Some things are just not funny. I won't drag us all down by naming them, but there are a few -- a very few -- things in the world that even I can't be irreverent toward.
I would have thought abortion was one of those things. But this morning, abortion became funny. Or, more accurately, the lack of one particular abortion became funny.
*Before I continue, a note. I do not care how you feel about abortion. I know exactly how I feel about it, and that seems like all I need to know on the matter. No one -- okay, no one who reads this crap, anyway -- cares.
As a writer, I eavesdrop. It's innate. I can't help it. I don't do it on purpose and if you give me enough dirty looks, I'll probably stop. If you get up and move to another table I definitely will, because I'm too lazy to pick up all my shit and move with you. It's not even that hard these days, eavesdropping. People have outlandishly personal conversations so loud they must want other people to hear them. Ride a New Jersey transit train some time. It. Will. Shock. You. In fact, I challenge you to spend an afternoon in any public place and not overhear the intimate details of a perfect stranger's life.
This one, though. This one was a doozy. Here is today's story.
Two kids -- probably late teens, early twenties; I'm of the age nowadays where that qualifies you as a kid, and also where I say things like nowadays -- caught my attention when she showed up to the coffee shop, a few minutes after him, looking nervous and guilty. Or maybe I was projecting. I was supposed to be working. He stood up quickly when she walked in and gave her a big, tight hug. By the time they settled back down into their chairs she had her arms wrapped protectively around her belly, he was clearly trying not to cry, and I wasn't trying at all to hide how enthralled I was.
He took her hands and asked her how she felt. She shrugged and I think she said "fine." Her head was down and I desperately wanted to ask her to tuck her hair behind her ears so it didn't block me out so much. I was afraid that might be overstepping my boundaries so I just scooted my chair closer instead.
"Man. I wish I coulda been there with you." Boy.
"Yeah. Well, my mom woulda freaked. Plus it seemed dumb for you to just sit in some waiting room." Girl. I'm noting -- taking actual notes at this point -- that Girl is not making eye contact with Boy.
"Did it hurt?" His earnestness was heartbreaking. And kind of hot, in a sensitive, emo way.
"Well... no." I'm suspicious of her, and not just because her sensitive, emo boyfriend is clearly too good for her. He's trying hard to get her to look at him. That hair is like the Iron Fucking Curtain. When he takes her by the chin and lifts her face gently, I am fairly sure I'm not the only one in the place who let out an audible "ohh." But I might've been. Mine was pretty loud.
"It kills me you had to go through this. I'm so sorry. We'll be more careful from now on. But it's all behind us now, right? It's over. I love you so much." Girl says nothing in response to this. Girl is an asshole.
"Girl?" Obviously, he doesn't call her Girl. I am protecting her, and protection is clearly something that has been lacking up to this point in her young, promiscuous life. By now, Boy is starting to sense something is off. Boy may be sensitive, but Boy is not too bright.
"Girl?" This time he says it with a little more insistence, and he's taken his hands off of hers. "It's over, right? I mean, you did it? You did do it, right? You went through with it, right?" Boy is less sensitive-seeming now, and more desperate. Angry desperate. Not hot.
"I tried."
I'm going to give you a few moments here to consider what you think might have been an appropriate second part of Girl's response.
I couldn't go through with it? Makes sense.
I realized I wanted to have your baby? Perfectly romantic.
I'm not morally comfortable with the lifelong ramifications to both my mental and emotional state, as well as my physical wellbeing, when it comes to making a decision of this magnitude? Seems a little lofty for this Girl, but feasible, I suppose.
Instead, she offered up this gem:
"It didn't take."
It didn't take. I missed the next few interchanges, my mind reeling to figure out what they're talking about. Clearly they weren't talking about what I thought they were talking about, right? Because "it didn't take" does not fit into the vernacular of what I thought they were talking about. All I could think was "Run, Boy, run." I tried so hard to think it into Boy's mind that I probably looked like I was trying to abort something of my own.
If they were characters, I would have to concern myself with all kinds of details at this point. Why did she change her mind? Did she ever intend to go through with it in the first place? How, exactly, does she plan on getting away with convincing him it's possible for this sort of thing to not take, like some feeble, failed attempt at a backyard garden? But they're not characters. Not my characters, anyway. And so they're going to have to sort their own shit out. I plan on going back to that coffee shop in about nine months, just to see how the story ends.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: The Castaways
Sometimes, it's been noted, I make strange choices. Like reading a devastating, poignant book about child abuse while relaxing on holiday. This time, though, I think I hit the nail on the vacation-appropriate head.
Elin Hilderbrand's The Castaways is easy to read, enjoyable, and just the right kind of fluffy for when you need to zone in and out every few pages. As do all her books, it takes place on the island of Nantucket, so already it's hard to imagine how it could be anything less than fun. Unlike all her books, it starts off with dead people. So, while she's frothy beach reading, she also packs a little punch.
My only criticism would be that there are a few too many people to mentally juggle, particularly when you're lying on sand. The Castaways is a group of friends -- eight, to be exact; four couples -- and their children. That's a lot of main characters to keep track of, and I spent more time than I would have liked trying to remember who belonged with whom.
Two thumbs up if you're looking for a good travel book, something that will keep you engaged and interested and then leave you alone.
Elin Hilderbrand's The Castaways is easy to read, enjoyable, and just the right kind of fluffy for when you need to zone in and out every few pages. As do all her books, it takes place on the island of Nantucket, so already it's hard to imagine how it could be anything less than fun. Unlike all her books, it starts off with dead people. So, while she's frothy beach reading, she also packs a little punch.
My only criticism would be that there are a few too many people to mentally juggle, particularly when you're lying on sand. The Castaways is a group of friends -- eight, to be exact; four couples -- and their children. That's a lot of main characters to keep track of, and I spent more time than I would have liked trying to remember who belonged with whom.
Two thumbs up if you're looking for a good travel book, something that will keep you engaged and interested and then leave you alone.
Year in (Book) Review: On Writing
One of the most important elements of these little book reviews, up to this point, has been all-inclusiveness. I think, thematically and hypothetically, what I review can be read by anyone. If you're a guy and you want to read The Heretic's Daughter, or a lit snob secretly reading Dear John, who are we, fellow bookworms, to judge? (Okay, I'm totally going to judge you for the Dear John one. It's so bad.)
This one might be the exception, and it makes me kind of sad. I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing, and I was none too happy about it. My gauge for a good book is that I'll read the first two thirds of it as quickly as my eyes and sleep will let me, then slow down almost to a standstill for the final third, simply because I don't want it to end. This has little to do with the caliber of author or of the writing -- I followed this pattern with the finale of the Twilight series in exactly the same way I have done with every F. Scott Fitzgerald book.
Some books, apparently, have just an imperceptible amount of crack sprinkled in the pages. This is the only way to explain Twilight. It is not a particularly well written book series, really, and the story is just weird. And yet, could you put it down? Well, I don't care if you could or not. I could not. I read, in my bed, unfed and unshowered and unimpressed by world events, for four days straight.
That is how I felt about King's memoir: half history, half mechanics ... like I could -- should -- snort the pages. Like I would -- could -- eat the words right off the page.
Perhaps the most surprising part to me? That Stephen King at one point weighed in upwards of 215 pounds. That, even in the times when he was by his own estimation light, he weighed nearly 170. Those are probably not the parts of the story he was hoping his readers would cling to. But it's almost like everything else he writes is so prolific, so profound and perfectly creative and inspiring and earth-shattering, that something as simple as realizing that Stephen King is not, as I might have imagined him had I ever taken the time to imagine him, a wimpy, minuscule kind of guy. Go fucking figure. Also, and my regular readers won't be surprised by this at all, I love, I mean LOVE, that he says fuck. A lot. All the time. For absolutely no reason. Just because there are people in the world -- people like me and people like Stephen fucking King -- who say fuck a lot. We aren't unintelligent. We aren't even uneducated. We just say fuck a lot because it fits and it sits so comfortably on the tongue.
I don't know how a book on the craft of writing will fit into the literary genre of you, my intelligent and well-read friends, who are either not writers or huge fans of the science fiction/horror genres. There are a lot -- millions, literally -- of insanely excellent books to read, and it's sadly impossible to get to them all. But this is a great book. It's a great insight to how a genius writer makes his genius work.
This one might be the exception, and it makes me kind of sad. I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing, and I was none too happy about it. My gauge for a good book is that I'll read the first two thirds of it as quickly as my eyes and sleep will let me, then slow down almost to a standstill for the final third, simply because I don't want it to end. This has little to do with the caliber of author or of the writing -- I followed this pattern with the finale of the Twilight series in exactly the same way I have done with every F. Scott Fitzgerald book.
Some books, apparently, have just an imperceptible amount of crack sprinkled in the pages. This is the only way to explain Twilight. It is not a particularly well written book series, really, and the story is just weird. And yet, could you put it down? Well, I don't care if you could or not. I could not. I read, in my bed, unfed and unshowered and unimpressed by world events, for four days straight.
That is how I felt about King's memoir: half history, half mechanics ... like I could -- should -- snort the pages. Like I would -- could -- eat the words right off the page.
Perhaps the most surprising part to me? That Stephen King at one point weighed in upwards of 215 pounds. That, even in the times when he was by his own estimation light, he weighed nearly 170. Those are probably not the parts of the story he was hoping his readers would cling to. But it's almost like everything else he writes is so prolific, so profound and perfectly creative and inspiring and earth-shattering, that something as simple as realizing that Stephen King is not, as I might have imagined him had I ever taken the time to imagine him, a wimpy, minuscule kind of guy. Go fucking figure. Also, and my regular readers won't be surprised by this at all, I love, I mean LOVE, that he says fuck. A lot. All the time. For absolutely no reason. Just because there are people in the world -- people like me and people like Stephen fucking King -- who say fuck a lot. We aren't unintelligent. We aren't even uneducated. We just say fuck a lot because it fits and it sits so comfortably on the tongue.
I don't know how a book on the craft of writing will fit into the literary genre of you, my intelligent and well-read friends, who are either not writers or huge fans of the science fiction/horror genres. There are a lot -- millions, literally -- of insanely excellent books to read, and it's sadly impossible to get to them all. But this is a great book. It's a great insight to how a genius writer makes his genius work.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The LSG Explains It All
The cute thing about being the LSG in your group of friends (that's the Last Single Girl, you silly) is that you get to impress all your Old Saggy Married Friends with your dating prowess and general knowledge of the MSG. (Modern Single Guy. Please try to keep up or this will take forever.)
The most recent example of this came at a Dayton Dragons game, with one of my old (she is thirty three days older than me and looks every minute of it)(nothing on her sags, though, dammit) married friends and her seven year old son. The baseball game, a present from me to the little boy, fell on the night after what we were trying to decide was a third date or not. You know ... the third date. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and in some places just totally making shit up, but the conversation went something like this:
"Third date, huh?" OSMF.
"Oh yeah. I mean, sort of. I think. Third ... ish." Me.
We promptly set about trying to determine exactly which date number I was on. Really, though, if you read between the lines, we were trying to determine whether or not I'm a slut. I'll summarize.
First date: Group date. To a karaoke bar. (Everyone who has ever heard me sing is cracking up or cringing for me right now.) Turns out, I later learned, he had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, or that there was a setup happening. Call me old-fashioned but I'm not tallying this one up in the date category.
Second date: Just the two of us, after he politely called me up on the phone to invite me to drinks and dinner. Totally a date. By every definition, a really nice date.
Third date: This is where things start to get murky. Another big group, to a Reds game. Somewhere in upwards of 100 degrees, and mass amounts of sweat was produced by all. Kind of a date, but mostly just me and a girlfriend knocking small children out of the way so we could hog the mister fans.
Next few dates: Actually a combination of evenings, taking place at the wine bar below the yoga studio where I have a mad crush on my new yoga instructor. Seriously, she's beautiful and flexible and spiritual. I love her. Love her. A few of these nights ended, very late, with him giving me funny looks because all I could talk about was my adorable yoga instructor.
Somewhere around maybe the sixth date: I climbed his tree. This is not, as my dirtier-minded friends assumed, and as you probably did as well you dirty-minded reader, a euphemism. I actually climbed his tree. He mentioned cutting it down, he did some grilling, we went to Krogers like an old married couple, I inexplicably climbed a tree, it was my favorite night so far.
So now OSMF is up to date, you're up to date, let's continue. I should mention here this particular OSMF was responsible for the initial set up, so she's practically gloating. And right now, while her seven year old is distracted by baseball and an inconceivable amount of food, she gives me the look.
"Awww. That's really cute. I'm so happy for you." I thank her. She keeps giving me the look. "So...?"
"So what?" I love playing dumb. Or not, since she hits me hard in the arm.
"I knew it." I don't know how she thinks she knew it, but apparently, she did. Now she's really gloating. "So can I see pictures of him on Facebook?" This is not where I expect her line of questioning to go, and I am momentarily taken aback.
"Facebook?"
"Did you change your status?"
"Whaaaat? I'm not his Facebook friend, for fuck's sake." It's like she just accused me of having a casual heroin habit. My voice gets so high-pitched the plastic Bud Light bottle the man next to me is holding threatens to crack. Bud Light man gives me a look of his own, one that says I probably shouldn't say "fuck" in the presence of a seven year old.
OSMF looks at me with obvious and -- if we're being honest, here, which clearly we are -- understandable confusion. Skepticism, you may even say.
"So... wait a sec. You guys --"
"Yep."
"I mean, like, all the w --"
"Mmm hmm."
"And which date was it again?"
"Five and three quarters, I believe." I say this with the celibate pride of the well-disciplined and self-controlled.
"But ... you won't Facebook friend him?"
"Noooo. God no. He'll think I'm a clingy stalker."
"Okay."
The nice thing about having lifelong friends is that they get you. And also, they are so generally worn out by you that they just can't muster the strength to ask for clarification.
There you have it. A brief glimpse into the perplexing world of the LSG, and her appropriate non-use of the Friend Request Button. If there is anything else I can help you understand, please do not hesitate to ask.
The most recent example of this came at a Dayton Dragons game, with one of my old (she is thirty three days older than me and looks every minute of it)(nothing on her sags, though, dammit) married friends and her seven year old son. The baseball game, a present from me to the little boy, fell on the night after what we were trying to decide was a third date or not. You know ... the third date. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and in some places just totally making shit up, but the conversation went something like this:
"Third date, huh?" OSMF.
"Oh yeah. I mean, sort of. I think. Third ... ish." Me.
We promptly set about trying to determine exactly which date number I was on. Really, though, if you read between the lines, we were trying to determine whether or not I'm a slut. I'll summarize.
First date: Group date. To a karaoke bar. (Everyone who has ever heard me sing is cracking up or cringing for me right now.) Turns out, I later learned, he had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, or that there was a setup happening. Call me old-fashioned but I'm not tallying this one up in the date category.
Second date: Just the two of us, after he politely called me up on the phone to invite me to drinks and dinner. Totally a date. By every definition, a really nice date.
Third date: This is where things start to get murky. Another big group, to a Reds game. Somewhere in upwards of 100 degrees, and mass amounts of sweat was produced by all. Kind of a date, but mostly just me and a girlfriend knocking small children out of the way so we could hog the mister fans.
Next few dates: Actually a combination of evenings, taking place at the wine bar below the yoga studio where I have a mad crush on my new yoga instructor. Seriously, she's beautiful and flexible and spiritual. I love her. Love her. A few of these nights ended, very late, with him giving me funny looks because all I could talk about was my adorable yoga instructor.
Somewhere around maybe the sixth date: I climbed his tree. This is not, as my dirtier-minded friends assumed, and as you probably did as well you dirty-minded reader, a euphemism. I actually climbed his tree. He mentioned cutting it down, he did some grilling, we went to Krogers like an old married couple, I inexplicably climbed a tree, it was my favorite night so far.
So now OSMF is up to date, you're up to date, let's continue. I should mention here this particular OSMF was responsible for the initial set up, so she's practically gloating. And right now, while her seven year old is distracted by baseball and an inconceivable amount of food, she gives me the look.
"Awww. That's really cute. I'm so happy for you." I thank her. She keeps giving me the look. "So...?"
"So what?" I love playing dumb. Or not, since she hits me hard in the arm.
"I knew it." I don't know how she thinks she knew it, but apparently, she did. Now she's really gloating. "So can I see pictures of him on Facebook?" This is not where I expect her line of questioning to go, and I am momentarily taken aback.
"Facebook?"
"Did you change your status?"
"Whaaaat? I'm not his Facebook friend, for fuck's sake." It's like she just accused me of having a casual heroin habit. My voice gets so high-pitched the plastic Bud Light bottle the man next to me is holding threatens to crack. Bud Light man gives me a look of his own, one that says I probably shouldn't say "fuck" in the presence of a seven year old.
OSMF looks at me with obvious and -- if we're being honest, here, which clearly we are -- understandable confusion. Skepticism, you may even say.
"So... wait a sec. You guys --"
"Yep."
"I mean, like, all the w --"
"Mmm hmm."
"And which date was it again?"
"Five and three quarters, I believe." I say this with the celibate pride of the well-disciplined and self-controlled.
"But ... you won't Facebook friend him?"
"Noooo. God no. He'll think I'm a clingy stalker."
"Okay."
The nice thing about having lifelong friends is that they get you. And also, they are so generally worn out by you that they just can't muster the strength to ask for clarification.
There you have it. A brief glimpse into the perplexing world of the LSG, and her appropriate non-use of the Friend Request Button. If there is anything else I can help you understand, please do not hesitate to ask.
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