Listening: música jarocha

Today for a couple of different reasons I've been thinking about my own relationship to the female half of the world.

This primarily has to do with the sorts of things girls are supposedly into. Although I can tell the following is either something I've avoided in the friends I've made or else the overwhelming majorty of chicks I've known absolutely refuse to admit to being into them (or at least no one admits to being into girly things).


Dressing Up/Attention Getting
What I've observed is that most mothers really *really* enjoy showing off their kids and love making their kids as cute as possible. For their girls it often means dressing them up in cutsey dresses and parading them for the family at reunions and for their neighbors at church. (An aside, this clearly leads to girls thinking that the proper thing to do is get miniature versions of themselves and dress *them* up for their friends. Thus playing with dolls.) Now these girls entertain and are entertained by all of the adult folk telling them how cute and adorable they are in their smart Sunday dresses and shiny black shoes and with all of those adults standing around looking approving and smiling, what else would a girl think but that to look good and to be admired is what she is there for?

A lot of girls carry this on for a long time. Of course this isn't just girls, many people learn to enjoy the limelight. Getting people to pay attention to you and listen and smile and dote on you can be...well, addictive. But I'm focussing on females. Many girls I've known have even eschewed the possiblity of being taken seriously just for the chance to be cute. I've been told more than once by a girl that she would rather people think of her as fun and happy than smart and interesting.

Maybe it's because my dad never really liked the little girl dresses that barely cover the kids' butts (presumably this is to make for easier access when removing diapers and such, and the underwear is usually more on the frilly pantaloon side than panties). Or maybe because my oldest brother is about thirteen months younger than I and that for about the first six or seven years of his life we were best friends, I got to liking playing in the mud and climbing trees better than with dolls or dressing up.

But there is still a strong part of me that likes to dress up. It's sorta weird, this instinct because I can't define or really find a good reason for it. I generally don't like the attention that goes with dressing up, unless it is something that I've specifically designed to here. By specific I mean, it is usually *one* specific person I've been aiming to wow and I want it to come out in a spcific manner. Otherwise I mostly like to look good. I do like some of the compliments I get but often enough I feel really awkward when I get them. But I remember them and often take them into consideration the next time I'm hunting through the closet for something to wear.

Of course I'm not likely to spend much time hunting through the closet. On average I spend maybe an hour per month really thinking about what I want to wear cause there is maybe one night per month when it really matters to me. I like how a beautiful woman looks when she is dressed very finely, in a lovely, rich gown. But she just looks beautiful there. She might as well be a statue or a painting for the regard that I have.

Of course there is appreciation for beauty and then there is attraction and the desire to fuck beauty. That comes later.

What I'm wrestling with at the moment is how come I can dress up (or want to dress up) but not really wish to deal with the effects that come after? Other girls now how hard it is and what a pain it is to dress up so they congratulate each other on a job well done. I don't think guys have the first clue to such things but they learn quickly that complimenting a girl usually means she won't ignore them for those few seconds.

My mom sorta messed me up because I don't think her style is really one I would *ever* like even if I hadn't been forcibly dressed by her every day until I was maybe eleven, and then only got to buy own clothes sometime during college. It could be because my natural tastes are either gothic and highly femme or totally lazy t-shirt and jeans that I didn't really like her middle-aged-lady-waiting-for-her-azeleas-to-pop-up look. Even my dad didn't like it much. He said when she was in her twenties she would dress like she was pushing forty, and then she'd try to turn around and dress me the same way.

I typically didn't mind when I was a kid. First I went to parochial schools where I had to wear a uniform and then I went to public schools where there was no real strict fashion code. But now I can wear what I like and so I do, but it's what people say that I'm not always prepared for. And if anything, I like to be prepared.

Acting
So lots of girls learn to love dressing up and showing off for people. I really don't have an explanation for why I came be exactly the same only different. I guess maybe I like to be admired, but I don't like to hear about it? No, that doesn't even make sense to me.

I first took a drama class when I was in the eighth grade. I'd already had friends who had been in drama and had been in the city's Children's Repertoire Theatre. I really, truly love the performing arts. I can't really say why. Possibly in part because it is in the moment, it is art that is only real at the moment that it is created and dies when the piece is over. How very melodramatic. Anyway, that's a subject for later. I was very curious about theatre and wanted to take my crack at being on stage to see what it was all about.

But what I found was stage fright and repeating other people's lines, harrassing myself until I exposed something that could pass for "emotional truth." Even in the eighth grade I realized I didn't really want to act and thought strongly about writing. But during my junior year of high school I got a chance to direct a short scene and realized the power that came in the latitudes one was allowed when one took liberties with someone else's words and with someone else's body. I could really do something with this. I could put it on a stage and from there drive myself crazy trying to get people to like what I do. Weird, no? I don't know what to do with people's praise for me, but if you praise something I do or how I present an idea, then I can deal and be gracious and stuff. Like a real lady. };> (j/k)

Shopping
For some reason or other society has told us that we like to shop and many of us have bought into it. It makes perfect sense in a capitalist society, but what doesn't make sense is all the girls who reportedly hate to shop. Why don't you hear about them on real-as-life TV drama's? I like to shop, I just hate trying on clothes and I despise being short on money. Money shall be it's own entry quite soon, I asure you, but suffice to say that staying away from shopping seems to work well for holding onto my lana.

Some girls can go out and try a bunch of things, spend hours at the mall, go into a dozen stores and walk away with a "killer" pair of socks. Some girls seem to only shop by thinking of the very specific thing they want (say, a black form-fitting button-down shirt for work), walk determinedly into the store, make a bee-line for the discount rack, find their size and, just to make sure, try it on at the fitting rooms before heading to the cashier and plunking down their MasterCard. I really suck at clothes shopping, mostly because when it comes to anything having to do with my body I am a basketcase. Unless I know *precisely* what I want it takes me a LONG time to find something suitable that won't make me sit in front of the mirror for twenty minutes and cry or pinch my flab and scratch my thighs until they bruise. If I go into a store thinking "Today I would like to buy a nice dress for Easter," I'm likely to walk out cursing that carpenter's son who had the nerve to get a bunch of holidays where us women have to practically kill ourselves to look good for and *then* get the kids to church on time, and *then* make sure the supper is a memorable one.... And I don't even have kids.

But I like places like Hot Topic or Ipso Facto, because they are dress up places that cater to the fashions that I like. But the trouble with the goth look is it possibly more unrealistic of it's expectations of the feminine figure than mainstream American media.

It figures, don't it? I go my whole life not fitting in anywhere and so the look I realize I like best of all is possibly the one that is most anti-me.

I'm the overweight goth with a tan.

Decorating and Taking/Keeping Photographs
For the longest time I'd never understood why people wanted to keep knick knacks around and take photographs of friends and family and then keep them on a desk even if they're folks they see everyday. But I think in my old age I'm beginning to understand.

I still don't understand knick knacks that well, but some amount of decoration is nice. I like being surrounded by strong colors so I like putting up items that mean something. In college I often put together collages of pictures I cut out of newspapers or magazines. They usually revolved around musicians I liked, occasional quotes that caught my eye and pictures that provoked some thought in me and others. I've come to find that I'm not the only person who did that, but it was still cool to be surrounded by people who sang me to sleep. But I still only vaguely understand the desire to have pictures around.

On my desk at work I have several postcards littering my desk, mostly because I don't have room for posters. Various sorts of movies I like (The Crow, Nightmare Before Christmas, Reservoir Dogs), characters from comic books, and musicians. And two books or postcards, one of Diego Rivera paintings and murals and one of Frida Kahlo paintings and photographs. Molasses gave them to me a year ago Valentine's. I also have a miniature Spanish flag (to let my fellow editors know I speak Spanish), a black and red feather duster/pen in the pencil box (to let my fellow editors know I'm a goth), a copy of the MLA Handbook and Webster's Thesaurus (to let my bosses know I'm an editor). It's all about style even if half of my desk is regularly buried by crap like copies of work documents, gaming notes, books, bills, etc. I like my stuff to talk about me so that I don't have to.

But pictures... they ground me in reality. I usually hate photos of me. If someone takes a picture it's often a result of me giving in cause I can't get them to leave me alone, but it's also the realization that I probably won't have to see the picture again. But sometimes I catch myself thinking that I *do* miss looking at my family. I occasionally feel like I've forgotten what my sister looks like because she changes her looks every so often. My mom is getting older and, sad to say it, but my dad can't go on forever. Momentos. Got to get them while I can.

Sexuality
Here's a sticky subject. There is a different form and expression of female sexuality as their are individual women. It's a tough subject because the folks involved are a wide rowdy, changing bunch. One of the quotes that I like best on the subject comes from some forgettable movie I saw a tiny piece of on a slow Sunday afternoon cause I was flipping through channels waiting for the Simpsons. A woman was telling her daughter about the first man she had ever been with. The man was *not* the girl's father and she was startled and had the look of mock scandalizement that folks get when they think they should be shocked in a bad way but can only be bothered to be a little surprised and then are impatient to hear the juicy details. The mother just looked at her with pursed lips and said, "You kids, you think you're the only one's who discovered sex."

Every girl goes through discovering, some go way too fast, some way too slow, and as is the way with divergent paths, they often end up in different places. But not always. Most girls have a goal in mind and find their way their eventually. I think it's those of us who were never clear on what were supposed to do that get confused.... I dunno. I get the distinct feeling that I'm talking out of my ass cause I've been sexually active for five years and while that's a full fifth of my life, that's ONLY five years. I know plenty girls younger than me who've been at it longer. Hell, most of my "innocense" went away when the girl who stopped going to junior high at the end of eight grade showed up, kid in tow in high school.

So I fully understand that my sexuality is likelty to change as I get older. But it's the first step in considering other things that come with being a grown up like kids and marriage (or marriage and kids). I don't really have path, exactly. I've never thought about the difference between being a kid and being an adult when I was a kid. I think I just figured I'd have the chance to earn money and that I needed school to learn how to do that.

What I've observed is that most girls like sex almost as much as any guy, and I strongly suspect that guys don't like sex as much as they think they do. I know all about them being horny bastards and all, but what I'm getting at is that I suspect guys like to come. Moreover they're kinda wired that way, and find that doing it with someone else is more fun than doing it alone. But the trial that goes into getting a date who will agree to go all the way can be a pain. Not that guys don't learn to love the pain. But now I'm getting away from my original subject. Me.

Getting sex is not a problem for chicks, getting good sex however, can be, and the wiring in most girls is to consider consequences, like say a baby, and that brings in all kinds of instinctual reactions to the idea of sex. Until recently a baby was something that made me nervous, but not really afraid. I was much, *MUCH* more terrified of disease. I still am. So even when I was drunk and throwing myself at a guy I tried to spare a thought for the glove.

When girls came into this for me I think was late in high school when I would see girls wearing guys clothes and doing a kind of a punky "fuck the world, if I die during the night, then I fucking die, but today I'm going to have a goddamn blast." They truly lived everyday as it it might be their last. I never could do that because my brain would short-circuit any such plan. ("Yeah, and what happens when you don't die, brainiac?") But the attitudes they held coupled with clothes that only hinted the curves underneath could really do a number on my breath and heartrate.

I haven't had nearly as much experience with them as I have with guys, again more because the supply of men way overwhelmed the availablility of women. And cause for a long time I didn't really *get* that I liked looking because I was attracted. But often enough the sort of woman I am attracted to is the ones that couldn't give me the time of day if I gave them a cash advance. They are either truly classy ladies, or hardcore and hell-bent on gouging every last once of fun and freedom from life before they burn out. Either way they could squish me like a bug under the heel of their boots, whether vinyl thigh-highs or combat Doc Martens. And I'd love it.

Guys...I don't know. I guess from just looking at the sort I've seen more than once I can guess that I'm most attracted to brains. And not only smarts, but the well-educated kind. The guys that I've dated have all come from USC, and school pride aside, it has as much to do with the fact that I've mostly only dated within my circle, and I have *only* been dating since I went off to college.

I don't really know where I would like to go with Molasses. Often enough he talks as if it's a given that eventually, in the unspecified future we'll get married and settle down. It honestly doesn't bug me as much as I thought it would, which in and of itself, is a reaction that confuses me. He's never actually asked me to marry him but he knows my qualm with the idea isn't with him so much as with the idea. I've told him enough that I would have forever if he'd let me and he's of the same mind. So that's enough for me. I don't see why I'd need or want anything else. I thank God everyday for what I have in him and try to remember to ask politely for some more.

I don't really understand the point of ceremony. But I understand legitimacy, as much as it irritates me. My mother will never take our relationship seriously and would probably freak if someone insinuated to her that we are sleeping together. I wish I could just brush this off as just another disagreement that she'll just have to get used to but this is a BIG disagreement and no amount of wishing will make it go away.

But I guess as for ceremony, some people like to make a big deal out of it. That's cool, if that's what they like. I hear some people like having birthday parties. I don't. My dad would probably be incensed if I dared state out loud that I don't want to take part in a ritual before God when that is the Catholic thing you do. He would insist that any bind I could make would be a weak one that could not last and would not even be as ashes before the strenth that a bind blessed by God could have. Maybe he's right, but I feel like God already gave such a wonderful thing in this man I love, I cannot understand what a ritual would do to make it better. The only thing that I can see that is the most important thing about marriage is the promise. To have and to hold, etc, etc. It's a vow and it's binding, dammit. In any way allowing for a chance to head for the hills when things got uncomfortable goes against what I think all the things a vow entails.

Now before you start shouting at me about abuse let me remind you that the *other* party had to swear to love and protect as well. If it's the other that's screwing around and coming home drunk and abusive, they've already broken the vow. But a person's word is they're bond. I believe in that wholeheartedly and if a person promises something and then gainsays it through action whether five minutes or fifty years later, this, to me, is serious problem.

I don't swear oaths lightly. And I don't look to oaths to give me something I couldn't get for myself.

Goodness. I've been at this for over two hours. I clocked out two and half hours ago.... I should leave!

Better dumb and happy than
Smart and with out any friends
better cute and better loud
better join up with the crowd
Change
Boingo