Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

i like jerks.

i do. i always have. it might be in part because i kinda am one. at least, i’m not “nice” in any conventional sense of the word. i mean, i wont usually go out of my way to be mean for no reason, but neither will i make much of an effort to be friendly or anything.

anyway, most of the guys i find myself attracted to are jerks. they’re self-centered pricks who think the world of themselves, and not much of me. it’s sort of a classic insecure girl thing. i have an excellent track record. it’s not perfect, but it’s damn close.

this has been true not only in my real life, but in my fantasy life of TV dating. much to the dismay of everyone who lives in my house, my favorite example of made-up manhood used to be Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl. he’s conceited, vain, ego-centric, and beautifully dressed. yum!

nice scarf dude!

however. he has yet to master all the skills and talents concomitant to his type. sure, he’s greedy and capricious, reprobate and occasionally vicious, but truthfully, chuck is also just a boy. he often lacks the courage of his cruelty. he hasn’t grown into an unshakable sense of himself yet and thus does not always act the consummate asshole. no, indeed we can frequently see glimpses of his vulnerabililty and lack of self-confidence. it’s something that may come with age, but for now i can say, i have found it somewhere else.

meet Ari Gold: Dickhead Exrtaordinare

come on baby, yell at me some more...

i spent all weekend watching 6 seasons of Entourage. so i’ve had some time to think about what it is that makes this character, to my mind, the archetype of the perfect man.*

He is a Chauvinist:

i mean this in the literal definitive sense:

–noun

this man always thinks he is right. and that is hot. he will pursue his conviction til and past the bitter end. he will run, jump, scream, wheedle, or pay to make his point and achieve his end. in a world where situational ethics are the rule, this man has a profound and durable sense of right and wrong. it may not align perfectly with the larger social paradigm but it is consistent to itself and he is unfailingly committed to it.

He Demands Obedience But Is Willing To Pay For The Privilege

this man dominates whatever situation he comes into. with the strength of his personality he achieves his ends by browbeating most of the people in his vicinity into submission. but though he can be demanding to the point of oppression, he also provides everything, unto excess, that these people could possibly want. his family, protege, and clients all benefit from his inexorable determination to do his best for them.

He is Not A Man You Want To Fuck With

he feels betrayal powerfully, and becomes vindictive when he is crossed, and due to his steadfast sense of right and wrong, you do not want to be the one to do it.

my very favorite scene** in the entire series comes when Ari is feuding with some upstart dickbag agent who thinks he can behave like a genuine rival for Ari’s position. they race in their fancy little cars, they exchange human feces, and then finally the gloves (and all else besides) come off; the dickbag posts nude photos of Ari’s wife (taken before she was Ari’s wife) and that is when the shit goes down.

Ari races across to the agency where dickbag works and proceeds to call him out of his office to demand an apology. when dickbag hesitates Ari SLAPS HIM LIKE THE BITCH HE IS and threatens to beat the living crap out of him if he fails to say he is sorry. because sending naked pictures of some bitch you both screwed is one thing, but this is his wife and the mother of his children and that is a line you simply do. not. cross. fuck. no.

He Is A Fucking Pig Who Takes His Vows Seriously

he eyes women up and down, CONSPICUOUSLY, pretty much non-stop. he’s a sexist who objectifies women and makes wildly inappropriate comments to and about them on a regular basis and yet, he would never cheat on his wife, and views infidelity with contempt. he is profoundly committed to his family and to his wife, and is at heart, an honorable man. even if you’d never guess it from the way he talks.

He Buys Expensive Presents When He Has Fucked Up

this may not, in itself, be admirable as a human trait, but i personally, am a fan of this behavior. my forgiveness can usually be bought.

He understands And Cares About Appearances And Labels

he is keenly sensitive to the value of image and does his best to present an image of power, authority, control, and dignity. plus also, he is a seriously sharp dressed man.

i realize these traits do not make everyone giddy, but they definitely do it for me. i am not unaware that he is also a bigot, workaholic, and general bully, but these things do not make him less appealing for all of that. i find it sort of interesting to realize this about myself, but i think it’s probably useful information going forward.

and hodie will be so relieved. she hated chuck.

**i literally squeal and bounce up and down every time i watch this scene.

prof·li·gate

when i was about 12 years old, i went to live with my dad. it was a fairly typical thing for an adolescent girl to do; tension with mother had reached a breaking point, the hateful stepfather, extra hateful. i’d had enough of the tyrrany and was looking forward to some freedom and peace.

it turns out, i was looking in the wrong place, but that is not the point in this particular narrative. what is the point, is that when i arrived on my father’s doorstep, i owned exactly one pair of shoes. they had serious holes in them. i would stand out in the rain and my feet would get wet. i was accustomed to this, but not inured. i told my dad i needed some money for a new pair of shoes. after some struggle, i got the shoes. and then, something strange happened; i got another pair of shoes.

this was unprecedented. i had always just had one pair at a time. it was heady and strange to be able to decide which shoes i was going to wear that day. i remember sitting in my room feeling giddy at the prospect. and it didn’t stop there. unlike my mother who harbors a profound disdain for the acquisition of things, my dad, he comes from stuff-likers. so. suddenly, i had stuff. items were given to me and neither rescinded nor destroyed. as such, i was able to amass a selection of things. and though i knew intellectually i was going to be able to keep these things, i became rather attached to the notion of having stuff, keeping that stuff, and getting new stuff to join it.

and in this way, i am still pretty much 12 years old.

never is this more apparent than when i cleaning. my god, i have a lot of stuff. stuff from when i was in middle school. stuff from my marriage. stuff from i have no idea where. even when i have nowhere to put it, and i am oppressed by it, i am very very reluctant to let it go. and of course, i still want more stuff too…

and what’s more, now hodie has a lot of stuff. toys, games, clothes, electronics, art supplies, books, costumes, gee-gaws, etc etc ad infinitum. as we were sorting through her room in the annual “pre-first-day-of-school-clean-and-purge” i was stunned by the quantity of crap my daughter has managed to collect. and most of this is my fault. i have definitely trained her to hold on to things; or more precisely i have encouraged her to hold on to things she would pretty much be perfectly happy to let go of. for you see, unlike her mother, she does not have deprivation consciousness, because for the most part, she has been deprived of nothing.

and so today. as we were cleaning her room, i did something i have never done before. i told her she could get rid of whatever she liked. she was not obligated to consult me about what to keep and what to be rid of. she could send off whatever struck her fancy. i didnt encourage her to to keep anything she did not want for her own purposes, and i let go the need to dictate where the things that were left ought to go. as long as everything had a place, i wasnt going to try to insist on placement or particulars; just that things were relatively tidy after all was said and done.

she was judicious for the most part. lots of books from when she was 2, stuffies she hadn’t even looked at in months, gifts from people years out of her life. she arranged her remaining things in a riot across all the flat surfaces of her room in a way that makes my fingers itch with organizational longing, but i resisted and praised her diligence.

i am happy to say that hodie does not seem to care nearly as much as i do about stuff. that she’s generally pretty happy to have it, but that it doesnt seem to be something she gives all that much thought to. and in this way, i like to think i have done a good job. the shrug of her shoulders, in the face of all those things, my best reward. even better than stuff.

and yet…

i promised hodie i wouldn’t go to the gym at night, because she doesn’t want to come along, nor does she want to be alone in the house after dark. i can’t really argue with either position, and usually, by the end of the day, i am so ready to sit down and not do a damn thing, i thought i might as well shoot for a pre-work workout schedule instead.

this, however, requires me to rise at the UNGODLY hour of 5am. this is about 5 hours earilier than i would rise given my druthers. so, this has been kinda sucky. to be fair, i haven’t managed to go more than once or twice in a row because shortly after i tried it out the first time, i ended up in the hospital and wasn’t going anywhere at all for a while, let alone the gym. i’m hoping that once i get into the swing of things, i won’t find the experience so fucking utterly and totally excruciating as i am finding it today.

i mean, i’ve figured out how to overcome my initial inertia by leaving a bottle of 5 hour energy on my nightstand and having at it as soon as my alarm goes off. this allows me to feel fairly awake by the time i’ve put on my gear and made it to the front door. i also realize that, much against my custom, it behooves me to eat something before i go. i forgot this morning, which i have no doubt made things a little rougher on me overall, but as with everything else in this scenario, i’m hoping routine will make all these things a little easier to manage when i am awake at an hour only meant for people on too many drugs and tiny birds who might otherwise die of starvation if they don’t eat every 4.25 hours.

but i went. and i worked out. and now, some 8 hours later, i am le tired. and also supremely cranky. i’m really hoping this will get easier.

for now, it will be best if you back away slowly…

there isn’t always a countdown. i’ve resisted the urge to do so the last few years, but for some reason, i am ALL ABOUT m embracing my customary (though admittedly ridiculous) amount of enthusiasm for all things birthday.

so, at T- 32 days, there is still much to be done:

• find purple gloves and red wig for costume cause this year instead of only TALKING about being Jessica Rabbit i am actually going to DO IT. sheesh
• obtain pumpkins, and carve them
• take hodie down to the haunted trail and hope she does not repeat her larceny
• call mother and request she make me a batch of The Best Carmel In The Known Universe and then hoard it
• find ingenious new ways to subtly, but unmistakably indicate my desire for various birthday gift items
• devise system wherein my closest friends & loved ones will not bludgeon me before my birthday just to get me to shut the hell up about my birthday.

that last one’s going to be tricky.

and not only because my birthday is Halloween.

i am intoxicated by patterns and textures, bags and shoes, silk and corduroy. i delight in surveying, and selecting, just the right combination of my garments. i array myself with clothes like armor and go to face the world thus protected, or exposed, depending on my aim.

each occasion calling for a mode of dress of a particular type is met with giddy anticipation. i relish planning for myself, i revel in making selections for others. and i have always taken considerable pride in my ability to portray myself in any manner i please in this way. i am just as easily the hipster as the harlot, jock or jade. i have an especial fondness for what i like to call Naughty Librarian Chic; fine fabrics, skirts just a shade too short, shoes just a bit too tall and pointy, tailored shirts with one button too many undone. i feel each of these choices communicates certain things about me to the people around me. and in most cases, i feel bolstered and safe behind the persona i don along with my clothes.

i hadn’t spent much time thinking about why i have such an obsession with clothes until recently. i could say readily that the utter lack of any choices about how i looked or what i wore as a child left me feeling exposed and vulnerable and was one of the most difficult aspects of growing up unsure of myself. i have somehow always associated being well dressed with confidence, security, and success. it was only when i began to notice a compulsive tendency to feel as though if only i could find just the right outfit, that all would be well, when my acquisition of habiliments became such as focus as to border upon addiction. i was putting the expansion of my wardrobe ahead of other more pressing priorities, and eventually, had to stop buying clothes altogether for a period of time.

and even now, that i am thinking about it conciously, i still have trouble controlling this impulse. moreover, the more i think about it, the stranger my ideas about clothing seem. recently it occurred to me that i always imagined that wardrobe was a fundamental focus for, if not every then certainly most, sophisticated attractive people with the means to dress as they pleased. having made several friends in the last few years who are unquestionably all of those things, but have little or no interest in clothing, has forced me to examine my biases about the subject.

and as i do so, i am forced to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth of what i suppose i know already; that when i refer to my clothing as armor, i am utterly serious about this comparison. i do not feel sure enough of myself to present indifferent dress. i can never dress solely for comfort or without considering exactly the perception of myself i am hoping to promote. the notion that people might see something i did not carefully craft sends me into a cold sweat.

which is not to imply i am always perfectly dressed, it is merely to say that i am never carelessly dressed. there is always significant thought invested in the selection of whatever i wear. and so too, in what it is i am attempting to communicate via my levi’s and low cut sweater, my capri’s and twinset, the exquisitely tailored cocktail dress, the tank top and peasant skirt.

and i have begun to envy these happy few dear friends of mine who seem so utterly at ease in their skin. who are radiant and appealing no matter what they wear. who do not have to look down at their outfit to tell them who they are today, who they want to be instead.

***part of a continuing series “Wholly Unsurprising Revelations”***

i am a picky eater. much less so than when i was a child, and would condemn foods from entire ethnic groups without ever having sampled them (this is how i missed out on hummus for most of my life, i feel my narrowmindedness has been duly punished, as such) but still, it shocks the better part of my social group, an urbane sophisticated food crowd, the wide variety of things i will not eat.

part of this is habitual, part physiological.

habit amounts to a tendency to eat the things i know i like and avoid things i’m not so sure about. when i go to Slowbar they dont ask me what i want because EVERY DAMN TIME i go in there i order a pulled pork sandwich and a Heineken. (well, not anymore. now i order a Peroni, since they got rid of Heineken) i mean, it’s delicious, and i highly reccommend it as my favorite pulled pork in town, but still. such predictability!!

on the physical side of things, i am a supertaster. so, though i think this makes me special, really, all it does it make me sensitive to stuff most humans don’t seem troubled by. i fall firmly into the cilantro haters category. texture is also exceedingly important to my ability to enjoy a given food. moreover, it turns out i have a rather combative relationship with my body. it is constantly betraying me in a variety of ways. like when it falls down for no apparent reason with embraassing frequency. my immune system leaves a great deal to be desired, and most important for this discussion, my gastrointestinal system is frequently in a hideous uproar. if i eat breakfast i usually end up feeling nasty. if I fail to eat breakfast i tend to feel queasy. the answer seems to be to sleep til one o’clock and avoid that part of the day altogether. not the most practical solution. and it is not only breakfast that causes me trouble, just that breakfast ALWAYS does, whereas other meals only do with a randomness that borders on maddening. i can’t accurately predict whether a given meal or foodstuff with go south on me. this does not tend to make me feel inclined to try lots of new and different things. though in the last few years, i’ve been brave. trying for the first time; indian, greek, lebanese, thai, and sushi. and excepting the last of these, i have found tremendous enjoyment in all this new cuisine.

yet there are still a few core things i cannot, will not, shall not eat which most people consider fundamental foodstuffs.

Tomatoes: this one baffles people. i like salsa, spaghetti, pizza, and many other tomato-based food items, but i simply cannot abide uncooked tomatoes. its definitely a texture thing. buh-leah.

Fishes: and not least because i am terrified of the buggers. also because they are yuuuuucky. nothing from the sea. except, well, i’ll eat tuna. but it has to be safely in sandwich format before i will consider it.

Mushrooms: occasionally, in my youth, i ate them, but only for recreational purposes. generally speaking, i try to avoid fungus in my life. for example when it is growing in my closet and under my bed and making it hard for me to breathe. seems like a bad thing. i also have a relative who is the Mushroom Expert for the Lincoln County Poison Control and i have heard too many stories that end: “And then she had to get a new liver, but since they couldn’t find one in 17 hours, she died.” additionally, LOOK AT THE THINGS!! scary alien things. biologists cannot even really honestly say what the hell they are. i mean, fungus had to have its own KINGDOM cause it was impossible to classify any other way. i cant think of any other eukaryotes we deign to eat. i think there’s a reason for this.

there are a million other examples, but these are the ones that seem to interfere with my eating the widest variety of common dishes. i wonder if other people have this problem; hating something everyone else seems to love and therefore have to dodge said thing with great frequency.

ah, the curse of the supertaster….

also, i LOATHE LOATHE LOATHE guacamole. seriously.

*** i consider this post the first in a series i am going to call “Wholly Unsurprising Revelations” if you care to make any yourself, please, feel free!!***

Wholly Unsurprising Revelation: It is no fun to have someone point out things you do not like about yourself.

i am well aware of my shortcomings. in fact, i make a hobby of listing them and announcing them to others. in fact, i am here willing to proffer:

A By No Means Comprehensive List of My Faults

• self-absorbed: which seems only fair since i AM the center of the universe after all
• vain: but, you know, with good reason
• pessimistic: call me Eyeore
• alternately spastic and complacent: some call this bipolar, i see it as weakness of character
• demanding: i like stuff and attention. lots of both. now
• hypersensitive: i am squishy in the middle, there is frequent crying

and yet, as willing as i am to admit all of this, turns out it is NO FUN to have any of these things pointed out by someone else. this was made manifest to me this morning. it all started innocently enough, talking about golf…. ended with “Sometimes I forget how squishy you are” which, ironically, in itself was an attempt to avoid upsetting me.

sheesh. what a pain in the ass i can be. but dude, if you agree with me, keep it to yourself please.