Quodlibets

No Reservations

If there is a person who is better suited to blogging than Anthony Bourdain, I'm not sure who that person is.  I hope that he spends lots and lots of time creating amusing rants over at Michael Ruhlman's blog. 

If you're a food person at all, you probably know who Bourdain is (and if not, try checking out his books, which are super-duper entertaining), but you might not know that Ruhlman is one of those important behind-the-scenes food writer people.  He's not a famous chef, but he writes about them.  He's probably best friends with half the famous well-known chefs in America.  He's also doing a very hot Q&A with Grant Achatz at Steppenwolf here in Chicago this coming Sunday.  (I haven't been to Alinea, but this is gonna be ther year.  I'm going for my birthday, one way or another.  And somehow, I'm going to get a picture of every dish I eat, and then I'm going to post a blow-by-blow account here.  Okay, I'm done with the affirmations now.)  I'm not going to that Q&A, because as I mentioned, I haven't been to Alinea, and well, I'd rather sit at home.  So sue me.

Anyway, check out Bourdain's entries if you like him.

"I just wanna hear your voice, I just wanna see your face"

Whenever I read a book that I feel is speaking to me, I post-it note pages that have sentences or paragraphs on them that make me think harder than the book is already making me think.  And I'll admit that from the moment I picked up Jennifer Baumgardner's Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, I knew I'd be post-iting the shit out of the book.  And I did, all the way to the very end of the short book.  15 post-its, which has gotta be a record for me.  There's even a post-it on the second-to-last page. 

Perhapst this is not obvious, but it is obvious to me:  I am a bisexual.  It doesn't feel weird to say that, except that I never do.  I never name myself with the word bisexual, and I'm not sure why.  As Jan Clausen is quoted in the book: "It's certainly the nearest label for my sexuality in one word, and on that level, I don't really mind it..."  In fact, I never say that I am bisexual because what I almost always say is that I am specifically S__sexual.  I mean to imply that right now, my overt sexuality is moored to S; I'm sure I look at other people, but in terms of sex, well, that's all tied up with S now.  I never make any predictions about what would happen if we broke up, partly because I hate the idea of us breaking up and partly because I have no freaking clue. 

Saying that I turned to men because of my horrible, awful relationship with a woman simplifies what is really going on in the situation, but the core of that statement probably holds more truth than I'd care to admit.  And the reasons I fell for S are complicated, as are the reasons I originally fell for my ex (I think I'm going to refer to her as Giraffe), but there is also truth in the statement that I was looking for something that wasn't her, something that wasn't going to hurt me.  And yet that doesn't at all take into account the complicating factor that as the book points out over and over again, I want to have a gay straight relationship.  All the best things about my relationship with Giraffe--the equality, the sense of understanding each other implicitly, the softness--I can't deny that I've sought that with S.  I know that it's true, even if I wasn't conscious of it when I started building the relationship.  It's perplexingly hard to accomplish, because I've been forced to confront that there is also a truth to the idea that men and women simply do not communicate on the same levels.  I yell a lot more in this relationship, because sometimes I feel like I must scream to be heard. 

Which has to be one of the biggest, baddest fears out of all of this being with a man--how to hang onto a feminism that was born out of the love of women.  It's been insanely hard for me to understand how to hang onto that radical part of myself while I engage in a relationship that by its very nature isn't radical at all.  I think that when Baumgardner talks about the idea of being with men as "reverting to old, unhealthy behaviors" she's on to something big.  I can't say it's a struggle every day, but it's definitely a struggle.  Sometimes it feels like a betrayal of myself to be with someone who simply can't ever know what being a woman is like.  I love S more dearly than I ever loved Giraffe (and I'm not afraid to say it), but there are things he will never be for me, that I feel that a woman could.  I'm not sure how cold that sounds, but I know that the flip is true; that there are some things that S is for me that a woman never could be. 

And I'll go ahead and admit it here; there are times when I can't ever imagine being with a woman again, because of certain mechanical aspects of certain intimate experiences.  Plenty of woman have expressed that thought before me, and I'm not the last.  There's something about it that's right, but I can't say that I'd never be able to experience that rightness with a woman.  Or maybe it's that there's a different rightness to being with a woman.  It's going to be incredibly hard to understand just what I mean by this to someone who hasn't experienced both same sex and opposite sex romantic entanglements, because it just is.  It's hard to understand how you could trade one rightness for another, but in being with man, I've done exactly that.  And I'm far happier now than I ever was with Giraffe, though to be fair to both of us, that relationship was dogged by something far greater than bisexual politics, something beyond sex.  (Namely alcoholism, if I'm being 100% honest.)

The whole thing is impossible, when it comes right down to it, to untangle.  It's hard to make a current relationship into an abstraction, into a situation, into words.  I can very easily voice my feelings about same sex relationships, but they're not wholly informed by just being gay; and I can't easily voice my feelings about opposite sex relationships because I'm still on this sort of long walk with S through the territories of one.  I don't know how it will be three, four, five years down the road.  I don't know what I'll miss or what I'l crave.  Perhaps one of the absolute best descriptions I've ever read about this situation, the loving a woman and then jumping to loving a man one, are in this book:

"[she] refers to being with women as like living in London: 'I want to really be in America' she says now, 'but I will always love and miss London.  It's wonderful to visit London.'"

It may seem very superficial to put it that way, but the minute I read it, I identified with it completely.  I mean, it seems 100% spot-on to me.  It is essentially the way I see my own love life right now.  I really, really want to be where I am; I also understand that there is something else out there that's nice.  Just not as nice as where I am.

(I meant to talk about more than this.  This doesn't even touch on things like the idea of a bisexual community, or how loving a woman informs relationships with men in a totally different way than before.  I had thought to talk about how my sense of self changed fundamentally from my earlier experience, and I even wanted to talk a little bit about how power has changed in my perceptions because of my past experience.  These are all topics the book touches on and goes into and made me think hard hard hard.  Maybe later, or tomorrow.  Now I need to go back to working.)

Sweet Fat Cat

Allie, 1989?-2007

Grey's Anatomy (phew)

So she lived.  Which we mostly knew she would, right?  I didn't guess that Ellis would die though, and as for the rest of it, well...the show was pretty light on other subplots.  They were there, but they were less meaty.  I'm sure that the episodes after this will be subplot-laden, however, since they won't include Meredith-in-purgatory scenes.  I have to admit, though, that I loved the return of Denny, since I adored Denny.  I also really enjoy the Izzie/George thing, because I love that it's showing the depth of friendship that is possible between a man and a woman, though I think it's sort of sad (but also sadly realistic) that Izzie is being the cliched friend who thinks her male friend picked the wrong woman.  Speaking of friendships, I'm on the fence about Mer and Christina's friendship, because on the one hand, it's wonderful to see two women in such a close, loving relationship.  Christina's worry for Mer was touching and lovely, but I wish that the two women talked about something than men, just once in a while.  I don't know that they've had a moment without men yet--though I can't recall every single conversation they've had.

Otherwise, I shouldn't be allowed to watch Grey's, because it makes me weepy and scared all at once.  It really brings mortality home, and makes me scared to lose S.  As sad as it is, I am deathly afraid that every time S walks out the door, it will be the last time I see him.  It's irrational and weird, but it is what it is.  I'm just afraid.  And Grey's makes me more afraid, because it seems like someone's always in danger of losing someone they love. 

(Look, I'm not going to discuss this fear of mortality any further because I could spend paragraphs talking about it and nothing will make it go away.  I don't wish to discuss it further.  Like I said, it is what it is.)

The Sordid Doings in 7C

Ummm, I did something bad.  I don't know if you've ever been to the East Coast, or had a friend from there, but if you have, then the minute I type the next two words, you'll at least understand why I did what I did.  Tasty Kakes.

Yes, that's right, I ordered a whole big bunch of Tasty Kakes online, and if we like them very much, we're gonna order more.  S has never had them.  This is a man who loves snack cakes of all kinds, who can eat Hostess products and ask for more, and he's never had a Tasty Kake.  I'm going to try to share my Butterscotch Krimpets with him, but I'm making no promises, because those Krimpets are the best in the world.

Once upon a time, I had a friend from Pennsylvania, and she used to get them sent to her by friends and family, and every once in a while, she'd share some.  And then, like a strange mirage, Tasty Kakes appeared in the Midwest, and it seemed like just as soon, they were gone.  I remember buying a few boxes of product back then, but I haven't had a Tasty Kake since.  And you just don't forget Tasty Kakes, after eating them.  There's nothing here that's remotely as good in the snack cake category. 

And I don't know, maybe it's the diet, maybe it's the winter blues, but something in me just snapped on Monday and I went online and before I knew it I was spending money to have a bunch shipped here.  It's not good for me, and it'll be even worse for the diet, but I think tomorrow might be Tasty Kake feast day here at the Efromano apartment.  S has NO idea what's in store for him.  I predict instant addiction.  (Which is also why this is very bad.  Tasty Kakes might be a very, very expensive habit.)

The Flu

I think a workplace is unhealthy when unhealthy employees feel so compelled to come to work, they'll risk getting their coworkers sick.  The stomach flu is sort of making the rounds here, and today one of my co-workers said that her child was throwing up yesterday, and she wasn't feeling so hot, and yet, here she was!  At work. 

I've never worked in a place where it was okay to be sick, and I've also never worked at a place that didn't ration sick time like it were the most precious asset on Earth.  And I've read article after article about how fatigued and sick employees actually cost their employees money.  And no employer I've ever known has encouraged its sick employees to stay home.  It pisses me off, because I don't want to be sick anymore than you do, but by coming here, to the workplace, with your germs and diseases, you're putting all of us at risk.

I've seen employees being reamed out for taking sick time, or for asking to leave work early because they were sick.  It's never happened to me, but then again, I'm minus sick time (like, I have to earn my way back to 0 hours of sick time) because of my illness in December.  I'm working under the assumption that as of right now, if I get sick, I can't take sick time.  I'd either have to come to work sick, or stay home without pay.  I can tell you right now that any day of the week I'm staying home, because working only seems to make me sicker, and I have enough respect for my job and the people I work with to not bring my disease here, and spread it around.  I don't think my work is the same when I'm sick, either, and I hate doing shoddy work.

(And you know, I'm not talking about mental health days, or just plain cheating.  I think that you can generally tell when someone is sick, or has been sick.  You know, when they're coughing up a lung in their office, you can be pretty sure that something's not right.  Or when all they're eating all day is chicken broth--yeah, that makes you suspicious that something's not right.  In fact, it feels to me like the people who are actually getting sick are paying for the people who aren't, and who are using sick time as personal time, thus making employers reluctant to be generous with it, and reluctant to be nice to their sick employees when they do make it back to work.  It's another one of those blanket rules that harm the good people.)

Either way, I think I'll reach the zenith of my working life when I work at a place that doesn't treat getting sick as a personal failing, which as we all know, it's not.  Sometimes people just get sick.  It'd be nice to know it wouldn't hurt me professionally.

Giving up the ghost (or illusion of one)

I was going to read The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, but when I started reading it, I realized it wasn't speaking to me at all.  I don't need a book to convince me not to believe in a God, because I'm already pretty much there.  I've talked about not being a Christian before, and I think I've even mentioned my phonebooth in the sky fantasty (complete with a literary elephant), but I never can remember how much I've actually talked about when it comes to God.  My history is peppered with God, because of who my friends are, and after high school, I stopped thinking about it so intensively because it was a freedom not to have to fight for the right to be atheist or agnostic (or to go to hell, as I was told repeatedly).  I don't remember the specifics of any of those conversations between very passionate, afraid Christians and me, but I suspect that there was a lot of handwringing on their part, and a lot of questions forced to make me confront how empty my life was without God.

I don't remember when it happened, but I once told my HSBF that I believed in people the way she believed in God, and I know she was trying to be gentle (but came off as triumphant) when she said, "And what happens when people let you down?"  Because no shit, they tend to do that.  People'll let you down at every little corner of your life.  I'm not that naive.  I never said that I believed people were good or that people were faithful or that you could put your faith in people.  I just said that I believed in people.  That in balance, at the end of the day, people would generally give you something to believe in.  I guess I still think that, on good days.

I have a lot of beliefs, in fact, though most of them are trivial and inconsequential.  (Although I'm not quite certain that any belief is more than those two things, to be honest.  Isn't a belief something that can't be proven?  As such, can they ever be things that mean much in our lives?  We may cling to them, but do they get us through the day-to-day?)  I don't know that I can list those beliefs, like a to-do list or a grocery list.  A lot of what I believe seems to be the kind of crap that introspective college students (or high schoolers, I guess) come up with when they want to sound profound, stuff about the essential meaning/nature of life.  Half the time, I'm not sure if I really do believe what I'm espousing, or if I'm only espousing it because at that moment, it sounds very good.  I used to thrive on philosophical discussions like that, but now I find them vaguely troubling and useless.  Who cares whether or not there's a God?  Who cares about souls and afterlife and things that are so abstract as to be absolutely meaningless? 

I'm discovering that I don't.  I don't care about those things.  I mostly care about going about my day in a way that feels true to myself.  I mostly care about loving where I am, and who I am, and who I am with.  That feels more meaninful to me than worrying about what the ultimate purpose of all this is, because when you're worried about that shit, you're missing the actual stuff happening to you, with you, around you.  I suppose that very essentially, I'm not a very philosophical person (In fact, I hated philosophy with a passion.  Took one class, as a freshwoman, and hated it.  It's probably misplaced hatred, at least towards the academic discipline, that happened because when I tacitly admitted I was an atheist in my phil. class, the class jumped on me, incredulous that anyone could not believe in God.  I think I was pretty much done with it after that.  Stupid frosh, at a Catholic school, saying she doesn't believe in God.  My fault, but still.) and really don't care about those questions, when it comes down to it.

It's actually rather surprising, as I always thought I did care about that stuff.  So yeah, thanks Richard Dawkins, for making me realize that I don't care.  That I don't want to waste anymore time contemplating things that ultimately lead me nowhere.

Supa-Tasta

I think S is a supertaster.  I'd never heard of the concept before this weekend, but I mentioned it off-hand to him, and he ran with it.  Essentially, the idea is that he would have more taste receptors on his tongue that us normal tasters.  There are a few ways to test the hypothesis--one including Sweet N' Lo--and I'm sure we'll try one at some point.  But a lot of the hallmarks of supertasters are present in S.  He doesn't like vegetables, olives, coffee, or alcoholic beverages, all of which are super taster dislikes.  I kind of thought that S didn't like vegetables because his mom cooked crappy veggies when he was a kid, but if this supertaster thing is true, veggies actually do taste bad to him, probably way more bitter than they taste to normal tasters.

Isn't that interesting?  Living with S and his food preferences is always interesting, because he's so picky about food, and it's kind of a relief to learn that it's not just that he's being a big butthole about food.  You know, it gets exasperating to live with someone who recoils from every green food on the planet, and it's incredibly hard to cook for that.  Which is pretty much why S and I eat separate meals every night.  And it's fine, it's working for us, but at least now I know why.  Like I said, it's a relief.

Here are some taster links, in case you're curious if you might be a supertaster.
-Supertaster on Wikipedia
-Supertaster quiz
-Supertaster test
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Not-quite-Grey's Anatomy?

Now look, you can hate Grey's Anatomy all you want.  (I know you're out there, haters.)  You can think it's the stupidest, worst-written piece of soap-opera-y trash on the planet.  You can think it's utter hogwash designed to reach the female populace, thus ruining your chances to watch 30 Rock, because your girlfriend insists on Grey's.  (S!)  And that's just fine with me.  Because you're probably one of those people that hates romantic comedies too, and you probably think they're some of the most schlocky, terrible movies made.  That's also okay. 

The thing is, I like those movies.  And I happen to really enjoy Grey's.  I mean, the kind of enjoy that includes being so involved with a show it makes you cry.  And look, you can make fun of me about it, or you can just admit that there must be something to it, if it's got people so dang involved they're crying.  You don't have to like it, but you've gotta see it.  I cried when Denny died, and I cried when George's dad died, and dammit, I was crying last night.  I think it's mostly the Christina factor--at least, last night it was. 

But what I really can't believe, and I really hope this isn't true--I really can't believe that Meredith is dead.  I can't imagine they'll continue to produce a show called Grey's Anatomy without Grey.  It sure would be shocking, but more than that, it would be crap.  And keeping her around as a ghost?  As much as I love the show, I'm not sure I can go there.  And I'm not sure the show can go there.  I'm almost 100% certain that Denny and what's-his-butt the blown up paramedic will end up somehow ushering Meredith back to the land of the living.  And I'm not so sure I like that bent on things either.  As much as I don't love Meredith on the show--I'm a George-Addison-Callie-Christina fan--I don't quite see the show existing without her.  I feel pretty certain she can't go. 

Now, I'd like to hear from you Grey's fans (fans only!  I don't care what you haters think.).  Do you think Meredith is really dead?  If not, how does she come back?  And if she is, how does the show go on?  Anyone?

Commute Notes

• Dude, if you can't handle the wall on LSD, get in one of the middle lanes.  Don't drive half in my lane and muck traffic up.  Also, screw you if you can't stay in your lane on the s-curve.  It's not THAT scary, and it's especially not scary if you're in the far right lane, going north.  That lane is the widest on the s-curve in the first turn, and you've got all the room in the world.  So a) stay in your damn lane and b) don't go 5 mph around that turn. 
• One of the greatest joys of my day is the last bit of my drive home, the bit that happens after I get on Lower Wacker.  If traffic is light enough, Lower Wacker is like a curvy playground for your car.  I love it.  And then as you're shooting onto LSD, going north, there is nothing quite like the pleasure of accelerating up that ramp and seeing NO traffic on the drive, and being able to literally cross four lanes of the road while going 50.  And if the sky is blue?  And the sun is shining?  It's like my heart will burst from the happiness of it. 
• Also, and this isn't so much a commute note, but a general note about driving in the city.  Which just happens to be one of the most frustrating things ever.  Seriously, people drive like fucknuts here.  I saw so much rude and horrible and dangerous behavior on Tuesday that I was shocked.  People just showing blantant disregard for the fact that snow changes the way you have to drive.  I saw one guy turn right on red with traffic literally almost on top of him from the green light.  Someone had to slam on their brakes in the blowing snow--thank god it was a car that probably had 4-wheel drive.  But jesus.
• That wasn't the point of the note.  The point of the note was the buses.  The buses do not so much obey the traffic laws.  I've seen so many buses run stop signs, I can't even tell you.  Now, when I see one coming towards me through a four-way, I just take it for granted that they aren't stopping.  Sad, huh?  It's dangerous and just plain wrong.  I don't care if they're running late on their routes.

Otherwise, I do love my new car.  It saved me approximately $60-70 dollars in gas in the first month.  I still chuckle when I fill up my car.  It's delightful.  (If you see me in it though, ignore the powdery white crap all over it.  Three snows, no car wash.  I'm workin' on it.