Well, this is either going to be right on or waaaaay off. Here goes.
The boyfriend and I were talking about sex, cause it's one of my favorite topics and I hope he's telling me the truth when he says that it's his. I got to thinking (and I am sometimes quite philosophical about sex, because I'm always looking for more ways to work it into discussions), thinking about desire and the way that women experience and bear desire.
For the record, I have struggled my whole life with a society that, to my mind, tried to deny me my desire or erase it somehow. And not just because I fancy girls. (Also for the record, I fancy boys, the occasional dildo [improvised and machine made], ropes, beating instruments, knives and my hands.) I was told that any woman too interested in sex invited rape, and was unnatural and sick. In other words, could expect to be punished for her transgressive behavior by a society united in their knowledge that the desire and the woman should be stomped out.
You know, for the good of all or something like it.
It always seemed to me that a kind of endless, wakeful desire was far more natural to women than the bizarre frigid, infertile slut thing that I was always seeing on the TV I watched at friend's houses and hearing about in conversation. I mean, who owned desire and why, I thought (at thirteen, actually). Why was female desire so important that it must be channeled and contained. (I am aware that there are books on this, but I hadn't heard of anything like it in my Southern Baptist, boycotting TV childhood.) What was I supposed to be?
Mostly, I tried to figure out whose fault it was.
*squick warning. You have been warned. And how often do I do that?*
The question of who owns what started early for me. I think I was nine or ten. My father, who is an engineer, at the time working for a major defense contractor, moved us to Okinawa to work at Kadena. Like most good Baptists, they immediately sought out a church, cause if you don't go to church at least once a week, you're going to go straight to hell. God takes attendance. In any case, the pastor (who is unmemorable to me in any way) had a teenaged son, who, for the hell of it, we'll call George. George took a special shine to my brother and I. We spent a lot of time hanging out, which my parents found gratifying, because his father was the pastor.
My parents are something of social climbers.
In any case, George played with us, babysat us, was around almost constantly. I don't remember how he looked very well, just that he was a wrestling fan and was forever getting me into some kind of complicated hold that involved a lot of groping. This was, of course, before the tits, so he was groping a flat chest. There's always been an ass there, even when there wasn't hips, so that was padded. This becomes relevant in a moment.
As a mother, I can tell you any teenage boy who is constantly wrestling and offering to babysit my kids would make me a little nervous. The boy in question was sixteen at the time, I think. I would not have permitted that.
George liked to get me in a particularly complicated position in which I was bent double with my face pressed to the carpet (or matting) and rub himself on me. Not so much my little brother, thank god. He happened to do this one time when his parents were over at our house, visiting with my family. I left the room afterwards and wandered into the front room, where the adults were. As an adult, I wonder if he stained my skirt. I don't remember there being anything on the pinafore. I interrupted, something I was not supposed to do, since children were to be seen and not heard, and told everyone about George's new game, 'cause it seemed a little odd to me.
My dad beat ten kinds of holy hell into me for being a lying slut.
In any case, reflecting at thirteen and later as an adult on that experience, the question of who owned my desire became important. I'm not the kind of person that can deal well with frigidity or abstinence. I go a bit the other way, actually. I love and need to feel, at first in an unhealthy way. Took me awhile to stop being there for whomever grabbed first or hardest. There were other incidences like this while I was growing up, and I was told both explicitly and implicitly that I did not own my body and that it was exchangeable for status and, even at birth, promised elsewhere (to a deity who would cede it to a husband, whose enjoyment of it would be more important than my own, anyway.) I was the custodian of two small breasts, a bodacious booty (if I do say so myself), a body prone to muscle making and casual strength (which has served me well) and an overwhelming curiosity. (Also not a terribly bad mind, as it turned out. If anyone has a Who's Who for US high schools from 92-93, I am in that baby for my freshman year, tail end of the Cs. There are only three of us with the same last name, and I'm the only one with an NEDT award. I also have a civics and DFYIT award, which I just rediscovered. Boy were they barking up the wrong tree [since junior high.] I used to 'take the edge off' a lot. Daily. I'm too old for it, now. Gets expensive.)
Is it any wonder I set out to enjoy it any way I could, though it took me a considerable amount of time to be able to own my own enjoyment instead of looking for someone to own it for me, albeit someone I hoped would be interested in my enjoyment, too. (A proviso-- when you are accustomed to thinking of yourself as a kind of vagina with leasing rights, you learn to have a sexual reaction to things that are not extraordinarily foreplay oriented.) I suppose this makes me a bit of a sick fuck. Hold your sympathy. If I don't feel sorry for me, I am not interested in your sympathy, either. Especially if it keeps you from listening to me.
The question of who owns desire is important precisely because when a woman goes about putting her metaphoric brakes down, there is a lot of resistance, mostly in the form of making it costly for her. In my observation, this is irrespective of whether her circumstances are like mine or whether her life has been peachy; it is no easy task to start refusing to participate in a culture that tells her (and has conditioned her to believe) that her desire must be evoked from outside her by a man who has a key. (You know, the penis fixes all. I like a good fuck, but fixes everything? Only if the penis has maaagic powers. I've had fucks that made me forget things that stressed me, but never a fuck that made everything perfect. And I like to think of myself as a fuck connoisseur.) Moreover, when she tries to insure that she owns her own sexual desire and expression, the same system that assures women that they don't own the evocation of their sexual desire goes into overload assuring her that she has no right to say no or that no is not effective in terms of deterrent. I have seen an amazing amount of mainstream movies that have female characters whose 'no' is only meant to be powered through, since it wasn't really no so much as 'show me you're serious about it' (because all women want out of a man is strength. Bah, I want the ability to listen, some mileage and personal competence. Also a pony, if Santa is listening.)
This uses a very natural experience, desire, against the woman who is only trying to figure out why it's hers, yet she is not supposed to be able to summon it on her own. (Which is, coincidentally, why so many women don't know how to say what they want or expect men to know. They literally don't know or understand that they can have it for themselves and chose with whom to share desire. As a side note to my side note, it takes a 'drying out' period to sort this shit out, in which I had to abstain and figure out what was mine. The answer was everything from hair down and all the associated mental properties and functions.) What happens is the woman is threatened with a withdrawal of outlets for her desire, as well as a complete lack of social modeling and support for her efforts to control herself, which is both short-sighted and the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot (unless you don't care if the other person is having fun, in which case you should be fucking a pocket pussy, not a partner.)
More desire = more fun and possibly more frequent sex.
Using desire this way is terrible, attaching a price that can vary from a woman's life to her ability to be considered worthy of bodily integrity (something that is a moot point in a society that hands the keys of desire elsewhere. It's an empty threat, in some ways. What is the threat, extra violence on top of what is already being offered? Like your broken bones in the left or right leg?) My objection is not to women as sexual creatures, a fact that I am both proud to affirm and fond of. My objection is that the sexuality which feels so good, that is so comforting and interesting and fun and soothing and exciting cannot be any of those things when it is doled out by someone else. I play with BDSM and love it, but play time is a granting, not a taking. Even when it's styled to be a taking (that would be why the word 'play' is so apt.) It beggars the mind to think of how casting desire outside the body tears out the very core of women, turning them against themselves. To place desire outside the body is to mutilate oneself and parcel it out. Women are mutilated by a system that takes our sexual selves away from us and this cannot be allowed to stand.
It's my goddamn desire and I'm keeping it; expression, thought and all. Sharing, yes. Not sharing also okay. The damage can be deciphered and undone. With patience and an unflinching willingness to keep looking.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
coping mechanisms
Alright, fess up. Everybody's got them. Some people eat when they get upset. Some people drink when they get upset. Some people do drugs when they get upset. Self-medication, while not a formal category of coping mechanism in the Freudian sense, acts as a defacto one in everyday life. And one we tend to enjoy more than, say, denial.
I've been thinking about sanity a lot over the last few days. I am aware that I am now and have always been qualified for some serious meds. I'm not interested. I've got this far (and it's further than one might think) on will power, an evil sense of humor and sheer stubbornness. And there are times when I'm even proud of it. I am invaluably grateful to my parents for insisting, all the way through my childhood and on into my adulthood (as of two weeks ago with the thyroid comment in the sHuckabee post), that I was, in fact, insane and would never go anywhere or do anything. We had family therapy a while back and they had no problem telling the therapist, me and anyone who wandered past. In a genteel way for strangers and bluntly to the therapist and I. They are sure something's wrong with me, since I'm all liberal and stuff.
Living them down has been difficult, but deeply satisfying, even though being a liberal is, to their mind, at least marginal proof I'm not all there.
I'll take a victory where I can find it.
In any case, coping with stress situations tends, at least with me, to fall into small, medium and large categories. I find that no matter the size of the stressor, I do best to get on it promptly in terms of stress management, or it gets worse (sometimes by creating an aggregate; this and this and this, as opposed to just one thing.) I class them that way based on what effect they have on me, not based on what kind of stressors they're supposed to be, though I pay attention to what they're supposed to do, because I tend to suppress my feelings until I feel calm enough to deal with them (thanks to a very stressful life, I tend to try to wait to sort things out until the 'danger' has passed, whether that's the stressful situation or the violence of the emotion I'm experiencing.)
The small category is made up of things like being late to class (which I hate doing, but it happens), being unable to find my keys; you know, little naggy, persistent things. Sometimes, I don't even need to do anything about it but sigh. When those kinds of things need addressing, I usually have a cup of coffee, listen to a mood-appropriate song, give a quick dance around the house, think about sex (aka go to my happy place) or slay something on a video game.
The medium category is tricky. It's stuff that's not quite nasty enough to qualify for a full-on 'get me outta here', but not that far off. Things like a bad workshop critique, feeling fat or unattractive, realizing I forgot homework at home (which really bothers me) or one of those weirdness index moments. Those get much worse quickly if they aren't discharged. For those, I do physical things. But very, very carefully. I have a bit of a sadistic and masochistic streak, so if I chose to workout, say, in response to being aggravated, if I am not careful, I will work out until I rip my calf muscles or until I pull something. Sometimes I won't feel it until an hour or more after I finish working out. I try, if I am nearing the large(r) category of frustration, to be very, very careful not to drink, hang out in the kitchen, top anyone or workout more than a preset amount of time.
The large category doesn't happen all that often, but it requires me to be very, very careful. I think I am not alone in being able to notice my reactions are not what they should be and being super cautious. If I know I'm in that category, I will not drink, smoke, eat more than a small, preset portion, work out and I will refuse to talk (because I got a mean mouth) to people more than I have to. But mostly, I refuse to engage in anything that has the potential for self-abuse or the abuse of others. There are times when this has made me somewhat less than social (to put it lightly), but I know what kinds of things I am capable of, and there's no excuse for taking it out on someone who has not enthusiastically consented to whatever I'm doing (but it's bad form and being a bad person to let my devastation out on someone, even if they consent.) A few times in my life (and only a few is good, considering my history), I've asked someone to keep an eye on me, but I can usually police me, which I prefer.
I suppose this has to do with sanity because coping strategies are how we maintain sanity (by which I mean the social strictures necessary for everyone to get along, to some degree.) If anyone feels like fessing up, how do you handle things?
I've been thinking about sanity a lot over the last few days. I am aware that I am now and have always been qualified for some serious meds. I'm not interested. I've got this far (and it's further than one might think) on will power, an evil sense of humor and sheer stubbornness. And there are times when I'm even proud of it. I am invaluably grateful to my parents for insisting, all the way through my childhood and on into my adulthood (as of two weeks ago with the thyroid comment in the sHuckabee post), that I was, in fact, insane and would never go anywhere or do anything. We had family therapy a while back and they had no problem telling the therapist, me and anyone who wandered past. In a genteel way for strangers and bluntly to the therapist and I. They are sure something's wrong with me, since I'm all liberal and stuff.
Living them down has been difficult, but deeply satisfying, even though being a liberal is, to their mind, at least marginal proof I'm not all there.
I'll take a victory where I can find it.
In any case, coping with stress situations tends, at least with me, to fall into small, medium and large categories. I find that no matter the size of the stressor, I do best to get on it promptly in terms of stress management, or it gets worse (sometimes by creating an aggregate; this and this and this, as opposed to just one thing.) I class them that way based on what effect they have on me, not based on what kind of stressors they're supposed to be, though I pay attention to what they're supposed to do, because I tend to suppress my feelings until I feel calm enough to deal with them (thanks to a very stressful life, I tend to try to wait to sort things out until the 'danger' has passed, whether that's the stressful situation or the violence of the emotion I'm experiencing.)
The small category is made up of things like being late to class (which I hate doing, but it happens), being unable to find my keys; you know, little naggy, persistent things. Sometimes, I don't even need to do anything about it but sigh. When those kinds of things need addressing, I usually have a cup of coffee, listen to a mood-appropriate song, give a quick dance around the house, think about sex (aka go to my happy place) or slay something on a video game.
The medium category is tricky. It's stuff that's not quite nasty enough to qualify for a full-on 'get me outta here', but not that far off. Things like a bad workshop critique, feeling fat or unattractive, realizing I forgot homework at home (which really bothers me) or one of those weirdness index moments. Those get much worse quickly if they aren't discharged. For those, I do physical things. But very, very carefully. I have a bit of a sadistic and masochistic streak, so if I chose to workout, say, in response to being aggravated, if I am not careful, I will work out until I rip my calf muscles or until I pull something. Sometimes I won't feel it until an hour or more after I finish working out. I try, if I am nearing the large(r) category of frustration, to be very, very careful not to drink, hang out in the kitchen, top anyone or workout more than a preset amount of time.
The large category doesn't happen all that often, but it requires me to be very, very careful. I think I am not alone in being able to notice my reactions are not what they should be and being super cautious. If I know I'm in that category, I will not drink, smoke, eat more than a small, preset portion, work out and I will refuse to talk (because I got a mean mouth) to people more than I have to. But mostly, I refuse to engage in anything that has the potential for self-abuse or the abuse of others. There are times when this has made me somewhat less than social (to put it lightly), but I know what kinds of things I am capable of, and there's no excuse for taking it out on someone who has not enthusiastically consented to whatever I'm doing (but it's bad form and being a bad person to let my devastation out on someone, even if they consent.) A few times in my life (and only a few is good, considering my history), I've asked someone to keep an eye on me, but I can usually police me, which I prefer.
I suppose this has to do with sanity because coping strategies are how we maintain sanity (by which I mean the social strictures necessary for everyone to get along, to some degree.) If anyone feels like fessing up, how do you handle things?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
moments from the weirdness index
Anyone else out there (and statistically speaking, there's bound to be at least one) have that moment when they realize just how fucking weird they are? You know, when you're not even trying.
Case in point: casual conversations about firsts. For the sake of a hypothetical (and definitely not anything that has ever happened to me, you know, often or anything), let us say that you are involved in a group of idly chatting women, and the subject of first kiss comes up and everyone starts telling stories. You know that your first kiss story is liable to cause consternation and/or disgust and/or pity, so you spend the first story told by one of the other women mentally editing the contents of your first kiss story in order to both be considerate of others and to hide your own weirdness factor, which you are fully aware exceeds the group limit. You run through your revised story looking inconsistencies during the second story told.
You aren't exactly lying, you're just doing everyone a favor and not exhibiting the differences between you. Sometimes false consensus is all you've got.
The woman just before you in the circle tells her story, which contains in it a boy backing her into a wall to forcibly kiss her. Ah, you think. Well, at least there's one other person here who didn't have a first kiss that involved a saccharine Rockwell moment. So you tell the real story, eager even, because it's nice to be able to tell and because you think 'hey, I'm not alone.'
Yeah, about that...
So, half way through the story, which involves a much, much older boy on a school bus and being forced to sit in his lap afterward to get your hair petted, you realize that every single woman in the group, including the woman you thought you had a lot in common with, is staring at you with dawning horror. Right about the time you describe sitting in his lap like some kind of a performing animal (at which he has been chuckling; you're fresh back from England and he thinks your accent [and the school uniforms that you're still wearing because it saves money] is hi-larious.) Your legs are short enough to dangle and bounce with the bus wheels, as you babble away at him. In the resulting silence, you realize that once again you have failed the weirdness index test, disguised as a bonding moment. You can't do what you want to, and walk off, because now you are both angry and embarrassed; angry that once again, no one told you the normie group rules (and of course they won't; they don't even know there are any, they fit so well.) And how many times are you going to flunk this kind of test? You're embarrassed because you do have to look these women in the eye afterwards and now they are all going to be thinking of you in terms of that school bus moment. No matter how many times you've been wrong, you automatically assume everyone has a moment like that and in one hot moment, you have once again been reminded that you are, you know, weird.
Not that I've ever been standing there trying to graceful cover how furious I am because I actually was trying to fit in and couldn't help myself. There's only one thing to do at moments like that.
Make the story worse. I got worse ones. And I HATE that pitying expression.
Case in point: casual conversations about firsts. For the sake of a hypothetical (and definitely not anything that has ever happened to me, you know, often or anything), let us say that you are involved in a group of idly chatting women, and the subject of first kiss comes up and everyone starts telling stories. You know that your first kiss story is liable to cause consternation and/or disgust and/or pity, so you spend the first story told by one of the other women mentally editing the contents of your first kiss story in order to both be considerate of others and to hide your own weirdness factor, which you are fully aware exceeds the group limit. You run through your revised story looking inconsistencies during the second story told.
You aren't exactly lying, you're just doing everyone a favor and not exhibiting the differences between you. Sometimes false consensus is all you've got.
The woman just before you in the circle tells her story, which contains in it a boy backing her into a wall to forcibly kiss her. Ah, you think. Well, at least there's one other person here who didn't have a first kiss that involved a saccharine Rockwell moment. So you tell the real story, eager even, because it's nice to be able to tell and because you think 'hey, I'm not alone.'
Yeah, about that...
So, half way through the story, which involves a much, much older boy on a school bus and being forced to sit in his lap afterward to get your hair petted, you realize that every single woman in the group, including the woman you thought you had a lot in common with, is staring at you with dawning horror. Right about the time you describe sitting in his lap like some kind of a performing animal (at which he has been chuckling; you're fresh back from England and he thinks your accent [and the school uniforms that you're still wearing because it saves money] is hi-larious.) Your legs are short enough to dangle and bounce with the bus wheels, as you babble away at him. In the resulting silence, you realize that once again you have failed the weirdness index test, disguised as a bonding moment. You can't do what you want to, and walk off, because now you are both angry and embarrassed; angry that once again, no one told you the normie group rules (and of course they won't; they don't even know there are any, they fit so well.) And how many times are you going to flunk this kind of test? You're embarrassed because you do have to look these women in the eye afterwards and now they are all going to be thinking of you in terms of that school bus moment. No matter how many times you've been wrong, you automatically assume everyone has a moment like that and in one hot moment, you have once again been reminded that you are, you know, weird.
Not that I've ever been standing there trying to graceful cover how furious I am because I actually was trying to fit in and couldn't help myself. There's only one thing to do at moments like that.
Make the story worse. I got worse ones. And I HATE that pitying expression.
on a lighter note
I took a personality test awhile back for shits and giggles, and found out that I am an INTJ, along with 5 percent of the population. Anyone else out there an INTJ or INTP?
art imitates life
I'm going to write this down before I forget it again. A dream reminded me. In the dream, I'm holding my infant son as his father ferrys his belongings out the door. He didn't tell me until the movers came. In my dream I am standing in the door, holding our son and demanding that he stay, because if he leaves, I cannot pay the rent. In my dream our friends and my parents are there, telling me that they're sure I'll find the money and to stop worrying. It is the 29th of the month.
This has happened in real life.
Not with this boyfriend, but the one before, five years ago. After months of getting to know me, he moved in (partially because after going to school, working at a gas station, and having two toddlers, I could not afford to pay the rent, so we worked out a trade.) I made that deal women make a lot, in which they trade company, cooking and sex for help. Yes, it's still happening. I know we've killed sexism, made the genders equal in pay and all, but it still happens. Did I love him (which ends up being the justification for said arrangement)? No, but we were basically sexually compatable and he was not terribly bad (at the time), so I made the arrangement I'd been taught to make.
I didn't want to be on welfare, because that would be shaming.
So he moved in. And we argued. And argued, and argued, and argued. I went to pick up my girls after work, near the end of the month. I want to say it was the 19th or so, something like April. The drive back was pleasant enough. I had the windows rolled down slightly for the 45 mph air conditioning which was the only air I was gonna get out of that car. When I got back, his car was gone, which in and of itself didn't bother me. He was probably out running errands or something. We walked up the stairs to the apartment, the girls and I, slowly, because that's the only way you're getting anywhere upstairs with a four year old and a six year old. I was due to grocery shop, and was going to drop off something at the apartment before going to Smith's.
I remember turning the key distinctly, that the adobe walls had a chunk missing by the right side of the door, on the bottom. The door itself was an innocuous beige, and the frame was heavily, though not recently, scarred. The scars were filled with paint. My youngest child was on my hip. The door opened. The TV was gone.
It took me looking through the bedroom to be sure. I called him. He told me that he was under too much stress, and that I nagged at him. I reminded him that the rent was due. He told me it wasn't his problem and hung up on me. I put my hands on the kitchen counter and leaned my head down flat on the linoleum counter tops, which were cold, and recited to myself the contents of the kitchen cabinets, which came down to a can of beans, a small bag of rice and a can of hominy, and the refrigerator, which came down to some milk, a few eggs and the condiments everyone has.
I get in trouble for writing about these kinds of things in workshop. My characters don't do emotionally what they're supposed to. I want to laugh at the kids, teacher included, who read my stories. Who has time to cry? I didn't want the girls to see me, then they'd have been upset, and despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I wanted them to have a happy childhood. I told the girls that the TV was being repaired, if I remember correctly.
And the other students look at me during critiques. I want to scream, 'I took shit out because I knew you wouldn't believe it. You keep telling me no one's life is like this. Well here I am, motherfuckers. Here I am. This is my life. All you have had to do is read.'
I took the yellow pages out of a cabinet and called all the shelters in town. Some of them wanted several days notice, one of them wanted me to go work for them, if I wanted food. The only one that could do it in the next 24-48 hours was the Storehouse on Broadway. I went the next morning with my youngest, pawning my oldest off on my parents, and stood in line at five-thirty am, coincidentally when I'm writing this, with a long line of people in the pre-dawn cold waiting for the heavy iron door to open. I made a steady stream of chatter at her, trying to amuse her, and held her, shifting her from hip to hip when the arm threatened to give out. The Storehouse is first come, first serve, and fortunately for us, we were only the twentieth people in line. I had her baby bag with me. The people ahead of me were surprisingly cheery, talking and stomping their feet to keep warm. When they opened the doors at seven, we filed in.
The Storehouse is a large, cavernous building made from a single room. When you get into it, the area has been divided into little boxes, the first of which, to the left, is full of toys and a line of heavy desks. The kids play, the parents answer questions and surrender their driver's license or id. The Storehouse employees keep a record of you, like most shelters, to insure you won't defraud them of their supplies. The line behind me had stretched out forever, and I was anxious to get the interview over as fast as possible so that we could get back into line. They made me recount the story of how I came to this and ask pointed little questions to insure that I am, in fact, telling the truth about the state my life is in. Out of the corner of my eye, the line snaked forward with people who've been there before and don't have to be so throughly vetted. I received my chit and my daughter received a book. I still have it. It's a Xerox self-publish called Dorrie and the Witch Doctor. She was being such a good girl. Everyone commented on it as the line shuffled forward again. I sang to her quietly. I could tell she was going to be upset soon. We were both hungry. I hadn't eaten since I found out that the grocery money needed to be applied to the rent. It had only been something like sixteen hours, which is nothing. I craved coffee and cigarettes, not that I was going to take up smoking again. It's an expensive habit. On the right, we passed tables with mounds of clothing, which we did not need. One of the room-like boxes, the furthest on the left, was a 'grocery store', or a small maze with shelves and a short bank of standing freezers. The chit I had been given stated which items I could take, and I presented it to the man walking me through the maze to insure I didn't stuff anything into the baby bag or my coat. One tub of Kroger's brand peanut butter, one loaf of expired wheat bread, one can of green beans, one can of tomatoes, one bag of pinto beans, one jar of Smuthers, one box of government issue milk, one bag of Land O Lakes stir fry and one pound of ground beef. I froze, walking into the maze, and could not grab anything. I was deeply ashamed and afraid of how little it turned out to be. The man escorting me clicked his tongue with disgust and put the items in the basket for me, towing us to the 'register,' where they double checked the items against a list and let me totter out the door. I put my daughter into the car seat and tucked the bags in around her. I found out when I got home that they were mostly expired, not that it mattered. We ate them anyway.
I can't sleep when my dreams bring these memories back to me. My best friend had an apartment right across the street from the Storehouse, within a short walk of downtown. We were within spitting distance the last time we went drinking, and I didn't remember even though we stood right next to it, staggering drunk, until, in this last dream, I was standing with a baby on my hip, begging the current boyfriend not to leave. I can't sleep when I remember these things. There are times when I want to send these stories to workshop, to stomp in and stare dead-eyed at the kids in the program while they discuss whether or not anything like that ever happens anymore. I get complaints about how dark my stories are, how they are self-indulgent and how the reader may not forgive me for having to read it.
I always want to laugh. Read them? Yeah. Put the story down. I'll take more life out of it next time.
This has happened in real life.
Not with this boyfriend, but the one before, five years ago. After months of getting to know me, he moved in (partially because after going to school, working at a gas station, and having two toddlers, I could not afford to pay the rent, so we worked out a trade.) I made that deal women make a lot, in which they trade company, cooking and sex for help. Yes, it's still happening. I know we've killed sexism, made the genders equal in pay and all, but it still happens. Did I love him (which ends up being the justification for said arrangement)? No, but we were basically sexually compatable and he was not terribly bad (at the time), so I made the arrangement I'd been taught to make.
I didn't want to be on welfare, because that would be shaming.
So he moved in. And we argued. And argued, and argued, and argued. I went to pick up my girls after work, near the end of the month. I want to say it was the 19th or so, something like April. The drive back was pleasant enough. I had the windows rolled down slightly for the 45 mph air conditioning which was the only air I was gonna get out of that car. When I got back, his car was gone, which in and of itself didn't bother me. He was probably out running errands or something. We walked up the stairs to the apartment, the girls and I, slowly, because that's the only way you're getting anywhere upstairs with a four year old and a six year old. I was due to grocery shop, and was going to drop off something at the apartment before going to Smith's.
I remember turning the key distinctly, that the adobe walls had a chunk missing by the right side of the door, on the bottom. The door itself was an innocuous beige, and the frame was heavily, though not recently, scarred. The scars were filled with paint. My youngest child was on my hip. The door opened. The TV was gone.
It took me looking through the bedroom to be sure. I called him. He told me that he was under too much stress, and that I nagged at him. I reminded him that the rent was due. He told me it wasn't his problem and hung up on me. I put my hands on the kitchen counter and leaned my head down flat on the linoleum counter tops, which were cold, and recited to myself the contents of the kitchen cabinets, which came down to a can of beans, a small bag of rice and a can of hominy, and the refrigerator, which came down to some milk, a few eggs and the condiments everyone has.
I get in trouble for writing about these kinds of things in workshop. My characters don't do emotionally what they're supposed to. I want to laugh at the kids, teacher included, who read my stories. Who has time to cry? I didn't want the girls to see me, then they'd have been upset, and despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I wanted them to have a happy childhood. I told the girls that the TV was being repaired, if I remember correctly.
And the other students look at me during critiques. I want to scream, 'I took shit out because I knew you wouldn't believe it. You keep telling me no one's life is like this. Well here I am, motherfuckers. Here I am. This is my life. All you have had to do is read.'
I took the yellow pages out of a cabinet and called all the shelters in town. Some of them wanted several days notice, one of them wanted me to go work for them, if I wanted food. The only one that could do it in the next 24-48 hours was the Storehouse on Broadway. I went the next morning with my youngest, pawning my oldest off on my parents, and stood in line at five-thirty am, coincidentally when I'm writing this, with a long line of people in the pre-dawn cold waiting for the heavy iron door to open. I made a steady stream of chatter at her, trying to amuse her, and held her, shifting her from hip to hip when the arm threatened to give out. The Storehouse is first come, first serve, and fortunately for us, we were only the twentieth people in line. I had her baby bag with me. The people ahead of me were surprisingly cheery, talking and stomping their feet to keep warm. When they opened the doors at seven, we filed in.
The Storehouse is a large, cavernous building made from a single room. When you get into it, the area has been divided into little boxes, the first of which, to the left, is full of toys and a line of heavy desks. The kids play, the parents answer questions and surrender their driver's license or id. The Storehouse employees keep a record of you, like most shelters, to insure you won't defraud them of their supplies. The line behind me had stretched out forever, and I was anxious to get the interview over as fast as possible so that we could get back into line. They made me recount the story of how I came to this and ask pointed little questions to insure that I am, in fact, telling the truth about the state my life is in. Out of the corner of my eye, the line snaked forward with people who've been there before and don't have to be so throughly vetted. I received my chit and my daughter received a book. I still have it. It's a Xerox self-publish called Dorrie and the Witch Doctor. She was being such a good girl. Everyone commented on it as the line shuffled forward again. I sang to her quietly. I could tell she was going to be upset soon. We were both hungry. I hadn't eaten since I found out that the grocery money needed to be applied to the rent. It had only been something like sixteen hours, which is nothing. I craved coffee and cigarettes, not that I was going to take up smoking again. It's an expensive habit. On the right, we passed tables with mounds of clothing, which we did not need. One of the room-like boxes, the furthest on the left, was a 'grocery store', or a small maze with shelves and a short bank of standing freezers. The chit I had been given stated which items I could take, and I presented it to the man walking me through the maze to insure I didn't stuff anything into the baby bag or my coat. One tub of Kroger's brand peanut butter, one loaf of expired wheat bread, one can of green beans, one can of tomatoes, one bag of pinto beans, one jar of Smuthers, one box of government issue milk, one bag of Land O Lakes stir fry and one pound of ground beef. I froze, walking into the maze, and could not grab anything. I was deeply ashamed and afraid of how little it turned out to be. The man escorting me clicked his tongue with disgust and put the items in the basket for me, towing us to the 'register,' where they double checked the items against a list and let me totter out the door. I put my daughter into the car seat and tucked the bags in around her. I found out when I got home that they were mostly expired, not that it mattered. We ate them anyway.
I can't sleep when my dreams bring these memories back to me. My best friend had an apartment right across the street from the Storehouse, within a short walk of downtown. We were within spitting distance the last time we went drinking, and I didn't remember even though we stood right next to it, staggering drunk, until, in this last dream, I was standing with a baby on my hip, begging the current boyfriend not to leave. I can't sleep when I remember these things. There are times when I want to send these stories to workshop, to stomp in and stare dead-eyed at the kids in the program while they discuss whether or not anything like that ever happens anymore. I get complaints about how dark my stories are, how they are self-indulgent and how the reader may not forgive me for having to read it.
I always want to laugh. Read them? Yeah. Put the story down. I'll take more life out of it next time.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
men, childbearing and feminism
Maybe men shouldn't read this.
My son is sitting in my lap, sleepy blue eyes blinking up at me. His oldest sister is passed out on my bed with her best friend, with whom she spent last night. My youngest is reading manga on the floor. The boyfriend, my son's father, is out playing croquet in a city park. I am writing an overdue paper that I got an extension on for my 19th century lit class. I've been trying to get done for a month. I've had to restart three times now, because it's all I can do to formulate thoughts; I get interrupted a lot. My son is better now, but he had health problems for awhile requiring a stay in the NICU and they were talking a second surgery in November. Both daughters are having full on sibling rivalry about his arrival, including lots of competition and, in one case a few weeks ago, a fist fight in the bathroom.
It's times like this that I hate knowing about feminism, hate even thinking about it.
If I suggested to the boyfriend that I could use some help here, because while I'm not traditionally working, I am finishing a Master's, and thinking deep(ish) thoughts is both necessary and difficult to do with a house full of people, he would stay home.
Of course, he'd be unhappy about it. As he told me, walking out of the door, it's not like he goes out much. I felt very whiny when I told him I don't mind that he gets out, which I don't. I do mind that I am stuck here, that I haven't left the house in weeks, that I couldn't leave him to babysit this many kids anyway (you have to be pretty versed with kids to be left alone with three preadolescents and a baby. And, frankly, I'm not comfortable leaving a guy home with this many kids. Call me sexist, if you like.) I mind that, despite all this blogging, it was all I could do to finish my classes last semester and that I am going into my dissertation, an intense period of writing, scared to death that it will be all I can do to produce a few pages. I normally write something like ten pages a week.
I mind because I feel like my mother. My mother who used to drag herself around the house, collapsing on chairs or locking herself in her room, screaming and crying about how she fucking hated to be a woman. I used to cling to the white-washed walls in the hall outside her bedroom door as I listened to her beg god to make her anything else, dead would be fine. We took cross-country drives where she bitched all the way home about how much she hated taking care of us, having had us. She was not happy until, a few years back, they removed her uterus and ovaries. The next time I saw her, she was like a woman transcended; eyes alight and glowing, hair clean and she stood up straight, looking me in the eye. Since then, she's been kinder, though she still criticizes me and my lifestyle frequently. She knows what ambition gets women.
What is it Madam Reisz says in the Awakening? I'll paraphrase it with 'you must have strong wings. There is nothing more depressing than the women limping back with their crushed wings.'
I wish my mother would do something for herself. She won't let me do anything for her, nor could I offer. What's between us is ugly at best and I am not eager to be tortured again.
As a feminist, I can look back on her depression and my own malaise and dissect it in terms of obligations, oppression and isolation; or myself and my brother, the expectations of family and the sheer amount of traveling overseas we did when I was tiny, respectively. (I think there's something even nastier in the family history, but I don't know for certain.) My mother did have outside contacts, as do I. My mother was the local president for the Right to Life chapter of Hunt County (in Texas), a frequent choir leader, conductor and arranger for churches (she left a BA program in music to work and support my father through school, getting her MRS instead) and student body Treasurer in college. (As an amusing side-note, I was not allowed to watch horror movies, but knew what aborted fetus looked like since I was ten.) My mother wrote constantly and painted, filling several filing boxes in the garage with a meticulously researched sci-fi trilogy she will never publish and paintings that, while not museum quality, were excellent portraiture. She sold a few. She had ambition.
So do I. I burn with it. I've never met anyone who burns like I do, who cannot sleep and grinds their teeth, making patterns of the bumps on the ceiling. I will. I will make something of myself.
Perhaps my mother burned, too.
Ambition is one of the reasons I've gotten even this far.
My son's asleep in the other room. The girls are sprawled out, shoes and all, on my bed. God, they're so pretty. Is there anything as beautiful as a sleeping child? My girls are so eager to grow up. They frighten me.
This is the best boyfriend I've ever had, better even than a lot of the girlfriends I've had, at least the ones I've introduced to my children. And yet, here I am, angry beyond words.
I have worked my ass off. Bootstraps? I didn't have any when I started. I was couch surfing when I got pregnant with my first child. Her father was an engineer something like thirteen years older than me, not that he cared for either the age difference or the baby. I was seventeen. He was thirty, as old as I am now. I cannot imagine being interested in a child, though I suppose I would not, after a year of being homeless, be what might traditionally be thought of as a child. I was staying at my grandmother's, but since she kicked me out promptly after the birth, it's clear to me that my arrangement with her was temporary, at best.
I have three children, each birth filling me with as much sorrow as joy, though more for the girls than the boys; I know what's waiting for them. I wouldn't give my children up for the world, because loving them has been both instructive and redeeming (I learned to love them before I learned to love me) but each child has resulted in at least two years of delay on my education. When my oldest was born, I was told my unmarried state would ruin her life and her chances (for a good marriage and therefore happiness.) When my middle child, also a girl, was born, I was told that my desire to go to school was going to result in her being badly socialized or deficient.
I was being a bad mother. I went anyway.
With this baby, people at school ask me how I do it. Ha. What else is there to do?
As a feminist, my knowledge only serves to remind me just how repressive some of these things are. Even though I know better, I still expect to be my children's only caregiver, to provide their support and to be home with them as much as I can, for fear of what might happen if I was not. I expect that their fathers will be useless, and that I will always be taking up the slack, and working, and going to school, and everything to everyone until I cannot take it any more, and then I will do it again. I've had as many as three jobs at a time while I've been going to school. God, sometimes I think I'm made of some kind of metal, the way I just keep trying. Keep going. Always and forever, keep going because you cannot afford to fail.
It's another form of woman as sacrifice, but it's an effective trap, because I'll die before I abandon them. Nobody has to shoot you down, all they have to do is refuse to help you. And wait.
In the feminist theory class I took last spring, one of the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, single, childless and very keen young things bemoaned the rejection of feminism by the working class women and single mothers she had been researching for her end of semester project. Why, she wanted to know. Why would any woman reject feminism?
I held my tongue and I shouldn't have. I'm not sure I could have been polite.
This is the best person I've ever dated. If I had to blame my attraction to the childless on something, I might blame it on the fact that I've been taking care of someone since I can remember; standing in for my once small brother and getting my ass royally kicked by our parents when we were kids, caring for other homeless friends, even just in a transitory way by shoplifting to feed the starving ones. I've had children around since just after my eighteenth birthday. I envy them, sometimes. I have no idea what it's like to be a kid, or to be alone. One of these damn days, I'm gonna be old, everyone will leave and I'm going on a permanent vacation.
This is the best person I've ever dated, and I'm no doormat (trust me), but here I am, trying to concentrate, to finish that last paper. He is the nicest man I've ever met, and he walked out the door, thinking we were equal in responsibility because he works during the day and does one baby feeding in the morning and (if he feels like it, or if I insist) one at night. No one I've ever dated has done even that much. I feel like giving him a standing applause, and then I am ashamed that I would be impressed with so little. Feminism reminds me of privilege, of why I am ambitious and what ambition means. Feminism gives me hope for another future, another time when I will not struggle to do what anyone should get to do, to make something of myself. More importantly, feminism reminds me to work a little harder at it for my girls. I have armed them as best I can against our rape culture, our oppression, which has only made them 'troublesome', and after all this, I can only hope. Feminism reminds me to notice the small indicators in speech that attempt to keep me at home the way my mother stayed home (god preserve me from what she did to my brother and I, god grant I continue to be kind), though the boyfriend does not mean to use them. He does not think of himself that way. Feminism makes me feel like someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, like two women in this body that is big enough for neither. It makes me feel insane because I know, I know, I know better. But this is a rock and that is a hard place and I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
My son is sitting in my lap, sleepy blue eyes blinking up at me. His oldest sister is passed out on my bed with her best friend, with whom she spent last night. My youngest is reading manga on the floor. The boyfriend, my son's father, is out playing croquet in a city park. I am writing an overdue paper that I got an extension on for my 19th century lit class. I've been trying to get done for a month. I've had to restart three times now, because it's all I can do to formulate thoughts; I get interrupted a lot. My son is better now, but he had health problems for awhile requiring a stay in the NICU and they were talking a second surgery in November. Both daughters are having full on sibling rivalry about his arrival, including lots of competition and, in one case a few weeks ago, a fist fight in the bathroom.
It's times like this that I hate knowing about feminism, hate even thinking about it.
If I suggested to the boyfriend that I could use some help here, because while I'm not traditionally working, I am finishing a Master's, and thinking deep(ish) thoughts is both necessary and difficult to do with a house full of people, he would stay home.
Of course, he'd be unhappy about it. As he told me, walking out of the door, it's not like he goes out much. I felt very whiny when I told him I don't mind that he gets out, which I don't. I do mind that I am stuck here, that I haven't left the house in weeks, that I couldn't leave him to babysit this many kids anyway (you have to be pretty versed with kids to be left alone with three preadolescents and a baby. And, frankly, I'm not comfortable leaving a guy home with this many kids. Call me sexist, if you like.) I mind that, despite all this blogging, it was all I could do to finish my classes last semester and that I am going into my dissertation, an intense period of writing, scared to death that it will be all I can do to produce a few pages. I normally write something like ten pages a week.
I mind because I feel like my mother. My mother who used to drag herself around the house, collapsing on chairs or locking herself in her room, screaming and crying about how she fucking hated to be a woman. I used to cling to the white-washed walls in the hall outside her bedroom door as I listened to her beg god to make her anything else, dead would be fine. We took cross-country drives where she bitched all the way home about how much she hated taking care of us, having had us. She was not happy until, a few years back, they removed her uterus and ovaries. The next time I saw her, she was like a woman transcended; eyes alight and glowing, hair clean and she stood up straight, looking me in the eye. Since then, she's been kinder, though she still criticizes me and my lifestyle frequently. She knows what ambition gets women.
What is it Madam Reisz says in the Awakening? I'll paraphrase it with 'you must have strong wings. There is nothing more depressing than the women limping back with their crushed wings.'
I wish my mother would do something for herself. She won't let me do anything for her, nor could I offer. What's between us is ugly at best and I am not eager to be tortured again.
As a feminist, I can look back on her depression and my own malaise and dissect it in terms of obligations, oppression and isolation; or myself and my brother, the expectations of family and the sheer amount of traveling overseas we did when I was tiny, respectively. (I think there's something even nastier in the family history, but I don't know for certain.) My mother did have outside contacts, as do I. My mother was the local president for the Right to Life chapter of Hunt County (in Texas), a frequent choir leader, conductor and arranger for churches (she left a BA program in music to work and support my father through school, getting her MRS instead) and student body Treasurer in college. (As an amusing side-note, I was not allowed to watch horror movies, but knew what aborted fetus looked like since I was ten.) My mother wrote constantly and painted, filling several filing boxes in the garage with a meticulously researched sci-fi trilogy she will never publish and paintings that, while not museum quality, were excellent portraiture. She sold a few. She had ambition.
So do I. I burn with it. I've never met anyone who burns like I do, who cannot sleep and grinds their teeth, making patterns of the bumps on the ceiling. I will. I will make something of myself.
Perhaps my mother burned, too.
Ambition is one of the reasons I've gotten even this far.
My son's asleep in the other room. The girls are sprawled out, shoes and all, on my bed. God, they're so pretty. Is there anything as beautiful as a sleeping child? My girls are so eager to grow up. They frighten me.
This is the best boyfriend I've ever had, better even than a lot of the girlfriends I've had, at least the ones I've introduced to my children. And yet, here I am, angry beyond words.
I have worked my ass off. Bootstraps? I didn't have any when I started. I was couch surfing when I got pregnant with my first child. Her father was an engineer something like thirteen years older than me, not that he cared for either the age difference or the baby. I was seventeen. He was thirty, as old as I am now. I cannot imagine being interested in a child, though I suppose I would not, after a year of being homeless, be what might traditionally be thought of as a child. I was staying at my grandmother's, but since she kicked me out promptly after the birth, it's clear to me that my arrangement with her was temporary, at best.
I have three children, each birth filling me with as much sorrow as joy, though more for the girls than the boys; I know what's waiting for them. I wouldn't give my children up for the world, because loving them has been both instructive and redeeming (I learned to love them before I learned to love me) but each child has resulted in at least two years of delay on my education. When my oldest was born, I was told my unmarried state would ruin her life and her chances (for a good marriage and therefore happiness.) When my middle child, also a girl, was born, I was told that my desire to go to school was going to result in her being badly socialized or deficient.
I was being a bad mother. I went anyway.
With this baby, people at school ask me how I do it. Ha. What else is there to do?
As a feminist, my knowledge only serves to remind me just how repressive some of these things are. Even though I know better, I still expect to be my children's only caregiver, to provide their support and to be home with them as much as I can, for fear of what might happen if I was not. I expect that their fathers will be useless, and that I will always be taking up the slack, and working, and going to school, and everything to everyone until I cannot take it any more, and then I will do it again. I've had as many as three jobs at a time while I've been going to school. God, sometimes I think I'm made of some kind of metal, the way I just keep trying. Keep going. Always and forever, keep going because you cannot afford to fail.
It's another form of woman as sacrifice, but it's an effective trap, because I'll die before I abandon them. Nobody has to shoot you down, all they have to do is refuse to help you. And wait.
In the feminist theory class I took last spring, one of the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, single, childless and very keen young things bemoaned the rejection of feminism by the working class women and single mothers she had been researching for her end of semester project. Why, she wanted to know. Why would any woman reject feminism?
I held my tongue and I shouldn't have. I'm not sure I could have been polite.
This is the best person I've ever dated. If I had to blame my attraction to the childless on something, I might blame it on the fact that I've been taking care of someone since I can remember; standing in for my once small brother and getting my ass royally kicked by our parents when we were kids, caring for other homeless friends, even just in a transitory way by shoplifting to feed the starving ones. I've had children around since just after my eighteenth birthday. I envy them, sometimes. I have no idea what it's like to be a kid, or to be alone. One of these damn days, I'm gonna be old, everyone will leave and I'm going on a permanent vacation.
This is the best person I've ever dated, and I'm no doormat (trust me), but here I am, trying to concentrate, to finish that last paper. He is the nicest man I've ever met, and he walked out the door, thinking we were equal in responsibility because he works during the day and does one baby feeding in the morning and (if he feels like it, or if I insist) one at night. No one I've ever dated has done even that much. I feel like giving him a standing applause, and then I am ashamed that I would be impressed with so little. Feminism reminds me of privilege, of why I am ambitious and what ambition means. Feminism gives me hope for another future, another time when I will not struggle to do what anyone should get to do, to make something of myself. More importantly, feminism reminds me to work a little harder at it for my girls. I have armed them as best I can against our rape culture, our oppression, which has only made them 'troublesome', and after all this, I can only hope. Feminism reminds me to notice the small indicators in speech that attempt to keep me at home the way my mother stayed home (god preserve me from what she did to my brother and I, god grant I continue to be kind), though the boyfriend does not mean to use them. He does not think of himself that way. Feminism makes me feel like someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, like two women in this body that is big enough for neither. It makes me feel insane because I know, I know, I know better. But this is a rock and that is a hard place and I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
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