When I was 17, I was horny. I was not a Democrat or a Republican. I wasn’t caught up in social climes or busy trying to push an agenda on anyone, or busy delving into the annals of the Women’s Rights Movement, or screaming about the horrors of abstinence-only sex ed.
I just wanted to get laid by my boyfriend.
That’s it.

Believe it or not, my high school boyfriend and I waited a year and a half before we finally decided to go for it (which, in teenage years is roughly a millenium, I believe) and, it may be shocking to many of you out there, but we absolutely used protection. Every single time. AND we agreed to never have sex if either of us was drunk. And then, a few months in, I considered putting myself on birth control, which was a huge inner struggle for me because, you know, only “skanks” and “sluts” get on birth control… I didn’t want to be known as a slut, but I also didn’t want to get pregnant and wind up “barefoot and in a trailer”, of which a friend had warned me when I told her we could always try “pulling out.”

Knowing that my mom would chain me to the confines of my room if I expressed my intentions of getting protected to her, I talked to other girls at my school (in the bathroom. Duh.) and learned that the South Carolina (where I lived at the time) Department of Health would provide me with thorough education about birth control, a safe, full gynecological exam, and free birth control.

With absolute terror, I attended the mandatory educational session (with aforementioned boyfriend in tow, who totally deserves credit for holding my hand in a room filled with teenage girls trying to get birth control. Dang. I must’ve been hot shit in the sack… hunh…) The girls in the small classroom and I looked at each other; I recognized one of my sisters’ friends and my immediately thought, “Oh no! What is SHE doing here!? She seemed so nice!” I felt so dirty and ashamed of us. I wasn’t “poor” or “slutty” or “trashy”; I came from a nice family in the suburbs! How did I end up here?! I didn’t tell anybody but my very closest friends, and I cried a lot about how shady the whole thing felt and how guilty I felt for doing this supposedly terrible thing; I wanted my mom to be with me to guide me through this, yet I didn’t dare tell her because I knew she’d be disgusted and embarrassed by me.

Anyway, for the next year-and-change, I kept going back to SCDHEC for checkups and prescription refills. Every time I went, the staff was careful and kind, gentle and comforting, but frank about what I needed and should be considering. I can’t believe I’m praising the South Carolina government, but this program is among one of their best efforts. I was having sex before I put myself on birth control, and I have no doubt that I would’ve continued even if I’d never heard about this program. It was going to happen; I had raging hormones, a boyfriend, and a free schedule. However, where my parents and society’s expectations of a “decent young lady” failed me, the Health Department supported and gave me the resources I needed to continue having healthy sex and a happy life.

When my mom was lecturing me about the inherent evils of sex before marriage after she found out about my foray into doin’ it, I told her I was getting birth control from the government. She gasped, “They can’t do that!!!” and I may’ve laughed at her.

At the time, I actually took for granted what was being given to me for free. In fact, I felt like it was a punishment for being so disgustingly wanton and perverted, instead of looking at it as an incredible gift given by a forward-thinking, post-feminist society. For years I felt ashamed and embarrassed that I’d chosen to sneak around and get birth control from the government, like some trashy loose woman.. or a hooker! (::gaaaaasp!!:::)

Now as an adult, I know, first of all, that prostitutes pay for their own OB/GYNs because they get tested more often than the Department of Health will regulate and, also, they have more money than I did working part-time at the Chick-Fil-A double drive-thru, and secondly, just how much the government saved my ass back then. They knew I was going to start having sex; it’s what hyper-hormonal teenage bodies are intended to do, people. It’s science.

The fact that SCDHEC was right there with information and easily-accessible public birth control information and medicines is both amazing and wonderful to me. I haven’t needed their help in over a decade, but I am so, so very grateful that it was there for me when I needed it, so that that terrified teenage girl with all the social stigmas weighing on her wouldn’t have been strapped to a life of motherhood she would have felt only guilty of. They gave me comfort and someone to talk to about real, pertinent issues that were going on with me and my immediate needs; their female doctors were gentle and informative about my body and what I was going to experience; they gave me a chance to have a happy young adulthood and the freedom to do it on my own. The idea that I ever took that for granted embarrasses me, but I felt like I should find a place to discuss it publicly.

I’m not interested in political parties. I’m not interested in talking about who is lobbying for what and how specific politicians are somehow more amoral than others and how the idiots barking on television about those politicians are fueled by Satan/the Nazi party/Illuminati/Communism. I just want to talk about people who, like me, need information and help and cannot get it from anywhere else except public services. I was given that gift and I believe in an America where everyone else deserves that, too. I would happily give a few extra tax dollars to help a 17 year old girl safely learn about sex and her body with the right tools and information at hand, because others did it for me. It’s just that simple, really.

Luckily, there’s more going on in my life than just a weight-loss regiment. Whew.

~ The Bear had the funniest moment the other day that I think is universally funny and not just my-baby’s-better-than-everyone funny. She’s developed all these words for animals and their respective sounds (Refresher: “Kak! Kak!”= duck/bird, “Eeow” = cat, “RAAR!”= bear, “Ar! Ar!”= dog, “oooo”=cow) which she uses at every opportunity. Well, we’re eating and watching some Powerpuff Girls when a commercial comes on for Zoobooks (which I cannot believe they still make) and suddenly Chloe is going nuts trying to keep up with the melange of animals they’re flashing across the screen. She’s pointing and screaming, “Eeow! Ar! RAAR! Kak! Kak!” desperately trying to keep up and really just sounding like a crazy person mimicking a barnyard. I thought I would die with the giggles but didn’t want to interrupt the moment by trying to find the camera.

Chloe’s been picking up a new word every day and it’s getting hard to keep up as she’s still very very loosely pronouncing these things. For example, every night before she goes to bed, we settle down and watch these old Disney sing-alongs my mom bought for me when I was a kid. This one song about a train came on (Casey Jr. from “Dumbo”) and suddenly she perked up, started pointing at the screen and repeating, “Do! Do! Do!” I kind of thought she was just expressing excitement about the song until the one part when they say “Toot! Toot!” and she did it at the exact same time and then started applauding herself. It was pretty cool.

She’s also making these amazing correlations that are pretty advanced. Yesterday we were watching something with butterflies in it (I swear we’re not constantly in front of the TV) and she looked down at her shirt and pointed to the butterflies along the border and looked up at me in recognition. I was stunned, actually, as the butterflies on the screen didn’t look very much like the ones on her shirt and yet she was still able to not only recognize the similarities but remember that she was wearing something with butterflies on it. I dunno, maybe it’s only impressive to me…

Oh and despite last Sunday’s debacle, she still LOVES to be outside. If we’re not outside at least once a day she goes into hysterics, pointing at the door and sobbing, so we’ve made it a habit to go for a post-nap walk, despite the incredible heat. Yesterday we hit another local park and even though we rode the swing for a few minutes and tried the slide a few times, what she really wanted to do is walk on the mini swinging bridge. And so, for the NEXT HOUR she walked back and forth across the bridge, sometimes going down the stairs and then going back up. When the heat finally got to be too much and she was covered in sweat and had rosy cheeks, I picked her up to take her to the car. Needless to say, she screamed and wriggled around frantically the entire way.

I have to admit that ultimately this makes me really happy. She’s not going to be one of those kids who plants herself in front of the television all day (we’re not doing the video games thing unless it’s a handheld thing and we use it exclusively for road trips. That’s what my mom did and she produced four well-rounded children capable of using their imaginations and easily making new friends. That’s example enough for me) and maybe I can get her into camping and hiking when she gets a little older. This is something I know her dad isn’t going to be happy about, but he’ll get over it.

~ After writing that thing about Hunter S. Thompson I sat down and wrote a blog entry about how pissed I am that what we call the 20th century American canon contains so many whiny, privileged white guys who “rebel” against this society that their fathers have created by turning into lush vagabonds and then basically perpetuating the same selfish, racist, sexist morality they were raised in. That’s not revolutionary. The other thing is that you can see this same behavior in today’s society with bands like Limp Biskit (remember them?), and Disturbed and Nickelback and all that noise. They’re just doing the same thing that Salinger and Thompson and Kerouc did but with more profanity and a different wardrobe. Meanwhile, really talented writers are given the shaft and aren’t considered neo-classic lit because the list is dominated by these carbon copies of nothing important. Gross.

ANYWAY, I wrote a rather lengthy essay about it and when I was done I realized that, with a little research and editing, it might not be terrible. I might look in to getting it published somewhere notable, which would be new and different from me. It’s scary to know you’re going to start getting rejection letters from nationally-recognized publications as opposed to just little indie ones.

~ Also, I’m having another essay published in next month’s ‘Sasee’. While I’m glad to have the publicity and the opportunity for a broader audience, I’m starting to get sick of submitting these really self-indulgent essays that focus on my overanalyzed feelings about stuff that only pertains to me. I’ve gotta start pushing myself.

~ Which leads me to this Second City writing class I’m taking. Now, before the class started, I wrote the professor and told him to give it to me straight. I’m poor and I want to get my money’s worth, so if something I submit blows, I want to know. I told him not to worry about hurting my feelings because as long as it was objective constructive feedback, I was grateful to have it. And honestly, he’s been great about pointing out my flaws and telling me how to fix them and, even though he doesn’t have to waste time on it, he’s been complimenting my strengths.

However, it seems I’m incapable of writing for stage. After a few weeks of this, everything I’ve submitted has received the message, “Great dialogue but there’s no action or showing of these emotions or events. These could be acted in the dark and have the same effect.” Even when I try to do things bigger and more adventurously, it always comes out the same way. I guess being used to writing for text hasn’t lent itself to creating real activity for people and I always feel limited by dialogue choices in a script because it’s so stripped down. I feel like my mind is just not capable of thinking that way, kind of like how I do in math. When I’m doing/writing the problem/script I think it’s okay but when the professor points out what I’ve done wrong I’m always smacking myself in the forehead and thinking, “Yes! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” And honestly, I have no idea.

And it’s starting to get a little frustrating, especially considering how long I’ve been involved with theatre, how long I’ve been writing, and the fact that this is just a beginner’s class.

~ I have my first audition in 3 years on Sept. 9. I’m really excited but kind of freaking out as I feel like I’m really really out of practice. I spent years upon years learning techniques and methods and all that and I still feel like they’ve evaporated from my mind over time, even though I did a lot of student scenework in my last few years of undergrad. Plus, as strange as this sounds, my voice has shifted a lot and I’m not sure where it sounds best as far as the “showtunes” sound goes. I used to have a whole repertoire from which to pull audition material but when I was trying it out this week it just sounded awful. That seems kind of weird considering I know exactly what songs I can do at any karaoke bar but I realize I can’t get up and sing “Dream On” if I’m vying for a part in “South Pacific” or “A Christmas Carol.” Although I did think about singing the first part of Green Day’s “Hitchin’ a Ride” for it as it comes across as very showtune-y.
:::sigh::: At this point I just don’t know. But I have a few weeks.

~One of the perks of our new town is that the local cable package includes LOGO! So I can finally watch Rosie’s “Big Gay Sketch Show”! Hooray!

~ Chloe is walking all over the house these days which is more exciting than I can possibly describe. She also LOVES dancing to any form of music available (musical toys, commercials, etc.) but nothing makes her shake her little behind quite like Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” which we listen to gleefully at least 20 times a day. She likes the rest of MJ’s “Thriller” album [which I have on vinyl!] just okay, but when the “Mama-Se Mama-Sah, Mama Coo-Sahs” start, she starts clapping and shrieking like she knows she’s the happiest baby on the planet.

Also, she’s talking up a storm. Her best words are still “Mamamama” and “Dadadada” (respectively), but she’s also learned that ducks (“Dahs!”) say “Quack!” (“Kek! Kek! Kek!”) and that Benny (“Bee!”) is a cat (“Kah!”) and that my mother is “Granny” (“Gaan! Gaan!”) It’s all terribly exhilerating. She also babbles pretty much incessantly (“GoGah! Woodleweedlewoodle! Deedledoodle! Gaaahhdaaahh…Loodleloodleloodle” She’s getting to expert level on glottal sounds and we feel she may be a champion yodeler by the age of 3), but my mother says she only does this when I’m around and, when she’s left in the company of strangers, she’s mostly just silent and smiley.

~ On a whim, I ordered the “Ocean’s Twelve” soundtrack for supercheap at Amazon.com. Say what you will about the overzealously shameless “Oceans” movie franchise, I honestly think the soundtrack might be one of the most underrated compilations ever created. Seriously, tres cool.

~ My free trial week at WeightWatchers.com is over and, even though I totally screwed up the program for two days in a row, I still managed to weigh in 6 lbs. less than I did last week. Holy crap. That’s the kind of progress I can work with. (And yes, I’m shelling out enough dough for a three-month run.)

~ This morning I woke up at 7 a.m., fed the baby, got her ready for travel, slapped on some eye makeup, got together all my legal documents and excitedly hopped in my car to drive 20 minutes to the county seat and finally register for my small business license. Turns out today is the same national holiday they’ve celebrated on the Monday of every birthday week since I was born…

Hunh… Go figure.

~ I don’t know why I get all shaky and nervous when I submit fiction works to the 10-12 contests I enter annually, but I uber-courageously [insert eyeroll here] kicked off 2009 with my first two submissions last week. Suffice to say I was so anxious, I nearly dragged my keyboard under the desk to hide out when I hit the “Submit” button. Why can’t they award prizes for bravery, no matter how awful the fiction attempts may be?

~ Because I’m using WordPress format on this blog, I have the privilege of tracking who comes to read my scribblings here and I’m always amused at what sort of ridiculous searches bring readers to the site. Aside from Googling my name, it seems there are a ton of people searching for the keywords “Marilyn Monroe’s Chanel ad” (duh), “naked women” (also, duh), and, mostly, “naked feminists”…

…Wait, what?! There’s a market for that!?! Well, looks like I’ll have to go looking for photos of the days when Gloria Steinem was working undercover as a Playboy Bunny. We may be able to sell ads here with the sort of traffic that’ll garner.

(Mrs. Steinem, if, by some slim chance, you’re somehow lost on the Web and reading this, I’m kidding, of course. Although, for the record, I think your tirade against Playboy and Hefner in the 1970′s was a bit ridiculous and insulted the free will and intelligence of women more than it supported our protection. This being said, I still respect your work and appreciate that you’ve grown a sense of humor and a willingness to marry in your older age. From a next-generation neo-feminist, thank you for your efforts, angrily executed though they may have been.)

~ I’m so excited about the inauguration tomorrow I can’t even stand it. If the permeating excitement of November 5th wasn’t intoxicating enough, I have a feeling that tomorrow will be one giant global party and I’m looking forward to riding the worldwide energy all day. For my 26th birthday, I think I’m getting some patriotism for a change.

I’m effing sick of this “My husband is an idiot! Isn’t that hiLARious?!” mentality. Actually, I’ve been pretty sick of the whole male-bashing idea of feminism for a while now, but, in my new life as a domesticated housewife, I’ve become increasingly aware and appalled at this “My husband blows; let me tell you why…” societal norm that allows women to publicly bash the spouse they specifically chose for themselves.

First of all, it’s exhausting and boring to listen to women talk about how their husbands screw everything up all the time or snore or fall asleep watching the game or fall into a thousand other male stereotypes women seem to love dredging up ad nauseum. Secondly, it’s degrading as shit, really, and makes the housewife doing the bitching look like an uncreative, ungrateful, whining cow. And thirdly, it makes women in general look like we can’t pull our heads out of domesticity and quit bitching about men’s inevitable quirks even though really, they as a gender made a lot of progress in the last few years.

Alright, maybe this tradition started with housewives of yore who were sick of being stifled and bitched amongst themselves in whispers while their husbands went out and held jobs and voted and owned land, etc. And I can understand that sort of passive resistance to an extent. But the last hundred years have shown a massive amount of change for the ways that women have been accepted as equals into a male-dominated society and I’d like to think that women’s mentalities would have shifted into a little more gratitude, at least on the homefront. In American society women are allowed to vote, we’re allowed to start and own businesses, we’re allowed to sue a guy for telling us we look nice, we’re allowed to get raises above men if we deserve them, we’re allowed to do pretty much whatever we want to do and yet here we are whining and bitching at the poor grandsons of the ones who actually made us feel repressed in the first place.

We get it; American husbands are burpy, farty, car-loving, beer-drinking, sports-watching, tits-appreciating, nacho-eating, tool-wielding creatures who are gloriously unaware of what to say to appease women and sometimes fall asleep after ejaculating. We effing know, okay? And, with the success of shows like Tim Allen’s Home Improvement and Comedy Central’s The Man Show, every man is aware of it, too, and even invited to accept and celebrate it. Mind you, this early-90′s “I’m a MAN, dammit!” movement never condoned abusing women, never supported dishonesty or infidelity, never advocated developing a drinking problem and dropping out of life or becoming a belligerently violent sonofabitch. This movement simply acknowledged the dynamics of men in today’s society and celebrated the various avenues of the masculine mystique. And that was perfectly okay.

But women had to swoop in and argue that somehow it wasn’t okay to just be different, just be a man. To watch such situation comedies (that are effing awful, ohbytheway) like Everybody Loves Raymond and The King of Queens (both of which I still cannot understand the appeal), we’re inundated with the idea that because men are sometimes selfish (who isn’t?), sometimes awkward (again with the “who isn’t?”) and sometimes misguided (again…) that gives their female spouses the right to publicly criticize and humiliate them for the sake of comedy. These emotionally taxing, painfully relentless shows pictured women berating their husbands (both of whom were really pretty good guys in the grand scheme of things) for having basic human flaws and the husband just sitting there and taking it in hopes to just shut their wife up for two seconds.

Um, this is normal? And nobody’s cited this as the cause of our rising divorce rate?

The thing is, nobody seems to worry about whether or not a man’s feelings have been hurt. If a man accidentally mentions that his wife or significant other may have put on a few, he must spent weeks groveling, but if a woman makes a degrading comment to her group of cackling friends about her husband’s beer gut, he’s expected to sit there and take it. “Like a man.”

Something seems very very wrong about that.

And it’s everywhere, and shockingly accepted in popular culture as well. If I go into a little women’s boutique, inevitably there will be some dishtowel or coaster or tiny decorative housesign dedicated to perpetuating some male-bashing stereotype like “Soap! It’s a man-repellent!” On my drive to the library, there’s a sign for some Tool Warehouse that advertises itself as “Daycare for Men!” It’s just this whole social undertone that screams “HAHA! Isn’t that hilarious!? Men are so incompetent that we can’t leave them alone for five minutes without giving them something to occupy themselves! They’re completely clueless about everything and we have to herd them like cattle or they’ll never get anything done!”

We call this normal. Some call it feminism. I call it sick.

I used to subscribe to it, too. Because of the married women I’d watched during my upbringing, I thought it was okay to publicly “pick on” my significant other about his faults. I thought telling a room about my lover’s shortcomings for the sake of a joke was perfectly okay, even admirably comic. I never stopped to consider that if I was with a man who wasn’t affected by this sort of passive emotional warfare at all, maybe he wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be with in the first place. Maybe I wanted to be with a man who was sensitive to feelings of mine AND his. Maybe I wanted a man who stood up for himself when he was publicly emasculated. Maybe I wanted a man who was assertive enough to tell me to back the fuck off when I was hurting his name, even if it was within a group of my friends. I never ever stopped to consider that I wanted someone who wouldn’t tolerate inequality from my side, just like I would from his.

The reason strippers are so appealing is obvious: they’ve got great bodies that they’re willing to gracefully show off. But the reason strippers can stay in business with one man or another far longer than just one dance is because they know that men want to feel wanted. This seems like a basic enough principle, but when a man is belittled and emasculated by a nagging wife who doesn’t listen, it’s very tempting to pay someone a little money to make him feel attractive, funny, clever, intelligent, and important again. Most of these men realize they’re being played by the dancer for his money and conversation per song (and the ones that don’t can be found scouring the Craigslist “Missed Connections” ads looking for that stripper who inevitably fell madly in love with him right back… poor guys), but apparently the need to feel appreciated is just that powerful. It’s obviously not about the sex so much and, sometimes, it’s not even about the looks on the girl. Many many lonely, unappreciated men flock to strip clubs to feel like they’re worthy of the attention of an attractive woman.

Now, I’m not advocating men leaving their wives and children every night to sit and chat with exotic dancers, but it seems to me that women would work to understand a little better why men seem so drawn to such a torturous, expensive place where they pay hard-earned money to get teased and not get off. I mean, if it was all about looking at beautiful women’s bodies, there are far less expensive ways than sitting in a smoke-filled nudey bar with a bunch of horny guys. Obviously, the human interaction must have something to do with it. And most women would be floored to learn how many men go to strip clubs and pay for access to the Couch Room, only to sit and talk with a stripper until his wallet is empty. The numbers are staggering.

The truth is, everyone needs to feel appreciated. Women love to publicly whine about how underappreciated they are but don’t stop to consider that maybe they’re actually fueling the problem with their own man-bashing. Women love to point fingers and make excuses about how “He started it with his [fill in the blank-itude]” and “Well if he didn’t [fill in the blank] then I wouldn’t feel this way.” but the truth is, I’m sure it started a long time before that. In each couple the lack of respect needed to belittle the other started with one person or the other and varies, but the all-encompassing mentality that it’s NEVER okay to talk shit about your wife but ALWAYS okay to do the same about your husband is stagnant in the social consciousness.

Feminism originally was women fighting to be seen as equals; so how in the hell do we expect to achieve that if we won’t treat men like our equals? I mean, even if we were to believe that men really are inferior (which I don’t), shouldn’t we at least be teaching them through example? We’re busy teaching our kids that it’s okay to be different. And men and women are allowed to be different, too; that’s what heterosexuals tend to enjoy most, actually. (And what homosexuals have learned to appreciate as well.) We’re allowed to have different interests and differing opinions and differing sexual fantasies and different habits of cleanliness (… or not. It’s really everyone’s personal prerogative.)

But blanket statements made toward the men of America are just as backward-moving and ignorant as those outdated chauvinist assholes who still make them about women. Period. And speaking ill of one’s male counterpart is just as offensive and intolerable as a man slandering his wife publicly. Period. (Just because men don’t want to start arguments in their defense doesn’t make these things untrue.)

Why do women assume that talking about how stupid or ill-equipped their husbands are makes them look more intelligent or powerful? If anything, a woman bringing out her spouse’s faults makes her look like more of an imbecile for choosing and staying with such an obvious moron in the first place. Additionally, it gives the appearance that she is perfectly happy with stagnation and living with someone she doesn’t respect and appears to despise. How delightful!

It’s far past time to stop these WASPily hateful comments and to start encouraging women to speak well about their husbands/significant others if they want the same in return. Not that a woman can be blamed for her husband running off and having an affair, but it certainly makes a bitchy, emasculatory woman seem like less of a convincing victim when it happens to her.

Mark my words, if I ever become a sex therapist, the first thing I’m going to have every couple do is dress up like a stripper and a strip-club patron and have her pretend to be interested in his every word, maneuver, and cheesy line without so much as a twinge of disgust. If that doesn’t light some fires, I’ll close my practice.