Grace.

As a random aside, I had a dream last night that I was eight months pregnant. And I remember the feeling of having a round belly (which wasn't entirely made of fat). Holy crap, it was so real. Ever had one of those dreams?

I saw a pregnant woman at work today, and I told her about my dream. I also told her it creeped the hell out of me. I hope I didn't offend her.

I just watched the documentary called "Street Fight" about the mayoral race between Cory Booker and the other dude who rigged the elections, Sharpe James.

Naive as it sounds, I didn’t realize that black on black hate was actually real. Here’s an excerpt from the director, Marshall Curry’s website on the film:

"The battle sheds light on important American questions about democracy, power and -- in a surprising twist -- race. Both Booker and James are African-American Democrats, but when the mayor accuses the Ivy League educated Booker of not being "really black" it forces voters to examine both how we define race in this country. "We tell our children to get educated," one Newarker says, "and when they do, we call them white. What kind of a message does that send?"

This documentary left a gross taste in my mouth. It could’ve also been the bucket of grease that was on my pizza that made me feel queasy, but something tells me it was, in fact, what I was watching.

Stephanie Klein, thank you! You made me smile today.

Since when do boys know what UTI stands for? Since when do they know that if you wear panty hose with new shoes, the bottoms of your feet will get dyed? Since when do they know that tampons can cause TSS? Since when do they know that most women’s breasts aren’t symmetrical? Since when do they know how a woman’s body works better than the woman herself?

How long does a boy have to date around before he learns these things? Before he is no longer surprised by how long a period lasts. Before he figures out that even when you’re a guest in her home, you shouldn’t sit on the couch while she’s in the kitchen. Before he learns that flowers don’t convey what an orgasm can. Before he wants to put her first. Before he’s happy making her a priority. Before he misses her when she’s not with him. Before he cries when she’s sad.

I would trade the innocence of new-to-dating for the heaviest baggage in the world if it means that the details of women’s lives were learned through difficult times, but not forgotten. Through tears, through break ups and get-up-agains. I’m sometimes shocked when I hear, "I don’t need you to clean up after me. I like to take care of myself." As a woman, I feel slighted, but proud.

"You’re loading me up with food... You’re such a Jewish mother already. You know the fastest way to a man’s heart, right?"

"Yeah, through your khram, as Borat would say."

Ladies, a toast: Our boys are growing into men.

I came home at 11 PM and they were sitting on the couch, under a very thin, brown, fleece, cat fur covered blanket. I’d spent the day on a plane traveling back from San Francisco with my boyfriend. He dropped me off at my door, and I came in the house with my beat up bag. Chances are that, some day, she’ll find this post and get angry at me. She’ll be angry because I’m about to make her look very vulnerable and naive, even though I know she’s not. Then again, she might not find this post, and I will have avoided a head ache.

I came home and she was sitting with him on the couch in front of the TV. He was eating an ice cream cone, mint chocolate chip. She was very approachable, no make up, nice face. He (some of you may know of him, some of you may not) was as he always is. Extremely full of himself, like a Cheshire Cat. (I know this because I’ve seen him offer up women to me in that way before: very ordinary women, the type that deserve to be treasured specifically because they’re so ordinary. But he offers them to me in the way he lets the conversation drift along between me and the woman, going somewhere and not at all, and meanwhile, he thinks to himself, "See? This is why I’m friends with her. Isn’t she interesting?" And I use the word "friends" loosely, very loosely. And I use the word "interesting" with a snide tone. Because friends need each other, and I don’t believe he needs anyone. And lovers need each other, and he doesn’t want to be needed. So I don’t know what all of those other women were. Friends at times, lovers too, and he’d introduce us, if even that, and he’d sit back to watch the conversation between us. Crossed arms over his chest, See? Isn’t she interesting? His posture would say. His conceited mouth would say it too. Throwing two interesting mammals of the female gender in a circus ring together.

Forget the times we’d walk to the metro together, and forget what he used to say to me during those morning walks, "So, who’s the latest guy?" He’d be speaking of someone I’d gone on a date with the night before. "You’ll be bored with him in a week, I bet," He’d say, without even knowing what the hell he was talking about. Conceited prick.

I know that he offered her to me for scrutiny, like examining a taxidermist’s victim, because the kill reflects on the hunter well. Look at her shiny coat, that minx. She ran and ran, but I caught up with her in the woods, cornered her.

He was proud of his kill. He let me ask her questions like, "Where did you go to school?" and she and I talked: Oh, you live in Minnesota. "Who do you know from there?" Oh, it turns out we know a lot of the same people. "Did you ever participate in that synagogue retreat thing?" Oh, then you must know what’s-his-name. If he didn’t want to show her off, he would’ve monopolized the whole conversation, the way he normally does.

He offered her to me as a token, as two people who had to exchange pleasantries with the third, who just got home from a long trip, who was cornered herself. I stood in the living room and chatted for a few minutes, but she took the conversation somewhere else.

"I’m wearing my underwear." And I looked down, to see that she was, indeed, wearing her underwear. I knew this for sure because she had pulled the fleece blanket aside to reveal her Minnesota-white thigh, which almost blended with the white cotton underwear she had on. That was the only thing protecting her poor, bare bottom from the nasty green couch that we have in our living room (which smells like cat piss and has had numerous things spilled on it, including cat vomit and probably other interesting women’s juices.)

"Well, that’s good," I manage to say. "I’m glad you’re wearing your underwear." And then I turn to the tiny space between them and say to neither one in particular, "You should really put something down on that couch–you don’t know what’s been on there. You could catch something." And he shoots me a look along the lines of: What’s the matter with you? Don’t you see this interesting person has come to stay with me for the weekend? Because he knows the truth of what kind of things have been spilled on that couch.

I change the topic by saying that I’ll be in Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend, and Oh, we should hang out when I’m there (We all know that what I’m really saying is, "Trust me, I have no intention to.")

I see her eyebrows lift up as she says to him, "Oh, you should come too." And she begins to steer the pleasant conversation towards the subject of how they were discussing visiting her parents, who live in Wisconsin. So they might not be free after all to "hang out."

But I see him hesitate. And I say to him, "Tickets are really cheap right now. Have you bought yours already?" And she nudges him, "See? They’re really cheap right now," her elbow says. Her whole body says it. Thighs, legs, brown eyes, brown hair, delicious lips. I see her in a different way now.

She is all of a sudden interesting to me.

He looks like he’s not certain about wanting to be paraded around in front of her parents. But he was so certain about what was hidden underneath the blanket just a few moments ago. He knew that part of her well. And I saw at that moment a woman who was old enough to legitimately want a family, a little house, a toddler boy and a baby girl, a husband who would know her thighs and her parents. Next to her, I see a man who doesn’t need anyone. I see a hollow, selfish thing with a penis and an ice cream cone.

I see her, and I like her. I imagine what it would be like if I could somehow become a man. If I could turn my innie to an outie and have the one thing that she would miss if she was with me as a woman. Besides that one, intimate detail, I am certain that I could fulfill her needs better than he ever could. And I want to. Because I understand her. I want to see her happy, at age 27. I understand her so well that I sympathize with her, this strange girl in my strange house, and I understand the entire situation in a way that he never will.

He sees a fun girl, someone who likes to fuck around on long weekends. She’s even willing to fly halfway across the country to partake in dusty, cat fur covered sex. She’s willing to host him too, in her home and in her. But at that moment, I see him like the little shit that he is: a user, a perverted, egocentric infant. Incapable of taking care of anyone but himself.

And I want her so badly; I want to speak to her about what it means to be a woman. What it means to be made of "fine china," like my junior high band director said once, while bitching out my 9^th grade band for inappropriate behavior on a band trip to Missouri (he found out about a clarinet player giving a sax player a hand job in the back of a theater).

I want to protect her above all, from his type. Stone cold, like a frozen fetus, so young and infantile I can see through his eyelids still. "She must know this," I think to myself, "Surely, she knows this about him already." And she knows in the way that I know, the way that I knew. But I walked right into similar situations, time and time again. And I might be doing it again in the not-too-distant future.

I’ve never wanted to have a penis so badly, never so curious than at that moment, never desired a weapon so badly. She and I could take him, just the two of us. She and I could teach him what it meant to need something, to want something so badly that you’d do anything for it.

I swear, I haven't forgotten about the blog. In fact, I have all these great ideas for things to write about. And I write entire entries in my head while showering, while on the metro, while walking to the store. And then, the moment passes and Ahhh! I have to go.

Busy. Need a vacation.

Will be in San Francisco this weekend! Let me know if you wanna hang out.

Tonight, I made dinner at home. Then, I walked to the grocery store (with a reusable, cloth grocery bag). When I got home with all my stuff, I baked brownies with yummy toppings: marshmallows, walnuts and chocolate chips. And I’m still waiting for them to cool. I also packed a lunch for tomorrow. Look at me be all domestic and shite. I kind of like it.

Also? I’m not keeping Passover, and I don’t feel badly about that.

***

Jewish Atheist referred me to a kickass band name Rilo Kiley, which could be just the name of the singer, but boy, they’re really good. Here are some of their lyrics, which totally floored me by the way, even if read as a poem. If you listen to the melody, I could swear there are parts of Cat Stevens’ melody from a tune called Father and Son. Anyway, read these lyrics and tell me what you think of the band:

Get a real job
Keep the wind at your back and the sun on your face
All the immediate unknowns
Are better than knowing this tired and lonely fate
Does he love you?
Does he love you?
Will he hold your tiny face in his hands?

I guess it's spring, I didn't know
It's always seventy-five with no melting snow
A married man, he visits me
I receive his letters in the mail twice a week

And I think he loves me
And when he leaves her
He's coming out to California

I guess it all worked out
There's a ring on your finger and the baby's due out
You share a place by the park
And run a shop for antiques downtown

And he loves you
Yeah he loves you
And the two of you will soon become three
And he loves you
Even though you
Used to say you were flawed if you weren't free

Let's not forget ourselves good friend
You and I were almost dead

And you're better off for leaving
Yeah you're better off for leaving

Late at night
I get the phone
You're at the shop sobbing all alone
Your confession it's coming out
You only married him
You felt your time was running out

But now you love him
And your baby
At last you are complete
But he's distant and you found him
On the phone pleading, saying, 'baby I love you'
And I'll leave her and I'm coming out to California"

Let's not forget ourselves good friend
I am flawed if I'm not free
And your husband will never leave you
He will never leave you for me

There’s an alternate reality where you are still with him. The plans you made actually came to fruition. The house you were supposed to buy and the babies you were supposed to have are all doing fine. And by "fine," I mean the house has an actual address, and the kids have names.

The way that life veers into new directions isn’t always a gradual shift. Sometimes, it’s a sudden shock to your system, sort of like Tom Robbins says in his book, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas:

"Something has changed. You have changed. Your dad told you once that Dizzy Gillespie sat on his trumpet and bent it, accidentally creating an instrument that transformed his career. Change can occur that fast. Snap! Ouch! And the next thing one knows, one is blowing a whole new tune. Something about the telephone call, the disappointment of the call, the "Bozo" that slipped out at the end of the call, the last straw of it, as it were–something ordinary yet indefinite, mundane yet mysterious, silly yet profound, something tiny but very, very pure, has happened, and you may never be the same." (Pg. 122)

I don’t think about the alternate reality often, but when I do, it hits me like an unfortunate weight. Sort of like walking in mismatched shoes, one high-heeled the other a flat. It’s seldom about the person in that alternate reality, but more often about the feeling of some great injustice occurring to me, as if I was only a bystander in my own life.

The truth is that I played a hand in how things went. There were so many fragile tipping points that I think entire weeks could have been massive universes, hanging like soap bubbles in the air. A mean comment here, a careless word there. And the wind finally blew the flock in one direction, but not the other. Direction-driven, accidental change.

I’m not the only one who thinks of parallel universes. It’s common for people who live lives in the gray spectrum, not the black and white one. The question is: What do you do now? Knowing that there’s a you somewhere, living the life you thought you always wanted?

But it’s not you out there. Would you even want to be friends with the other you, knowing what you know now? Knowing that you wanted all the right things for the wrong reasons?

I know I wouldn’t. And that hurts sort of. Like estranged siblings, you and you, loving each other, understanding each other deeply, but just deeply enough to see that you’ll never agree on anything. And you’re not even sure that you like each other, even though you love each other. Sometimes that sort of mixture of emotions makes the difference between love and hate almost indistinguishable, so you end up hating yourself and who you have become in that alternate universe. And it pushes you closer to who you are now, like finding a new best friend because your old one moved away.

If you shift your perspective just enough, you see that fragile tipping points happen an infinite number of times per second. Split second decisions that change your life in little ways. They happen so often that you could thread them through a needle and spin them on a loom. Sometimes, you just don’t see them—entire patterns go unnoticed until you’ve stepped far enough from the scene. The earthquake-type changes don’t happen that often, yet they have the capacity to shatter us, so that pieces of us move away to live life in alternate universes. You’re probably better off that way, because you really couldn’t stand another minute with who you were becoming.

***

I spent the weekend in Pittsburgh with Schubert, and it rained a lot. It rained pungent, hyacinth watercolors and scandalous orchid body parts. Secret, moist areas. Divots like belly buttons collecting water, petals opened up to the heat of the sun to reveal the seedy, powdered, pollen inside. I felt like a voyeur, looking through the glass walls of the arboretum, examining poor things that couldn’t flee because they were planted so firmly in the ground. Roots working against them, for once.

***

When I wake up, I sometimes feel like you’re looking at me through the glass. You see me even in the dark with the curtains drawn. And I love that.