Three Little Words

"Seriously?!" exclaimed my next-door cube neighbor in disgust today. "I think developers just select words at random to use as street names. I just got a literature request from someone on Technology Forest Drive." We all laughed - cubicle walls don't really exist in our office etiquette-free environment - and she added, "Really, it could be anything. Flute Potatoes Avenue."

I didn't laugh as enthusiastically at that one, because frankly, I was kind of jealous I didn't think of it first.

We complain - or at least I do - about words being used without regard to their meaning. Yet I'm rather forcibly reminded, by a recent episode in my nineteen-year-old daughter's dating life, of how certain words have lost a great deal of the impact they used to have for me.

Katie has a new boyfriend she was very excited about a week ago, and is thinking about breaking up with now (assuming she hasn't already). A few days ago she came to me with a furrow in her young brow. "I told Jake I love him," she said, troubled. "We were at a party and I'd had a couple of drinks. But I really don't love him."

I didn't particularly see the problem, but Katie felt the need to call Jake the next day and clarify that she was, in fact, not in love with him. "Are you breaking up with me??" he asked. "Oh, no," she said, "just I don't actually love you, that's all." "Oh," he said.

Personally, I would have just let it go. Saying "I love you" to men you don't actually love, I tried to explain to my innocent young daughter, is just a normal part of the female condition, and probably male as well. You say it. You didn't really, really mean it. Worse yet, you say those tender yet insincere words to someone who responds with something awkward like "Ummmm," or a little more debonair, such as "Awwww" or "That's sweet" or "Thank you." Which is what Jake did (I believe Katie told me he is an "Ummmm" man, and I can respect that; awkwardness is not a quality I disparage in any way).

But it's funny, now that I think about it, because when I was in my teens and twenties, those three little words seemed to matter far, far too much to be uttered in vain. And that's not just a girl thing. My first serious boyfriend, my sophomore year in college, once took me to a Moody Blues concert at Zilker Park. They sang "Nights in White Satin." We clung together throughout the song and he sang along softly in my ear, and it would have been only THE MOST ROMANTIC THING THAT EVER HAPPENED ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, except that every time the chorus got to "I love you" he switched to humming. Words meant things.

Now that I'm past 40, "I love you" doesn't seem quite so untouchable, so sacrosanct. I don't say it dishonestly, but there are so many kinds of love, aren't there? As in, I care about you - or it would be personally devastating to me to do something that would cause you significant pain - or I hate to see what you are going through right now - or I know you well enough to be truly comfortable with you, and being comfortable feels so good. I remember somewhat the fiery passion of "True Love," but it never really worked out in the end, did it? Maybe it turns out that, like every other expression of human language, "I love you" refers to some unspoken middle ground between what the speaker and the hearer believe it to mean.

So do you spend your life stressing about whether you really mean it when you say "I love you"? Or do you teach yourself contentment, and settle down with your sweetheart and your thirty-seven cats in a cottage with climbing roses and a white picket fence on Flute Potatoes Avenue?

I have no clue. I'll have Katie figure it out and get back to you on it, in about 25 years.

The 99% Likes Opera, Too

Is it just me, or is the basic message of "Die Zauberflöte" that women are dark, scheming and evil whereas men are wholesome, honest and good? Because Mozart can stick his magic flute where the sun don't shine, if you catch my drift. Or is that an awful, vengeful thing to say? Well, Bill Gates is paying a visit, so I can't be held accountable for my irrational female behavior.

I don't know if the Austin Lyric Opera will ever top their production of "The Bat," but their "Magic Flute" had some cute modern touches and very good singing, particularly by Sarastro and Pamina. The sets were overly minimalist, I thought - I mean, it's fine, it works, but you really should actually have a dragon of some kind onstage at the beginning. Even an extremely tacky rubber one would be acceptable. I did like the touch of having Tamino run out of arrows and, in desperation, heave his bow at the invisible beast.

Unfortunately, FunFunFunFest is also going on just across Riverside, and the Long Center is not completely soundproof. So at least on the very very back, top row, I was a little distracted by the deep bass thumping from outside shaking our seats - loud enough to drown out the Queen of the Night, who was more precise than powerful. It's a typically Austin experience but not necessarily a happy one, though I expect Mozart would have found himself more or less at home in a mosh pit drinking canned beer, the misogynistic bastard.

After the show, Katie and I teetered across Barton Springs to have Whataburger while the parking garage cleared out, and got made fun of by drunken 4F goers who may not have realized that we could hear them, inasmuch as they were the only ones shouting. (Katie pointed out that their tickets cost about twice what ours did.)

All that said, of course, any night you get to go to the opera is a good night - uncomfortable shoes and all. Going tonight was Katie's idea. That, coupled with the fact that today my son brought me a vanilla hazelnut latte from the coffeehouse where he works, gives me a sense that my decision to have children is beginning to bear fruit, so to speak.

Now if I can just bend them to my nefarious will.

April Fool's!

Did you know how there's this trend where Japanese guys are dating pillows with a girl's anime face and figure imprinted on them? Did you know how there's now a trend where some of these guys are marrying their Japanese pillow girlfriends? Well, it's true. I read it on the internet.

I did lunch coverage at our visitor center downtown today. This is lots of fun because all kinds of people come in and ask interesting questions. I've done lunch and part-day coverage so many times now that I'm actually almost passable at it - I mean, very few of my visitors get arrested for following my recommendations anymore - but I certainly don't have the kind of stories that the regular staff have. One of my dear friends there sent me a list of some of the particularly notable things she's heard.

"How do I become a senator? I want to become a senator so I can represent my people. My people need and deserve representation! My people, well... they’re gypsies."

"I understand that drag queens have to pee too, I just don't think they should do it in the ladies' room."

"I guess some people don’t know any better because no one’s ever died for Iowa."

The thing is, our visitor center staff are held to very high standards of customer service. We love our traveling public, we really do. And while we hear some doozies now and again, we're polite and respectful, and try never to let our customers know that any boneheaded thing they might come up with could end up being blog fodder. Because nobody wants to be blog fodder. Nobody.

Across the room from our travel information desk is the visitor information desk for the particular historic site where the visitor center is located. It's staffed by a different agency, and I'm sorry to have to break the news that this agency's customer service standards are not quite as high as ours. Let me give you an example. Take Dwight... please.

Dwight works at the other desk; right across the room from ours, he's naturally friendly, and regards me as something of a comrade-in-arms against that greatest of all natural enemies, The Public. "Don't you let them push you around," he tells me, quite loudly, in our large and echoey chamber which is open to the rest of the rooms on the floor, including exhibits and a gift shop. "You've got to stand up to these people. If you're too nice to them, they'll just walk all over you."

He then proceeds to tell stories about how he's told this visitor what's what or shown that other visitor who's boss. He speaks loudly - our desks are about 20 feet apart - and he has a high-pitched cackle which he airs freely when he feels he's said something particularly witty. Which is more often than you might think. I glance nervously towards the open stone arch doorway, because, you know, the public is right there. They can hear you.

Last week he came over and showed me an iPhone app that displays pictures of different guns and knives and makes the sound of them being fired or drawn when you tap on the screen. "See, now, this is how you deal with unruly tourists," he told me. He cackled.

One of my coworkers, who works the lunch shift at least as often as I do, has never experienced many of this, the confidences, the cackling, or the iPhone apps. "I think Dwight has a little crush on you," he told me.

"Dwight is married," I told him; "he doesn't wear a ring, so I didn't know until recently; but last week he mentioned his wife - said his house was being remodeled and that he and his wife were butting heads over it."

My friend and I arrived, I'm sorry to report at almost the same moment, at the startling conclusion that Dwight's wife is actually a Japanese pillow girlfriend.

In further news, I intend to continue blogging if I can still get anybody to read the darn thing.

Chicken Marsala for the Soul

On the hike-and-bike yesterday, a cute bicyclist caught my eye and smiled as he was passing. "Hi," he said, so I smiled back, and as he passed, he added, "You look like a million bucks."

Isn't that nice? Frankly, for the last couple of weeks at least I've been feeling like maybe a buck-fifty, buck-seventy-five, tops. So this really made my day, though I was much too surprised, slow, and shy to turn around and yell "Thanks!" at his retreating form.

No wonder I never get any.

Chickens are a whole nother story, at least according to some very highly placed people in my division, who made some surprisingly inappropriate comments at dinner last night. This is perfectly all right, of course. The comments were not aimed at me, and actually this is the first time I've seen the higher-ups in my "new" job (one year next month!) behave with anything less than the utmost probity (which sounds dirty but isn't).

The conversation turned, as conversations sometimes will, to the topic of chicken resuscitation. Someone, a friend or relative of the teller, used to swat flies for his chickens, and the chickens ate them as they dropped. Perfectly normal so far, of course; we all do that. But apparently, one time, one of the target flies was too close and the guy accidentally swatted a chicken clean into next week, right? So the chicken fell over senseless. (As opposed to how chickens normally are.) Anyway, the guy freaked out and tried to revive the chicken by giving it mouth-to-mouth through its beak - "I guess that'd be mouth-to-beak," added the husband of the Big Boss, sitting next to me. "Mouth-to-pecker resuscitation."

Oh no he didn't!

The chicken survived with only a mild concussion, though the conversation never quite recovered. Still, our dinner was tasty and the service (Romeo's, by the way) was really superb. Hooray for planning an event where everything comes off perfectly!

But I had to rush, because my high-school friend Pam is in town - for the funeral of a friend, unfortunately, but it was really nice to see her. Tony was my date to the reunion, so she knows him; and we met up at his house to drink wine, reminisce, and muse about men; panties; childrearing; vibrators; unwanted body hair; going in the out door; prayer; virginity (appropriate attire for, loss of, Rohypnol and); alcoholism; turtles; penis size and sexual duration; and perhaps one or two dozen other things that wouldn't really interest anyone, so I won't go into details.

I didn't get around to telling her the chicken story, though. Maybe she'll be able to visit again sometime under happier circumstances. I think we should go hit the hike-and-bike trail.

Bruises

How things have changed since I was growing up, and I'd swear it hasn't been that long.

Katie and I have been sitting around watching TV tonight. It's been that kind of weekend: cleaning like mad, getting the place spic-and-span, just for ourselves. We just had a small turkey roast, some canned sweet potatoes, jellied cranberry, microwave stuffing (yarf!) and apple pie for Thanksgiving dinner. Yesterday was much more satisfactory. We biked to HEB and got potatoes and little filets mignons and had quite a tasty repast. Today we walked to South Congress and did a spot of shopping. Tonight, we biked over to Fran's for cheeseburgers. Much girl talk has ensued; boys, you don't want to know; you'd be terrified, even those of you who have plenty of experience with the wimmens. All I can really tell you is that, if a guy I'm (ahem!) closely entwined with is suddenly deeply engrossed in the TV watching Transformers cartoons, sixteen-year-old Beth is a lot more understanding than sixteen-year-old Katie would be, so I'd invest in a time machine if I were you.

But our closest moment of girl bonding happened when this song came on in an iPod commercial:

"Oh my God," said Katie, "that's totally how it is with guys for me."

I am several years older, which is why I get to buy wine. "That's how it always is with guys," I said, "for all women. Always."

So we immediately paid $0.99 to download the song from iTunes. Oh my gosh, you guys. When I was Katie's age, well, for one thing, no commercial would ever play any song you actually wanted to own, are you effing kidding me?! Do you even remember "Ban with cashmere"?! But if, let's say hypothetically, a commercial did play something good, you'd have to wait till the next day and go to the record store at the mall and buy a CD for $18.99 that contained the song you wanted, along with about thirteen other songs you really didn't.

The times, they are a changing. Now if we could only do something about men.

Bathroom for Improvement

Really, I'm only writing because I haven't in a few days. Lately it seems to be harder and harder to come up with something. And most of what I come up with seems hardly worthwhile at all. Still I have to write something, because otherwise - otherwise - well, because otherwise I won't be writing anything.

If this isn't a perfect metaphor for life, I'd like to know what is.

One of the problems is that what's been on my mind a lot lately is public restrooms. Have you ever tried writing something meaningful about public restrooms? Something that really speaks to the human condition? Something really (sorry) moving??

Public restrooms are an even better metaphor for the pointless and ephemeral nature of human existence than blogging is. You meet people in bathrooms; you can have conversations with them. You can learn to hate strangers anonymously in a public bathroom. You can be angry, territorial, or very, very afraid. You can marvel at the injustices with which life is fraught. Did I ever mention that the president of the internet marketing company I worked for in Corpus never washed her hands after going? Even #2?!? Well, it's true, I'm sorry to say.

I don't know if men's restrooms are so enlightening. I still suspect that urinals are the product of a demented joke played on mankind by some long-dead, self-made designer who was bitter about being barred from architecture school because of her sex. I imagine her in a room full of other early feminists, all sipping cosmos. "I'm going to design the first public restroom for men," she tells them exultingly, "where they all have to pee in plain sight of each other!"

The other women laugh, because of course no sane person would ever do this. But our architect insists - perhaps placing a substantial bet with her friends - that she can bring male society to such a nadir that eventually, they will stand next to one another to pee, vulnerable, exposed - and think this is perfectly normal behavior.

This was after a lot of cosmos, so she was more surprised than anybody when she won.

I get pissed off at work now because the no-count bitchez from right across the hall, who work in an inferior, bureaucratic division where the restroom is darker and more cramped, like to come over to our side to use the facilities. They commit such atrocities as hogging the sink, splashing water everywhere, the unspeakable "hoversquat," and using the handicapped door button to open the door so they don't have to touch the handle, which, ew! might have germs! omg!!1!!1! This leaves the door wide open to the elevator lobby for about ten seconds - not the end of the world, but not very considerate to anyone who may be trying to perform some reasonably private function inside.

But that's not the one that really pisses me off. No. What really bugs me is that these bureaucrettes always insist on taking up the handicapped stall for their, um, lengthier visits. Since our building doesn't have a locker room, and many of us in the far superior, classier division where I work are into regular exercise, and therefore have to change clothes once or twice a day, this means we get relegated to the smaller stalls, where on several occasions I personally have come perilously close to dropping my scrunchie in the toilet.

File that away for future reference, would you? That has to be a euphemism for something - though, I have to say, probably something that goes on in the men's room.

Non-Verbal Communication

Ladies! How many times has this happened to you?

You're in a relationship (or some equivalent thereof), and you've become worried about it. You're picking up subtle (or not so subtle) clues from your significant (or not so significant) other that he's losing interest. And it's hard not to jump on it. He's not calling you as often, or he doesn't seem as attentive when you're together, or whatever. And you freak a little bit. Doesn't matter if you aren't into him either: rejection is all that matters, and it's horrifying. Rejection by someone you don't consider to be good enough for you is the worst. Because what does that say about you?!?

So you ask him, hey, what's going on? Are you upset with me? Did I do anything wrong? What's the matter?

Of course not, he tells you (without exasperation if he's nice). Everything's fine. You worry too much. You read way too much into things.

But when it turns out you were right, you don't get any satisfaction out of "I told you so." He still won't believe you really picked up anything. It's Cassandra's curse, isn't it? You catch cues so subtle that your partner - probably a decent enough, honorable enough guy, don't get me wrong - can't imagine, even when confronted with clear evidence to the contrary, that he was giving them off at all. Even when you're right he thinks you're not; he himself would not notice these signs, and it doesn't occur to him that someone else might. Rational people (e.g., he and his football buddies) would never notice such signals, and you - my girl, you are told to believe, and you do! that you're a typical, overreacting, hysterical female.

A real bastard will cite your insecurity as the reason for dumping you.

Years and miles in the past, these things rankle like nothing else I can think of. This is not to be confused with that "Men Are from Mars" bullshit. People are people. I just don't see why they can't be honest with each other.

Pearls Before Swine

All the sacrifices we make for beauty, I thought this weekend as I was carefully repainting a chipped pedicure that had never seen the light of day, that men don't even notice. What ungrateful bastards!

Pedicures being a case in point. We do realize that a man, casting his gaze lingeringly downward along our body, usually doesn't make it quite all the way to the toes. Yet a perfect pedicure is vitally important. If our polish is chipped, our nails are uneven, or our skin is callused, we can't radiate the kind of confident sexiness that tells a guy we fancy, in no uncertain terms, that he needs to be ogling whatever part of us he happens to like better than toes. Pretty toenails help us stand up straight and tilt our hips and throw back our shoulders and smile, you see? You do notice a pedicure, realize it or not.

Date-shaved legs are another detail that usually goes unnoticed by the intended beneficiary. A little very, very, very short stubble doesn't show up under a skirt unless someone is examining terribly closely; and again, the legs, from the knee down, don't generally capture that kind of attention from any but the most, um, discriminating* guy. But if we have a big date, we're shaving immediately before - not that morning, and certainly not a day or two earlier. The razor is barely hung up to dry before we're out the door.

Exciting underthings are very important, whether or not you are ever granted the privilege of seeing them. If God forbid I should ever put on granny panties - and not even Bill Gates can induce me to do so - I wouldn't be able to look an attractive man in the eye. We do not wear cotton, and are confounded as to why there appears to be so much of it on the market these days. We wear little frilly things made of satin and lace, stockings instead of pantyhose, and we always match. Don't you?

Guys do notice, usually without being consciously aware of it, such details as makeup and hair. Makeup should be subtle, even though a lot of guys don't realize if it isn't. The transportational stalker guy who once went after my old cube neighbor told her - with no apparent sense of irony - that he didn't care for women who wore makeup because he considered it deceitful; one can only assume he honestly believed that nature had given her bright blue, sparkly eyelids. Granted, he was batshit insane. Hair should be full and long, if possible, and shouldn't look like you might put an eye out on it, so it's a mercy that the 80s have passed.

Look at us: goddesses, or geishas, beautifying ourselves to the most painstaking detail just to please you. And all you have to do in return, to win our admiration, adoration and respect, to command our undying devotion, to make us see you as Casanova and Don Juan and Rudolph Valentino and David Bowie all rolled into one worshipful object, is not fart.

So quit complaining.

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*Not to say fetishist

Girlfriends

I expect this post will contain a certain amount of rampant sexism, and not even be funny, to boot.

There's just something about female friends. I haven't had a close female friend in a long time, not since leaving Corpus and Denise behind. Generally I get along better with guys - not that I don't get along with other women, but for some reason the "click" of close, comfortable friendship seems to be a lot harder to achieve with my own sex.

But when it does happen, it's something special. There's this automatic common ground, shared experiences, shared perspectives, shared context. When it does happen, the flow of ideas and support and confidences is much more natural than it is with guy friends.

Maybe it's that, even though a girl can confide in her male friends, the conversation tends to go one way. My best male friends will happily lend an ear or a shoulder, but they almost never tell me the sort of things about themselves that I'll tell them about me, or at least not as much. It's generalizing, but I think it's true to a certain extent that men just don't connect in the same fashion that women do. They also just don't get certain things about my feelings or behavior that another woman, immediately and intuitively, can grasp. So, conversely, if a close guy friend has been giving me a certain piece of advice for months and months, and I haven't been willing to listen to him, a close female friend can give me the same piece of advice and seal the deal. It must be so. A woman would know.

Not in any way to endorse that stupid "men are from Mars" crap. Last time I was at Planet K I bought a button for my backpack, which says:

"Giving your heart to a man is like giving a computer to a dog."

I should also have bought another one I liked just as well, although the message might be contradictory:

"Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Get over it."

But I only had a buck-fifty on me.

We're all people, we all struggle with the same issues from time to time; we all have feelings; we all get hurt. Sometimes very badly. We deal with it in different ways and show it in different ways, and - I've always assumed primarily for social reasons - women tend to deal with it similarly, which makes it a lot easier sometimes to understand and be understood by a good girlfriend.

And if all the above weren't reason enough to have at least one close girlfriend, it's a lot easier to have hilarious conversations about penis size.