The Weather is Insulting Today

Today, I just want to pout. I don't want to be in a bikini on my way to the beach even though I've been complaining all summer about how much I want to go to the beach.

My eyes are still swollen from crying last night. It is the cherry on the top of my bad body-image day. Today, for some reason, either my skin is more translucent than usual or I am more observant, but I can see all my major blood vessels in my legs. I am too young for this. I am supposed to still be young and hot. Young and hot and vampire-skinned.

I have had a fat month, catalyzed by the fact that my mother would not shut up about how I needed to lose weight when I felt like I looked pretty good, and now I cannot stop thinking about how my legs look. My stomach. Whether I've lost the muscle tone in my arms and now they're gross jiggly arms. If my baby fat is coming back into my cheeks, if my cheekbones are receding into softness.

I cried for a long time last night for a number of reasons I'm not even sure of. Superficially, because R's ex-girlfriend came to visit and even though I like her I'm glad that she came off as unfriendly at the party last night. I know she was out of her element. I know she didn't know anyone, and I know she's really a lovely girl. But a part of me still in junior high craves everyone else's approval: that I'm a better match for him than her. I'm more attractive. I'm more fun. Etc. Etc.

I left the party before R and Rebecca (her real name. why not?) and he didn't kiss me goodbye after not seeing me for two days and barely speaking to me during that time. I cried because of that. I cried because even though R has been amazing lately stupid little things like this can knock me off track.

I cried because R and I never have talks about "us" because I don't want to have them because I don't want to find out how little he cares. How little he knows me. I don't want to hear again that he won't tell anyone he loves them until he's pretty sure they're getting married. We never talk about us because I get tired of thinking about how big a failure I am that I can't make this man love me after nine months. Nine months is long enough to have a child. And I still get "I care about you a lot."

I cried because I never tell him the things I should. I never tell him why he makes me happy, why I like to be with him, why I'm not looking around me in case I could trade up, why I get glowy when my parents talk about him. He says he knows I care without me telling him those things. He locks up whenever I try. It gets old. Sometimes I just need to hear "I like you because you always make the bed/buy only wheat bread/wear only matching underwear." I need the stupid goofy mushy conversations where you end up talking about how much you like his ears, or something equally retarded.

We don't have the "us" conversation because while I'm not reminded of it, it's a lot easier to pretend he does love me and just isn't saying it.

I know I'll pull out of this. In a few days, I'll be back to pretending, and be happy--really happy, because I'll believe that eventually he will love me and things will work out. My veins will no longer be quite so blue, or I won't care, and my legs will be less fat. Maybe I'll actually lose some weight.

Loompaland

I don't know if it's Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, or just nostalgia for my childhood, but I am in such a mood lately for The Nightmare Before Christmas and the remix of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Believe it or not, I hadn't seen the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory until just a few nights ago. I can't believe how much better it works without the clunky musical numbers weighing it down. It felt a lot tighter, a lot more streamlined, even with the backstory for Wonka. I loved the interior of the factory, though I missed the musical lock. I liked the updated Oompa Loompas. Johnny Depp is no Gene Wilder, but he did a very good job with his new interpretation of a socially-inept Wonka. I think Dahl and Burton go very, very well together. The sendup of the morality fable in a pretty and dark fashion is perfect for Tim Burton. And I LOVED. THE. MUSIC.

Perhaps now is a good time to state that I have a deep and abiding love for the music of Danny Elfman. I linked his name with his work with the first Spiderman movie, though long before I had seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. (which my brother had his own little obsession with) Until I rewatched Nightmare Before Christmas as an adult, I hadn't realized that Elfman is the singing voice of Jack, which is entirely enchanting. I know Nightmare Before Christmas is a tweeny goth staple. But it's delightful. The story is sweet. The music is wonderful. The animation is lovely. And it's all terrifically twisted in the slightest kind of way.

I loved, loved, loved Roald Dahl when I was younger. The first book of his I got ahold of was the classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I finished it in one fell swoop and turned right around and read it "circularly"--as soon as I finished, I'd start over and not quit until I was called upon to do something else, so I never stopped at the end. It was my first qualified book obsession. I read The Twits. I read Matilda. I read The Witches. I read The Great Glass Elevator, sub-par as it was. I read The BFG. I read Danny the Champion of the World, which was my favorite and is now rather hard to find. When I got a bit older, I read his Henry Sugar collection of short stories and loved them too. I loved Quentin Blake's itchy-scratchy drawings and later made my mother buy a book of his for her class just because he was Quentin Blake. Perhaps it's my early obsession with Dahl that turned me into the slightly twisted black comedy-loving person I am today. I don't know.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, because all my other childhood staple books were incredibly wholesome. I grew up on Anne of Green Gables, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, and as many fairy tales, fractured or otherwise as I could find. (maybe the fractured part makes sense) I read a lot of Lousia May Alcott and Frances Hodgson Burnett. I was very attached to some random series: the Five Little Peppers and E. Nesbit's Five Children books (Five Children and It was a particular favorite) I was as Victorian-girly as it was possible to be in my reading.

As I got a little older my mother continued on her quest to make me well-read and I started in on the classics. And now here I am. I will probably always be obsessed with Roald Dahl. But somehow, somewhere along the way, I developed a passion for books that take me on a ride. Books that make me not care about plot holes or tiny writing quibbles. That's why I love Lolita--the story and writing is so good that you forget you're talking about a pedophile and the keeping of a juvenile sex slave. House of Leaves is the ultimate reader-interactive experience I've found yet. And Harry Potter is as enjoyable a ride as I've read in a long, long time.

Braggarts

I have an aunt. Though I've never heard the story, I assume that at some point Jesus Christ himself must have come down and blessed her uterus, possibly through the fertility treatments she and my uncle underwent. Because to hear her talk--and talk she does--no more ideal children have ever been conceived than her four, until her grandchildren, who are perfection distilled.

This is the woman who gave birth to my absolute favorite cousin ever, who lives in LA with his smoking hot wife and works in a recording studio and (I imagine) smokes a lot of pot while enjoying his exile from the conservative swamp we live in. I have no idea how he managed to come out of that family so cool.

When I was applying to colleges, I left a family get-together in tears, with my mother so furious she almost couldn't drive. First off, I committed a major faux pas by surpassing all her children (including Favorite Cousin, who is very intelligent) on standardized tests. I was told repeatedly that F. C. "could have done better, if he'd just retaken them." Not only that, but when she found out the schools I was looking at, she saw fit to inform me that F.C. "was recruited by Harvard, you know, because he was a scholar and an athlete." Harvard doesn't recruit. Bitch. If I wanted to go there, I would have applied there, and your perfect son ended up at a state school, and that's what you just can't stand.

(side note: I was thisclose to going to OSU. I have no snobbery when it comes to state/private universities. My aunt? You guessed it.)

The firstborns of this family were boy and girl twins, the girl first. The most beautiful precious baby girl that ever was, of course. After she was crowned homecoming queen, the sight of her leg through the slit in her gown caused an opposing player to miss the game-winning foul shot. (according to my aunt) That's the caliber of woman we're talking here.

My cousin got married, about seven years ago, and I was in the wedding. Lovely dress, nice ceremony, complicated by the fact that lightning struck the church steeple about half an hour before and the minister was trapped in the elevator when the power went out. That story's only been told about thirty or forty times.

My aunt and my cousin are the reason that I do not want a large wedding. In fact, I'd like for there to be less than twenty people at the actual ceremony--including the officiant, my husband, and I. I want only people who love me and wish me well to be there, not people who will only snipe and compare. Nothing, in my aunt's mind, will ever compare to her daughter's wedding. I could wear a dress made entirely of platinum and it wouldn't matter. So I won't give her the opportunity. I will have my wedding and it will be as happy as I can possibly make it, and she can pick at the fucking pictures.

all the things I daren't say

you should know that you're my hero
not in the "you save me" sense
but that I love to watch you stride about
trying to teach and inspire the whole damn world
that you don't care it's an impossible task
that you live your three ideals, love truth honor
like another superman we know
and darling, you should really know that
you don't have to wear a cape for me to be your Lois Lane.

In Which Something Amusing Happens to Me While I Am Only Partially Clothed

The power on Murray Hill, of late, has been not-so-reliable. One night, the electricity went out for four hours and the apartment was understandable sweltering. On nights like this I usually escape to R's tiny but air conditioned fraternity cubicle, but R was out of town on Very Important Fraternity Business. So I called his best friend and got let in.

Business as usual: I spoke to the boys, brushed my teeth and washed my face, got back to R's room and stripped down to Normal Sleepwear (bra and underwear) and promptly fell asleep. I got up the next morning, ran home to shower, went to work, and thought nothing of the episode until I got home that night to an instant message from R's friend across the hall.

Drew: Hey, were you in the house last night?
Me: Yeah.
Drew: Okay good, I wasn't hallucinating.
Me: ...?
Drew: I walked into R's room last night and saw you there and wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or not--I was really tired.
Me: Yeah, I was definitely there.
Me: Wait.
Me: I WASN'T WEARING PANTS, Drew.
Drew: I think Steve might have been in at some point, too.
Me: ....all right then. That's three brothers who have seen me partially clothed.
Drew: Three?
Me: Yeah, Zach walked in one morning while I was watching T.V. without a shirt on.
Drew: oh?
Me: He walked out, and came back five minutes later with a tray of electronics components for me to play with because I "looked bored."
Drew: HA.

A few days after this, I was walking with R into the house past a group of brothers. (who happened to include all three of the aforementioned men) Steve motioned for me to come over and whispered you were wearing sweatpants. And then I remembered.

At some point in the night, probably after Drew had been in and out, I'd woken up and for some reason grabbed a pair of boxers and put them on. I have no idea why. But I did. So the situation was only about a third as weird as it seemed.

I'm That Girl

Reading Vogue is bad for me. Does encourage me to work out, though.

So Sean had a line in his last post that has really stuck in my head, and because I'm still sick we're going to make this quick.

"nearly every girl ive ever dated was bi-sexual. not that i let them do that when we were dating, but thats another story for another story."

Not that Sean has ever dated me (I doubt that he ever would) but I have been that girl. The bisexual girlfriend. Which always sounds like a better idea than it is, apparently.

Part of the problem is that I date guys for whom I am superficially wrong. I like girls. They don't like to share. I am endowed, although not overly so. They like smaller breasts. I have wavy/curly hair which quickly deteriorates into Hermione hair if not properly cared for. They like to play with hair. I like to give oral sex. They'd rather give oral sex. I like lacy lingerie. They like cotton boyshorts. Etc. Etc. Etc.

It's the phrase "not that i let them do that" that really gets me. My knee-jerk reaction is a somewhat disapproving "hrm."

But. It's the perogative of anyone in any relationship to choose what is non-negotiable. If sleeping with other people is not negotiable, as it usually isn't in a relationship, then that's okay. It's fine to say "if you want to fuck other women, that's cool, but don't call me." In fact, I'd say that's healthy. I would certainly never "let" any boyfriend of mine prowl around looking for more play.

Add this to the fact that most bisexual women are looking for relationships with men--don't get me wrong, I like girls, but it'd be a rare woman who'd be worth all that fighting for the relationship alone, not to mention the drama that comes with dealing with girls--and the fact that some girls who identify themselves as "bisexual" are more "drunken-bi" or "for-an-audience-bi" and letting the bisexual behavior become a deal-breaker looks like more and more of the right idea.

What causes my initial reaction, I think, is the fact that in all my years of agreeing that whatever piece of meat in a magazine/on the internet they're ogling is incredibly hot, no man has ever asked me to stop seeing women romantically. That's always been my choice, my little sacrifice for them. But honestly? How many men are going to be right up front about it and say "yeah, I'd prefer it if you didn't get all naked with those other chicks while you're seeing me"? Men today are almost required to want the bisexual girlfriend--threesomes, you know, and blondes with big fake tits and all that--and those who aren't okay with it are often too intimidated to speak up.

And to be honest? I don't really date girls anyway. I fall in love occasionally. But I am cripplingly self-conscious about approaching women, so my bisexuality is more wishful thinking, sexual tension, very few experiences, (and possibly, someday, two tickets to the south of france) than anything else.

Television Wisdom

I have a little Grey's Anatomy problem. Thankfully, unlike other addictions I've had in the past, this one has led me to some good conclusions:

I don't want to be a doctor.
I don't want to marry a doctor.
I never want to be as thin as Ellen Pompeo.

Upon occasion, the teleplay is incredibly quotable, though usually this has far more to do with the quality of the acting than the quality of the writing. However, there's one line that has always stuck in my head:

You can have anything in the world that you want, if you are willing to give up everything else to get it.

I do believe this is true. In fact, I've made it work for me several times in the past--most often with boys, shallowly enough, but occasionally with jobs or classwork. Sheer, concentrated force of will is something more people should tap into.

For the first time in my life, though, I feel like there's nothing I can sacrifice. I'm ready for a real job, but to rush through graduate school would put my social life on hold, which I can't do. Similarly, I'd like to think about settling down in one area, but to do so would be to not give my education/early career the attention it deserves.

There are things that I want, but I want them all equally. I want the whole package. I no longer desire one thing, one person so much that everything else is nearly meaningless. And you know what? This is great. Yay balance, go maturity and all that.

But I fucking miss being able to love like that. To want like that. To be unreasonable, to flail and cry and feel in my entire body. To disengage from my head, no matter how undignified. To be so bloody singleminded that it didn't matter if my family or friends or boyfriend felt a certain way, I was going to do what I wanted and naysayers be damned. I miss the feeling that fate had its hand on me. I even sometimes miss the overblown drama and angst and the undeniable "but I love him/her/it" reason for doing anything.

Love isn't a reason anymore.

It's a good thing, really. You can't run around being led by your heart at all times. At least I can't. My heart is pretty capricious--if I followed it, I'd be running around the country and changing my major about every week. And love isn't a reason. It's a feeling.

I think it comes down to the difference between content and happy, in my very special Leigh Dictionary of Connotations. Happy is when your heart is so full you can't do anything but laugh. Sputter and laugh. Spin in circles. When you suddenly realize your ears ache from your smile and your chest is so full of feelings it's up around your collarbones. Happy is euphoria, stepping off a rollercoaster, putting down a great book you've just read for the first time, walking into your apartment after a really good first date. I'm happy now too, at times. But happy, for me, is to be enjoyed in the moment and then allowed to pass. Happy is a little too shallow to pursue as a daily goal.

Content is what I am now. Content lasts. It's tied to situation, to the more permanent parts of being. Content is enjoying--not adoring--your job. It's knowing that what you're doing right now will lead you to the future you want. It's thinking that perhaps this relationship will be your last, but if it's not, it's not the end of the world. Knowing that all's right with the world, and even if it's not, you'll make it through. It's reading a favorite book for the tenth time over and smiling at all the best parts. Content is what I really want for my future.

Happy's fireworks. Content is a 100-watt lightbulb. Less showy. But you can't read by fireworks.

Uncomfortable Truths

I've been working freshman orientation for the past few days. We did away with the very popular "Sex Signals" drama this year, due to financial concerns. Anyone who went through orientation at Case in the past few years is familiar with this event--it's some dialogues about issues on a college campus, sexual health, etc.

Because we're orientation leaders and therefore awesome, we elected to replace it with skits of our own. Because we care about our group as well as the incoming freshmen, the actors decided to perform them for us during our training.

The first one was hilarious, incredibly well-done, about drunk driving and what to do with alcohol poisoning people. It doesn't sound funny, but it is.

The second one was a very simple scene: guy and girl, dating for a while, return from party, flirt a bit, he wants to get it on, she's tired--let's just say the issue gets forced.

The way the scenes work is the actors play it out till the very climax of the scene--in the second case, the moment where B (male actor) throws A (female actor) to the floor and begins to climb on top--and a moderator calls stop, the actors freeze for a moment, then face the audience and answer questions in character. In the first scene, all the people at the "off-campus party" grab chairs, sit, and answer the audience's questions in various levels of intoxication, which makes for some humorous results.

In the second scene, B grabs a chair and addresses the audience, while A stays collapsed in the fetal position on the floor until addressed, at which point she crawls upright and hugs her knees, talking to the audience from her position on the floor. It's moving in any case. But in mine...

There are more, but I've never seen them.

I watched the entire skit. I got through the entire question and answer session with my teeth gritted, repeating in my head you will not be the one who cries, you will not be the one who runs out, you will not vomit on the floor. As soon as the skit ended, I was out the door and crammed into a corner by the elevator, face in hands, sobbing.

I'm writing about this to try to discover some sort of middle ground between "completely okay" and "entirely unglued." I do not think it has been a success.

This is not me, but it might as well be.

Revealing Covers

I read a series of articles today on Slate.com about pornography--specifically, about books written by women purpoting to uncover the effect of porn on our culture.

From what I gathered, the discussion wasn't about the books. It was about the authors either apologizing for or shrieking about the porn industry, and the views that the discussionistas had about such positions. According to Pamela Paul, porn is responsible for "failing relationships, men's flight from intimacy, men judging women by harsh appearance standards, men liking large breasts, female body-image issues, general female insecurity, lack of sexual foreplay, male impotence, men demanding more oral sex, [and] infrequent sex among couples." Wow. Okay.

I can't say that I've had a lot of successful relationships--that's kind of the way things go, you only get one, and it's always the one you're in till it isn't successful, and then you're not in it anymore. But I have dated/flirted with/been intimate with (both emotionally and physically) a number of men that is not statistically insignificant. And all of them, at one point or another, have watched porn. Some more than others, it's true. But I want to use my experience to talk about some of these claims--that porn is empirically a bad, bad thing.

First, I really resent these uppity feminist ideas that no one would work in porn if they weren't being pressured/exploited. Of course there's some of that going on, more than I think any of us would ever guess. But can't we, as women, just accept that some other women may be comfortable working without their clothes? Perhaps this is less about feminism and more about being threatened by these women.

Second, why be threatened? In my nearly seven years of dating experience, only one man ever claimed to enjoy masturbation more than sex, and even then, sex won because it was a more interactive experience--ensuring someone else's pleasure as well as his own. Yes, there are men out there with porn addictions, but this message seems eerily like D.A.R.E and abstinence-only sex ed programs; they're not sharing that there's a safe and healthy level of porn.

Because there is. Granted, I don't much care for porn. Not because it offends me (although some of those penises are very scary) but because it comes off as either humorous or clinical rather than sexy, arousing, or even erotic. I watched a full hour of the award winning Pirates...adult film...laughing hysterically with my girlfriends the entire time, not only at the insane dialogue, but also at the idea that someone did costumes for this, someone spent time composing a score. Also wondering if perhaps some of the girls had retractable teeth.

I've also attempted to watch porn with guys I've dated. It has always ended in either confusion or laughter on my part. Talk about clinical--a woman hooked herself up to a (literal) fucking machine with different heads for different orifices, and it honestly looked like the cameramen just set up a tripod and left.

I don't view porn as cheating. If I did, then I'd have to be equally hard on myself for the time I spend daydreaming about fictional characters. I have a hard time convincing myself that human beings are naturally monogamous--in fact, that's what makes commitment so meaningful, that you're giving up something, making a sacrifice for this person, who now means more to you than the hoards of slightly more attractive people you could be screwing.

To address some of the reviewer's accusations of the porn industry as viewed by one of the authors: in my experience, the men who watch the most porn, or the ones who watch it openly, without shame, have been the ones most into their partner's pleasure, the ones most accepting of real bodies, both theirs and their partner's, and the ones least likely to push for anything their partner is unwilling or reluctant to do. Now, I have dated and am friends with almost exclusively men in pursuit of college degrees, which means that this is an extremely limited demographic, and one which generally lends itself to a warmer male attitude towards performing oral sex. For some reason, this is usually interpreted to mean that these men are better partners, more respectful, more caring, etc. And yet the more willing a woman is to perform oral sex, the more oppressed she is, the less self-esteem she has. That's a strange double standard.

Why is that? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say most people know, academically, that head is head. But this oral-sex stigma comes from one of two places; either the glorification or vilification of femininity. If it's the glorification, then the woman is degrading herself by deigning to touch the inferior male genitalia, and only the men who are worthy get to approach the women's. If it's vilification, then any man willing to stick his head down there is obviously deserving of several medals and a drawn-out ceremony.

Or maybe it has something to do with general female attitudes towards sex as a route to intimacy--that receiving oral sex, as a woman, means something more than giving it. I don't know. All I know is that porn is not the social evil some people make it out to be, given that everyone involved is consenting and possibly even having fun.

Text

Truth: When I get up in the morning, I do not crave the bathroom, water, coffee, or sex, but rather, a large block of text to read. Just like that, verbatim, every morning my brain cues me to go get a "large block of text."

I attribute this to my upbringing--as I've stated many a time, I read. A lot. Nearly constantly, and more so when I was younger. Voraciously. To the point of rudeness.

So it was with great interest that I picked up the Plain Dealer last week to see an article on the perils of children stopping reading for fun over the summer. It was pretty standard summer fare--retain your student's knowledge, and all that--and one of my favorite children's authors, Jon Scieszka (of Stinky Cheese Man fame) had given several statements, including a list, by age, of recommendations for both genders.

Reading down the boys' list, I thought smugly to myself, hey, good stuff. Jumangi, yeah, I like Chris Van Allsburg. Captain Underpants for nine year-olds? Okay, sure, fine, if it keeps them reading, I suppose. Ditto for Lemony Snicket. Ooooh, Ender's Game, cool--and here's The Outsiders, and the major works of J.R.R. Tolkein. Maybe a little age-inappropriate, but that goes both ways over the list, both down and up.

Then I read the girls' list. Paper Bag Princess--cute. The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes: couldn't do any harm, I suppose. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging for the 13 and ups. Oh.

As it turns out, Jon Scieszka is head of a group called GuysRead, devoted to promoting the literacy of boys and young men. All well and good. But does he have to do it by suggesting parents shove Bridget Jones spin-offs down their daughters' throats?

I've been accused in most unimaginative terms of being an anti-feminist. If anyone is curious, this is where my line gets drawn. I choose to enjoy being in the kitchen. (I also enjoy my job, but no one pays attention to that when there are spittle-flecked rants to go on!) If I cannot choose to give my children, irrespective of gender, good books to read, then I will be sitting down and writing some of my own, or teaching my girls to think like the boys in the books do.

In other news: If you have never read House of Leaves, please just pick it up and flip through it. It can be a tough read at times, but some of the delight of reading it will come from simply--literally--turning the pages. You'll know what I mean. I have a copy if anyone wishes to borrow it.

I love books that have an element of play in them; where the reader is an active participant, where the story isn't just lying there on the lines, it's around and under and through and a lot of other adverbs, and you have to head in there with a pickaxe and coax it out. It's fine if the twists are telegraphed in advance, and it's okay to be a little predictable. Leave me buried treasure and I will adore the book and wave it about and research it online.

That's why I love Nabokov--in addition to bouncing and playing with the language, he leaves lots of doors open for the reader to walk through. I love House of Leaves, ponderous though it is, for the same reason. You can wander forever in this book.

And that--text as a physical construct, as a labyrinth or a highway, a way to get you not only to the author's conclusion but to wherever you wish to go on it--is why I love literature.