Fucking Perfect

Jan 312011
 

So caught up has my little family been in all things Buffy that our drivin’ around time of late has featured zero radio and all this, and if you think it’s not funny to hear a five-year-old belting out verses about penis diseases and priceless to hear each of us assuring the rest that we can face anything if we’re together, then you’ve got another thought coming, mister.

Then came a day when the CD I’d burned inexplicably stopped working1 and we were forced to listen to the radio. I knew that Pink had a new song out that people said was kind of fabulous but it wasn’t until I was alone in the car driving back from the grocery store that I finally heard it.

There might have been a small tear, or if I’m being completely honest with you2 it was a big tear, and then many big tears. And then as soon I got home and put the fish sticks in the freezer I downloaded the song, found the lyrics and vowed to slip it on my daughter’s mp3 player at the earliest opportunity because what almost-teen doesn’t need to hear this:

Pretty, pretty please
Don’t you ever, ever feel
Like you’re less than
Less than perfect

Pretty, pretty please
If you ever, ever feel
Like you’re nothing
You are perfect to me

My teenage music choices were encouraged only in the sense that whatever they caught me listening to was immediately deemed inappropriate and unworthy of my attention. At one point my mother came across a mixtape a friend had made me3 which was unfortunately queued up to Fat Bottomed Girls. “This is horrible,” she raged, and thus was solidified my never-waning devotion to Freddie Mercury.4

I had some vague idea before my children arrived that raising them would be difficult not only because in so many ways I lacked good role models but also because it would be difficult to see them at ages where I can so vividly remember the abuse and general fuckupedness present in my own childhood. While this has certainly been true, I had no idea how how knocked-in-the-solar-plexus can’t-breathe extreme those emotions would be or how many times I’d be leveled by a thought, a word, a song.

Even at the best of times I worry that there’s a vanishingly small hope that I can raise these small people to have few5 lingering after-effects due to my parenting blunders. At worst I feel utter despair at the idea that I could ever give them a proper upbringing, because really, how can that happen? How can I give away something that I didn’t have to begin with? How can I manufacture from nothing and with no help from an unconcerned (or non-existent) Sky Daddy the ingredients necessary to produce healthy children?

This is not a rhetorical question. How?

  1. Not from overuse, surely? [↩]
  2. And why would I not be after all this time and all we have been through and everything you know about my ass. [↩]
  3. Shuddup, younguns. [↩]
  4. For crying out loud that song is practically custom-written for — oh. Now I think now I understand their objection. [↩]
  5. Or none? How about that? [↩]
 AAG Entries, Buffy, family, think  17 Responses »

Wha? How? Why?

Jan 292011
 

I can only assume that his pencil cup was broken. NSFW, click below:

Continue reading »

 AAG Entries  12 Responses »

Anal Sex Should Be a Feminist Issue

Jan 282011
 

Emphasis mine:

Anal sex is painful, unsanitary, unsatisfying for women and creates unique risks for serious physical diseases (if you doubt me, go read the Wikipedia entry on the subject) because the anus is not designed for sexual intercourse, increasing the risk of torn flesh and the intermingling of bodily fluids—blood, semen, fecal matter—that can spread an astonishing variety of diseases. The female partner is far more at risk than the man in these encounters. This should be a feminist issue.

–Maggie Gallagher (read the rest here with blood pressure medicine close at hand)

I couldn’t agree with you more, Ms. Gallagher. Anal sex should be a feminist issue, and here’s how it would go: My feminine body is my own, and I will do to my anus whatever I choose with no supremely ignorant judgment from you on how painful, unsanitary or unsatisfying you might guess it to be.

 AAG Entries, buttsex, Feminism  22 Responses »

The Mayor

Jan 282011
 

As is no doubt clear to anyone who has read this website for long than five minutes, I grew up in a very restrictive environment. The rules protecting me were so draconian they’d at times make the Duggars‘ household look permissive; my parents’ hope was, perhaps, that I would loose myself from their grip just enough and just long enough to acquire a suitable husband who would marshal me in the same ways they had.

That didn’t happen, and so severe were the growing pains when I found myself under no one’s protection but my own that I vowed to prepare any children I might eventually have better than I was prepared. My little ones are still in the stage where “We always wear underpants”1 and “Please don’t use that dollhouse to hit your sibling on the head”2 are the main rules but as my eldest is less than eighteen months from her teenage years the lessons need to be much more intense.

And now we’ve worked our way together through three sevenths of a show which has provided fodder for a variety of discussion topics from partner abuse3 to parental tax evasion4 to mean girls5 to first sexual experiences6. She’s spent the past twenty-two episodes in wide-eyed horror over the Mayor, who is possibly my favorite Big Bad of them all.

“He’s so nice,” the kid said after watching him set up his prodigy with her very own apartment, gaming system and shiny weaponry. “It’s almost like he wants to be Faith’s father.”

Remember how I told you that this season asks you to make comparisons between the two slayers? I asked. They’re very different in some ways, aren’t they? But in other ways they’re very much alike.

“Buffy has Giles and Faith has the Mayor,” she realized.

The Mayor really cares for Faith, doesn’t he? I prompted.

“It’s so weird that he loves her and at the same time he’s so evil!”

People can be like that, I said. Sometimes a person can be really nice and really evil all at once, and my heart squeezed as I realized that I was nearly thirty before finally I realized that awful and ugly don’t necessarily go hand in hand and that in fact evil can be disguised by kindness, or beauty, or devotion, or even weakness.

Instead of protecting her from the world I want to show it to her — and no honest view can hide the existence of evil. She may never meet a mayor but I hope she’ll remember that sometimes evil wears a pretty skin and offers you cookies.

  1. No really. Always. [↩]
  2. Especially not when grandma is around. [↩]
  3. Which is bad. [↩]
  4. Also bad. [↩]
  5. Continuing the bad theme but with the opportunity for redemption [↩]
  6. Me: What just happened between Buffy and Angel? Her: They kissed, then they fell asleep. Me: Um. [↩]
 AAG Entries, Buffy, family, think  17 Responses »

Bored Now

Jan 272011
 

There is no comfort in the world of objects, and Clarissa fears that art,
even the greatest of it, belong stubbornly in the world of objects.

I’m guessing it was some leftover from the feel-good 70s that encouraged my sixth grade math and social studies teachers to devote an entire class period each week not to lessons but instead to talk. Thirty years later I remember, vividly, how much our classes (or at least the top-reading-group members, who to my little elitist mind were the only ones that mattered) anticipated those days where we could ask anything, say anything and provoke any kind of interesting and ofttimes hilarious conversations.

(I don’t think this sort of thing happens in my kid’s school. The closest I’ve heard about was a pre-holiday discussion initiated by her writing teacher where churchgoing classmates were asked to raise their hands and the remainder were questioned as to what the hell was wrong with them. Did this prompt a incensed call from me [and numerous other parents, I was told] to the principal? Oh you better believe it did.)

The details of those discussions have worn away with time and failing memory but one tiny incident remains stuck. A classmate (she was, it should be noted, in the second-tier reading group) was complaining that she’d be imprisoned at the babysitter’s house over spring break where, surrounded by her caretaker’s other wee charges, there would be nothing at all to entertain her. “Everyone else is going somewhere!” she said. “Or at least they can stay home with their parents. I’m going to be so bored!”

Our teacher solicited from the class suggestions for things to keep her amused1 but she remained convinced that she’d be too bored even for tears. Eventually he had enough. “Read a book! Use your imagination! Bored?” he thundered. “You should never be bored. Only boring people get bored,” and so very much did I want to avoid being a boring person that I resolved on the spot never to be admit to this complaint. And it’s not like I’ve had over the years much reason to stuff down ennui; between books stashed away in purse and car not to mention a vivid imaginary life I seldom feel even the slightest twinge.

But somewhere along the line my treacherous brain conflated “bored” and “lonely” and if I feel the latter I remember my teacher’s word on the former and thrust the emotion away. I will not be a boring person I’ve lectured myself a thousand times, and ten-thousand more I’ve used his words to felt superior to anyone who called herself lonely. This has for the most part worked well until recently when I began noticing…something. A feeling which seeps in around the edges of an evening no matter how busy I keep myself with work, teevee or books and which persists no matter how many terribly quiet chats I have with myself about the evils of loneliness.

What to do with this situation? Nothing, I think. I’ll sit with it; I’ll continue to be a spider, albeit a loudmouthed, impetuous one. And maybe one of these days a thread will stick.

  1. These ranged from cookery to comic books to toddler-assisted chicanery [↩]
 AAG Entries, think  7 Responses »

Intimidated by Sex Toys

Jan 262011
 

Reader O needs some advice. Here, listen in:

I’ve been married for 30+ years. Until recently we’ve had an unexciting sex life, often with long dry spells. I’ve always been highly sexual so this has been more than a little difficult for both of us. But, hooray, thanks to an amazing set of circumstances we have been having the most amazing sex of our lives and for the last month it is a daily occurrence.

About six weeks ago I ended up purchasing my first toy, a jack rabbit. It arrived without batteries and I couldn’t find the right ones in the house so the first trial was pretty unspectacular. After rushing out to purchase the correct ones I tried again and holy shit, was that amazing. Why have I waited so long? I think I tingled and vibrated for two hours afterward.

Hubby knew I was buying the toy and hadn’t really said anything. That night in playful talk I told him how wonderful it was. Lo and behold it led to him getting really squirrely. He asked “Why do you need that?” As I really had no answer, I proceeded to get my feelings hurt and was severely disappointed in the fact that we wouldn’t be using it together. I think he is jealous of the thing or intimidated. Believe me our sex together now is out of this world and he can make me orgasm multiple times through various means. But I fear, because of our history, this may become a problem.

Do I just keep my toy-time a private thing I do during the day without him? Do I keep trying to make it part of our routine together? Do you have a different solution?

What say you, readers? Have you dealt with a partner intimidated by your sex toys? How did you handle it?

 AAG Entries, sex  21 Responses »

Txt Plz

Jan 252011
 

With the rapid approach of my 42nd birthday I am losing all patience with dating site messages that look like this:

UR cute my # is xxx-xxx-xxxx hit me.

No. A world of no.

So ridiculous are those messages that they can be dismissed without thought but I’m finding another kind far more annoying because I get reeled in, man. It starts with an email — a decent email! a reasonable email! — from a guy who, when I check out his profile, seems like the epitome of kindness and class. Ooooo I think. This one might have promise. So I respond in kind and thus begins an exchange that depending on the time of day and my level of interest could last for many iterations until finally I give up the treasured instant messenger handle.

I’m naive enough to believe1 that the conversation should continue along the same lines in the more rapid-paced IM environment. Sometimes I am right. Other times I discover that where once were sentences there now are phrases. Are you meeting lots of lovely ladies through the site?2 I might ask, and whereas I would expect it to unleash a torrent of impassioned dialog I instead get “A few, you?”

I shake my head, certain that I’ve done something wrong3 but determined to keep soldering along. What sort of relationship are you hoping to find I might ask next, and once again I get something brusque, like this: “Not sure. Casual?”

And then silence.

It took me a while to break the code, but now that I have it seems like I’m seeing it everywhere. Are you by any chance using instant messenger on your phone? I ask, and invariably they say “Yes why?”

It’s really hard to have an in-depth conversation by text, I say. Shall we wait ’til you’re on the computer?

“No this is fine,” they say, and at that point I throw my hands up in disgust and wander off.

Now I realize that I stay far, far away from the bleeding edge of this crazy thing called “technology.” I don’t have an iPad or a Bluetooth or a DVR. So it’s possible, perhaps, that early-relationship4 mutual exploration via cell phone IMing is the wave of the future. That all the cool kids are doing it. That one day I’ll have to give in and do it too.

Is it? Must I? Please advise.

  1. Or at least I was until recently [↩]
  2. One of my standard questions because WOW you can learn a lot about a man from his answer to this [↩]
  3. This is my standard assumption in any case where things have gone wrong. Some day I will stop assuming this. Some day! [↩]
  4. To be clear, I am totally fine with texting later in the getting to know you process. Totally fine! But at the beginning? No thank you! [↩]
 AAG Entries, date  22 Responses »

Smile

Jan 242011
 

In the first hour of the visit my mother called the children’s bickering rude, admonished the eldest to “smile more” and complimented the middle child — who, it should be pointed out, is six years old and so far as I1 can tell is in need of neither fattening up nor slimming down — for losing weight all while I burbled with an anger that was contained only because a friend allowed me to text out my frustrations to her instead of getting into a pointless and unproductive argument with the people who raised me.

Thanks to my friend2 I didn’t blow up despite the extreme provocation. Why anyone would think it appropriate to comment on a kindergartner’s shape is beyond me, and while I appreciate that the transition from a house in the country where the only sound is the chatter of squirrels to my raucous abode which regularly features squabbles over the last precious clementine and doll beheadings must be rough there’s no reason to call my more-or-less well-behaved progeny rude.

Rude. How rude is that?

I’m irritated by the comments about rudeness and weight loss but seriously bent out of joint by the one about smiling. As many times as her lack of compliance and surly attitude annoy me3 I’m extremely glad that my daughter is growing up not to be a people-pleaser — because that’s how I was raised. I was told in so many words and not to keep my feelings to myself, to respect my elders, to keep a pretty grin on despite utter insanity raging around me. And we can all see how well that turned out.

You know what Grandma said about smiling? I asked the child hours later after I’d had a chance to cool off4.

“No. What did she say about smiling?”

She demanded that you smile more.

“Oh. I forgot about that.”

Well, I said, it’s complete bullshit. You should smile when you feel like smiling and not smile when you don’t feel like smiling.

“Ok,” she said. “But I don’t like it when you cuss.” And off she flounced as only a pre-teen can and I was left wondering if I was doing more harm than good in cursing over something she’d already forgotten.

  1. And her doctor [↩]
  2. Also, Xanax [↩]
  3. And omg they do so annoy me [↩]
  4. This may or may not have been assisted by wine [↩]
 AAG Entries, family  11 Responses »

And The Award Goes To…

Jan 212011
 

The award for Statement Most Likely to Make My Legs Spring Shut Like a Bear Trap goes to this little gem: “You over-think things. Just relax and don’t worry so much about stuff!”

To everyone who has ever said something like that to me I hereby issue an enthusiastic fuck you. You want me to think less? You want me to turn off my brain? Why? So that you can pass some sketchy crap past me without my noticing? Dude. I do not think so.

Anyone who tells me to think less needs to start looking for dates somewhere else — preferably in some other decade. Or century.

Rant. Over.1

  1. Ack, I feel like I must apologize for being such a crankypants. Someone said this to me last night while simultaneously trying to blow some nonsense up my skirt and it just…wow. I think I need to stop interacting with men for the purpose of dating for a bit because good DOG am I ever letting it get to me. [↩]
 AAG Entries, date  16 Responses »

Random Thoughts That Fit No Where Else

Jan 202011
 

Scattered! Thoughts! That fit! Nowhere else!

  • The bathroom faucet has been leaking steadily for a week. I’ve now purchased the supplies to fix it but they sit on the counter unopened because I’m afraid I’ll fuck it up more. Send courage and possibly a “basin wrench,” which the box tells me I need and which I probably do not have?
  • The ass-sex went really well. Thanks for asking!
  • I’ve had some level of a cold for nearly two months now. Fuck me.
  • In the past I’ve been lucky enough to have a steady stream of work1 to keep me busy but (generally) not overloaded. Now, however, I’ve found myself with four concurrent projects and another set to begin on Friday. This is good in the sense that, you know, we can eat, but bad in the sense that I may never again be able to take a shower without extreme guilt or open my email without head-spinning dread centered mainly around my desire not to confuse these disparate jobs. Have I posted the sexytime pictures on the site dealing with Tantra or have I mistakenly put them on the one advertising pediatric physical therapy? Did I implement the dark-n-moody theme on the site with a patriotic bent rather than on the one selling wax for glass joints2? Is that Google Analytics account linked up with the right site? With 3,967 tabs open at once things get a little hazy. No mistakes yet3. Let’s hope the trend continues.
  • What does one do to ensure that one’s children are wearing underpants — and wearing underpants correctly4 at all times? Right now I’m taking the approach of Random Underpants Checks but that’s annoying and weird for everyone5. I’m happy to entertain alternate suggestions?

It would be nice if my head would feel less like this but I think the only way to guarantee that would be if I could spend at least two hours a day naked, coated in lube and pressed up against a very attractive man. Someday maybe that will happen.

  1. at my side job of making websites with WordPress [↩]
  2. !!!!!!! [↩]
  3. Clients: Please do not worry. I check details obsessively. Really. [↩]
  4. Ie, not backwards, not yanked down under the ass [↩]
  5. especially when company is over [↩]
 AAG Entries, family, sex  18 Responses »
 Older Entries

Meta


•Site Admin
•Entries RSS
•Comments RSS
•Subscribe via Email
© 2005 - 2011 aagblog.com

Find Me Here



Receive Updates Via Email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner