Big and little questions...

There are the big questions, and then there are the little ones. I'm not sure, really, which are more annoying or demoralizing. Taken in the aggregate I'd have to guess it's the small ones. (One mosquito is a minor annoyance; thousands of mosquitoes is hell.)



Co-worker: "So where did you go this weekend?"

Me: "Me and LJ just hung out at my place and watched TV, ate pizza, whatever." (Said in a tone of satisfaction, not complaint.)

Co-worker:"Why didn't he take you out? I mean, you've only been dating a couple of months, but it seems like you're always staying in."

Me:"It doesn't bother me. I LIKE it that way. And besides, it's cheaper anyhow."

Co-worker: (Tsk.) "YOU shouldn't even be worried about that. HE ought to be paying for YOU, at this stage."

Me:"I've never really abided by that rule." (Thinking: Perhaps this is why you're nearing 50 and have no dates? Ever?)

Co-worker:"Well you SHOULD. You shouldn't even have to THINK about it. I mean...What does he do for a living?"

Me: "He's a substitute teacher."

Co-worker:"Substitute? Why not a -real- teacher?"

(Pause. I remember BEING a kid--what WE did to subs, and we were nice little Catholic schoolkids in the 1980's--so anyone who wants to do that job NOW, in the wonderful wilderness that is 2003--hey, whoever they are, they get ALL respect from me.)

Me: (moving to favorite fall-back answer): "I don't know. I've never asked." (Thinking: And I don't care, either.)

Co-worker: "HOW old is he again?"

Me: "Just made 30."

Co-worker: "That right there should tell you something. You don't want somebody who's not -serious-, not -responsible-. Not at your age, not unless you're just out there playing. I mean, if that's what you're doing, that's fine--but you're getting to that age where you should be thinking about the future, and for THAT you want someone -responsible-. A MAN--not a little boy."

(Long pause, while the following thoughts go through my mind: 1. "Spoken like a woman whose expectations probably chased off every man who was ever interested in her." 2. "Since when does the number of hours a man works per week define his character? Or the money he makes?" 3. "What the hell do you mean, 'at your age'? I'm 15 years younger than you, you judgemental old bat!" 4. "If we're going to talk about men vs. boys, how about this: THIS one respects me. THIS one doesn't cheat on me. If you ask me, things are IMPROVING. Maybe not up to YOUR fine standards, but goddamnit, I'm happy.")

Finally, me: "Well, I hear what you're saying, but I just look at things a little differently."

Co-worker: (Tsk.) "Believe me, I know about these black men. That's the main reason I won't date 'em."



Ah, the little questions. How much and why not and how come; why don't you and shouldn't you be and what the hell is WRONG with you, anyway?? And to try to explain it is just like digging a deeper hole. To try to just speak the truth as I see it--that if a man treats me well and keeps his own business handled, it doesn't concern me WHAT he does or how much he gets paid for doing it--is tantamount to heresy.



Sometimes, after the words are out , when I find myself in this office full of professional women all glaring at me like I'm a puppy that's peed on the carpet, and I sometimes think Is THIS what feminism was trying to create? I thought it was about the freedom for a woman to choose who to be--maybe instead, it was about the "freedom" for women to believe in anything you want, as long as it's exactly the same thing all the other women believe in. I do get tired of perfectly good ideas being co-opted by the forces of conformity, that's for sure--feminism, democracy, alternative rock... all lost to me now, it seems, because I can't and won't and CAN'T be like everyone else. I've NEVER been able to be like everyone else, and there was a time it actually used to BOTHER me, when I was a little girl trying to make the "popular" girls accept me...now, at 33, I find myself in a world where my time has come and gone, in a momentary blink of happiness. My reality is wrapped tightly around a core of 1994, a time when it was absolutely right to be exactly who I was. Anyone who wanted me to believe like everyone else, or act or dress or do ANYTHING like everyone else, was a negative influence, a disposable person, and that was a bliss made possible by one simple fact: for the first time in memory, there were as many of Us as there were of Them.



Whatever happened to that moment probably happened while I was otherwise distracted: by heroin, by grief, by North Carolina, by CR. But then again, by the time CR came around, the moment was long, long past. So--whatever happened to those days happened while I was obliterated. Lights on, no one home, Next Register Please. Your Call Is Very Important To Us.



The most frightening, and at the same time the most wonderful part of all this house-buying process is this: a small piece of me, no matter how wrong and deluded that piece may be, sees this as a way back in. The plans I have for this life in this new place--as I told LJ tonight--are vast and epic in their scope; as I also told him, the period of my past I MOST would want to emulate would be 1994 and 1995. Not that it could be done, you understand, nor even that I would want it to...but the FREEDOM of it, the POTENTIAL of those days, the absolute refusal to be cowed into believing anything that wasn't truly relevant to my experience....THAT's what I want to bring back. This life right now is exhaustingly mundane and too-easily manipulated, and I'm tired of it.