Quit While You're Ahead

I did a despicable thing last weekend. I watched "Sex and the City."

If I were Catholic, I'd be camped out in the confessional right about now. And not because of the sex.

Am I the only woman left standing who recognizes this series for the piece of airbrushed shit that it is? Am I supposed to care about these women and their handbags? Who the fuck thought up this narrative? Why aren't Manhattanites massing in the streets in protest?

It's mind-numbing.

My daughter -- who is walking around the house with walking pneumonia at one-in-the-afternoon on a school day due to walking around in flipflops in November, but let's not go there -- stumbled across "Sex and the City" reruns on Fox 21 a few weeks back and has added it to her Must-See-TV alongside "Ugly Betty" and "Desperate Housewives."

I can't believe I'm the kind of mother who lets her 12-year-old daughter watch this deplorable shit. Choose your battles, and all that, I just get tired of arguing. I'm so tired of arguing I owe the Sleep Bank seven years unpaid interest. At least "Housewives" doesn't take itself seriously. Not so with "Sex," which my daughter thought I should watch at least once on account of my having the same name as the main character.

Can I sue for libel? Slander? If not, I'm going back to my given name: Asshole.

It was the full-length movie version of "Sex and the City" that I watched. About halfway through, I turned the sound off to see if this might improve things. Not. There were still those handbags, and all that inane giggling. Interspersed with bouts of crocodile tears to suggest balance. Life is difficult, then there's Botox.

The nude scenes stood out like a...well, you get the point. Here's this Pollyanna storyline punctuated with long naked glimpses of anonymous glistening gym rats athletically faking orgasm. It just didn't flow. The Pollyannas, of course, are never shown naked, being genitally-challenged, like Barbie.

I was ten when Barbie was born. She appeared suddenly, miraculously, from the mind of God. Like Jesus. My sister and I each had our own Barbie -- the ponytailed blonde, the bouffant brunette -- and would painstakingly dress them in the latest fashion, then switch heads when we wanted to change outfits.

I can think of a few women I'd like to switch heads with. I'm sure my husband could, too.

Then along came Ken, and life was never the same. The blonde and the brunette fought over that dickless wonder for the rest of their fashion-centric days, until heads had been switched so often they started nodding off. Isn't it telling that Ken's head wasn't removable? Believe me, we tried.

Why we didn't just get another Ken is beyond me. But then I suppose the passion and drama would've gone out of it. With a Ken for each Barbie, where's the conflict? Next thing you know you're playing doubles tennis and living in side-by-side Dreamhouses.

Whatever became of that Barbie of mine?

She'd be worth quite a bit now, being the original, with her little black-and-white stripe swimsuit and her cotton candy hair. Though she had a less than perfect time of it -- all that fighting over Ken -- she may not have held up too well. Unlike her counterparts in "Sex and the City," who walk through life in designer shoes and go through men like tampons and always manage to find a taxi and never, but never, lose their heads.

Show and Tell

For Show and Tell this week, Hunter shared that he saw a man dressed like a lady walking down the street.

"And what did you think of that?" I said, and Hunter said,

"It's a mystery."

I think anyone who names their kid Hunter should be taken out and shot.

I must confess the above-named Hunter -- let's call him Joey -- is possibly my favorite student. Don't get me wrong, I still think most male members of the species are one point above plant life. Make that below. Except this particular boy has gotten under my skin, not an easy feat.

In fact, it's a mystery.

Joey is a spoiled brat, a motor mouth, an energized bunny, as Caucasian as it's possible to be and cute as a bug's ass to boot, if you're into that blue-eyed blond-haired sort of thing. All the ingredients. By rights I should despise this kid and the pony he rode in on. Instead, he's won my jaded heart by the sheer incongruity of his charm. Against all odds I've fallen, slowly and inevitably, like some ancient old growth deep in the forest keeling over in slow-mo with no one to hear.

It's that word "mystery" that did it. And the time he drew a "contraption" for Early Project. And when he rhymes the ends of my sentences with made-up words (Come on over it's Circle Time...kurkle shime...flurkle jime). And when he says "Oh my goodness!" whenever Brooklyn talks. Brooklyn hasn't said a word to anyone since school began in September, but she'll occasionally respond to Joey's constant stream of chattery commentary with an unintelligible whisper and a slight nod of her likewise blonde-haired blue-eyed head.

Anyone who names their kid Brooklyn should be made to live there. And not the one in New York, pal, the one up on Da Rainch.

Whatever happened to regular names like Sally? Or Billy? Or Gail? I haven't run into a Kathy since I started this gig. And there weren't any Kathies when I was teaching high school, either, that was the Heather/Jessica/Ryan era. Used to be 90% of the people I knew were named Kathy. If you thought you were a Kathy and woke up one morning to discover you were actually a Brooklyn, you'd be struck dumb, too.

And here's another thing, Joey calls his mother "Mother." Like a little English schoolboy. This bothers his mother, she told me. She feels like she's done something wrong, that she doesn't deserve to be called Mother. My tongue hurt for two days after biting down on that one.

Then there's Randall's mother (not his real name), who's pregnant again and not happy about it. Randall's been in day care since he was six weeks old. He dresses in camo and often pretends he's a puppy and brings hunting gear for Show and Tell. He'll be able to lock and load by the time he's ten, if our State Legislature has its way. When we play Dress Up Randall likes to wear the blue plastic Barbie shoes.

Joey wouldn't be caught dead in heels. Though he isn't averse to trying on the feather boa. He calls it the "fancy cape," for when Spiderman goes to parties and stuff. I told him he should bring it for Show and Tell. He's considering it.

Another Story

There's mouseshit on my desk. Is that a bad thing?

I'm talking about my third-floor belfry desk, the one where I commune with the Muse and entertain Second Thoughts. The Muse is an easy date, requiring not much more than dinner and a few dozen drinks. Second Thoughts is another story.

I first had Second Thoughts back in The Seventies, when both of us were at Loose Ends, one of the outer ring suburbs of The Seventies. I found myself at Loose Ends when My Lease ran out, and I was forced to take Stock and leave town. Stock hated Change as much as I did, and yowled from her box in the back seat the whole time.

Two carloads and I was moved. Stock lived to be thirteen. My Lease rotted in Hell, is what I heard.

I was introduced to Second Thoughts by Bad Choices, one of those situational friends one acquires when one is in Transition, one of those cul-de-sac hoods on the fringes of Loose Ends.

One night I found myself getting drunk with Bad Choices at some nautically-themed leisure lounge out on the strip, watching Paul Revere and the Raiders elude a comeback, when through the haze of nostalgia I locked eyes with this character skulking in the shadows like the Hesperus. Turns out it was Second Thoughts, a distant cousin of Bad Choices, who reluctantly introduced us. The rest is history.

We've been together, off and on, ever since.

It's a dirty little clandestine affair, carried out in Murky Recesses, a Motel 6 knock-off with franchises across the Known Universe. We manage to reconnect every few life crises or so, but our chances of ever being together are miniscule. I continually remind myself that it's not the destination but the journey, especially when the destination is Cold Day In Hell.

If my husband suspects anything, he's playing It Cool, a Free Cell knock-off available on certain cell phones. Sometimes I'll catch him in a corner of the basement, hunched over his LG Dare, playing It Cool like there's No Tomorrow. Which, incidentally, is where the Muse hails from. And which is why she finds my belfry so distasteful at times, reminding her, as it does, too much of home.

At least, she claims to be the Muse. Sometimes I'm not so sure. I mean, wouldn't the real Muse be bothered by mouseshit? "The Princess and the Pea," and all that? Then there's the matter of the few dozen drinks. For all I know, this Muse could be another shirttail relation of Bad Choices, who still emails me from time to time, the skank.

I'm thinking of changing my address, but I'm having Second Thoughts, who emailed last night from the Murky Recess out on Highway 53. It's been awhile. Now I've got to get my belfry in order for Second Thoughts, I can entertain Change at a later date. All in Due Time, which is an outer ring suburb of... but that's a different story.

Change in the Weather

There was a meteor shower in Taurus Wednesday night, I missed it. Too cloudy. I've been cloudy for days now, months, years. Being cloudy is not the same as being in a fog. Albeit I've been known to go about with zero visibility for long periods of time, occasionally the sun breaks through and the mist dispels.

Not so with cloudiness.

The Election has broken through like a heatwave, however, and I can see clearly now, for the time being. I woke up this morning feeling a little bit less loaded. With the cares of the world, that is. Thanks to my country doing the right thing for a change. Good Christ, I actually said "my country." Last time I said that was in second grade, singing "Tis of Thee" for Miss Hessler at the top of my lungs in hopes of getting first dibs on a Tootsie Pop.

I've always been a sucker for anything with a surprise in the middle.

My mother used to disperse clouds. I'd catch her standing beside the sheets on the clothesline in the backyard staring up at the sky, I'd know she was at it again. I'm not sure what exactly she was aiming for by engaging in this activity, only that she believed she'd be able to do it on a regular basis if she just concentrated hard enough.

My mother also read tea leaves, dreamed prophetic dreams and played Table Up. I remember the sound of the card table legs tapping steadily on the rec room linoleum, sometimes with great force. She played with two special friends, her "book club," she called them, though to my knowledge no books were ever read. Mostly they asked questions of the universe and practiced communal cloud dispersal.

Maybe a few of those dispersed clouds somehow found their way into me. Which would explain a lot.

Due to my cloudiness, I sometimes miss the simplest things. Take the Housekeeper, for instance, whom I've referred to elsewhere in these pages.

I try to steer clear of the Housekeeper, but sometimes it's unavoidable. It is, after all, my house she's keeping. It should have been clear to me that the Housekeeper has obviously been pissed off about something lately, because books and magazines have been turned onto their faces again, and the framed picture of the Dalai Lama is getting mighty dusty. Then last week, while trying to sneak out the back door, I ran smack into her on the stairs. She took out her ear plugs as a prelude to conversation, so I smiled and wished her a Happy Halloween.

Big mistake.

Halloween is, after all, a pagan celebration, which is why it's my favorite holiday. But the Housekeeper, you may recall, is a Fundamentalist Christian, right down to the marrow of her intelligently-designed bones, a fact that temporarily slipped my cloudy mind. I endured her muttered "You can keep that to yourself!" before hightailing it, only to return home later to find that my skeleton earrings and collection of cardboard death masks had been turned over, along with the Vanity Fairs and Peoples.

I should have known better. It's the clouds, stupid.

Now that I think of it, the Housekeeper is probably pissed off about The Election. And about the fact that, due to the economy being in the crapper, she's stuck keeping house for this leftist socialist feminist incense-burning pot-smoking anti-American vegetarian pagan wino Democrat, whose tomatoes were bigger than hers this year. Talk about God's indifference.

As for me, you can have God, I'll take a meteor shower any day. This last one, the cloudy one in Taurus, was that like God sending a postcard? Like maybe a comment about The Election? Like, "Yo, assholes! Now that's what I mean by Free Will!"

The Housekeeper probably thinks God has abandoned us. As for me, I'm with Michelle Obama, I've never been prouder of my country. Oops, I said it again.