What is it with women's underwear?

Ok... so if you know me, you know that I don't like to have to think about what I wear much.  A few reliable things in the closet are all I need.  Nowhere is this more true than with my socks and underwear.  Socks are easy-- once every two years, I buy about 20 pairs that are exactly the same.  Yes, in black.  No worrying about matching them up, missing odd socks, things like that.

Same with my underwear.  The last few times I stocked up I purchased two different colors because I felt I had to, even though I would have preferred that they were all black.  No more!  However, it's a lot harder than you'd think to find plain, black women's bikini briefs.  Do you like lace?  Good, it's everywhere!  Thongs?  Mind boggling selection.  Frills?  Polka dots? Teeny little bows? The women's underwear industry exists for you.

This past weekend I went to a mall since my underwear supply is dwindling (rather inexplicably... though I do drop off my laundry and I sincerely hope that that isn't how they're keeping my prices so low).  First, I went to Victoria's Secret.  If you've ever been in there you know that it looks like the Great Spirit of Pink exploded in it.  They had nothing I wanted.

Next, Macy's, to the "Intimates" section (btw, wtf? Why are not men's underwear sections called "intimates" too? I leave you to ponder this.).  Here I had the same problem.  I found the style I want, but only in multipacks with other completely unfathomable colors.  And granny panties.  Lots and lots of granny panties.

Next, Sears.  I did find what I wanted here... plain black bikini women's cotton underwear, without an obnoxious logo on the band, for under $7.  You know how many pairs I found?  ONE.

There were, however, lots of these:

Ok, now look closely.  I ask you, WHAT GROWN WOMAN WEARS HELLO KITTY UNDERWEAR?  OR WORSE, ELMO?!? Actually, as I was taking this picture there was one right next to me, going absolutely nuts over the selection on this table. (I will confess I was slightly tempted by the cookie monster ones... they seem like a good way to screen out women without a sense of humor.)

Next I resorted to buying my underwear on the internet.  This is America in 2012, and there have to be plain black underwear of the kind I am seeking for sale somewhere.  Apparently, I'm not the only one who has this problem... this person stated it rather well.

Sears online? Sold out.  Gap? Sold out.  Clearly there is demand, and so I'm not a complete weirdo.  Finally, I found some at Jockey.  I bought enough so I don't have to deal with this again for another few years.

Note to the women's underwear industry:  I do not buy underwear to express my inner cuteness.  I do not want to have a little secret underneath my clothing.  I do not want to express ANYTHING with my underwear, besides the fact that I wear underwear.  And I want not to wince at the affront to my dignity when I'm reaching into my underwear drawer.  Is that too much to ask?

You're wasting your money, Match...

Once again, I've had to change my gender because a web service assumes I'm heterosexual. Not that I have any interest in making myself easier to be advertised to, but really... below, from Pandora (which for you non-US people is a streaming radio service):

This does nothing for me.  But they do have nice teeth.

I find the second one, which is a scrolling, streaming wall of men, particularly objectionable. So yes Pandora, you can go ahead and think I'm a dude.

See? It's not just me.

In re: to my previous post, The politics of "I love you"....

Huffington Post article "Don't Be Deceived By These Three Words"

What am I doing on the Huffington Post's Divorce blog? I don't know.

Another gem

German is an inflected language. The endings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc are key to understanding what they mean in a sentence. This is very nuanced, and there has been a lot of information to absorb, and I find that I haven't *quite* got the hang of it yet. So there have been a few mishaps. Here's my fave from yesterday.

Chapter 18, exercise sentence 6:
Wenn eine Biene ein Feld mit vielen Blüten entdeckt hat, teilt sie dies den anderen Bienen in ihrem Stock mit, indem sie einen eigenartigen Tanz ausführt.

The correct translation:
When a bee discovers many flowers in a field, it communicates this to other bees in its hive by doing an unusual dance.

My first attempt:
When a bee in a field has discovered many flowers, he shares them with the other bees in his hive, resulting in a weird and peculiar dance.

SIGH

15 days in

Week 3, day 2: we've been parsing and translating and apparently now we are ready to move onto passages from Immanuel Kant's "What is enlightenment?"

The German:
Zu dieser Aufklärung aber wird nichts erfordert als F r e i h e i t ; und zwar die unschädlichste unter allem, was nur Freiheit heißen mag, nämlich die : von seiner Vernunft in allen Stücken ö f f e n t l i c h e n G e b r a u c h zu machen.

The correctly translated sentence:
Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.

My attempt:
For this enlightenment we will need freedom, and indeed the harmless among all, was only whatever one wants to call freedom, namely [the] from is sanity in all places.

Sigh.

Intensive German, week 1.

Now I'm not one to back down from a challenge, but this one has got me straining. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one!

I showed up for my first class prepared-- textbook ($80 discounted from $100, damn the publishers), big fat dictionary, which I feel like I should name because it takes up as much space as another person on the couch when I am studying, and 7 different colored pens, for reasons that were explained on day one.

Now the guy who teaches it is a seasoned professor of German literature and culture, and teaches this course to bring people from 0 to reading and translating Nietzche... in 6 weeks. So yes, to repeat, intensive.

The class was made up mostly of people from my department and some from the classics department, since we need to be able to read academic German for what we're doing. Presumably. In my case I know it'll come in handy since many early psychiatric textbooks, and of course the writings of the father of the field, are in German. The classicists are an interesting bunch. Remember their work is to learn dead languages and specialize in literature that was written thousands of years ago. Blows my mind.

First class, we do a little parsing. Now I don't know how long it's been since the last time you mapped a sentence, but I am not used to thinking about them in this way... find the conjugated verb, the predicate adjectives, the adverbs, and conjunctions, the accusative objects, and identify the nominative, accusative, dative or genetive cases of whatever we're looking at. IN GERMAN, mind you. Ugh. I hated it in high school, and age hasn't softened me up to it any.

There were a few students who were calling them out with no problem. Needless to say, I found this a little intimidating. That is, until I figured out-- it was the frigging classicists! I guess when you learn a few languages this way you learn to throw words like that around with ease.

We're reading, learning grammar, translating sentences, and memorizing vocab. Unlike most of the graduate teachers I have had, this guy gives quizzes. The first was a vocab quiz. I did fine. The second was a translation quiz. I bombed this. Let's take a look at why. This was the sentence in German:

Es gibt keinen Staatsbeamten, der den Studenten eines Professoren versprach, dass ihnen ihr Lehrer immer zum geeignetesten Beruf rät.

Ok. The reason I bombed the quiz? Because I spent the entire time thinking that this couldn't possibly translate into what I thought it said. The correct translation is:

There is no civil servant who promised to the student of a professor that their teacher always advises them to (pursue) the most suitable career.

?!?

Then the workload. When he said 3-6 hours a night, he wasn't kidding. Someone spoke up at the end of the week and said it was unsustainable and overwhelming (yay) and he admitted that the summer term had been shortened to six weeks from seven. The prof also figured out that the classicists had an edge on the rest of us and is going a bit slower with the parsing. Anyway now the workload is saner, but I'm a little burned out! Hooray for long weekends...

Epic epicness

So I moved this week. After a tense and harried six weeks, I'm finally in my new apartment and somewhat settled in. There are still many unopened boxes and we can't find the silverware, but at least everything is (mostly) here.

First, the packing, which I got through by sheer force of will, smoking, and the fact that my friends took pity on me and came over to keep me company. That was a slog, but completely uninteresting compared to what came later.

Next we had to pack up my dad's apartment. I think smart moving companies know that moving is largely a psychological game, and that the movee is usually more stressed out than the guys who are running the boxes and furniture into the truck. I hired a decent company in NYC, but boy the foreman was one surly motherfucker. He was good at what he did, but grumpy and uncommunicative.

Anyway after we packed up on the UES I dashed to my Brooklyn apartment, at oh say 415. They showed up at 6, just as the train i wanted to take was leaving Penn station. There were two more, so I figured i was fine. Long story short, no matter how many times I told him I was going to miss my train, I ended up having to RUN to the subway, and once I got off I had to RUN to the ticket machine and then RUN to the train. I made it onto the 739 train at 738. With my traveling companions:



Yes, those are piggy banks and a plant.

Cut to the next day, the guys are loading the things in, and we encounter a hitch in the form of a tight corner and a low ceiling in the entryway. The problem: anything over a certain height... didn't fit.

The upshot: by the end of the day, both couches, the credenza, and the king bed were in storage, and I was stressed out, not to mention sad because I was still sleeping on an airbed. I emailed around and found a company that handled these situations. Two days later they met me at the storage space with this:



They loaded up my stuff:



The drove it to my place, and started hoisting it up:



They had to go REALLY high because a tree and some power lines cross right in front of my balcony:



After this point I couldn't look. But anyway they managed to position it:


They had to take off the balcony door, but finally they got everything into the apartment. It's all here and I'm happy to say that I'm composing this blog on my dad's big leather mancouch, which he is very attached to.

Stay tuned.... pics when we unpack.

Another stocking stuffer.

You guys remember this post about my Christmas present from T, right? Well, K managed to top her this year.


It vibrates.



I think they work rather well together, don't you?

The 5 stages of PMS

Yes, I know, this is my second blog post about it, but I have to say my life totally changed after I started tracking my periods and those of any woman I lived with. I highly reccommend doing it you don't already.

Ok, the five stages, not in strict order:

Stage 1, Mild disaffect: You want to be alone. A lot of people don't understand this: it's not that a woman is particularly moody when she's about to get her period, she just wants to be left alone. So, leave her alone!

Stage 2, Indiscriminate hunger: The one day in the month where you seem to be able to do nothing but eat. Here's a secret: Reese's dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Sugar, salt, fat, carbs and chocolate, all in one efficient little package. That, folks, is period food.

Stage 3, Unexplained/unjustified/baffling sadness: Grab some tissues, because that prostate medication commercial really was quite moving.

Stage 4, Not-quite-so-mild disaffect: Accompanied by cramps, bloating, and feeling like a walking blood blister.

Stage 5, Relief(?): You bleed. Sometimes a lot. For days. And, because this happening signals an end to stages 1-4, you think this is FANTASTIC!

Typos to watch out for

Typos happen, and they happen often, but when they happen on cover letters, resumes or school applications, it's pretty unfortunate. Over the past few years, I've learned that some typos are more unfortunate than others.

Take, for example, the application essay where I wrote about my ability to asses... well, clearly anything but my spelling.

Then there was the resume from the fellow with formidable pubic speaking skills.

My personal favorite is the poor schlub who sent off a bunch of resumes that listed his bachelor o farts degree.

Proofread, people. Proofread.

Ever heard a squirrel sneeze?

A couple years ago, on a nice spring day, I was sitting in Washington Square Park on a bench on my own. All of a sudden, I heard from behind me a high-pitched and rather loud noise that scared the crap out of me and made me jump about a foot in the air. I turned around, and lo and behold, there was a little squirrel standing behind me, who had just sneezed.

Ok. So that was one of the weirdest noises I'd heard to date. I was relating this to someone last night when we were walking past that same bench in Washington Square Park, and she gave me the idea of looking up a squirrel sneezing on YouTube.

Take a look at the first thing that comes up when you google "squirrel" and "sneeze" on google:
http://vickiporter.wordpress.com/2007/08/06/when-a-squirrel-sneezes/

At least it was a girl squirrel.

Exfoliation

Never mind what it says on the package. I contend that you do not know what exfoliation is until you have been held down and scrubbed to within an inch of your life by a big Egyptian woman in a hamaam.

That is all.

A Stocking Stuffer

I'm not big into celebrating Christmas... I didn't grow up with it, and I am not a Christian. But I break down and exchange gifts with a couple of friends of mine, who delight in being creative with their gift-giving.

T's gift really took the cake this year. Behold the Banana Bunker.

Now as it happens, I'm making a concerted effort to eat more bananas these days (I used to hate them), so this is actually pretty useful. At first glance though, it looks like something other than protective casing for a banana, and because of this, I'm afraid to leave it lying around at home... so I've decided that it's better if I take it with me everywhere. I mean it looks a little better when it's fulfilling its intended purpose....

Now I'm taking it around with me regularly, I had to introduce it at work. So one afternoon about a week ago, I casually took it out of my bag and removed a banana from it as I was talking to a co-worker. A moment passed, then she asked, "Did you just take that banana out of protective casing?" I replied that I had indeed. I handed it over, and let her laugh at it. Hey, I sit across from her! Which means that she will be seeing a lot of the banana bunker.

Then there's when I'm on the subway. I have to be mindful of the placement of it in my bag, because when I open it it looks like this, which has earned me some looks already:

All this, for my daily quota of potassium and magnesium. Thanks, T :)

Hello tacky

On Myspace, a screenshot of some of the ads that they're giving me... see the ad at the bottom?

???

And then there's the one on the left.... MySpace, which apparently assumes I'm straight, has a series of ads from Match.com that consist of videos of attractive (I guess?) people who look like they're chatting with people they like. The plug being, I guess, that it could be you chatting with them and eliciting the reactions that they're having.

Yeah.

I got irritated with looking at videos of all these men so I changed my gender, and now have been getting the girl below. So much better! Anyway, if anyone's wondering why I'm a boy on Myspace, that is the reason.

A compendium...

.... of my favorite conversations this year with various family members, or as I like to think of them, blog fodder.


Convo 1, with father:

Dad: You made your bed this morning.
Me: Yes...
Dad: Are you feeling okay?


Convo 2, with stepmother:

Stepmother: You know what I noticed this week? Every Wednesday at 9PM, the local radio station becomes a homo station.
Me: A what?
Stepmother: A homo station! They play their music and have their programs for a whole hour!
Me: Is that right.
Stepmother: So, do you think they're born like that?
Me: Yes.


Convo 3, with sister via telephone:

Sister: Well, you know how I feel about the... (whispering) G-A-Y thing.
Me: Oh. You mean the thing about how I like to fuck women? That thing?
Sister: ...Must you be so coarse?


Convo 4, with big brother:

Big brother: Let's get manicures.
Me: I don't want a manicure. I don't like them.
Big brother: Stop being ridiculous. They're fun.
Me: They hurt!
Big brother: What's wrong with you? Just get a frigging manicure!
Me: (Running ahead) No! Leave me alone!


Convo 5, with niece, while playing this game:

Me: Chicken robot!
Niece: ...It go bok-bok.


Convo(?) 6, with tiny niece:

Me: (Picking up tiny neice) Come here cutie.
Tiny niece: (Snuggles up to me and then tries to chew my face, because she is teething and chews on everything.)

History Channel Reaches New Lows

A few years ago I used to hear people complain that the History Channel was all WWII documentaries and little else. Then they started varying their programming, which made me happy, even though I'm a total WWII buff. I was working the night shift and documentaries about this or that used to keep me sane. Then they started their series, like Lost Cities and Modern Marvels. These shows I find to be... eh. So-so. Now they've got things like 'Tougher in Alaska,' about truckers and oil men, and I'm still trying to figure out what they have to do with history.

Tonight I find my bewilderment at their lineup has been renewed. On right now is a program called 'Modern Marvels: Bathroom Technology.' On next (and I'm not making this up): something called 'All About Dung: The Historical Significance of Excrement.' A two-hour special, on from 1AM to 3AM.

I'd like to see them advertising that on their billboard in the Bronx.

That said, many of you know I'm a repository of all sorts of useless information. Tonight I've learned a new fact. Did you know that most toilets flush in the key of E flat?

More irony

On 1st Ave somwhere in the 60s: a fast food joint called "The Chirping Chicken."

... It sure as shit isn't chirping now.

The politics of I love you

There's a lot of stereotyping about male and female and gender roles in... well, every culture really. One of the fun things about having been raised in a couple of different cultures is that you get to see how flexible these things really are.

There are different expectations, subtle ones, ones that took me a good long time to cop onto. The dynamics of saying "I love you" in this country is a big one. Back where I come from, well... in my so-called mother culture, there is no direct way to say "I love you." The best approximation is "Mein tumsay bhari pyaar karthee hoon," which translates to something along the lines of "I do a great deal of love towards you." Clunky-- not something you can comfortably end phone conversations with. It's very matter of fact too... it comes across as informative and earnest, rather than affectionate.

Instead, we rely on affectionate (and maybe slightly barbed) nicknames and terms of endearment. Jaan means heart. Chooni means loveable one. Pyaari means cutie. You get the idea-- and they're things that I wouldn't be calling anyone if I didn't REALLY like them. The other way of being demonstrative is through action. Being affectionate, or doing nice things like giving gratuitous backrubs or making the significant other a cup of coffee while she's in the shower and I have no earthly reason for being awake... this is my way of getting it across.

One of my exes didn't get this. I got into a lot of trouble for not knowing when to say I love you. I tried to explain, we don't sit around where I came from and say "Mein tumsay bhari pyaar karthee hoon" all day. No dice. I got into trouble for the following:

* Not responding with an I love you back, immediately, whenever she said it. (Sorry, I know a lot of you won't agree with me, but this can be very awkward. Especially when there are other, rather glaring issues and you feel that somebody's actions are contradicting their words.)
* Not remembering to say it at the end of every phone convo. (I mean I'm calling, sometimes multiple times a day, and often very long-distance, aren't I?)
* Not remembering to say it multiple times a day. (Come on now!!)
* Then there was the hand squeeze. I've told some of you about this. She wanted to hold my hand when we were in public, and squeeze three times every so often as a code to say I love you. At which, I had to squeeze back three times. All this because, according to her, This Is What People Who Love Each Other Do. (Seriously? Seriously!! I found this problematic on many levels, including that I would get into a lot of trouble for not responding.)

Ok, so you guys know that I've calmed down about a lot of this, and accepted that when in Rome etc... but really now. If I'm calling you sweetie, cutie, darling, hot stuff, cowboy, or any of the rest of them at every opportunity, or if I'm doing something like holding your hand in public, you can safely assume that I am very fond of you!

Good grief.

Um

As most of you know, I am in the habit of sending out texts without punctuation. Usually my meaning comes across fine... they may be a little hard to understand at first glance, but they convey what I'm trying to get across. However...

I just looked at my outgoing texts and realized that I sent the following to my brother-in-law, in an honest attempt to let him know that his 3 year old daughter was missing him and wanted to see him on msn chat when he could log on:

"hey baby missing you come chat on the webcam when you can"

...oops.

I, gollum

My new job title is collection manager/archivist for a museum here in New York. I haven't done museum science, and I've never managed an archive, but I've done research in plenty of them.

I remember that for this paper I wrote last year, I needed to do research on Aby Warburg, the eminent art historian and private scholar whose library ended up at the University of London. I was researching the man himself, who went nuts, but in a very interesting way... which is a story for another time. For the paper I was writing, I had the choice of researching from a letter that his secretary typed about his illness, which was in the archive of the Warburg Institute, or the handwritten notes from a lecture given by a professor of mine.

Initially I opted for the typed letter. Then I learned that in order to gain access to look at this document...

1) I needed a letter from my supervisor to be let into the Warburg Institute in the first place so I could use the library, even though I was a student at the University of London.

2) I needed ANOTHER letter from my supervisor, and a document that explained the nature of my project, in order to get permission from the institute's director to get into the archive.

3) Because the document was about Warburg's illness, I also had to apply in writing for permission from the Warburg family to look at it.

4) Then I would need to approach the archivist... by email... and request an appointment... which would be granted at the earliest in two weeks. After which I guess maybe she would think about letting me see it. British bureaucracy and academic abstruseness at it's best.

I did eventually get the paper written... but had to do so without the typed letter. It ended up being easier to decipher the professor's chicken scratch lecture notes. (This, by the way, took DAYS. Luckily, I had about 25% of it on microcassette, so it was like having the Rosetta Stone.)

It amuses me that I am an archivist myself now. Privately, I'm already referring to the archive as The Precious. When people call to inquire about it, I hear myself thinking in the back of my mind, "Nasty little academicses... what wants they with the Precious?"

Britishisms

I spent a year in London earning my master's degree, and returned in the fall. I had spent time there before; I did summer school for six weeks at LSE. I love London, and loved living in England, but I must say there were some things about differences in the language that gave me pause, and got me into a little bit of trouble.

Salad cream.
Eww, right? 'Salad cream' is the term that they use for a dressing that is widely availiable, often in packet form. Say it to any American though, and invariably they will shudder. This tends to be very amusing to locals, to whom something like 'salad cream' is a normal, if not desirable part of a meal. For me, the term is about as appealing as 'salad ointment.' Even 'salad goop' sounds better (and more honest) to me.

Sex aids.
This is another interesting one. We call them 'sex toys,' but 'sex aids' sounds much more serious. I guess because I was only recently exposed to the term, it also calls up images of ointments and splints. In my mind, you go buy sex aids in a place that is bright with flourescent lighting. What is a better word though? 'Sex tools?' I have known people for whom this styling of it wouldn't be inaccurate...

Trousers vs. pants.
This one actually did get me in trouble. In England, what we would refer to as pants are termed trousers, and what we would call underwear are called pants. Now to me, 'trousers' are what you wear to work, and more often than not have a crease down the front... so I had a little trouble with this one. One of my better moments occured in the locker room of my yoga center. I get a little anxious in locker rooms full of straight women as it is... so when I said to one of them something along the lines of "Dude, I really like your pants" and got a look, it was a bit of a headslapper. But really, yoga trousers?

The PMS Issue

Chocolate is of course a PMS staple. In recent years a lot of chain pharmacies have gotten smart about stocking it-- not just your regular Mars & Co. candy, but the GOOD stuff. I am convinced that every female chocoholic in the neighborhood has discovered the holdings of the 24 hour Duane Reade on my corner. I know this because of WHAT they are constantly out of: Lindt's 70% extra fine dark. This is the ultimate in self-medication through chocolate. The cocoa content is high enough that it delivers you a good, clean hit without packing in too much sugar or extra crap (as opposed to your regular candy bars, which are basically flavored vegetable fat) and low enough that your eyes don't bug out of your head from the bitterness (which they would with Lindt's 85%). Literally, you walk in, and there are bars from all the other brands-- Ghirardelli's, Hershey's Special Reserve, Scharffen Berger, etc-- but there is a conspicuous gap where the Lindt's 70% should be.

I suspect that this is because I am not the only one who does the PMS run at this particular 24-hour Duane Reade.... last time I went there to buy a package of Kotex and two slabs of chocolate, the cashier was trying not to laugh. She knew.

Some numbers from the week

St Paddy's Day.
1: number of Irish bars on my block.
3: number of emergency vehicles parked outside of it on St. Paddy's day at 10pm.
6: number of paramedics trying to talk the very drunk man in the neck brace into the gurney.
15: number of minutes it took them to do so.
4: number of big burly paramedics who actually participated in strapping him down.
at least 1: number of people watching the proceedings through binoculars from above.


Pigeons.
1: Number of headless pigeons that abruptly fell out of the sky and landed in front of me on Park Avenue this Friday.
2 and counting: number of days it's taking me to get over being completely weirded out by the incident.


Kids.
2: Number of times I've chatted with my neice (almost age 3) this week on the webcam.
2: months before I anticipate that this kid will be able to pick up the phone, dial my number, tell me to get online, and then initiate a webcam chat on her own.
968,277: Number of times that my uterus has skipped a beat when I've thought of the little little one, who is 3 1/2 months old. (... wait, make that 968,278.)
32: Age that you must, must, must tell me to wait until before I even think about having children.

My friend has been outing us on MySpace

So somewhat ridiculously, there has been a rumor going around among people we went to high school with that my good friend and I were once caught making out in a closet by a third girl. Besides being completely untrue, it's kind of funny-- I wasn't out to even myself in high school, and my friend is pretty straight.

My friend has a MySpace account, and she likes to do those bulletin quizzes when she's bored at work. I figure that by now, our high school class is probably convinced we're married. A selection of her more recent answers, from the last two weeks:

* Who is the last person you held hands with? [me]
* Who can you always turn to? [another friend and me]
* Who was your last text from? [me]
* Who was the last person you said "I love you" to? [this would be me as well.]

That said, this woman is the alternate excecutor on my living will. (Which reminds me honey, we still have to go get that thing notarized! xoxo)

When an MA degree opens new doors

So I did a really intese MA program from 2006-2007, basically working nonstop for a full calendar year. If I wasn't in class I was in the library, and when I was researching and writing my thesis it was gym, 6-8 hour library days, and home, nonstop, for three months.

After I finished my degree in the fall, I spent a month up at my sister's house. This was quite a change of pace... she'd recently given birth and needed help with the baby and her toddler, who hadn't yet been toilet trained. Changing two sets of diapers at once is A LOT of work and completley untenable long-term, so the task of toilet training her fell largely on... yes, me.

Our babysitter had a helpful tip. With kids that age, you have to be TOTALLY enthusiastic about anything you want to get them to do, including going to the bathroom. Otherwise, why would they do it? In diapers you don't have to stop playing just to pee, and you get your parent's attention when you get changed. See? Win-win.

We toilet trained her through a combination of negotiation, bribery with stickers, begging, and trying to present going to the bathroom as The. Most. Exciting. Thing. Ever. And I realized just how much of a break from all things intellectual I was on when I found myself standing over the toilet with my niece, flushing it while saying "Bye bye, pee pee!" (and waving) with all the enthusiasm that I could muster. My niece waved too, earnestly adding, "See you later!"

One more reason to go off the red meat

When people first come out, and by this I mean to themselves, one of the first things that they need to deal with is all of the terrible things that they have heard about homosexuals, and how this does or does not apply to them.

It's particularly hard for people from more, say, traditional cultures. The ignorance runs deep. It spans wide. And it's very funny when you're on the other side of it. Observe:

Convo 1, with stepmother.

Stepmother: You know my nephew just moved to San Francisco.
Me: Oh great! Now we can visit him!
Stepmother: (scandalized) No no...
Me: ...no?
Stepmother: No!
Me: Why not?
Stepmother: Your father will never take the boys there! [The boys being my younger brothers, 14 and 17 at the time.]
Me: Really? Why?
Stepmother: Because all the homos!
Me: (Silence.)
Stepmother: See, it's when teenagers see these things, they're attracted to it, and then they get sucked into a very hard, and very lonely life! You and [my older brother] are ok, you can see these things and not get drawn to it. But the boys, we'll have to wait till they're more grown.
Me: (Stunned silence, because both my older brother and I are gay as june bugs.)


Convo 2, with insane aunt.

Aunt: You know there are a lot of gays in Afghanistan.
Me: Is that right?
Aunt: Yes, they're famous for it.
Me: That's interesting.
Aunt: Do you think they can help it?
Me: I don't know that anyone would choose it, really...
Aunt: I think it's because they eat a lot of red meat.

Times when I'm glad my gay big brother is around

So last night, my father, my brother and I were watching Bride and Prejudice, an Indian version of Pride and Prejudice directed and written by the same lady who did Bend it Like Beckham.

It was cute, but we had a moment when there was a scene where the dweeby but rich Indian guy was bemoaning the lack of good women in America. It struck a chord because I was supposed to have stayed in Pakistan, gone to medical school, and done the arranged marriage thing. The fact that I am here now is the result of two years of kicking and screaming when I was a teenager. The line went:

"You know, in US, they [foreign-born Indian girls] are all too outspoken and career-oriented. And some have even turned... into the lesbian!"

You could have heard a pin drop. Boy was I glad my brother was in the room.

KY Brand Sensual Evening Wash

This caught my eye one morning at the pharmacy downstairs. I noticed it behind the counter as I paid, next to the KY lube. What the hell could that be? I thought. I realized I was staring, so I texted my friend to see if she knew. Evening wash, specifically sensual evening wash from the good people at KY. My friend texted back, lubed douche? but no, that made no sense. Why sensuous? Why evening? Was this product meant to be used alone, or in conjunction with someone or something, as with KY's other offerings? I was intriuged, and slightly grossed out.

Next day I was at the pharmacy again (they sell vegan food, and I mostly subsist off of the burritos in their freezer) and looked a little closer. KY Sensual Evening Wash is offered in several varieties: Bali Moonlight, Paris Twilight, and Saphire Glow. This mystified me completely.

Now mind you, very little embarrases me. I could go up to the guy behind the counter and ask for dental dams, a gallon of lube, and an economy-size box of vinyl examination gloves with no compunction. But I don't think I could bring myself to ask for something called "KY's Sensual Evening Wash." So we were going to make one of our guy friends buy it so that we could figure out what the hell it was.

Finally, my friend was able to find some and take a picture. The back was unfortunately obscured with a security label. If you look closely, the words 'to romance' appear on the bottom. Since it is a KY product, I naturally assumed the application was intimate in some way. The best guess I had was that it was a product for girls who didn't want to smell like... well, girls, if you catch my drift. How unfortunate, how un-PC, how disappointing. As my friend who was in on the saga from the beginning put it, how lame.

Now... I realize I was wrong. This is apparently an attempt by KY to expand into the business of aids to sex and romance that reach beyond lubrication.

IT'S SHOWER GEL!!! WHAT THE HELL IS SHOWER GEL DOING BEHIND THE COUNTER NEXT TO THE LUBE?!?!

Where my friend and I are somehow mistaken for prostitutes.

So, background-- the past few months I've been working on and off at a small off-Broadway theater near Times Square. I got the gig because a good friend hired me on as her assistant. It's an excuse to hang out, do something in the evenings, and get paid... in peanuts, but paid nonetheless.

The routine is easy; we come in, set up, maybe stuff programs, and then seat everyone. Once that's over, we get some downtime. Downtime consists of sitting on the stairs and talking, quietly; shushing people who come in off the street and speak too loudly in the lobby, and occasionally seating a latecomer.

The last night of the show, we're sitting on the stairs at about six thirty in the evening. My friend is wearing what I imagine is the most businessy thing that she owns (which isn't very businessy) and I'm wearing ill-fitting khaki jeans, an ill-fitting black t-shirt which I stole from my brother, and sneakers-- not exactly dressed to impress.

A guy comes in off the street, apparently mistaking the lobby of the theater for the lobby of the Econolodge hotel, which is next door, and asks us loudly if we're working. After we shush him, we say wait, what? He asks again, are you working. When he realizes he's in an off-Broadway theater and that we are not in fact working girls, he gets embarassed and and runs out the door.

Now I ask you... between trolling for prostitutes before dinnertime, doing it in a theater, and apparently having no idea what a prostitute looks like, how much concentrated stupidity do we have here?

Welcome...

... to my Blog of Small Things.