Recently, I've been thinking about the men in my life-- the ones that have gone, the few that remain. The bridges I've burned recently, and the bridges I've burned very recently, in a self-inflicted drunken stupor designed to break through my inhibitions and loosen the stranglehold that my insecurity has gained over my true feelings.

Linda's life lessons learned the hard way number 467: You never appreciate a stranglehold until you're crying at a moniter at three in the morning, typing violently to two seperate people that they never cared about you, those bastards.

Clearly, things have been rocky between me and certain people-- particularly, with the guy I've felt the closest too as of late, Elorza. Our conversations lately, drunken and sober alike, have alerted me to the fact that I've become too focused on him, missing him like crazy, calling him in desperation whenever something goes wrong, giving a level of caring I simply can't ask to have reciprocated, not anymore, not at this distance.

Tonight, after my workout, I started working on the song I intend to perform at two of my coworker's Karaoke birthday, and somewhere in the midst of it, I slipped into a fantasy involving my performing a duet with my hypothetical perfect best friend. An imaginary man that I who's attributes I will now discuss at length. First of all, I should qualify the male thing: I value my friendships with females just as much as I do those with males, but it's very simply two different roles-- the male best friend, the female best friend. These two people have never had very much overlap. But before we spend all our time apologizing for that, we'll move on to the meat of this entry, which is piecing together my favorite things about the other men in my life to create him, perfect platonic partner-in-crime extraordinaire. This theoretical Karaoke partner would have to have the following:

• Casey's intelligence and quick-thinking wit. And his surprising, if seldom witnessed, capacity for empathy.
• Chad's superb listening skills and incredible kindness.
• Dan's enthusiasm, for his music and my writing, and, occasionally, for crazy silly bullshit questions like "Who would win? A Ninja, or a pirate?"
• Jeff's willingness to make an ass of himself, and his appreciation for private jokes.
• Jeremey's singular knowledge of the inner-workings of crippling insecurity, and his sense of humor, and his ability to leave fucking wonderful answering machine messages.
• Mike's dependability.
• Sam's sense of adventure-- his genuine willingness to get in a car in the middle of the night and drive to New York, or whever, while others just talk about it. The side of himself he shows when we sit together and listen to "Hallelujah", that soft quality of his voice when we both know how much we mean to each other.
• Elorza's egotistical humility-- the effort he puts into crazy arguments about insanely idealistic principles. The fact that he has, so recently that I cannot yet let go of the dizzying gratitude of it, saved me from myself. The way he never lets me feel like a burden on him.

It's important for me to be clear that my mind reels, even as a I write this, with a list of the things about these people that my ideal best friend could not have, but that's not really the spirit of this post. Each and everyone of those people has faults that I am glaringly aware of: some I have accepted, some, I continue to forge useless battles against. Still, it's undeniable that I love them all, though that probably comes as news to a few of them. (It should be said that there are qualities of people I've met and come to respect or care about more recently that belong on the list, that had to be left off so that I could make that blanket "love" statement, which I feel needed to be said. However, without having lifted the following people to an L-word status, and with no intention to, I find myself more and more drawn to Scott's good-hearted personability, (s) Bill M's confident but unobtrusive charm, and (m) Bill M's endless patience and uncanny knowledge of the Gilmore Girls.)

While I'm able to point out the very seperate things I love about each of these people, any one of them can tell you that the amount of overlap for the things I feel for them is nauseatingly large. I got into putting in terms of music, earlier: My residual feelings for Casey can best be summed up in Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer", a song I first fell in love with while I was going through a rocky patch with Chad. Last summer, I made a mix CD for Sam, which included Matchbox Twenty's "Disease", a song I have, in the past, associated heavily with Jeremey, "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls, which I used to listen to every time a conversation between Elorza and I got deep, and "The Weakness in Me", another one that conjures memories of Chad. "Caramel", by Suzanne Vega, and also on the CD, was completely about Sam until a conversation between Elorza and I the other night had me playing it on repeat. And Sondre Lerche's "Things you Call Fate", well, that's a little bit of all of them.

A lot of overlap with each other-- suprisingly little overlap with the conspicuously unmentioned man in my life, the man in my life, really. Zack is the only person in my life with a balance of all the desirable characteristics that condusive to being able to spend my whole life with him, on a full-time basis. So, what if this hypothetical man did exist, this collaboration of all the other loves of my life? What would be there, then, to elevate Zack to the soul-strung status at which he now resides? The easiest answer is simply this his Zackness, the ineffable quality that makes him him, and makes me in love with him. Put more eloquently, by Justin Huntly McCarthy:

"If you were to die to-morrow, I might tell you this much to-night. A woman may love a man because he is brave, or because he is comely,or because he is wise, or gentle-- for a thousand thousand reasons. But the best of all reasons for a woman loving a man is just because she loves him, without rhyme and without reason, because heaven wills it, because earth fulfils it, because his hand is of the right size to hold her heart in its hollow."
~Excerpt from If I Were King

Zack has his own music, too. Our song, "Moon River", and, as mentioned a few posts ago, Death Cab's "I Will Follow You into the Dark". But in this same vein, of love for love's sake, I'd say "It Had To Be You" is also quite appropriate.


Zack can't be my best friend, though, except in that saccharin "giving lip service to your husband at in an award-acceptance speech" sort of way. He can't fake quick-witted intellect, doesn't have that drive for adventure, and his listening skills are sub-part. And, worst of all, he'd never do Karaoke with me. And that's what this is really all about.

FieryGwenivere: if we were going to do a duet for karaoke, what would it be?
xKxOx: hah, that's a good question
xKxOx: i'm a huge fan of ain't no mountain high enough, but that's way too cliche for me
xKxOx: i dunno tho, i've never been vury good at picking karaoke songs
FieryGwenivere: I was so thinking about that earlier, Ain't No Mountain High Enough
FieryGwenivere: Like, that was the one I would have chosen
FieryGwenivere: That or "Something Stupid"
FieryGwenivere: but you wrote me that e-mail all those years ago about how you were listening to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", and suddenly you couldn't bear to leave me as upset as I was when I ended our conversation. It was the first e-mail you ever wrote me, actually
xKxOx: oh yea?
xKxOx: i don't remember much, but that's always been a pretty prominent song for me, despite it's popularity
xKxOx: i dunno what somethign stupid is tho
FieryGwenivere: Heh.
FieryGwenivere: The title line just fucking fits us, that's all
xKxOx: hahaha. I can run wit dat
FieryGwenivere: "Then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like 'I love you'."
xKxOx: that is pretty perfect
xKxOx: kind of
FieryGwenivere: Plus, in the episode of the Simpsons where Sideshow Bob marries Selma (Patty?), they totally do a duet of it at Karaoke
xKxOx: haha, hehehe, i like that
FieryGwenivere: :-) I do, too.
FieryGwenivere: But here's the critical question
FieryGwenivere: Would you ever actually sing a Karaoke duet with me?
xKxOx: I'm selma, no question. hah!
xKxOx: you kidding, i do anything like that
xKxOx: dance in front of a crowd alone
.xKxOx: sing at the top of my lungs despite my horrible voice
FieryGwenivere: :-) Ah, dip
xKxOx: i'm all about that



Then again, maybe I've just misjudged the situation.

On with it.

"Well, hellhounds on your tail now, once again, Boy.
It's groping on your leg until it sleeps.
The emptiness will fill your heart with sorrow.
'Cause it's not what you make, it's what you leave."


In these words from the song "Misery", Green Day demonstrates an unsettlingly insightful knowledge of one of those fundamental truths of life that so many people lose sight of: too often, the circumstances of your life will not be driven by the effort you put in, day after day, to foster relationships, shape careers, and make what you want of your life. Too often, they will be determined by the moments where you think, feel, or pretend that these things aren't important to you.

Take a relationship that's had it's ups and downs, one that has proven it can weather frustration, anger and sorrow. But sprinkle in a dash of indignation, and you have a recipe for disaster. Take a lifelong goal, one that's driven you around every curve of your life, and see what happens when you let go of the wheel.

Take a friendship, one that's seen better days. Two people. A connection. Maybe one or both of them has gotten off the track. Maybe one of them seems to have stopped trying to find it again. And maybe the other says some things that she can't frankly remember whether or not she was right to say.


What he needs to understand is the way it feels to watch from the sidelines as something you care about lets go. What he needs to understand is that not putting forth that effort is like spitting in her face, telling her that something she loves isn't worth his time.


"Tough Love" is kind of the ugly stepchild of love. It's underappreciated, it looks different, and people act like it's not even a part of the family. There's this criteria to love that we, the media-minded, have put in play. It's gotta be soft yet supportive. It's gotta be intense but joyful. It's gotta be Barbie Dreamhouse pink and in frilly cursive lettering. It's gotta be a hallmark card or a teddy bear or a hug.

Whatever it is, it's certainly got nothing to do with concepts like "the truth hurts" or "it takes someone who cares about you to tell you what you don't want to hear." It's not about making someone take their medicine when they're sick, even if it tastes bad; making them clean up a mess when it's theirs. It's about politely ignoring someone's faults, even if they're more like fault lines. Whatever it is, it's definitely can't be looking someone straight in the eye and telling them they not only can do better, it's their responsibility to.


"Step one, you say 'We need to talk.'
He walks; you say 'Sit down. It's just a talk.'
He smiles politely back at you,
You stare politely right on through.
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame.
You begin to wonder why you came."


Later, if she is alone, she will wonder about all the things she was supposed to understand: how much he was hurting, how lost he felt. She'll have plenty of time to think about all the years between them and plenty of reminders in case she's not inclined: christmas songs they used to dance in the street to; phrases they used to use with each other over and over again, movies they watch, plans they made. Promises they made. She'll have plenty of time to think about those, and, without him there to force her to be defensive, she'll wonder. How much of what she said was below the belt, how much of what she did was in his best interest. How much of what she felt was really about him.

She won't have answers. Without him there, all she has is the questions.


"Where did I go wrong?
I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness."


There are no answers, probably, just a hundred different sides to the story and too many feelings too remember. His, hers, the poor unwanted stepchild's, and the seemingly absent viewpoint of Hallmark card love. In the end, there are only two things floating around her mind at night, when she's alone, that really ring true. It was both of our responsibility to do better. And this, this is what happens if you go too long letting yourself believe you don't care.


"I would have stayed up with you all night,
Had I known how to save a life."
~The Fray, How to Save a Life

On with it.

You know what can be a pain in the ass about bearing it all in a public forum? The bearing it all in a public forum part.

Five and a half years, I have been blogging here, and I've had to learn hard lessons about what is and is not a wise thing to assign your name to on world wide web. Because it's called "world wide" for a reason.

In the past five years, in no particular order:

• A post about suicide has landed me in a psych ward.
• A handful of teachers in high school knew my every mood, from my burning teen angst to my raging hormonal urges. (The humilation over these being public, I've since learned, is very much worth it to actually have them.)
• Friendships have been strained, or irrevocably broken. It was a post here that cemented Jeremey's anger for me (which originated from...a post on another blog.), the lack of recognition that has alienated close friends as well and friends who only felt that we were close, and my inability to hold back here that forever cast me as the in the irrational emo girl role. Though, to be fair, actually being an irrational emo girl didn't help that any.
• A past boyfriend found out about a lie that I had kept from him for years.
• A friend of Lucy's, with, from what I can assume, help from this blog, has cultivated a very negative opinion of me which I believe will result in the end of our relationship.
• One of Zack's best friends from high school, and, according to my hit counter, a very regular reader, has become privy to every up and down of our relationship.
• My father-in-law has taken Zack aside and let him know that he is aware that I'm bisexual. Glad I wasn't there for that conversation.
• Most recently, I've found out that Zack's...other set of parents, his mom and step dad, have now become readers, gaining "both positive and negative insight to me as a person." Oh, goody.
• The whole world has seen my most fundamental weakness, a challenge with shakes me to the core: Screwing up the use of homonyms like "there" and "their", or "write" and "right." This is not all write.
• Perhaps the greatest insult to all the injury is the countless times I've had this gem thrown at me: "I only get to know you through your blog. It's as if you're closer to that website than you are to me!"
  

In this all-too frequent situation, where someone in my life comes to me indignant, angry, or hurt, looking me in the eye and slinging the accusation that I care more about words than I do about people, that I have a deeper connection with the hundreds of pages of babble I've spit out over the years than I do to a living, breathing human being, there is only one thing I can say to them: "Well, duh."

What is it exactly that people expect? Firstly, the way you open up to a real-world person, face to face, is a completely different process. There are different vulnerabilities, different consequences. As far as I'm concerned, as far as life has consistently taught me, you have to be much more discerning in these situations. It's so easy to be misrepresented in something you want desperately not to be misrepresented in when you have to deal with the exact implications of your words on a person-to-person level. It's so easy to connect, and then fear disconnection, rejection, a breach of security; heartbreak. And, more daunting than any of this is how easy it is to sound like a complete idiot when you aren't allowed to revise. The only saving grace, really, is that you won't know whether I've fucked up the homonyms when I'm talking to you. But this is easy cancelled out by having to put up to listening to your blah-blah-blah.

Perhaps less cynically is this argument: Here, we have five and a half years of my life, of my passion, of the one thing I have consistently wanted as long as I can remember: to write with relative eloquence, with makeshift insight and the dream of depth, and being accepted for it. Whatever I cannot say to a person in life, because of social constraint, awkwardness, shame...here, I can pour it out and tell you to take it or leave it. Here, I am the master of my domain, and I what I say goes. Resultingly, what we have here is not just hundreds of thoughts, thousands of words, millions of emotions. What we have here is five and a half year's worth of me, tangibly, undeniably. What you read here is five and a half year's worth of my growth as a person, the only thing in my life that I've cared enough about to master slowly, and the slowly ripening fruit of that long-winded labor. I am a girl who thinks in metaphors, and feels in adjectives (Or better yet, when available, particularly descriptive nouns.) I maintain that there is a healthy amount of caricature in my writing, but it's a carefully honed disguise, a process that I have decided on, and that is just as telling as every ounce of sincerity; more truthful than truth, as it were.

If what you endeavor to be is closer to me than me, well, hell, go for it, you crazy bastard. But take heed of these two, equally important warnings: 1) It's not fucking pretty in here, and 2) you'll have to learn to shut the hell up.

As far as all the consequences, all the awkwardness, all the seriously uncomfortable information that I've lavished on the unsuspecting reader, well, it's worth it, I guess. The idea of all three of my in-law's reading the ins and outs of my marriage with their son (more outs than ins, if you catch my drift) makes me, well, frankly, slightly nauseous. At least they know now that their assumptions of our overnight activities early on in our relationship (too early on for me to have considered that, for the record) were wrong; I've always felt the need to correct that: I don't exactly have that "European approach" to sex (Shudder). No, your son is not pussy-whipped; on the contrary, he's stuck by my side through over three years of hellishly celebate marriage based on something different entirely, something about me as a person. What that may be, I have no fucking clue, but I get the feeling that getting into long-winded conversations with various parents about the things they've learned about him through me, via a blog that he's never more than grudgingly consented to, is not exactly going to help things.

And while whether or not he is fair game is up for debate, there's an unspoken rule here that I'm afraid I feel the need to speak: The more delicate aspects of this writing isn't up for discussion between me and my in-laws. Period. (Thanks to Chuck for abiding by this for as long as he's been reading.)

Boy-howdy, was that a long-winded way of saying that. Well, you know me. A little too well, it seems.

On with it.

"So I will find my fears and face them,Or I will cower like a dog.
I will kick and scream or kneel and plead.
I fight like hell
To hide that I've given up."
~Bright Eyes, "Another Travelling Song"

The first post of a new year. 2007. A little nervous, a little unprepared, maybe, but I'm pretty fucking happy to be out of 2006.

2006 was a year of great music. If I had to pick one artist to sum it up, I'd say Bright Eyes. Songs like "Waste of Paint" and "Take is Easy (Love Nothing)" brought me into a closer understanding of my weaknesses, and the weaknesses of those around me, and I reacted with venom that might have poisoned more than it was supposed to. Songs like "Going for the Gold" and "No Lies, Just Love" reacquainted me with the kind of hopeless pain that only a shaky voice can iterate. And I let the album "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning", with it's sentimental push towards a brighter dawn wrap up my year. Here is an album everyone should run out and buy. Here is a song that haunts you, a rhythym that drives you, a question that haunts you: "Why are you scared to dream of god// When it's salvation that you want?"

The last couple of months have slowed with the melody of "Lua", marched with the beat of "Road to Joy", and come to the realization, "We are nowhere, and it's Now."

Bright Eyes can do the music of mourning better than anyone. Bright Eyes remembers the rhythym of regret. There's poetry in pain, singing strains of sadness and sorrow. Bright Eyes is the kind of music you need, if you're about to have a year like I just had.

It was a year of great music. But it wasn't a great year.


I am making a conscious switch this year. This year, I will rise from the minor chords. I'm coming up, scratching out, fighting back. This year, I will overcome. Or it will be my last.


I am waiting for this song to come to an end. Then I will press "stop."


The music of 2007 will be provided Ani DiFranco, with maybe a little Etheridge or some classic Joni. The music of this year will be all about energy and determination, strength that only women can understand, the kind that resides, often latent, within long, lean, unassuming muscles. This is the kind of restrained power that only springs forth when cornered; a woman is a fighter of nessecity where a man is a fighter of pride.

I haven't always owned up to being a woman, but that is what I am. And that is how I will overcome.


I stumbled upon an old Ani CD that I hadn't listened to in ages the other day, put it in, and I remembered what it feels like to listen to her-- not just the slow stuff that has been in my stock of MP3's the whole time, but her spunky stuff, the gumption, the moxie; the politics and the anger, the love and the indignation. I had forgotten.

This is the year I will end my own personal battle with Vaginismus. And when that's done, or concurrently, I will fight on the front of every other woman's battle with it. This year, I will not take "no" for answer. This year, I will not let myself give it.

"My thigh have been involved in many accidents,
And now I can't get insured,
And I don't need to be lured by you.
My cunt is built like a wound that won't heal,
And now you don't have to ask,
'Cause you know how I feel."
~Out of Habit

There's a lot to say about things lately, more than I have time for. People and places. Resolutions and reservation. Music and memories; a moment, a week ago, in the cab of a truck with someone that I cared about in 2006, and the things between us that pushed us apart, us so like magnets forced to either repel or attract. The dichotomy of roles between us; two people who see the best in each other, want the best for each other, are their best when with each other, on one end. On the other, two people who can't seem to help but act in such a way that totally undermines their mutual respect. I suppose this could mean a lot of things, but for me, the only thing that resonates is a moment alone with him, listening to a song in the dark, leaning on him; his earnest request that I not avoid-- abandon, more accurately-- him in the future, and the way it looked as a I watched a single tear fall from my eye and soak into the fabric of his shirt as I apologized, promised him that I wouldn't do it again.


The way it felt, several hours later, when, with a quiet acknowledgement of the hours in between, we both knew I couldn't keep that promise.

Loving people, it's a bitch.


It was a male singer, the song we were listening to in the truck. You ever notice how women will listen to, and love, music by artists of either gender, but men almost never listen to female artists? Kudos to the Chicago Jew for loving Ani.

So, now to dive, headlong into 2007. Wish me luck.


On with it.


"Everything I do is judged,
And they mostly get it wrong, but oh well.
'Cause the bathroom mirror has not budged,
And the woman who lives there can tell
The truth from the stuff that they say.
She looks me in the eye
And says 'Would you prefer the easy way?
No? Well, okay then. Don't cry.'"
~Joyful Girl

It's December 27th. Two days after christmas. Five and a half months or so after I made a deal with myself, this summer. Gave myself a deadline. A deadline of six months.


2006 has arguably been the worst year of my life, with special emphasis on the late spring through summer. This was a time when Zack and I, buckling under the pressures of the problems our life together has fostered, took turns hurting each other. I've realized, recently, that I can't regret any of the things that I did to him on their own; that I have to regret the entire era of our relationship, as a whole. (I feel, as I write this, a hint of deja vu, so please forgive if I am being repetitive.) I've realized that my actions weren't those of a good person or a bad person, a promiscuous person or a faithful person, a person in love or a person in a bad relationship. My actions, in a way, weren't actions at all, but reactions. In a way, this can be said, too, of the things Zack did to me. In a way, we can blame each other infinitely, and everyone else, and everything else.

And at some point, though, we both have to take ownership of the ways we hurt each other. Under different circumstances, this concept-- that we both did what we did, and for whatever reason, we had control of ourselves going in, so ultimately the responsibility lies with us-- might have caused either of us to be unable to forgive the other. But we've accepted each other's failings, the moment when each of us fell from grace, because we both know what we tripped on.

Vaginismus.

Five and a half months ago, I gave myself a deadline. I realized that the vitality of my marriage, which once seemed so terribly immortal, hinged upon my ability to give Zack what he needs: sex. I realized, further, that of all the many things I've wanted to be in my life, and there have been many, the one I want know more than all the others combined is to be his, and no matter how I negotiate it with myself, I'm fairly sure that I don't want to be anything else at all if I can't be that. And I realized that while I've been making an effort all of this time, there was a nagging little seed of avoidance with in me, rooted more intricately than I knew, that kept causing me to put it off, the way I put off everything of importance. I let myself believe that I had all the time in the world to make this problem better, and I let the disease that this truly is take that time to make itself worse.

Now, I cannot function half as well as I once could. Now, I have built up so much baggage surrounding anything sexual, and I do mean much more than even those who have met me could possibly understand, that I have simply made it a non-issue in my life. Like someone who is afraid of bridges, I take alternate routes. I deal with the needs of others as nessecary, but ignore my own, or address them with machines designed to make intimacy obsolete. When I am not near a bed, or a partner, I feel the desperate need to relearn the art of pleasure; when pleasure is a possibility, I sabotage myself.


Listening to the hypnosis MP3, I have learned that if I am ever to cross the moat of frigity to slay the dragon of vaginismus, I must first defeat the castle guard that is my own cynicism. I've spoken of him here before as my inner critic, addressing him in terms of self-esteem and calling him "Jiminy Critic." I've given him a voice and told you all exactly what he has to say. And while my awareness of the destructive things he has to say about me was peaked, I did not realize that this self-worth-attacker by day was moonlighting as the soulmate of my sexual dysfunction.

He's telling me now that this personifying thing has gone too far. That I've used cast one too many metaphors, and I must reel them back in. He's not half bad to have around, when I write.

But when I'm listening to this MP3 that's instructing me to relax, and he's relentlessly mocking every word that's supposed to lull me into a state of suggestibility, he's not so helpful.

"Your muscles are melting like butter-- there's some imagery I've never heard before. She must have learned that in Hypnotherapy Clichés 101."

He disagrees with her when she tells me my stresses are melting away. Points out when the things she says come off of condescending. And just laughs when she gets too sacharin.


It occurs to me that he does not sound totally unlike my father, who taught my whole family to make cynical jokes out of anything that hits too close for comfort. The feeling I get as Jiminy battles my whispering voice that pleads with me to just let go, it seems, is somewhat similar to one I experienced on Christmas day: I forced my family, finally, to watch Love Actually with me, at long last. During one scene where one character is discovering her husband's affair, my father pseudo-jokingly criticizes the wife for snooping, and the husband's carelessness in leaving evidence to be discovered. Every time the couple graces the screen, his chiding gets louder, more forced, and it occurs to all of us that he is not really joking, just hiding his discomfort at the idea. My sister starts making comments back at him, sharp barbs amid the guise of laughter, that she'd always assumed he had experience with the topic. I try to ignore the truth behind it all-- watching my mother and father interact, seeing her forced strength when it comes to issues of philandering and loyalty, it's clear to see that somewhere in their 30-plus years together, some infidelity has occurred. I know this about my father, and accept it. I see the tolerance in my mother, and envy and pity it all at once. But as Cathy makes another "Joking" comment, and my mother joins in, I tune it out. Acknowledgement of this issue isn't the kind of family activity I had planned for this Christmas.


Believing, really believing, that eventually husbands cheat, eventually wives must turn a blind eye, or forgive, or cease to be wives-- this doesn't help the vaginismus. I don't know how much of it is fueled by what any more, but it never escapes my attention when I see or hear something that I can't help but believe is making it worse.

I'm thinking about yoga-- finding my inner self, forcing myself to practice at quiet, at acquiescence, at acceptance and moving on with the flow. I want to shut up Jiminy; slay the guard and start working on crossing the goddamned moat.

But it occurs to me that part of me doesn't want him gone. It's not just the part of me that wants to keep me safe from penetration-- or perhaps it is; there's more than one way to be penetrated, after all. Beyond the defensive reasons, though, I hear myself thinking that perhaps my outspoken little critic is the most interesting part of me, and he eagerly confirms the suspicion. We East-coasters wear our cynicism like a badge. We consider it a habit of intellectuals to congratulate ourselves on our free-thinking anger, to find our daily pride in moments when our comebacks are particularly brutal. We are warriors with minds faster than bullets, pens mightier than swords. This is the kind of cruel detachment that builds empires, makes millions, writes sitcoms. Careers have been built this way, and, furthermore, this is the way I've always wanted to build mine.

I don't hate Jiminy; I embrace him. I laugh along with him, because he's so undeniably a part of me. He is my father's voice, and also, perhaps, the thing I've always loved best about my father.


I fantasize that there's something like an on/off switch to be found; that I'll be able to listen to him when I want him, and tune him out when I don't. I suspect, however, that it doesn't work this way. That there's a choice to be made: that I need to be either in or out.

"No." Corrects Jiminy. "You need to put out and take it in."


To take a line from Sin City, I can't bring myself to tell him to shut up. Maybe he's just a part of my psyche. Maybe he's just a product of a guarded, sarcastic upbringing. Maybe he's just a figment of my imagination.

None of this stops the bastard from being absolutely right.


On with it.

My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency presents: Best and Worst Commercials, 2006 Holiday Edition.

Worst: Started airing a few years ago, but I'd happilly forgotten it until now: A series a of beautiful people, in beautiful places, with beautiful wind making their beautiful clothing whip around all their shapeliness look into the camera and send you a deep message for the holidays: It's not your clothes, it's not your music, it's not where you live and it's not how you dress that tells the most about who you really are.

It's your watch.

This christmas season, Seiko wants you to cast off your old concepts of vanity and self-importance...and adopt some newer, more expensive ones. This commercial, sadly, isn't online, but you can get a pretty good overview of what I'm taking about with their website's flash presentation.

Casey's reaction tends to make me think that I'm possibly the only person in the world who finds it so damn amusing, but hey, there it is.



Best: As much as I haven't always loved the Mad TV Cast's Sierra Mist commercials, I must say that I found this year's Commercial for Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash, featuring the Holiday Hawk, to be quite unexpectedly enjoyable. Check it out here.

On that note, YouTube is, one of these days, gonna go ahead and make my commercial-describing skills completely obsolete. How will I keep my place, gently embedded in the hearts of minds of my beloved readers?

Why bringing you news of ingenious internet advertising campaigns, like this one for the Philips Bodygroom, first! Don't miss the music video, or the description of "Where to Shave", both located in the main menu.


And since it seems the internet has made my job a great deal easier this year, I will sign off for now, wishing you a Merry Christmas, and reminding you, this Holiday season, to keep the spirit of joy in your heart, to give freely to others, to love, and to give every person, rich and poor alike, the same treatment, no matter their manner or apparel.

Unless they're not wearing a watch.


On with it.

I check my mail today and find the current e-mail in my inbox:

To: Suedecaramel@gmail.com
From: 66anonymous66@hotmail.com
Date: Saturday, December 9, 2006 8:55 PM
Subject: Hey Operation Suporvisor

The shit is about to hit the fan

Consider yourself warned

This seriously freaks me out. I have no idea what this could possibly be about, or who it could be from. It obviously has something to do with work, because "Operation Suporvisor" (sic) is my title. But I sat here for an hour trying to think of any thing that I've done wrong that could possibly "hit the fan", and I can't come up with a single goddamned thing. I've been working my ass off. I love my bosses and they like me, I think. And I love that store. I want nothing more than to see it's success, and I feel like I've made that clear. I've been nice to everybody, which is easy-- Iike almost everyone there. I am wracking my brain for anything I've said that could be considered offensive, and just can't come up with anything. I honestly have nothing to worry about.

But I'm really worried. I love this job.

I hope this figures itself out sooner than later.



On with it.

I finish my book today, close it, and find myself still at work three and a half hours after I should have left. It is a rare thing for me to finish a book, though I probably read more than the average person. Most of the novels I endeavor to start reading just don't make it across my finish line, the most recent being Dave Barry's Tricky Business and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. There is no pattern here.

I am wandering around the store, half looking for a replacement for the force that has just come and filled my life then left me standing in a void, half simply having no reason to go home. Bill, who I am drawn to, is rearranging the iPod accessories section. I strike up a conversation which, since it is not directly about work, makes me instantly self-conscious about what I have to say. When I was in elementary school, this kind of discomfort might have caused me to lash out, picking a fight with the object of my interest. I am an adult now, though, so instead, I just pick a fight with an object.

"These organic yoga mats annoy me." I say in his general direction, and he cocks his head. I pick one out of it's display and examin it's grainy brown color, a condescending hue if I ever saw one. "Was there really a need for this? Were we clear-cutting a forest of yoga mat trees?" I am miserably aware of the fact that there was a much more suave and intelligent way to say this, and I try to ignore that, only to find myself hoping that he doesn't pick up on the larger flaw, which is, of course, that if yoga mats were really made from yoga mat trees, than they'd already be organic. When he's still said nothing in reply, I tell him, more quietly, "Sometimes, I go on rants. You'll find that out about me."

"Okay. But they are a good development." He picks one up and reads the label. "These are made out of 100% Pico Plant fiber."

"Are you implying that we're running out of vinyl?"

"No, but these will decompose in a landfill." He says earnestly. Bill is one of those people that is so nice, it's impossible; so non-judgemental, you end up judging yourself in his presence just to make up for the deficit. "They create less waste."

"Thank god," I say, sarcastically. "I always say, the biggest challenge our environment faces right now is all the unrecycled yoga mats that pollute our air and water." In truth, I simply hadn't thought about it from this angle. But I wasn't to give up my armor of cynicism.

"Well, it's a start." He says, pleasantly, and goes back to his work. I turn my back to him and straighten a few books, wanting to rant on about how there might be more global good accomplished if people learned to be fiscally responsible with, say, the thirty dollar difference between the price of the organic yoga mat and it's cheaper synthetic cousin, or even sent that money off to Greenpeace, if that floats their boat. I wanted to point out that they could use that money to buy organic snacks for a rally against the excessive burning of fossil fuels or the tiny little cages they put those bleeding heart chickens into before they become McNuggets. I wanted to ask him to be my friend.

Instead, I say, "Great. Let's give those yoga people one more thing to feel self-righteous about."

He turned to look at me again. "You are on a rant, aren't you?"



On the ride home, I wonder if my bitterness was fueled, in part, by a yoga person I know who, at that exact moment, was neglecting to get back to me about tentative plans we had made, and it strikes me that it's always the decent people who motivate me to act like an asshole. I turn on the radio to washout this thought; 94.9, in it's all-holiday-music mode, is playing "Let There be Peace on Earth" performed by some country singer with a twangy voice. I listen, and am brightened, if just for a moment, by the simple words, and that special, subtle effect Christmas can have on you, to make you enjoy something you'd despise eleven months out of the year. Then, in the next verse, the country singer's voice is replaced by the voice of a young boy. It's meant to illicit feelings of innocence and nostalgia, carefully chosen to sound immature and somewhat nasal; suddenly, all I can think of is some far more talented child who auditioned, getting passed over because some record exec. with an eye on the bottom line said, not to the boy's face, "Nah, this kid's too good. We need to a kid that sounds like a kid. A common denominator." All I can think of is that kid not getting a callback, and wondering why. Hearing the song on the radio and being bitter, knowing he's better than Nosey McCan'tSing, but secretly wondering if maybe he really isn't.

I don't think I quite fit into the target demographic, here. Clearly, I am not the common denominator, either.

I pull into my drive way, and check my cell: still no text message from the yoga girl. I think about landfills, and how dishonest they are: let's take all this trash that we can't get rid of, trash that'll never be anything but trash, and bury it. Wait for some green grass to grow back, it'll look nice. We're making our own geography here. The rolling hills of Scotland, almost. Why not just a warehouse, I wonder. And where were the yoga people when that decision was being made?

A big pile of trash covered by a thin layer of soil and grass; it's not much of a disguise, but, then, neither is picking a fight with a yoga mat. I can't help but wonder who came up with this concept, and why.


On with it.

I feel, lately, the need to be fake. Things that are going on in my head, I feel like I can't write them here, for the first time. The guy I can't allow myself to expose my continued vulnerability to, anymore. The girl who I have no let understand how badly I want to get to know her. Problems with Zack's family that are not mine to publicize.

At night, I lay in bed and these things swirl through my mind, and I feel the need to commit them to paper, or the modern day equivalent. The process I've developed to deal with my day-to-day problems involves a detailed equation, reconciled only when I've put it into words precise and rhythmic enough to be worthy of an audience, then shared. In the end, the sum of my circumstances and neuroses is humanity, the story of my character, and if it's written well enough, than people will love me for the confession, no matter how heinous the crime.


Part of the situation that I am not at liberty to publicize in this manner winded up bringing me, today, somewhere I did not comfortably fit in, a place where the reality is harsh and uncomfortable, so much that going there was not only a physical journey, but a leap forward, too, in time: most often, we age at a regular pace, maybe different for all of us, but pretty constant throughout any one life. Every so often, though, things happen that push you forward at a dizzying speed, and you stumble forward, haphazardly maturing out of nessecity. To get through these things, you understand, you have to be a little bit more of an adult than you ever planned on being.

Without giving away too much detail, I hope, I found myself waiting with Zack and his brother in St. Mary's, just outside the psych ward, just after the elevators and before the locking doors. We layed on the stairs and listened to MP3's on Ian's cell phone, and I stared up at the concrete bricks painted with that institulional paint, a beige so bland that it hardly even qualifies as a color, and suddenly I was overcome with a sense of familiarity.

"This feels like high school." I said. Zack and Ian acknowledged me, but then moved on with the conversation, leaving me to decipher the deeper implications.


I'm reading Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper right now, a recommendation from Barb, a teacher at Andover who I miss since I've stopped going. It's excellent; I don't feel qualified to give a full-blown recommendation until I finish it, but, unlike with most books, I have no doubt that I will. The book is dramatic, sad and complex, with a new tragic revelation, like a punch to your gut, ever third page or so (but not in a bullshit, unbelievable, Forged by Fire kinda way. Moreover, it's a way that feels familiar to anyone who's ever gotten the sense that life really does love to kick you when you're down.) In the midst of all this tradgedy, though, the author's wit comes through in a real way, and, in spite of it all, you find yourself wanting to laugh just as often as you want to to cry.

You should go to Border's Brunswick and pick it up. I hear they have a great selection, there.



On with it.

The problem, as I see it, is ambiguoity: for any given situation, the answer is different. There is no hard-and-fast rule whether virtue is to be found in letting go of what hurts or fighting for what doesn't. Romantic movies spout different morals to this end: The Mexican's somewhat famous morale is that, between two people who love each other, you never reach the point of "enough is enough", but you get the sense in the movie that they just might reach that point anyway. In Casablanca, she turns and leaves the man she loves for a more promising future, but you can't help but think she should have stayed. Romeo and Juliet stay together forever through all costs, but the costs are high. More and more, romantic comedies are featuring a new kind of love story: the kind where a couple loves, changes each others lives in a meaningful way, then parts amicably; these stories, The Breakup and Prime to name a couple off of the top of my head, end on a new kind of resolution, where there's a scene at the end where they see each other and smile, pleasantly, acknowledging their mutual past and bearing no ill will. It's not exactly happily ever after, but it's all some of us dare to dream of, anymore.

In California, we had a "talking circle" every day before massage class began, where we sat and shared whatever was on our mind; things of significance, things of insignificane; a lot of west-coast touchy-feely crap, really, but when in Mariposa. There was a somewhat creepy older man there, Chuck was his name, I believe, and no one really liked partnering up with him very much, touching and being touched by his leathery, backwoods skin, but in a group we managed to get along with him pretty well, poking well-meaning fun at the weird things he said, and he learned to take it in stride. One day in the circle though, he said something that didn't sit well with a lot of the people there: he began telling the story, very casually, of a woman he had loved years ago, a relationship which had ended badly, and how he'd spent every year since then, twenty or thirty or so in all, trying to get her to just talk to him. It was clear that, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what made this strange, or why she'd stopped accepting his calls. The reaction of this was something of an uproar; a lot of people had a lot of opinions. One woman, Pauline, started lecturing him in the all-knowing way she must have used on her kids about how desperately important it was for him to let go. I didn't like Pauline particularly before that, and I especially didn't like what she had to say. My anger came out, at first, in twisting hands and stifled grunts, and as the people to either side of me tried to offer their support and quiet me, I couldn't take it any longer. I got up and walked away, breaking the circle, and the unspoken rule not to walk away when someone else was speaking.

What I couldn't put into words them was not that I agreed with Chuck, in particular, that he was doing the right thing in clinging to the love of this woman, but that Pauline had no basis in which to assert he was wrong. No one in that room had the right or the knowledge to say whether what he was doing was foolish or wise, whether it would end badly; whether it would be worth it if it did. Despite the way it looked on the surface, I sided slightly with him, for my own reasons: this was during the longest fight that Jeremey and I had ever had, the one that lasted more than a year. I had gotten use to people telling me that I needed to let go of my love for him, gotten used to my own, steadfast reply: Jeremey and I, we could last through anything. Maybe he wouldn't take my calls, maybe I'd shed enough tears over him to drown an ocean. But Jeremey and I, I were sure, would be the truest kind of friends, forever.


Tonight, he was the one I called when I learned that once again I'd been lied to by the person I hate being lied to the most. I wasn't wrong in hanging on to my love for Jeremey, and it's good that I wasn't: there are friends I tend to give to and friends I tend to take from. Jeremey is one of the latter, but in a situation where I know I'm going to fall apart, I tend to choose to take from the givee's: if you're going to be humiliated by your tearful vulnerability, it's preferrable that it be with someone who's own tearful vulnerability you know well. While I was on the phone with Jeremey, the subject of our discussion beeped on the other line, and asked me to meet him for dinner.


Ambigouity is one problem, maybe even the problem, but credibility, or lack thereof, is another: when lying becomes a pattern, the truth becomes this distant...I don't know. I don't know. But the reason I don't know is because of the sheer distance of the truth. What I do know is this: those cartoons where the character in the dessert sees a mirage and begins to shovel the sand into their mouth because they believe it's water, that's credible. One might wonder why the brain lets the heart believe it's drinking. The reason of course is this: the brain knows that when survival is nearly impossible, and the priority is keeping things as painless as possible, hope is more important than water.


Standing in front of my mirage, I resolved myself to swallowing the grainy liquid he offered up, knowing that once he drove away, I'd be coughing up dust. The thing is, it's no longer even really a quesiton of whether or not he is lying to me. It's a question of whether or not I can bring myself to believe him.

Whatever the truth is, it may be too distant to matter anymore. Ambigouity is taking hold, and I don't know whether to fight for the truth or for what I want to be true, to give up entirely or to just try and believe. I know, for sure, two things: I'm tired of writing this, and I need a drink.

On with it.