Keriosity

I just got finished reading a great book. Its cover is filled with accolades about what a beautiful love story and how it’s a triumph of love and how soaring and brilliant and poignant and sweet and blah blah blah blah BLAH. What did I think? I was depressed and sad. It was a great book, yes. But I will never read it again. And I often read great books more than once.

I never read love-stories and this is why: When I do read them, I feel unhappy afterwards. There is a reason that love-stories are always in the fiction section. They are so wrought with inaccuracies of real “love” that really they need a fiction section of their own. In fact, let’s make up a whole new bookstore section for them: The “Overly-Dramatized Never-Gonna-Happen Men-Aren’t-Like-This Fantasies That Make Every Woman Feel Bad About Her Own Relationship” section.

I don’t think I’m alone here. I happen to know that I have a great marriage. We aren’t perfect, but we have a strong relationship and I’d even say we’re happily in-love. Yet suddenly after reading a love-story or watching a love-story book made into a movie, I start to become resentful of all the normal marriage stuff that is too normal to be in the book or movie. Somehow, I start to think that since Vanessa and Mikel never fight about who left crumbs on the kitchen counter and their love is deeper and more passionate than this world can handle and so they need to quantum leap to other lifetimes to fulfill this massively endless timeless love, my simple one-lifetime crumb-filled marriage must be so…lacking.

Love-story characters never fight over the bills, they never slouch on the sofa watching TV all weekend because they are bored but too lazy to make plans, and 60 pages of each book are not dedicated to football. Also, love-story sex seems to bring about altered states of consciousness instead of inspiring such mood-killing outbursts as “oh your mother called today” and “don’t forget to pick up stamps.”

I think that the high divorce rate can be attributed, in part, to love-stories. If we can blame the media for warping women’s body-images, I think it’s not a stretch to blame it for our unrealistic idea of what a relationship should be. Men are not romantic by nature. (No, they are not.) When they do anything romantic, it’s a means to an end. And they know better than we do that there are many other means to that end, so Romance is the least used of all the means. He probably does the dishes to get the end more often than he lights candles and pours you a glass of wine, right? And how many of us have actually come home to find a pathway of rose petals, or candles, or love-notes, or anything other than dirty socks or piles of mail or the kids’ toys leading us to the boudoir? Hm?

With all these loving, romantic, thoughtful, apologetic, communicative husbands and lovers in these books we read - women develop very high standards for real-world men - who, by the way, rarely read books, let alone love-stories. How are men to know what they should be aspiring to be?

I think the solution is for women to start to write whatever it is that men DO read.

They like to read car magazines? Here’s a sample:

“According to Dodge, the new Ram Mega Cab boasts a number of “biggest” in its class: largest cab (perfect for when your beautifully pregnant wife is 9-months along…have you told her how beautiful she looks?), most interior cargo room (great for antique sales!), most cargo volume behind the rear seat (lots of long stem roses can fit there!), most second-row legroom (How about a double-date with her sister and brother-in-law? That new Julianna Moore movie is playing!)”

Is your guy a home improvement do-it-himselfer?

“The key to properly re-carpeting the master bedroom is to choose a high-grade extra-plush quality carpet, so that when you spontaneously decide to shower the bed with rose petals, light candles, play soft music, have chilled champagne ready, and present your lady with outrageously expensive new lingerie - and a diamond tennis bracelet to match - she has nice soft carpeting on which to faint from the shock of what a perfect and romantic man you are.”

Or maybe he’s a sports fan?

“Police have reportedly been called to the home of Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Milton Bradley three times this summer due to domestic violence issues.” …Uh…

“Anchor-reporter Carolyn Hughes has been taken off Dodger coverage at Fox Sports West during an investigation of her relationship with pitcher Derek Lowe. Neither Lowe nor Hughes would comment, but Lowe’s wife Trinka had plenty to say.” …Um…

“Nike is using photos of Kobe Bryant for the first time since his arrest two years ago for an alleged assault on a female employee at a Colorado resort.”

Ok I tried to find articles I could tweak to give examples of professional athletes being great husbands - but I couldn’t find any who are! Those guys are dogs!

I guess I’ll just go back to reading suspense thrillers and historically-based novels. At least those books make me grateful that no serial killers are after me and that I live in the age of chapstick and tampax.

PS - The Time Traveler’s Wife: good book, but don’t hold it against your man. Especially if he travels a lot.

The other day, I was driving down the freeway, stuck in traffic - yet again. (There’s a LOT of traffic in Southern California.) And as if being parked on the 5 freeway wasn’t bad enough, I was stuck behind one of THOSE cars: A Toyota Camry whose driver uses the car’s rear end for her very own political billboard and from whose back window stared no less than about 15 little cutesy faces. Beanie Babies…or something. For someone who thinks abortion should be legal but meat is murder and we must save Alaska from the oil industry but stay out of Iraq and Bush is bad and everything we do is wrong - she sure loves cuddly stuffed animals (which are made from plastics that I’m sure pollute the planet and are personally stuffed by the hands of 4-year old slave children, and who knows what those “beans”are. Apparently, she’s too busy judging others to think about the evils of the beanie baby, I guess. They probably don’t have an anti-beanie baby sticker out there.)

Here’s the deal: If you are old enough to have a driver’ license - and this driver was WAY old enough - you need to let go of the stuffed animals. I think that should be the cut-off age. Having a driver’s license means that you have taken on a huge responsibility. It means that it is now easier than it has ever been before to accidentally and foolishly take a person’s life. It means that you don’t have to rely on mom and dad to take you places or pick you up - so you can get a job that is more than 1 mile from your house now. It means that you are practically an adult and need to start acting like it. No self-respecting grown up person should own, let alone prominently display stuffed animals.

My friend told me about a friend of hers who has a bed full of stuffed animals and more displayed on shelves in her bedroom. An adult woman. A 30-something year old adult woman. What kind of sex life can this woman have? How can you possibly think that it’s OK to invite a man into your home, start getting a little hot & heavy on the couch and then say “Gee Ted, let’s continue this in the bedroom. But first let me clear off all my teddy bears from the bed!” Let me tell you something, lady: teddy bears = creepy. It’s a bit little-girly. It’s NOT sexy. I think they will pretty much kill the mood. Or at least kill any potential relationship. (Let’s face it - he’s still going to sleep with you but you will become a funny story he tells his friend. For years. You’re going to be “that teddy bear chick” from now on.)

Now I collect Barbie dolls so this may seem hypocritical. My barbies are not in my bedroom. Most are in storage and my favorite ones are in display cases, not near the bedroom. And Barbie is sexy - so that doesn’t count. Well the ones I collect are, anyway. Personally, I wouldn’t want the barbies in my bedroom. I don’t want all those pairs of eyes staring at me. Ever. Not to mention during intimate moments. It’ just plain weird.

There is a difference between doll/toy/stuffed animal collecting and psychosis. Being picky about which ones you buy/display, having favorites, being ok with selling off some = collecting. Buying anything and everything and displaying them all over the place - so much so that it overflows into your CAR = psychosis. If that’s you - you have a problem. Grow up and sell the beanie babies.

Then unsticker your car. Then un-cutesy your house (it definitely is cutesy or country or both). And while you’re at it, stop wearing the socks with kittens on them.

Have I mentioned that Orange County, California is the breeding capital of the Caucasian race? It is.

Emil and I are not going to have children. People who don’t know us very well think we will change our minds because…well I don’t know WHY exactly. People who DO know us understand perfectly…no one who REALLY knows us wants US to have children. Babies and I generally don’t like each other, and children and Emil don’t get along at all. (Neither shares well.) That’s just the way it is.

We had no idea when we toured our apartment complex with “Dallas”, the rental agent, that this pristine, quiet community was merely a front for one giant child care center specializing in 10-12-year-old boys who like to skateboard and play kick-ball. I guess their caretakers aren’t getting paid enough to mind that these boys play in the alleys where the garages are (kind of dangerous) instead of the beautiful huge park that adjoins our property. Nor do they care that the boys are LOUD. I am starting to wonder if there are adults in charge of them at all.

If these boys do have parents, our theory is that all the parents got together and decided that 8am on Sunday would be the universally scheduled nookie time and so they send their kids out to play very loudly in the alley. Since Emil and I don’t pencil in such activity, we have been rudely awakened every Sunday by the sounds of skateboards and shouting pre-teens. (Now, now! Don’t even go there - the kids ARE worse because we have to listen to them for more than 5 minutes.)

Every weekday, the complex is so peaceful and relaxing. You can hear hummingbirds flying about, birds chirping, bunnies foraging, lizards…being lizards. 2:30pm hits and it’s all kids. Screaming, playing, yelling, splashing in the pool, SHAKING MY TREE, kicking balls into my garage door, blaming each other when I go out to yell at them for kicking balls into my garage door. Then darkness falls and the 3 year olds start their bathtime/bedtime tantrums while mothers call for their pre-teens to come inside it’s getting dark and did you do your homework.

This is not what I signed up for. I’m not having kids, so I should be able to avoid the tantrums and the homework-nagging! It’s almost worse when it’s not your kids because you can’t yell at them they way you think they should be yelled at. I’m sorry but if “Miles” gave me lip when I wanted him to come inside at 8pm, he’d be inside at 8:00:03 with one arm longer than the other. (still want me to change my mind about kids?) There are reasons I chose pets over children - crate-training dogs is legal and cats use a litterbox starting at 4 weeks old.

I feel really bad for Emil, whose “living on the west coast/working on the east coast” schedule is such that that he’s awake and on the phone at 6am, but done working at 3pm - just in time for the kids to get home. This means that after a day of power conference calls, he can’t relax at the pool because of the screaming, splashing children, he can’t decompress his brain in front of the TV because the kids are yelling at each other right outside the window, and thus he is in danger of becoming one of those creepy dudes who is drinking beer at the dive bar by the beach every afternoon.

Normally, I try to be a polite neighbor who reminds her husband that revving the car engine for no real reason is rude - but after many weeks of enduring the antics of their unsupervised offspring, my new motto is…well it basically tells the neighbors what to do using some swear words, let’s just put it that way. And they don’t need to schedule some time for it either - just whenever and often.

With the astounding child to adult ratio of our area, the fact that we cannot acquire food after 9pm, and that I might have a better chance of getting crack delivered to my apartment than pizza - we have some thinking to do about where to buy a house within the year. newportkeri might change to losangeleskeri or hollywoodhillskeri or god-willing, venicekeri. We’ll see…

A few weeks ago, I spent 2 days in Vegas, having a lovely time with friends. And then this happened:

We decided to stop by Haagen Daz in The Venetian hotel for a tasty afternoon treat, when I noticed a large plaster ice-cream cone statue - like Mr. Peanut, but an ice-cream cone. Anyway, it was holding coupons in its hand and without really thinking about it, I go up to take a coupon and of course, like an idiot, it doesn’t occur to me that it’s a person dressed up like an ice-cream cone and just as I reach for a coupon, he snatches his hand away and I jump about 4 feet. And then ALL of the 107 customers in Haagen Daz and the 3 employees, and the thousands of people walking by all start to laugh hysterically and point at me. I was not amused. Yet I played it off - haha, yes how funny. He sure got me! hardy har har.

Well the ice cream cone would not let it go. He followed me into the store and continued to harass me! I tried to have a polite sense of humor about it until I could swear that the little slit where his eyes must have been was pointed significantly south of my necklace, and then I had enough. When he handed me a third coupon, I grabbed onto his hand and insisted “No, really. You can stop now. In fact - seriously! Go. Away. NOW.” He slithered off to embarrass others.

I really hate those kinds of characters and I want to know: What parole board or prison-outreach program casts them? And then I want to know why these weirdos always pick me! Ok, in this case I walked right into it - but normally, they pick on me when I am innocently minding my own business. I’ve had a balloon-animal maker guy actually HIT me in the head with balloons during his little shtick - I guess trying to be funny or flirt with me or something. (My 2-year-old niece was glaring at him with daggers in her eyes. She’s a little protective of me.) I’ve had those living statue people reach out and touch me. I swear that Minnie Mouse was a little too friendly a few years ago outside those spinning teacups. And now I have this pervert rapist ice cream cone incident. Vegas, as you may know, is FULL of living statues, wax statues, plaster statues, all kinds of statues. I was a paranoid post-traumatic wreck for the rest of the trip! Even at a diner in the middle of the desert 190 miles out of Vegas, I kept one eye on my french toast and one eye on the Elvis statue next to me.

I think that these characters can be grouped in with Clowns as a category of weird scary beings who are obviously dangerous and should be avoided if at all possible.

I have met people who were Disney characters, and I don’t include those people in this category (even the lesbian Minnie Mouse, since lesbianism isn’t a form of depravity.) I consider the Disney character people to have a rather odd manifestation of masochism.

The “clown” category people are those who display a form of sadism in which they get off on forcing the shy public to interact with them by inflicting some form of extreme embarrassment - but all from behind the shield of a bizarre costume and a “happy” character. No emotionally healthy person who choose this job. Please - you know it’s true. There could be a whole group of laughing joyful fearless children, and who does the clown pick as his victim? The shy child who is clinging to her mom. We’ve all witnessed this. Ask 10 people on the street what they think of clowns and 8 will shudder. Try it!

No one likes these characters. Have you ever heard anyone say “Oh, look! A funny ice cream cone man! Oooo I hope he comes over to me!”? Never. Everyone reacts the same way: They mutter “oh sh*t, I hate those things.” Then they avoid eye-to-slit contact with the cone and try to leave the area as quickly as possible without attracting any attention. No one wants to play with the creepy ice cream cone.

It is my opinion that only a truly sadistic person with an extremely low self-esteem dresses up as a faceless object and tortures a person in an ice cream store for a good 5 minutes. And only a girl who REALLY wants $1 off her ice-cream purchase and simultaneously takes a leave of absense from her brain would naively reach for a coupon from such a perv. Next time I’ll kick him first and hope he drops all the coupons. Eh, screw the coupons. I’ll just kick him.