Counter Culture Dancing

Couple things happened in my head while I was dancing my hypothetical balls off at Club Z in Williamsport last night with some of my girlfriends and our DD/supervisor/agent, Tom.

First, I was missing a whole lot during my crippled-by-self-consciousness 20s. Dancing at a gay bar is awesome. I did go dancing at a gay bar once in my 20s, with some gay temporary roommates. I got felt up (and not in a nice way) by some straight dude.

Which is a total quandary. What are the straight people doing at the gay bar? I know, I know. It's a bar, a club, there's dancing and the air is thick with poorly mixed DJ beats and cigarette smoke. The energy is contagious and it's totally counter culture. I guess there're some straight folks (like myself) who get a kick out of being someplace where different is normal. In Williamsport, if you don't want to hang out with the 20-23 set at Cell Block, it's the only place to go dancing.

But what was with the posturing straight men trying to grab my (luscious) bootie, and feeling up Amber, this drag queen who danced with us, and trying to dance with the irrepressible Hillary? What were they posturing? Were they pretend gay or pretend straight? Were they trying to feel us up so as to discern our sex? I feel like mine is fairly obvious. And Amber's was, too, but her girl parts done comparatively well. And Hillary is a feminine, shimmering pixie. Do their weasely minds believe genitals grabbing is more acceptable at a gay bar?

That was what I told myself the first time. But I'm older now and wiser and angrier and more aware of the very real way in which women (and very similarly homosexuals) are second class citizens, even now--in the future! I sincerely believe that most straight men are utter pigs and not to be trusted. And I follow @MsMagazine on twitter, so I get all these news feeds about the high sex-discrimination crimes that happen the world over. Now. In the future!

And when I got home last night and I was a sweaty, vaguely drunk, cigarette stinking mess in bed with my lover, and my body still ticked with energy and glee, when I thought about way in which the fun was kind of marinated in this palpable cultural dischord; I almost wept.

There is no minority for which I have greater sympathy than the transgendered/transvestites. I can't think of a worse affliction than looking in the mirror and seeing the wrong thing. Feeling like your skin got mis-sewn at the factory.

Craigslist & what's happening to me?

Something has happened to me. I don't know what it is, but Craigslist is no longer my favorite thing in the world. Wow.

Perhaps I am suddenly eager to be upwardly mobile. In all areas of life, but especially financially. And perhaps this yearning for upward mobility has cast a shade of snobbery over the notion of Craigslist and its grassroots, nonprofit shtick. Or perhaps it is because I no longer have an urban Craigslist, there's not a lot of super interesting stuff and pages, pages, pages of it. Harrisburg "gigs" are all links to those "work from home" ads, and the job postings are few! Instead of at least one page under each heading each day, there are 0-3. Maybe 4 or 5 on some select days.

I've sworn off internet dating. I have a profile over at OkCupid, but rarely check it (unless I get a message about having a message), and sometimes when it is late, I get a kick out of answering those personality questions, taking quizzes, seeing what OkCupid has to say about me, and skulking around the "Who's viewed you" profiles, often being positively horrified by arrogance, ignorance, sub-literacy or blatant lies.

Anyway, I was just trolling the Craigslist Personals. I used to get a big kick out of them. But today, they were annoyingly transparent and pathetic. I was also surprised to find that an overwhelming majority of the ads were from very, very young men (under 21) looking for "the one," men my age (25-35) hoping to start a family, and middle-aged to older men (42-59) looking for "NSA" encounters and/or discreet kittens on the side.

Perhaps the reason I found the personals so distressing today is because I have not been feeling so malcontent in my aloneness lately. I mean, who wouldn't like to get laid?, but I guess I've just determined that a love relationship is probably not in the cards for me until Pearl's older and all the men who are now married to the beautiful, vapid girls they dated in high school are divorced.

In fewer words, I didn't feel like one of the posters today. I didn't have an intense surge of empathy or of desire or of anything besides pity, really.

Additionally, I have been experiencing a great amount of feminist rage lately. I am very upset with men. All of them. They are whiny and obnoxious mostly. Except I really, really like them.

Anyway. What's happening to me? I feel like it's Puberty the Second. Everything's changing, and it's doing so without my permission.

the lovely hair salon

My friend from High School, Justin Kelly, owns this salon, Studio 3. It's this fabulous high-ceilinged space over near the Target Plaza in Carlisle. He's got his own line of products and tons of Ikea furniture.

He says he's living the American Dream. He has a house and two dogs and a partner and a Volvo and his own highly successful business. If I wanted him to do my hair, I'd have to book 2 years in advance.

And I LOVE giving him and his stylist Jeannean my money. And I LOVE the whole grown up hair salon experience. I had a cut and highlight, and it cost $80, which is probably more than I've spent on ALL the haircuts I've had in the past 10 years, but I swear--I got my head shampooed and conditioned not once but TWICE with this awesome Studio 3 Mint shampoo, and the most excellent moments of utter self-indulgence and femaleness and estrogen-laden energy.

I'm finding that indulging all of this womanhood, or maybe not womanhood because I am a woman every day and I'm mostly comfortable with that. Maybe I mean that I'm experiencing a new kind of comfort with my own femininity, my own interest in prettiness, in nice hairdos, in nice creams, lotions and skin treatments. I have started moisturizing my face and getting excited about eyeshadow, mascara, moisturizing conditioners. I'm finding all of this to be both an extension of my newly realized militant feminism and in reaction to the fact that my job puts me in the presence of almost exclusively men on an hour-to-hour basis. And the whole thing kind of freaks me out. I'm not comfortable in this comfort or in my level of involvement in the comfort.

I have to admit that it's also a bit about Pearl. How am I going to be a mom to a very feminine little girl who will eventually have very feminine little friends who will pressure her to get her eyebrows waxed? How will I negotiate? How will I navigate unless I learn myself?

I don't want Pearl to be 20 before she learns that people actually do wax their eyebrows. I also don't want her to be shocked. Perhaps I should like it if she found the whole thing to be an horribly barbaric expression of cultural vanity, but I'm not holding my breath. I think she might possess her father's disinterest in a critical inner life which is another thing I shall have to learn to negotiate.

Mazel Tov.

This Dream I had

First, the major players:
1. A boy I know, have slept with and know I shouldn't talk to anymore. We'll call him Dilbert.
2. His Girlfriend. We'll call her Angie.
3. A boy I know, have not slept with, and to whom am not sure I should have stopped talking. We'll call him Aaron.

Cameos:
1. My dad. We'll call him my dad.
2. A swell girlfriend of mine.

So Dilbert, Angie and I are conversating. That's right, conversating. As one often does in dreams. Angie is cool. She is talking about Dilbert's later-life circumcision (In life, Dilbert is Jewish). She says, "oh, he needed it. Like drawers need bottoms." I am listening with earnest intention.

Spontaneously, Dlibert breaks up with Angie and announces that he would like to do it with me. I argue and resist, since Dilbert has behaved so badly. And I am--in real life and the dream--in utter conflict over whether or not I should like him. at all. even as a friend.

My swell girlfriend calls and tells me that her physician has told her that she has every kind of flu virus in her body, and that that is very unusual, but he has not prescribed medication.

Then as suddenly as the conversation about Dilbert's circumcision began, Dilbert and I are having [very good] sex. (In real life, Dilbert is not much of a lover.) But the whole time, I am--aware of conflict and irony in a dream in ways I have never been before--pretending that Dilbert is actually Aaron. In my dream, that is how I explain the sudden transformation of Dilbert's skills in lovemaking. Aaron is almost certainly a very good lover.

This is when my dad appears. Somehow, there is nothing at all perverted about his appearance, just odd. He comes into the room where Dilbert and I are screwing and asks me to make him a hot sauce cocktail with the two bottles of hot sauce he's brought with him. He says, "take your time." He says, "don't mind me," and means it.

Then Dilbert begins to interview me about Aaron after my dad disappears. He tells me that he loves me because I love someone who isn't him. He asks a thousand questions that I am happy--and even more greatly aroused--to answer.

I wake up just after Aaron, as a floating head, has appeared to Dilbert (Aaron has no awareness of my presence or of the nudity) and Dilbert asks him if he loves me.

Aaron, of course, does not answer before I wake.

And now I puzzle over whether or not to break my fast from him and tell him about this bizarre dream. I think I shall'nt, for I fear rejection, and his fear.

My Mac is Durty and so is my mind

I need to dust and clean my computer. This is madness.

Pearl and I need to settle in to some scrubations.

The oil man is here, filling the tank. Very good, methinks.

I have filthy, filthy dreams far too often. I think I shall scrub my synapses.

I recently read an e-mail that I wrote to someone some years ago. Back when I thought I was stupid and a failure. I used the sentence, "it feels like someone is knitting with my synapses." Ooh I am a clever devil.