In defense of being "crazy"

It occurred to me the other day that the way we police words and decide in some spaces which words we should not use out of sensitivity or history was incredibly backwards and fucked.  I was on a run with a friend last week when I referred to sitting through some stupid thing in law school as "torture."  And the second I said it, I knew I could never use that word like that again.  I have written a great deal about torture in law school, I have read hundreds and hundreds of pages about the torture that was done in the name of our safety, I have used international law to try to bring about justice after the torture of others around the world.  I know fully how widespread torture is, I know (academically) how terrible and awful and inhumane and almost umimaginable it is, I know that my own country has used it, IN MY NAME.  And here I had just co-opted that word and diminished its meaning by casually using it.

The same goes with "starving."  How often do you use those words, Readers?

The thing is, if I had said that sitting through some law school thing or other was "rape," there is an entire community that would come out to condemn me.  They would call me insensitive, they would call me out for continuing the rape culture, and they would be right.  But where are those who demand we stop using "torture" flippantly?  Where are those who cry against the devaluing and diminishment of the power of that word?  Is it because torture survivors have not yet been able to unite and form political and social movements?  Is it because we aren't afraid that a torture survivor might hear us and thus be triggered by the word?  These last two are pretty morally repugnant reasons to continue using a word though, don't you think? 

I try to be as mindful as I can be about the words I use, and respectful as I can be about the way those words are perceived and used.  Words are powerful.  They matter.  Their meanings (which, as a good post-structuralist, I know are not all the same to everyone) matter.  I've read an awful lot of theory, and I once wrote in a poem, "We pick up cups by their verbal handles / And know to drink from them."  I would never claim that words can be divorced from their histories, their pasts; if we want to use a word, we must own a sordid past, embrace it, use it for a reason.  And a reason that is not "ironic": if anyone claims they are using a hateful word ironically, they have failed at both irony and truly accepting the power and baggage and hurt that a word can bring.

I continue to use the word, "crazy."

I suffer from bipolar disorder.  My mother has borderline personality disorder, and I have a written before about what fun THAT was growing up.  But the only thing I first understood both of us to be, was "crazy."  When I was 13, the only way I could keep myself from going insane was reminding myself over and over that my mother was crazy.  Because if she wasn't crazy, then I was.  And I couldn't even contemplate that.  When I had my first deep depression at 14, the only way I could comprehend it, without medical terms, without therapy, just on my own, a skinny, lonely kid in her room crying and cutting herself to shreds, was "crazy."

It may be hard to remember, but not a long time ago, not everyone was considered to be showing symptoms of "mental illness," we weren't passing out Ritalin like candy, and individuals weren't self-diagnosing with a shocking fluency in mood disorders picked up from just turning on the television.  When I was a kid, we didn't know what these things were.  We didn't know anyone on meds, we didn't even know what ADD was.   Prozac wasn't around, there wasn't the push from the pharmaceutical companies to proclaim that every minor twinge of sadness and setback was a mental illness to be fixed by chemicals.  By and large we've accepted this culture now, but there was a time we fought it.

When I first understood there was something every wrong with me, when I understood the chemicals in my brain were really not amenable to being controlled, or a stern talking to, or would listen to my pleading, I embraced the word "crazy."  And I embraced it because it DOES have so very many meanings - anyone different, anyone on the margins, is "crazy."  The things I do now, like be outspoken about sexuality or sleep around, or god forbid sleep with other women, would have put me in an insane asylum a hundred years ago.  Young women who were considered "uncontrollable" and not correctly performing their feminine gender could be locked away.  They were "crazy."  People who challenged the norms, people who did not fit, all bore the dismissive title of crazy.  Being called crazy is the ridicule stage of Gandhi's "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

I am not belittling mental illnesses.  Believe me, from my deepest, darkest depression, or where my mania has reached its anxious fevered state, I would never do that.  But the word "crazy" has never been merely confined to those who had brains with wonky chemistry; it was also leveled at people who started revolutions, agitated for change, wanted freedoms that were not yet their own.  

And some of us, even with our mental illnesses, understood that the way society was changing to embrace mental illness was one in which the the pharmaceutical companies flourished, and we were all less than perfect and flawed.  And how happiness was being defined was more consumer culture, more ascribing to gender roles, more following the fundamentally sick "American dream."  Radiohead's Ok Computer came out in 1998, and "Fitter Happier" made me all the gladder I was happily identified as "crazy."

 

There was an Adbusters magazine, too, that came out in 2004 or 2005, I can't remember, that offered, hey - maybe we're not crazy.  Maybe the country, our society, our culture is ill.  And because our society is so ill (think what was happening in the country those years, people) the only way to BE is "crazy."  And so crazy I have been all these years.

I do not like telling people I have bipolar disorder.  I do not explain my mother as having borderline personality disorder.  These feel too inorganic to me; they do not explain my experiences, my feelings.  I stick with crazy.  All the meanings, the baggage, the history of that word - it fits her.  It fits me.  And while the word has different meanings when I say it for both of us, I am ok with that.  Crazy has never only fit one kind of people.  And it has come to mean so many things now - risk-takers, spontaneous decision- makers, hilariously funny people, even FORCES OF NATURE.  It sits on me comfortably, and I like it's broad scope - it manages to capture an awful lot of Gayle, and there is an awful lot to Gayle.

I understand that there are many people who consider it "ablist" to refer to other people or things or events as "crazy," and I understand the reasoning.  I understand the reaction.  There is a terrible history of how people with mental illnesses have been treated and dismissed, and I can understand the aversion to the word.  But at some point, your needing to be comfortable with the words I use does not trump my ability to define myself and my world.  At one point do your feelings end, and my feelings begin?  I understand my bipolar disorder as crazy, I understand myself as crazy - and who is anyone to decide that is "ablist"?  We have come to the margins of sensitivity and mindfulness in words and usage, and they are a lot squidgier I think then most people are willing to concede. 

This obviously doesn't apply to words I will never use, because I cannot own the history, truly understand them, ever take them as mine.  I do not say the word "retarded" - I have taught medically-diagnosed-as-"retarded" children, and their lives are unimaginably hard.  I do not say "lame," because that isn't something I can own - riffing off of people with physical disabilities seems so unkind, especially as every day I take the metro and see the signs about elevator outages and other metro breakdowns and wonder how the FUCK do those with physical disabilities manage?  I actually don't use the word "bitch," anymore, because I do not think I can own the misogyny, and I think it is still carries all that misogyny, used as an epithet against women, or against men who need to be put down because they are acting too much like a woman.  And there are words I cannot use as a white person, too, and I try to remember to refer to myself as "broke" instead of "poor," and so on.

But at some point, it begins to grate on me.  I feel like I am being treated as if I am overly precious, overly sensitive.  Amanda Marcotte has written about feeling condescended to by those who insist she shouldn't have to hear the word, "rape," and sometimes, I feel this way too.  Not with "rape," maybe, for me, but certainly with other things.  I know we want to be sensitive to listeners around us, but what about when those listeners are justifiably annoyed by your assuming their sensitivity?  We don't assume every woman responds to being raped the same way.  And so we shouldn't assume every woman will respond to the word "rape," in the same way.  And while I don't use it, because I'd rather be sensitive than trigger someone, what about when someone uses that very word to define themselves?  What if they cannot explain their lived experience without the very word that is supposed to be oppressing them?

There was a "Dear Imprudence" column written by S.E. Smith over at FWD, and it was about pressuring people to resume family relationships.  I wrote a comment to the column, and the comment was this:

'Oh, suuuuch good advice. Thank you, Abby. As a lady with a mother with borderline personality disorder, it makes me so distraught every time someone suggests I need to forgive my mother or just get over it or I will “regret” having cut her out of my life or all I need to do is be more loving and accepting or WHATEVER it is. It is hurtful to someone who has been victimized by a family member over your entire life, even as a child, to be told it is your fault for not making things right.

Also, I am guessing Abby read between the lines, and maybe knew the grandmother was either minimizing or didn’t know about the mother’s treatment of the daughter over a very long period of time leading up to the one incident she recounts. It’s rarely just one incident that makes one cut off a family member; it was just that that one incident was the last straw.'

The comment never went through.  I was confused.  I emailed S.E. Smith asking why, which I know it kind of an obnoxious move, but I was genuinely concerned I had maybe done something incredibly offensive.  She very kindly emailed me back, saying that, "It wasn't allowed through moderation was because it seemed like you were identifying your mother's BPD as the cause for her behaviour--if you had just said 'as the child of an abusive parent,' that would have been fine. At FWD, we prefer not to ascribe behaviour to disabilities--as an autistic person, for example, I don't blame my behaviours on my autism--and we also prefer not to disclose medical details about other people."

This made me fucking mad.* 

First of all, if we're not going to disclose medical details about my mother, CAN I JUST CALL HER CRAZY?  I bet that won't do.  But I was being exact - I didn't have an "abusive" parent, I had a "crazy" parent.  Who, I mean, was also abusive, but it is a very specific experience, being the child of a borderline parent.  Some Readers here know this.  But using the word, "abusive," doesn't explain my experience - it is too blunt a word, sounds like I may have merely been beaten, can mean any number of things, EXCEPT what I felt I actually went through.

And second, you don't ascribe people's behaviors to their disabilities?  Really?  Also, HOW?  Because, ok, yeah, I can make choices, but I have a permanently fucked wrist, on which I have had several surgeries.  Sometimes, when I can't do things, I blame it on my fucking wrist.  Because it isn't a lack of will that made me unable to do whatever it is.  Further, you know the only reason I can get through a depression?  Because I DO NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY OR BLAME MYSELF FOR IT.  I blame my disease.  I blame the chemicals in my brain.  No fucking amount of personal will will get me out of a depression, I can tell you, I have tried.  And so walking around and being sad and cranky, I try not to feel bad for, as if it were a personal failing, because feeling bad about feeling bad and beating yourself up for your inability to fix that is not so helpful.

Now, if I'm mean to someone while depressed, do I need to own that?  Sure.  But there are plenty of times when I am being mean or cranky where I know I am being mean or cranky and I CANNOT STOP IT.  It's like watching two trains about to collide.  Ask me about my hypoglycemia sometime, or anyone else who has it for that matter, and they will explain what it feels like being one of those trains but unable to hit the breaks in time when their sugar has crashed.

And finally, if I didn't blame my mother's actions and her treatment of  me on her mental illness, then I would have to assume she is the meanest person ever, or just plain evil.  The only reason I have managed to deal with my mother at all, on any functional level, is because I understand that she operates as she does because of her mental illness.  So I have more patience with her, I don't argue with her, I don't try to win with her, because there is no way to win with a person with borderline.  I have achieved a not easy, hard-fought truce in my relations with her, and it is because I know how her illness operates.  And I know it makes her unable to show love in any rational, acceptable manner, and so I have stopped being hurt all the time, hoping that someday I will get the mother I'd always wanted but never had.

Essentially, at FWD, I couldn't use the words I needed to define myself or my experience.  I don't read there anymore. [EDITING to make clearer: I am not accusing FWD of policing people's self-identification.  The blog has consistently defended the right for a person to self-identify in whatever manner they feel comfortable.  This was only meant to address my feelings about not being able to use language in regards to my experience in some spaces in general, and my comment not being posted at FWD in specific].

What I am saying is: there are things I will not tolerate here at Unnatural Forces.  Fat-shaming, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, the usual suspects, you get the idea.  There are words you cannot use.  But I also know I walk a fine line between trying to make everyone feel included, and taking away someone's ability to define themselves or their experiences.  If you don't feel safe here because I use the word "crazy," I understand that.  But I don't want anyone to think I am using the word flippantly.  I have thought about it a lot, and I use the word consciously.  I am "crazy."


* Editing to add: what made me mad is feeling erased, not the blog policy.  FWD and all other blogs can follow whatever comment policy they like - this never bothers me.  Delineating "safe spaces" and policing to keep the space safe is fine.  I was upset because I felt like the fear that an imaginary person may potentially be offended trumped my ability to define my experience for myself.  Having words taken out of your mouth is always a bad feeling.  I think FWD is an awesome site; it's just not for me.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 6: Don is a mess, Peggy is my hero

Ok, I am just breaking this down by character.

Roger: increasingly irrelevant and a mess.  All he does is dictate his memoirs now, and we know him even finding Don and hiring him was a drunken accident.  He knows his own irrelevance to the firm now - he refuses to give Don his Cleo without a promise from Don that Don couldn't have done it without him. 

Don: He's starting to black out and not remember giant chunks of time.  He wakes up with a strange woman, having lost a day, and having introduced himself to her as, "Dick."  The most telling line in this episode is where the woman who works at the firm as a consultant (what's her name?) says to him (right before she rejects his offer to go sleep with him, telling him he is confusing a lot of things at once): "Award or no award, you're still Don Draper."  Don's response is: "Whatever that means."  And that's Don's problem - without a family, a fiction to uphold, he has lost his own storyline.  He cannot figure out who he is.  He even doesn't remember his day with his own children, and disappoints them.

Peggy: Peggy IS MY HERO.

She is increasingly furstrated at how little credit she gets, how much work she does and how very fucking good she is, without Don acknowledging it.  She was a big part of the idea behind the ad that got him his award, but she doesn't get credit whatsoever.  She is told she has to learn to work with the lazy asshole art dude when she is clearly better.  There is that great scene where she goes to speak to Pete, he says not now, he walks into the office with Lane, and she has nowhere to go, no one to appeal to.  The look on her faceless is perfect - she just hit her head on the glass ceiling.  And she is MAD.

Furthermore, I cannot even tell you how much I admire the scene where she calls the asshole art guy on his shit and strips (and then makes fun of him the whole time, and later mentions he has a "little, tiny thing").  Most women give in to body shame - I mean, here is a guy being a complete pig, continually ragging on Peggy how uptight she is and how he is really into nudity and being free and unfettered.  But he's really using that to belittle her, control her, shame her - he can't ACTUALLY handle it when Peggy strips.  And the thing that preceiptates her stripping is he makes fun of her body - he says she should be ashamed of it, it could never turn him on.  So she takes her clothes off to prove him wrong, in that she is unattractive, that she is a prude, and that she doesn't turn him on - she continually looks over the table to make fun of his erection.  She refuses to drop her gaze first.  It's just . . . the awesomeness in confronting shame, body hatred, and misogyny like that, and winning, had me fucking clapping in my seat. 

While Peggy wins, Peggy SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO BE IN THAT SITUATION.  That kind of blatant sexual harassment and sexism is nothing she should ever have to deal with.  She manages to get the upper hand in a shitty situation, but there is no denying that we are SO LUCKY to live in a time where mostly, we as women don't have to tolerate that shit (at least on paper - I've been sexually harassed plenty, but I also got to report it, and steps were taken.  I know there is a lot to be said about my white privilege, too, in sexual harassment - I want to address that in another post).  Peggy is brilliant, and Peggy gets screwed, and is continuously under-appreciated.  And she is also the warmest, kindest, most honest person in that agency - she tells Don that he has to make right after stealing that kid's ideas, instead of just stealing them.  She gives Ken a big hug when she sees him.  Peggy is just good people.

Basically, again, Peggy is my hero.

Other things I am wondering - when does Roger start to really destroy the firm?  Or Don, with his inability to control his drink?  What is WITH this new kid, and don't you think Peggy will end up stuck with him?  What did you think of Pete and Ken's interaction - and how big a dick is Pete (still)(I thought he'd be mature about things and . . . he wasn't)?  

The thread is yours!  I am really interested in what you think!

Blog note! With cats.

Hello, my dear, lovely Readers!

I have received the awesome request to write a post about why I love David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest so much, and I have been talking about the book a great deal online with strangers (I posted on a site that matches people by books, and when I described why IJ matters to me, I merely wrote, "I think this book may have saved me."  Which is true.  You'd be amazed how deeply people have responded to that).  I am working on that post, but it is HARD.  And soul-sticky, and slippery, and nearly impossible to grasp.

Also, we had journal orientation for the new members today (I'm editor-in-chief of my law journal) and I had to get work done and classes start tomorrow and I am tired.  I will get the Mad Men post up tomorrow, but that IJ post, that may take some time.  I just . . . I want to get it right.

In the meantime, life goes on here at Unnatural Forces.  My cats have discovered yet ANOTHER tampon to play with - does my closet give birth to them?  Where do they get these?  I do not know.

Azrou helped me change the sheets.

And Amouch does what he does best, which is look pretty in the light.

May everyone's week begin beautifully!

CLEARLY.

So Glenn Beck's wackaloon (but also: dangerous) followers have descended onto D.C. this fine day to make anyone with any good sense, an even shallow grasp of American history, or who gives a shit about ACTUAL civil rights and equality and race and justice issues, wince in deep pain. 

But the last time the tea nutters were here a year ago for, like, the 9/12 thing maybe, I don't know, WHO KNOWS, I was working on Capitol Hill.  I was interning for a non-profit that focused on counterterrorism law, Guantanamo, military commissions, and human rights, and our offices happened to look over the Capitol.  I had to go run around the Senate office buildings that day passing a report out to various committee members, and when I walked outside that afternoon, there were a lot of white, above middle-aged, cranky Midwesterners swarming about.  A couple of them asked me for directions ("Where is the Supreme Court?" "Uh, that's it behind you."  "Do they keep the Constitution in there?"  "No").

Anyway, I went on to my task, eyes having rolled so hard at their stupid fucking protest signs (and no, really, they were very misspelled) I nearly lost them in the back of my skull (my eyes, not their signs), and at the end of the day, I walked over to the Blue Line to go home.  The metro was PACKED with Tea Baggers, and they were LOUD.  Loud like shouting at each other in close proximity as if they all suffered from a congenital lack of volume control, or no one had described "inside voices" to them ever as children.  I scooted as far away from them as possible on the platform.

When the train came, I was relieved that it seemed like all the wackadoodles were getting on another car, when at the last second this (heterosexual - need I say this?) couple got on and sat down across the aisle from me.  I knew they were Baggers.  It was obvious - they exuded that middle-of-the-country-whiteness and excessive, privileged Christianity that every East- and West-coast city dweller can spot immediately.  Also, I think they were draped between the two of them in like 7 crosses.  Now, I am not saying all these people are BAD, but as a Jewish socialist feminist queer chick, it's a defense mechanism - I see these folks, a little warning light in the back of my head goes off that blinks, "Not Safe."  I am not disparaging huge parts of the country or the folks who live there; but there are certain communities, certain spaces, certain places, certain people, within or with whom I am more likely to be mentally or even physically in danger, and so I am wary.  And these people, I just KNEW, were going to be awful. 

The train had not been moving for but three seconds when the woman announced loudly, and yes, I am using all caps, because this is what it was like, "GOD, WHY DOESN'T ANYONE SAY ANYTHING?  NO ONE TALKS TO EACH OTHER HERE.  EVERYONE IS SO UNFRIENDLY.  NO ONE TALKS TO EACH OTHER.  WHY IS EVERYONE SO IMPOLITE????"  I was sitting down next to an older gentleman in a suit who was reading the paper - definitely a native.  He looked over at me, and we both groaned, so at least I know I had an ally.  He unfolded his paper completely and held it up so it totally blocked the two of us from the Tea Party couple, like a shield protecting us.  I laughed.  The woman ignored us and kept going.

"IT'S SO SAD THAT NO ONE IS FRIENDLY IN DC.  IT'S EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH DC.  WE CAN'T WAIT TO GET BACK HOME.  NO ONE IS POLITE HERE.  THEY DON'T TALK TO YOU.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?????"

Really, she asked that seriously.

At some point the woman, who was doing most of the talking while the guy was scanning the train crowd in what I can only describe as "Hyper Alert Mode," latched claws into a young business kid in a suit who made the fatal mistake of smiling politely when the woman made eye contact with him and now was trapped  in a crowded train and couldn't get away.  Maybe he had better home-training than the rest of us, and good for him, but the DC natives who were just trying to get home after a long week that Friday afternoon were in "Full Avoidance Mode."  Some of us were also trying not to get really fucking angry, or burst out laughing.  The gentleman sitting next to me and I had begun to now whinge loudly and make fun behind our screen of newspaper.

The woman began laying out her conspiracy theory to this kid.  She was like Glenn Beck with a chalkboard, but less articulate, possibly because there were no pictures or chalk arrows to help you follow the along.  I mean, you try that shit as a narrative, and forget it.  There were a lot of twists and turns in this plot, but she covered Obama being a community activist (she spit out the word "activist" like an epithet), the Weathermen, Communism but yet also Islam, like ISLAMIC COMMUNISM: ALERT YOUR LOVED ONES IT'S COMING, the birth certificate, and the murder of people I had never heard of, and who may or may not have ever existed.  Anyway, this whole long rant from the lady finally got to its revealing climax.  She had laid all this groundwork for this poor young man so she could ultimately show how Obama was really directly linked to . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . .

Charles Manson.

At this point the gentleman next to me and I completely lost it, his paper crumpled as he grabbed his belly, and we howled with laughter.  The woman and the guy she was with were still shouting at that poor young man as they got off at the very next stop, which was lucky, because I was afraid the woman was going to turn her sights on us.  The gentleman and I continued to laugh and joke until his stop, at which point he shook my hand before he left the train and said, "It was an absolute pleasure sitting next to you this afternoon."

And that woman thought DC'ers weren't polite.

Sex, papers, and law school

So, true story: last fall semester, I wrote a paper on the history of the legality of vibrators from a feminist/cultural theory perspective.

It was for Gender Discrimination and the Law class.  And, basically, in struggling to come up with paper topics, it kind of boiled down to this: I was writing a massive paper on torture.  I was reading hundreds and hundreds of torture documents.  I was working on GTMO and counterterrorism law and torture at my internship 20 hours a week.  I had a bazillion (actual number) classes.  I had this paper and I knew if I did anything that mattered really intensely to me, anything really emotional and personal, like pro-choice issues, or queer issues, I knew it would destroy me.  I just couldn't psychically take on that much.  And then, out of the blue, I may have read a blog post or seen a picture or something, I was like FUCK THAT: I am going to write about vibrators.

Basically, I wanted a paper topic that every time I did research for it, or was even just reading on the metro on the way into school, it turned me on.  My paper topic made me hot.  It was fun and fantastically interesting and now I can whip out all these cool facts and outrageous history at parties (like: a person owning above a certain number of vibrators/sex toys is illegal in my backwards state of Virginia.  I am not telling you how many that is, but I do happen to own more.  DON'T TELL ON ME).

I have Feminist Legal Theory class this semester (starting next week!  Do I come up with paper topics before I ever start classes? - maybe!  I just nerd like that!).  I think I may want to compare the rules of sex clubs and BDSM play with state-sanctioned law, and how one embraces "yes means yes" and an autonomous female sexuality and pleasure, and the other continues to make women the defenders of their chastity and punishes them for going out while female and drinking.  This is a great topic, right?  It is interesting, it is sexy, it can include lots of theory (Butler!  Foucault!  YAY), and it is novel as fuck for a law class.

And I totally think it will have to involve a field trip.

Gone speechless

So, my post about the asshole body-policing runner dude got linked by a bunch of folks, and we had a gazillion people come visit here at Unnatural Forces (Hi, new people!  Welcome!).  And in comments I talked about how, you know, I've gotten really fighty of late, how I have less patience, how I will just blatantly call people out, and how I am less able to suffer fools.  But Gayle is not always ready with a come-back.  I wasn't always able to whip out zingers and take down arguments and throw brutal logic monsters from my brain that eat the the other side alive.  This is a recent development, and I am very proud of it, but even I surprised myself at how easily the responses to that douchebag came out of my mouth.  This is possibly because  I am 30 now, and at this point, I have either read arguments or argued this shit myself SO MANY FUCKING TIMES, it's almost rote (I am leaving commentary on how obnoxious it is I've had to argue the same things a innumerable times over for later).

It is rare, I think, for me to be rendered totally speechless.  I have chosen not to argue.  I have chosen to walk away or ignore.  I have said things like, "I am not even entertaining your argument as if it is valid," or "Arguing with you would lend your opinion legitimacy, and it has none."  That's not speechless.  I have even said, "I can't believe you just said that, I am now speechless,"  but then clearly I am NOT speechless, I am saying I am "speechless" to show my moral opprobrium for what someone has just said.  But truly speechless, where my mind goes completely blank and my brain refuses to form thoughts or even shoot neurons in any direction in an attempt and I can only made rude, grunt like sounds in the back of my throat because my very words have become inextricably lodged there?  That is rare.  And for my second story post, I thought I'd tell about a time I was rendered really and truly speechless.

My grandfather died on my 18th birthday, and when I was 21, my grandmother decided she wanted to remarry.  She wanted a wedding (her reasoning was, "I like dancing"), and scheduled it for mid-December, right after I returned home at the end of the semester.  So the Thanksgiving break of my senior year in college, I went home to find a dress as her bridesmaid (there was only one, and it was me).  The theme was purple, and anything I found that I liked that was purple (and at her insistence, "sexy," FOR HER WEDDING, I am not even kidding, she was 82 at the time) was perfect.

Well, I found a beautiful deep purple gown with beading, and I loved it.  She also approved.  But I really wanted to take it back to college with me after Thanksgiving break so I could wear it for my college's formal Winter Ball.  My mother objected, saying I'd mess it up before the wedding.  But my grandmother thought the dress lovely, argued it should be used as often as possible, and insisted I take it back to college for the month.  I promised it would be in perfect condition for the wedding, not a bead out of place.

Well, the Winter Ball came, and I donned that dress, and I looked fucking GREAT, kids.  I went to the Ball with several other ladies with whom I was close friends.  We had an absolutely fabulous time.  We all danced holes in our shoes, got very drunk, and then, and I am not sure how this happened (I am sure it involved a lot of weaving and stumbling), four of us went back to one of the ladies' rooms and had sex with each other all night.  Which, you know: awesome.  The next morning we were disastrously hung-over but in mighty good spirits (no surprise!), so we all went out to breakfast together at the greasy-spoon truckstop diner a short drive from campus (greasy diner food = best hangover remedy ever.  It makes no logical sense why cheese and eggs and grease settle that queasy alcohol feeling, but it is thus).

The thing was: when I'd put my gown back on to go home the next morning to change into regular going-out-to-breakfast clothes, we realized there was a tremendous spot on it.  Someone had come very hard directly on the front, and there was dried lady-come maybe the size of my palm smack dab in the center.  After a fucking hysterical giggle over this and guesses as to who it belonged to (and I prefer to think of myself as the catalyst for that orgasm, but really, it's anyone's guess after we had shed clothes onto the ground who that spot could be attributed to), I was like, Ok, guys, this is not funny, I have to go home in a week and wear this to my GRANDMOTHER'S WEDDING.  But everyone was like no, no, no, it'll totally come out, it's like organic and all, and a friend volunteered to walk it to the dry cleaners with me after breakfast.

So after breakfast my friend and I scoop up the gown and walk it several block to the dry cleaners, making stupid jokes about how I was going to explain that spot if it wouldn't come out (I can't remember our ideas here, but I do recall having to sit down on a stoop at some point I was laughing so hard).  We get to the dry cleaners and patiently wait in line.  When I finally get to the front, I hand it to the woman, telling her I need it in a few days, and it's really important to get the spot out, and if she can please be extra specially careful with the beading, I need to wear this dress to a wedding in a week.

The woman was very re-assuring and said it would all be no problem, but in an attempt to better figure out how to attack the stain on the dress she held it up, pointed to the spot, and asked me, of course, "What is it?"

I was struck completely dumb.

My brain has never gone so dead in my life.  I just froze.  I had no idea how to answer.  I could feel my lips beginning to move, and small word-like sounds begin to come out, in attempt to break the forever-long (to me) silence.  I couldn't even comprehend an answer.  I just stood there just silently mouthing nothing, opening and closing my mouth like a fish in a tank when my friend finally found her voice and jumped in, "It's FOOD.  It's DEFINITELY FOOD."

Ok, the woman replied, looking at me a little askance, and wrote out a receipt.

As we were walking out I looked at my friend, both of us still a little in shock, and I exhaled. "Woooooo.  Well done, dude."   She responded, "Well, we ate it, I figure it counts as food."  Thus began another round of hysterical giggling.

The spot came out, and the dress was perfect for the wedding.  But that's the last time I can remember being struck totally, completely speechless.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 5: Pulling for Sally Draper edition

Oh, ok, let me tell you how much I want to pray for Sally Draper, even though: 1. I do not believe in a god, and 2. Sally Draper is not even real.

There's so much to say about Betty's beliefs - that only girls who play with themselves are "fast."  Because female sexuality - any expression of it makes you a whore!  What's most frightening about this is that people still counsel children that masturbation and expressions of sexuality, are sinful and wrong, and if you engage in them, ESPECIALLY as a girl, you become a "loose woman."  One point for the virgin-whore dichotomy.

Also, there is the scene where Sally cuts her hair - she says she just wants to be beautiful.  If she has learned anything from her mother, it's that her worth lies on her beauty, her ability to attract attention based on her physical appearance.  Betty Draper is a terrible mother who resents her daughter, and Don can't even re-schedule a date to spend time with his kids.  Sally is begging for attention, and the only way she knows how to do this is by trying to make herself "beautiful."

Sally is also very alone in trying to figure out sex.  She knows her father sleeps around; her mother has replaced the father figure in the house very quickly while routinely yelling about the women her father brings home.  She says to the babysitter she absolutely won't speak to her mother about sex.  And no wonder -  she is shamed for exploring her sexuality in a healthy way.  Kids masturbate.  And no one has spoken to Sally before, and she may not feel safe masturbating in her own house (her mother slaps her for cutting her hair, so).  I am so so so hoping that therapist is good - she immediately seems to pick up on how fucked up Betty is - I mean, Betty really thinks her daughter does things solely to punish her.  It's like my fucking mother, guys - and let me tell you, that therapist will need to be really good to help Sally navigate a mother like that.

After being a teacher, too, I can tell you - so much of youth ignorance or misinformation or weirdness or unhealthiness about sex is all about their PARENTS' discomfort and immaturity about sex.   I'm really, really hoping that Sally's therapist is good.  Really.

Other points:

• Roger seems pretty fucked up - he's drinking a lot recently, being insane about "the Japs."  I loved that Pete stood up to him and called him out, I loved Joan refusing to indulge him.  And I think Pete was right - Roger has always had the most uncomfortable, tenuous position in the firm - what does he do, really?  This came out in previous seasons - remember when the firm was first sold and they'd left his position off the list of employees?  So Pete, I think, is exactly right, to claim Roger is wrapping himself in teh flag to keep himself relevant and important in the firm.  We really get the sense that the partners are becoming less and less respected in the office - Don and Roger are falling apart.
• But! This was Don Draper at his best.  This is what he's good at - playing the game.  And he played it well - it was a delicious pleasure to see him do his thing.
• Another but!  Jesus, Don Draper has gotten meaner.  He's just less and less pleasant to watch when he is not doing his job.  Also, do we think his next attempt will be the wonderful lady who works with him?  She's very talented, very smart.  But she may also have him too figured out to fall for it.
• The stigma against therapy is STRONG, man.  I am so so so glad I did not live in that time.
• Well, Burt is mad the black folks still "want things."  They get equality on paper, isn't that enough?  Pete makes the comment that they also want to stay at the Waldorf - this is a beautiful example of how racism and classism mix.  But seriously, Mad Men, can't you spend more than 20 seconds on race issues?

Alright, loves, the discussion is yours.  What'd you think?

Break-ups and chivalrous idiots

It is the third installment of Gayle taking suggestions!  And can I tell you - everyone has requested stories.  And I have a lot of stories, Readers, so I decided to divide them - there will be several story posts.  This one is anecdotes with a point - while I was rooting around in my head for stories, this pattern emerged, and I was like holy shit!  This is a Thing!  That I should write about!  These anecdotes are connected!  And so this is that post.

And what are those continually occurring anecdotes that I realized form a pattern, my dear Readers?  It is this: Boys always break up with me.  BUT WHEN WE ARE NOT IN A RELATIONSHIP. 

No, seriously.

Have you had this happen to you, ladies and dudes?  I have this happen consistently.  And I will opine about it once I lay out (some of)(there are MORE of these stories, if you can believe it) the evidence:

EXAMPLE 1
This one is by far my favorite, because this dude was by far the nicest about it.  Also, after a very chivalrous break-up of our non-relationship, he became a good friend and then much later my lover ANYWAY, so it all worked out.  Plus, years later he still tells me I am the sexiest person to whom he has ever made love and other such lovely flattery, so we like this dude.

Here's what happened - it was the first year I had moved to Morocco, and there was a Halloween party for all the teachers that fall at a friend's house.  To preface, I had come in with a group of nine new teachers that year, many of whom were young dudes - and these young dudes made it kinda clear they were interested in the ladies.  Gayle was her usual Feminazi self, refusing to giggle and bat her eyes and laugh at stupid jokes, and so was for the most part treated AS AN EQUAL (Isn't this the grossest thing?  You know this pattern.  A lady refuses to act like a "lady."  The dudes then do not see her as someone they want to date.  But they treat her with way more respect.  I hate the patriarchy).

Anyway, Gayle has her moments in life of deciding that she's gonna work it, and she was SLAMMIN' at this Halloween party.  And this party ended up being a TOTAL shitshow - people got outrageously drunk and there was sex with someone's best friend's boyfriend and there was fighting and drama and it was a MESS.  Which I totally stayed out of - I danced with folks and chatted and flitted about and had a great time.  It was nice!  I spoke with everyone, I laughed, I met new people.  I took a compliment from one of the dudes who was new that year with me, and I complimented him in return (he was rather good-looking).  Then the party wound down/fell apart/there was crying and recriminations, so I went home.

The next day, I get a phone call from the gentleman I'd swapped compliments with.  He says, "We need to talk about this thing between us."  I ask, "Thing?"  He says, "Look, I know it's really intense and it's hard to hide it and like I just look across the room at you and GOD, but I really don't think this is a good idea."  I, who am hungover and not a little confused, manage a, "Wait, what?"  He goes on: You're a really wonderful girl and you're sexy as hell and I know there's that powerful thing between us and we have this strong attraction to each other (he might have said "animal attraction," now that I am thinking about it).  BUT (and then he says this ever so apologetically), I'm so sorry, I can't do this.  We work together and I got involved with someone I worked with in my old school and it was a mess and I don't want to make the same mistake so I really enjoy your company and I like you a lot and I'm really looking forward to being your friend.  I'm sorry.

I was silent for so long he thought we had been disconnected, so he hung up and called me back.

Then he asked me if that was ok and if I understood and hey, did I maybe want to hang out with him and some friends next weekend?  I said, "Uhhhh.  Sure."  The thing was: I never corrected him.  I never told him I had absolutely NO FUCKING IDEA what he was talking about.  We had a connection?  When?  Where?  Wait, really?  And he was so very nice about the whole ordeal, breaking up this thing I never knew we had.  So what could I do - stop him, correct him and tell him that he was all wrong, and then, like, argue with him about . . . whether we were ending a relationship that may or may not have existed?  Ultimately, it all worked out the same - there was no relationship!  And so it seemed a little heartless to butt in and say, "Actually, dude, I have no interest in you at all, I feel nothing between us."  While that would have been honest, it would also have been unnecessarily hurtful.  And so I didn't say a word.

Like I said, we did become good friends.  He was very much there for me and a wonderful support those two years I was in Morocco - he always seemed to magically know when I wasn't doing well, when I needed help, and he would just show up or call, like *poof*.  We became lovers after we actually established a connection between us.  He fell for me, right at the end, and it was sad and a little painful, that, because I was leaving and I hated that he was hurt.  But it was all very sweet, too, and he was never anything but kind about everything.

They only get meaner from here.

EXAMPLE 2
My first year of law school.  The average age of law student was pretty much right out of college (I referred to the panicky, immature 22 year olds collectively as "the children"), so I began to organize an "Old Folks Happy Hour" with a bunch of, obviously, older folks.  Whilst planning, a dude in my classes said, "Oh, you have to meet this other dude!  He should totally come!"  I met him, and he seemed cool, and he was my age, and as those were the requirements for a happy hour invite, he got invited.  Happy hour was a blast, and he and I really hit if off.  We had a few really click-y connection-being-made chat conversations, and then phone conversations, and it was really nice.  Here was law school starting, and it looked like I might have found a partner in crime.  I mean, we really clicked, in that kinda rare but pretty important to a person feeling not-lonely in life way, and that was exciting, because we were all fish out of water, starting this law school adventure.  And maybe here was someone I could swim with.

And then.  Then came the phone call.

He told me he couldn't do "this."  He told me like 8 times he was in law school (NO SHIT) and he needed to focus on that and he shouldn't be taking time over a relationship.  He told me that I was too intense, and I was too much, and he didn't even think he could be friends with me unless we did it totally on his terms, based on his comfort level.  He could reach out to me when he was ready, but I was not to reach out to him.  Because he was in law school.  And he needed to focus on more important things.  And he couldn't do "this" with me.

This was ridiculous.  We had never dated, never touched, never done more than talk on the phone a few times.  I pointed out that a relationship built solely around his needs was not actually a friendship.  I asked him what the fuck he thought I was doing in law school, if not focusing.  I pointed out he was in fact being INSANE, because I was DATING SOMEONE ELSE at the time, and we'd talked on the phone like 3 times.

And his response was, in the nastiest tone ever, "Don't even tell me you didn't think about this becoming a relationship, Gayle.  Don't even pretend you didn't."

At which point I just shut up, because, you know: he had already decided he knew what I was thinking.  No matter what I said about what I was thinking.  He had this all figured out, he knew where this was going, and no sir, he had to put a stop to it.  It was the only responsible thing to do.  He had to do what was best for him right then.  And really what was best for me.

Even though, as you can guess, I had put as much thought into us having a relationship as I had in trying to trap the fucking gnomes that always just steal one sock out of the fucking drawer.  I let him rant for a bit, and then got off the phone.  I see this full-tilt asshole around law school now, and it is fairly awkward, but I walk out of every interaction with him feeling mightily superior, because WHAT THE FUCK.

EXAMPLE 3
My ex-boyfriend, when I moved to DC, put me in touch with his former roommate from college who lives here in the District.  The ex figured hey, we were both cool, we could be friends.  And the former roommatee was, indeed, cool.  We hung out, and then we hung out again, and the electricity between us the second time nearly made the air crackle.  Then he pulled some weird rabbit-in-a-hat type shit and kinda disappeared for a while, but when he reappeared, we had like maybe two dates (this must have been last November, I think).  One of those dates was a pretty beautiful experience (I am a fucking Manic Pixie Dream Girl, after all).

Still, I wasn't really sure how I felt about this dude.  I didn't trust him - he'd disappeared on me before.  He was squidgy about things - you could tell he wasn't in a good place, because I'd say something nice to him and he'd mimic it back to me in a mean tone - he must have gone through some serious hurt and pain with someone, because he didn't seem to know how to accept kindness as just that, kindness.  He was super busy, writing a book (which has gone on to do very well - he's a mad smart kid), and I was super busy, you know me.  Also, I was dating two other people at the time, a dude and a chick, both of whom were more serious than this dude, and the chick I really, really liked.  I went for drinks with my friend E. on a Thursday night, and I talked about how I was unsure if I was going to keep this guy around.  E.'s advice was, "Ehhh, whatever.  Just see what happens."

On Friday, I get this email that says merely, "Gayle, you are a really sweet girl, but I don't think this thing with us is going to work out.  I wish you all the best, the dude."  I immediately, because I am Gayle and this was hilarious, forward his email to like 5 friends with a line at the top that says only, "Ahahahahahahahahaha!"  Because: funny.

Now, ok, but this "thing"?  That is supposedly between us?  GOD.  I email him right back and say DUDE, look, you need to CALL ME AND EXPLAIN THIS.  Because no, with the email.  He calls me and I lecture at him that he probably shouldn't date another lady until he can at least call her to break up with her, because he is an adult, and should maybe attempt to actually embody that role.  Then I ask, um, so, what are we breaking up, exactly?  We went on two dates.  What gives?

He proceeded to tell me that he just didn't see it working out, and as I was clearly more into him than he was into me, and I was obviously falling for him, he felt ending it would be the humane thing to do.

Readers, I just burst out laughing over the phone.  I was like, ok dude, SURE, ok, WHATEVER.  I am not even arguing with you, because that's just fine. 

We said we'd stay friends, but he is shitty at this.  I bumped into him at a '90's dance party two weeks ago, and he was awkward, but that was to be expected, because I have never interacted with him when he was not a bit of a mess.  Now I only get drunk texts from him every once in a while.  This is intensely boring.

So what gives with these dudes?

These dudes are kinda the corollary to Nice Guys(TM).  While they don't hang around the ladies playing "nice" hoping to get into their panties, they similarly do not care about a lady's thoughts or hopes or desires.  They either assume she hasn't any, or they assume that they are EXACTLY as they imagine them to be.  What always struck me at the time of each of these "break-ups" is the dude had a totally fleshed-out fantasy world of what was going on between the two of us, and he could not imagine it was otherwise.  But of course this imaginary world was wholly of his own creation; I was merely subsumed into it.  I could not have any agency, make any choices, want anything other.  I was a paper doll placed in the landscape of a future of two people, as figured on unilaterally by one person - and one person who is (obviously) ridiculously ego-centric. 

Now remember when I described Dude 1 as chivalrous?  That's what this is, chivalry.  It's some dude needing to "act like a Man" and to do what's best for both of us, take one for the team if you will, so he adopts this slightly suffering tone, vaguely patronizing, a little superior, and explains why "we" just can't do this.  It's for the best.  For everyone.  Really.  Even though they have managed to silence and erase me.

Most guys would absolutely deny that they expect women to merely be a complement to their lives.  I think most dudes would say they are looking for a partner, not someone who is merely a help-meet, in their heterosexual relationships.  But this dude-breaking-up-nonexistent-relationships things is an offshoot of that thinking.  My function could only be as a help-meet - I cannot think, or want, or take control, or fucking blow shit up in their faces (which is, really, the more likely outcome of anything).  These dudes are resorting to that deeply ingrained male privilege ideology that envisions their centrality to everything and anything.  They're Jupiter, and all I can be is a little orbiting moon. 

So, these chivalrous idiots, these guys who just took one for the team, do they piss me the fuck off?  Yes.  Am I mad at any of them anymore?  Nah.  Because they are missing out, undoubtedly, on some really wonderful partnerships with actual, 3 dimensional, non-imaginary women.  Ummm, assuming those women actually want a relationship with them.  Like, in the first place.  Maybe next time, the dudes could try asking.

My little strip of stomach is going to make you lose your mind.

I, literally, just walked in the door from running.  I am sitting in my desk chair in my soaking wet running shorts, dripping sweat onto the keyboard. 

I woke up later than I wanted to today to get out and run - I was hoping to get in a longer run, but because I got up late and Virginia was already cranking up the heat and humidity (seriously, Virginia, fuck you, man, you make it so hard to run), I settled on just doing 6.

Lots and lots of runners were out this morning on the Mt. Vernon trail, all glistening with sweat, and I was thrilled - it's fun to be out there with so many people, most looking like they are training for something, conjuring a nice communal-motivational-type feeling.  I am on my way back home when some dude passes me, and then slows down right in front of me.  So I pull up alongslide of him, and as I go to pass him, he starts talking to me, asking me how many miles I'm out for and what I'm training for.

I tell him the Baltimore half-marathon, and he says he's run it a couple times - the first 3 miles are a gentle uphill slope, the last two miles are downhill into the harbor, there's lots of hills in between, and be prepared for the bottleneck towards the finish.  This is totally helpful!  I am so glad I am pacing with this dude!  He's training for the marine corp. half-marathon and then a marathon after that.

So, right after he informs me of this, he says, "You know, I don't really get women running in sports bras.  I mean, I get it, I just don't think it's necessary."  I suppose we passed a woman running without a shirt and I hadn't even noticed.

Now, Readers, let me tell you something - I had been watching all those women running in just their sports bras today green with envy.  I WISH I was brave enough to run without a shirt, because it is so motherfucking hot out, and your shirt gets soaked and clings to you in annoying ways, and I would love to get over the absurd feeling that if I expose the world to the little strip of my belly between my shorts and my sports bra its fattiness and hideousness will cause other runners to become terribly nauseous and in fact have to veer wildly off the trail into the bushes to escape the heinousness of my flesh.  I am afraid to offend the universe by removing my shirt (none of this is an exaggeration, sadly).  But I so desperately wish I could (remove my shirt, not offend the universe.  I understand logically that removing my shirt will not lead to the gods taking offense).

But this is how the conversation goes, verbatim:

Me: What, I don't understand.  Women shouldn't run with their shirts off?
Him: No, it's just immodest.
Me: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  It's hot out!
Him: Hey, a little modesty never hurt anyone.
Me: You must be fucking joking.  Women get stoned to death in some countries for not meeting someone else's idea of modesty.
Him:  . . .
Him (trying again): I just don't think it's necessary.
Me: So, my teeny strip of stomach, if exposed, will drive you so insane you will be unable to continue to run?
Him: I'm not saying I can't handle it, I just think it's too much.
Me: I'm sorry you have such a weak constitution and can't see with bodies without sexualizing them - must be hard to manage in the world.  My little strip of stomach and I are going to TAKE THIS OTHER PATH NOW.

And I ran off.

Seriously, people, SIGH.

Poems.

It is the second installment of Gayle taking suggestions!  And folks have mentioned poetry.  I haven't really received any clarification on whether I was supposed to write some poetry, or write about some poetry.  A discussion about poetry will have to be another post, because I just sat my ass down in my desk chair for an hour with some scrap paper and a pencil and wrote two poems.

Which!  Means they are unedited - this is what just came out of my fingers, just now.  Before I ever think of these as finished, if I ever do (and the chances that I will are, like, the same as the likelihood of me finding a fucking unicorn), I will pick at and rewrite and cross out and fuss with them for ages.  But I thought it would be nice to put some (relatively bad!) poetry up here before the drastic alterations, because, I don't know, I think for all writers, the most important part is to keep writing.  The vast majority of what you write will be crap (and by "you" here, I mean "me"), but if you keep going, you'll write something that is not.

They haven't titles; I am just going to put them one after another, but they don't go together.  Also, reading them back to back is . . . weird.  Just a warning. 

I.
I keep your cardigan folded
on the shelf with the others.
You would have kept it just so.
You folded your clothes like they were on display in a catalogue.

I date it from the '60's, slightly scratchy, crocheted;
clearly someone's grandmother's sweater.
It still smells of you.
Or I imagine it still smells of you.
I wear it in the dark sometimes, when I weep,
rocking back and forth, holding myself together.
You would never have worn it to cry.
I can't imagine you letting the torrents take you like that.
I never saw you without poise and grace.

Even that day.
You chose to let the morphine take you instead.
You wiped the tears from my cheeks and told me
even if I wasn't ready,
you had to go.
You called me your baby as I
walked out of the room.

That was the last thing you said to anyone.
The morphine waited patiently.

I remember your voice.
Your breath smelled of milk before you died.
You used to sing me to sleep with Yiddish songs,
and always had breakfast ready
at the exact time I woke up in the morning.

I wish I had your poise, your grace.
I put your cardigan on
and try to pretend I do.



II.
Must somewhere there be mirror images
of us,
born with crisp, sweet apple bites
already in our mouths.

Crickets won't shriek so manically loud.
The susurrus of night is gentler, and
a reflection of me cannot bruise
by your force or fingers.
I shan't squawk like a bestial thing,
a cacophany in a crow's beak,
a nut cracked in half.
We hardly would make shadows on the ground.

There would be no blood to bleed.
My image could walk with you in
our woods, pace the perimeter -
I wouldn't even burn.
You could see the freckles on my shoulders
by the starlight.
My shoulders, my arms, the sway down
of my back,
they wouldn't make you jealous.
They wouldn't make you furious.

The fruit of a decade won't catch in my throat;
A mirror image cannot mold.
And you will let me go.
I could walk away.
The trees will part graciously and
there will be no sweetness commensurate
to make me stay.

You can take your nine New Age principles and shove them up that ape's ass.

I have gotten the ever so fun suggestion, in this week of taking requests, to write a blog post about books that didn't change my life (I've actually already written that blog post of books that did).  The books that first struck me, in mulling over this topic today, as the most useless were ones that I'd read in high school, and what made them especially sorry was that they were supposed to change my life.

I've read a lot of books.  I love fiction - I drink novels down like water.  I'll throw in a memoir, a non-fiction book, a biography every once in a while, but it is fiction that has moved me, molded me, grown me.  Ever since I was wee tiny and could chose my own books, I loved the good ones - my favorite books in elementary school were never Sweet Valley High or the Babysitter's Club, but From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Tuck Everlasting, Maniac Magee, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Watership Down, and everything by Susan Cooper and Madeleine L'Engle.  In high school, I loved nearly every book we read for class, and I was charmed and taken by even those dead white dudes that no one is supposed to like - Hawthorne, Faulkner, Hemingway, Milton.  I love literature.  I like books that are difficult and sticky and dense.  I like books as projects, undertakings, journeys, trials - a friend of mine refers to long books as "Gayle-sized."

I've also read a lot of shitty books, and sometimes for fun - I have several times read a book because someone handed it to me saying that it was gloriously terrible.  Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity was like that, as were a couple of Anita Shreve books, and the first page of The DaVinci Code (that was as far as I got)(no, for real Dan Brown, "SYMBOLOGY"???  My mind, it is still boggled).

But by far, the books that were least successful at changing my life were the ones that were supposed to.  They were the ones that should have gotten me at the more naive and ignorant age of 16, when I was looking to try to make sense of the world and my place in it.  Instead, these books made me groan at them, roll my eyes at them, call friends and make fun of them.  And I mean here Ishmael and The Celestine Prophecy.

These books are silly.  They are also wrong, bad, and really ridiculous.  They aren't dangerous or anything, not really, not like I think The Secret is, which erases privilege and oppression and encourages you to stay away from helping those in need, because what with their bad energy, which is why their life is like that and thus is all their fault, they might infect you with their negative thoughts. 

No, these books are just crap.  The Celestine Prophecy is a New Age-y "spiritual journey" that is poorly    written, boring, and I don't even really remember because I only read the first 50 pages of it before throwing it at the wall (literally).  It has that "serious intellectual" tone that only those who suffer from Terminal Uniqueness can adopt.  It's really into "synchronicity" and energy states, which as far as I could tell at the time had something to do with vegetarianism, which I was all for, and energy flows and and humankind rising up into a spiritual awakening and revolution and whateverthefuck, which I thought was absurd.  I remember it had one good point: when entering into a relationship with someone, you shouldn't lose your sense of self - you are looking for a partner not to complete you, but compliment you.  I liked that bit - I skipped ahead and read that chapter.  That's just solid advice right there for any teenager who has fallen in love with a dude the year before and is kinda getting dicked around by him because he knows she loves him and uses that to get what he wants without ever being interested in what her desires are let alone meeting them, and she just accepts this arrangement because she is in the Anything I Can Get love-place and that never ends well.  SO.  Point being, The Celestine Prophecy was one part New Age silliness, one part Eastern philosophy and Orientalism, and like ten parts poor writing.

Ishmael is also a ridiculous premise with an even more ridiculous execution: it's a dude who has telepathic conversations with a gorilla.  That's it.  That's the entire book.  It chafed sometimes, Readers.  Basically, the idea of the book is that our culture is unsustainable, and we are destroying the world because we have become Takers, capitalist consumers, and are eradicating the Leavers, those in indigenous tribal hunter-gatherer "primitive" societies.  This is not TOTALLY wrong, after all, and there are some pretty fucking obviously true points in the book - we are in fact destroying the planet, capitalism encourages unsustainable consumption, and humankind is for the most part of the mindset that all living creatures are to be used to our ends - whether for food or game or entertainment.  The book is extremely pro-animal rights, which I remember being what got me through it.

But the book also goes off the fucking rails.  It suggests that were we all living like the Bushmen in Africa (it says this, seriously), then we would have continued to evolve, and the world would be a perfect, sustainable, balanced place.  By living like "Londoners" and other city folk, we have stopped evolving, acted like we are above the gods, and thus are ruining the perfect equilibrium achieved among all living things.  The book romanticizes Native Americans to an absurd degree, in that New Age white person sort of way that makes me uncomfortable whenever I walk into stores that sell crystals and books about faeries and how to take "spirit quests."  It engages not in Orientalism, but something similar, let's call it Primitivism - an "us" and "them" dichotomy where one exists solely to define the other and there is rampant attribution of every positive characteristic to the idealized "them" that we should all adopt in order to save the planet.  I recall the book also argued that overpopulation is why people go hungry; even at 16 I knew that it wasn't lack of food, but lack of access to food that causes starvation.  So, whatever gorilla.

Why did these books fail to change my life?  Because they fail to address life.  The problem with self-help books like this is they are written by those in the privileged class who are looking for anything to give their lives meaning, as long as that doesn't actually involve getting their hands dirty or fighting oppression or GOD FORBID agitating for social justice.  These books are not about liberty, or freedom, or raising up human beings around you - they are more interested in condemning the "unenlightened," erasing the fact that nothing is so simple, and making the able-bodied, cis, straight white male angst stand in for every hurt and harm there is.  I mean, look, what is Ishmael in the face of the floods in Pakistan?  No, really, go look at those pictures and try to divide the word into Leavers and Takers.  Or what is spiritual vision measured against the dead black bodies floating in the streets after Katrina?  What is The Celestine Prophecy to the daily lived oppression of people of color, women, transfolks, those with disabilities?  What do these books have to say to the people of Haiti?  "Stop consuming?"  "Find your inner spiritual energy?"  Fuck that.


The thing is, there is a lot wrong with the world.  I mean, you know, OBVIOUSLY.  And I think the most heinous of these wrongs are what people do to other people.  I just finished editing a paper I wrote for publication on holding the medical professionals at Guantanamo civilly liable for violating the customary international law prohibition against nonconsensual human experimentation.  This paper tears my heart out.  I went through a deep, dark depression researching that thing. What hurts my soul when I read the news is the bigotry, the racism, the sexism, the ableism, and sheer awful seemingly boundless hatred and contempt human beings have for one another.  These books which purport to contain the truth to enlightenment contain nothing that resembles justice, liberty, freedom, human kindness and empathy, or activism.  They produce some more false dichotomies, between the Leavers and the Takers, or the enlightened and the ignorant.  As if all the Takers are on the same playing field, and all the enlightened have never been instruments of oppression. 

What also happened soon after I read these books, the reading of which kinda made me think about some things in an intellectual detached way but never really made any resonance, is I read bell hooks.  bell hooks near made my head explode.  I was a pretty angry teenager, but I was never really able to express that anger, and so it just boiled in me, like when you watch young children roil into tantrums because they don't have the words to let out whatever is inside of them.  But I read bell hooks, and I had words suddenly.  I had a language to use to point to oppression, injustice, and say yes, that.  I can tell you why I am so upset, so distraught, so angered, because that is not right, and I can now tell you why.  Feminist literature and theory, which I dove into with the desperation of a fish suffocating on the shore, is what saved me, what changed my life.  Ishmael and The Celestine Prophecy were just these white male exercises in betterment, and there was no room in them for the kind of revolution that can save the world.

Well, that's not fair - Ishmael is ostensibly about saving the world.  But it is not about saving the people in it.  There's an awful lot of planet-love lightly brushed with misanthropy.  If your enlightenment is not about  PEOPLE, if your enlightenment doesn't work to eradicate the inhumanity of human beings, I am not interested.  I don't want to save the planet by becoming a Leaver if women are still treated as if they are less than men.  I don't want to have a spiritual awakening with anyone who thinks that Park51 should not be built in lower Manhattan.  I see no future in a world where torture, rape, and crimes against humanity occur.  What's so funny (and I mean aggravating) about The Celestine Prophecy and Ishmael is the sense you get that they authors thought they were being so radical, so revealing; those books aren't even close to radical enough.  They are as deep and thoughtful as the thickness of each page they are printed on.

So fuck New Age principles, and fuck the gorilla.  Ishmael and The Celestine Prophecy never changed my life.  I emerged from high school being most affected by To The Lighthouse and Beloved and Their Eyes Were Watching God, my fondest memories of my friends and me reading Shakespearean sonnets and Finnegan's Wake aloud to each other while lying on someone's bedroom floor.  I am sure there are well-meaning (white! privileged!) people for whom those books were life-altering; in fact, there are  message boards and groups that have sprung up around Ishmael.  They organize online!  So much for living like indigenous tribal peoples.  I, however, am exhuasted from working on my paper, and so must now take myself to bed.  May all of your spiritual energies and living "in the hand of god" restore you tonight, because there is actual work to do tomorrow, and humankind ain't gonna save itself.

El-P is one of the major musical reasons I have made it through law school thus far.

Here's "Time Won't Tell" from his newest:

The day my blog went democratic!

Kind of!

The next week and a bit, I am on vacation.  Well, vacation a la Gayle, which means I will be working on various journal related matters, editing a paper to be submitted for publication, and reading about Foucault and the law for my professor.  Also, I need to GET ON IT, because I have a half marathon in two months.  And the running books are saying I should be running 6 days a week, but I run to enrich my life, not take over my life, so, no.  But still, I would like to feel prepared, it is in fact my first race.

There is a running/body issues post that has started rattling around in my brain, but you know?  In honor of my vacation, I don't want to come up with blog posts.  And I intend to try to NOT get so stabby-mad that I have to write a blog post lest I hurt a person.  So!  Here is where you, my wonderful readers, come in!

What would you like me to write about the next nine-ish days?  Books?  Movies?  Do you want me to tell stories?  Do you want politics or law or theory?  What do you want to see here at Unnatural Forces?  I hand this over to you, Readers.  Symbolically!  Because I may not be able to hand it over to you, actually - I haven't the faintest how many people will leave suggestions, or whether I can write on your suggestion competently, or whether I feel I have anything to add to a topic.  Like, I can tell you right off I am not going to write about the "mosque" (it's a fucking community center, people)-near-Ground-Zero issue.  Why?  Well, because lots of better, smarter people have written on this, and also, three words: The First Amendment. Here's another three words: FUCK OFF, BIGOTS.  And Gayle is done.

I'll pick three topics suggested to me here or in the Twitterverse, and I will write about them over the next week and a half (insh'allah).  And then we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming, which means this again becomes a tyrannical despotism where I will  subject people to long-winded stories that have no relevance to anything at all (and also to Nicholas Sparks; I am an especially tyrannical tyrant, I tell you).

IN ADDITION, I realized today that this blog has been in existence for over 6 months now!  Yes!  Happy half-birthday to us!  Seems a fitting time to celebrate by being a lazy motherfucker and have other people come up with topics for me, no?

Alright, so, here we go: what am I writing about?  I await with baited breath.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 4: Peggy rocks my socks off edition

Those last two scenes of the show, folks: whoa.

And pretty much, Peggy is awesome.

Ok, so the way she reacted to Allison, Don's secretary, weeping after sleeping with Don and him being a complete douchebag about it, was not very sisterly.  At the same time, it's understandable why Peggy would be angry.  I think I might be immediately, too - Allison's belief that Peggy must have slept with Don implied that Peggy got to where she is ONLY because she fucked to get there.  That is undoubtedly something Peggy has to face a lot - no one can believe she could have been promoted on her talent, because, well, she's a woman, so she must have slept with someone to get ahead.  It erases the fact that Peggy works really hard, and is really fucking good - it objectifies her, no less than the men objectified her when she first started working at Sterling Cooper and was repeatedly hit on.  I wish she hadn't been mean, but Peggy isn't, at her core, mean - I think she was just really insulted and lashed out.

If Peggy is anything, it's that she is a continually evolving, complex character.  Can you  imagine her in the first season now doing what she is doing?  Going to loft parties thrown by artists that get busted by the cops, smoking pot and watching arty iconoclastic movies and hanging out with a queer girl, and then kissing some strange dude in a closet where they are hiding from said cops?  She's incredibly quick, too: when the queer girl tries to kiss her, and then points out Peggy's boyfriend doesn't own her vagina, Peggy responds with, "No, but he's renting my vagina for a while."  She watches the arty movies stoned and notices how rhythmic it is, and when asked if she likes it, she says, "I'm Catholic; I don't think I'm supposed to like it."  She is unoffended by the drugs, the ridiculous artist, the girl trying to kiss her - she doesn't judge.  Considering that she grew up in a very conservative, Catholic family, it's pretty amazing.

And then there's that second to last scene.  Peggy's new friend, the queer chick (what is her name?  I have to re-watch the episode later) calls her up for a spontaneous lunch.  Peggy has just gone to congratulate Pete on the news that he and Trudy are going to have a baby - this obviously brings up all kinds of emotions for her.  But she faces them, and makes a point to congratulate him to his face.  As she is running out to meet her new friends, there is that great juxtaposition between one generation and the next.  All these suited (white) men are standing in the lobby, smiling and shaking hands, but still very stiff and proper.  Peggy's friends, behind the glass doors of the levator, come giggling and laughing and running up to the office door, men and women dressed far more loosely and colorfully, energetic and looking like they are ready to go play.  Pete is standing with the men in the lobby - he and Peggy lock eyes as she joins her friends waiting for the elevator.  They smile - Pete is genuinely smilling, but Peggy looks sad for a moment.  Then she REALLY smiles, drops her eyes, and heads into the elevator with the Cool Kids.  Pete does not look away - he watches her go, stuck with the men in the lobby, part of the Old Guard, the last generation.

It says a lot about the generation gap, obviously, but also about the amount of struggle both of them have had to face, and the choices they have had to make.  Pete can just walk into that Old Boys Club - he has to the class status, the right gender, the right color - Peggy can't do that.  And it looks like she is choosing not to try - she kisses a strange boy in a closet, so she's not single-mindedly set, obviously, on traditional courting (and maybe marriage - she said she wanted to get married in the last episode, but made it clear she mostly just doesn't want to be lonely).  She's hanging out with the counterculture now, and that makes sense - if anything, Peggy has seen very clearly that it isn't merit that gets you anywhere, but who you are and who you know.  She's seen the man behind the curtain.  It will be incredibly interesting to watch how her new experiences outside the office start to conflict with inside the office. 

Now, that last scene with Don, where he watches the very old couple re-enact a pretty sad scene - what do we think of that.  Does he see marriage inevitably ending up there?  Does he dislike what he sees?  Is he indifferent?  It's interesting when he shouts at the psychologist, because he's right, she isn't forward looking enough - women have always been taught to want marriage as the ultimate goal.  But if women are introduced to different ideas, different ways of thinking, that won't necessarily remain true - Don is basically arguing that social narratives change, and the ad agency needs to change with them.  We know he turns out right, so we can cheer for him in that scene, but it's a pretty progressive moment for Don.  Of course, he is drinking a tremendous amount.  That is worrisome, his drinking in the office alone late at night.  When he starts the letter to apologize to Allison, he stops at, "My life right now is very" and is unable to complete the sentence.  He knows something is very wrong; we'll see if he is able to address it, though, or continue with his epic Don Draper avoidance.

Also, points to Joan for making me laugh this episode.  Because Don has made things a mess by sleeping with his secretary and then being a cad, Joan has rebuked him - by giving him the secretary he is least likely to sleep with.  His "girl," as they call the women secretaries, is now a matronly grandmother, and people in the office are snickering at him.  Which is pretty brilliant, but also shows how much respect and clout Don has been losing.

Alright, folks, the discussion is yours.  What did that last scene with Don and the old married couple  mean?  What do you see happening with Peggy?  Don't you just love Pete and Trudy's relationship, even if you don't love Pete?  Have at it, loves!

Gayle's terrible, horrible, no good, very sad day.

My mother woke me up at 6:30 a.m. this morning to inform me that she and my father were taken the Doberman to the vet to be put down.

I am back at my parents' house, doing a weekend of dog- and cat-sitting.  The Doberman, well: the Doberman was old.  He was nearly 12.  When I was animal-sitting here last, three months ago, he had been doing pretty poorly.  But that weekend I was with him, he rallied.  He had run about the yard, played fetch, let me chase him and chased me, and generally didn't act at all like the very aged, ailing dog he actually is.  It was a joy to be with him.

It was his last good few days.

Two weeks ago, he collapsed - he legs just gave out from under him.  My father was out walking him and basically had to carry him back to the car.  He was put on steroids, but he had a bad reaction to them, so my mother started weaning him off.  He collapsed again last week, desperately and pathetically crying when he was unable to make his legs work.  He was carried again to the house.  My mother put him back on the higher dose of steroids.  But his kidneys were shutting down.

When I got here yesterday, he looked terrible.  I pointed out that his ribs were severely distended on one side - he has benign tumors growing all over his body (it's a Doberman thing) but now it seemed there was one in his chest, which would eventually affect his heart.  He was unable to control his bladder and was peeing everywhere.  And then he would get upset he was peeing everywhere.  And then he was upset his legs wouldn't do what he wanted them to do.  It was heart-breaking to be around him.

And now he's gone.

He was a pain in the ass dog.  My family, including my grandmother before she died, referred to him as, "the Asshole."  He was needy, dependent - Dobermans are very driven and intense, but they are also insecure as fuck.  He would follow everyone around desperate for attention.  All the time.  He had perfected the sad-eyes-looking-up-at-you-I'm-so-pathetic-you-must-pet-me look.  Everyone hated driving him anywhere because he would bark loudly and shrilly in the driver's ear the entire way.  He liked to chew on toys outside until they were full of mud and dog slobber and then rub them all over you in an effort to get you to play tug-of-war with him.  He used to walk right up to you and rest his head and neck on your tummy, and then just stare at you, until you pet him.  He would not move until you did this.

He was also the dog we didn't need to get.

When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time slipping into and out of my house through the sliding glass doors that lead out to the backyard.  And other people slipped in and out, too.  Most often, someone was sneaking in so we could have sex; but I also snuck out to go for drives with friends, take long walks around the neighborhood with folks who lived nearby just to talk, left by myself to go swing on the swings across the street at midnight to clear my head.

One night 12 years ago I fell asleep downstairs on the couch, waiting for a lover to come steal into the house.  Unfortunately, my mother woke up in the middle of the night and came downstairs to let the dog, a mutt we had gotten from the pound many years earlier, out.  She opened the back door and our dog trotted gayly over to my lover who had just walked into the backyard to say hello.  My mother shrieked, because there was a strange person in the yard.  My lover got startled and scared, and bolted.  And I woke up to a hysterical parent yelling that we had to call the police because someone was trying to break into the house.

Did I tell my mother what had really happened right then?  No, I did not.  Because then I couldn't have used that backdoor again.  My mother called the cops, there was a big to-do (the cops, of course, didn't catch anyone - they had no description or anything, there was too much darkness and distance for my mother to see a thing) and my mother decided that because the dog we had had failed to adequately protect the house, we were getting a Doberman.  And that was how we ended up with Gabe.

I named him Gabriel after Eli Wiesel's rendering of the angel (or perhaps the devil, you are never sure which) in the novel The Gates of the Forest, which I was reading at the time.  It is appropriate you are never sure if Gabriel is good or evil in the book.  Gabe the Doberman was the cutest puppy just ever, but dear lord he was an annoying dog.  He was also ridiculously endearing in his pathetic neediness and sheer earnestness and accidental silliness, and everyone came to, very begrudgingly, love him.  Including me.

That lover and I, though, whenever he would later come by to spend time during the light of the day, we always joked about the dog being ours.  My lover especially had such fondness for Gabe, because really, he was responsible for Gabe being with us.  When he asked after Gabe, he asked, "How is my dog?"

That lover would go on to be my rapist.  So, you know.  There is a lot, today.

I kept thinking I could draw lines, and they would be respected.  I believed that the rape could be in a cordoned off section of my mind and my life, and I would only be thrust back into trauma and turmoil when I chose to cross the boundary into the rape place.  But the rape, the lover, no, they keep invading the rest of my life, crossing that line, having no respect for walls or geography.  I think I have everything in it's place, and then some hurricane-like wind comes and blows shit everywhere and I am ill-prepared and caught off-guard.  I kept thinking I can manage my rape; I kept being wrong.  I cannot erase the ten years of my life I spent with my rapist.  I wish I could just scrub the parts of him that are there away, but I know because of how memories and moments are connected, then I'd have nothing left.

I need to stop pretending I will reach some magical threshold where I will finally and forever after have everything nice and neat and in its place and under control.  I am fucking tired of being raped, I am so over writing about it here, I hate how it just never seems to end.  But I can't keep up with the illusion that I can close drawers or delimit spaces.  Because then I am just that much more vulnerable, and surprised, when the lines are ignored.  It feels then, when some raw emotion from a past trauma charges through across my chest and sets everything aflame, like all the walls I have slowly, painfully built and all the order I had worked so hard to create have been destroyed, and I am back to the beginning again.  It is a horrible, desperate, exhaustion.  When really all that work into building nice, neat spaces was an illusion, anyway.  Those walls were nothing but smoke.  I can't contain feelings and emotions.  I can only weather them when they come.

I took these pictures of Gabe in the minutes before my parents took him to the vet.  I loved him.  I miss him.  And I don't believe in heaven, but I hope wherever Gabe is, he is with someone who is happy to have a mud- and dog drool-covered toy rubbed all over them before they play tug-of-war.

Bye, buddy.