romance is dead. long live romance.

and before you tell me i have high expectations, try to situate yourself in my generation, within the boundaries of my gender, and imagine having my boobs on your chest - i regret this already. the thing is, no one ever taught me about the male libido. but consider time and the-worst-stage-of-my-life known as puberty, and let us to refer to Bossypants in which tina fey aptly points to a seemingly vague "study" which revealed that the moment in which most women realize that they are in fact women, occurs/ed once a man objectifies/ed them.

i remember this moment clearly. i was taking a walk with my big sister and she raised her eyebrows and said "wow, you totally just got checked out" and i said "what does that mean?" and i've been fucked ever since. of course it was confusing - i was flushed with an unintentional feeling of confidence, and an uncomfortable feeling of "i didn't mean to do it, whatever it is i did." to this day that is the horrible sweaty feeling i have when men stare and wink, and good god, i live near too many factories and truck drivers. i spent a lot of my youth not getting this attention and feeling horribly, depressingly, obstructed by my total belief that i was the worst thing to feast your eyes on. it was terrible for everyone, including myself.

if i could write a letter to high school me, it would feature some things like this:

1. don't worry. there will be at least ONE day where you actually feel pretty.
2. a very cute boy will ask you out, take you on a date, try to woo you, kiss you, tell you he really likes you/mean it, and you will be so emotionally stunted, that you will in fact do the rejecting.
3. you're not special.
4. wax, don't shave.

but i could never warn myself that we'd be at a real loss at this point in time. i could maybe forewarn the cultural studies classes and the realizations that TV makes up romance, and nothing actually happens like that. no one woos you. strange men ask you to "keep it coming" when you wear revealing (read: elegant, for fucks sake) dresses, and cars stop and ask for more when you take your sweater off, and chubby dudes get all flustered when you bend over. no one charms, but rather, reluctantly admits that "yeah, you're hot." and the day that you realize you're pretty isn't the day any of this happens, but the day you look in the mirror and feel like skirts cinch your waist just right. cause that's really all you've got in a world where all your smart, funny, KIND friends are single because everyone my age is too awkward to touch each other. boys do not chase girls, and girls are not nice and inherently good. you have to get really upset at men before they reluctantly admit they care about you (which is as good as it gets), and you will be a general asshole and bully to the boys you like because they will have entrapped you into a "bro-like" box. if you want a significant other, get drunk and feel up the next person who feels you first. you will groggily wake up the next morning and reluctantly accept what has been given to you. and if you don't do at least this horribly depressing and sticky (yes, i choose the word sticky) task, then things are either going to develop into a woody allen movie, or veer towards that horrifically accurate prediction that is children of men.

me, "we should write stuff together." jacob nods, "suicide letters."

revisiting: Rodarte - "Vox Humana" feat. Jenny Lewis

accurate.gif

"Most cool girls are totally fucked up because they are used to guys telling them they are "cool" or "funny" or "smart" and they assume it's a euphemism for "not hot" because they already feel like dudes with boobs."

- Molly Lambert, http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/2/22/in-which-we-teach-you-how-to-be-a-woman-in-any-boys-club.html

smiling back politely.

it goes from having one of your best friends take you to his favourite place for breakfast. he's been raving about it for some time, and eventually you see it's this tiny crack in the wall of local family-oriented neighbourhood. and there are two older (one elder) women behind the strip of a counter as you squeeze onto the stools. they say things like, "dear" and rant about having performed the splits right there the other day. they tease each other about 5th marriages and accidental pregnancies. and they welcome every customer in as they would their own grandchildren, and the whole time i'm thinking, "movies are REAL?!" finishing our meal, we walk out and my friends tells me more about this place. when the middle-aged cook is not there, her brother usually is. though they are both a little bit... "retarded" he says. "they are loud" i say. "no, i mean. i think they were once into some heavy drug stuff. you know, one of those, have half of your brain scooped out stuff." movies are real.

yesterday, taking a stroll through the city (please refer below to rainy day soundtracks), i stop at a local thrifted jewelery store. the bright pink linings of the building had always been a bit seductive to me. in a holly golightly & tiffany's way. awhile back, due to various social conditions, i had inadvertently sparked conversation with a very thin, frail, blonde girl. and when i asked her where she got her gorgeous clunky sparklingly necklace from, she directed me to the pink lined store. so on this day of doing nothing, i heard the ring of the doorbell, as i stepped into a type of sparkling paradise. beads, colours, stones, glittered from all corners, and i spent quite a bit of time, just perusing. i had walked in on two older customers who i eavesdropped were there to support and visit their friend - the owner. an older bland, slightly overweight woman. bland women always have the most access to gorgeous, gorgeous, things. and one of the women bothered me so. she was from france, and kept dismissing all positive references with a french sigh, proclaiming that she "still wasn't back from her travels." presumably she had visited somewhere in East Asia. it would explain how we stood by side observing the beads around our mutual necks. or rather, how she peered over to stare at me, as i watched myself. a post-colonial kind of mirror reflection. she, like many pale coloured beauties found my skin appealing in a "darling artifact" sort of way. in the end, her friend politely inquired about my ethnicity. said something abrasive like, "you should get that necklace on your indian skin. it would look gorgeous." an indirect insult and compliment. i smiled back politely.

rainy days, or in this case, weeks

*did i just post the lost in translation soundtrack? oh. oh, hahahahaha.

saturday night is always epic.