie one on, you simply have sex before, rather than after. Takes all the pressure off, and lets you go out already feeling good and looking all glowy. So, from me to you, sex first, sloshiness after. You’ll thank me later.
Boy raised the bar, is what he did. Next time he has something of crucial importance, I’ve got to seriously step it up and give back as much of a gift as he did me this time, or else I’m going to feel like a total slacker, especially since the last time he had something hugely important and all about him (making his last short film) I ended up getting the funny paralysis on the set and scaring the hell out of everyone.
I owe him, big time.
