Catharsis-Farts

Let me get this off my chest in as eloquent a way as possible.

I was sitting on a concrete bench, and there were ants, not a lot of ants, but a few, crawling around on my fingers, and I remember being able to see the moon. It must have been one of those afternoons when you can see the moon before the sun goes down. It’s never a full moon, rather, it’s a moon in transit, close to the beginning of its cycle, thus closer to the earth (or something like that). I remember looking just past his ear as I tried to explain myself and seeing the half moon in the light of day.

I had done a bad thing, he told me. We recently spent the weekend together at our future home out west with our future church, and I had rudely rushed him out Sunday morning while he was being admired by one of the members of the church. I can barely even remember the moment.

The first time we met the members, in December, we had instantly fallen in love with them, and they had fallen in love with us. He told me that he believed he would not have been hired without my charming personality. I remembered him as generally happy and usually admired wherever he went, but he always felt a little awkward and nervous in interview situations. That was where I came in. I was the warmer, the joker, the one to find common ground. I was not, however, much of a lady about it. Ever. Oh how I hated and loved that about myself.

Now it was March, and the preacher and his wife were leaving, waving to us, and calling back that they would go ahead and get a table at the restaurant, but we were surrounded. A shy gentleman had been speaking with us for longer than anyone was comfortable. He wasn’t a bad guy, just one of those guys that keeps nervously talking until whoever is listening cuts him off to leave...to escape. My love was too nice to walk away, so I cut in to remind him that people were waiting for us.

Seems like a normal thing to do, except that I, apparently, am abrasive. The way some had described me to myself at that point in my very early twenties, my voice and words must've gone over like a rusty bucket of soggy diapers.

He told me that he was so embarrassed by that particular interaction that he was listing it as reason for ending our engagement.

We had been together for almost four years, three years when he proposed. We were performing a David Ive’s sketch for the current group of young Christians with whom he was working. It was in Sunday school. Asking me to marry him was in the script, written years before we would ever even read it, but actually having a ring was not. And he had a ring.

Then suddenly, there we were, almost a year later, sitting outside of the laundry room, in the shadow of impending doom. I, shifting my gaze from the ants on my hands to the early moon, was half listening to him explain how inappropriate my behavior had been over the past weekend. He had driven to Dallas from Abilene to tell me all of this. My dad and I had run into him at my place when we got back from dish shopping, for the wedding registry, for my wedding registry.

When I think back to that weekend and turn it around the folds of my gray matter, I remember having brunch at the home of a young married couple from the church. They were quiet and reserved but very intelligent. We talked about politics (within the church) as well as lifestyle, since we were planning a big move west and were looking forward to slower, warmer living. It was dull conversation, if I’m honest, too polite.

Somehow we ended up talking about film, and that conversation made its way to the topic of curse words and sex (or "biblical fornication") in film. He and I were all too familiar with this conversation. We’d had it with each other a million times, and a million times we had been in agreement. Movies were our thing. We went to see so many movies and rented or purchased enough VHS tapes of our favorite films to satisfy the nerdiest of obsessions. We had crossed the bridge from VHS to DVDs together. We saw the rise and fall of Circuit City, and we shopped at the liquidation sales. We basked in our haven of electronics and entertainment like the excellent Americans we were.

This couple was not a fan. They liked movies, but they preferred the ones that didn’t barrage them with unpleasant violence, sex, and language. This was not uncommon among church goers. Entire campaigns to show the world we stood behind our word included pledging, as a Christian, to walk out of movies where the Lord’s name was taken in vain, and I fancied myself one of them for a moment.

Unfortunately, the creative madwoman in my head wouldn’t let me avoid seeing the films that received the highest accolades which were always the films rife with sin. I was a snob and a junkie. We were, together. So I argued as I believed, that if art is to be a reflection of life, it must reflect all of life, even the parts we don’t like.

She (I don’t remember her name, but she was a nurse or something because she was wearing scrubs...or she was just a person that liked wearing scrubs...which is worse, not that being a nurse is bad...just...scrubs) argued that she did not want to fill her mind with such images. I said I couldn’t imagine denying myself knowing how the world works, and what life without church would look like. This was an important moment along the timeline of my relationship with my first love.

And he was my first love. With him, for the first time in my life, I realized that love was easy. That falling in love was something that couldn’t be stopped or controlled, and that the amount of love I had to give was greater than I had ever imagined. I loved him so much it hurt, every single day.

Relationships, on the other hand, were tricky. They required immaculate communication and compatibility. He and I were very young, and he had, I would learn, a few expectations about marriage that I would have never expected. Namely, he had never seen his parents argue, and we argued all the time.

When asked his opinion of “unpleasantness” in film, he surprised me with an about-face and agreed with our new “friends.” It would do us all some good to protect ourselves from having to hear and see, to consume, such violence, such harsh realities. 

Looking back on it, this was the moment I should have known for sure. There were many times before when I should have known something was wrong. He talked about different women, "amazing" women in his life, and I should have seen the lust behind those words, but THIS moment should have thrown me a lot further than it did at the time. 

He, whom I had known so well, was not himself...any more. At least, he was not the man I loved, my heart, my best friend, every night with our feet up laughing about farts and debating the validity of the Best Picture win for Titanic, eating buckets of fries from McDonald's (literally, they sold buckets for a short moment), and laughing our equally unique and ridiculous laughs. He was not himself.

He had not been himself for a long time. I just didn't see it.

I fought him, tumbling into the hole that I didn't even see coming. We wrestled, and I raged. He just wanted it to be easier, and I guess I always knew it wouldn't be...for me. 

A year later, I was in Europe, an overfilled and heavy backpack strapped to my back. It started as motivation, my first effort to build the best revenge: a better life, but revenge is usually misguided, and the most painful breaks are often born of circumstance. We were both victims. 

I don't want to be a victim any more.

I remember a tiny piece of the pain that day every once in a while, when I look up at the sky before the sun has finished setting, and I see the moon. I used to hold onto it like a talisman, a metal of honor for taking it in the face. 

But I had to let it go. I had to stop fighting...without losing my pluck. This is tough to say, but I used to tell people, "I'd rather die than have my heart broken like that again." I'm glad I haven't yet... died, that is.

I was thinking about trying to tie the ants in here at the end, talk about how I don't mind them any more, and how they can't hurt me...but ants are gross...and I will dance on their graves. I will delight in their demise. Is what I'm saying.

Thank you for listening, and pardon me if it seems like I'm abusing our friendship.

Legitimately Legitimate

I know what you're thinking, "not another rehashing of the tragic events involving the defining of rape in 2012," and I know, it's hack. But this is seriously serious. I'm talking about rape. On a more specific, and nonetheless grave, note, I want to discuss sext rape. Rape sexting. Rapeting.

It may have happened to you, and you didn't even realize it.

Have you ever found yourself at home alone, just sitting on the couch, drinking a magnum of red wine, watching a marathon of America's Next Top Model? Then, suddenly, you receive a text message. You're excited, at first, because you don't normally get texts after...normally. But when you see the content of the text, you realize, it is anything but a pleasant surprise.

You've just received a text message from that guy to which you gave your number at that club that night when you were drunk. You gave him your number because you thought he seemed like a really nice guy. He seemed like the kind of guy that would totally call (or text) a girl that he met at a club, and maybe they would go on a date, and maybe they would go on a few more dates, and then maybe they would find themselves in love and in a relationship, and the wedding would be so much fun because your friends would love you and each other and barbecue and sunsets on the river and kegs of low gravity beer and at least two dogs with a house and a yard with a garden and Obama and a beautiful utopian socialist future.

Well, you were partially right. He TOTALLY WAS the kind of guy that would text. In fact, he just texted you a picture.

OF HIS PENIS.

Yes. I know. Your initial reaction is to laugh, and that's fine. For now.

You play coy, so as not to embarrass the poor guy, and respond with:

"who is this? ;)?"

He responds with another picture.

OF THE AREA BETWEEN HIS MOUTH AND HIS GROIN INCLUDING HIS ABS AND THAT LINE THAT FORMS, LIKE, A MUSCLE ARROW POINTING DIRECTLY TO HIS PENIS.

You continue to play coy:

"OH HI! I remember YOU! ;)"

He responds (how charming) with:

"Your turn."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's you. Alone at home. You're laughing because you think it's hilarious, this guy's gumption. Like he's just so sure he can get you to send him an infamous "tit pic," or "snatch chat." How cute.

"Yer aDORable."

"Srsly.

ANOTHER PICTURE OF HIS PENIS"

"I'm good."

"I'm not."

Wait a minute. You don't remember asking this guy to send you a picture of his genitalia. Why? Because you didn't. And now, all of a sudden, because he's "taken the initiative," you've got to reciprocate?

I. Don't. Think. So. And I'm a damn feminist, mother-fucker (had to be said).

So you ignore him.

But he doesn't stop asking. And when you finally ask him to leave you alone, he says,

"But I showed you mine! Don't be a tease!"

So, now, all of a sudden, you're a tease for sitting alone on your couch on a Friday night, drinking a magnum of wine, and watching ANTM?!?!

I know. I know. My tone is changing. It's changing because I'm not talking about you. I mean, I might be talking about you, but I'm mostly just talking about me.

I don't want to parse words.

I am who I am, not who anyone else wants me to be. I imagine it's just as hard for men as it is for women, so let's be real.

Nobody is required to do anything they don't want to do, even if it seems as benign as sending a picture of his schlong or her jugs via media message. That's it.

Also, let's stop making one label for that one thing and another for this other thing. Words are just words and very often insufficient. That's why people write songs and paint paintings.

Think of the idea of rape as the same things as the idea of porn.
Maybe you don't know what it is exactly, but you know it when you see it.

I just hope you don't have to see it in the form of a poorly lit penis, photographed from a suspicious angle so as to make it seem bigger, or thicker, or whatever. I also hope you don't have to see it in the form of smooshed-together hoo-haas and duck lips.

J'ai fini.

I love you. All of you.

ABC...Gum

Oh man. I used to be such a victim. I used to spend all my time whining to myself about how much of a victim I was and how nobody understood. I mean, it was hard not to assume when, on a typical day, my driver's side power window on my Honda Civic broke with the window not completely up, it rained buckets, and everyone else but me was in a relationship all the time ever. I was totally justified. I know.

It changed though. It was mostly gradual, but I can definitely put my finger on a specific time and place when I began to stop crying to myself about how lame my life was. Outside of extensive therapy and a lot of googling of topics like "nobody understands","I don't have anything to wear","does my dog hate me", etc, there is one moment of exemplary protest that seems to be the greater of the catalysts shoving me in the direction of a more positive self image.

I was shopping for vegetable plants at Home Depot for a vegetable garden I was planning on growing at the house into which I had just moved in Atlanta (it's a prepositional phrase party!!). I had purchased some Black Cow, Mushroom compost, and the Bonnie baby plants that allowed me to skip the seedling process (it was too late for it at that point anyhow, but we can talk about gardening timelines in another blog), and I was attempting to load them into my car. Luckily, no one was parked next to me which made it easier to transfer the items from the cart to the car while leaving my car door open all the way. UNTIL, this...HUMAN...in some car that I can't remember drove up and, despite the fact that there were numerous parking places available, decided to park in the one next to me that was currently occupied by my cart and my car door...and ME. REALLY? REALLLLLY?

So she honked. YES. She freaking honked at me.

I pulled my cart out of the way, shut my car door (mid transfer of items) so I could press my body against my car to give her enough room to back into the space.

And there I was. Totally at the mercy of this woman and her car...and her stupid heels (to Home Depot)...and her gum...and her bling-ey phone....and her stupid bug-eye sun glasses.

LIFE IS HARD, PEOPLE!!!!!

As she walked by, I mumbled "you win," like the experienced victim I was, but she heard me, her head snapped in my direction, and she spat, "it's not a competition," in the smuggest way possible.

I finished my car loading, pushed the cart all the way back to the garden center because I am thoughtful and responsible and nice and AWESOME, and I shuffled back to my car where I had a piece of gum that had already been chewed resting on the lid of the diet coke I had been poisoning myself with all day because I refuse to throw it out the window. It NEVER GOES AWAY, PEOPLE.  Oh delicious ABC gum...stuck carefully on a plastic lid...left behind in a warm car...slightly melty enough to turn into a long string of gum when I pulled it off the lid.

And then I had an idea. I looked at the gum, looked at the car backed into the parking space next to mine, looked back at the gum, checked to make sure I had at least one more piece (I love chewing gum), thought back to moments ago and those heels and sunglasses, rolled down my passenger side window (which worked), took a deep breath, and flung the gum onto the mean lady's carefully parked car.

It's not a competition? It's not a COMPETITION?!?!

BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

I win.

And that was when it all changed.

Well...it started to change a year or so before that during a yelling match I had with an old lady and her dogs...but that is another story for another time.

What I'm trying to say here is:

I ALWAYS HAVE GUM IN MY CAR....AND SOMETIMES IN THE BOTTOM OF MY PURSE...BECAUSE IT COMES OUT OF THE PACKAGE AND THE WRAPPING COMES OFF AND IT GETS SHUFFLED AROUND IN THERE AND STICKS TO THINGS LIKE MY KEYS AND MY PHONE.

So watch yourself. I play to win.