It's the little things in life that become emotional pornography when you're single. Maybe not just when you're single, but when you're not getting it.
2 hours of dancing on top of a 5 hour car trip had me whimpering mentally by the time I was heading home tonight. Leaning over a marble bannister, unable to even make it to my car without trying to stretch out my back, I found myself having an intense fantasy moment where all I had to do was make it home, and there would be someone there waiting whose only main concern would be whether they'd rub my feet or my back first. The backrub would be especially welcome, since it would likely involve lotion and I've had this chronic itch on my right shoulder blade for the last few months that has me contorting like a cross between a mental patient and a dog with fleas to reach it on a daily basis. This itch has been with me for years, but was one of the many little things that my partner did for me that made a warm squishy place in my heart, even if he insisted upon teasing me about it. "will you scratch. . ." "your right shoulder blade" he would finish with what I always hoped was amusement and not resentment. He didn't have any hard to reach chronically itchy places, so I never got to return the favor.
I figured this would be the place on my hide that wouldn't allow me to go "Between". He thought it was from my tattoo, I think it was because he didn't care for me properly when he grew me, and that was a weak spot on my skin :)
These fantasies combined with memories happen a lot anymore. I find myself sighing at the idea of curling up on the couch by myself to watch tv, and dreading forcing myself to actually cook when I'm by myself. I miss being felt up while I'm doing the dishes, and putting my cold hands in his warm places when I come in from outside and don't have enough sense to put on gloves. Laughing and joking around with another adult who you're intimate with is something that isn't the same with close friends. A lot of things aren't the same with close friends, mostly because they have their own lives and share their own little moment of life with someone else.
My step-brother and his wife are visiting my family right now. I just came from there today. They've been married a long time. I sort of vaguely remember them getting married, but I was pretty young and not paying much attention to that kind of thing. Or maybe, they got married just before my mom and step-dad got together. In any case, they've always been together in my mind. They almost split up a few years ago. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but it sounded like it was the same basic problem most couples who've been together for a while (especially those who got together young) face. They just got bored.
Those little moments that are so important to me now, important enough that thinking about them brings on some kind of weird horniness, an emotional horniness seeking out consumation on the plane of intimacy instead of the playing field of the physical connection, are things that it's easy to forget are important. It's simple to see how green the grass is somewhere else for no other reason than the sheer novelty of the unknown being more interesting than what you already know in and out. They got bored. They felt the other one didn't hear them, didn't appreciate them, didn't even know who they were anymore.
They got past it, somehow. I'm not sure how they did that either. But now they're comfortable with each other. They like each other. Somewhere, they realized that maybe those little moments meant more than they seemed, maybe they weren't so little. They know each other really well, better than anyone else does. That counts for a lot, when you really think about it. In Shall we Dance? the Sarandan character says this about marriage, "We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."
Not especially romantic, but it's that witness I miss the most. The participation in my life by someone else who gives a shit about it. I spent 12 hours making a roof over someone's head. I'm so fucking impressed by that. The only other human being in the world who can truly understand how impressive the amount of work I did was, isn't here anymore to care. The only person who has a complete picture of my history, of where I came from, what I fought through to get here, took his attention away and left a hole in the documentary. The *context* of my accomplishments has been removed.
I don't need a person in my life. I am content with myself most of the time. I can support myself, take care of my kids, keep myself entertained, get laid (theoretically), develop my self/art/skills/intellect, and happily sleep by myself taking up a surprising amount of the king sized bed. I find myself wondering, what exactly is a partner good for? I'm so competant in my own life, it's almost scary, what do I need in someone else?
I realized I don't *need* someone else, but I want company. I want a companion who is interested in me, who is interesting themselves, and who is simply *there*. Being present in my life, witnessing it and sharing it. While I do seem to get more *done* by myself, I miss killing time. I *want* to just hang out with someone whose company is so enjoyable, that we just talk to each other about whatever, and suddenly we're late for where we were supposed to go, or not going to get enough sleep for the next day, or didn't get the project done we swore we were going to do. People are interesting enough, but individuals are fascinating. I love and miss digging into a particular person, a unique person, and spending *years* understanding their layers and plumbing their depths. I like working on that kind of time scale. I miss forever, I long for the knowledge that there's plenty of time ahead. Emotional pornography is the decadent luxury of the forseeable future laid out in front of you, available for slow and deliberate exploration, deeper and harder, increasingly subtle and sensitive probes based on shared history and the unique language of intimacy that every close pairing develops.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Thursday, May 19, 2005
W - The President
These stickers kick ass. I love them. They are beautiful and elegant, with just the right font, in a very cool square shape that is different from most any bumper sticker I've ever seen. There's something extremely classy about the font they used, the W is sleek and pronounced. It's white on a black background, easy to see and unmistakable. The shape of the sticker alone is distinctive, the W takes up most of the space, so you already know where you're going with the sticker before you even get to the punch line.
And let's talk about the punchline. It's simple, directly to the point. There's no convincing, there's no pleading, no humor, no negotiation. W... who is he? The President. He won, you lost, get used to it. It's a statement of victory. Of victory so complete that there is no apology, no mincing, no euphamism. Nothing can be done, and his supporters are free to be as public and unapologetic about their support as they want to be.
And the form of support they choose is classy. It's so fucking classy. It's timeless and elegant, it's not in any way cheap or faddish. I'm drawn to those stickers with the same lust I have for cars I can't afford, vacations to the south of France, and any table setting that involves more than 4 pieces of flatware. Those stickers make me feel beaten. They make me feel outclassed and vaguely embarrassed about my political leanings. I respect those stickers as an adversary more potent than anything I've seen in the political arena since my conciousness blossomed.
There has been a backlash, of course. But it's too late. The joke is funny, the effect is certainly a great try. I may even get one myself. However, it's defense, and they scored the win in this round. Maybe the F will salvage some shred of pride, provide some dent in the smug feeling of bovine contentment felt by people who have convinced themselves that they stood behind W all along and never had any question he was the right guy for the job. Maybe the pure vulgarity the F implies, put on such a classy sticker with such a sleek and refined font will rattle the cages of the people so very very pleased with themselves, but in the end, it's a token effort against a group of people so inured in their rightness that they couldn't be rattled if a bomb dropped directly on their house and they saw a big W - The President sticker on the tip of it.
And let's talk about the punchline. It's simple, directly to the point. There's no convincing, there's no pleading, no humor, no negotiation. W... who is he? The President. He won, you lost, get used to it. It's a statement of victory. Of victory so complete that there is no apology, no mincing, no euphamism. Nothing can be done, and his supporters are free to be as public and unapologetic about their support as they want to be.
And the form of support they choose is classy. It's so fucking classy. It's timeless and elegant, it's not in any way cheap or faddish. I'm drawn to those stickers with the same lust I have for cars I can't afford, vacations to the south of France, and any table setting that involves more than 4 pieces of flatware. Those stickers make me feel beaten. They make me feel outclassed and vaguely embarrassed about my political leanings. I respect those stickers as an adversary more potent than anything I've seen in the political arena since my conciousness blossomed.
There has been a backlash, of course. But it's too late. The joke is funny, the effect is certainly a great try. I may even get one myself. However, it's defense, and they scored the win in this round. Maybe the F will salvage some shred of pride, provide some dent in the smug feeling of bovine contentment felt by people who have convinced themselves that they stood behind W all along and never had any question he was the right guy for the job. Maybe the pure vulgarity the F implies, put on such a classy sticker with such a sleek and refined font will rattle the cages of the people so very very pleased with themselves, but in the end, it's a token effort against a group of people so inured in their rightness that they couldn't be rattled if a bomb dropped directly on their house and they saw a big W - The President sticker on the tip of it.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Masculinity Class Final Paper
Dating is one of those interesting areas of interpersonal dynamics that’s easy to get advice for, but hard to determine whether the advice has merit. The plethora of information available for people to utilize shows that there is need, desire, and plenty of confusion about the best way to proceed when it comes to finding another person to connect with in an intimate way. Dating advice is a place where gender assumptions and stereotypes are still rampant. I see this as a sign of confusion about current standards of gender expectations rather than a more sinister desire to keep traditional roles stable. Traditional roles represent stability and the known and in times of change and turmoil, Michael Kimmel says, “society tends to search for the timeless and eternal during moments of crisis, those points of transition when old definitions no longer work and new definitions are yet to be firmly established.” Female roles in our society, homes and workplace have changed dramatically in the last 30 years, and it makes sense the confusion about the current state of affairs would show up dramatically in one of our most elementary points of human connection, dating relationships.
In order to get a grasp on what I consider to be the basics of relationship dating advice being presented to the public, I consulted three main sources: David De Angelo author of the e-book Double your Dating, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider authors of The Rules II, and Dr. Joy Browne author of Dating for Dummies. De Angelo advises men in a primarily traditional shame based manner, calling to the man’s ego, his desire for power and his aversion to being thought of as less than a man. Fein and Schneider advise women in a primarily traditional manipulative female wiles approach that calls to a womans’ insecurity about her physical appearance, her desire to abdicate power/responsibility for action to the man, and the understanding of sexuality as power. Dr. Browne takes a more middle road stance and attempts to write a book appealing to everyone with special notes about tendencies of one gender or another. The content of the advice isn’t all that different between these three sources, the form it comes in, however, is. If you wanted to break these authors down to stereotypes, it would be: traditional masculine, traditional feminine, and progressive egalitarian. These are three socially different groups of people, yet the content remains somewhat constant: try to look good, be confident, develop your own interests and don’t put too much pressure on any individual relationship working out.
I looked for commonalities as well as differences in these references. De Angelo and Fein/Schneider are both opposite ends of the gender spectrum. They advocate fairly traditional gender roles in the interaction between men and women. They agree on a few main points: Men must pursue, women must be pursued. Men have to make the moves, women respond to advances. Neediness is not attractive in either gender. Keep your distance, don’t give away too much information too early. Develop your independence, learn to be happy with yourself. Some of these points aren’t objectionable at all. In fact, the middle road author, Dr. Browne agrees with at least the last few in the list. Dr. Browne does not, however, agree with the game playing mentality that goes with the other authors advice. Fein/Schneider advocate rules like: only call a man back once for every 4 times he calls you. De Angelo advocates rules about not answering a womans’ questions directly, to crack jokes or lie outright in a funny way.
Playing hard to get is considered attractive. Not returning phone calls, being busy, and being mysterious about what is truly going on in your head are advocated as ways to build desire, interest and sexual tension in a person you’re interested in. These games establish power in the relationship, they cultivate a belief in the person you’re trying to attract that you are better than they are, or at least an equal, thus desirable. Utilizing basic human desire to climb the social hierarchy through their associations, this advice can be devastatingly effective as long as everyone buys into the stereotypical behavior and gender codes being iconized.
The study of psychology began to be seriously developed in the late 1800’s with Freud. Psychology began the idea of defining normalcy and deviance in humans. Gender roles and the interactions of people in romantic relationships was something that was observed, noted and attempted to be explained rather than challenged. Some of those initial assumptions about the core nature of how gender is done are still with us today in the forms of gender stereotypes and statements that start with things like, “men always…” or “women should. . .”
As a culture, we developed an investment in settling the issue once and for all. If we know what men and women do, then we know what they are, and we can know what to expect. Victorian era relationship styles became the standard to which all subsequent eras struggled to maintain. The first major crack came from Rosie the Riveter and got blown open by the flower child. Women were no longer willing to accept the gender roles they’d been assigned by Freud and had been pressured to maintain by a society seeking stability in a century of huge upsets. (world wars, the industrial revolution, the depression) Feminism became an offshoot from the anti-war movement and resulted from dissatisfaction for how women were treated within that movement and an increased understanding of how effective political cooperation can be when the group is united in its goals. (faludi ch. 6)
I was fascinated to consider that women were pushed into feminism by men who had inappropriately applied traditional gender roles in situations where the common ground was philosophical and political rather than specifically sexual or domestic. Without the combination of political awareness and the desire for the men to have women as staff to do the work for the movement, feminism may never have happened. The first programs in feminist/womens studies started in 1972. I was born in 1973. The bonding together of women who stood up and said "we will not be allow ourselves to be oppressed anymore" happened as my mother was blossoming into adulthood, deciding what kind of adult she wanted to be. She is so different from her own mother, that not just grandma being foreign (Latvian) and my mom being raised basically American explains it. I had always just thought it was a cultural difference. It is, of course, but I think it's much more than country of origin. My mom was a transitional generation between Victorian era women of Freud and a new breed of woman more like Rosie the Riveter.
I married a feminist, and he broke me of the remaining notions I held of getting my door opened and getting stuff bought for me just because I was a woman pretty quickly. You want equality? You got it, babe, open your own door. It ended up being a situation where we worked out what we wanted to do based on individual interests, not on gender. I mowed the lawn, he did the dishes, and we fought over who had to clean the toilet. Some jobs are no fun no matter what.
Somewhere along the line tho, he cracked. I can only speculate on what caused it, I never even identified the situation until it was well over. Was it the pressure from his own gender? Did his imbedded ideas of what a man is really like finally leak through the seal he'd put on them until there was a crack that broke the whole thing down? Was it subtle pressure from his dad, implications that he wasn't a real man? Was it his own insecurities about being ahead of the curve, a man unlike the men around him? And he was. He was unlike the men around him, he was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, unlike anything I had known was possible for a man to be. Those men are much more common now, they're just 20 years old and not 30something. He was a man ahead of his time, and maybe being on the frontier just got to be too much. He's retreated into traditional masculinity with an aplomb I find sort of fascinating, if grisly.
Defining traditional manhood would have been something I would have struggled with 6 months ago. I just knew it when I saw it. Kimmel on the other hand, did a pretty good job. He has four rules that seem to make it all so clear.
No sissy stuff, that's the first rule. You can never do anything that even remotely hints of femininity. The second rule is to be a big wheel. You know, we measure masculinity by the size of your paycheck, wealth, power, status, things like that. The third rule is to be sturdy oak. You show that you're a man by never showing your emotions. And the fourth rule is Give 'Em Hell. Always go forward, exude an aura of daring and aggression in everything that you do.
Traditional manhood isn’t nearly as much of our past as traditional womanhood is. The effect is that men are left without the proper responses from women and society to understand how they should be acting, since what they’ve been taught doesn’t seem to be as effective a model as it was for their fathers. The current way men want to interact with women in a dating scenario reflects a desire to establish power and dominance in at least one aspect of their lives in a society where men are floundering to understand what it means to be a man. In What Makes a Man: “The Gift”, Michael Datcher talks about “disenfranchised men who in place of commitment play the field, measure their manhood by booty call average. The home run fence replaced the picket one.” While he is specifically talking about black men, I think there are signs of this in a more generalized look at men’s behavior.
Young men have come to adulthood with some of the expectations of male entitlement that were the natural birthright of the penis bearer in our society as late at their own fathers time. That entitlement simply isn't as easy to come by anymore. Women who are bonded to the men my age were raised by the first generation of feminists, the first wave of women who came to adulthood with expectations of their own entitlement: entitlement to a job with a competitive to men wage, entitlement to their own sexual pleasure, entitlement to help around the house when they too work outside it, entitlement to pursue their own interests and to expect support from their mates to accomplish it. This stuff is all radically new, and it happened since I was born. Finding a place for the 4 rules of traditional manhood becomes problematic when faced with the reality of new womanhood. Dating has become an arena for proving manhood in a society with no proving grounds and the hunt allows men a traditional method to prove their manhood in ways socially recognized by both men and women.
Unfortunately, reinforcing these standards of manhood for dating comes into conflict with the new ways men are expected to perform in society, the workplace and the home. In long term relationships, jobs, parenting, and more, men are expected to be more able to operate in our increasingly service based society. That means they have to develop skills like being more sensitive, multi-tasking, and understanding body/meta language the way women have been doing for a lot longer.
I firmly believe men are perfectly capable of developing these new skill sets, but are still struggling to do it willingly. Men do a lot to keep each other in line, the very nature of male bonding is one of sadism on an emotional and physical level. They think nothing of humiliating a friend in order to make sure the friend upholds the standards of masculinity he feels are important. Female society isn't much kinder to their own members, of course, but womens liberation has done a lot to muddle the issue even among ourselves. We can't force someone to conform when we've been told from the moment we could understand that we could do anything, that we can stay at home or work, we can have kids or not, we can be more masculine or more feminine, wear make-up or not, and it's all ok. We have been given the freedom of variety that is still considered normal and acceptable. Men haven't been given that freedom yet, and they are trying to figure out what to do now.
The study of gender as a construction, a choice or a response to pressure was birthed by feminism. As it stands now, gender study typically indicates women and is based on the inequalities women face. The gender of men is still invisible. Men are ungendered. By being without gender, men are left without an understanding of masculinity as a construction that can be chosen. Masculinity is viewed as an inherent and unchanging quality of genetics. What this ends up meaning is that if femininity is a construct that can be chosen, and masculinity is genetic and is present without choice on the part of the man, then all heterosocial interactions pressure the woman changing herself (since she has the option of change and he doesn’t) in order to get along. Lack of exploration of masculinity as a construction encourages the belief that these assumed components of masculinity are true.
If this is the case, when sociologist Erving Goffman wrote:
[I]n an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports . . . . Any male who fails to qualify in any of these ways is likely to view himself -- during moments at least -- as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior . . . .
We are shown how limited our scope of manhood has become, and how very few actual men fit under the umbrella represented by an ideal no longer, if ever, suited to modern life.
I went to a lecture by Michael Kimmel, and he talked about how this change we're seeing is inevitable. Men simply are going to have to take on more traditionally feminine roles in society. Those roles still need to be filled, and women aren't going to go back to working in the house only. Kimmel pointed out the definite benefits to men if they take on these roles. If they're helping around the house, the woman they're with is going to be less tired, more happy, and more likely to have the energy and desire to have sex. Men who help around the house get laid more. Sociologists Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams actually did the research. Men who help around the house have better health stats, more connection with their children, the children are better adjusted and get in less trouble academically and socially. Everyone wins here.
Earning my Tool Belt
Last weekend, I worked hard. I worked really really hard. I spent the weekend participating in the local Habitat for Humanity Womens Build. This is an annual event (this is the 4th for the local group, my second) where a house is built from bottom to top by women. This year, the family it was being built for was a married couple, so there is one man on the crew.
There's something really powerful about women building a house. This is especially true in the first parts of the build, my area of specialty. In the beginning, you are putting up walls, trusses and sheathing the roof. These are exhausting, physically intensive jobs that require teamwork and just plain grit to get done.
Saturday, wall raising day, it rained. We were wet and miserable, cold and slogging through clay heavy mud. Words like "mire" "tar pit" and "I'm Stuck!" flew around the site freely. Words were the only thing moving freely through the job site. I held on, knowing that the next day I would be "in the air," the term used euphemistically to indicate the people who would be doing the roof.
Sunday was clear. It was the most perfect day for being in the air that could be imagined. It was heavily overcast, around 60 degrees, and not all that windy. We started by getting the headers set, the big, obnoxiously heavy end pieces at the front and back of the house that hang over the edge. Getting those in the air is always impressive. Doing it with a crew of only women is just that much more incredible and satisfying. I'm not sure how much they weigh, but it's somewhere around several hundred pounds. After that, my job was to grab the trusses and pull them up while they push from below. I'm proud that I was designated as strong enough for this job, but yesterday, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. My abdomen was so sore, and I realized that it was from leaning over a wall, and pulling up one truss after another. After that, we had to center the truss. Somehow, it became my job to tap the end with a small sledgehammer to get it right. I should have pass it over to her after a while. The tendons on my right hand are still (Tuesday afternoon) objecting to motion, and the very idea of gripping something hard makes me wince.
We had the trusses set in place by noon and spent the afternoon sheathing the roof. I wasn't completely certain I could still hold a hammer, but hold one I did. I exchanged the framing hammer I'd been using to set the nails in the trusses for a lighter one for roof work. That helped. In the air, something to hold a hammer becomes critical. I didn't have the pants with the hammer loop, and I only had a nail pouch to hold the hammer, sort of. I was tired of worrying that I was going to drop my hammer on someone's head working below me. I decided I needed a tool belt. In a conversation with my partner, the woman I'd worked with last year, I talked about the decision to get a tool belt.
Getting a tool belt is an interesting decision for a woman. After all, exactly how often is a woman really going to need a tool belt?? There's something a little pretentious about a woman wearing a tool belt that's hers. Like combat boots, there's an expectation that this piece of equipment is meant to be used. If it's not, then owning it is a waste, it's an insult to the supreme utility intended by its existance. There are some things that are so rugged, so utilitarian, and so specifically made to *work* that owning it and not using it for that task is shameful.
I owned a herding dog once. I had two dogs, both were herding breeds. One, however, was a working dog. I never quite lived down my shame in owning such a finely composed tool and never using it for what it was intended. She was a working dog, and that's what she wanted to do. She tolerated being a pet, and made the best of it, but that's not what she was put on this planet to do, and we all knew it. When she died, I knew I'd failed to do what I'd always said I would. I had promised myself that I would make sure she had something to herd, that I would have moved out to the country before she passed and gave her something to move from place to place the way she intended. I didn't do that. Somehow, the time passed, the opportunity wasn't there, and she became old and feeble before I fulfilled my obligation to her utility.
Would I fulfill my obligation to the utility of a tool belt? Would it become worn and used as it should? Will I be able to find anything I'm looking for without concious thought because I've worn it enough that I know exactly where each pocket and each tool hangs on my body when it's there? Will the unfinished buckskin that tool belts are made of become slick and smooth in places where my hands have touched, where the tools have slid in and out? Or, will the belt remain clean and suede like, the leather still stiff and shaped by the factory and not by the tools it has held?
I speculated with my partner about whether a tool belt is something to be earned. There are other communities where things are earned. In the leather community, one earns their "leathers" by meeting certain standards set within the community they choose to participate in. I have a ring that I covet and want, a ring that signifies my being a part of the Latvian community, a symbol of that ethnicity, a ring that can only be given as a gift, and in my family is only given when a person learns the language. I haven't earned that ring yet, even tho I've spent years in half hearted efforts to learn.
In speaking of my concerns about getting a tool belt and whether I'd earned it, my partner turns to me, comprehending completely what I was saying and said with utter seriousness, "oh, you've *earned* your tool belt." I was so pleased by that, I wasn't sure what to say. If there's anyone who could make that judgement, in reality, it would be her. She is tough, super tough. I have never met another woman who works the way she does. She is supremely competant, and I respect that entirely. She works hard, she's straightforward, she's strong, and she's very much still a woman. Earning the respect of someone that you respect a great deal is a satisfying thing. I've had respect from people I don't respect and it's hollow.
I have earned the right to wear a tool belt. I work hard, and I do it often enough to justify having the right tool to do my job properly. I like working with Habitat, and I like building houses. I have a passion for housing, for building, I hadn't realized that until the last few years. In my mind, I had this vague notion of building my own home. At one time, that was The Plan. We were going to move to the country, build our own home, and get a flock of sheep for the dog to herd. I would spin wool, we would have a masonry stove to heat the place, backed up by passive solar. We were going to figure out how to generate our own electricity and grow our own food.
I'd been afraid I didn't have it in me. I thought building our own home was something that I couldn't do, that my body just wouldn't take it. I know that's not true now. My body is strong, it is able, and it can build. I spent 12 hours on Sunday alone working really really hard. I didn't do it alone, but I did a lot. I can build a house. While I'm not interested in building a stick built house, I know I can work hard, and I can get the job done. My tool belt won't go to waste, because I will make a home for myself and my children, in a very literal sense. Until then, I will make homes for other people, structures for other people to call home for their families, or in the case of Thunder Dome, homes for communities to come together and celebrate their unity. I build.
There's something really powerful about women building a house. This is especially true in the first parts of the build, my area of specialty. In the beginning, you are putting up walls, trusses and sheathing the roof. These are exhausting, physically intensive jobs that require teamwork and just plain grit to get done.
Saturday, wall raising day, it rained. We were wet and miserable, cold and slogging through clay heavy mud. Words like "mire" "tar pit" and "I'm Stuck!" flew around the site freely. Words were the only thing moving freely through the job site. I held on, knowing that the next day I would be "in the air," the term used euphemistically to indicate the people who would be doing the roof.
Sunday was clear. It was the most perfect day for being in the air that could be imagined. It was heavily overcast, around 60 degrees, and not all that windy. We started by getting the headers set, the big, obnoxiously heavy end pieces at the front and back of the house that hang over the edge. Getting those in the air is always impressive. Doing it with a crew of only women is just that much more incredible and satisfying. I'm not sure how much they weigh, but it's somewhere around several hundred pounds. After that, my job was to grab the trusses and pull them up while they push from below. I'm proud that I was designated as strong enough for this job, but yesterday, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. My abdomen was so sore, and I realized that it was from leaning over a wall, and pulling up one truss after another. After that, we had to center the truss. Somehow, it became my job to tap the end with a small sledgehammer to get it right. I should have pass it over to her after a while. The tendons on my right hand are still (Tuesday afternoon) objecting to motion, and the very idea of gripping something hard makes me wince.
We had the trusses set in place by noon and spent the afternoon sheathing the roof. I wasn't completely certain I could still hold a hammer, but hold one I did. I exchanged the framing hammer I'd been using to set the nails in the trusses for a lighter one for roof work. That helped. In the air, something to hold a hammer becomes critical. I didn't have the pants with the hammer loop, and I only had a nail pouch to hold the hammer, sort of. I was tired of worrying that I was going to drop my hammer on someone's head working below me. I decided I needed a tool belt. In a conversation with my partner, the woman I'd worked with last year, I talked about the decision to get a tool belt.
Getting a tool belt is an interesting decision for a woman. After all, exactly how often is a woman really going to need a tool belt?? There's something a little pretentious about a woman wearing a tool belt that's hers. Like combat boots, there's an expectation that this piece of equipment is meant to be used. If it's not, then owning it is a waste, it's an insult to the supreme utility intended by its existance. There are some things that are so rugged, so utilitarian, and so specifically made to *work* that owning it and not using it for that task is shameful.
I owned a herding dog once. I had two dogs, both were herding breeds. One, however, was a working dog. I never quite lived down my shame in owning such a finely composed tool and never using it for what it was intended. She was a working dog, and that's what she wanted to do. She tolerated being a pet, and made the best of it, but that's not what she was put on this planet to do, and we all knew it. When she died, I knew I'd failed to do what I'd always said I would. I had promised myself that I would make sure she had something to herd, that I would have moved out to the country before she passed and gave her something to move from place to place the way she intended. I didn't do that. Somehow, the time passed, the opportunity wasn't there, and she became old and feeble before I fulfilled my obligation to her utility.
Would I fulfill my obligation to the utility of a tool belt? Would it become worn and used as it should? Will I be able to find anything I'm looking for without concious thought because I've worn it enough that I know exactly where each pocket and each tool hangs on my body when it's there? Will the unfinished buckskin that tool belts are made of become slick and smooth in places where my hands have touched, where the tools have slid in and out? Or, will the belt remain clean and suede like, the leather still stiff and shaped by the factory and not by the tools it has held?
I speculated with my partner about whether a tool belt is something to be earned. There are other communities where things are earned. In the leather community, one earns their "leathers" by meeting certain standards set within the community they choose to participate in. I have a ring that I covet and want, a ring that signifies my being a part of the Latvian community, a symbol of that ethnicity, a ring that can only be given as a gift, and in my family is only given when a person learns the language. I haven't earned that ring yet, even tho I've spent years in half hearted efforts to learn.
In speaking of my concerns about getting a tool belt and whether I'd earned it, my partner turns to me, comprehending completely what I was saying and said with utter seriousness, "oh, you've *earned* your tool belt." I was so pleased by that, I wasn't sure what to say. If there's anyone who could make that judgement, in reality, it would be her. She is tough, super tough. I have never met another woman who works the way she does. She is supremely competant, and I respect that entirely. She works hard, she's straightforward, she's strong, and she's very much still a woman. Earning the respect of someone that you respect a great deal is a satisfying thing. I've had respect from people I don't respect and it's hollow.
I have earned the right to wear a tool belt. I work hard, and I do it often enough to justify having the right tool to do my job properly. I like working with Habitat, and I like building houses. I have a passion for housing, for building, I hadn't realized that until the last few years. In my mind, I had this vague notion of building my own home. At one time, that was The Plan. We were going to move to the country, build our own home, and get a flock of sheep for the dog to herd. I would spin wool, we would have a masonry stove to heat the place, backed up by passive solar. We were going to figure out how to generate our own electricity and grow our own food.
I'd been afraid I didn't have it in me. I thought building our own home was something that I couldn't do, that my body just wouldn't take it. I know that's not true now. My body is strong, it is able, and it can build. I spent 12 hours on Sunday alone working really really hard. I didn't do it alone, but I did a lot. I can build a house. While I'm not interested in building a stick built house, I know I can work hard, and I can get the job done. My tool belt won't go to waste, because I will make a home for myself and my children, in a very literal sense. Until then, I will make homes for other people, structures for other people to call home for their families, or in the case of Thunder Dome, homes for communities to come together and celebrate their unity. I build.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Hey Little Girl
I was threatened today. That's as hard to admit as it is shocking that it happened at all. People don't threaten me. That's not arrogance, it's just basic truth. What is also basic truth is that as much as I am an intelligent woman, a confident woman, a woman with obvious power and an at least unreliable *seeming* temperment to people who don't know me, I am still a woman.
This is a fact that usually doesn't have a lot of bearing in my world. Today, I was reminded that I am sometimes isolated from my gendered reality by virtue of a naturally prickly set of non-verbal cues that signal me as someone not to be trifled with.
There's been a pit bull running the neighborhood. I don't like pit bulls. Aesthetically, I find them quite handsome. They appeal to my taste for powerful and reletively dangerous predators. However, people who own pit bulls are consistantly of a temperment that take a handsome and rather gentle breed and turn it into something ugly and unsafe to be running loose. I tried for a while to bite down my learned bias for the animals when he would sometimes get loose. Recently, it's been more frequent and I found out he'd growled several times at my Goddaughter. Unacceptable. I asked around, and apparently the dog had bared his teeth, chased and otherwise showed unreliable temperment towards other people as well. The dog has to go.
For the last week, it seems the dog has been loose all the time. Early this week, I'd had it. The dog was growling at my loved ones, chasing the neighbor kid on the bike, and who knows what it could/would do to my children. I called Animal Control. I didn't get a person, so I left a message. I'm not sure if anything happened because of my message, but the dog was still around today. I was at the neighbors house when I saw him again. I urged her to call Animal Control again and she did. I believe the neighbor across the street also called them, because the dog had taken to sleeping on her back porch. The neighbor across the street from me had shot him in the ass with a pellet gun sometime last week to get it out of his yard. The whole street has had it.
When I got back from the gym today, the owner was out looking for the dog on his 4 wheeler. I figured it was him, although I'd never met/seen the guy before, since he was riding around calling out a name. I presume that's the dog. I wandered over to the neighbors house to see if the dog had been picked up, or if Animal Control had come by or what the gossip was. He rolled by, an ugly man of around 50, and looked at me hard. I was mildly surprised he recognized me at all, and a tiny bit disconcerted that he seemed to be aware that I was involved in the calling in of Authority about his dog. Then, he lowers his head, squints his eyes at me and growls, "You call on my dog again, and there's going to be big trouble."
I stopped in my tracks. Naturally possessing more guts than brains, I was a hair's breath away from telling him just what part of my ass he could kiss. Suddenly tho, my situation came crashing down on me. I was alone. I live alone and worse, I sometimes live alone with two young children. I don't even have a fucking dog to give me advance warning if someone breaks into my house, much less a man around to act as a deterrent for crazy ass pit bull owners who like to teach mouthy women a lesson about their place. In that moment between his comment and my preferred response of sarcasm and disdain, I recognized us both for what we were. He's a brute, a man who is just crazy enough to push someone around if he thought he could get away with it. And, he figures, you can get away with it when it's just a woman you're pushing around. And I am a single mom living alone.
Just a woman. All three of those words are significant in their own right. Just = less than, a = alone, and woman = weaker/vulnerable. I remember feeling vulnerable and weak once. Twice, actually, tho the second time was different in many ways. It was during pregnancy. I remember feeling slow and cumbersome and completely and utterly helpless to whatever the world may throw at me. At the time, it was a panic that was controlled by my husband. In response to my increasing frailty, he became increasingly protective and watchful for danger. I thought it was romantic and not a little bit comforting. It was always nice to have his physical presence at my back.
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire. . .
Not today. My husband is now an ex-husband. There is no physical presence at my back. In fact, the only physical presence in my house is mine, and it's my presence that's at the back of people smaller and weaker by nature than I am, my children. I'm all we have, and that reality choked me. In the end, I faced that reality and called on the resources I had, I talked to the neighbor about it, and enlisted the protection of that man, knowing that masculine protection is the only language except for brute force on my part that guy would understand. Other women I've told have suggested I call the prosecuters office pre-emptively. That way, when/if something happens and the guy does decide he wants to fuck with me, I have a report already in. Why? Because we all know a woman is only believed reluctantly and has a better chance of getting a quick response if there's already been a report made. Other than that, it's just histrionics.
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a 6-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul
I guess I need to get a dog, or a boyfriend, or a penis.
This is a fact that usually doesn't have a lot of bearing in my world. Today, I was reminded that I am sometimes isolated from my gendered reality by virtue of a naturally prickly set of non-verbal cues that signal me as someone not to be trifled with.
There's been a pit bull running the neighborhood. I don't like pit bulls. Aesthetically, I find them quite handsome. They appeal to my taste for powerful and reletively dangerous predators. However, people who own pit bulls are consistantly of a temperment that take a handsome and rather gentle breed and turn it into something ugly and unsafe to be running loose. I tried for a while to bite down my learned bias for the animals when he would sometimes get loose. Recently, it's been more frequent and I found out he'd growled several times at my Goddaughter. Unacceptable. I asked around, and apparently the dog had bared his teeth, chased and otherwise showed unreliable temperment towards other people as well. The dog has to go.
For the last week, it seems the dog has been loose all the time. Early this week, I'd had it. The dog was growling at my loved ones, chasing the neighbor kid on the bike, and who knows what it could/would do to my children. I called Animal Control. I didn't get a person, so I left a message. I'm not sure if anything happened because of my message, but the dog was still around today. I was at the neighbors house when I saw him again. I urged her to call Animal Control again and she did. I believe the neighbor across the street also called them, because the dog had taken to sleeping on her back porch. The neighbor across the street from me had shot him in the ass with a pellet gun sometime last week to get it out of his yard. The whole street has had it.
When I got back from the gym today, the owner was out looking for the dog on his 4 wheeler. I figured it was him, although I'd never met/seen the guy before, since he was riding around calling out a name. I presume that's the dog. I wandered over to the neighbors house to see if the dog had been picked up, or if Animal Control had come by or what the gossip was. He rolled by, an ugly man of around 50, and looked at me hard. I was mildly surprised he recognized me at all, and a tiny bit disconcerted that he seemed to be aware that I was involved in the calling in of Authority about his dog. Then, he lowers his head, squints his eyes at me and growls, "You call on my dog again, and there's going to be big trouble."
I stopped in my tracks. Naturally possessing more guts than brains, I was a hair's breath away from telling him just what part of my ass he could kiss. Suddenly tho, my situation came crashing down on me. I was alone. I live alone and worse, I sometimes live alone with two young children. I don't even have a fucking dog to give me advance warning if someone breaks into my house, much less a man around to act as a deterrent for crazy ass pit bull owners who like to teach mouthy women a lesson about their place. In that moment between his comment and my preferred response of sarcasm and disdain, I recognized us both for what we were. He's a brute, a man who is just crazy enough to push someone around if he thought he could get away with it. And, he figures, you can get away with it when it's just a woman you're pushing around. And I am a single mom living alone.
Just a woman. All three of those words are significant in their own right. Just = less than, a = alone, and woman = weaker/vulnerable. I remember feeling vulnerable and weak once. Twice, actually, tho the second time was different in many ways. It was during pregnancy. I remember feeling slow and cumbersome and completely and utterly helpless to whatever the world may throw at me. At the time, it was a panic that was controlled by my husband. In response to my increasing frailty, he became increasingly protective and watchful for danger. I thought it was romantic and not a little bit comforting. It was always nice to have his physical presence at my back.
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire. . .
Not today. My husband is now an ex-husband. There is no physical presence at my back. In fact, the only physical presence in my house is mine, and it's my presence that's at the back of people smaller and weaker by nature than I am, my children. I'm all we have, and that reality choked me. In the end, I faced that reality and called on the resources I had, I talked to the neighbor about it, and enlisted the protection of that man, knowing that masculine protection is the only language except for brute force on my part that guy would understand. Other women I've told have suggested I call the prosecuters office pre-emptively. That way, when/if something happens and the guy does decide he wants to fuck with me, I have a report already in. Why? Because we all know a woman is only believed reluctantly and has a better chance of getting a quick response if there's already been a report made. Other than that, it's just histrionics.
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a 6-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul
I guess I need to get a dog, or a boyfriend, or a penis.
Dear 15B
To the girl who took the locker I usually utilize while at the gym,
My day was a bit off kilter. No apparently good reason, although in the shower I realized I'd started my period so that could likely explain my complete inability to swim straight. Speaking of straight. . .
I would like to apologize for that brief burst of annoyance that someone had taken my usual locker, the locker I'd chosen for no particularly good reason other than it was the first that caught my eye and it was a multiple of three. I don't apologize for my irrational petulence, since it's a part of my nature. However, I do regret having any ill feelings towards you in particular.
After my swim, there you were, getting dressed. I would like you to know, officially and publically, that what you have under your clothes just ain't right. The world at large appreciates your efforts to keep yourself in shape, and the lucky person who regularly gets the view I got to see today is a source of my long lasting envy. I'm sure you're a colassal pain in the ass. I'm sure you think your ass is fat and fret compulsively over whether you have been good enough to deserve a half a brownie. I don't really care about all that, since I only got a brief glimpse of your glory and thus only have to pay a small price in assuaging your neurosis.
To that end, let it be known... if you ever thought gays and bisexuals shouldn't be allowed in locker rooms because they're looking at you, you were right. If you thought other women would be glancing at your form out of the corner of their eye with envy and covetous desire, you were indeed correct. If you were the one who spoke up and said "yes, I *do* think that in the brief time we are naked together in a locker room a person can have filthy and lewd fantasies about what they would do with my body, some rope and a deserted alley." Well, you were right about that as well.
I hope you abuse that body regularly, 15B. I hope you run hellbent for leather over any man (or woman) who dares to think they can contain you. You should be public property, you should be rode hard and put up wet, and you should be fucked, a lot.
I wish only the best for you. I hope your bush remains always so black and curly, your ass somehow makes the word "flanks" sexy, and your breasts never lose their supernatural levitation abilities without a bra. Good luck, and happy hunting.
Sincerely,
The temporary occupant of 13B
My day was a bit off kilter. No apparently good reason, although in the shower I realized I'd started my period so that could likely explain my complete inability to swim straight. Speaking of straight. . .
I would like to apologize for that brief burst of annoyance that someone had taken my usual locker, the locker I'd chosen for no particularly good reason other than it was the first that caught my eye and it was a multiple of three. I don't apologize for my irrational petulence, since it's a part of my nature. However, I do regret having any ill feelings towards you in particular.
After my swim, there you were, getting dressed. I would like you to know, officially and publically, that what you have under your clothes just ain't right. The world at large appreciates your efforts to keep yourself in shape, and the lucky person who regularly gets the view I got to see today is a source of my long lasting envy. I'm sure you're a colassal pain in the ass. I'm sure you think your ass is fat and fret compulsively over whether you have been good enough to deserve a half a brownie. I don't really care about all that, since I only got a brief glimpse of your glory and thus only have to pay a small price in assuaging your neurosis.
To that end, let it be known... if you ever thought gays and bisexuals shouldn't be allowed in locker rooms because they're looking at you, you were right. If you thought other women would be glancing at your form out of the corner of their eye with envy and covetous desire, you were indeed correct. If you were the one who spoke up and said "yes, I *do* think that in the brief time we are naked together in a locker room a person can have filthy and lewd fantasies about what they would do with my body, some rope and a deserted alley." Well, you were right about that as well.
I hope you abuse that body regularly, 15B. I hope you run hellbent for leather over any man (or woman) who dares to think they can contain you. You should be public property, you should be rode hard and put up wet, and you should be fucked, a lot.
I wish only the best for you. I hope your bush remains always so black and curly, your ass somehow makes the word "flanks" sexy, and your breasts never lose their supernatural levitation abilities without a bra. Good luck, and happy hunting.
Sincerely,
The temporary occupant of 13B
Money
Money, get away
I hate money. I hate talking about it, dealing with it, being responsible to it. I don't like to have to think about money in my life. I don't like what things feel like when I owe someone money, or they owe me money. I don't like the ugliness that enters a relationship when money becomes an issue.
Marriages end over money more than anything else. My father has a marriage ending right now, and while he didn't say it particularly, I can tell it's over money. He talks about being in debt up to their ears, over extended... this was in a conversation where he sent me a check for $300 from his tax refund, "because I thought you needed it more." And I did, I really really did need it more and I hate that.
My own marriage may have ended in no small part over money. Who works, why, how much? What amount is needed to live on, and who is responsible for making sure that amount gets met? What happens if it doesn't? What happens if the person who should, just can't?
There aren't any other options, someone just has to.
Money, get back
I need to get a job this summer. I don't want a job, I just want to be with my kids, hang out, do art, and generally decompress. I want to be in denial about my financial situation, and simply can't anymore. The wolves are at the door, the howling masses of debt banging from the outside, demanding to be acknowledged. When I was in school, I could pretend they didn't exist. Now, they must be heard.
Money, it's a crime
Without money, nothing works right. I won't have a place to live, won't have a car to drive, won't have the freedom to do what I want to do, when I have the time left to do it after I spend the rest of my time making money.
Money sucks.
I hate money. I hate talking about it, dealing with it, being responsible to it. I don't like to have to think about money in my life. I don't like what things feel like when I owe someone money, or they owe me money. I don't like the ugliness that enters a relationship when money becomes an issue.
Marriages end over money more than anything else. My father has a marriage ending right now, and while he didn't say it particularly, I can tell it's over money. He talks about being in debt up to their ears, over extended... this was in a conversation where he sent me a check for $300 from his tax refund, "because I thought you needed it more." And I did, I really really did need it more and I hate that.
My own marriage may have ended in no small part over money. Who works, why, how much? What amount is needed to live on, and who is responsible for making sure that amount gets met? What happens if it doesn't? What happens if the person who should, just can't?
There aren't any other options, someone just has to.
Money, get back
I need to get a job this summer. I don't want a job, I just want to be with my kids, hang out, do art, and generally decompress. I want to be in denial about my financial situation, and simply can't anymore. The wolves are at the door, the howling masses of debt banging from the outside, demanding to be acknowledged. When I was in school, I could pretend they didn't exist. Now, they must be heard.
Money, it's a crime
Without money, nothing works right. I won't have a place to live, won't have a car to drive, won't have the freedom to do what I want to do, when I have the time left to do it after I spend the rest of my time making money.
Money sucks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
