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So Gay

6 May

I took my little ladies to see my friend, Kimia, DJ on Friday night at Ortlieb’s in Philadelphia. It was early. We stayed for an hour and the girls were in bed by their nightly 8 o’clock bedtime; and while they did dance and party pretty hard at the DJ booth with their comp-ed Shirley Temples and $1 tacos, the scene wasn’t inappropriate. There was nothing young Drew Barrymore-ish about it at all.

Later that night, I posted on FB a really cool but dark photo – because it was taken inside an old Jazz club – of Kimia with my two girls. And then it happened. Some woman I don’t know decided to comment on the photo with this sarcastic ugliness, “Well, that’s not creepy at all.”

The photo was dark, no doubt, but creepy? No. The funny thing about this for me was that this woman had one of those jump-on-the-bandwagon-so-it-looks-like-I-have-an-identity-and-one-opinion stupid, gay rights, equal signs, with Bert and Ernie as her profile photo.

I found it puzzling, the idea of someone openly defending gay rights with cute images of Bert and Ernie (they were puppets, Ok? They never had sex or wanted to get married. Because they aren’t real.) Yet this woman felt ok to call a photo of two children and one really stunning woman creepy. Aren’t children just off-limits when it comes to jokes, especially from such a blatant, and supposedly sensitive, activist?

I replied with a single warning to, “Watch it with the comments, twat.”

I think it is so condescending, this “I love my gays!” nonsense. If I was gay I would be horrified to be treated like a novelty. I personally have no activist interest in gay rights, and guess what: I know about half a dozen more gay men than you do. I find the masses (I mean mindless lambs) who love Siegfried and Roy, and dumb shows like Glee, with their patronizing interest in “Gays!” so offensive.

If I found myself constantly being rewarded or spit on due to my sexuality, while the rest of my character, my being and my personality are ignored in its shadow, I would want to scream. I’d want to bitch slap every idiot who thinks they support me through something as useless as a profile photo and by loving the novelty of the stereotypes I’d have to live up to for them, like a cute little circus monkey in a plaid vest asking for peanuts, or human rights.

I have no idea how hard it must be to have to grin and bare it, to lose dignity by having my sexuality turn into a FB profile picture, one that is trendy among the bandwagon-hopping activists, and one that will be as meaningless as that shallow Kony 2012 FB profile photo that also patronized an oppressed group of people: children.

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Emasculate Me

1 May

Both the probing questions and the ever-increasing interest in my single life, from well-meaning friends, can be annoying, much like newlyweds rudely being asked, over and over, when they are having a baby. The annoyance is that, in coming from so many directions, it becomes compounded, and I am forced to politely grimace and listen to advice on dating and men by women whose love life histories are neither forgotten nor admired by me; and when I’m asked things like, “Are you dating!?” or the startling and repulsively crass (even to a filthy mouth like mine), “Are you fucking anyone yet?”, I maintain that polite façade and refrain from replying with cruel reminders such as,

“Wow, it took [his-name-here] 10 years to finally, and unromantically pull the trigger on you, huh?”
or
“Too bad you really despise your boyfriend but are too afraid of being alone to do anything about it.”
or
“Jeez, remember how bad dating was for you before you found that high school guy on Facebook?”

While in Texas this past weekend, my friend—who, unlike a lot of the other advice-givers, may sadly be right, even if I refuse to accept it—told me that if I wanted any guy at that music festival I could have him, but that I had to do all the work; that, in today’s world, no guy is going to just come up to me and sequester my Amazon loveliness; that men nowadays don’t do any of the work.

Sigh.

What happened to romance and pursuit? Where have all the men gone? Are all the men who wear wife-picked, wife-approved, wife-matching flip-flops, who stay at home raising babies, killing the dreamy male idol of old?

In my opinion, a man, that blessed beast that once was, who could detect the slight scent of lemons and hormones mingling on my soft female skin from a distance on 20 feet, may no longer exist. All the quiet, seductive, joyful female effort I put into my appearance, before I even leave my house, should be subtle enough to intoxicate a man-stranger in close proximity to me; to signal the very natural and deeply carnal desire to want to find out all of my mysteries.

I mean, a firm handshake along with a smile, direct eye contact and a simple, “Can I buy you a drink?” or “Where are you from?” or “What is your name?” should not, at the very very least, be asking too much. But, according to my extremely busy social life and most of my friends, I am. Asking too much.

I do not think that asking of the universe to be presented with a man—one who is so cock-fucking-sure of himself and feels an actual desire to find out things about me that he can’t keep himself from knowing, while not being an asshole—is really asking too much. Having some timid guy watch me for an hour, without making a move, is not attractive. Well, not to me anyway.

Plenty of modern women wear the pants in relationships. I like to wear skirts.

I have known a number of women who emasculate their boyfriends or husbands, even unabashedly doing so in public, unable to see that this makes every witness dreadfully uncomfortable, no matter how common such behavior has become. These fellas, who are as much to blame as their wives, are easy to identify by the fact that they never mention their wives in passing conversation. Ever. It would be simple and easy to think these weak souls want out, but are stuck with their ball and chain because of kids or finances; but, after watching so many seemingly dead marriages continue, I wonder if maybe this is a new world order of castrated and timid men who, ultimately, like being micromanaged, like being told what to do, or more importantly what they can’t do.

I am not the type of woman who decorates a man cave in a basement, or allots the spare bedroom for her beau, all the while hanging a watchful 8 x 10 photo of herself, square and neat, beside his computer screen; you know . . . just in case he gets any ideas about looking at porn (or sexy female bloggers who shamefully post every photo where said blogger looks like hot shit) while she’s out making the bacon; just so she can make sure that he feels totally emasculated by her image, an image that will immediately bring to mind the creepy, watchful 8 x 10s of people like JFK and various popes; just to drive home who is really in charge!

I have been told my entire adult life that I am intimidating to men. This is a lousy excuse for what men have allowed, and possibly liked, themselves to be turned into. I may be a giant in stature and personality, but I am petite inside, all girl. I want to be treated like a woman, a beautiful feminine object of desire, of love and of pleasure. I want to be treated like I am sincerely cared for, something those girls who marry and boss around their “best friend from college” usually don’t end up with. I don’t want to be friends. I have plenty of those. I want a man, and I want to treat him like one. I want a man who, at any distance, sees right through me, to the very best part of me, and can’t stop himself from getting to it.

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Impression

23 Apr

Saturday night I went to see Billy Bragg at the Keswick Theater in Glenside, PA. This is an odd concert venue, as it is in a very out-of-the-way suburb of Philadelphia. The upside of this hard to get to venue is that, for every show I have ever seen there, I always end up with the sweetest seats. This time we sat in seats CC 104 & 105, otherwise known as sixth row, center; I once saw Emmylou Harris there, and had similar seating. Each time, I marveled at my luck.

The show was very good. In-between old and new songs, Mr. Bragg ripped on the ambiguity of hipsters and their beards at SXSW, knocked on Nick Cave’s style, dissed Morrissey twice and, of course, talked about what his day was like when he woke to the news that Margaret Thatcher had passed. On that day he shopped for a wardrobe of pearl snap button western shirts and checked his email on his phone in a coffee shop, all the while sporting the same hipster beard he made fun of. He may be terribly more vain than he could ever recognize, as a great deal of what he spoke of related to what people or ideas “looked” like.

I spent some parts of the show being a silly girl, crying in row six, dead center of the stage. The apparent sincerity of songwriting and a new guitar for each song are exactly the ripest of conditions for me to unload some of my own heartache and angst, and a bit of the sadness I don’t know what to do with. No matter how much I carefully apply heavy black liquid eyeliner, wearing it like a precaution so I won’t cry, a seatbelt of sorts, I still do. Especially in dark concert halls.

He spoke about Woody Guthrie, how Woody never got to play an electric guitar before his death and how he, like me, dreams of alternate universes. In his, Buddy Holly never died and Woody did get to write his supersonic boogie on an electric guitar. That was when I really wished I had just packed a few tissues instead of trying to stop myself from feeling anything through thick eyeliner; because I do feel things. It is not ambiguous.

Throughout the show the smart phones were aglow, filming videos and taking photos of Billy. I certainly can be very guilty of this pandemic keeping-my-monkey-hands-busy-with-a-dumb-phone-nonstop-documentation myself. I even recently setup an Instagram account, doing so regardless of my feeling unsure about participating in yet another way to share, my instinct trying so hard to push her way through the distraction of another shallow sharing app to ask, “Why the need to share and view so much of the mundane, sweetheart?” But my dissing Instagram while owning and operating a blog is as laughable as Billy Bragg dissing hipsters. He is one, whether he realizes it or not.

Towards the end of the show, I watched this guy from the audience sneak up to the stage, in a hunched-over, burglar-style tiptoe, to take a few shots of his idol on his phone. It reminded me of the time I decided that I wasn’t going to take photos in front of monuments anymore. Well, only if I didn’t want to. I was in Italy with my ex-husband. I had been to Italy at least a half a dozen times before but only once to Rome. He and I were traveling with a good friend, visiting the lovely and less traveled Umbria before we spent this single perfect day walking through Rome. While in front of one of the Egyptian obelisks, I decided to end my lifelong façade as a polite, obliging tourist. I declined to have my photo taken. It wasn’t some big declaration; I wasn’t rude; I just didn’t need to have every single moment of this dreamy day documented like I was in a pack of crazed, Japanese tourists. I didn’t need to prove “I was here!” over and over and over again.

I just wanted to sit and look, really look at that obelisk. This object, like Billy Bragg, had been photographed by thousands of novice picture takers, as well as thousands of professional ones. I could just look it up in a book if I wanted to see it again. What I couldn’t do again was to sit on a bench, drenched in early October sunlight, and quietly study it, wondering about the men who carved it, and what their lives were like, what was going through their minds as they worked.

Why do we rush to take a photo of someone we admire, or of a monument we find ourselves in front of? Is it some type of ego-driven ownership, like a dog marking his territory? When we are face to face with greatness, why aren’t the impressions that form in our minds of any more substance than the urge to indulge in crappy photography?

I may never walk through Rome or see a Billy Bragg show again; or sit in the Keswick theatre, crying over all the spilled milk I wasn’t wise or careful enough to not knock over. I didn’t take any photos on my phone to upload that night. But my impression of him and his thoughts, and mostly of who I am in the middle-end of my thirties, is forever stored deep in my collected impressions.

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Cheap

11 Mar

Last weekend, Brooke and I got into a hefty conversation about how awful, how deeply hideous, cheap people are.

Everybody has known someone so cheap that it makes everybody else uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that the appalling-ness of the behavior is unspeakable, shocking the onlooker to a stunned, silent horror. As Brooke put it,

“How could I ever have brought this horrible person around the people I love?!”

I knew what she meant; but what I was left wondering was what makes someone so rotten.

I am not confusing cheapness with frugality, mind you; I am always impressed with a frugal person. These two behaviors may walk a fine line together but are each of a wholly different nature (even though I bet some of the fattest tightwads would like to think they are just being frugal. I call that self-deceit.)

Cheapness with money, and what it buys, is always visible on the outside of a person; what is revealed behind it is always a withholding of something else, some part of the person’s character, such as affection or kindness.

Is cheapness a massive, stinginess of person, a whole failure of a soul, like an emotional cancer?

I’ve only known a few incredibly cheap people in my life and for that I count my blessings. I’ve learned to steer well clear of the people who make the hair on my neck stand up because of their tunnel-vision obsession with the cost of things. Life is too short to be brought down by people who live so small, people who have traded simple living & giving for conversations about money, conversations that hide how broken they are inside.

I had a cheap boyfriend once, who was really tall: 6′ 7.” I’ll admit I was curious about that height; I’d never had to look up at any guy’s face before, never had to stand on my tip-toes, my being 5′ 10.” He was huge, with nice hair and a great nose, and a strong face behind which lay a peculiar weakness. He was also slightly pear shaped; odd, because he was not overweight at all. He just had a long narrow back that sat on hips. I decided that, since I was certainly no hourglass, and was maybe even a banana shape, I was in no position to judge a pear. I thought myself rather generous to overlook this flaw, in the same way one could pat oneself on the back for loving a person with really short arms or eyes too close, or too far apart, things that are universally unattractive; things that universally repel in the boudoir.

I soon found out that the tall pear was not worthy of my generous oversight or curiosity. He was unbearably cheap and, each day in our short relationship, his cheapness pealed itself back to reveal a soul so twisted that it stole the show from his unusual shape and height.

One night we had somehow ended up in some low-end, semi-fancy French restaurant, in a weird annex of Philadelphia by name of Conshohocken. After we ate and the bill arrived, to my surprise, he took it. I was so used to his spiltzy, even steven, Dutch attitude that I smiled, thinking maybe he was starting to feel more secure and intimate with me. With 12 little words, he wiped that smile off my face.

“I will get this, but it will be your birthday dinner. Ok?”

My birthday is in May. This crappy meal was happening in February! I slowly shook my head

“Do you really think, with moves like that, you’ll be putting your penis inside me in an hour?”

It was over, I couldn’t get back to my truck fast enough, to get away from someone who was so unbelievably neurotic in their cheapness.

I should have known really. All the signs were there. The first time I slept at his house, his cat jumped on my head in the middle of the night. When I woke him and asked him to get his cat’s ass out of my face he replied in a grumpy, half-asleep mumble,

“Leave her alone. She’ll be here long after you’re gone.”

I left that brief relationship wondering if this was a case of the chicken versus the egg; was he a failure because he was cheap, or was he cheap because he was a failure?

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Appearances

8 Mar

A few weekends back, my sister was retelling a version of a story that I’ve heard many times; she had overheard a woman standing in a Target strictly forbidding her daughter from looking at, or even dare considering the purchase of, a Barbie doll.

I, being prone to sudden rage upon hearing any example of pure stupidity, shook my head. How stupid! As if this simple public act and declaration would bring forth from this girl child a perfect vision of feminism. A woman so strong she can attribute her becoming the first female U.S. President to her mother’s resistance to toy purchases. At a Target, no less! A huge box store, otherwise known as an evil corporation because ALL corporations are evil and cause harm to many someones as well as the environment, regardless of how cute that toxic, sparkly shit from China is!

Have you ever, ever, heard a man say, “Superman and Spidey totally emasculated me as a child. My self-esteem was shot to bits because I could never be a superhero. Every time I look at my naked body in the shower, all I think is, ‘I’m a failure, limp, mortal… nothing.’ And it was action figures and comics that fucked it all up for me… FOREVER.”

No, you don’t. Because men just don’t think that way. But some of the ladies on the other hand…

Feminists, like children and atheists, are often full of shit and manipulative. About a year ago, Ashley Judd, a well-spoken feminista (who, not surprisingly, is entering politics) was being hounded for suddenly having a “puffy face.” She responded proudly and went on to blast the media and society for being hypersexual and misogynistic. I loved reading her strong words, her denouncing the importance of looks. I wished that I had been able to personally ask her if she felt so much when she was on People Magazine’s list of The Most Beautiful People in the World in 1996, 2000, and 2002? Or, is society only hypersexual and misogynistic now that her face went bad? That woman is a liar, but she was stupidly applauded for speaking out so “bravely.”

I know for a fact that the woman behind the hatred of Barbie’s supposed misogynistic message is an incomplete, very self-absorbed female, one who is actually OBSESSED with appearances, like the puffy Ms. Judd; so twisted in her self-deceit, her narcissism, her failure to be somebody (or just get a great job with all those diplomas), that she blames a doll (a doll!) for this. You’d never see a happy, self-satisfied, sexually proud, and fulfilled woman embarrass herself by blaming a doll, or the supposed mystical message Barbie whispered in her ear 20 years ago, for anything. Ever.

And that is the funny part about it: by forbidding the play of Barbies to a daughter, thinking the child will become more self-assured—all the while shopping at Target and receiving a million other screwy messages—the mother in turn forces her daughter to begin to obsess on her own narcissism, her own appearance.

Much like people who blame dolls for their poor self-esteem, atheists, who spend a great amount of time OBSESSING over God and Baby J and how religion has ruined the world, are liars too. By proclaiming they don’t believe in any God, they are revealing just how terrified they are of the unknown, much like any Jesus freak. Atheists and Jesus freaks alike, have to label it—to control it—to control their self-absorbed fear of the unknown.

The saddest thing about atheists is that they never look outside of their own micro-culture to see, or admit, that the only people who show up in a crisis, like Sandy or Katrina or Haiti, are church groups, small groups of kind people who want to help perfect strangers. Are there any atheist groups that appear in a crisis? No.

I never think about God or Barbie, and if either is bad or good. There are so many other, very important things to think about and worry over. I certainly don’t ridiculously tell my children if there is a God or not (how would I ever know that answer?) or tell them if they play with Barbie dolls that they will blossom to have skewed body images. But, I do warn them to be wary of people who play victim, who blame beliefs, ideas and images for things that are in their control.

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Blood Money

20 Feb

Does American society blindly believe in the good in charities? I think so. It’s a safe, feel-good given. Perhaps seeing a 501(c)(3) organization status allows us to not work, think or question; we can give dollar bills away at checkouts, to 5Ks and to fundraisers, and quickly compartmentalize and check off our own charitable efforts. “Check. I donated money. I am a good person.”

How could anyone who works for or builds a charity ever be shady? How could the blessed Red Cross ever be anything but the greatest bastion of goodness known to modern man?

Let me tell you.

One morning when I was in high school, I asked my mom to sign a permission slip so that I could donate blood to the Red Cross at school that day. My mom looked up from reading the WSJ and in her steady, unemotional, Northern tone she said,

“No. You are not doing that. The Red Cross is a business and you will not be giving them their product for free.”

Then my dad chimed in, in his A-Oh!-Whoa!-Italiano-tough guy voice and said,

“Nooo-Oooo! That’s your blood, your blood, you don’t give it away! You better listen to your mother, girl.”

I went to school, obediently following their orders but thinking, “my parents are the weirdest, most cruel humans ever to live.” Being 16, I of course thought that. Plus, given that, when my appendix ruptured at age 11, they didn’t take me to the hospital for three days, never even got me the promised sorry-we-almost-killed-you-this-will-make-it-all-better pony and instead got me some cheap opal bracelet from the jewelry counter at the store Best, I knew for a fact that they were actually somewhat weird and cruel; and now that I didn’t trust them, at least with my life, I didn’t think in any way that my mom could be right. Yet, doubt did begin to seep into my mind.

Was the Red Cross just a business? Wasn’t it a charity, a non-profit of great hope for humanity in an evil world?

Three years later, when I was living and working in NYC, I found myself sitting very uncomfortably in the gazillion dollar apartment of a blood broker. My boss at the time, who was 10 years older than me, was his friend and invited me to this guy’s party. MY friends rented apartments in Mt. Holly and had posters of the band Hole up on their walls. HER friend sold blood to poor countries. Where did he get the blood? The more I thought about it, while sitting on a black leather sofa with views of Central Park that I’d never see again, I felt more and more uncomfortable, and remembered what my mom had said all those mornings back: “They get their product for free…”

It gets worse.

Not long after I met the wealthy blood broker, I was working at a high-end furniture store in Philadelphia. It was there that I met a client who was an executive at the Red Cross. He bought so much furniture; so much expensive furniture, like sofas that cost 10 grand. Maybe he had SFM (secret family money) or maybe he had an incredible salary at the Red Cross, but the three parts to this story forced me to be very skeptical and all these years later side with my mother—whom I have forgiven for the careless attempt to end my life through neglect and also the cheap bracelet/pony let-down.

This American cultural, nonstop fundraising, donating, charities, wristbands, bumper sticker ribbons, and checkout dollars… it is too much, too thoughtless. The common folks give their money and blood away without asking why or who for. Who is getting rich off of checkout dollars, Joe Corbi’s Pizza, and cancer? Is the world better for it?

I certainly don’t know that answer, but I don’t participate in throwing money at anything to make myself feel good or to validate my goodness; and, just like my parents, I am teaching my own children to question donations and not follow the pack. When my daughter came home from her Catholic preschool and asked what the box she got for collecting Lenten donations was for, I told her the truth and prayed that she obediently take the answer back to school with her.

“Lawyers.”

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Word

15 Feb

Last Friday afternoon I met up with friends of mine at the Philadelphia Art Museum for our children’s weekly art classes. Just as I passed through the revolving door, out of the cold, my friend looked me up and down and asked, “Are you having a bad day, too? I think I said mother fucker 20 times today.”

“Hey, that is the greatest combination of two words of all time, maybe even the oldest!” I said smiling, “Made you feel better didn’t it?”

We parted, to drop the kids at different classes, both of us feeling lighter.

The release of strong language can really soothe some of the stress we carry inside. But how often does one really feel as though they have the freedom or confidence to say the words we hear so rarely anymore in our plain-Jane, mealy-mouthed society?

At the last MQA book club dinner, while sitting at my dining room table surrounded by friends who were eating a complicated new recipe that I had proudly knocked out of the park, a shameful word popped up in our conversation. A friend repeated an LBJ quote which carried this ugly word. She quickly bore the heavy burden of publicly saying a bad word in front of nice people and there followed an uncomfortable tangle of justifications, leaping from her mouth. “I don’t use that word. I am just using it in this context.”

I looked around the table, studying pairs of eyes that didn’t care about hearing the word; some eyes had dropped to their plates but I, being the hostess and a woman who embraces all words whole-heartedly, felt I had to clear this up.

“Big deal! It is a word! If we can’t hear or use words that are ugly or bad then HOW will we describe the very things that those words are intended for??”

To emphasize my point and to top the word that had been spoken, I added loudly,

“A cunt is a cunt is a CUNT!”

Forks dropped. Then her husband said, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? We didn’t hear you.”

His witty response lightened the heat and force of my exclamation and we resumed eating and talking about a really great book for the rest of the night.

A part of me never recovered; I get beaten up by how watered down language has become and I take it personally, straight to heart. I worry about words, the loss thereof. I worry that the really good ones, the ones that make women cringe and hold their babies tight to their chest, the words that start and end fights, the sweet dirty words that I so wish to combine and whisper against the skin of a lover and also dream of hearing against my own skin, will one day just not exist; and all I’ll have are books to remind me that, once upon a time, people desired to speak to each other in such a way that it implied a depth of feeling or a pride in thought; that, once, there was a time when a person felt something and wasn’t terrified to share it.

One of the things that repeatedly blows my mind is how passionate letter writing was, pre-WWII. Even men would write letters to each other declaring their deep affection and admiration for each other. Today, no such lust for personal expressive writing exists to my knowledge. People today shy far away from any hint of personality, even in casual friendly banter.

A classic example is a story my friend Bob told me. He was at a party and recognized a couple who lived on his street. He approached them, introduced himself and said,

“Hey, I am your neighbor, I live two blocks up the street.”

The response was,

“How do you know where we live? Are you stalking us?”

That story makes me cringe, not only to think that some trashy, common family is stalker-worthy but that this is a clear and hideous example of what conversation looks like now-a-days.

I often hold back from writing how I really feel about something. Even I feel as though there are these dull boundaries that must stay intact, because everyone else seems to think they should. I wish I had more guts to spill the beans, let it out. But maybe the real question is, who is listening? Maybe no one.

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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The Aftermath Will Not Be Televised

8 Jan

I spent a good deal of Sunday hanging sheetrock with Donal at Karen’s house in Atlantic City. Her kitchen, which was completely gutted due to the devastation of hurricane Sandy, is the current focus of Donal’s complete restoration of her home. Karen lost nearly all of her belongings in the first floor of her small home during the storm.

As we prepared to begin to sheetrock, with me tapping back nails and screwing screws back into the lath, Donal asked me to tell Karen about all the items that our friend, Bethann, and I had sourced for her. I ran off a list, including a sofa, new 20″ TV, pair of twin beds and boxsprings, $500 cash towards flooring, five bar stools, a filing cabinet, and a bookcase. These items added to the fridge and kitchen cabinets that were already donated by other friends.

She shook her head in disbelief, smiled, and said, “The funny thing is that the bookcase makes me the most happy. I lost all of my books in the storm.” I asked what she liked to read and she said she is a non-fiction reader, enjoying Christian books and also biographies. I told her one of my book clubs was reading the biography, “Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum discovered the great American story” by Evan I. Schwartz next month and I’d lend it to her when I was done.

I asked Karen what has surprised her the most from the aftermath of a devastating hurricane and her reply was mighty quick. She said she couldn’t get over the generosity of complete strangers. To tell you the truth, I can’t either. I can’t believe Donal is intending to, not only get me and every other person he can out of their house at 6:30 am on a weekend to help him help her, but that he plans to see this thing through. It is a huge job! And one that a gentle, kind woman, who likes to read non-fiction and has worked at a homeless women’s shelter for more than two decades, indeed deserves.

Other highlights of the day, besides of course, the fact that I screwed in enough sheetrock that the soft skin between my index finger and thumb got slightly blistered, was meeting her insurance adjuster. Who, finally, that day, came to look over her home’s damage, 70 days since the storm touched ground.

It was the first house he looked at, in his brand new job as an adjuster. He, along with 360 other newly trained adjusters, would finally get into homes that hadn’t been seen yet. I paused and turned my head to hear him speak to Karen in the next room and smiled like any decent troublemaker would, when his first question was if this was a home or a row home. I almost fell to the floor in mischievous laughter and looked at Donal, pointed to the floor and said quietly, “Yeah, it’s a home alright, people live here. Duh!” It took all of me to not follow this poor guy around and make his next paycheck’s virgin expedition turn into a bullet-sweating, t-crossing hell by a girl who can run off questions faster than lightning.

I hung back though, and continued to work.

After he left, I asked Karen what she thought of the concerts and all the fancy fundraising. She said she was given four blankets, a bucket, and a mop from the Red Cross a week after the storm and hasn’t seen them since. She, herself, hasn’t seen or knew of anyone who received any assistance from any non-profit, other than small church groups. She then told me that the City of Atlantic City stopped taking debris after December 15, meaning any demolition material would have to go into a rented dumpster. Well, City of Atlantic City, for some people who have no money, have no help, and maybe haven’t seen their insurance company show up yet… way to go! Way to go Federal Gov’t, way to go FEMA, way to go stupid-bullshit-useless-feel-good-asshole-fronted-12.12.12-concert!

The only thing I heard after the 12.12.12 concert was “Mick Jagger was AMAZING!” to which I should have replied each and every time, “Ummm, aren’t we supposed to be helping people in a time of extreme crisis?? What good is watching the Stones for people like Karen?? She’s never going to see those dollar bills!” Man, I wish I could have stood on that stage and told the whole world about Karen, about her poor neighbors and friends, most of whom do not have any help, some of whom have not even gone home yet… 70 days later in the richest country in the world.

If you would like to lend a hand and help us get Karen’s house back together, please contact me. One day of labor makes a big difference. According to Donal, anyone is useful, which he proved to be true on Sunday. If I can sheetrock, you can sheetrock. And if you’re lucky, Donal might even take you to the famous Irish Pub for a cold beer and a sandwich after you bust your ass, helping a decent person get her life back together.

© Mad Question Asking – 2013 All Rights Reserved

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Black and White

23 Dec

WARNING: PART OF THIS IS SOMEWHAT VULGAR. PLEASE DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU ARE WEAK OF THOUGHT.

IT, is, black and white.

In the wake of any story, news, or world event, what I am always most dazzled by, is the human energy spent dancing around what is so obviously the truth.

This chronic denial should not surprise me and because it does, it is evidence of my own dimwittedness and my own Ground Hog Dayish denial of social truths that repeatedly hits itself up against the walls of my mind. We humans are so very afraid to accept the plain truth, even about ourselves, that the dance of deception and denial will always trump the raw duty of the truth.

In my mind, the very reason that horrific unreasonable stories arise at all is for the truth to be given light, to expose itself.

When the whole story broke about that creep in Penn State banging retarded kids, and, as a nation we were forced to revisit the issue of child abuse, all the conversations veered right off the road and ended up stuck in a ditch of lies. “It is a pattern of abuse, the abuser was abused and so his sexuality was corrupted. It is about power and control.” Really? Is it? Then why don’t priests just rape female nuns instead of little boys?

The truth about child abuse—as confirmed by the disgusting business that is what the internet is mostly used for—is that a startlingly large portion of men want to have sex with children. That is what turns them on. And if you understand how a penis works, it needs attraction to work, to get hard. Men who have sex with children are attracted to children. This is a painful truth.

Why is this so hard to fathom?

Because it is too disgusting, too honest. And when we can’t deal with the truth, we go to therapy, we make excuses, we defend our lies—we stew in conversations that go round and round only to be tucked away until the next story breaks.

The defending of the second amendment in the wake of a mass shooting is disgusting on two counts. One, because if you do not possess the very basic simple decency to shut the fuck up about a constitutional bill of right (AN IDEA) when there are people grieving the loss of their community and their child (their whole entire world) then you are showing that you are as much a monster as a disgusting wealthy woman who taught her emotionally unstable child how to perfectly use a gun.

Two, to defend a right to bear arms, a right that was written 221 years ago, long before cars, planes, phones, home alarm systems and all the forms of technology that can protect us from all the fantasy boogie men we perversely imagine that want to get us, tells me that you are swimming in a disgusting pool of fear created inside your weak mind.

The truth is that, very simply, if you own a gun for the purpose of protection, you want to kill a human being.

Let’s try that again.

The truth is gun owners want to or intend to, kill people. It is that simple.

When my home had an attempted break-in a couple of months back, many people told me I should have a gun. This is complete bonkery. If the two 17-year-olds had successfully entered my home and I came into contact with them, I would not have wanted to kill them. Because I have zero desire to kill any human being. Nor do I think that my home, family, or myself is worth defending to the death.

I would have used words. And you can laugh all you want, but I am not the one who lives in a world of fear, I would have used words. I would have told them to “get the FUCK out of my house!”

The truth is, and maybe this is why IT is the FIRST amendment of our bill of rights, words are the most powerful thing in the world. They are so dangerous, that most people fear ever saying out-loud how they really feel or what they really think! This ignorance to grasp that beautiful first amendment and its perfect set of 45 words, may just be why the second one sticks so strongly in a nation of weak, lazy minded cowards who only know how to defend themselves with violence and extreme denial.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

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The Real Thing

27 Nov

I started this miserable, cold, wet day holding the hand of my four-year old in front of a closed post office. Instead of waiting five minutes for it to open, I made her a spontaneous, extremely generous offer and asked if she’d like to wait next-door, inside her favorite place in the whole world.

CVS.

Walking in, with a Tuesday morning type of clear mind and no agenda, I decided to see if I could see CVS through her eyes. What power or happiness did it hold over her? Was CVS the retail version of the cardboard box the kid wants more than the toy that came inside?

Browsing the aisles I don’t usually walk down, I forgot all about her interest and started thinking that Old Spice and Jean Nate could be the single gifts I give to all the males and females I am obligated to buy Christmas gifts for. And if they looked at me like I was cheap… or tacky, I could crinkle my brows and deliver a blow that only “My dad just died” could top, “Sorry, I am a divorcée. I am a single mother now.”

Then I could ride out the holidays in a style mixed of scent nostalgia, perfect craziness, and a mind game I could enjoy alone right through my steady Mona Lisa smile.

Having children (they are always around!) is something that I watch some of my peers not get the real joy in. A fellow mother was telling me an exasperated story about how it takes her an hour to get her daughter dressed for school. I cut her off. (I’m not listening to boring nonsense when there is perhaps non-boring nonsense in a different close-by conversation.) “You are getting it all wrong. Let her wear whatever she wants, take hand me downs or just let her wear the clothes she gets as gifts. Why spend money on kid clothes when you could blow that wad on yourself? I rarely buy my kids clothes anymore, I stopped that shit. Right about the time I realized they are not dolls. Kids have their own opinions and what the hell do I care if they are bad dressers or like that ruffled fleece coat that my mom got them? I don’t like that coat, but if they like it, and I didn’t pay for it, it is none of my damn business.”

She laughed nervously and said I was right. The bell rang, I bid adieu (and wished I could curtsy or bow slowly as I backed away from untwisting a fellow human’s useless, dull neurosis) and went home, drank more coffee, listened to all four sides of The Wall, while I looked at all of the great clothes I bought for me.

Parents, I believe, would enjoy their children (honestly enjoy them) if they could see what possibilities or treasures lie in their lives, that are, in fact, separate from ours.

My seven-year old asked if she could be in the school talent show with her eight-year old friend. After I, along with the eight-year old’s parents, secured the fact that they understood what a heavy responsibility it was, said yes. On one condition. That they choreograph their number to none other than Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings.

How great is that going to be? I can go through all that work to prepare her for this and get something out of it, that pleases me. See, nobody says before you have children that these types of possible memories can happen. If you make them. Nobody told me that my dry, suicidal wit could be worked on my child, for my pleasure. My daughter asked in her sweet tiny princess voice if dreams came true and in a perfect northern tone my response was “Mmmm, no… they don’t. Mom?” Then my mom said, “No, not usually.” She, at least, added a I’m-sorry-kid-life-is-a-fucking-bitch-smile, whereas I just patted her on the head.

The real thing, like freedom, an identity given room to breathe, loving CVS, and wearing clothes they like, and having awesome stories to tell when they grow up like “my nutty parents had me talent show to Wind Beneath My Wings!” and having all six thousand questions they have answered honestly each day, well that real thing does come true. If you make it.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

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Narrativity

24 Nov p1030782-001

Any time you find yourself on the outside of the inside job that is society’s narrative, you are bound to want to kick people off your porch and end up ruining the Thanksgiving brussel sprouts by talking to your brother-in-law about Greco-Roman civilization when he should be watching his vegetables.

The day before Thanksgiving a woman I know stopped by unannounced at 7 am to drop something off. I was in my fuzzy pink robe, black glasses and I still had yesterday’s eye makeup on. My two little girls ran up to the front door when they heard the doorbell ring. She asked what we were planning to do for Thanksgiving. The girls in unison said they’d be with their dad at his house. She looked at us, cocked her head, pursed her lips, knit her brows in sympathy and said “I’m sorry” as if we had shared our beloved pet or grandmother had died.

I am pretty quick with replies of any nature. And I wanted to give her a version of what I tell Jehovah’s Witnesses when they step on my porch (“Get off my property. Now.”) and tell her to get off my porch with her stupid fucking narrative.

Sorry? For what? They love their dad, so being with him is a good thing. Thanksgiving doesn’t mean anything to me past “where is the finest food being served?” or do I feel like us missing every other Thanksgiving together is something anyone should pity us for. I am certainly not brainwashing or raising my kids to believe something is wrong or missing in their narrative.

I walked away, and let her talk to the kids for a minute while I started my coffee and cooled my jets. I thought of how when I read Taleb’s Black Swan and he used the word narrativity, it made me think of the word nativity and then I pictured a bunch of books sitting around the Bible in Bethlehem. Or maybe stupid Hallmark cards that continue common social narratives (happy lies like Thanksgiving, perfect families) sitting around the Bible.

Satisfied and comforted by my imagination, the fact that a week later I’d be sitting in the Philadelphia Free Library listening to Taleb speak and hear him with my own ears, and the coffee I’d drink in a few minutes, I said good-bye and of course… Happy Thanksgiving. I closed the door on the fake-compassion-pity-party-disguising-real-passive-aggression.

Just a few days before this I was also affronted by another whole family narrative. My ex pointed at our crying four-year old and said “Look what your freedom cost!” My reply was “Yeah, I’m not spending the rest of my life with you so that she doesn’t cry (she is four, they all cry) any more than I will tell her who to love or live with when she is an adult.”

Humans are so willing to sell their dignity, sexuality, happiness, INTELLIGENCE, maybe all of their soul for a line (a crock of shit), a story, a narrative they didn’t even make up.

This leads us to the story of Pompeii, my brother-in-law and the brussel sprouts.

My kids went to their dad’s and I got in a car and drove to the Hudson Valley to eat expensive, high-quality fare and enjoy the company of adults and not once have to tell my kids to knock it off.

A long time ago, my brother-in-law and I were talking about the history of the world and we got to the Greco-Roman part in the human timeline. He started telling me about the openness, the eroticism, and the unrepressed sexuality that existed then. I vaguely knew about the beautiful dirty frescos but I had no idea that humans at that time were not only openly ok with all forms of sexuality, but that it didn’t ruin a family or a career. Sexuality wasn’t deviant, it was celebrated. I stopped him. I think I said “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a second! Are you shittin’ me or what? Of course a goddamn volcano covered THAT up. How was this not a verse in Alanis Morissette’s song Ironic?”

Brown Paper Wrapped Goodness

And since that conversation I have (on and off) been really interested in all things Pompeii. I had just ordered a book called Roman Sex that came mailed to me, wrapped in brown paper to conceal its naughtiness. I was telling my brother-in-law about the book and then the brussel sprouts over cooked. I felt badly, since ironically that is both his and my favorite vegetable.

I followed him into the kitchen and started in on how I wasn’t accepting society AS-IS anymore and that I suspected that we all are so deeply, foolishly enslaved in our puritanically perverse (and boring) narrative that once again I could say we (human Americans) are like willing Jaycee Dugards. Some of us are so willing to settle for never FEELING anything just as long as we can sit inside the uncomfortable comfort of a poorly written script. Go to school, get married, buy a house, celebrate holidays, watch TV – never stop and think long enough to question any of it.

I told him my thoughts about how I think we are living in a Dark Age. How perhaps, my biggest question of all is “Where is the ART?” We got into a discussion then on how EVERYTHING has its value in its commercial value, not in forming opinions or beliefs or a real feeling. I asked if there were patrons to the arts anymore and he told me that there too it is based on sellability, not a belief in supporting expression, creation.

Always talking too much turkey

After a fine dinner – sans brussel sprouts – we continued this sad, impassioned conversation. He suggested I read Baudrillard and lent me two of his books. He told me I’d find answers there to my questions about art and all the fakeness I see, all the simulation. My brother-in-law is an artist and told me that all these questions I bring up are much worse in their effect on artists. I agreed, saying I could see that. I could see the suffering from repression, I see the submission to simulation over the real fucking thing and I certainly have seen the ugly brute force of commercialism in the very few talented artists I had ever met.

We left the Hudson Valley with my mind whirling, maybe a bit scared to read these new books. Living outside the safety of society’s narrative, I find some comfort in day long conversations like that one, but sadly, I mostly find myself alone in a bed with books, ideas and wild dreams that maybe make up for my own daydreamer’s narrative, one I have to struggle to write.

The irony in me being the one alone, outside the box, is that I am simply standing up for the human heart and its right to expression and love. To really love. But like the beauty that was hidden under a volcano’s ashes, I am left buried under the weight of society’s story, a story I refuse to stand by.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

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What Are We Voting For Exactly?

6 Nov

I have taken a great, big, giant step back from the American life du jour in the last few years to ask myself the following questions.

“What am I doing?”

“What is this life?”

“Do I enjoy it?”

“Do I agree with, believe in, follow or subscribe (in whole or part) any of the rules, orders, and ideas prescribed by the masses?”

The answer I came up with, after I found I felt very much like an asshole when I felt excited about a coupon from J Crew for 20% off my entire purchase, was simply, no.

After discovery, I resolved to live in a way in which I felt I was actually alive and wanted liberty and wanted freedom. I wanted these things personally. Because it is certainly one thing to shout about all the ways in which the world is letting you down, but another, if in your own life (if you actually stepped back and looked at it) you let yourself down every day. Or worse, you know your heroes would hate you.

Today is election day. And my question to all of you is, “What are you exactly voting for today? What does it really mean?”

I realize this is murderously confronting if you are, in fact, willing to think about these things. A thousand apologies.

I read H.L Mencken’s Notes on Democracy last month and thought that I would share one of my favorite parts on Liberty and Democratic Man. (If you want to borrow my copy, please do. It is an excellent book, although… Mencken would not have suffered from a pretty lady reminding him to “Slow down baby, come up for air in between a 10,000 word long thought.”)

“The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man’s mind. He can imagine and even esteem, in his way, certain false forms of liberty—for example, the right to choose between two political mountebanks, and to yell for the more obviously dishonest—but the reality is incomprehensible to him. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. More, he must be able to endure it—an even more arduous business. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means enterprise, it means the capacity for doing without. The free man is one who has won a small and precarious territory from the great mob of his inferiors, and is prepared and ready to defend it and make it support him. All around him are enemies, and where he stands there is no friend. He can hope for little help from other men of his own kind, for they have battles of their own to fight. He has made of himself a sort of god in his little world, and he must face the responsibilities of a god, and the dreadful loneliness. Has Homo boobiens any talent for this magnificent self-reliance? He has the same talent for it that he has for writing symphonies in the manner of Ludwig van Beethoven, no less and no more. That is to say, he has no talent whatsoever, nor even any understanding that such a talent exists. Liberty is infathomable to him. He can no more comprehend it than he can comprehend honour. What he mistakes for it, nine times out of ten, is simply the banal right to empty hallelujahs upon his oppressors. He is an ox whose last proud, defiant gesture is to lick the butcher behind the ear.”

Mencken writes a lot about the inferior man and the mob in this book. I think he’d be startled to find out that no superior man may even exist today. 86 years has passed since his writing of this. I think he’d see that the mob has grown so fat that it ate up even the few who dreamed of freedom and liberty. We are a nation of followers, afraid of not having health insurance and our precious mortgages, we fear not being slaves. Our choices are not in defense of something as incredible as Freedom of Speech (Who is saying anything?), but I think in sole protection of our fears.

We are a nation of willing Jaycee Dugards. We settle for living in shit, held down in a backyard, by the trash in the big house.

I am on my way to vote now, to make my proud, defiant gesture. But instead of licking the butcher, I’ll tickle him, because it is not lost on me what we are exactly voting for.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

99 Problems

3 Nov

A few days back, a friend of mine and I were gabbing about Tuesday’s presidential election. She said that as a woman she felt she had to vote for Obama. We sat in silence for a moment.

“You know… I’m kind of a misogynist.”

“I know Ingrid, but think of your daughters.”

Sigh.

This election is the eeriest election I can recall in my lifetime. Where is the rally? It’s not there! It feels as though, as a nation, we are in total denial that “this is really happening.” We are voting between worse and more worse and no words are even struggling to be heard against that very fact.

There have been timid valentines expressed for Joe (God bless that smile) here and there. But most of what (little) I hear is the wimpy defending of the lessor evil. And very, very little of that. It is so silent. The American public is completely sitting on their hands, biting their lip, staring at their untied shoe laces in some sort of shameful stupor.

Yesterday, I heard a Obama paid-for endorsement by Jay-Z on the radio, pleading his case with “Umm, yea, yea, when I grew up in Marcy, yea yea…umm, vote for Obama.”

Hearing Jay-Z’s voice reminded me that I have had a huge bone to pick with him since his book Decoded debuted in late 2010. Massive success for an excellent catalog of rap music and Beyoncé’s heart not being enough, he became an author and went on to win the respect and the shallow, guilt-ridden hearts of the American intelligentsia.

BLINGrid

Explaining, I mean decoding, his lyrics to Cornel West and friends at the NY public library, Jay-Z spoke about the verse in “99 Problems” when the officer pulls over a car and about how this was about racial profiling as opposed to being about women. In that verse the “bitch” wasn’t a woman but was the canine unit that turned up too late to cause him problems.

I think I momentarily contracted high blood pressure when I read about this back in 2010.

I would have given almost anything, anything to have been present there at the library and stood up shouting, “Nigga PLEASE!! No one has EVER in the history of humanity meant anything other than bitch when referring to a bitch. All of you on stage are a pack of lying jackals, that just ruined a perfect song by explaining it, and worse, making shit up about it! And for what? The respect of white people?”

(I’ve wanted to publicly get that off my chest for years.)

Back to the election.

I still plan to vote for “YOUR MOM” as I said I would earlier this summer. The only hitch I foresee is perhaps one day finding myself in some radical-stay-at-home-mom internment camp deep inside Utah. Sitting in a dark concrete room, with buckets of cold water being thrown in my face and a brutish wannabe Neanderthal shouting, “WHAT. DID. YOU. MEAN. WHEN. YOU. WROTE. YOUR MOM!”

A terrible liar by nature, I just keep repeating, “It’s a joke! I think it’s from the early 90s but it may be THE oldest joke in human history! Christ Almighty, it’s a joke! Come on! Jokes are not meant to be explained you thick-headed thug! They lose their taste if you are told the recipe!” Water splashes in my face again. The drowned out sound of my words, “Aw, fucking hell! Again?” as I turn my face, bracing the cold slap of water.

I don’t ever want to find myself in any sort of internment camp – especially for such a lame reason – any more than I wanted to be called an asshole because I bought a SUV in 2004! There must be far better reasons I’m an asshole, right?

Oh wait, this is America, where the sum value of your character is based on the type of car you drive, what bumper stickers are on it, the town you live in and the school your kids attend.

Fuck. I am an asshole.

Maybe I’ll reconsider my vote between now and Tuesday, or, maybe I’ll go on and make a tasteless joke out of what is so painfully the biggest joke of all. The United States electoral process.

Its recipe of fraud laid right in front of our very silent eyes by packs of shallow, guilt-ridden elected assholes on one side and packs of stupid, misogynistic elected jackals on the other.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

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Do Nothing

26 Oct 480699_434354286623399_1380376637_n

If you ever want to incite anger in a person who wants to (badly) be under your skin… do nothing.

Last night I was in a heated conversation with a person important to me and his frustration built to a climax and these words (which I have heard many times) rushed from his lips, “You know what your problem is?? You have too much time on your hands. You have too much time to sit around and do nothing. You THINK too much!!”

I laughed, reminding him of things that for some reason escape the memory of every critic I have. I take care of two small children on my own. As in, 90% of their life is my chore alone. One of them is only out of my company for a mere 2 1/2 hours a day. I work 20ish hours from home every week. My house is perfectly clean and organized, as are my children, at all times. Every t is crossed.

I suppose I master single housewifery so effortlessly, and free of common complaint, that it appears that a ghost maid does all of my chores.

After my middle class tasks are checked off, the time I am left with is mine. And what I do with it is usually nothing. I love to snuggle up in a chair and think the afternoon away or simply read a book. I am personally not moved by the gracelessness of over-scheduling or the yawn-inspring American life du jour of working towards goals of popular charities (where is the fruit of these efforts? Forgive me, but what has actually changed?) and nonstop 5Ks.

Our culture is limited to charities, complaining and runs. Our society is made up of people unable to say no, even to checkout charities. Have you ever wondered who exactly is the recipient of that $1 you gave? You, only doing so because you didn’t want to “look” like you were uncharitable to the stranger in line behind you. Or, perhaps (I’ll be the critic here) because you follow, to a perfect mindless T, our culture where saying no is unheard of.

Left smugly unimpressed by society’s current standards, I follow my own rules, my own standards. In my mind and home, the bar for thoughtfulness, liberty, and pleasure is so high it incites anger in yokels who accuse me of thinking too much.

Next time you feel like stepping outside of our busy, stupid culture, try sitting around doing nothing. Try thinking. (But, please, not about schedules or charities.)

It’ll scare the shit out of everyone you know.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

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Moronia

10 Oct Summer Girls

This is something I wrote one afternoon last summer. Rereading it made me miss the summer sun, the longing, the books I read, my emancipation and even my frustration. The first summer after my first marriage ended is over now and a bittersweet, unknown future with new frustrations and expectations is wide-open, ahead of me.

…..

I was in the middle of finishing up a number of books the past couple of days, all of which were not “mommy porn.”

Nothing, nothing can take the sexy out of sex more than the term “mommy porn.” Except maybe the image of three chubby, middle-aged mommies hitting up the local fantasy shop in the middle of the day, only to laugh at and name the fat blue vibrators they bought each other.

I don’t read books like 50 Shades of Grey for a number of reasons, and since I’m feeling generous and chatty today I’ll share them.

Well, for one, I do not need anybody else’s help in forming my own dirty mind. I have a number of person- and place-specific dirty thoughts that I have spun every gorgeous tiny detail of. I think it’s a crime against humanity (I’m not kidding) that I cannot act on these images my imagination created, because of ball-and-chain ideas and traditions such as marriage or staying married because you don’t want to hurt your kids. (I don’t think there is anything more perverted in the entire world than the fact that people stay married because of their kids. “I love my kids so much, I deny my desire and sexuality. Merry Christmas Johnny, I hope you appreciate this gift, this sacrifice I am giving you.”) I think this idea of commitment over personal happiness is WHY stupid unsexy things like “mommy porn” exist. If humans could lick the one they want instead of asking, “What’s for dinner, dear?” then “mommy porn” would be obsolete.

Another reason I don’t read books like 50 shades is that I am prone to fall for stupidity and novelty. As my own chaperone, however, I enforce the avoidance of dumb books.

I keep busy, straightening out my dirty mind and derelict ways mostly by reading history or nature books. Well, today I finished the last 70 pages of my dear but dense Edwin Black eugenics book, and yesterday I had finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Suffice to say, my mind was in the hard world of the first half of the 20th century. Every page I read in the last two days was a constant reminder of how people lived through poverty, starvation, and World Wars one and two. And to top it off, unless you were really, really up to snuff, the government was trying to sterilize you via the insanity of rich people.

While I was doing what I do best, sitting half-naked in the sun reading, my mom came outside and offered me a little Prosecco. My mom loves to report ridiculous news. Maybe she is shocked by what she’s sharing or maybe she knows it’ll get me going but as I put my book down, put my t-shirt on, and sipped my drink she said, “Ingrid, did you hear? Hooded sweatshirts for children cannot have strings anymore. It’s been outlawed. The Burlington Coat Factory was fined one million dollars because they sold sweatshirts with strings.”

I shook my head and thought of my dreamy vintage homeboy journalist H.L. Mencken (who was still smokin’ hot even though he had that same goofy haircut Moe from the Three Stooges had) and his term for the dumb middle class “Booboisie.” All I could say was “retards” as I continued to shake my head.

How? How are children going to have a lick, a single lick of sense in the future? “Johnny, you cannot have a string on your sweatshirt, because I don’t think you can be trusted with common sense. You may end up strangling yourself because I’m too stupid myself to tell you that the string is there in the first place so that when it’s windy or cold and you want to protect your head you can tighten the hood. I don’t know that because I don’t have any common sense either, sweetie.”

This is exactly like the argument that kids can’t be trusted with a glass, so parents let them drink from potentially toxic plastic cups. If you don’t think teaching your kid how to be careful enough to hold a glass without breaking it is not a simple, valuable, common-sense lesson, then what common sense lessons are worth being taught? How to be unhappily married and “get by” by reading dumb shit like “mommy porn?”

The people in the books I read, they had to fight every second for their lives, they had to have common sense. They had to fight poverty, live through wars. Today people fight to get strings removed from sweatshirts. Today people read books hideously described as “mommy porn.”

Frustrated, I sit and sip my Prosecco, half nude in the sun. I’ll keep getting my black lace panties in a bunch and keep reading books that are NOT mommy porn. I’ll wait until my own oppression is sweetly lifted by the arrival of a tack-sharp, smart-ass prince to show up, shaking his own head. Maybe he comes straight out of the past with Moe’s bad haircut.

© Mad Question Asking – 2012 All Rights Reserved

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