Being at Home

My husband and I love our couch.
Well, actually, I want to get a new
couch, so I guess I should say we love
what the couch does, anchoring us
in our house,
with our dog,
and our cat
And ourselves.
We watch entire seasons of Mad Men
and The Wire, and when he’s not home
I sleep on it.
Every once in a while he will come in
and say, “Want to meditate?”
We pull the cushions into position
so we can breathe easier.
I appreciate that he doesn’t do this often—
I never was regular with anything.
Sometimes he walks in the door
and sits down next to me,
and I can just tell that I need to
close my computer,
put it aside,
scoot over closer.

I used to wonder as I drove to the bar,
or the dance club,
or the coffee shop,
who these people were, the ones
with cars in the driveway
and lights on in the windows.

Now I know.

My Solution for the Economic Crisis: International Do-Over Day!

While listening to NPR during this whole debt crisis situation, I thought, "So, basically, everyone in the world owes everyone else in the world money." Perhaps it's more complicated than that, but that's the gist. You'll have to forgive me--monetary concerns were never my strong suit.

Which isn't to say that you should completely disregard the rest of my argument.

Seriously, once money gets up into the trillions (Hahaha, okay guys, you got me! that's not a real number!), I pretty much start to feel like we all moved to Monopolyland or something. All this shuffling of bits of information that represent money back and forth between computers. It's MIND BOGGLING! And just when I was starting to think that I was the only one on the whole planet who realized that money is this totally crazy made-up thing, This American Life did a whole episode on it. Scroll all the way to the bottom of that page and listen to it. It's fantastic.

So anyway, money is made up. And some people have waaaaaaaaay more of it than other people. Problem is, when one guy finally has all the money and refuses to share it with anybody, nobody can buy that guy's--or any guy's--products, and no one can pay their debts to anyone else, bringing us to an economic showdown wherein BARTERTOWN. TWO MAN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVE! Don't worry. I know what you're thinking. "This girl is about to go totally socialist on my ass!" Um, no. I'm going to propose something even more radical. You're going to think it's crazy, but I beg you to let it soak in for a minute before you decide that it's a stupid way to take care of economic problems. I know you have a lot of top quality choices when it comes to debt solutions.

What is this mind-blowing solution, you ask? I don't know why you would ask that since I put it in the title of this piece but: INTERNATIONAL DO-OVER DAY!

What would happen if we just erased all debts? Everyone's debts? So tomorrow I wake up with exactly the same amount of money that I have now, but I don't owe anyone anything--and no one owes me anything, either. Then we start from baseline. Perhaps there would be SOME debts allowed to carry over. My employer still owes me a paycheck, and I still owe the IRS. Maybe? Maybe not? I'm not an economist! All I know is that on a larger scale, if China owes Argentina (do they? I made that up as an example) a gagillion dollars and Argentina owes the United State a gagillion dollars, what you end up with is some kind of circular standoff. It's like when the mob offers to sell you protection and then breaks your legs if you don't buy the protection. In other words, the money is like the protection--a MADE UP THING! And if you don't want to be involved with made up things, then can't you just decide not to believe in them? No. The mob still comes for you anyway. Maybe this is more like the emperor's new clothes.

MY POINT IS that it's kind of ridiculous to keep letting money wield all of this power over us when WE'RE THE ONES WHO MADE UP THE FUCKING MONEY. Money is whatever we say it is. It's not some inherently autonomous, uncontrollable force like God or your mother. It's fucking MADE UP, YOU GUYS! I think I've made my point.

International Do-Over Day. Think about it. Make a Facebook invite or something. Viva la revolucion! And remember what Jesus said (according to the Presbyterians): "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." See? JESUS is all about International Do-Over Day!

Is domination the name of the game?

I just read this line in a piece at the Good Men Project about how men are doing in what sounds like our “post-feminist” society:

Most sexual relationships (if not all) involve a power exchange, including some degree of domination and submission. How does this basic human need fit in with the discourses of gender “equality” that prevail today?

This is an oft repeated stock idea that you’ll hear a lot all over the place. Sex is about power. When I was 21 and thought I knew everything about everything (and was a somewhat insufferable little shit), I would’ve said the exact same thing. It sounds like such an intellectual way to discuss the down and dirty deed, especially since intellectual types never want to sound too hopeful or sweet. It just wouldn’t do for us to say anything equating sex with love. And I would never say that all sex is about love—anymore than I agree with the idea that “most sexual relationships (if not all) involve a power exchange”. Emphasis mine.

Why is this the prevailing narrative? I can tell you, I’ve had lots of sex that didn’t seem to be about power at all. Two willing participants getting together and doing something that is mutually beneficial doesn’t sound like a power struggle to me—it sounds like a good time. Even when two people get together and one says, “Hey, can you boss me around for a little while? That’s hot!” it’s not really about a power exchange because, well, one person asked for the illusion of a power game. When one person is willingly submitting to another’s respectful domination, it’s fake power exchange. The person on bottom is just as much in control of their sexual experience at that point as the person on top.

The only other instances I can think of when power is at play during sex aren’t so pretty. They’re either situations in which the couple is at odds in other aspects of their relationship and each is using sex as a tool or a weapon, or they’re rape. “Maybe if I give him sex, he’ll like me.” “Maybe if I give her my love, she’ll give me her sex.” See what I just did there? I quoted the story before we get to the conclusion that all sex is about power. We’re taught to believe that men want the sex and are engaged in an elaborate ruse or, worse, all-out battle to get it. But, again, is that true? Like, is it inherently true, or is it just what we’ve been taught and therefore what we act out on the regular?

This idea that sex is inherently about power supports all sorts of unhealthy sexual attitudes. It scares women into trying to control men with sex. It gives men the impression that they have to be dishonest or forceful in order to get what they want. But, again, that isn’t inherently true. That’s just the traditional narrative. Why don’t we ever say that sex is about fun and connecting with another person? It doesn’t have to be about love for the long haul—it doesn’t even have to be about love for the night. But it can be a mutually pleasurable experience, and I just don’t get how that’s about power.

The Golden Age of Never Was, Part II

Recently I had a conversation with my father about whether or not gay people should be given the right to marry. We discuss this topic often. It's laughable, really. It's not as if either of us has changed our minds yet. I supposed maybe he finally budged a little when he admitted gay people are probably born that way.

During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that kids were better off being raised in two-parent households made up of a mother and a father. This then spiraled to the point wherein I said, "I love it when people point to some magical time when all families were made up of a mommy and a daddy and things were perfect and everyone was happy." That time, of course, never existed. My father claimed that it did because that's what his childhood was like. Well, so was mine. I certainly wouldn't claim that my experience is representative of all experience or even average experience. I wouldn't even claim that it's the only valid or right way to be raised. It sure did beat having abusive, neglectful parents or being raised by wolves (although sometimes I claim that I was for all the proper household care and maintenance my parents taught me).

I was thinking about all of this today after reading a thing at the New York Times (which I would link to, but they've cut me off for the rest of the month) about the decline of editing at publishing houses. Books, it would seem, are being published containing horrendous numbers of typos. The writer of this piece seems to think it wouldn't be such a problem if modern writers were better spellers and spellcheck hadn't ruined everyone's life. Reading the comments cracked me up. The pearl clutching! Over typos! I mean, I cringe when I see a typo on a website when I've done the copy. But life goes on and stuff. I certainly do not think WE ARE ALL GOING ON A SLOW RIDE INTO HELL when I spot a typo.

However, as internet commenters are wont to do, everyone freaked out. Some people were extremely pro bad spelling (or, you know, pro the fluidity of language and all that stuff). Others were militantly anti stupid people. It was the anti crowd that really got me going. Commenters harkened back to some ideal era in which 12-year-olds wrote spotless essays on the importance of being earnest. A time when all people everywhere could fucking SPELL, goddammit, and also never jaywalked. And all had awesome jobs with pensions and were set up in one of those "fat guy/hot wife" situations. ALL OF THEM.

The other day my mother said something about their being more sociopaths in the world today than ever before. My father and I started shaking our head slowly from side to side at the exact same moment and said, "No." I guess we agree on something. I said I would assume that the percentage of the population that is sociopathic is roughly the same over time. So, too, the percentage of bad spellers. There's something really satisfying about screaming, "We're all gonna DIE!" in a crowded theater. I just never understand how anyone thinks it's at all helpful to say that we used to have everything right but we don't anymore. It has only just now dawned on me that this phenomenon is just like the story of Adam and Eve: life was perfect, then people started up with their people-y ways, we got fucked, and now we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. I'm totally about to listen to "Woodstock" on YouTube. Funny. One of the comments on the YouTube video is, "Groovy! I miss those days...easy living and no worries!!" IT ALL COMES FULL CIRCLE.

I've never had much patience for people who are still pining away over some long lost love more than a year after they and that person parted ways. Seriously. No. Patience. It's one thing to say even after a long period of time that it's somewhat sad that it ended. But to pine away--to believe that the person who is gone was the only person who will ever be so perfect in the entire universe--makes me want to hit whomever is selling that schlock right in the face. It's just not honest. It may feel like the truth, but people who think this way are unwilling to actually look at the world straight and see it for what it really is: a very mixed-up place. It feels safe to believe that perfection existed at some point in the past because if that's true, perfection is both possible and possibly attainable. We can just follow our steps backwards, do now what we did then to make that magical time reappear.

But as long as we're betting on the past, we're not creating a future that might actually really be different. At the very least we're wasting a whole lot of time being dicks on the internet.

The Golden Age of Never Was

Gray morning. It was a gray morning,
the painted dotted lines beating steadily
against the edge of the car window. So many
gray mornings lined up like the lines down the
center of the road, seemingly straight
and leading somewhere out of sight.
Maybe endless? Clean. Alone, glass and steel--
blue-sounding songs for driving, sleek
like sterile luxury car ads that speak
of sexless women built like money.
This was how I liked it, gliding along
on concrete, surrounded by neon facades.
Alone. I still love alone. Perfectly hungry for
nothing. It's a myth I wrote about myself when
I was a dripping dog wandering the desert,
my ribs pressing into my flesh as the sun
turned the whole world washed out.

Our Bodies, Our Boobs

It's Fat Tuesday, and somewhere a woman is probably showing a bunch of strangers her boobs in exchange for beads. You go, girl!

Meanwhile, here at the ranch, there's something that's been coming up a lot lately that I would like to now discuss. I just got done reading this at Jezebel. It's about how everyone is so worried about how thin Megan Fox is! But also, she makes a living being thin and hot! What's a girl to do!

Society believes that it owns women's bodies. I cannot tell you how many times I've been standing in line at the grocery store and noticed a magazine that said, "Tori Something-or-other is TOO THIN! But also, LOOK AT BRITNEY'S FAT ASS!" Have I talked about that before? I feel like I've talked about that before. The message is two-fold. One, women have about a five pound range in which we will find their bodies acceptable. Two, we (meaning everybody) get to discuss women's bodies publicly because what we think of their bodies is very important. More important, oftentimes, than what we think of their work or their character.

The other day I was telling my boyfriend the reasons I used to hate having big boobs. One of them was that people felt like they could just tell me I had big boobs. All. The. Time. I could never figure out why this was a thing we needed to talk about. Believe me--if a girl has big boobs, she knows. Next subject! When a man's body is commented on in the course of the conversation, it's usually somewhat functional. "You're slim, dude, and I was at this store the other day that had clothes that would look great on slim dudes." Not only is it typically functional, but it's also much more rare. For every time my boyfriend has to hear about his slimness, I've probably had to listen to comments about my body from friends and family members 30 times over. Why do we all feel it is so okay to tell a woman what is up with her body?

The message is that women's bodies don't belong to themselves--they belong to the group.

Women comment on women's bodies, too. Let's get that out of the way right now. This is a societally conditioned thing. It's something we all fall into. And believe me, there is nothing wrong with the occasional, "You look nice," or, "Have you done something different with your hair?" But when someone has to listen to five people in one day make a joke or comment about her boobs, it's time to look at what's really going on. When a woman is both praised for, paid for and shown concern over the state of her body, it's time to question why we're talking about these things.

And this isn't about attacking what anyone is attracted to, either. Let's get that out of the way as well. I'm not saying you can't be attracted to a woman. I'm asking why is that a news flash? I'm asking why we have to discuss women's bodies in what I think are inappropriate situations? You want to tell me you like my boobs when we're in bed together (honey, sweetie, fiance, love of my life only)? Have at it. Knock yourself out. You want to talk to me about my boobs at all during a conversation about Linguistics class? Fuck off. You want to comment about my figure while we're at work? Who do you think you are?

You are part of the society that says, "I own you. I get to express my pleasure/concern over the state of your body whether or not you've asked for my opinion on this subject because my opinion on this subject is inherently important. Because you are a woman, and, therefore, just a body."

My tattoo says, "I am not a body. I have a body. I am a soul." I got that tattoo when I felt like I'd successfully recovered from anorexia and bulemia. I got it to celebrate the fact that I'd taken my body back from all the people who felt like it was okay to tell me what they thought of my body. Make no mistake. It was me who chose to listen. But, "I have a body." That means this body--it's all mine.

They didn't know I was there.