No, YOU

Hypothesis: Any relationship between any two people lasting longer than a month will have at least one long-running argument that spans the entire course of said relationship.

Corollary: Said argument will be over something absolutely bone-fuck stupid. The level of viciousness of said argument will be directly proportional to the stupidity of the topic at hand.

Example 1: The parking lot outside my office does not have delineated parking spaces. A co-worker of mine (I will call him Patrick, as that is his name) showed up one morning at the same time as me. I pulled into a spot next to the one he was backing into at a glacial pace. At halfway in the spot, I saw him mutter something and pull out to move several spaces down. I shrugged and gathered my stuff to go inside, but he caught up with me.

“You cut me off,” he pouted. “I was backing into that spot.”

“Er, no,” I said, “You were backing into the spot next to mine.”

He pointed back at the space between my car and the next one, asking testily how he was expected to fit his car in there. I looked at the sizable empty space.  I looked back at him. I looked at his car, a Ford Focus. I asked him which breakfast cereal he’d gotten his driver’s license out of, hazarding a guess that he was a Cocoa Pebbles kind of guy. Things only escalated from there, with a day-long argument involving impartial observers being pulled away from their desks to look at how I’d somehow prevented him from putting a mid-sized car into a space spanning roughly the size of Iceland. (Alright, maybe not Iceland. Equatorial Guinea, then.)

That was roughly two months ago. Now as we get coffee from the break room, he narrates his every movement to make sure I don’t cut him off. I tell him that his car, like so many other things in his life, is not as big as he thinks it is. I anticipate that this will continue until one of is fired or killed.

Example 2: My parents, desperately in love as they are, come close to divorce at least once a year over one of the following things:

• Tinsel on the Christmas tree (my father says it’s festive, my mother argues that it looks like robot diarrhea)
• Bubble wrap (my father says it’s fun to pop for hours, my mother has started to get a twitch whenever it’s nearby)
• The video camera (my mother says it’s important to document important moments in our family, my father quite reasonably says that him drinking his morning coffee in a robe that leaves little to the imagination is NOT an important family moment)

Example 3: I have not even the words to get into the debacle from my relationship with J, but I assure you that if you ever play the word “za” in Scrabble for 24 points and triple word score, it’s probably best if you leave before the cops show up because shit is about to get very real indeed.

Conclusion: Long-running arguments provide a sense of comfort and familiarity in a relationship, a home base to return to when other conflicts get too hard to deal with. It can be about nostalgia, foreplay, or just plain fun, but the fact is that a relationship needs at least one good conflict to be able to survive.

Alternate conclusion: People are sort of dumb and za is NOT A WORD.

Tags: arguments, parking space, relationships

The Marrying Kind

I used to plan a wedding just about every day. My best friend K and I were avid supporters of the bridal industry, but with the budget of second-graders being on the smaller side, we had to make do with whatever we had around the house. Mrs. K’s guest towels made a lovely aisle (provided we didn’t get caught) and lace curtains pilfered from the spare room were perfectly serviceable as veils. When I finally got a bride Barbie, we were ecstatic. It wasn’t the act of marriage we were really interested in. In fact, the ceremonies themselves rarely went to completion on account of the scandal of Ken having impregnated a teenage Skipper and the drama of Jem (re-christened Madge and given a new career as a prison matron) hauling him away as Barbie wept all over the dandelions shoved in her hands.

In retrospect, our parents really should have done a better job of monitoring our viewing of Days of Our Lives.

Eventually, we outgrew playing wedding. Other girls started to think about who they were going to marry and what their dresses would look like, but once Barbie’s white dress had been stained red with lipstick and she rode off into the sunset with Midge in the Voyager, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I didn’t really care if I ever got married or not. Sure, I appreciated a pretty dress as much as the next girl, but being the centre of attention for the day didn’t do it for me. It only got worse when I turned sixteen and was asked to be a bridesmaid for my aunt, a woman who exemplified the term bridezilla before it was even a thing. On the day of the wedding itself, my mother practically sat on me to keep me from voicing the sharp retorts I had to the bride’s meltdown over the flowers not being the right shade of gold. I did, however, catch her turning a laugh into a cough when she overheard my under-the-breath rendition of “The Yellow Rose of Blow It Out Your Ass, Jackie”.

I was grimly determined to never have any dealings with another wedding.

Then it happened: I grew up and fell in love with a guy who wanted to marry me. I wanted to go to city hall, or maybe to a beach in the Dominican. He said my mother would be disappointed if her only daughter didn’t have a proper wedding. And yeah, I admit it, it was tempting to think that maybe I could do it right. No hassle, no pain, no shrieking about baby’s breath. We set a date (the tenth of September of next year, 9/10/11) and I started to make plans. I learned what the fuck fondant was and resigned myself to the fact that strapless would not, should not, could not happen. The impossible happened, and I found myself having fun with it.

And then the relationship went under, and I found myself totally adrift.

It feels strange to miss the idea of something I didn’t really think I wanted, but I confess that I’m a little sad I’m not getting married next year. I’m happy that I don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on some lacy concoction and figure out seating charts, but there was a certain charm to it. Even though it turns out I was wrong, it felt nice to be so sure about someone. It made my heart swell to think about sharing the rest of my life with the person I loved. I finally got why Barbie was so upset when Ken walked away, because whatever way you want to put it, a wedding is a way of saying that you believe in a choice you’re making about another person.

Maybe someday I’ll feel sure enough again, but this time I’m standing firm and doing it on a beach. Maybe I’ll carry dandelions. From what I hear, they’re the perfect shade of gold.

Tags: childhood, love, marriage, relationships, weddings

Out of The Mouths of Babes

For several years, I’ve been appointed Auntie Lime by my cousin’s daughter. No one’s sure where she got the idea that I’m her aunt, but after explaining it several times, she is determined that she’s right, so I just shrug and go with it. She looks up to me and wants to be just like me when she grows up. I know! Isn’t that terrifying?

Anyway, the little wedge off the ol’ Lime is nearly ten and growing up fast. The last time I saw her, my mental picture of her as a lisping toddler I could cart around on my hip was shattered by this tall creature that’s all legs and waist-length blonde hair juuuust on the precipice of puberty. Once I got over the shock of being confronted with the blossoming adulthood of a child I am technically old enough to have given birth to, I started to enjoy talking to her as the young lady she is. It turns out she’s, like, a person and stuff. I gave her my e-mail address and told her that she could send me a message any time. She was tickled pink.

I’ve gotten a few messages from Wedge, mostly about how school is going and how her younger half-brothers and sisters are always getting into her stuff. Now and again she summarizes episodes of Hannah Montana for me. (That show seems to run primarily on wacky misunderstandings. It’s like Three’s Company for the under-12 set.) It’s all very adorable and it brightens my day whenever I hear from her. Today, however, her message was a little different. Sure, it started out the same, telling me about the latest trouble Miley/Hannah had gotten into by being a fucking moron (my words, not hers), but her post-script nearly had me do a spit-take.

“What is clamiddia?”

I was puzzled at first, since it wasn’t a word I recognized. I thought maybe at first it was some sort of Tamagotchi for the newer generation, or maybe some new kind of leggings. Then I sounded it out.

I have about eight million questions as to why my nine-year-old niece would be asking me about chlamydia. Is it for health class? Is there something I should be concerned about? Do kids know much more about STIs than we did at that age? Did she overhear something she shouldn’t have?

WHY IS SHE ASKING ME?!

Tags: family, Wedge

The Internet Is For Porn

I watch porn now and again. For obvious reasons, I don’t bring it up often in conversation. For starters, it’s rare to have the opportunity to discuss the comedic merits of Evan Stone, the greatest pirate hunter in the world, around the water cooler at work. For another, it’s one of those things that people often find disconcerting in a woman. Either I’m trying too hard to appear cool and sexually liberated or I’m single-handedly (no pun intended) destroying the feminist movement. I could write a whole essay on the subjugation of women in the porn industry or how sexual freedom has become somehow culturally synonymous with being open-minded, but it’s been done before and likely better than I could do it justice. I get both arguments, but personal-is-political aside, I feel like what happens between me and Tube8 in the privacy of my own home isn’t really the concern of lecherous dudes or Catharine MacKinnon, so aside from the obvious irony of writing a blog post about it, I don’t so much mention it.

That said, I have to speak up and talk about certain persistent problems I’ve seen that need to be addressed.

Bad dialogue. I know, I know. Saying you like porn but hate the cheesy dialogue is like saying that you love the Mona Lisa but you think she could stand to wipe the smug look off her face. I’m not making a complete blanket statement here. If the pizza guy knocks on the door during a game of truth-or-dare at the cheerleader camp sleepover, you would be simply disappointed if said delivery did not somehow offer meaty sausage. This guy works customer service and will never get an opportunity like this again, let’s cut him a little slack. Between So Terrible It’s Actually Amazing and Huh, This Is Actually Decent, there’s a bleak no-man’s-land where someone thinks it’s actually acceptable to say the words “hot snatch”. Unless you’ve just stolen some baked goods fresh out of the oven, no. Just no.

Ugly sets. Pool? Fine. Office? Fine. Generic but otherwise inoffensive bedroom? Fine. Futon with wood paneling in the background? Not fine. Some guy’s garage? Not even allowed within 100 yards of fine. Hang a drape, use some cushions, invest in some lighting. No, a guy holding an Itty Bitty Book Light just off-camera is not lighting, I don’t care if he is union.

Long fingernails. I guess I should be up-front and say that this is something that skeeves me out in general. I appreciate a pretty French manicure as much as the next girl, but I cannot and will not accept talons near the gentle areas. Actually, this leads me to my next point.

Misuse of the clitoris. For those of you just joining us in ninth-grade biology, the clitoris is a bundle of nerves at the crest of the labia that has roughly 8000 nerve endings. To put that in perspective, that is twice the amount of nerve endings contained in the head of the penis. It is sensitive. It is like a landmine whose mother you just insulted. Every woman is different in how she prefers hers to be treated (though I’ve heard “to the left a little bit” is usually a good bet), but I can tell you right now that it does not like to be poked at like you’re testing it for signs of life. You’re not sending an angry text to an ex-boyfriend. A genie is not going to come out. You do not pull back the hood and go to work like you’re fixing the transmission, you approach that bitch with respect or you risk getting kicked in the face, so you step lively and ask firmly but politely how its day was.

Wardrobe. I accept that a certain amount of rayon is inevitable. I get that all schoolgirl uniforms are going to look like they came straight from class at St. Bambi’s Whore Academy. I will immediately turn off any clip that shows a man naked except for his socks. I have to have some standards here.

It’s not all bad. Some people obviously have had the same thoughts I’ve had and have set out to make the wide world of erotica a better place. I can appreciate that there are varying tastes in the world. I just don’t like wading through a sea of dreadful XXX’s in search of a decent O.

Tags: porn, the internet is a series of tubes

Oh, Auntie Em

My hometown is small and pretty, with rocky cliffs and waves and picturesque fishing stages. In the summer, the sun sets over the ocean in just such a way that it makes the ocean look like it’s on fire. Before you know it, there are a million stars above you and it feels like living poetry.

Of course, it isn’t summer yet. It’s spring, which is not a real season in Newfoundland so much as it is a test of how much rain you can stand before you dust off a typewriter and start banging out a manifesto. I’ll admit there’s a certain majesty to watching the fog roll in over the harbour, but it’s difficult to appreciate when you’re convinced that you’re starting to get rickets. Despite the week’s forecast, I couldn’t help but be excited when I walked into the house and was bowled over by Captain Morgan Freeman.

I hadn’t seen my dog since sending him to live with my parents after moving out of J’s house and was worried that he wouldn’t remember me, but I needn’t have been concerned. He’s small and curly and looks ever so slightly like an Ewok, and he absolutely refused to leave my side the whole time I was there.

“Hmph,” Dad said, obviously affronted. “We’ll just see if the little traitor gets any more of my ice cream.”

Visiting my parents is a delicate balance. I need to be there long enough to quell the homesickness that comes along now and again, but not long enough that I start to remember precisely why I left. I guess I should tell you that my parents are very nice people. They’re always polite to waitstaff, they recycle, and they donate to charity when they can. My mother instilled “please” and “thank you” into me to an almost Pavlovian degree and is always ten minutes early for every appointment. Daddy’s a little rougher around the edges, but underneath the cigarette smoke and short fuse, he’s got a heart of gold. I say all this so you can understand that I sincerely love them before telling you that after a week living with them again, I was biting my nails down to the wrist.

It has nothing to do with them. They’re not difficult to live with, my father’s propensity for playing guitar on the toilet aside. It’s just the cognitive dissonance of being home and yet not home. I used to lie awake in my yellow bedroom with the brass bed and patchwork quilt wondering about the person I would be when I grew up. It’s discouraging at twenty-five to lie awake in the same bed under the same quilt staring at the same yellow walls and still be wondering the same thing. I expected to be an adult by now and I just don’t feel like I am. It’s one thing to fumble through life in the little hollow in the city I’ve carved out for myself, but amidst glow-in-the-dark stars and science fair medals, I felt something akin to guilt for letting my teenage self down.

Still, my parents are proud of me. They think I’m smart; that I showed immense strength of character walking out on a guy who couldn’t seem to manage fidelity for longer than a year’s stretch. My mother thinks I’m beautiful and my father thinks I sing like a bird. They think their little girl turned out just fine. I’m not sure yet. I’m still turning out. I’m waiting to see if they’re right.

Tags: Captain Morgan Freeman, family, home

We Are Learning to Make Fire

I have never believed in soulmates. The idea of The One, the person put on this earth to complete you, has just never sat well with me on any level. Statistically, the odds of you even finding the one person you’re destined to be with in a sprawling world of billions of people are astronomical. You have a better chance of randomly finding your first grade teacher on Chatroulette, and the odds are even greater that if you do, he’s going to show you his penis.

Even leaving aside the logistical problems, I feel mildly offended at the idea that I need to be completed. I’m already a complete person, albeit a deeply flawed one. I do believe in love (“to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach”) and I’m not opposed to romance. I just don’t want to be the half of a whole, because what happens when your other half goes away? You can keep your souls meeting in divine union. All I really want is a partner.

And yet.

And yet, nothing is ever that simple. If all it took was mutual respect and shared life goals and a certain amount of fondness, we’d live in a very different world. There has to be something more. Even lust is just science, boiled down to bare bones of evolutionary biology and pheromones that often lead us terribly astray (“The lads I’ve met in Cupid’s deadlock/Were- shall we say?- born out of wedlock”), and even that is fleeting.

I’ve fallen in love before. More than once, but not often enough that you could call it habit. There’s no pattern aside from an obvious predilection for boys with glasses. The variables are all different. There’s no predicting it, that maddening rush that comes when a person walks into a room and says your name just so. It’s a poorly designed scientific experiment with the methods all wrong and inexact and the subject staring dreamily off into space, doodling hearts in a spiral notebook. This has happened before and it will happen again (“Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky“), but I don’t know when or how.

I think it’s backwards to think we’re only able to find true love with one person in the whole world. Isn’t it more romantic in the end to think that the possibility is there at any time, an unexplained phenomenon that most of us will experience at least once in our lives? If love is neither math nor chemistry nor biology, then maybe it’s alchemy,  spinning the ordinary and everyday into gold.

*Credit where it’s due to the authors of the italics: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dorothy Parker, and T.S. Eliot. Title comes from Margaret Atwood.

Tags: love, poetry

Wires Crossed

It is next to impossible to recreate the smell of a hospital. People talk about how hospitals smell like antiseptic, which is true, but it’s only the most easily identifiable base note. The real complexity is in the impossible-to-articulate scent of illness and death and anxiety and sadness shot through with the faintest whiff of hope, like Pandora’s box come to life.

I’ve never liked hospitals, despite my childhood aspirations of becoming a doctor. Unfortunately, I had a scary fainting spell last November that nobody could explain using words other than “holy shit”, so I’ve had to become quite familiar with them. The ER couldn’t figure it out, so they sent me to the neurology department. After several tests, one of which required me to be sleep-deprived and have bright lights flashed in my face (which I’m pretty sure is against the Geneva Conventions), Dr. Mumtaz told me that I was completely normal, brain-wise.

I had the good manners not to laugh in his face.

Anyway, the good doctor continued as I bit the inside of my cheek, the EKG from the ER wasn’t normal so likely it’s some sort of heart problem that’s gone undiagnosed for a while. He did not seem to have an answer as to why they didn’t mention it to me at the time, so I can only assume they did not think it would be the kind of thing to ever come up. You know, because guns shown in the first act never go off in the third.

Long story short, my blood pressure goes down all the time, you know, whenever it feels like it. The lackadaisical slut.

The reason I was at the hospital today was to get a Holter monitor attached so they can figure out what the hell my heart is doing that it’s so unpredictable, which is a fine adjective for loopy manic-pixie-dreamgirls in movies that are all about teaching uptight bankers how to seize the day through the power of feng shui or whatever, but not so much for one of your major organs. The monitor is a sexy little get-up that has about seven different electrodes and wires hanging off various points in my torso. You do not get a photo, since it is not that kind of blog, but this gentleman should give you an idea of what I’m dealing with here. I look like something a bomb squad would be dispatched to deal with, the observation of which prompted my mother to remark that today would be a fun day to go to the airport, because I guess Mother’s Day cards that come from a maximum security prison are just that much more sentimental. Even my boss deadpanned asking if he’d seen me in The Hurt Locker. (Everybody’s a goddamn comedian.)

I really hope they figure out this thing soon. I’m tired of the hospital smell. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go outside and scare the neighbourhood children. I might be able to convince one of them I’m a cyborg.

Tags: bitching, cardiology, health, hospital, neurology