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April 3, 2008

Because Jim Asked Me To....

My friend and blog host Jim was a very ugly baby. Jim is who introduced me to my evil ex Adam (which I don't hold against Jim, because he did warn me not to date this guy) who, according to Adam's mother, was also a very ugly baby--but we'll never know HOW ugly, because Adam was unwilling to produce any sort of evidence as to just how horrible he looked as a wee sprog. Actually, it wasn't just that he was unwilling to show anyone his baby pictures; he was unable to do something that risky, because he lacked A) a sense of humor and B) plain old chutzpah as well as C) genuine confidence in his adult good looks. (Though in his own unpleasant, insecure way he was very vain and was always telling me how good looking he was, as if I couldn't see for myself that he was a handsome guy, aside from his CRAZY eyebrows--they were like rodents nesting on his face--and the fact that the rhinoplasty he got after college left his nose just a tad too delicate to match the rest of his profile--it wasn't as bad as Michael Jackson, but you get the idea.)

Jim, on the other hand, had a sense of humor and chutzpah and a thorough awareness of how devastatingly attractive women found him. (I was no exception.) Having outgrown his infantile repulsiveness and turned into quite the handsome dude, he positively gloried in having once been so very, very hideous. He'd show his baby picture to anyone. It's easy to see where he got the attitude; his mom likewise gloried in having given birth to such an ugly child. When I met her, she cackled in delight as she told me how people would withdraw in embarrassed confusion when they saw him in his stroller. (I never met Adam's mom, by the way; I know from Jim that she would simply state, with a matter-of-factness that mortified Adam, how ugly he was as a baby.)

But it seems that other once-ugly children are trying to wrest Jim's position as ugliest baby away from him. He asks, therefore, that you go to this photo of the world's ugliest baby on flickr and add it to your favorites, and then add a link to his entry in which he declares himself the world's ugliest baby.

Seriously. Jim deserves the title, and we must help him keep it.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (4)

January 1, 2008

More on the Kindness of Strangers

My sister really sort of hates New Year's Eve, mostly because it's her birthday. Some people think December 31 would be a great birthday, because there are always lots of parties--but the thing is, they're almost never for you. People usually have their own agenda on New Year's Eve, and they don't want to come to a birthday party for you every single year, plus if you host a party on December 31, people expect it to go til midnight and so forth. Then there's the business of birthday gifts: Only people who really love you and think ahead manage to buy you a present and send it to you in time; a lot of people do that whole horrible "This is both your birthday AND Christmas present" routine, or else they send you stuff in mid January. At least, this is what my sister tells me, and I believe her.

I don't dislike New Year's as much as my sister, but it's not my favorite holiday. Part of it is that there's no prescribed activity, aside from having fun, and I generally resent forced frivolity. I prefer holidays with clearly defined activities: eat turkey and pumpkin pie, or go door-to-door asking for candy, or give and receive gifts. The activity is dictated by custom; whether or not you have fun is entirely up to you.

I've had plenty of spectacularly forgetable New Year's Eves, and I've had several that genuinely BLEW. I want to talk about that, but before I do, I must say that last night was just about the best New Year's Eve I've ever celebrated in my whole life.

Probably my worst New Year's ever was 1988. I made travel plans to meet the family of the man I was in love with, and when I bought my airline ticket part of the plan was that I'd get an engagement ring for Christmas. Instead I got dumped, but for a variety of reasons I stuck around for the whole holiday. There were two other New Year's where I began dating someone after I'd already made plans to spend the holidays with my family, so I didn't have that kind of close-proximity misery to deal with, but there was still romantic drama and tension via email and over the phone.

Then there was New Year's Eve 1986/ New Year's Day 1987, when I got pulled over by a cop who was convinced I'd been drinking, and thought I was being cute when I said I hadn't had a drop all year. "Yeah, yeah," he said. "It's 12:30. But what about before midnight?"

"No," I said. "I meant all of 1986. I don't drink."

He shown his flashlight into the car. I had three passengers. "Looks like you were having quite a party," he said.

"Not really," I said. "The guys in the back are my little brother and his best friend, and they're not old enough to drive, which is why I had to go pick them up from the church dance. This person is my friend Ellen, whom I haven't seen since I went on a mission for the Mormon church in May 1985. I got home three weeks ago, and I'm still not recovered from my jet lag, which is why I'm wearing a flannel nightgown, a bathrobe and slippers: as soon as I get home, I'm gonna crash. You want me to get out of the car so you can see?"

But New Year's Eve 2007 was nothing like that. As I mentioned earlier, I'm in Chicago doing all sorts of fun stuff; the past couple of days have involved hanging with my friend Z. Also in town is Saviour Onassis, who is here meeting the friends and family of his new man, BG. SO was going to a party hosted by BG's best friend, and BG was cool enough to invite me and Z. He told us the party started at 6 p.m., so Z and I thought we'd be fashionably late, and arrived at 7:30.

But the party was actually supposed to start at 8, so we were the first to arrive, and nothing was ready. The hosts were complete strangers to both of us, but they welcomed us into their home, provided us with alcohol and all the queso we could possibly eat, including a really stinky Italian cheese that turned out to be lovely, even though I used to think I didn't like stinky cheese. Z and I sat and played Holiday Mellencamp until other guests showed up ("OK, Christmas gifts: a real bicycle or an exercise bike?" Real bicycle. "Jewelry or a negligee?" Jewelry. "A dozen red roses or a really powerful handheld vacuum cleaner?" The vacuum cleaner.)

And then other people showed up, and even though I'd only met two of them before in my life, and even though Z had never before met any of them, they were all lovely and welcoming and generous and cool. The food was AMAZING: the hostess was a professional chef,and she provided quite a spread. But as my grandmother liked to say after a very pleasant meal, "the food was good, but the company was better." The guests were really diverse: there were neighbors and friends of friends and children and even a Masai chieftan from Kenya who is in the US trying to promote measures to bring economic stability to east Africa. Z and I had originally planned to go early and leave early enough to be in bed and asleep at midnight, because the roads weren't bad, but we had so much fun that we didn't leave until well after 1 p.m.

Now, this is not the continuation of my previous post on good-natured strangers that I had originally intended to write. And it's not like I have never before been to a party where I didn't know many people and still managed to have a good time. But like so many things, the ability to do that is a skill, and one I had to cultivate.

As a freshman in college I drove half an hour to get a big bash held at the home of one of my favorite professors. She lived out in the foothills east of Tucson, and a wash ran through the back of her property; every semester she invited every student who had ever been in one of her courses to come to her home, where she had accumulated a stash of wood to build a bonfire in the wash, and then she facilitated a good time. This was 1982; I was 18 years old; and the drinking age was 19, so I knew there would be booze there. I didn't plan to drink, but I also knew I'd have to make conversation with people I hardly knew, and that I'd have find common ground with people who were nothing like me and who might be drunk.

I pulled into her driveway, found a parking space, took a deep breath, then backed my car out and went home. I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't make small talk with strangers who might consider me a hick. Oh, I could stand up in a room of 120 people and offer my opinion on the textbook we were reading; I could stand in front of an audience of 400 people and give a 20 minute talk on any pre-assigned topic anyone wanted to give me. But I couldn't imagine strangers being nice to me or being interested in anything I had to say at a party.

That attitude came partly from the fact that I grew up knowing people from kindergarten on; you didn't meet people at parties; you already knew everyone, so you played games or danced or ate or something; you didn't mingle and introduce yourself.

Am I the only person who had this experience? I'd like to think I'm not; I'd like to think that I'm not the only person who had to learn adult party etiquette.

But aside from that, I'd like to thank SO and BG for inviting me to that great party, and I'd like to say how great it is for me now to know that it's cool to make new friends. I realize that sounds like the kind of advice many people's mothers gave them in high school; I didn't really get told that. But being nice to strangers and believing that strangers actually have the ability and even the desire to be nice to me back is a really cool way to approach interactions and one I wish I'd adopted sooner.

So one of my New Year's resolutions is to follow the example set for me by my friend C and by BG's friend the professional chef and to assume that--and I cringe as I write this, because it's so cliched and smarmy, but right now it really does encapsulate how I feel--"a stranger is a friend I just haven't met yet."

Happy New Year.

Posted by Holly at 12:41 PM | Comments (5)

June 26, 2007

Socializing Beyond the Blogosphere

This post is an introduction. Dale has beaten me to the punch by writing an entire account of the magical evening we spent together in Toronto before I even managed to post the first of what I hope will be several installments about the experience. I suppose I could dive right in as he has done, forego the introduction and contextualization, but I like context and clarity, so I'll just have to deal with the consequence, which is that it will take me longer to tell my side of the story. Those of you who read me with any regularity probably are used to that tendency from me; it might even by why you read my blog. Anyway. Here's the introduction.

I have had the privilege--the very great privilege--lately of meeting in real life two people I first met virtually in the blogosphere. One wishes to remain anonymous, and so will be known as "Anonymous Blog Friend," and the other is the ever passionate Dale.

Now, maybe there are people out there who are willing to have dinner with any old person they meet in cyberspace, but I'm not one of them. I'm sure that every single person who reads my blog is a lovely human being, and I am most definitely convinced that the authors of each and every blog I read are all the coolest people in the world (that's why I read their blogs), but still, there are matters of trust and protocol that have to be dealt with when you move from reading all about a person's life on the web to asking really invasive questions when you're sitting across a table.

In other words, I didn't just email someone randomly and say, "Hey! I'd like to meet you! Let's arrange it!" No. Preparations for these recent encounters began, oh, last year. I don't remember who emailed whom first, but the fact of the matter is, I had exchanged a few messages with both of these people in private. In fact, both of them had sent me something tangible through the postal system (a gesture I am sorry to say I did not reciprocate, because I am not as nice as they are).

And the other thing is, we all recognized that emailing someone to say, "Hey, I'm going to be in your part of North America in a few weeks"only entitles you to so much. It's perfectly acceptable to ask someone you've never met if they'd like to meet you in some public space and have a meal with you; but if you ask, right off the bat, if you can spend a few nights sleeping in the spare bedroom of someone you've never seen in real life, chances are good that person will remember that s/he has to attend a family reunion in Uzbekistan the weekend you plan to be in town. (I admit, I felt comfortable enough with my Anonymous Blog Friend that I did offer to let her stay in my guest room should she ever venture out this way again, but she gave me time to make that decision on my own, as good friends should.)

Mercifully the people I met were thoroughly gracious and had lovely manners, so everything went really well. And both blog friends have given me leave to blog about our meetings within certain restrictions, which I completely plan to respect because hey, these people were enough fun that I want to hang out with them again. So if you're interested in reading a few posts on what happened When Holly Met Dale and When Holly Met Anonymous Blog Friend, well, you now have that to look forward to.

Posted by Holly at 9:31 PM | Comments (4)

June 3, 2007

His Big Gay Belgian Wedding

By the way, remember that wedding in Belgium I mentioned attending? I never said who got married, because I wanted to write all about it. And I did write all about it--I wrote a great little piece which I sent off to the NY Times Modern Love column, because it's edited by a friend of mine who asked me several times to write something he could use. So I finally did, and wouldn't you know, it never even got a response.

I'm not going to post here the essay I wrote, but I will post something I didn't send the NY Times: a photo, of me with my dear friend Matthew, one of the grooms. That's right: the wedding I attended was a gay wedding--and not just a commitment ceremony either, but an actual, valid, legal ceremony performed by a government official and recognized by the state, without any nasty judicial challenges or threat of constitutional amendment to render it invalid.

And not only did I attend the ceremony, but I took part in it: I was one of the legal witnesses--in other words, I was one of the "best people."

I'm including a photo of me and Matthew instead of Matthew and his husband because Matthew has already appeared on my blog, so I figure he's fair game. As for the partner, well, I don't want to invade his privacy. But they looked fabulous together and I was very, very happy and proud to be part of their wedding.

View image

Posted by Holly at 10:30 AM | Comments (7)

March 5, 2007

My Ethos of Conferences and Other Related Topics

Well, here's the thing, here's why I keep disappearing for weeks at a time:

I've been busy.

Busy with some stuff that was clearly, from start to finish, thoroughly dreadful; busy with some stuff I thought would be good but wasn't; busy with some stuff I thought would be tedious and obligatory but was actually Tony-the-Tiger, riproaringly loud, extendedly GRRRREAT!

In the last category was the 2007 conference of the Associated Writing Programs, which I returned from yesterday. I have this thing about conferences: when I go to a conference, I go to a conference. I stay at an official conference hotel; I don't arrive late or leave early; I'm there for the whole time, and even if I ditch out on sessions to hang out with people and talk, I'm still talking to people I meet up with at the conference, often about conference-related topics. I mean, it's great that I have an opportunity to go someplace I might not otherwise visit, and see people I might not otherwise see; but I am, after all, a seasoned world traveler, and if I want to visit friends or do the tourist thing, I'll do it without the distraction or time-constraints of some conference.

So I got to Atlanta on Wednesday night (which was good, because it meant I avoided weather-related travel hassles, as Thursday's hurricane in Alabama was really nasty rain in Georgia), the first night of the conference, and even though not much was going on, I was still overwhelmed by
how big it was–almost as bad as MLA–worse, maybe, because it was overrun with poets. (More on that later.) In my previous conference-going, I have tended to favor small, focused conferences, and this just seemed gross. I found myself in my hotel room, asking myself, "Why the fuck did I come here? Since I already spent my scholarly allowance on other stuff, this is going to eat the bulk of my tax return and I'm not even presenting!" I called a couple of friends and complained to them about my foolishness, yada yada yada, promised I would gird up my dutiful loins and try to have a good time, then went to bed.

And I really didn't have to try very hard at all.

Before I go any further, let me mention one of the benefits of not changing your look substantially for, oh, 18-19 years: people who haven't seen you for a decade or more still recognize you when you walk right by them. Half a dozen times someone said, "Holly!" And I turned and there was an old dear friend. Sometimes it was someone I didn't know would be at the conference and whom I would have recognized without their calling my name, had I not been intent on getting to the bathroom before a line formed out the door; other times it was someone I did know was at the conference, but who looked so altered–different hair, glasses when they only wore contacts before, significantly more or less weight–that I recognized them as much by their voice as their look. And perhaps there were other old friends whom I missed because when I was heading intently for the bathroom they passed me heading intently for the coffee counter; but I am nonetheless glad to have met up with as many people as I did.

So the people were the best part–isn't it always that way, really? But I also attended some interesting panels, and perhaps, if I can find time in this hectic week before spring break starts (that's right! I have next week off!), I'll write about some of them.

But what I should really write about, is the way I was inspired. I came home with so many ideas for my own work, so many new projects started, so many new perspectives on old, languishing projects. THAT is what is going to save my life.

Posted by Holly at 9:07 AM | Comments (3)

October 1, 2006

Skills Acquired through Old Jobs

So, having already mentioned one benefit of acquiring a friend who used to tend bar (I love focusing on that verb--"to tend bar," which evokes an imagine of needing to sooth an unruly and disgruntled piece of very big furniture, as opposed to dealing with the people behind it demanding beverages--instead of focusing on the role--"be a bartender," which evokes an image of someone shrugging slightly and frowning to him/herself before filling a glass with way too much tonic and way too little vodka), I am now discovering that there is much more to that subject.

I guess I should acknowledge that I've been friends with people who tended bar while I knew them, and that two obvious benefits were that they mixed me stiff drinks, and would see me and ask me what I wanted, even when I couldn't make it to the bar because of the crush of people before me. And I guess I should acknowledge as well that I've known other people who once tended bar who aren't nearly as cool as this new friend and colleague of mine, whom I shall call Dr. C.

Thursday night, which is not exactly the most happening night in the dismal little town in the rust belt where we live, we went out. We sat at the bar in an establishment that was anything but crowded, and I got to watch THREE masters at work.

I'm sure it helps that Dr. C orders expensive alcohol and knows what she's asking for--the bartenders know they're going to get a decent tip. But Dr. C is also extremely personable, in ways I can only admire and envy. I mean, I try to be sincerely pleasant to people who work in the service industry, but I have this thing about not wanting to exceed appropriate boundaries, because I do not want to bug people while they're working. As a secretary, I used to get really annoyed when people who came in the office would try to have conversations with me, both because the conversations were usually stupid and because my boss would get mad.... But now that I think about it, the rules are probably a little different in a bar....

Anyway. Our first bartender was a young, pretty, elementary school teacher who supplements the crappy income she earns shaping the lives of America's future, by serving alcohol to people her own age. The bartender responded to Dr. C's questions about the bar, its patrons, and her own life with excellent service and relief that the interesting conversation she was having wouldn't end with a request for her phone number. When she left, a young guy who looked like a hotter, straighter version of John Travolta in Grease showed up to finish out the night.

It took him a while to warm up to us (and when I say "us," I of course mean the amiable, articulate Dr. C and her largely silent, standoffish friend), but before long he was spending most of his time talking to us, regaling us with tales of his experiences managing a whole slew of bars in Vegas. (I never did work up the courage to ask the obvious question, "Why the hell did you leave Vegas and come back HERE?") Dr. C asked him about the most disgusting drinks people tended to order, and he said one of the worst was "an Irish car bomb: a draw of Guinness and a shot glass of Jameson's topped off with Bailey's."

Now, I love Guinness, I like Jameson's OK (I'm not really a whiskey drinker), and of course I ADORE Bailey's. But that doesn't mean they should go together, right? I mean, I love both ice cream and bacon, but I wouldn't mix the two.

Then they talked about disgusting, syrupy girl drinks. I admit I like a cosmo (which Dr. C said she resented mixing more than any other drink) but I never did the thing of mixing butterscotch schnapps with Bailey's and Kahlua and god only knows what else. At that point I made one of my few significant contributions to the conversation: I said, "I didn't start drinking, really, until I was about 30, at which point my taste buds were dead enough that I didn't need all that sugar to cover up the taste of the alcohol. It's something to be grateful for, I think."

Not long after that a trio of guys at the other end of the bar ordered a round of--that's right--Irish car bombs. The bartender asked if we wanted to see them poured and consumed. I was curious and willing to watch, but I rather expected we'd spy on the proceedings from a safe distance. But Dr. C walked right up to the guys and said, "Hey. We were talking to the bartender about this very drink, so we wanted to see what they're like. You mind if we watch?" The alpha male of the group responded by putting his arm around her shoulder and offering to buy her one too. "That's OK; whiskey isn't my drink," she replied. She introduced me--I was standing a few feet back--and I waved and mustered an uncomfortable, strained smile. There was a little more chatting about the drinks in front of the guys, but when they delayed drinking them, Dr. C extricated herself from the situation and we went back to our end of the bar.

I marveled at what I had just seen. "You're so freakin' friendly," I said. "And not weirdly friendly, either, just--kind of, like, graciously nice. It's impressive."

"I used to be a bartender," she said. "It was my job to make people feel happy."

"I used to be a Mormon," I said. "It was my job to make people feel like they were going to hell."

And that was the personal revelation the evening had to offer me. It wasn't an entirely new insight--this goes back to why I have said and continue to say that I would rather hang out with a bunch of average beer-drinking joes and jills than the most devout of Mormons. And it also has to do with why I so love the movie Babette's Feast, a topic I've been thinking about since the entry on movies about art, and one I hope to write about further before the week ends.

Posted by Holly at 1:25 PM | Comments (1)

March 24, 2006

The White Trash Goddess

I just checked Saviour Onassis's blog While You're On Your Knees and saw that he had posted something about his alter-ego, Helena Bubbles.

Helena was a truly fascinating creature and although I understand the reasons why she had to retire, I was still sorry to see her go. One of the few things that gave me any comfort in the matter was that I got some of her old clothes.

As the page featuring SO's story of Helena loaded, there was a picture of Helena, and then when the page was completely loaded, the photo was gone--kind of like Helena herself. I hope you get to see her.

Posted by Holly at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2006

Why Hang Up?

People say you know you've found a special friend when you can enjoy a comfortable silence with him--the absence of speech doesn't herald awkwardness and anxiety. My friendship with Wayne must be pretty damn special because we can enjoy a comfortable silence together--on the phone. I called him Saturday afternoon and of course the conversation wandered eventually to blogging, an activity we share. We sat at our respective computers, he in Southern California, I in Northern Pennsylvania, and we blogged. We collaborated on three new entries (see them here, here and here), working in silent contentment, listening to the other breathe and mutter in the background but not speaking unless it became necessary, because we're THAT comfortable with each other, and besides, we both have free cell phone minutes on the weekend, so why hang up just because we don't have something to share right this second? In another 20 minutes or so, one of us will surely think up something to say.

Posted by Holly at 8:36 PM | Comments (4)

December 20, 2005

Curbside Delivery

I'll soon be flying back to Arizona so I can hang out with my family for Christmas. I'm excited about it, for several reasons: 1) I have all these really cute nieces and nephews that I haven't seen since last Christmas; 2) I'll get to see Wayne, who will also be visiting his family in Arizona; 3) the highs in Tucson are supposed to be around 75 degrees (that's 24 Celsius, for those of you lucky enough to live someplace that doesn't use Fahrenheit, the stupidest of all non-metric measurements), which is a hell of a lot better than 25 F (-4 C).

What I'm not so excited about is the getting there part. I'm not the least bit afraid of being 31,000 feet above the earth in a big metal tube, but I don't like sitting around at the gate, waiting to get on and off that metal tube. I don't like being cramped for several hours in a seat next to a person who as often as not hogs the armrest. I don't like entrusting a suitcase full of my stuff to people I don't know. I don't getting to and from the airport.

I had a hell of a time finding a decent flight this trip--actually, I FAILED to find a decent flight this trip. My plane leaves at 6 a.m., which means I need to be to the airport around 5 a.m. The shuttle service I used to use is in the process of going out of business, and only delivers you to the airport if you want to get there during "convenient" times. 5 a.m. ain't convenient.

So I begged a ride from my friend Tom, who not only said he'd do me this favor, but didn't even seem to think I was being unreasonable in asking it in the first place.

Last night I was thinking about how great it is that he's willing to do this for me, and how I should do something to make it up to him. But that reminded me of an incident long about 1994, when someone I'll call Arianna asked me to give her a ride to and from the airport in Iowa, promising me that in return she'd find some truly fabulous gift to bestow upon me in recognition of my generosity.

I admit I thought Arianna was overstating the situation: she was flying in to the Cedar Rapids airport on a Tuesday afternoon in July. It was pleasant drive and I didn't have anything special to do instead--I mean, it's not like I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and drive through a bunch of mushy, muddy snow to get to the airport. People need rides to and from the airport: it happens. To borrow a line from Zorro, the Gay Blade (one of my favorite movies--add it to your Netflix queue!), her gratitude would have been thanks enough.

But no. Arianna made this BIG DEAL on the way to the airport about how she was going to GET ME SOMETHING, and it was going to be SPECIAL. And I will admit that on the drive to the airport to pick her up, I couldn't help wondering what she'd brought me: chocolate, maybe? A cool refrigerator magnet?

Turns out it was a fashion magazine she'd bought to read on the plane, and a bottle of shampoo and some hand lotion she'd taken from the hotel she stayed at. Wow, I thought. So that's the kind of person she thinks I am: someone so simple and/or out for what I can get that I'll jubilantly accept someone else's cast-offs.

And maybe I truly was that kind of person. Because a year or so later, Arianna was dumped by a man she loved quite deeply. About fifteen minutes after this guy broke up with her, he asked me out. I felt bad about saying yes, but I admit I said yes--jubilantly, in fact, because I really did like this guy. We dated for a couple of months.

Every so often my conscience bothers me when I think about how I wasn't a very loyal friend to Arianna. But then I think about the fact that this guy who broke her heart ended up being a good friend to me--we're still in touch, and he called me on my birthday. And then I think about the fact that Arianna thought so little of our friendship that she felt she had to bribe me to take her to the airport, and thought so little of me that she figured a complimentary bottle of shampoo and an unwanted magazine would suffice as a bribe. And then I don't feel so bad.

But I still think it's really cool of Tom to drive me to the airport well before dawn in the middle of winter, especially since he's not doing it because I'll get him something; he's just doing it because he's a good friend.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

October 9, 2005

All Hail Jim!

Those of you who have visited my blog before will notice some changes: It's no longer utilitarian and spare, but spiffed-up and fancy! Check out the picture in the upper right corner--that's one of my favorite photos of me. Check out the Chinese character in the upper left corner--that's my surname and my tattoo! Check out the soothing green palate and the larger, easier-to-read font!

I owe all of this to my friend Jim, who generously offered to host my blog and custom-design the template.

I couldn't be happier with the results, or more grateful for his work.

Feel free to leave enthusiastic comments praising the beauty of my blog--but remember, Jim is the genius behind it all.

Thanks, Jim!

Posted by Holly at 10:37 AM | Comments (2)

September 22, 2005

Bad Coffee in Bed

Monday afternoon I called Wayne, because a conversation with Wayne was what my Monday afternoon needed. At one point he said, without a segue, "So, I've decided I need to be more of a snob." I figured there was a good reason for this pronouncement, so I waited to hear it. "I started drinking tea a while ago," he said, "mostly chais, because they seemed healthier than coffee. Green chais, herbal chais--there was a vanilla chai I really loved and couldn't get enough of for a while. Lately I've been drinking black tea and I really like it, and I realized it's not really that different from coffee. But I just like it better than coffee. And then I realized that part of the problem was that I drank so much bad coffee."

He was on a roll and it was interesting, so I didn't interrupt him.

"You know how for a long time I was all about coffee?" I made some noise of acquiescence. "Well, good coffee is really good. But bad coffee is really bad. And I realized today that I needed to be more of a diva when it comes to coffee. Not once, when I was presented with a cup of really awful coffee, did I taste it, then spit it out and say, ‘How can you expect me to drink this shit?! This is vile! This is beyond vile! I will not pollute my mouth or any other part of me with a substance so thoroughly foul!"

"Does this mean you're going to start drinking coffee again?" I asked.

"Maybe," he said. "But only good coffee. If I do, I will be a complete coffee snob. I'm ashamed to tell you about all the bad coffee I've had, Holly. I mean, coffee from some awful container that's been on the back of a caterer's truck for hours and hours if not days and days.... We're talking some of the worst coffee in the world. Coffee that even before you sugar and cream it up, you can just tell is going to take the enamel right off your teeth--both the smell and the look of it just tell that it's not OK."

There was a pause, and I imagined him staring at the painting of Gabriel Garko he had just finished, and shaking his head. "But I would drink it, I would drink that bad coffee, because it was coffee and I believed I liked coffee. I would drink the whole cup, thinking at some point, it would get better, but a bad cup of coffee never gets better, though it often gets worse."

"That pretty much sums up my feelings about sex," I said. And then we both laughed--after all, as both Karen Walker and Homer Simpson said, it was funny because it was true.

Wayne drank bad coffee just because it was coffee and he believed he liked coffee; I had bad sex just because it was sex and I believed I liked sex. I did say, on more than one occasion, "I'm not willing to have sex right now," but on those occasions when I said OK to sex and it turned out to be bad, I never said, "This sex is really bad! How dare you subject me to such bad sex! Get out of my bed!" That, after all, didn't seem polite. No, I just did what I could to make it end sooner, and hoped it would be better the next time.

Details tomorrow.

Posted by Holly at 7:17 AM | Comments (2)

September 12, 2005

Watching Football

I guess I'm not so much "one of the boys" as I might have thought, since it turns out some of the boys have been getting together to watch football, and didn't invite me.

I found this out last week when Craig, another colleague, asked if I had been invited to SBJ's house that evening to watch football. I had not. Craig then asked, "Do you watch football?"

"If by ‘watching football' you mean, am I willing to be a in room with a television tuned to a football game, the answer is yes," I said, "as long as there's other stuff to do, like drink beer and eat, and as long as no one expects me to care about the game, and as long as there are other people who also don't care about the game, and who will ignore the game entirely whenever an interesting topic of conversation comes up." I've been to a couple of Super Bowl parties that fit that description, and they were fun. "But," I continued, "if by ‘watching football' you mean that I actually pay attention to the game, then no, I don't watch football."

I have never "watched football" in that proper sense. I have sort of tried. I had to go to all the football games in high school because my mom insisted I be in the marching band. Mom would always talk about how fun marching band was.... and when I informed her that I loathed it, loathed everything about it, from the early morning practices to the stupid formations, from the strange arrangements of pop songs marching band music so often consists of to the horrid, hot, woolen uniforms we had to put on and march around in at parades in various parts of Arizona when it was still early autumn and 90 degrees or so, all topped by the absolute horror that was Band Day at Arizona State University--hours and hours on a school bus, then hours and hours standing around in those uniforms, then more hours and hours on a school bus--well, when I complained about all that, she told me it was good for me and would build character, but I think having to do something I hated so thoroughly just contributed to my recalcitrance and cynicism, and that I would have been a nicer, happier person had I been allowed to opt out of stuff I hated and sucked at (such as playing a musical instrument, whether it was the piano, the clarinet or the bassoon) and allowed instead to devote myself more completely to stuff I liked and was good at, like editing the yearbook and getting good grades. (Yes, I was a first-class academic geek.)

Not only did I have to be in my high school marching band, but I had to watch my big sister in her stupid marching band. For a while she was in the flag corp at the University of Arizona, and a few times my parents dragged our whole family to a college football game so we could see my sister perform along with the rest of the band at half time. I begged and wheedled to get out of it, but no--I had to go. "Just bring a book," Mom said, so I did. And even though I wasn't dependent on the game for amusement, those bleachers were uncomfortable and the bathrooms were always disgusting and the action was too far away and I couldn't understand the rules and there were these long pauses where nothing happened and someone won and someone lost and I was supposed to care?

I loved football games when I lived in the dorm because everyone but me would go to them. For a good three or four hours I'd have the laundry room and then the bathroom all to myself.

There are some sports I can watch with pleasure: I like basketball, especially men's college basketball. If the Wildcats are in the playoffs, I try to watch at least one game. (Oh, the horror that was the Wildcats' loss to Illinois this past spring!) I rather enjoy the Olympics, the way they're staggered so that the winter and summer versions come along every two years; plus they're always this fascinating, strange, concentrated dose of nationalism and overachievement, all heavily edited so that you don't have to watch a lot standing around.

I'm trying to think of something else athletic I like... but I'm not coming up with much.

Friday night I hung out with SBJ and some other friends and the topic of football came up. SBJ said he was committed to spending a good chunk of the fall drinking bad beer, eating bad pizza and watching good football. He recently declared his devoted allegiance to the Patriots, and was heartened that they beat the Raiders.

The next night I ran into Tom and said, "I hear you guys watched football without me."

He said, "It didn't occur to me that you might want to come."

"It didn't occur to me either," I said, "until Craig asked me if I'd been invited, and then I had to devote a good six or seven nano-seconds to wondering if I should be hurt and offended that I wasn't given an opportunity to say no an activity I wouldn't particularly enjoy."

"You're welcome to come next time," he said.

"Thanks," I said, "but I don't think I'd have fun. SBJ told me you guys really watch."

"We really do," he said. "Especially SBJ."

I just visited the official website of the Super Bowl and learned that the New England Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls, which I guess makes them an easy team to get excited about. I personally will never forget the fact that on January 26, 1997, the Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. I remember this not because I watched the game, but because while the game was going on, Adam, my evilest of exes, dumped me, brutally and thoroughly. And the next day, when I was suffering from alcohol poisoning brought on by drinking half a liter of Jack Daniels while discussing the breakup on the phone with the friend who introduced me to Adam in the first place (who sympathized strongly because he knew Adam was a schmuck but still refused to say "I told you so" until I said, "Just go ahead and say it"--only then did he say, "Well, I told you so--I mean, I really did try to warn you"), everyone kept talking about the damn football game.

So maybe if the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl this season I'll insist I get invited to the party, and bring a book in case everyone but me is watching the game, because now that I think about it, even the longest, most boring football game in the world is more fun than having my heart broken.

It so often comes back to that particular trauma, doesn't it? I hear someone say. Yeah, well, it so often does.

Posted by Holly at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

September 7, 2005

Art That Fits in Envelopes

This post is dedicated to my new friend Tammy, whom I met through Friendster (yes, you really can meet interesting people that way) thanks to the suggestion of a mutual friend (SBJ, to be specific), who thought we'd get along. We've been corresponding for less than three months, and she has already written me several of the best letters I have ever received in my entire life.

***

I think one reason I like blogging so much is that it's the closest I can come to writing letters all the time. The letter is one of my favorite art forms and one I think I'm particularly good at. I have always placed a high premium on good mail, and while I've learned to appreciate the virtues of email--its immediacy, for one thing--still, in many ways it's a sorry substitute for a real, honest-to-goodness letter. Most people send such short, inconsequential notes over email, and I still miss opening my mailbox, finding an envelope bearing the return address of some cool person, and knowing that inside are a couple of pages that will entertain and delight me.

Email has also hurt another of my favorite art forms, the postcard. What a great thing to find in your mailbox: a few really witty statements on the back of an interesting photo! I love getting and sending postcards, and used to devote a lot of time and energy to building up an impressive postcard collection. But these days I have only one friend who sends me postcards: John C, who not only sends postcards, but sends them with postmarks from Thailand and South Africa and Austria and so forth. (I am chagrined to admit I send him, at best, one postcard for every four or five he sends me, and mine have BORING postmarks.)

In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, the heroine, Catherine Morland, is teased by the hero, Henry Tilney, when she suggests that she doesn't keep a journal. "Not keep a journal!" he exclaims, adding that

it is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but still I am sure it must essentially be assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.

The "usual style of letter-writing among ladies is faultless, except in three particulars," he assures Catherine, those three particulars being "a general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar." Whether or not journalizing contributes to the art of writing agreeable letters, I do know that my journal and my correspondence often overlap. I'm serious about journal-keeping. I use three-ring binders, and thanks to my industrial-strength three-hole paper punch, pretty much anything can be included in my journal. I used to put the best letters I receive in my journal, and given that I wrote drafts of letters (I typed them out on a typewriter, because my handwriting is so hard to read--even I have trouble with it)--I would keep copies of the more important letters I wrote as well. These days it's even easier: I write my journal on my computer now, and I just cut and paste important letters I've written or received from my email program to my word processing program. (Though I did get a notebook to dedicate entirely to Tammy's letters, because they deserve that kind of special attention.)

Here, for instance, are the opening and closing paragraphs of a letter dated August 22, 1990, sent to my friend Hakim in Seattle:

With such pleasure did I receive your postcard! I always wanted a depiction of the burning fires of hell. But even more than that, I was glad to know that you are alive, working for an entity that values you enough to give you raises, promotions, etc, even if you hate your job....

Anyway that's my life. Thanks again for the postcard, and drop me another line some time if when you feel like entrusting your deepest thoughts and feelings to the US Postal Service. (Isn't dropping a letter into that abysmal void known as a mailbox a real act of faith? It almost feels like flinging a paper airplane off a cliff. You never really know if it will arrive, be read, understood or even appreciated.... The feeling is even worse when you submit your writing to some literary magazine, but enough musings on the mail.) Anyway, send me some details on your life!

Or a letter to my sister Kathy, who sent me a map of Utah I needed for a class, along with some other stuff, including a stupid chauvinist letter somebody sent to the editor of BYU's "alternative" student paper, prompting me to send this reply dated May 1, 1989:

I received your charming map/BYU folder/sexist letter and commentary ensemble. THANK YOU. The map is exactly what I needed, the folder fills fantasies I had never dared express, and the sexist letter and commentary confirmed my belief that BYU is the stupidest university in the western United States. Nothing else is going on here. I haven't cut my thumb on a cheese grater in three whole days.

Sometimes, in the midst of writing a letter, I'll feel an excitement, an adrenaline rush. It's two things: the joy of creation, and the pleasure of performance. A good letter is art that fits in an envelope and is certain of its audience, which is a very good kind of art--not lucrative but still rewarding to produce. I believe that a good letter--even on e-mail--is more of a performance than it is a conversation, about on an equivalent with stand-up comedy or a good lecture. In these cases, you know your audience is there and you can strike whatever tone you like: conversational, intimate, formal. But you know that while there might be some interaction, it's really just you talking; you have to come up with the energy and ideas to sustain the entire discourse. You might get a reply, but it's still not really a conversation, because of the difference in position or the lapse in time; someone's on a stage speaking to a group of people who can zone out or walk out; or someone is writing to someone else who must receive and read the letter, and you have to say something that makes him/her want to reply.

I firmly believe in the restorative power of a good letter, especially when you're away from home. But few people seem to share my passion for composing quirky letters, or else they just don't see the therapeutic value in the practice, or else they're busy and/or lazy. I hate it when people ask a lot of questions as a substitute for thinking of any real response to whatever is before them in a letter. I like people who are funny and I like people who send enclosures (something else that has fallen by the wayside, thanks to email), whether they're poems or bookmarks or refrigerator magnets. I hate writing to people who think that e-mail forwards or excuses for why I'm not getting a more substantial letter constitute a real correspondence.

Aside from the time when I was in love with and unofficially engaged to a guy who lived 6000 miles away, mail was never so important to me in my whole life as when I was a missionary. On my mission, letters from home were addressed (in English) to the mission office in Taichung; the mission secretary would then stamp a missionary's current address in Chinese on the envelope, and forward the letters on. A few times he mixed up the address stamps and we got all of someone else's mail and none of our own. Once two of my letters arrived, for some reason, stamped MISSENT TO SAKARTA SOEKARRO HATTA. As if I knew where that was.

Despite the fact that families with missionaries in the field are supposed to write letters on a regular basis, many weeks went by when I got no mail from anyone in my family, and it always upset me. Mom insists that I have misremembered, that she wrote to me regularly, but I recorded every letter from home in my journal, and I also saved all the mail I got from her, and there isn't that much. My father sent me fewer than 20 letters the entire 80 weeks I was away. I was always begging for more mail from my family, but the pleas never had much effect. Instead, my mom informed me that "We are aware of the great sacrifice and inconvenience you are going through, but you would make yourself happier if you would be happy with the things you do receive from us....and we do have to lead our regular lives." The fact that they had to lead their regular lives was one of the reasons I was so upset: I felt so disconnected. Mom usually sent brief notes and would drop, casually, the information that my youngest sister had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, that my second sister had some new boyfriend. But rarely did anyone take time to write a letter and tell me what was going on. It was a sore spot my entire mission.

I doubted very seriously that my family was aware of what I was going through. When my brother John went on his mission in 1991, my mother had learned her lesson and tried to send him two pieces of mail every single week, one a genuine letter and the other a postcard or a brief note. I wrote to him every other week, whether he had answered or not. But one week, about three months before he finished his mission, he wrote an irate letter home because he had received only two letters that week, and neither had been from anyone in his family. Even though I was 29, I couldn't help saying to my mother, "See? I told you missionaries need a lot of mail, and I wasn't just being nasty when I complained that you didn't write enough."

There are many ways in which I have shed my missionary zeal (and plenty of other ways in which I never had much to begin with) but I am still filled with evangelical enthusiasm when it comes to writing letters. I would love for any and everyone reading this blog to post a comment or write me a letter, but if you won't do that, write to someone else! Write a good, long, proper letter that will conjure delight and wonder and gratitude, and make someone feel that seeing your name in his/her inbox is one of the nicest moments a day can bring.

Posted by Holly at 12:39 AM

September 1, 2005

A Little Distance

A few months ago I was thinking about how I'd like to spend next summer in Europe, but it would be really inconvenient because the post office will only hold mail for 30 days, plus I have a cat and a house full of stuff I can't just go off and leave. Then I thought about my colleagues who are married or have live-in partners, and how they gallivant around the planet and leave their spouses back home to take care of everything. "That's what I need," I thought. "I need a live-in boyfriend who will babysit my cat and keep an eye on my stuff while I go to Europe for six months."

I told Tom about this. "Holly," he said, "most people want a boyfriend or a girlfriend not so they can go off and leave them, but so they can be with them."

"Yeah," I said, "I know. But I've always thought most people put way too much emphasis on the whole togetherness part of a relationship."

I wasn't just being perverse when I said this. My closest friends live in Brussels, Hollywood and Seattle. The guy in Brussels in particular I hardly ever see–-the last time was May 2002, and that was because he bought me a roundtrip plane ticket from Phoenix to Brussels. Given that he was so generous to me, and given the fact that I can call western Europe for three or four cents a minute, I figure it's my moral duty to call him often. As for the other two, weekend and evening calls on the cell phone are free. I feel we do a pretty good job of maintaining warm and intimate friendships. Not only that, but I was in a couple of long-distance relationships, and I liked certain things about them. For one thing, I write fabulous love letters, a skill I rarely have opportunity to use.

Tom is married to someone very cool and they have a very cool five-year-old daughter. I have gotten the distinct impression that he enjoys spending time with his wife and child. He rolled his eyes at me, despite my sound logic. "Are there are any other reasons you'd want a boyfriend?" he asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Like what?"

"Oh," I said, pausing to think, "uh, physical affection. Intellectual companionship--definitely. And emotional intimacy."

"So what matters most?" he asked.

"Well, I guess...I guess the physical affection/ intellectual companionship/ emotional intimacy stuff all kind of tie for first place, but the free cat-sitting runs a close fourth," I said. "I'm not afraid of a little distance."

Apparently the only part of my request the universe paid attention to was the "not afraid of a little distance" part. Not long ago I met someone I really liked, at least for a while. Unfortunately, we lived on opposite sides of the continent. There were other reasons the relationship died an early and ugly death, but the distance didn't help.

And now that I think about it, I remember that although there were things I liked about long-distance relationships, my two previous efforts ultimately failed as well. I have been forced to admit that despite all the ways modern technology makes it possible to stay in touch with someone, it's not the same as being together.

To hell with free cat-sitting. I'll trade it for someone whose face I can actually see when he says "Hello."

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2005

Existential Dread

Yesterday was the first day of classes. I decided a while ago that I wouldn't write much about my job, mostly because I like it well enough to want to keep it. But I figure there a few safe job-related topics, and I'll hit some of those.

For instance, here were some good things about the day:

1. I finally got to wear these fabulous new red d'Orsay pumps

I bought five or six months ago and have never had an occasion to wear. When you get really great new shoes, you can't wear them just anywhere the first time.... But now these shoes have been introduced to society and can go anywhere they want.

2. The M&Ms that have been sitting in my desk since April were still fresh.

3. Someone very kind left a box of lavender jasmine tea and someone else left a bag of goodies in my mailbox.

4. A student rushed into my office with an mp3 and said, "I've been waiting all summer to play you this song about falling in love in a concentration camp. The first time I heard it, I instantly thought of you." I'm not entirely sure I was flattered by that.... I mean, I did talk about love a lot, especially the traumatic kind, in the classes he took with me, mostly because he wrote about it a lot.... In any event, he showed me these features on my computer I didn't even know about and played me this cool song.

Here were some bad things about the day:

1. Tom and I don't teach on the same day--he teaches MWF, I teach Tu-Th--so chances are I will hardly ever see him this semester.

2. The crackers that have been sitting in my desk since April were anything but fresh.

3. I was plagued all day by existential dread.

I mentioned this last item to a couple of colleagues and they said, "Oh, it's Hurricane Katrina." But it's not Hurricane Katrina. The devastation she wrought in the Gulf fills me with horror and compassion, and as for what the remnants of her are doing here, well, I'm not that afraid of some heavy rain.

I've felt this way for a while, actually. Something beyond my consciousness is wrong, and since I don't know what it is, I don't how to fix it. I have the vague sense that something is menacing me, and I don't much like it. I tried to explain this last Friday to SBJ. I said, "I just have that feeling of alarmed anticipation, that feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, that anxious certainty that something bad will happen, but I don't know what and I don't know when."

He said what he always says when you're telling him something that doesn't really make sense to him: "Huh. Hmm. Huh."

I began to fear this is a sensation other people don't have, so I asked, "Have you ever had that feeling?"

He said, "Probably, but I don't really feel like trying to remember a time in my life when I did." Which I guess I could understand; he was in a good mood, so why search your memory for trauma and pain?

But yesterday, when we were talking about our first day back, he mentioned that he's teaching a class on existentialism, and I said, "I'm suffering from existential dread right now," and he perked right up and was all over that. "I don't know what to do about it," I added.

He was as animated as a five-year-old talking about a birthday party. He said, "That's ‘cause there's nothing you can do about it. That's what makes it existential dread: it's generalized; it has no object. If it had an object, it'd be something else: fear, for instance."

"Well, it's making my stomach all tense," I said, punching myself in the gut to show how constricted it was.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You know," I said, "existential dread is just another name for what I was trying to tell you about last week when I saying I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, that something bad is definitely going to happen."

And he did that thing again: "Huh. Hmm. Huh."

I don't normally get jittery at the beginning of the term--I've been doing this a long time--so I suspect it's something besides new-semester nervousness. I don't know what's wrong. Hopefully nothing--I managed to relax after I got home and had dinner and sat down to blog (which is all I really want to do these days). But if it is really something, believe me, you'll hear all about it.

Posted by Holly at 6:04 AM | Comments (1)

August 26, 2005

Celebrated Saturday

Last Saturday afternoon, SBJ and our new friend Anesthesia and I went downtown to Celebrate! the city we live in. It was your typical street fair, with jugglers and really cool chalk drawings on the pavement and a couple dozen tiny girls (three, four, five years old) doing fierce tumbling routines along the main thoroughfare of town.

We walked around, looked at crafts, searched without success for a stand selling funnel cakes with tomato sauce (SBJ claims they're all the rage in Connecticut), drank beer in the park. We talked about important things, like emoticons. We agreed that the only acceptable emoticons are the plain old print ones, like :-), and that the cartoonish ones you sometimes see online should be banned from use forever more. We spent some time figuring out what Anesthesia should be called in this blog–we were happy enough with the nickname we came up with. At first she said, "Yeah, but it puts you to sleep!" I said, "That's not my main association with it. I think about getting general anesthesia before surgery, and how it feels really good, but it's dangerous--too much can kill you." Which didn't reassure her all that much, but then SBJ pointed out that the word would make a great album title for some metal band, and then we couldn't think of anything better, and this word sounds like another name that is meaningful to her, so we went with it.

SBJ asked about really bad haircut stories. This is a competition I always win because I almost died from a bad haircut. Seriously: I cried so much my intestines exploded and I nearly hemorrhaged to death. (That's the short version--the long version is truly fascinating, provided you're not afraid of being grossed out. I'll tell it someday.)

We found a stall where girls were selling samosas and painting on temporary henna tattoos. SBJ wanted something to complement his three questions, so the girl gave him a straightforward geometric pattern an inch or so below them--she said she had never hennaed a man before and wasn't sure what would be appropriate, so she went for something simple. It looked fine, but SBJ was not overcome with pleasure at the finished product. In fact, he said he felt gypped.

Then it was my turn. I got a paisley (one of my favorite designs) on my shoulder, which looked pretty awesome, and felt very celebratory. All in all, a very satisfactory day.

Posted by Holly at 8:43 PM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2005

Kant's Three Questions and Yo! God

Sweet Baby Jesus's biceps, it should be stated at the outset, are pretty great. Lately he has been spending a decent (not a ridiculous) amount of time at the gym, and he's bulked up since I first met him a year ago. He looks good.

Not long ago he began toying with the idea of decorating one of those biceps with a tattoo. Of course he came very close to getting a band of barbed wire around his upper arm.... Just kidding. He'd never do that. Nor would he opt for the ribbon of celtic knots--yes, they look fabulous, but they might be one of the few tattoos more ubiquitous than Chinese characters.

What he finally decided on were the three questions posed by Immanuel Kant in Critique of Pure Reason: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?"

Which are pretty f*cking awesome questions.

He spent a lot of time experimenting with fonts, and finally chose an unusual, angular font called Daupin. When he knew what he wanted, he grabbed his passport and drove to Toronto so he could get the tat done at a really great parlor he'd heard about up there. This is not as eccentric a move as it might seem; we're not that far from the Canadian border, and no one raves about the tattoo parlors here. Given that not only tattoos but certain blood diseases are forever, I'd be willing to drive four hours to ensure that the needles were sanitary and the marks permanently etched on my body aesthetically pleasing.

And aesthetically pleasing the three questions are. They're high up on his right arm, and all three questions are legible even when is arm is at his side. The tattoo looks nice simply as a band around his arm, and then you realize the band actually says something, and your appreciation for it deepens. It's one of the best tattoos I've ever seen.

He also got this Hebrew word, transliterated as "hineni," tattooed above his heart. I don't read Hebrew (in the late 90s I went to the synagogue in Iowa City to ask about Hebrew lessons, but they told me they don't provide that for the goyim, especially since there was a perfectly good university in town) so I have to take his word for it when he tells me that it's the word Moses spoke to God when God first appeared to him in a burning bush, translated in Genesis 3:4 as "Here I am."

He explained, however, that the word could not be used to say "I was here yesterday;" it indicates presence in time but not in space, and is all about the now. "So it's kind of like saying, ‘Yo!' to God," I suggested.

"Kind of," he said. And then he gave me all this other information I'll try to paraphrase as well as I can.

It has "the flavor of being in the accusative rather than the nominative," or of being a direct object (me) rather than a subject (I), and is a way of "announcing yourself at the service of others, rather than as an agent who acts upon others." (It occurs to me now that it might be like what well-mannered store clerks or receptions say: "Jill speaking; how may I help you?")

His interest in this word comes from his study of Emmanuel Levinas ([1906-1995], philosopher and Talmudic commentator, born in Kaunas, Lithuania, naturalized a French citizen in 1930), who was the subject of SBJ's dissertation. According to the obituary of Levinas published by The New York Times, on December 27, 1995,

Dr. Levinas's alternative to traditional approaches was a philosophy that made personal ethical responsibility to others the starting point and primary focus for philosophy, rather than a secondary reflection that followed explorations of the nature of existence and the validity of knowledge.

"Ethics precedes ontology" (the study of being) is a phrase often used to sum up his stance. Instead of the thinking "I" epitomized in "I think, therefore I am"--the phrase with which Rene Descartes launched much of modern philosophy--Dr. Levinas began with an ethical "I." For him, even the self is possible only with its recognition of "the Other," a recognition that carries responsibility toward what is irreducibly different.

Knowledge, for Dr. Levinas, must be preceded by an ethical relationship. It is a line of thought similar to Martin Buber's idea of "I and thou," but with the emphasis on a relationship of respect and responsibility for the other person rather than a relationship of mutuality and dialogue.

According to SBJ, Levinas illustrates his ideas about "the Other" and our responsibility to It with Isaiah 58: 6-9:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward.

Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.

SBJ tells me it's the only place in the Bible where GOD uses the term "hineni" to address humanity, the only place where God declares himself in the service of humankind.

He also said, in all seriousness, "Originally I wanted to get this passage from Isaiah tattooed on my chest...." Which is another of those earnest statements I can't help but titter at. I mean, it's really quite cool that someone who isn't a bible-thumping evangelist would want three and a half verses from Isaiah tattooed on his chest as an ethical declaration. But it's just not something you hear someone announce every day.

And as the tattoo over his heart healed (it didn't get as much air as the one on his arm, and he said it itched a lot), he would lightly press his hand to his chest and take a deep breath, which was rather a lovely gesture.

In any event, both are very cool tattoos: stark, intelligent, tasteful. They are like mine in that they are primarily verbal declarations rather than representational images, so it's not remarkable that I would find them so remarkable. If you ever meet Sweet Baby Jesus, ask to see them! He'll be embarrassed, but chances are good he'll oblige you by showing them off.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2005

Out with the Guys

Last night was one of those nights I go hang out with the guys and talk about writing. Sweet Baby Jesus was there (the tattoo on his arm looks so fabulous! I promise I will get around to writing about that soon), as was Tom, as well as a guy I'll call Lemonhead, because he told me that's his nickname, and another guy I'll call the Monk, because he said he is one. The weather was pleasant, so we sat on the patio of a bar where the drink special was "anything Stoli for two bucks," and I had no problem sucking down four cranberry stolis and one stoli & tonic.

We are all writers, so we workshop our stuff. SBJ and Lemonhead had some really great poems up, the Monk gave us a very poetic short story, and I submitted an essay about menstrual problems I had as a fifteen-year-old anorexic recovering from a bizarre and traumatic illness. The piece is actually kind of funny and I like it as well as anything I've written in a while, but I was still worried the guys might be freaked out by the subject matter. I shouldn't have worried. They gave me really smart suggestions for improving the piece, and didn't seem a bit weirded out that they now know all kinds of details about my menstrual cycle. They also claimed to be grateful for a little clarification about what happens in a gynecologist's office.

It was a fun evening, and we even talked about yesterday's blog entry, and my ambivalence about being "one of the guys." They protested that I could hardly be considered that, and pointed out that I don't look anything like a guy. I admit, on these evenings, I make sure I look better than I do when I go to the grocery store, when I'm content to throw on some old skirt and top and put my hair in a pony tail. No, I dress up: partly because I like dressing up, partly because I want to reinforce my own sense of my femaleness. I wear a dress I like, lots of jewelry, do something with my hair. Last night I was able to wear a dress I haven't been able to fit into for the past three years: this strange malaise I've been in since I got home from Sunstone has made it really hard for me to eat, and I've lost ten pounds in two weeks. The dress must have looked OK, because I noticed that I turned a few heads. That's always nice.

Anyway, I feel better about spending so much of my time with men. And if I'm going to be one of the guys, I'm pretty lucky that this is the group of guys I get to be one of.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2005

One of the Boys

Right now, I'm kind of one of the boys. My two best friends here are Tom, who is married, and SBJ, who is not, but as I said, my affectionate mocking of him is tinged with the fond feelings of a slightly snotty big sister.

By a significant margin, most of my colleagues are male. I do have some fabulous female colleagues, but most of them are married with small children. These are women with PhDs, diverse research interests, cool husbands, and very busy schedules. For various reasons, it is harder for these women to socialize than it is for the guys I work with. Although I manage to meet these women occasionally for lunch or coffee, a more common event in my social life is to find myself the solitary woman at a table with three or four or five guys, drinking a round of Arrogant Bastards (a local brew), talking about poetry and tattoos and bowel disorders and gross medical procedures and how the fact that SBJ likes neither Pink Floyd nor Led Zeppelin is one more thing that makes him odd.

I'm sort of not complaining, and I sort of am. I'm not really used to this "hanging out with the guys" business. I'm the second of five children: four daughters followed by a son everyone expected to be another girl. My mother has a very strong personality; my father clearly loved us very much but was never good at showing affection; my grandfathers were downright distant; plus I had all those sisters and no brother until I was almost nine; so I was very female-identified as a child. Then there was the fact that I grew up Mormon, and saw very early that a lot of men were power-hungry bastards. It's not that I never found good men--I found plenty--but I was always very wary of them, until they demonstrated that they deserved my trust.

I was and am straight, which was complicated by the messages I got from the church, particularly when I went on a mission. Men in the Church, I was told often enough, were in authority over me; I should not try to be on an equal level with them. But exerting the authority of the priesthood seemed to render men not larger and stronger, but stunted and misshapen. Consequently that's how I saw them: distorted, disjointed creatures, some of whom one could be romantically attracted to, some of whom one must try to obey despite their failings; none of whom could demand from me the mutual respect and understanding I felt ought to exist between me and other women, who were my equals. The good relationships I achieved with men occurred when they sought to minimize their authority, not when they sought to enlarge it, as so many of them often did.

It got easier to see men as complex, complete human beings when I left the church, but anyone who thinks the sexes are equal, that men don't have opportunities and freedoms that women lack, just isn't paying attention. Patriarchy is strange. The guys I hang out with are good guys, and I value and enjoy their friendship. But it's still weird to spend so much of my time with a large group of men, none of whom are or ever will be a romantic partner.

I'm going to have more to say about this, about gender roles in general and my own gender performance--actually, I've already started saying things here about my own gender performance--but I'm planning on saying even more. It's something I've been thinking about for a very long time, given the fact that I was a feminist by the time I was twelve and that my boyfriend from kindergarten, my date to the prom, and my ex-fiancé all grew up to be gay Mormon returned missionaries. Then there is my dear friend Wayne, who, according to his myspace.com profile, was "Formerly a bed-wetting, drug-addicted, Mormon Drag Queen."

Yeah. This is a topic where I have something to say.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2005

Madge and the Beast

I sometimes say that Madonna saved my life while I was a missionary in Taiwan, because it's really kind of true. I hadn't much cared for her before my mission--I loved the song "Material Girl," because it was so witty, but so much of her other stuff just seemed like the silliest, shallowest dance music, and I liked my dance music rife with complexity and angst. But as a clinically depressed missionary given to long bouts of crying, I guess I felt that since the whole God thing wasn't working for me, I might consider looking to other things to offer me happiness.

I got transferred to Taichung, one of the larger cities in my mission (which covered the lower half of the island) at the beginning of June. It was monstrously hot, and spending all day riding a bike when it's 100 degrees and 100% humidity really takes something out of you, even if you're not being treated for depression. To escape the heat, my companion (an assigned working partner, not my lover) and I would do something we called "shopping first-contacting," which meant that we would go to some department store with air-conditioning, then wander around passing out flyers advertising the church until we at least felt human again.

Our favorite department store was called LaiLai's. It offered many attractions, including a restaurant in the basement that served barely edible pizza (as opposed to the inedible kind of you found everywhere else--Pizza Hut had not made it to Taiwan in 1986) and an electronics department featuring a big-screen TV that constantly played Madonna videos. We would often position ourselves right at the top of the escalator, which was also midway between an air-conditioning vent and the television, thrusting flyers at people without saying a word as the escalator crested. They almost always took them, looked at them, looked at us, and shrugged.

OK, OK, it was a lousy way to do missionary work. In my defense I'll say that there were other ways in which I worked really hard. But missions don't cut you much slack--you're supposed to work 63 and a half hours every single week--and sometimes you had to find creative ways to survive.

Anyway, the point is, watching those videos over and over and over again, I began to appreciate Madonna's genius. It seemed clear to me that she respected her religion without feeling bound by it. She was able to incorporate accouterments and ideas from Christianity into her own creative vision. She demonstrated something I suspected: dance music could be as inspirational as religious liturgy. About that time her third album, True Blue, was released, and she changed her hairstyle from the golden ringlets she'd sported for her first two albums to a close-cropped platinum do. She provided me with an example I needed: a woman who could reinvent herself.

As a result I have always loved her, and always will, even if I don't care for some of the stuff she's done lately: I bought American Life but couldn't even finish listening to it. I put it in my cd player once, took it out before it ended, and have never tried listening to it again.

Yesterday was her 47th birthday. I thought about making yesterday's blog entry a happy birthday shout-out to her, but that just seemed silly. Instead, I sent this email message to my friend Wayne:

You have probably already baked a cake and bought the party favors, but in case you forget, thought I'd remind you that today is Madonna's 47th birthday. I realized that this day is more important to me and requires more recognition than something like the summer solstice. She's crazy now, isn't she, really truly crazy? But I still have to be grateful for what she has meant to me.

Last night we were talking on the phone and he suddenly interrupted me to say, "Holly, Holly-- Oh, oh my god. Oh my god." And then he read me a news story about the fact that she had celebrated her birthday by going riding on her country estate in England, fallen from a horse, broken her collar bone and three ribs, and fractured her hand.

That's some pretty heavy karmic shit. Madonna's whole kabbalah thing requires her to believe that everything happens for a reason, that we draw energy and events to ourselves, and drawing to you the kind of energy that makes you fall off a horse and sustain several fractures on your birthday, two months before your album comes out, so that you'll be laid up in bed and unable to film any dance videos any time soon, is serious stuff.

But I still hope she recovers quickly. I've never had a broken collar bone or a fractured hand, but I have had a broken rib--it happened on my mission--and I can say that ONE is excruciatingly painful, so having THREE has to really suck. I can only guess about how bad the other stuff feels.

This morning when I got up, turned on my computer, and checked my email, I found this message from Wayne:

Good morning!

Repeat after me: Today I am going to be a ray of fucking sunshine!

So be it.

I am so freaked out about Madge and the beast. I have never really liked horses that much. Some things should not be domesticated. And some people, I suppose. Madonna's self imposed "English country wife" thing makes we wonder if I am fulfilling my true purpose or just deluding myself? Am I supposed to be wild and free or good and trustworthy or dumb and f*ckable?

One thing I like about Wayne is that, aside from the two times he did something so awful to me that we didn't speak for months until he worked up the nerve to apologize, it's really easy to be his friend. He claims he is hard to be friends with. But I think it's not at all hard to be amused and enlightened and captivated by brilliance and inspired to be a better person, all of which are things that happen when being friends with Wayne.

Or at least, I guess it's not hard for people who want those things. For people who want to be bored most of the time, and stupid most of the time, and content with the drivel the world has to offer, and given permission never to learn or grow, well, yeah, it might be hard to be friends with him.

So today I will take his advice and be a fucking ray of sunshine–a ray of sunshine who is also thinking about Madge and the beast. Am I fulfilling my life's purpose? I don't know.

I am also a ray of sunshine with a very sore neck. I injured it somehow helped SBJ move. It hurts to look anywhere but straight ahead of me. Perhaps that is also a message from the universe? I don't know.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2005

Mellencamp

My friend and colleague Sweet Baby Jesus is roughly the same age as my younger brother, and I am chagrined to say that something about SBJ brings out the bitchy big sister in me. A fairly common sequence of events is this: a bunch of us go out for beers; mocking SBJ occupies a good portion of the evening; I go home, think about how I teased him, and feel bad; I stop by his office the next day, and apologize for tormenting him so, saying it seems out of character for me, since I don't treat my other friends that way; he says he doesn't mind at all--in fact, he insists, he enjoys being the center of attention and finds it all good clean fun as long as it's a gentle mocking rather than malicious bullying; I go away reassured, but full of resolve not to tease him so very much next time.

I'm still working to identify the reasons why this happens. So far I've come up with two: 1) he's telling the truth about enjoying it; he plays along and laughs good-naturedly, and even after the conversation has moved on to something other than his most charming foibles, he provides us with information that almost seems designed to provoke more teasing, which means that 2) he deserves it.

In some ways, Sweet Baby Jesus is one of the oddest people I know. Don't get me wrong; I like him, quite a lot, actually. But he has some of the strangest ideas, opinions and behaviors.

Last December a dozen of us went out on the last day of classes to celebrate having survived the semester. At one point, apropos of nothing, SBJ asked, "Do you ever play that game where you take two things that are basically equal, and make people choose which one they like better? For instance, like with Bruce Springsteen on one hand, and John Cougar Mellencamp on the other."

We were in the middle of a crowded bar and the din was terrific, but at that moment it was like the entire world went silent. Everyone looked around the table. "You're kidding, right?" someone asked.

"Of course not," SBJ said. "Mellencamp is like the Midwestern Springsteen."

We stared at each other again. "You're really saying that John Cougar Mellencamp is ‘basically equal' with Bruce Springsteen?" someone asked.

"Yeah."

"You're saying that ‘Hurts So Good' is on a par with ‘Thunder Road' or ‘Blinded by the Light,'" I began.

"Or ‘Jack and Diane' is the same as ‘Born to Run' or anything off Nebraska," someone else said.

"Yeah," SBJ said. Everyone looked around the table again, and burst out laughing.

"You're forgetting songs like ‘Little Pink Houses' and ‘Blood on the Plow,'" he cried.

"That's ‘cause they're forgettable," someone said.

"Mellencamp is an authentic voice of middle America,"SBJ said, his voice rising even more. "You're all just a bunch of east coast snobs."

THAT pissed me off. "I am not going to let some guy who grew up in Connecticut and went to school in New York call ME an east coast snob," I said, jabbing at him with my forefinger. "I'm from Arizona, remember?"

"Yeah, but I lived in Indiana for six years, and I really grew to appreciate how Mellencamp speaks for the Midwest," he said.

"I lived in Iowa for eight years, and I'm sure that even in that bastion of Midwesterness, people have the sense to prefer the Boss to a guy who named himself after a mountain cat," I said.

"And let's not forget cover art," some said. "Mellencamp looks pretty stupid on his album covers."

"Or hair," I said. "John Cougar Mellencamp's hair was so poufy and feathered, he could have been one of the girls in a White Snake video."

SBJ seemed genuinely astonished that no one--not a single person there--thought Mellencamp was the artistic equal of the Boss. You'd think he'd learn that this is not a question designed to arouse a lot of respect for his taste in music. But no, months later, he still brings it up when someone new comes along, so he still gets to hear people guffaw in disbelief as they finally realize he is serious about the comparison.

The game–-which we now call Mellencamp--can make for fun bar banter when you play it with things that are actually comparable. Coke or Pepsi? East Coast or West Coast? Cats or dogs? Window or aisle? Mac or PC? Q or A? T or A? Ginger or Mary Ann? Aiden or Mr. Big?

And I'm probably going to have to apologize to him for posting this--or maybe delete it, if it really hurts his feelings--but I want to say this: SBJ, let it go. You can like John Cougar Mellencamp as much as you want, but you can compare apples to oranges more easily than you can compare Mellencamp to the Boss.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2005

Moving Day

In addition to my friend and colleague Tom, I also have a friend and colleague, Sweet Baby Jesus. That's not the name his parents gave him; that's the name he gave himself. It rather fits. Sometimes we call him SBJ, and sometimes we call him Dr. Sweet Baby Jesus, because he has a PhD in one of those silly, useless areas of the humanities.

Sweet Baby Jesus just moved out of a horrid apartment complex full of old ladies who hang wreaths of dried flowers on their doors, changing the wreath to match the season. He never fit in because his door remained unadorned, no matter what the time of year. But now he's living in a cool semi-detached house across from a park.

SBJ does not have a lot of stuff--people who name themselves after wandering mendicant faith healers often don't--but he still has more stuff than he could move on his own. So he asked me, Tom, a new colleague ML, and her husband HC, to help him load up a truck and shlep everything across town. He said that if we did, he would reward us with pizza and beer, and as an added treat, we could watch him eat an entire large pizza on his own.

It took only an hour to get everything in the truck from the old place and out of the truck at the new place.

And then it was time for pizza. Since we are a lively bunch of cynical academics, and since we began drinking around noon, the conversation centered on meaningful concerns, such as when SBJ would host his first party in his new place. "I was thinking I'd have a craft night some time soon," he said. He says things like this all the time, and it always makes me giggle. "We're going to go back to my apartment to make collages," he told me a few weeks ago, when I asked him how he planned to entertain a friend who was visiting from out of town. He would have made such a great Mormon girl. We were always crafts nights: tie-dying t-shirts, stringing beads, practicing embroidery. Don't get me wrong, I dig that stuff--it just seems funny to have someone organizing an evening where a bunch of PhDs sit around a dining room table and decorate t-shirts.

"Collages again at this crafts night?" I asked.

"Maybe," he said.

"Candles?" asked HC.

"Door wreaths?" asked ML.

"Door wreaths would be good," I said.

Then we started talking about lame superpowers. ML had a good lame superpower (very oxymoronic statement, I realize, but hopefully you know what I mean): she is related to so many people through families that have split through divorce, then extended themselves through remarriage, that she can probably manage a way to make YOU related to her. She offered to set me up, for instance, with an uncle of hers--she says he's the right age for me, a die-hard ex-Catholic (which should complement my die-hard post-Mormon status well), has liberal politics and a job that involves helping the under-privileged. He lives a couple of states away from all of us, but still in the same time zone, which is closer than anyone else I'm interested in. So we'll see how powerful this lame superpower of hers is.

Then it was 2 p.m. and any remaining pizza had grown cold (we were all pretty sure SBJ did not manage to eat an entire pizza on his own, but hey, it was his house, so we weren't going to insist) and we all had stuff we ought to go do (I really need to write a couple of syllabi) so we left SBJ to his unpacking.

And that is the thrilling story of my thrilling Monday. Check back for more on SBJ, who gave me permission to write about his very cool new tattoos.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (1)

August 10, 2005

The Ultimate MF

Yesterday on campus I told my colleague Tom that one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog was to share with the world my recent insight that the Mormon god is the ultimate motherf***er: he's up there in the celestial kingdom, having sex with all those mothers in heaven.

Tom wanted some elaboration. I said, "According to Mormon doctrine, we are supposedly all the literal spiritual offspring of a father and mother in heaven. Our spirits were conceived by the sexual intercourse of God with one of his wives--according to Joseph Smith, he might have plenty--that's the whole polygamy thing."

"So this is real sex," Tom said. "It's not just some spiritual thing, or is it? Does it involve actual body parts?"

"Absolutely," I said. "God has a body, parts and passions. It's a basic tenet of Mormon doctrine." I told him about being a teenager and being shepherded into the cultural hall with all the other young men and women, where a high councilman told us in no uncertain terms what was at stake in the phrase "families are forever": only in the celestial kingdom, the highest level of Mormon heaven, would people allowed to be sexually active; everywhere else--and this is a quote I remember almost 30 years later--"You'll all be just steers and heifers." In other words, the promise of an eternity of sex in the next life was why we better not have any until we were married in this life.

"Huh," said Tom, who is the son of a Baptist minister. "Heavenly sex."

"But it's all about reproduction, not fun, which means eternal PMS and endless celestial pregnancies for some of us," I cried.

"I like it," he said. "It's a metaphor for something. I just don't know what."

But I, on the rag, heavily drugged by the muscle relaxant ibuprofen and aware throughout the conversation of the blood gushing from my body, doubled over in horror and buried my face in my hands.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)