Category Archives: MEN

Strangely, A Lot in Common with Emily Dickinson

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From Wikipedia:

Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.

That’s TOTALLY ME! Except the brilliant poet for all time part. But seriously, she is one I look to in moments of despair about my life. And though only wore white in high school, I have a “thing” for white t-shirts. Surely that counts.

It hit me today that being an unmarried woman of 46 years old was somehow a very bad thing. Most of the women I know who are my age were married at least once in their life. Not being married makes me feel, all of a sudden, like a societal misfit, a freak. Oh god.

Does marriage make you happier, as studies suggest? Does it trap you in a lifetime’s worth of misery? Is it the best thing ever, especially as you near the end? Or is it a little bit of all of that? And what is wrong with me that I never did it? It was partly that when I came of age women in my social circles weren’t really the marrying kind. We were just coming out of the 1970s and women empowerment and all of that.

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Henry Rollins and David Mamet

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There are people out there who lend their voices to our collective. They are truth seekers and independent thinkers. They do not reside inside any box. Henry Rollins one of those: a punk rocker with Black Flag turned spoken word genius turned DJ turned philosopher. And playwright/newly minted conservative David Mamet is another.

This is the reason I love Henry Rollins. He wrote this song – which helped me through a terrible phase in my life:

And David Mamet, writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, has decided to “come out” as a conservative. While I think this shows less intelligence on his part, and perhaps a late-age fear of losing all of his money to taxes, you have to admire someone who is risking so much by speaking his mind.

Free thinking. Why not.

Sometimes a Song

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Weirdly enough, two things happened at once that thrust me backwards in time. The first was that a long lost friend/unrequited love turned up on Facebook. This is a guy that I thought, at the time, I had no desire to date. But when I remembered it back after all of these years what I see more than that is how afraid I was of someone with strong, sincere feelings like that. But boy, did he kind of stick with me over the years in an odd way. So now he’s on Facebook. That is the strangest thing about Facebook, well — maybe it’s number 515 when it comes to weird things about Facebook.

The second thing that happened was an encounter at the Federal building with a total stranger also made me think of this person. We exchanged smiles briefly. He stood behind me and said my last name was the same as his mother’s maiden name. But, though I thought he was cute and all, something stopped me from engaging in conversation with him. What was it? Fear? Lack of interest in jumping on that roller coaster ride of a relationship? Whatever it was it was a strange, unsettling encounter with someone who seemed very familiar to me. Since I spend so much time online now I forget that there are other ways of meeting people.

And finally, on a nightly jog, this haunting song came over my headphones and it once again thrust me back. I think we’ve all been the girl in this song one time or another. I dare say we’ve also been the guy. When I’ve been the guy, it hurts like hell. When I’ve been the girl I often look back with a fair amount of regret. It’s like a mournful puzzle that never gets put together. A maybe beautiful one, in its perfection and impossibility.

When I hear this song it floods my brain with my recorded memories of being a much younger woman. It recalls lazy summer afternoons spent up at the creek smoking pot and skinny dipping. It recalls occasional trips to Dodgers Stadium, too few and far between, and all of the romance that goes with boys and baseball, or baseball at all.

And as my daughter and I get ready to flee this city and head for the South of France, to Cannes, this is probably the song that remind me of today. Right here, right now.

Life Without Dick

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I was eating a banana the other day and it reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’ve interacted with a male organ. (Oh no she didn’t!) I’m sorry to have to be so blunt about it but it is a fact of my life: I have given it up, at least for now. Why? Because I’ve wasted way too much time interacting with it. It might be true that cock has attempted to ruin my life. Sure, maybe it was the great conversation, the memorable moments in movie theaters, the restaurants, the running on the beach in the rain, the champagne, the flowers, the hugs, the laughter, or maybe, you know, it was the cock.

It wasn’t really until I saw the Eat, Pray, Love trailer that these thoughts began to circulate and form a conclusion – maybe a conclusion I don’t really want to reach.

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