Dead Like Me

I think part of why I'm enjoying Dead Like Me so much is that I can relate to the main character. When she dies she's a virgin who has never had a boyfriend, her relationship with her mother is combative, she drops out of college and she lives her life on the periphery, trying not to be noticed, her nose buried in a book. That was me at about the same age. That's why I find the idea of you having a mohawk as a kid so interesting. It's the exact opposite of anything I would have done as a teenager. I didn't ever want to be noticed.

This show is strangely reassuring to me. I understand it's fiction but it speaks of a greater truth that I have faith in. While the subject matter is life and death it never delves into any particular religious beliefs, and maybe that's what I like so much. There's no God picking and choosing, shooing away gays and suicides and a-holes. Everybody dies and everybody's soul gets to go into the lights.

I like their version of God better than the Bible's. Their God looks more like the God I pray to. And my God isn't a bouncer at a club kicking people out because of their sexual orientation or because they suffered so much emotionally in life that death seemed a better alternative.

Possibility

My friend Sheila sent me this youtube clip. I love this.

O!

1. Oprah's book club.

I turned up my nose at Oprah's book club the instant she introduced it. I'd been reading since I was old enough to hold a book in my hands without succumbing to the urge to chew on it. I didn't need Oprah and her minions telling me which books I'd like.

A few years ago I picked up a book by Anita Shreve called The Weight of Water. I'd never heard of her, but I was between books and the word water was in the title, and because I feel a special affinity for water I took my chances. (Sometimes I judge a book by even less than its cover.)

It was a pretty good read and compelled me to try another book by Shreve titled The Last Time They Met. Something I noticed about Anita Shreve was the first thirty pages of her books felt like slogging through a marsh to get to a sandy beach and clear waters. But the slogging was always so worth it. The Last Time They Met had me stifling yawns at the beginning and yelling at the pages by the end and became one of my all-time favorites. Even though it was technically a romance and I'm way too cool to read that kind of shit.

I was surprised to discover The Pilot's Wife, also by Anita Shreve, was The First Oprah Book. She was right about that author, and of the books that have since landed in my lap stamped with Ms. O's seal of approval, I haven't ever been disappointed.

I stopped turning my nose up at books endorsed by Oprah at about the same moment that it became cool to view Oprah as the personal savior of sheeple incapable of independent thought.

I've always had a real knack for timing.

2. There are people who refuse to consider the validity of a theory or idea on the sole basis that Oprah endorsed it.

Yet nobody would refuse a polio vaccine just because everybody was getting one. These are the same people who ignore Christmas on the basis that the holiday has become a gross caricature of its intention in the over-commercialization of our evil capitalist society. Of course the rest of us know that you're just a bunch of cheap fucks hiding behind the sadly thin veil of pseudo-self-righteousness.

Christmas is fun. Even Jesus thinks so. Stop being a dick.

An idea being popular and/or eagerly embraced by the masses does not automatically render it stupid and worthless. If it did, we wouldn't be excreting in toilets or adorning our feet with stylish footwear. While it's true that a passionate embrace of new ideas can sometimes result in unfortunate debacles like cults and scrapbooking clubs, it's also true that if everyone limited their investigation of popular ideas to quasi-intellectual online reviews and morning djs, we'd still be scratching our red asses and eating lice off each other's hairy backs. Or worse: we'd still be English. No offense, England.

3. The Secret

At the end of my three hour drive to Hayward in February my mother enthusiastically greeted me with "Shhh!" Oprah was on, talking about The Secret. The Secret is about the law of attraction. According to the law of attraction, you will attract people and experiences based on your thoughts, beliefs and expectations. If you don't like what's happening in your life, you have to change what's happening in your mind.

4. Everyone's a critic

Run a news search on The Secret and you'll find plenty of negative press. One of the chief complaints is that the premises in The Secret are nothing new. Well, no shit. But mating's nothing new and nobody's suggesting sex is a waste of time.

5. They're such copycats.

I'm of the "many roads" mindset in regards to religion. I view spirituality as being much like music, with different types of music appealing to different people. It wouldn't make any sense for God to write just one song and expect everyone to be moved by it. Maybe the most important things to know come repackaged over and over in history, until we find the song that resonates for us.

Buddha, 563-483 BC: All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.

Paul, est 58 AD: Romans 12:2: Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Galileo 1564-1642: You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882: Success comes from within, not from without.

Norman Vincent Peale, 1898-1993: Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Sir John Eccles, Nobel Laurete, 1903-1997: I here express my efforts to understand with deep humility a self, myself, as an experiencing being. I offer it in the hope that we human selves may discover a transforming faith in the meaning and significance of this wonderful adventure that each of us is given on this salubrious Earth of ours, each with our wonderful brain, which is ours to control and use for our memory and enjoyment and creativity and with love for other human selves. --How the Self Controls Its Brain, pp. 180-1

6. The Power of Positive Thinking!

Expressing overly optimistic thoughts typically results in people assuming you're either a recovering addict or aspiring writer for children's television programming. Happiness as a whole is dismissed as the last bastion for the mentally impaired and intellectually inferior. My, we're a cynical lot!

7. But we're also a depressed lot.

According to the National Association of Mental Health, 9.5% of Americans over the age of 18 suffer from depression every year. I thought that number seemed a bit low. There isn't anyone I know who hasn't suffered at least one bad bout of depression in their adulthood. And I'm not talking about the blues people felt when Ben Affleck knocked up Jennifer Garner and doomed Alias to its untimely end. (Or was that just me?) I'm talking about real depression, the kind that makes you feel like life is best lived asleep and compels you to think showering is more of a social nicety than a norm.

In an ongoing effort to diminish the social stigma attached to mental illness in general, depression is frequently compared to diabetes. This is a dishonest comparison because it suggests depression is a purely physical ailment requiring a lifetime of medication.

8. Depression, as explained by web md:

There is absolute proof that people suffering from depression have changes in their brains compared to people who do not suffer from depression. The hippocampus, a small part of the brain that is vital to the storage of memories, is smaller in people with a history of depression than in those who've never been depressed. A smaller hippocampus has fewer serotonin receptors. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter -- a chemical messenger that allows communication between nerves in the brain and the body.

9. Did you know...

Just as brain chemicals can change thoughts, so too can thoughts change the chemistry and functioning of our brain.

from Mind-Body Medicine by John Spencer, PhD and Karen Shanor, PhD

10. Maybe Pollyanna was on to something.

Thoughts impact mental health which impacts life experience. Cognitive therapy posits our thoughts create our feelings and our life experience, rendering optimism a powerful tool in experiencing life absent the burden of dark lows and suicidal tendencies.

Of course you can't bottle and sell optimism.

11. Meds have their place.

The insidious thing about depression is that unlike its marketing sister diabetes, it makes a person question who they are. Reality is skewed as every experience is filtered through the sludge of hopelessness, unworthiness, anger, sorrow. Working to change one's thoughts in order to change one's brain can be like trying to light a match in a thunderstorm. Meds chase away the storm so a person can work on their thoughts.

I just wish shrinks would have the good sense to put down the prescription Pez dispenser and show people what they're capable of.

12. Depression, as experienced by me:

My depression was a symptom of PCOS. I required meds to balance estrogen, testosterone and androgens. Antidepressants did nothing to balance my sex hormones and the promises made to me by medical professionals writing out prescriptions for Zoloft and Paxil were doomed to be broken.

When it started I was fortunate enough to have a friend who had learned about cognitive therapy in college. He told me about thoughts and how habitual thinking alters the chemical paths in our heads. I fought to change my chemical paths, but I was busy lighting matches in the hormonal imbalance thunderstorm.

I did manage some level of progress. At its worst, I rarely showered and spent every moment I wasn't at work asleep. My wardrobe consisted of three pairs of sweats in black, gray and blue. At 220 my fat thighs wore away the material between my legs and I sloppily mended them because I refused to buy clothes.

I hit my rock bottom hard and didn't tell anyone for a whole year. The person I finally told was a shrink who told me I shouldn't have survived. I agreed, though we didn't mean it the same way. I worked to climb back up the cliff I'd tossed myself off of by laboring to change my thoughts.

By the time I was diagnosed with PCOS I'd managed to fight my weight (which the PCOS caused and makes difficult to lose) down to 185. I wore regular clothes and showered every day. The piece I had great difficulty with was my moods, which still lapsed into a blackness so profound that it was impossible for me to really let go of the comforting thought that I could always choose to throw myself back over the cliff again.

I had depression for seven years before I was diagnosed in 1999 and provided prescriptions which stopped the storm. From there the climbing got a lot easier.

My whole life is different now. At 21 I never could have imagined how fucking great my life would be at 34. I know how powerful the not-so-secret Secret is. It's just a shame to me that people who could benefit from a worthwhile tool dismiss it as crap because they don't like how it's packaged. I'm not even talking about depressed people, I mean people in general. I don't believe anybody was put here to suffer or to fail. I believe we are capable of great things and that the devil is not in the details, but in distractions. Minding one's thoughts is a discipline and it's easy to push that discipline aside in favor of just letting life happen all around you.

13. What if?

What can hurt in the 'what if' of considering a tool even if Oprah endorsed it? One of my favorite quotes: Have you ever noticed that what the hell is always the right answer?

You look fabulous, darling!

A month ago I complimented a woman's outfit in the ladies' room and inexplicably ended up with her phone number. One of my friends told me that's what I get for talking to strangers. He said I need to go through life like he does, waving around an emotional yardstick and keeping people at a distance. Hours later I got into an elevator with an immaculately dressed woman who was wearing a pretty brown dress with hot pink shoes, scarf, and earrings. It's rare to see perfectly accessorized people, so of course I immediately ooh'd over the outfit. She was delighted and stepped out of the elevator glowing happily. I reflected on Thad's warning and thought, "Horseshit! Compliments should always be passed on!" This is something I truly believe, as few people tend to say the nice things they're thinking right out loud. If someone tells me something nice about a friend, I pass it on. But I realized the women I impulsively compliment about their appearance have more in common than fabulous style: they're almost always black.

I wondered what the hell that meant? Why don't I compliment women of other races? Surely I've seen fabulously dressed whites and asians and latinas, yet I have yet to blurt out, "Those are such adorable shoes!" to a total stranger of this ethnicity.

I briefly worried over what this said about me. Maybe these compliments of mine aren't genuine. Maybe they're merely a subconscious reflex of some latent guilt I carry in regards to race?

But then I realized something else: the only women who ever compliment ME are BLACK. In my experience, there are no women more generous towards other women in celebrating physical appearance than black women. The women who regularly shower me with praise over my shoes or my hair or my outfits are all black. I know they're being relentlessly sincere, because they're just as quick to let me know when something I'm experimenting with isn't working. When I paired tights with black slip-on platform sandals in December, I got some negative feedback in the form of, "Jen! Uh-uh" with a head shake and finger wave of disapproval. I wasn't too certain about it myself, chiefly because the sandals were designed to be worn on bare feet, so my tights-clad feet slid around too much and I was struggling to keep the shoes on as I walked. This criticism came from the same woman who had previously let me know my hair color made me look like Marilyn Monroe. I know THAT wasn't true, but I'm betting all women of color expect all blonde white women to consider it the ultimate compliment to be compared to Monroe. Her disapproval of the tights/sandals combo compelled me to relegate this impractical experiment to a "don't." Though I'll add I saw the same look in Vogue a month later on a runway model and felt vaguely triumphant over my innate fashion sense. Then again it's rare that runway looks actually work in the real world.

What's interesting is there are white women I work with whom I would consider work friends, people I don't mind talking to 9-5 but don't really seek out when I'm not paid to be somewhere. Contrary to the outspoken acquaintances, they never ever offer even the mildest compliment nor do they comment in a positive manner about other women privately. One work friend in particular regularly torments me by "jokingly" calling me "slut." She openly criticizes my cleavage, my skirts, everything, and laughs about it. This doesn't bother me, it just strikes me as rather odd and junior high school. And those kinds of remarks would have been devastating to me in junior high. What's the point of lobbing unkind comments at this stage of the game? She is part of the small group of girls I've dubbed The Fox Force Five, though only I, the Tarantino fan, understand the reference. They wanted me to be part of their club, and were very persistent about recruiting me by inundating me with emails until I finally replied. The Fox Force Five exchanges email conversations consisting primarily of ripping on anyone and everyone. They're all white. White women can be universally nasty about everyone. Especially other women. When I participate in FFF verbal evisceration, it's only to make amusing observations or to rip apart corporate America. I once emailed them the names of every single person on our team and provided a sentence or two about what I thought they'd be like in bed, offering often surprising but I believe accurate analysis. When they start ripping on morbidly obese people who are already a Twinkie away from not being able to exit their homes, I bow out.

I don't know what makes me a little different, unless it's that during my wonder years my upper jaw extended too far out of my face and I couldn't even touch my lips together. I was tortured by people like them every fucking day of my junior high school life. Once you've lived through that kind of stuff during the very time when your self-esteem is forming, you don't feel all that compelled to laugh at fat/bald/ugly people because they're fat, ugly or bald. Of course retards are still fair game.

Anyway, it's more than the way black women celebrate all women and don't turn the workplace into a junior high school locker room nightmare. It's that they accept praise as gracefully as they offer it. They're the ones who coached me to accept their compliments with a thank you as opposed to a "no, whatever" wave of the hand. If you wave off a black woman, she'll stare at you with a look of authority unique to black women and take it as you challenging her aesthetic judgement as a whole. She'll punish you by throwing more praise at you in a scolding manner. But also, they accept compliments with the regal grace of royalty and respond with appreciation that makes you feel good that you shared. I've learned to respond as they do, with a happy smile and a gracious thanks.

I think I love you! So what am I so afraid of?

Dear Total Stranger in the Black Range Rover:

Hey there, sexy. I couldn't help but notice you today. I feel like there's a real connection between us. I know you feel it too. I could tell when you drove past me in the Byerly's parking lot and shyly bellowed, "Nice tits!"

I have to admit I was somewhat taken aback to hear such sweet nothings shouted at me in a grocery store parking lot at 6:30 on a Tuesday night. Byerly's tends to cater to a more family-friendly crowd, but the way you took advantage of what can only be described as a serendipitous moment by loudly approving of my anatomy tells me that you, sir, are a hopeless romantic.

I like that in a man.

I thought this was the end of our all-too-brief interlude. I couldn't believe my luck when instead of exiting the parking lot altogether, you actually turned into the next row of cars and looped back, this time waxing poetic with, "Your legs are fucking awesome!" before rolling to a stop so you could wait while I got into my car, backed out of my space, and headed out.

It was so flattering when you pulled up behind me. I know it seems I didn't spend nearly enough time staring lovingly into your eyes through my rear view mirror, but a girl can't appear too eager or where's the thrill of the chase? And clearly you're a man who enjoys the thrill of the chase! Yes, I said man. I was delighted to see you weren't a kid in daddy's SUV showing off for his friends! You were in your late 30's and curiously alone in your Range Rover, sporting adorable black sunglasses and a crisp white long-sleeved Polo shirt. Whatever did I do to deserve you?

I was so excited about our burgeoning romance that I ignored the Stop sign at Portland and swung out into the road without the slightest pause. I've always viewed Stop signs as more of a suggestion than a rule. If they were serious about making us stop, they'd install a light. Most people disagree with this theory, but not you. You jumped into traffic and cut off that Volkswagon the way only a man crazy in love could. When you suffered the brutal bleats of the VW's horn just so you could keep up with me, I had butterflies.

Our whirlwind affair really meant something to me, but maybe I should have done more to show what I felt than pick up my cell phone and dial the first person who popped up on my contacts list. Anne didn't even answer her phone, but as I was leaving her a voice mail - all about my undying love for you and you alone, baby - you abruptly switched lanes and honked your horn repeatedly to get my attention, waving and grinning like a retarded kid at the back of the short bus as I turned left on 42 and you continued down Portland.

You know what I think, Total Retarded Stranger in the Black Range Rover? I think it's bullshit, what they say about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Bullshit!

Yours forever,

Byerly's Shopper

xoxoxo

Anger Management

Being raised by someone with undiagnosed bipolar teaches a kid some unusual lessons. Cool dad was always taking on new projects. He'd have an idea and he'd make it happen. He never ever doubted himself and would follow through on whatever ambitious task he took on until either the pendulum swung low or until the task was finished.



This complete faith in his own ability to accomplish anything so long as he put forth the effort was extended to his family. When I was 12 and told cool dad I wanted to compose a song, he told me to go ahead and do it. When I then reported that whenever I tried to "find new songs on the keyboard," I only came up with old songs, he told me at least I tried and now I can try something else. There wasn't ever any failure in his eyes, just attempts that told us to try something different.



Crazy dad was another story. His trademark was his rage and his frightening silence. Not ever knowing why the pendulum swung low and usually thinking it must have been something I did, I tried to coax cool dad back out by regaling crazy dad with stories and jokes I heard at school. This was ineffective, but I tried anyway. When I was a teenager getting pissed and offended by crazy dad's behavior, I was petrified of confronting him, because I didn't trust crazy dad at all. But I learned that anger was a pretty good tool for pushing my terror back and if not ceasing crazy dad's stormfront, then at least forcing him to go take a nap and sleep the mood off so the rest of the family could have the living room back. These small "wins" were empowering. I never liked to cower. And he really did need to sleep that shit off instead of being a jerk and sending all the rest of us to the emergency exits.



Crazy dad left odd surprises in his wake, like when I had a male roommate and found myself inexplicably worried about immediately cleaning up after myself. I hadn't been like that with female roommates, but with easygoing, never angry Stephen I found that my heart pounded too hard in my chest as some long-forgotten memory of crazy dad urged me to make everything perfect so as not to bring out something crazy and angry in Stephen. But the beauty of life is once you can point a finger at whatever it is that's causing some unwanted neurosis - preferably your middle one - you can let go of it. And that is a scientific fact. It isn't instant, like a genie granting a wish or like Britney grabbing a drink, but your brain starts the process and you reach that point of no longer being freaked out over the idea of a grown man seeing a dirty glass in the sink.



Crazy dad was obviously kind of a pain in the ass, but I'm convinced he also left me something which I believe saved my life.



I'll preface this story by saying this took place the same week my parents were moving from Lakeville to Hayward. They'd opted out of hiring movers, so that week my dad and I packed a U-Haul and made the three hour drive out. I was planning a trip to Vegas the following month and my dad expressed some concern because there was some rumbling in the news about terrorists targeting Vegas. I said I wasn't too worried about it, because Vegas is probably the most secure city in the world. Cameras, cops, security personnel, bouncers, there are tons of people protecting casino money and thus protecting us. Dad asked what about the planes? We talked about that for a bit, wondering what we'd do. Dad likes to say, "It isn't their plane, it's my plane, and nobody's fucking with my plane." I pondered it for a moment and then said, "You know, I think it sucks that bad guys just know they can victimize people. I would never approach somebody with the intention of doing them harm because I'd expect them to kill me. Maybe the best defense is a good offense. Show them fucking with you was a mistake and act like a crazy person so they're the ones who're afraid." My dad laughed and acknowledged this could be an effective strategy.



Fast forward three days later, when I attended a happy hour after work. Happy hour ended at 10ish and my friend Alexis and I enjoyed our evening stroll from Drink back to the building where our cars were parked. The weather was utterly perfect. We enjoyed it so much we sat down on the steps of the building kitty corner from ours to continue our chat. Given security guards for both the Campbell Mithun building and our own building regularly stroll outside, and given we were gabbing only two blocks from a police station, the act of relaxing on a city street only two blocks in another direction from a bad neighborhood did not seem unwise to us. Not to mention we're two suburban girls. It's easy to wander through life assuming nothing really bad will ever happen to you when so far nothing really bad has ever happened to you.



We ended our marathon chat at the ridiculous hour of 3 AM and walked across the street towards our cars, pausing to wrap up our thoughts on the Da Vinci Code. I looked beyond Alexis and saw a guy approaching us. He looked normal enough, wearing khaki cargo shorts and a nice white Polo shirt, and he would have been easy to ignore entirely except for the fact that he was staring up at the sky and mumbling to himself as he ambled along.



I figured since he was in the midst of his riveting self-conversation that he'd walk right on by. But he didn't. He stopped. Still looking up - and since he was now so close I could see his eyes were moving back and forth like he was watching a ping pong match in the sky - he mumbled something almost entirely incoherent. All I really caught was "money" and "charity."



Alexis paused in the middle of her sentence without even turning around. Then she resumed talking as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, keeping her back to the stranger. I admired her obvious streetsmarts, the way she felt no need to be even remotely polite to some strange guy at 3 in the morning. I tried to refocus on our conversation, but the guy was still babbling and still watching his private ping pong match in the sky, so I looked right at him, smiled, and said, "I'm sorry, we don't have any money." I thought this would encourage him to move along, but instead his tone became more insistent as he continued babbling. When he took another step towards us Alexis pointed at the sidewalk behind me and said, "Let's walk."



I didn't hesitate, just turned on my heel and started striding away, Alexis falling in step on my right. Guy suddenly became very articulate as he said, "Oh no you don't. Now I know you got some money for me and I want that money." We were walking on 3rd parallel to the CSC on the sidewalk across the street, heading south. Guy got right up behind us, I could feel him against my skirt every couple of steps. He said, "Don't you understand? I can take whatever I want from you. I can throw you down in this parking lot here. It's dark, there isn't anybody around. I can..."



At this point, I stopped hearing him. Something in my head turned into a tea kettle on a stovetop. I knew he was still talking, but I wasn't hearing what he was saying anymore because the only thing that mattered was that we were in trouble.



All of my attention narrowed down to the feel of him right behind us and the way the sound of his voice told me he was becoming very confident in his ability to follow through on the terrible things he was promising he could do to us. He was testing us with his words first to see what we would do, and all we were doing was walking. Not running, not reaching for our cell phones, not screaming. Just silently walking along. He was in charge.



The tea kettle in my head started its whistle as I rifled through my mental files, throwing things around, desperately seeking any small thing I'd ever learned about how to handle a situation like this. This wasn't even supposed to be happening. I was with somebody else, we were right across from our work building and two blocks from a police station. How the fuck was this even happening? File after file after file, I remembered my mother warning me about dangerous dogs and how they'll often attack because they can smell your fear. The tea kettle's whistle got louder, escalating into a shriek. My brain was substituting Asshole's words with its own internal warning system so I could figure this shit out, but the louder it got the less time I had before Asshole stopped talking and did whatever he wanted to do. I was afraid, but I had a built-in defense mechanism to handle my fear, thanks to crazy dad. My anger. Rage started blossoming in my gut, chasing away the weakness that was overwhelming me, taking away the rubbery feel in my muscles and filling me up with something red and hot and making me stand taller, reminding me that this fucking bullshit is unacceptable. The bad guys should be fucking afraid of us.



I very abruptly turned around, leaned into Asshole's face, and screamed at the top of my lungs, "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM US, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!!!"



Asshole recoiled as if he'd been punched, but recovered himself quickly to lean into my face. Asshole was a lot taller than me and he was so close I could feel his eyelashes on my forehead and smell his breath. Asshole said, "Nobody talks to me like that." This was supposed to be very intimidating, but what Asshole didn't know was I'd been in that position a thousand times before with crazy dad. Somebody leaning into my face doesn't intimidate me, it just pisses me off even more. And I was fucking furious. What Asshole didn't know was in spite of my short black skirt and pale pink blouse and high heels and hair piled on top of my head, I would absolutely love the opportunity to beat the piss out of him. Because as far as I could tell, there was no cool version of this guy that I needed to hold out for. Just an Asshole who needed a lesson in what happens when you threaten to rape a woman. It didn't matter that I hadn't ever been in a fight, or that I was in heels or that he was obviously bigger and stronger than me. I was willing to bet that I was a lot more fucking mad than he could ever be and that my anger was enough. I was ready for him to make a grab for me or hit me because I really wanted the opportunity to try to kill him.



When Asshole leaned down like that, I didn't lean away. I said, "Fuck you. You started this."



There was a long pause, with neither Asshole nor myself moving. Finally I said, "Alright, I think I've had enough of this bullshit." I reached into my purse for my phone. Asshole leaped away from me as if I might have a gun in there, managing to put about 20 feet between me and him in about four seconds flat. I was so startled by this that I actually stopped what I was doing to stare at him. Asshole demanded, "Whatchoo got in there?" I said, "A fucking phone, you fucking asshole." He said, "Oh yeah? I'm gonna call the cops on you!!" He tapped one of his pockets confidently to suggest he too had a cell phone.



It was at this point that I knew any danger we'd been in was over. Now I was just dealing with a common thieving motherfucking asshole idiot. I glanced over at Alexis, who also had a cell phone, but she hadn't reached for it and was only standing there in complete silence, looking like she could really use a cigarette. I wondered if I was misreading the entire situation, if I'd overreacted and we weren't ever in any real danger. Alexis didn't look remotely alarmed, just mildly uncomfortable, like it was kind of embarrassing to watch Jen act out and she'd sure be glad when it was over and she could have a smoke. I didn't want to make even more of a scene by wasting time for the police, so I didn't take my phone out of my bag. But I also didn't take my hand out. I kept it there, because Asshole's worry over what might be inside seemed to be working to my advantage. I laughed without humor and asked, "Oh? And what will you call the cops for?" He paused for a moment to think and then said triumphantly, "For insubordination. I'll tell them about your insubordination!"



This time I really did laugh. I laughed and laughed and asked, "Are you fucking serious? Do it. Call the cops on me and you tell them that I wasn't being cooperative when you attempted to mug and rape me. You let them know, they'll be right over to save you from me."



Asshole slouched, stuffed his hands in his pockets and complained, "I don't need this shit." I stepped towards him and watched him immediately take two steps back. Encouraged by the shift in the power dynamic, I yelled, "THEN GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!! BEAT IT!! GO!!" He started walking away through the parking lot, tossing a "Whore" over his shoulder, to which I called back, "FUCKING LOSER!" Alexis and I resumed walking. Unbelievably Alexis resumed her Da Vinci Code thought as she lit her cigarette and as I looked around like a secret service person, ready to take on anyone else collecting money for a fake charity.



Of course by the time I got home that night all the anger and adrenalin was gone and I cried and trembled violently over the whole thing. I kept thinking through the evening, how fucking smart that guy had been, approaching as if he was on something or maybe mildly retarded so he'd seem especially innocuous and could get as close to us as he did. How he'd had the good sense to get some distance between him and me because he had no idea what was in my purse, while I didn't even think to worry that he might have a weapon in one of his pockets. The following Monday I emailed Alexis and asked, "Were you scared? Or did I overreact?" She replied, "I was terrified. I was so glad you did something because I couldn't move."



My dad was horrified by the entire thing, especially when I told him that I'd turned around and screamed at Asshole because of the conversation he and I'd had about letting the bad guy know it was a mistake to fuck with you. Dad was imagining all the horrible scenarios that weren't, like Asshole having a gun or a knife or just killing me by slamming my head into the curb. But my younger brother was elated and proud, passing on the story to his Army buddies and letting me know how awesome they all thought I was. Jeff said, "They count on people being too afraid to act. You did the right thing."



Later that summer channel 9 interviewed and surveyed rapists in Minnesota prisons. They asked them if they had a weapon. 98% of them said no, that they didn't even need a weapon. All they had to do was threaten. They used their victims' fear to get them under control, not a gun or a knife. They said when people get scared, they often don't know what to do and they freeze up. When asked how they choose a victim, they said they go for women who won't put up a fight.



What I learned from this ordeal was how important it is to have a plan in your head. Have SOME idea of how you'd handle a situation. Having an idea stops the fear from freezing you and allows you to act.

Not that kind of "bi."

Growing up with a bipolar dad seemed perfectly normal, given I had no idea there was an alternative. I mean sure, Cliff Huxtable didn't abruptly stop talking for no apparent reason at all and give Claire and the kids the silent treatment for a whole week, but that was tv! Real life never seemed to have all that much in common with tv. In real life there was cool dad and there was crazy dad. Cool dad was always taking on new projects and was so disciplined he could forego sleep to master any new skill. Cool dad loved his children above all else and observed my brother and me as if we were living miracles and he couldn't fathom a world that wasn't blessed with our happy presence. Crazy dad was the angry and silent walking corpse of my father. Crazy dad's cornflower blue eyes bulged and glared straight into yours with a detached cruelty that threatened murderous violence, which thankfully he never acted on. You just stayed the fuck out of crazy dad's way, because you knew cool dad would eventually be back and things would be fun again.

Dad cycled through these highs and lows with no rhyme or reason. It was the 80's, before television and magazines were inundated with ads for pills to cure depression and anxiety and bipolar. We just thought it was dad's personality and that probably he was a bit fucked up after engaging in hand to hand combat in Vietnam. Cool dad was awesome, no kid had as great a dad as my dad. But God help us if we fucked up and got the old "You just wait til your father comes home" if the father who walked through the door was the crazy one.

I was the only one who ever hit the jackpot and drew crazy dad for punishment. I don't even remember what it was that I'd done which remanded me to my bedroom pending the end of my father's workday. I just remember listening to my dad walk through the front door. The sound of his boots on the hardwood floors was how my brother and I gauged which dad was home. If it was a normal stride, it was cool dad. If it was loud, fast stomping, it was crazy dad. On an ordinary day it sucked to hear that crazy dad had come home, because crazy dad cheated us out of spending time with the cool dad we loved. On a day on which I'd been threatened with the old, "you just wait til your father gets home," the notion of crazy dad getting the news took "sucked" to a whole new level.

I listened hard that afternoon, hearing the annoyed tone but not the words of my mother's voice as she summarized my transgression. When I heard the loud and rapid stomp of my dad's boots I immediately knew what even my mom didn't realize: she'd just sicced crazy dad on me. I'd been spanked before, but never by crazy dad. So I did the unthinkable. I did what any reasonable person would do in that situation. I ran for my bedroom door to lock him out. Dad, seeing the door start to swing shut, ran the last couple of feet and of course my 90 pounds was no match for his 220. I was wearing socks, and my feet slid helplessly across the floor as I fought to shut crazy dad out of my room. Fear is highly motivating, even for a 90 pound kid, and I almost succeeded in locking him out. Almost. When I realized I only managed to piss him off even more, I ran for my window. I punched the screen out with a surprisingly easy hit and threw myself over the windowsill to follow the screen, screaming at the top of my lungs for help.

There was no help. This was the 80's. What a man did to take care of business in his own house was his concern, not the neighbor's.

I was dragged back into my bedroom and all of the rage crazy dad had about the world was taken out on my 10 yr old ass. When my mom realized it was crazy dad doling out my punishment she ran into my room and tried to pry me out of my father's grip, pleading with him to stop. But crazy dad wasn't normal and didn't respond to normal things like his daughter's screams and his wife's pleas and his son's petrified tears. He just kept hitting until he didn't feel like hitting anymore.

Neither my brother nor I were ever spanked again after that. Not by either of our dads.

By adolescence I had stopped fearing crazy dad and only hated and resented him. When I was a teenager and he was busy stomping around in his fits of rage, I refused to leave the room. And I started yelling at him. "You don't have the right to treat us like this!" "What's your problem, why do you have to be such a jerk?" My brother and mother always headed for the nearest emergency exit to wait it out, my mother pausing just long enough to chastise me with a, "Jennie, just walk away." But I couldn't. I wouldn't. Fuck this crazy motherfucker. I wasn't running away from anyfuckingbody. I didn't fucking care if Vietnam DID fuck him up, HE DIDN'T HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO ACT LIKE THAT.

Crazy dad would always get right in my face like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. He'd say, "Don't think I won't knock you on your ass." I'd stand as tall as I could, glaring back at him, standing my ground. He never did knock me on my ass. Somewhere in there cool dad was wrestling for the controls and prohibiting crazy dad from beating the shit out of his own flesh and blood.

Crazy dad got banished by meds when I was a sophomore in college. That was when my dad found out he had something in common with Ben Stiller and Axl Rose. It seemed my dad hadn't battled mood swings his whole life; he had bipolar. Crazy dad is not missed. The sad thing is my dad would have been Cliff Huxtable if bipolar was as well known in '82 as it is now. Sadder than that is the guilt he carried around after that. Crazy dad was gone, but his legacy remained, my poor dad's conscience trembling under the weight of remembering things that he did when the pendulum swung low.

Dad never talked to us about this directly. My very blunt and curious sister in law had asked him loads of questions when she visited one Christmas. My dad has always had this strange habit of being remarkably truthful no matter what he's asked. He never says, "None of your goddamned business." He just answers as if he's been sworn to testify. When my sister in law told me that he felt bad about our childhoods, I called my dad and told him bullshit. I told him he had no business feeling guilt about that shit. Jeff and I had talked about it and there's a world of difference between someone doing something because they are a hateful and mean asshole and someone doing something because their body is hijacked by chemicals run awry. If my dad was such an asshole, crazy dad would have stuck around in spite of the meds.

One of the most remarkable things about my dad is that he defied the white trash cliche that should have been his life. Growing up, he was beaten by three successive stepfathers. His mother was a cruel sociopath who conducted herself in an utterly hateful and manipulative manner. Dad ended up estranged from his entire family when he was in his late 30's, and though we exchanged several letters, I never did meet my Grandma Lynn or anyone else on dad's side. But it was necessary. They were nasty people. Somehow my dad was able to accept this and move on without all the victimization and self-pity that's so popular in our culture. Not only that, in spite of his bipolar, and in spite of the single spanking gone awry, he never beat us. He never left us, the way all of his fathers did. He didn't hate women, the way maybe he should have given his horrid mother and sister. And know that if he saw how I was writing about his family, he'd be heartbroken. He is a forgiving man, and it wasn't ever from him that I learned what his family was like - Dad only ever told the good stories about his family, he only reported on their accomplishments and what he'd learned from them. It was my mom who finally explained when I was 19 why it was we hadn't ever met anyone from dad's side of the family.

Dad turned his back on all the statistics and forged his own way in life like a phoenix rising from its ashes. THAT'S how I think of my dad. As someone remarkable and cool. Not as crazy dad.

Not to mention I believe it was crazy dad's participation in my upbringing that saved my ass two summers ago right outside the CSC building. But I'll save that one for tomorrow's blog. :)

It's a scorcher!

Yesterday I made the three hour drive to Hayward, Wisconsin in a car with no air on what the local news described would be "a scorcher of a day!" I'm sure that's an actual meteorological term, since they were all using that phrase, as opposed to a tragic lack of thesauruses available to the metro weather people. They'll be waiting in hell with huge veneered smiles welcoming you with, "It's a scorcher in here today!"

Though I love spending time with my folks, I'd have looked forward to this little road trip more only had my seats been made of vinyl so I could enjoy the thrilling sensation of peeling my sweaty thighs off of them.

I decided I'd enjoy the trip more if I did something to avoid focusing too hard on the misery of being trapped in a moving sauna on a holiday weekend dodging the road ragers who don't have as good a reason to be enraged as someone trapped in a moving sauna. I countered the scorcher of a day not with a car repair to return my air (I paid a hundred bucks for my air to be fixed last summer and have no idea why it isn't working now), but with stand-up comedy on my mp3 player. It worked; I spent the whole drive laughing my ass off not in feverish delirium, but from solid stand-up including the following bits. (And arrived at my destination drenched with sweat but ten pounds lighter. Bonus.)

Dave Chappelle / Cartoons 3:13


Dave Chappelle / In the ghe-tto 5:25


Chris Rock / Drugs 2:46


Bill Maher / Translation of Rap Lyrics 4:04


Louis CK / Awesome Possum T Shirt 6:19

It's because I am a fucking hypocrite.

Just like you, I have rules for other people which do not apply to me. I am the Queen of Me and thus generously pardon myself for those moments of inappropriateness and outright retardation. The Queen will not, however, forgive you for same. (She's kind of a bitch.)

Naturally this isn't in a criminal sense. I'm not a sociopath. I took Cosmos's ten question Personality Disorder quiz and it diagnosed me as a quirky depressive like Audrey Hepburn, not a functioning sociopath like Martha Stewart. This is simply a matter of how I think the world should be. My worldview is rife with inconsistencies and varying degrees of tolerance dependent upon whether or not I like you, you're a friend or family member, you're me, you're attractive, you're in my way, you're an idiot, you're annoying, etc.

You don't get to make stupid observations under the guise of casual conversation. If you do, expect me to slay you with my always hilarious wit. (Remember, even when I'm not funny, I pardon myself for the indiscretion and tell myself it's rare to swing and miss.)

My MP3 player, dropped a hundred times too many, has a deep crack on the faceplate. I was listening to it yesterday and Thad looked at it and observed: "It still works even though there's a crack in it?" Touched by the hopeful tone in his question, given he knows how I love my MP3 player, I answered, "Your ass has a crack in it, does it still work?" Thad laughed.

However, had it been reversed and had I been feeling extra vulnerable and insecure because I was bleeding betwixt the legs, I'd have frowned and said, "You don't have to talk to me like I'm an idiot, it was just a question." Because I am a fucking hypocrite.

If I don't know you and have never seen you and probably wouldn't fuck you even if nuclear holocaust occurred and it was up to you and me to repopulate the planet with radioactive freaks of nature (ie superheroes), you don't get to walk into the elevator smiling at those of us already standing inside.

If my enthusiasm is at the Audrey Hepburn level and you step into the elevator with a stupid grin on your face, I wonder why you're approaching an elevator as if you just met your blind date and your expectations have been greatly exceeded. Fuck you. You don't come bearing Girl Scout cookies, and you're not - nor will you ever be - my friend, so why the fuck are you smiling like that? Turn around and focus on the fucking numbers like a normal human being. Seriously, I want to slap that smile right off your face.

However, when I'm happy I light the world up with my smile. I don't walk so much as spin around singing about how the hills are alive with the sound of music, sickening passersby with all that embarrassing, unbridled joy expressing itself all over the place. I don't even suppress this enthusiasm in confined spaces and will step into the elevator smiling brightly at the blank and grim faces inside as if you are a tribe of Native Americans and I'm just so excited to introduce you to Jesus and let you give me your land. Because I am a fucking hypocrite.

If you have kids and have decided to unleash them on the unsuspecting public rather than hire a babysitter, remember two things: Just because it burst through your vagina like a screaming, destructive alien being does not make it a walking miracle and Mother Earth is not your living room.

When you're sitting at the next table at Applebee's please don't let that slackjawed, drooling, saltined kid stare at me and my friend over the back of your booth. If it starts waving and trying to engage in what passes in a toddler's mind as "conversation," make that kid sit down. It's not cute. It makes me feel like you've just volunteered us as babysitters so you can enjoy your mozzarella cheese sticks without worrying over some hyperactive little person and its grubby, grabby hands. Look, you're the one who took hormone shots in the ass just to bring that trophy into the world. YOU watch it.

However, if the child in question is the adorable angelic perfection manifested in human form that is my nephew and the children of all of my friends, don't you dare look annoyed and put out when they board an airplane for a three to sixteen hour flight. They're kids! Maybe you should remember that you didn't spring fully grown from the forehead of Zeus. Once upon a time adults had to put up with getting a whiff of your shitty diaper or listening to you pitch a fit because your mother just shattered your world by refusing to buy that pink flamingo lawn ornament for your crib. This is just part of the human experience. Payback for your own long forgotten kid behavior is a bitch. If you don't like interacting with children on your overseas flight, maybe you should avoid public transportation altogether and enjoy a nice lonely raft float with the sharks that frown exactly like you. And if Baby Mike is practicing his motor skills by waving happily at every single passerby, struggling to communicate with you through a mouthful of crackers or around his sippy cup by telling you about "grape," "dog," "uh oh" or "da da" (if you get them all, he just shared his entire vocabulary with YOU), anything less than utter delight and worship at the tiny wobbly feet of that little miracle makes you a child-hating Hitler. Because I'm a fucking hypocrite.

If you say something I decide is racist, you will forever be labeled a backwoods asshole. I will assume you sleep under a confederate flag and that your rusty pickup truck with the Dukes of Hazard horn has a rifle rack in the window for the express purpose of killin' anybody who isn't an ignorant fuck just like you.

If you point out two people who keep looking over their shoulders as they exchange money for a little bag of white powder and suggest there's a drug deal going down, I will take a step back from you in utter disgust and ask why you're saying that? Is it because of the color of their skin? Even as one of them snorts what I presume is tangy sugar from emptied pixie stix, I will subject you to trial by me and label you a total racist asshole. I might still talk to you, but I'll quietly work to have you deported to wherever it is Nazi racists like you congrehate.

However, if I share an observation about how I remember the good old days when I could walk into my office building without thinking I'm in a Nepalese temple and wonder why those assholes mumble their non-language when this is America, dammit, and isn't it enough they took our jobs? It's not me being an intolerant a-hole with no memory of how this great country was founded and how fortunate it is that America is still the land of opportunity. It's the product of an allergic reaction to the smell of curry, brought on by being crammed in the elevator with forty of them all babbling incoherently and completely ignoring my all-American right to three feet of personal space, because where they're from it's common to be shoulder to shoulder even when they take a shit on the street. I don't say these things only to you and never ever in front of them because I'm some kind of closetted racist. It's because I'm a fucking hypocrite.

If you're having a bad day at work, don't you take that shit out on me.

If I approach your desk unbidden or tap you on the shoulder even though you're being unusually quiet and trying to listen to some tunes and I start regaling you with a fascinating tale of the difficult decisions I faced when trying to pick out something to eat for lunch, you should respond with interest and enthusiasm. Even if you have to fake it. I don't care that some a-hole just ripped you a new a-hole and made you cry at your desk. This isn't about you, is it? No, this is about the array of choices available to me for consumption and my right to tell you all about it without you giving me a look like you wish I'd spontaneously combust.

However, if I'm having a bad day because I glanced in the mirror and noticed a not-so-little hair has burst from my chin in a long Rapunzel-like braid and I don't happen to have tweezers in my in-desk boudoir, I will react like a cornered chimpanzee denied a steady supply of bananas and a mate in order to encourage hilarious chimpanzee tricks for the adoring public. If you come within twenty feet of my charm and get smacked in the face with my temper, that's a you problem and not a me problem. It's not that I'm a bitch, it's that I have an artistic temperament. It's the small price you pay for my creative little soul. And it's because I'm a fucking hypocrite.

Unless you're a doctor talking an intern through saving the life of some poor asshole choking on his corn dog or an explosives expert asking if the caller can see a blue wire, get off that fucking phone.

Guess what. I don't need to listen to your boring conversation when I'm minding my own damn business and trying to enjoy a quiet bus commute to or from work. Can't you see I'm reading here? If I turn up the volume on my MP3 player to drown out your nonsensical prattle, my awesome summer playlist will distract me too much from my book. Bus norms require that if you're on a silent suburban express ride unencumbered by ghetto urchins loudly discussing their late welfare checks, you don't interrupt said silence with your obnoxious fucking word vomit. Do you have problems being alone among strangers? Is it too hard for you to disconnect from the comfort and security of family and friends for a 30-minute bus ride? Cut the cord, asshole. I need to concentrate while reading Harry Potter or I'll miss a pivotal plot point or sly foreshadowing!

However, if my phone vibrates in my purse and I see it's my brother or sister-in-law, fuck you if you think I'm not taking that call. Bus norms be damned, this is public transportation. Typically I'd wait til I exited the bus to call someone back, but you have no idea how hard it is to connect with these two. If you don't like listening to what appears at the surface to be an inane conversation, stop being such a cheap fuck and drive your own car to work. I have to speak loudly, I can hardly hear them over the noisy din of the bus engine! And I have every right to punctuate my conversation with dove-like cooing at my young nephew, along with a seemingly endless loop of me repeating, "Hi, Michael! Hi, Michael! Hi, Michael!" three octaves too high. Kids can't hear you unless you speak three octaves higher. Mike has an undeveloped sense of humor and the sound of my voice is all it takes to make him laugh hysterically. Why would you deny a young child the opportunity to laugh? It's not that I don't respect your so-called right to a peaceful commute. It's just that I'm a fucking hypocrite.

You're an adult. Use a debit card for that Diet Coke and Hershey bar and not every penny you dug our of your couch cushions.

What are you, 12? Did you just bust open your piggy bank? Fuck you for making me wait in line behind you while you pretend to be sheepish about counting out all that change. Fuck you harder for your demonstrated lack of mathematical skill prohibiting you from speedily counting while precious minutes of my break are sacrificed to my rapidly growing hostility and impatience. And fuck you more because now I have to wait while the mathematically-impaired cashier makes sure you counted right. If you insist upon conducting a simple transaction like a transient, at least have the courtesy to hit the convenience store not when it's convenient to you, but rather when it's convenient to the rest of us. Say, four in the morning. Two in the afternoon on a Sunday. Not at noon on a workday in our building's little store with a line of twenty where one cashier operates the register while the other wanders around pretending to count the inventory. I will change my religion to VooDoo Magick on the spot just so I can jam pins into a clay miniature representing you. Even though it's easier to remove wallpaper than it is to remove clay from underneath a french manicure.

However, if I'm with the only friend I have who does that - Rob - don't you dare cast disparaging glares at him. He has the right to pay in this fashion. Money is money! Maybe get some anger management and prescription medication because you can't tolerate waiting an additional four or five minutes. You're a jerk, you know that? And I'm a fucking hypocrite.

Don't become hall monitor of the highways and byways and decide you'll set the limit in the fast lane.

It's the fast lane. It is to be ruled by the fastest. Not by you, when you decide however fast you are going is fast enough. Move the fuck over if someone behind you needs to get somewhere 2.3 seconds faster than the rest of us. Let them by. I don't need you causing a road rage incident because you're a total asshole who doesn't comprehend the function of the far left lane.

However, if the posted limit is 55 and I'm going 65, that is fast enough. I'm not going to move into the grandpa lane to the right where the caravans are tooling along at 56. And I'm not risking a speeding ticket in the 35W speed trap stretched between 494 and Diamond Lake Road by being lead car in a parade of flagrant lawbreaking speed demons. So get off my ass and deal with it, because probably I'm saving you a ticket and maybe I'm even saving your life! And because I'm a fucking hypocrite.

Confession: I Have Herpes. (Alternatively titled Only Practically Perfect in Every Way)

Okay, so I don't have Herpes. The nice thing about having sex with the frequency of the summer Olympics is it makes it exceedingly difficult to contract an STD. Odds are better that I'll win the Powerball on 7/7/7.

Announcing I have Herpes is less embarrassing than telling the awful truth.

I have a certain preference when it comes to men I like, and that preference is that they know less about me than they know about Britney Spears. This is easy to accomplish when you consider my vagina is rarely photographed and splashed all over tmz.com. I don't mind being open with my entourage of gay boys, but I don't want a straight guy I like to know my shameful secrets.

This isn't some die-hard dedication to maintaining a high level of obnoxious mystery. It's just self-protective, cowardly impulse. I get too anxious around straight guys. Shrink always urged me to "put down the Hanzo sword" and open up. Letting go of the sword is, as the saying goes, far easier swatted with a newspaper than scraped off the wall.

So. I'll put down the sword indirectly, via blog, and I'll pretend I'm the kind of woman who answers questions she's asked rather than answering by asking her own questions or acting like English is her third language. And I'll tell you all about my Herpes Simplex Fourteen - the most hideous form of Herpes!! And far more humiliating than regular Herpes or the Herpes that only results in a cold sore, which I personally don't think should be called Herpes at all because who needs the stigma?

The FAQs. (Aka Forgot to Answer Questions)

When was the last time you participated in this Olympic event?

Lacking confidence in what they refer to back at the convent as "skeelz" in that arena as a whole - due to afore-mentioned infrequency of Olympic participation - focus on any one event is less frequent than Paris Hilton's newfound religious expression. The last time was Beckham knows when. I believe 1999. I spent about sixteen seconds on the event before abandoning it.

I did read up on the how to's. Barnes and Noble doesn't sell [Blank]ing for Dummies, but tips can be found online. I am a nerd and refer to the Internet every time I have a question. The Internet lovingly provides answers galore. Even about that. I didn't even do 70% of what I read about because I started getting anxious. I'd only read how to's on one site, and realized during the event that I should have cross referenced with others because what if this tip sheet was all wrong and I did something you didn't like? Then you asked your question and I fell off the balance beam and assumed the judges were giving me a perfect zero. Like any dedicated athlete, I simply gave up.

So what's the deal, you have Herpes?! You skeevy bitch!

No. I've never even had chicken pox. For the most part my body shuns illness and breakage like Lindsey Lohan shuns rehab and her father. I've never even sprained anything.

I have PCOS. PolyCystic Ovary Syndrome. It's an endocrine disorder originating at the ovaries and fucking over multiple hormones. The body, struggling to balance itself, overcompensates for too little of some hormones with too much of others and ends up hijacked. It's like the endocrine system gets alzheimers and thinks everything is running fine when it's not. Your body becomes fat without the privilege of being an overeater who can't resist food. Pimpled for no reason you can fathom given you're not even a teenager anymore. And you start losing your hair.

So... how many pins do I have in my hair? Depends on how you define "my."

Like Britney and Jessica and Paris, I supplement my own hair with somebody else's. Unlike them it's not to have long fabulous hair, as I don't make that kind of money. It's to add volume to my own. It isn't pins in my hair to count, it's the bonds of the other hair attached to my own. They're like the aglets on your shoelaces, so not at all undetectable.

Thus, if someone says "I love your hair," I can't respond. It's not really all my own. This shames me. It makes me feel inadequate. It makes me shove your hands away and tell you not to worry about the pins in my hair.

Now you know a secret I couldn't even tell you after generous vodka sprites.

The Jen Commandments (for Kiwi) - like the Constitution, this is a living document subject to whimsical modification

1. Never speak ill of Lord Beckham.

2. If you can't think of something nice to say, find something else to do with your mouth.
2a. I don't mind if you speak ill of others (excepting Lord Beckham), but you are not to speak ill of me. Or yourself.

3. If you're having trouble coming up with ideas of things to do with your mouth, I probably have a suggestion or two.

4. When you read my emails, you must read them knowing I'm smiling. Always.

5. Getting me all worked up over the notion of showing you my "charms" only to blow me off and let me know you'll just wait til sometime next week is naughty, naughty.

6. Your chair must be clear. Just in case.
6a. Failing that, your lap must be clear. Just in case.

7. I may fuck with your head every now and then, but I won't ever fuck with your heart.