Love is the realization that another person exists even when they are not in your presence. We are this: inevitable. Parallel lines meet and merge and curve. Infinitely.
We shall bury the notion - maybe we already have – that you are a single line or that your life is a lone trajectory. One storied arc.
I am many messy storylines, all at once.
We are parallel lines. We intersect. We are points. We are communities of dots and dot coms. We are circles. We are stars. We are constellations. Shine.
6 people have
Mr. Anonymous: I am feeling slutty
Kelly: was it the porn shirt? I would totally LOVE to take credit for it
Mr. Anonymous: well I think it is the anticipation of wearing it
Kelly: excellent. it has magical powers!
Mr. Anonymous: clearly. though my head constantly flirting with me is boosting my ego no end
Kelly: that is the best line ever. Hold on while I cut and paste and plagiarize it
Mr. Anonymous: you know I mean my headteacher and not my physical head, yes?
Kelly: we don’t call headmasters head masters in Canada so it took me a moment
Mr. Anonymous: he’s called the headteacher
Kelly: we call them “principals”
Mr. Anonymous: headmaster is very old fashioned and refers only to men
Kelly: are you going to have wild unruly sex with him?
Mr. Anonymous: no
Kelly: prude
Mr. Anonymous: he has a bf
Kelly: ah. morals. pesky things, those
Mr. Anonymous: who is also a friend of mine
Kelly: yep, you are in the no-sexing zone
Mr. Anonymous: which is fine and the harmless flirting is great fun:
“Doing a good job of looking hot in those jeans, Mr. Anonymous”
Kelly: oh. again. stealing that. Taking out the “Mr.” and “Anonymous” and inserting “Kelly”. It is now mine. He IS promiscuous. He’s flirting with ME too
Mr. Anonymous: he called me into his office one day because someone told him off for flirting and he said “Do I really flirt with you?” and I said “yes”. and he said “well it must be unconcious but you are so my type”
Kelly: I think we’re all too ramped up and cautious about workplace flirting. Flirting is not the same thing as sexual harassment. Flirting is no big deal. It is human. ‘Course that’s only as long as it is welcome and not creepy
Mr. Anonymous: it is very flattering
Kelly: yes!
Mr. Anonymous: It’s his way of saying he likes me
Kelly: yes! me, too. I would flirt with a rock and often do
Mr. Anonymous: and he’s so charming. you just get sucked in
Kelly: see, this just sounds delicious! yay, happy workplace. that’s just good for morale
Mr. Anonymous: he’s one of those very sexy types – not attractive – but the sexiness you get from someone who knows what they are doing and are absolutely passionate about
Kelly: I love that. that’s deeply hot.
Mr. Anonymous: and it’s very easy to be in his company
Kelly: and so…you feel slutty? or is that unrelated?
Mr. Anonymous: they are related. deeply and truly. like twins. he’s made me feel hot
Kelly: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. that cannot be appreciated enough. that’s gratifying.
Mr. Anonymous: yes it is
Mr. Anonymous: which is why I love my new boss and the wonderful school he has created
Kelly: yes! passion transcends and transforms all arenas of our lives. if you’re passionate in one area it leaks over into all of the others. ever since I embraced my writerliness I am a man-magnet. it is related. being on fire is HOT
Mr. Anonymous: and I am on fire
Kelly: yes you are baby!
Mr. Anonymous: it’s amazing
Kelly: amazing and juicy and generative. so good for the soul. Now take that I-feel-hottishness and sally forth. in your porn shirt.
_____________________
some names have been changed to protect the morally suspect. nobody else’s boyfriend or relationship was harmed in the making of this post. the porn shirt is mostly a joke unless of course you want to buy it.
It was at this party, this sultry party on a sultry night with wet-blanket air thick with the tang of lemons, this party with steadily depleting and magically refilling trays of almost-cool Primus weaving in and out of the crowd, this party with its golden rings of pretty girls and flashy boys sitting in chairs under the trees in the garden, it was at this party when his life stood still, slid sideways, tilted around, stopped and sped up, all at once.
But then, there, he was Mzee. An approximation of Moses, because even twenty-six years ago, as a fat, unwrinkled, chub-chub of a baby, he was old for his age. Sage. Wise as Moses. Mzee.
Maybe ‘old’ is not the right word. Surely it isn’t. Because he is lively, alive, mischievous, quick with a trick or a joke, so fashionable – au-courant – and skinny-juicy-sexy. He has cheekbones that could slice cheese and rich lips which God surely intended for others to bite. No one can be this fat with life and juice and joie-de-vivre and be bony-hipped at the same time unless young. Old is not the right word.
And with the naming of Mzee, again and again and again each day, his family and friends are confirming his responsibility. His maturity. His ability to see beyond the end of his nose, to take the long view, and see himself – no, really know himself – in the midst of his family. A result of his family. The future of his family. Unlike his friends, his brother, even his father and his polygamous uncles, and legions of young men-boys across the hip-hop, pop, rock-listening world, he is not a man concocted in the imaginings of a mirror, all smooth-skinned post-shave pride and prejudice (he doesn’t shave often enough for that, it’s true). An exultant Me! who springs whole from the head of himself, beholden only to himself – no. He is not that young man, this Mzee.
The call. Came just after midnight. Just the time for the not-coming home, on my way home, will you be home, you better get home, where are you and why aren’t you home calls.
You need to come home. They are leaving. Kabila has sent them home. There will be trouble. This is a different call, altogether.
Still, he wears his easy charming smile of square almost-white teeth and a gap between the front ones that in other places – in Canada, The West, the US, maybe Europe too but not Britain – looks unfixed, unfinished. There, here, such teeth beg to be enmeshed in a web of steel, wire, elastics, and time; beg to be taken firmly in hand by an expert in these matters. There, then, the gap is sexy. Maybe because it does indeed signal that the wearer, the flasher of quick-slow smiles, needs to be taken firmly in hand but by another kind of expert. The pretty girl kind. The hopeful. The kind who believe they can fill in the blanks, bridge the gaps.
Surreal. Shadows tilting this way and that, falling over the eyes of his acquaintances, friends, neighbours, as though they are shielding their eyes from what is coming. Now.
Only one country away, four years ago, Tutsis – his family members, friends – were being murdered by their neighbours, friends and even family who fell on the other side of the ethnic tree.
And now Mzee is not Mzee. Now, he’s a Tutsi. He’s possibly not even Congolese anymore. He’s always heard that (“there are no Congolese Tutsi”) or suspected he heard that or deliberately ignored that he heard that, knowing that this is, of course, not true. At least at this particular minute, or in the minute before the call.
Before life as he knew it – easy, regular, familial, set up for smiling at pretty girls who like his very good job and even better car – ended.
This is my least sexy post, ever. You have been warned.
On Monday night, my stomach dragons smote me. Repeatedly. It started at 7pm as I was tucking my wee ones in bed.
I dropped all storytime activities and did battle valiantly(ish) (this is fancy talk for “I threw up”) while the little ones wailed in their bedrooms.
“I am so worried about Mommy,” sobbed my eldest.
“Mama’s sick, I’m so scared,” wept the youngest.
Torment. I couldn’t leave the bathroom yet my babies were distraught and needed me.
So I called them into my bedroom and told them to get into my bed. Then they’d be close to my new station.
That wasn’t close enough. They ended up making nests of towels and pillows on the ensuite floor and my five year old rubbed my back while my little one fell asleep at my feet. Eventually we were all sleeping/resting on the bathroom floor.
As I laid my head against the cool grey tile, my thoughts were as follows:
After a while, I gathered my wits, my moxy, and my balance, and carried my sleeping kids from the bathroom to their beds. I wrote the blog post that was haunting me. I curled up in bed and tried not to move or anger my stomach in any way.
My friend (aka my Gentleman Caller who keeps calling all superfriendlylike even though I’m on a man-diet and he is pretty much #1 on my list of restrictions) called at 10ish to say hi. I whimpered and whined. He said, “Why didn’t you call me? I’d be there in a flash. You should have asked me for help.”
I was shocked – not at his generous offer (and it is generous – he lives an hour away) because that’s just how he is – but at myself.
I hadn’t even considered asking for help. I wanted help, but it never even entered my mind that I should call someone and ask for help.
My friend Heather and my sister Julie live within blocks of me and I knowthat they would drop everything, any time, to come to my rescue, and in fact they both did, just last week.
(This is in fact why I moved to the suburbs almost three years ago – to be closer to my family and be able to lean on them – and be leaned on – when necessary.)
My other sister lives – get this - in my house AND was home at the time.
When I say “didn’t consider asking for help”, I don’t mean that I thought about asking for help and rejected the idea. I mean that although I wanted help, it never occurred to me to actually ask for help.
What does this have to do with sex, money and meaning?
Sex – not having any. Temporarily. I reserve the right to change my mind on this issue at any time without issuing updates. (Who am I kidding? I will totally issue updates.)
Money – I am going to hire someone to clean my house. It is an investment in my mental well-being. The less time I spend cleaning, the more time I can spend writing and making money. And the next time I attempt to merge with the bathroom floor, it will be marginally less distressing.
Meaning – Even though I have resolved to work out my askus requestus muscle, it seems that I have (mostly) trained myself not to ask for help. And that is phony and a power play. It is weak, but not in a “I don’t deserve help” kind of way. Instead, it is a weak in a “I’m going to pretend to be so superior and superwoman-y and got-it-together” way. Which is appalling. I’m going to get right on over that.
Print = prizes, cachet. Blogging = low barriers.
Blogs are often seen as an activity, a diversion, a hobby. Making books is a business. A serious one. It may even be art. There are conventions.
There’s still a certain reverence for print and publishing which is why so many of us are bitterly, sadly gleeful at its apparent demise. Giants on their knees is just good fun.
Anyway. My point. There is less cachet to being a blogger than to being, say, a novelist. The novel is a genre. The internet is a mess.
There’s more. Blogging is an apparently illegitimate activity rather than a pedigreed genre because it isn’t chosen, juried, sanctioned by experts and editors and gatekeepers.
It is notoriously hard to get published, and even more diffictult to get widely read even if you do make it to print. So print must be better quality, yes?
Sure. The daily grind to produce wears off the shine and the shrinks the time to spit and polish. Journalists have worn these shoes around the block a time or two.
And so, the argument goes, bloggers aren’t ‘writers’.
Lots of them aren’t. True enough.
I think it is a function of these things, but also novelty, and mass output which contributes to a lack of form or genre.
******
On mass distribution. This has happened before. It was called the printing press – or “for younger readers, the 15th Century internet” – and as soon as it took off, so too did pornography. Everyone was making it. They were called “chapbooks”.
(LOVE that.)
So, back then, although it could be argued that all kinds of socially enriching materials were being printed – bibles, after all, were being cranked out – print as a medium didn’t have a lot of cachet. All those rabble rousers. And pornographers.
***
18th and 19th C novels remind me of blogs. Pamela. Clarissa. Tristram Shandy. Later, Jane Eyre. All this overheard conversation, witty, complicated word-play, direct addresses to gentle readers, commentary on the social conventions of the day (especially The Woman Question) via spying and prying into other people’s lives, and interior dramas, and minute mundane dramas of daily life, mostly framed up by sex (who was having it or plotting to have it). In short, my blog.
****
When the USSR became Russia, a very similar thing happened. The absence of firebreathing censors was accompanied by a blossoming of, well, porn.
A guy I used to know, Adam Jones, wrote a very long thesis-cum-book on this subject. He thinks there is a pattern in formerly communist countries or countries transitioning into democracy. Regime falls, censorship is dead, and a rush of sexually explicit content ensues.
I might not be helping my argument here.
The point is that the internet is still a toddler. Or maybe a horny teenager.
The teenager analogy might be less disturbing. Let’s keep it.
It’s new(ish). Publishing tools are in the hands of many. Hence, porn and lots of everything else. And all this new, and porn, and lots and lots of everything creates the connotation of “low quality”. Internet writing, therefore, is low-brow. The official print industry, with its cherry-picking and jurying and experts and editors, and internal friction slowing dissemination, is a filter. Quality. It has genres and juried prizes.
My thought is that we need to think about blogging as an infant genre.
It already is a genre (perhaps). It has tropes and conventions: lists, how-tos, snappy headlines, carving text up into sections with headers (hate that) leading/ending with questions, a pressing emphasis on short (250-750 words).
Those tropes and conventions bore me a little (a lot). I like wild, caterwauling, cartwheeling prose. The lack of friction, the lack of oversight, should mean an explosion of freedom and experimentation in the blogosphere. Instead we’re copywriting ourselves into taupe prose.
We’re all doing what everyone else is doing.
Which got me thinking about techniques and methods and a theory of blogging. As in: can we please get a few more of all of them?
Alan Moore moans in his porno essay that porn is everywhere but nowhere is it art.
(I think he fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of porn. Have you ever watched arty porn? Do you want to? I thought not. It is profoundly un-sexy and sometimes comical. But not funny in a good, on-purpose way.)
No, while I disagree with his thrust that porn should be artistic (it could be, go right on ahead, but I would be happy if the sets were just a little better decorated), I do plan to apply his argument to blogging.
Blogs are everywhere and nowhere are they art.
Except that’s not entirely true. I DO think that there are people doing wildly interesting, surprising, freewheeling, bucking-boring-conventions writing, in blog-form.
And I do see people using blogs to mull on and challenge social conventions. With skill.
There are writers – bloggers – arching their backs and curving in and out of experimentation and questioning and creating. In short, creating art.
*****
Blogs don’t all have to be artified. I don’t mind if we keep dispensing how-to tips and writing bulleted lists and top ten blah blah blahs.
Those are useful.
But we can have more. We can do more. We can start thinking about creative practices and methods and media to juice up and transform our blogs.
and our world. Because if print is dead (it’s not), then it’s all on us.
Dearest darlingest most beloved Reader (yes, baby, that’s you),
In response to my piece on Valentine’s Day (Love is my religion! Valentine’s Day is my Christmas!), Bruce Nunnally wrote,
it is important to note that the adoption of paper valentines delivered by post made it possible for valentines to be delivered anonymously. This in turn led to more racy verse. So perhaps you should invite Readers to post Valentines they would LIKE to send to their true love, but dare not?
YES!
Operation Secret Valentine is in effect.
‘Cept it doesn’t have to be secret, unless you want it to be.
If you had the boldness/courage/sheer stupidity/evolutionarily problematic lack of fear, what Valentine are you aching to send?
To who?
What would it say?
You, publicly: Answer on your own blog (text images, whatever). Sign up on the list or link back (here’s a badge) so I know where to look.
–OR–
You, privately: e-mail me your valentine or comment below (enter “anonymous” instead of your name and don’t include your URL).
(and by “me”, I mean me and Amanda Farough)
Are you in?
The badge and the list are below. ’Course you can play, privately too. Feel free to e-mail me your secret valentines at kelly at kellydiels dot com.
Love love love…can’t wait to read your sweet, sizzling, heartfelt, anguished, mundane love notes.
xo,
Kelly
________________________
Operation Secret Valentine. Where you can find all the not-so-secret love notes:
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There’s a book that was read to me when I was a wee one and that I read to my wee ones. It is the story of a baby bird, separated from its mama, who wanders around asking everyone and everything he meets – from cows to dogs to kittens to chickens to steamshovels to planes – “Are you my mother?”
It is simple. It is sweet. It is about seeking-and-finding-and-fitting and a little anxiety-inducing on a cosmic level (which is where I like to fly).
I also like ruthless, tender simplicity and efficiency. I’m currently pruning dead wood (and skeletons, same dif) from my garden/closets. Of course, this kind of decluttering is not just about lovers. This is about everything. Time, money, attention, friendship, care.
It is really basic. Love is a compass.
When I’m not sure about a choice, or I’m tempted to make one I’ve resolved to avoid, I (silently) ask that choice or thing or person: Do you love me?
I’m like that little bird looking for its rhetorical mama. I ask it of everyone and everything. No sense imprinting a chicken, kitten or a steam shovel.
I say it to blogs. To restaurants. To vices. To charities. To corporations. To friends and wannabe friends and friends with benefits and lovers and dates and other assorted and sundry relations.
To a blog: do you have my interests at heart? Are you protective of my time and attention? Do you want the best for me? Do you want to amuse or educate me? Or do you just want my credit card number?
To a corporation: Dear McDonalds-as-a-stand-in-for-the-industrial-food-industry, do you love me, and my kids? Do you want to give us the best, most nourishing food and experience you can possibly provide?
It is just a quick question, but it gets at so much. It solidifies the airy sense that I’m a moth fluttering to a flame and makes me think, maybe it is time to be the flame. It amplifies the rumbling-gut feeling that I’m about to do something that’s really not good for me and mine. It gets at The Answer. It gets me to the people and things to whom I ought to give my attention, money and love. Love is a ruthless economy.
Danielle LaPorte advises something similar: whenever you’re feeling pressed about your ‘no’, say it doesn’t feel right to me.
Nobody will contest that.
Or, if someone does, then you know strong and clear and viscerally that this person does not have your interests close to your heart, and you should absolutely, firmly, emphatically and defiantly cling to your no.
No one – no person, no corporation, no industry, no government – who truly loves you asks you to sacrifice or do things that put you, your finances, your family, your self-respect or your well-being in jeopardy.
My kids, for whom I might be tempted to sacrifice any or all of the above -might, maybe, I make no pretence to saintliness - don’t ask me to sacrifice.
And I don’t sacrifice for them. All that is required is chosen. It may spring from an oft-exhausted well, but ‘tired’ is not a sacrifice. It is a commitment that expires and renews, every day.
I’m thinking that sacrifice is bullshit. The world doesn’t need sacrifice. The world needs contribution.
I am a risk-taker in relationships. In addition to being a risk-taker, I’m doggedly committed and don’t give up on a teetering romance until I’m well and truly and certainly done with it. As a result, my friends, family – and, I’m sure, more than one potential suitor – sigh and shudder and worry and are not-so-secretly convinced that I put myself on the line because I’m lonely, fat, a single mom and therefore should be lacking in self-esteem due to my apparent unfuckability (oh, if only y’all knew) and desperation for the security of a relationship.
They would be wrong. I’ve always been a risk taker: fat, skinny, younger, older, before and after kids, always. I take risks because I know I can handle it. I’m resilient. I have faith in myself. Even if I get my heart broken, even if I’m stung by love’s yellow jackets and swell up and take to bed for three days to nurse my hives, cracked heart, fractured ego and assorted existential wounds, I’ll come out of it okay. I usually learn something, too. I stretch. I grow. I expand my emotional range. I go wide and deep. I love.
This, I submit, is the opposite of low self-esteem and desperation.
But, I admit, I’m breaking the rules. It is not always comfortable. It is not always easy. And so far, I don’t have the happy ending to point at, chant “see, nya, nya, I told you so”, and then legitimately launch polemics against tepid dating and soulless relationships and the patriarchy.
So I break the rules. I own myself and my feelings and act on them. I try to connect and I call when I feel the need to do that, which can be a lot. I think that is as it should be. When you like someone, you want to talk to him. I don’t wait around or corral myself into a good girl box of chocolates hoping a man will choose me. When I like a man, he knows it. When I love him, he’s lucky. That sounds like empowerment, and it is, and sometimes I say things that feel honest and powerful to me but which are interpreted vastly differently by the people who live outside my head. Things like this: I need a man. I am lonely. Arguably, being honest about those things does not makes me pathetic or weak. In fact, I think the opposite narrative, the one that says “I don’t need a man, I want one” is ridiculously boring and weak. I get it, but it is not compelling. It goes like this: you can pay your bills. You’re doing fine. You have hobbies and friends and a cat and if you died tomorrow, you’d be satisfied that you lived a good life.
Those things are sort of true for me, too, except that I don’t have a cat. I like my upholstered goods on the unshredded side. And even with the ability to take care of myself quite competently for the rest of my life without male assistance, I still need a man, and the fact that I am marginally solvent and reasonably capable in most adult matters means that I can be shameless about expressing my needs. Admitting to needs – requiring companionship and savouring love and partnership – does not diminish me. So there, nya nya, I told you so (again. Am I undermining my credibility as an adult?).
I need a romantic, significant, long-lasting relationship. I think most people do. Relationships – friendly, romantic, platonic, passionate, familial – are the juice and the juju that a growing life demands. Being one half of a passionate partnership presents challenges and struggles and magic and love and I need that. I need to give that and exchange that and grow in that. And I’ll risk the lectures about how I should be an independent woman (I am! and it is not all self-sufficient sunshine and egalitarian roses!) to say so. Because the risk is worth the reward.
So fuck risk-managing potential relationships. I’m frustrated with that and this is the core of my exasperation with dating and the our boring cultural discourses about dating: one of the axis that it turns on is a glib, therapized, risk-managing approach to relationships. And yes, my darling reader, you ARE so prescient. I do have thoughts on the matter and I would love to share them:
All the risk management and red-flagging paradoxically creates risk. Every step is a mine-field of meaning. Codes are being signalled and transgressed. Everything becomes a Big Freaking Deal. Relationships halt based on a poorly timed phone call. As proof, I offer you my recent, deep, and time-consuming research on the after-sex call. This is what I did: I googled ‘after sex call‘ and the results cracked my lid and my brain made a brief, panicked, screaming run around the living room. There are more than 80 million pages advising you when to call, when not to call, what it means when he calls on Sunday (you’re girlfriend material), Monday (he’d like to sleep with you again but you’re not relationship material), or Friday (you’re a booty call). Let me repeat it: EIGHTY MILLION pages of results on this issue.
Let’s talk about The Rules, which is not just a way of talking about the stupid rules of dating but an actual book that articulates them in 35 (!!!) easy-to-remember points (!!!!) by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider.Or let’s not. I’m sure you know them and all their evil, anti-feminist clones like He’s Just Not That Into You, Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man (which uses cookies as a metaphor for sex and advises women to dole them out sparingly, and not at all in the first three months) and, most recently, Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World by Jordan Christy. All of them essentially advise the same thing: don’t put out, don’t call, don’t require much, and maybe, if you’re lucky and you wait around quietly looking pretty, he’ll marry you. In short, don’t be you.
So that is what is supposed to guarantee me the Happy Ending. The Wedding (which incidentally, I don’t even want. Marriage: yes. Wedding: no). The Husband.
But what kind of husband would I land with those rules? What kind of relationship and marriage would that be?
The answer to this not-so-rhetorical question is this: not the kind I want.
In Canada, you can marry anyone you want, as long as you’re only marrying one adult person at a time. This, in the world according to Kelly, is as it should be. So I have no issues with marriage. If gay and lesbian and straight people and everyone who identifies themselves in between or outside of those categories can marry, then I too can marry in good conscience because I’m not accessing a privilege allowed only to those who accidentally, luckily, have sexualities deemed socially acceptable. So, yay, Canada. Yay, marriage.
If I am to marry – and I hope that I do – I would want to marry a man who thinks like that, too. And I highly motherfucking doubt that a man who thinks like that would
Because that would mean that he’s wired like a wannabe patriarch. And this is would be a problem for me because how I feel about fucking the patriarchy (pro) is wildly different than my feelings about fucking the patriarch (con).
So, sadly, dating is still a gender-trap. And, paradoxically, even as dating is a dangerous trap, it is so gd safe. We talk about dysfunction and reflexively screen out anyone lacking a career or a physique that will pass muster with friends and family and who doesn’t call by Wednesday. We’re risk-managing ourselves out of hypothetical heartbreak but into one-bedroom apartments and solo-Christmases.
Recently, someone said to me “…but I never enjoyed dating the way you do.” And I was stunned. I embrace the risks that relationships entail but I hate dating. I like people, I adore men, I like meeting people and connecting and getting excited about seeing the world (and even myself) through their eyes, but dating and me – well we are not in love and never will be. It is too coded. Too mined with gendered expectations and signals and social assumptions. Too uncertain. So, yes, with one side of my mouth I bemoan the rules of engagement while with the other I freely kiss and confess that I adore being wooed. It is a very, very good thing when someone showers me with attention and affection and never makes me wonder: Do I call? Do I not call? Is he just not that into me if he doesn’t call? What does it mean if I call? To me? To him?
And that’s it. That’s the dichotomous, insane space we live in. As women, we’re supposed to be empowered and beyond The Rules. As naked, vulnerable, brave and needy people, we need to connect and be adored (or at least I do). And the dating manuals that make me crazy live in precisely that crazy-making space: they directly address the need to be feel adored by prescribing formulas for discerning adoration while in the same breath and with lipstick-slicked, barbed kisses they re-inscribe a pointed, confining, prescriptive cultural narrative about gender roles and heterosexual relationships.
About women, that narrative says this: Women should wait. Women should let men take the lead. Women should not be demanding or difficult or insist on getting their needs met by their male partners. Women should contain their sexuality. Women should be tricksters. Women should not expect anything other than the social outlines of a contractual relationship. Women who do all of these things will be rewarded with a ring. Being single is a prison you can earn your way out of with good behaviour and yes, your man is your Warden.
About men, that narrative says this: Men are hunters. Men do not have emotional needs or require friendship from their partners and if they do, they should never admit it and definitely not call before three days have elapsed because that is just unattractive. Showing you like a woman will scare her off. Don’t care for her, conquer her, because, after all, men have an inherent need to conquer women and the world. Men don’t like themselves so they cannot like women who show them that they like them. A man should marry the woman who likes him the least. A man values a woman who restrains her desires with him, because that means she’ll restrain her desires with other men, too. Men don’t know themselves so have to be tricked into getting what is good for them. Men can be tricked. Men should be tricked. Men are dumb.
How is that for seductive? After you get past the pre-marital, tedious process of risk-management and encoding gendered, patriarchal assumptions, the two of you will ideally end up in a soulless, mostly sexless marriage of convenience where the man takes out the garbage and mows the lawn and the woman flutters around doing sexy domestic things like cleaning the toilet and keeps her mouth shut except when she’s yelling at the kids. Excellent. Fantastic. I’m in.
Confession: Until this year, year thirty-sex, I never really dated. Every significant relationship I have ever had evolved out of ‘hanging out’: out of spending time together, having wide-ranging, unconstrained, passionate hours-long conversations in which we solved the political and social dilemmas of the day, doing things together, with other people, and together, until we were just, organically, a couple or some sort of watershed sexual/romantic/conversational moment occurred that articulated our ecstatic commitment to couple-y-ness.
I suspect that this dynamic is a function of youth and university. I suspect that this is even what universities are for: campuses are covert, middle-class marriage markets. Mostly middle-class families offload their kids there and after four or five years and those kids emerge as qualified adults ready to earn, baby, earn and are likely, hopefully involved with now-degreed, pedigreed, marriageable partners who also have reasonable career prospects and are probably from other middle-class families. Who needs a matchmaker or an arranged marriage if you can send your kids to college?
During the university years, young adults are installed in crappy, overpopulated apartments on a campus with several thousand mostly-single people in the same age bracket, and all of them have lots of free time and (temporarily) very little money. It is a recipe for social interaction that is based on conversation and connection and ideas, and if you’re lucky enough to be surrounded by uberliberal, progressive, smart, thinking people, then the very structures of relationships get talked about, questioned and negotiated. Then, if you’re really lucky, you end up in a Relationship with a man who thinks about these things too, and is willing to go there with you and wonder about The Rules, and fuck the Rules, and just be, and figure out how to be, together. Yessssssssss.
I spent most of my twenties in University. Naturally, I ended up in a Relationship – bizarrely, with a very socially conventional (and very good) man – and spent most of my thirties having babies. Then we split. Now I have a job, kids, a rigid and unbending schedule that requires me to see the inside of 5am every weekday, a cosmic void where babysitters should be, and no classmates or (adult) house-mates with single friends with whom to hang out and eventually fall in love. So now I have to date, marshal time to date, organize an infrastructure that allows for dating, search out appropriate people to date, all of which I do, sometimes ecstatically, sometimes begrudgingly. To me, the logistics and the safe, gendered discourses of dating are the antithesis of sexy. I miss my flophouse university days. I miss organic relationships.
Relationships are conversations. Relationships are messages sent and received and returned. Relationships are primal, biological, electric, evolutionary, revolutionary. Relationships are generative. Relationships are transcendent and divine. Relationships are magic. Relationships are worth the risk.
Too bad that as a grown-ass adult you have to date to find one.
___________
note: I originally posted this piece in September 2009 but I was missing it, lots, so I called it back. It loves me, too.
Normally I don’t do Valentine’s Day – you know, manufactured holiday, card companies and overpriced dead plants, and oh! how loving and tender to receive gifts at a socially-prescribed time!
YOU WILL BE ROMANTIC, DAMMIT.
So, usually, I’m a skeptic and can’t be bothered.
And then my friend Heather did a little drive-by Valentine-ing.
She might have called me a two weeks ago to say “Yeah, so I think it is time for you to take down the Christmas wreath.”
She may have been right, but I didn’t take action fast enough (immediately) to suit her.
Next thing I knew, it was Sunday morning, I was making pancakes and I heard my front gate click and thump-thump-thump up the front stairs. And then nothing.
I opened the front door…and nothing. Except a shiny red heart wreath hanging on the door, and Heather waving from her car across the street.
My oldest daughter was wonderstruck. The shine, the sparkle, the heart.
And then it occurred to me: I’m all about love and romance and intimacy and sex. This is my religion and Valentine’s Day is my Christmas.
So we’ve spent some time making Valentines for all of our beloveds. Hearts and pretty frippery adorn our doors and windows. Our house is such a loving place.
And I’m not even bothered that for the first time in a million years (okay, since kindergarten) I don’t have a boyfriend to tell “don’t get me anything for Valentine’s Day because I don’t believe in it.”
That might be because I’m choosing the no man thing. I’m on a man-diet.
I’m using the word “man-diet” because I know diets, as systems of deprivation rather than as descriptions of what you eat, are temporary and doomed to failure. I’m so okay with failing at this diet. Eventually.
Anyway, this is my heads up! I’m doing Valentine’s Day but I’ve got no lover-lover-man! Which means all my real and daily loves can expect much love.
I’m all about the beauty buried in the minutiae of life. I don’t think romance is flowers and chocolates (in fact, I just think: waste of money).
Instead, I think – I know – love is when my sister picks up my girls from daycare because I’m stuck on a bridge for three hours. Love is when I’m tempted to put my need where it doesn’t belong and a friend says “call me, instead.” Love is my baby sleeping in the small of my back. Love is telling my boss that I quit and she cries (ok, we both did) because she’s sad to lose me but so damn proud of me. Love is “I’m proud of you.” Love is my friend knocking at my door and saying “give her to me” about my incessantly screaming two year old. Love is my brother-in-law changing the oil in my car. Love is making dinner together. Love is the lunches I pack every day for my children.
So: Valentine’s Day. I’m all about the love. The mundane kind.
I have this idea – more of an observation than a fully-fleshed out structural theory – that the how-to-make-money-online blogging conventions are pretty male.
The model:
person has a question/problem, types it into Google, follows links to pages that rank high for those query keywords, lands on a page of an ‘online authority’, who ultimately provides – for sale – a ’solution’ to that problem
and so, to capture that traffic and convert it to a sale, probloggers aim to rank highly on Google (authority), structure themselves as likeable, trustable experts (authority), and offer infoproducts that solve problems
the bloggers, then, who will be successful, are the ones who follow this model, exploit it, and provide solutions
that’s how you monetize. You capture the questions and provide the solutions.
and, as a result of this process, and as a function of how people read online, effective blog posts are structured in a particular way:
my observation: the information-finding model and the genre conventions are linear, analytical and about problem-solving and solutions
my beef: the websites that provide solutions are the least bewitching and entrancing to me (with an exception or two, and usually that’s due to a relationship I’ve got with the blogger, or by how deeply they’ve embedded their personality in their prose)
and…A-list solution bloggers = men
probloggers tend to be men
hell, bloggers, it seems, tend to be men
this linear, solution-hunting model and attendant blog-writing genre just feels very male to me
and so lots of the advice – even the basic genre conventions – about how to be a successful problogger just plain put me off
and that’s it. That’s my observation.
