The Car is a Man: On the Gender of Automobiles

This is actually a comment I did some months back (with some edits), on this post http://thisisby.us/index.php/content/man__love, but I think it is an interesting question. Do we instinctively apply gender to the industry around us, and what does that gender application mean to us, especially women? Is it a man's world? How long can one survive in machine city? And how important have our machines become that they have taken on the life of a human, or at least an animal ("my car died" "she's having trouble with her engine" "Gotta get her oil changed") and why are we always calling cars shes?

I have a drawing of mine on my wall of a red car. Next to the red car, in childish script, are the words "the car is a man." My parents came to visit my NY apartment some months ago, and my father looked at it and said, "the car is a man?" in way of looking for an explanation. I looked at my father and shrugged.

The truth is the thought came to me as if a message from god on a walk home to my apartment in Manhattan one summer night. I was crossing at a red light, thinking about how much faith I had in the driver who was stopped there, how one could choose to step on the gas and I would be at their mercy. True, if I survived I could sue them and make a pretty penny, but I was overwhelmed in that moment by the trust I was placing in this driver--HE wasn't going to do that to me. I couldn't see him as I passed in front of his car and it wasn't until I was stepping safely onto the other curb that I glanced back to look at him. HE was a SHE, and at that moment I thought, yeah, sure, the driver is a woman, but the car is a man. I have never figured out whether that statement--the car is a man--was global, or specific to this incident, but I think about it a lot. There are a lot of cars here in Manhattan, and some trucks too, and I don't know the gender of most of them. It takes an intimacy (placing your life in a car's hands by driving it, riding in it, walking in front of it) to know a car like that.

In New York, the car is a stranger; an ever-present, loud stranger, of indiscriminate gender. The people here a much the same.

Stuff, can't live with it, can't throw it out

Two years ago at a dinner party, some friends and I were having an impassioned conversation on what we could do to improve conditions in our country. I stated at that dinner party, to the great dismay of my friends, that the most patriotic thing one could do at this moment in time, is to buy second hand. I have made a life of, and often considered making a career of, thrift. My friend Amy and I toyed with the idea of a TV show on how you can create the latest looks, not at Macy's or Bloomingdale's, or Nordstroms, and not even at Filene's, but at your local thrift stores. Imagine my shock, when I was chosen to pose for a piece in Lucky magazine. That day I was wearing many of my thrift store finds, so I thought they liked my look. I went to the shoot, though, only to find that they wanted nothing to do with my thriftiness, and instead dressed me to the nines in clothes I could never afford--wait, I thought they wanted me for my innovative style? Nope, turns out I was just a dummy, a placeholder for REALLY expensive things.

And I knew that other gals like me, who get paid decently, but not well enough to afford all the things they put me in, will read that magazine, and maybe even feel a little behind because, hey, that girl can afford those clothes, why can't I? Trust me gals, better to be wanting than to be a dress up doll for overrated advertising (a.k.a., fashion magazines).

But, I digress, verily. Let's forget for a moment the feeling of inadequacy that modern advertising, and now ALL the media rely on, and get back to buying second hand. Two years after my statement, a friend of mine directed me to this video called The Story of Stuff.

It is a shocking tour through the journey of the stuff we buy. The little cartoon images of people working around the clock to buy the things they are working around the clock to make, gives you a keen insight into the hamster wheel we are all on. But who is going to stop this hamster wheel? What, pray tell, can we do about it? Because, if we join the Reverend Billy, and The Church of Stop Shopping, won't we take bread from the hands of our fellow down-and-outers? People will be quick to blame you for taking the jobs of the little man, because we all know that when profits are down, the CEO's salary is not.

Well, I don't have an answer yet, but I can tell you this much. We need to stop living in denial of the slavery of stuff. Which leads me to my utter annoyance with the media and the mind control game that has been played on us for many years now. If you think this is just the way human kind is, think again. This mentality, though easy to create, has nevertheless, been created. Let me give you two examples of people who have directed our economy this way:

1. Victor Lebow: He was a retail analyst in the 1950s. I am not sure, but I imagine that Victor Lebow was one of the first retail analysts, because there was a time when marketing a product meant marketing the product. Our current marketing aim, is to market the need, not the product. Let's take for example, an advertisement for an antidepressant. I don't know about you, but every time I see one of these, I think, "Oh, maybe I DO need that. Life is hard, and I can't always seem to keep upbeat. Perhaps that little blob of a guy with the cloud over his head is right. I am depressed." Well, our friend Victor Lebow said it pretty succinctly, when he put it like this:

"Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

In other other words, we need to make sure that the consumers can keep up with the manufacturing. We must keep this hamster wheel spinning. It is very important that we, the people, believe we need all the things these guys have us spinning our wheels to make, in order to make more money, in order to buy more stuff. Hamster wheel. Need I say more?

No, but I will.

2. Interesting marketing guy #2, the invention of mind control. If you haven't seen this, make sure you watch it. This is the tale of Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is considered the father of marketing as we know it. Check this video out. Suffice it to say that almost all the work Freud was doing to CURE human misery, was later used by his nephew to CONTROL human misery, and direct the consumer to the store, or the ballet, or the whatever it was they called Edward Bernays to sell.

Watch this BBC documentary The Century of the Self for a quick lesson on Freud's id, uh, I mean nephew.


Point is, we need to wake up a bit. Perhaps not shopping seems harsh or drastic. Perhaps it may seem to some like these uppity folks are trying to take away their one joy in life. But, I am telling you that you were made to believe that consuming things was your only shot at joy. This was and is the intention of marketers. Stop watching T.V. for one week (episodes of The Wire excluded, as it is art not T.V.), stop reading newspapers and magazines (listen to NPR and read trusted blogs for the news, watch YouTube for presidential debates), and just experiment, just see how you feel about yourself when one week is through. I hope that after the anxiety about what to do with your time passes, you will feel like you are enough, like you are complete without these shoes or that purse, without this gadget or that. Like you are okay as you are, and the medicine, vacation, gym equipment, or subscription will not fix everything. Like some of it is nice, and some of it is important, but not all of it.

Try it, see what happens...

Peaches

So, I don't just write blogs, I write stories, too. Most of them are in process, or waiting to be published elsewhere, so they remain, unsharable. Here, though, is a bit for you to bite into.

****

When I watched him eat a peach I felt disgusted. He ate the peach as if it did not want to be eaten, as if he ate it against its will. As if he were raping it. And the juices of the fruit reflected off his broad chin as they dripped onto the white linen button down that he would now expect me to wash for him. I don't know when I became his housewife. I don't know when he became this peach rapist. I don't know when we became this couple.

We had met five years ago. We were young artist types. I say artist types because neither of us is an artist. I would be if I could, but, well, I ain't so talented in that arena. When we were married we were that couple, you know the progressive arty couple. I didn't really care if he cheated on me. I just wanted that image, the image of us as a unit, of him on my arm. I wanted to have a baby.

Now staring at him I know my mother was right. I was too young. He was too irresponsible. In fact I couldn't even stand to look at him. Especially not while he ate that peach.

"I want a divorce"

The statement just exited my mouth. It wasn't even as if I had moved my lips and tongue to create the pieces of the sound. It was as if the statement, with a volition of its own, merely pushed the door of my mouth open and walked into the fresh air. My hand rose to my mouth as if I had burped. It was an expulsion of air.

"Really?" he looked kind of excited, ducked his head and put his hand under it as he lost a piece of peach. He slurped to try and catch it.

As the juice dripped down his beard, I knew I had made the right decision. I think I was smiling. I was smiling at never having to kiss that mouth again, never having to smell that musty beard, never having to wash those clothes, never having to watch him eat fruit again.

Am I too late?

I fear I am running late. Not for an appointment, not for a date, or a movie, or for work. This is a much bigger late than I have ever been before...

I don't have my PhD in Neuroscience yet. I haven't read any of the philosophy I am supposed to have read. I am not married. I have no children. I don't have a "career" and I have yet to publish my novel (in fact I haven't written it--shit).

Who else feels this way? We all do. Cue french accordian music. Okay, Radiohead will do, thanks Saurin Park.

It's no wonder saving mice makes me feel better than anything else, it's no wonder I don't feel satisfied with life. I don't know what satisfaction looks like. Have you ever heard of the approach/approach phenomenon? Here I am, your average run of the mill lab rat. To my left down a tunnel lies a scrumptious morsel of swiss cheese, to my right down a tunnel lies a scrumptious morsel of swiss cheese. Which way do I go? Which way do I go?

It doesn't matter, right? Wrong. If I were really a laboratory rat, I would run back and forth down the little tunnel, never arriving at either yummy destination. I see this as a metaphor for my life. I can't run down the tunnel, because there might be something at the other end that would be fun, at which I could be good, that would have been my calling. I have so many callings that I am without purpose. I don't fail. Worse, I flounder.

Time to say goodbye to one scrumptious morsel and devour the other before something gets moldy.

Here I go again on my own...

There is a song for everything that happens in my life, and for some reason today it is Whitesnakes rock ballad of the moment we all face, walking the road of life without mommy or daddy to lean on. As I ponder the bills in my mail, the ones on the way, and the ones on the way to being on the way, I wonder how it will all get paid, how it will all get done.

I am sick today. Not so sick that I can't move, but so sick I can't really hack another day of the less than rewarding job that I have discovered through various calculations, I am paid less than $20/hour to do. So, it is some web surfing, some reading and some napping for me. It's lucky for me that I have such a job really. I promote gratitude at all times, but sometimes it takes a bit of work. Here is how I did it today.

1. I went to work,and upon arriving decided that my impulse to call in sick was a good one, and by 9:30 I marched myself our the door.

2. I saved a mouse. I am with the general public on the disgustingness of having mouse poop on the kitchen counter. I am not however, into the glue trap. And as I walked home, feeling woozy and vaguely sorry for myself, I spotted a little grey furry guy stuck awkwardly to one such trap--the side of his faceplastered to it, his legs awkwardly crushed beneath him as if he had tripped and found himself stuck to it. He was wiggling frantically, and I weighed all the things I had to do in my apartment upstairs--eat, go to the bathroom, email the office, call my boyfriend and sister--when it suddenly occurred to me--What am I doing thinking about the mundane when death is on the line? How would I feel if I was trying to wiggle myself free, facing starvation or cardiac arrest from my panic and a passerby said, "Hmmm, I could save you, but you know I really need to call in to the office"?

So, I made a plan, mentally tallied the inventory I would need to successfully proceed with the rescue mission. I didn't want to touch the mouse--ew, germs! I would need a pair of rubber gloves, some kind of oil (olive or baby) to neutralize the adhesive, and maybe some alcohol to douse my hands after removing the rubber gloves.

I did stop to go to the bathroom, as I wanted to devote my full attention to the rescue mission. I left the apartment, all rescue apparatus in a tote bag, and scurried up the street to the spot I had last seen the mouse. But, alas, it was gone and for a moment my shoulders fell in lost hope as the thought occurred to me that I was too late to make a difference in the poor rodent's life. Then I deducted that if I were the callous person that put out a sticky trap in the first place (please my friends if you want to kill mice, poison them, use the evil traps that sometimes get your fingers) would I be kind enough to kill the mouse (by method of drowning or crushing) before disposing of him? No, I think if I were that person, I would just throw the mouse away.

Sure enough, on the corner by the apartment building of the first sighting of the awkwardly squirming mouse, in the garbage can, beneath some brush, was the trap and mouse still struggling pathethically to let himself free.

As I reached into the garbage can with my rubber gloves, I looked up and down the street to see if anyone would spot me. What was I afraid of? 1) seeing someone I knew and having to wave at them with my other hand in the garbage can--how would I explain that? and/or 2) being spotted by someone anti-rodent who knew that I was on a rescue mission, who would lecture me on the filthiness of rodents and how I did the neighborhood a disservice by setting this one free. But there was no one I knew and generally speaking people don't care what you do as long as you a) have clothes on, b) are quiet, and c) don't have a gun.

So, mouse in hand, I walked up the street with him half hidden behind my leg. I ran as quickly as I could without causing alarm, and brought him (or maybe it was a her) to the edge of the pond in the park near where I live. I held the trap out with two fingers as far from my body as I could get and pulled a bottle of baby oil from my bag with my other hand. I doused the poor guy in the stuff and watch him nearly sigh with relief, as the wiggling began to make a difference and his leg began to pull free.

As he lay panting in the grass, free from the trap, I caught a glimpse of his eyes in his oil drenched head. He was clearly in shock, and in fact his eyes seemed frozen over by cataracts and bulging like a looney toon. I gave him an unnecessary pet to soothe him and wondered if he would survive. Or would he cower in his shock until starvation overtook him? Or might he die of baby oil poisoning? I deducted that either way, my sitting there rubbing his tiny head with my rubber-gloved finger probably would not prevent either fate. So I left him, telling myself that I would come back and check for his tiny carcus, bury him if necessary.

It was a small deed, but it made me feel better than 40 hours of work slaving to keep an overpriced MFA program afloat. I love the students I work for. They are a gracious, lovely lot, but to continue to work in a place where my impact pales in comparison to the mere rescuing of a mouse seems like rolling a big rock up a hill. I am not cut out for this work. I believe in art and in creativity and its power to save. I just don't know if the MFA is saving anyone. It is a moral dilema for me.

So, you ask, where does Whitesnake come in? Well, the Ivy League Art School has been my home. Sure, in my proverbial family, my father beats me, my mother commits verbal violence, and my siblings get a lot more attention and love than me, but still it is home, and if I leave maybe I will just end up married to some alcoholic who sleeps around. Maybe it is not even better out there. But I think I will have to find out. I have graduated and it is time to leave the nest.

FADE UP: ME MAKING DUST IN MY TRANS AM, A BUXOM BLONDE IN ACID WASHED JEANS WAVES WISTFULLY AS I DRIVE INTO THE SUNSET.

CUE MUSIC: WHITESNAKE'S HERE I GO AGAIN...

Here I go again on my own,
going down the only road I've ever known.
Like a twister I was born to walk alone,
but I've made up my mind.
I ain't wastin' no more time.
Here I go again....

FADE OUT


THE END

Not a sell out, but a warm up

I have a recent phone message from a friend who has (I assume lovingly) called me a sell-out for starting a blog. This one’s for you S:

I am sitting in a café in upper Manhattan. There is jazz on their stereo, but I only hear it on the breaks from my Pandora “Shout out Louds” station. I am writing a blog. I am picking at an egg and cheese on a bagel, thinking about how I would like another cigarette, and another, and another. The music I am listening to is poppy and thick, summoning nostalgia from deep within my belly (most of my feelings come from my belly—the curse of an empath: belly aches). My boyfriend lives in Brooklyn, he is the co-owner of a T-shirt company whose hope is to inform youth culture about important political figures. We are working on a proposal for teaching underprivileged children art. We work at an art school. We, and all our friends, struggle daily with our vaguely hipster-like identities. Am I a sell out? I am not sure, I think I am just a member of a generation that yearns to make a difference in the world and also wants all the privilege that comes with living in the most liberal city in the most “free” nation. And most importantly, we don’t want to sell out. We want to get money for just being ourselves. And we hope that when someone starts paying up, we will still be ourselves and not relinquish on our promise like our hippy-cum-yuppy parents.

My brother is a rock musician. He lives in western Pennsylvania, but Brooklyn is waiting for him. The hipsters worship an absent figurehead, who is busy stocking groceries on Mill and Blair. He may be on a smoke break now, but he may have quit. He may be working on his novel, or he may be playing video games, but he remains unaware of the throngs of plaid shirted, tight-jeaned, just slightly tattooed, purposefully grubby-looking, messenger-bag-carrying, lost boys looking for their Peter Pan.

But, these are only images and then there is the reality. I digress. I am a digression, this is where I am my digressive self. Is that selling out? Perhaps, but then, when does the selling begin. Where’s my money?

Am I like everyone else? God, I hope so. I am so tired of the throngs trying to assert their difference. The rush to discover the band before they are a free iTunes song. The rush to find the white boots you wore in sixth grade before they are on the cover of Elle magazine…or Marie Claire, or whatever the fashion magazine that isn’t so fashionable.

And along comes another digression--I was in Lucky magazine. Yes its true.

Was I a sell out for that? I would love to say absolutely, but again, I didn’t receive any of that coveted cash. They dressed me up in clothes that didn’t really fit (big metal clips held them in the back), plucked my eyebrows, cut my hair and painted my face. Then they interviewed me about my life as a full-time administrator at a university art school, a part-time student, and a sometime painter and writer. The article was printed. I was misquoted and reduced to a corporate-like employee without all the dimensions of me that I love (no artist, no student, just a single, 30 year old career girl, fade-up Mary Tyler Moore theme music). All my digressions were left out, including the fact that I couldn’t even afford the clothes they put me in--the bag I carried would have cost me 8 months rent. And I didn’t get to keep one thing. Nada.

I did get a free haircut, 5 copies of Lucky magazine, endless embarrassment, a proud mother, and loads of giggles. But they made me look a lot richer. People who don’t know me think I am faking my thrift store chique look. Students in the school where I work now think their tuition is paying for my $5000 bag. What I want to know is when did selling out become such an unprofitable business?

Why should I begrudge those lawyers and hedge fund managers I know? They are only conforming like the rest of us, it just happens to not be as fashionable among that lot to wallow in what is wrong with the world, to feel the drive to make a difference—again, these are images and erroneous ones at that, as I know a slew of bleeding heart corporates, and just too many jaded trust-fund hipsters to count. Regardless of the wardrobes of the company you keep, disenchantment comes with a price, not a salary. And yet, I am hopeful that I’ll get mine. That someday I can really sell something, and people will buy my paintings and buy my stories. And what will be the price? They will have to listen to me about what is wrong with the world, and what is really important.

So, S, there it is, my warm up. Now, I close down the blog to work on one of my short stories. If you would like to read one I will gladly sell out. Just send me $15.95 and an SASE. With love from the sea.

The Joy of....

Sex? Cooking? How about both? The Joy of Cooking in my family, is a book that gets purchased for you (that is if you are a woman, in this sprawling family of women) when you have married (read: when you have grown up enough to take on the responsibility of cooking for a family, or at least a man). The Joy of Sex in my family, is a book that never gets purchased for you. You should not really have it at all (sex or the book), but if you do you should really be married. Anyways, in my family, you should really be married. What's wrong with you anyway?

Well, the news is: I have recently obtained both The Joy of Cooking and The Joy of Sex. Actually the latter is More Joy of Sex, as I have been having the improper joy of sex for over 10 years--eek! No wonder I'm so good in bed! The improper joy of cooking, on the other hand, I have not had. Luckily, now I own the joy, with a capital J, of both...I got the joy joy joy down in my...where? down in my...where?


...and the secret is (lean in close for this one): I'm not married!


And if the devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tack, ouch! Sit on a tack, ouch! Sit on a tack! OUCH!


So, moving on from elementary school church songs, you might be asking me, if you were here, how in the hell did I get the Joys (proper) of cooking and sex without solemn vows or surpassing the only occasion on which I might wear a garter? Well, there is a spot in the lobby of my building, where everyone leaves the things they do not want. A rummage sale, without the sale; dumpster diving without the dumpster. I love it. It is my favorite part of living here. At Christmastime, the Christmas tree is placed in the same corner as the things that are being left for scavenge. It is the most beautiful array of gifts one could hope to see--piles of well loved objects looking for more. Velveteen rabbits abound. In fact, when I moved into the building, it was December, and I didn't know that this corner was always the give away spot, I thought it was Christmas generosity (or humbug) that compelled people to share the wealth (or dump their shit), under the tree.

So, last Saturday, I came home to find two large--and I mean LARGE--boxes of books. Books! Books! Oh boy books! I won't make a list for you of the booty I collected, but I will tell you it was a veritable feast of literary sustenance--Eco, Borroughs, Beckett, Irving, Woolf, McEwan, Franzen...are you getting the picture? I passed up the biographical sketches of Star Trek characters, as well as some books on make-up techniques used in Star Wars, and some chess essays (chess essays!? damn, come to think of it, I should have grabbed that). Anyways, I had a pile up to my chin, but if I lifted it just a bit, I could fit one last (mind you thin) book under there and possibly navigate the stairs without wiping out. So, there it was: More Joy of Sex. Small enough to fit under my chin, big enough to have nice pictures to look at. I guess whoever had owned it had had enough joy of sex.


The next night I walked into the lobby and all the remaining books (the, like, three I didn't take) had been cleared away or claimed, but above the spot where our unwanteds are deposited was a sign: "Just married sale....combining households, so some stuff must go." After wiping the look of disgust off my face at the saccharine sweet tone of the note and the cheesy graphics, I scratched my chin and wondered if the book boxes I dove into the night before had been a cleaning out of the new married couples' book shelf. The books had had a decidedly complete spectrum of male to female, with moments of absolute polarity (i.e., Virginia Woolf/Boss Tweed biography). It seemed to make sense. And then it dawned on me--one of the things that "had to go" was the joy of sex! Oh, honey, you won't be needing that anymore. And I scratched my chin more and wondered further, had her mother bought her The Joy of Cooking for her wedding shower!? Was this how it worked in all families?

So, I decided that if the rule was not having The Joy of Cooking before you were married, and not having the Joy of Sex after you were married (and all these years I thought it was premarital sex that was the problem!), well, then I would have to break one of those rules. If I am ever going to get married (it could happen), and I want to be sure to keep the joy of sex (proper or improper), I best have The Joy of Cooking before I get married. (I know it seems a bit fuzzy, but trust me, I am the expert at breaking the small rules for the greater good, and I did really well in Symbolic Logic. I could write you a proof for this.) Thus, tonight, after a long therapy session about food and my mother, I bought The Joy of Cooking.

I am going to try it tomorrow--cooking I mean. The joy of sex? Well, my boyfriend has apparently gone into a cave, so not much chance of that tonight. I better go out and get Our Bodies, Ourselves while I am at it...