pumpkin full of hate: September 2006

We’re getting a new roommate. As it works out, said roommate is: 1, a she, and 2, twenty years old. When we placed the original ad, Girlfriend made it clear that she was hoping for a female (it was my account the e-mails went to, so weeding out the weak fell on my shoulders). I guess the thinking was that she can more comfortably trust me with some nubile coed, than she can trust some strange man living in our back room to keep from rooting through the laundry hamper to find soiled pairs of her underpants, for reasons best not explored.
As it turns out, the new roommate is very sweet. And yes, in answer to your next question, she is quite pretty. Not that this matter, or to the extent it does, not in the way you think. It’s not that I’m adverse to beautiful young women; in fact, I definitely fall on the ‘pro’ side of this issue. It’s just that I don’t suffer any Benny Hill delusions of sexual escapades. Aside from the boast factor (which I outgrew in my teens), there’s nothing automatically superior about an attractive woman in bed versus a plain one. I’ve never found a woman’s sexual talents or appetites to in any way be determined by her appearance, so the idea of an attractive woman in the vicinity, while certainly not a source of complaint, is, at the same time, no reason to start behaving like the keeper of a harem. I have nothing but the greatest admiration for the beauty of a youthful body, but realistically, any voyeuristic need to see a young woman nude can be easily met. There is quite a successful little industry that specializes in distributing images of nude and physically attractive girls, and it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to access more than enough naked flesh to sate my appetite.
Why the new roommate’s comeliness is a relief is for far more practical reasons than fulfilling some adolescent fantasy. The Girlfriend, who I’ve not yet settled on a appropriate nickname to call her by other than her title, is (not to brag) a very beautiful woman, looking a lot like a living anime character. While this may solicit ‘high fives’ from male readers (and perhaps any lesbians out there), this brings with it more burden than pleasure for her. Obviously, there is the afore mentioned threat of disappearing panties, but even more settling, is the constant target of hostility she is for other women. There is something dark and sick in our culture, where women who deem themselves as unattractive are given license to vent their self-loathing at women they consider more beautiful or thin. It’s socially acceptable behavior for a woman with a problem with her weight (or an imagined problem) to viciously attack thin women, making them pay for the suffering their failure to gain weight causes. I had never been that conscious of that kind of hostility until I started up with the Girlfriend, but after five years, I’d like to believe I’d developed a sensitivity to her plight.
And it is a plight. I know, there are those out there who balk at my choice of words, responding that they should be so lucky as to be a victimized skinny girl. But consider; the woman sensitive to her weight is the victim of some vaguely defined abstract social standard, a social standard they validate by exerting so much energy in defining their short-comings by. The Girlfriend (or any woman leaning toward the thin category), on the other hand, does not suffer the pages of fashion magazines or the beauty standards put forth on “Entertainment Tonight” and its kind…she doesn’t even read those magazines or watch those shows. What she does suffer is direct conflict with other women, face to face, not some remote electronic voice that can be turned off with the touch of a button.
A few years back, the Girlfriend was wrangled into going out for a bachelorette party being thrown for the bride to be of a family member. It was the usual tacky affair, all tiaras and squelling drunkenly. Except there was one woman, a friend of the bride, who could not contain the desire to express her hostility for the Girlfriend’s figure for more than five minutes. It started slowly, with an occasional declaration that, quote; “every time I see a skinny girl, I want to kick her”. No one gave her whatever agreements or reassurances so she repeated it, over and over again. Finally, crammed into the back of a taxi, she turned on the Girlfriend, telling her that while it was nothing personal, she felt a strong need to deliver a kick toward her. It’s not just that this sentiment is a disgusting, self-pitying expression of shallowness, it’s that none of the other women in the cab bothered to interfere of defend the girlfriend (who, aside from the bride, also had another sister in-law present). The message received that night was that women unhappy with their looks are entitled to vent hatred toward those women who are comfortable with their appearance, and that the victim of this bashing should accept in good stride, a small price to pay for being reasonably pretty.
Doesn’t this mind-set define you as handicapped, some sort of cripple that others should allow themselves to be the focus of your impotent rage, out of pity? Yes, those three girls on “Friends” were pretty skinny, but why the fuck are you watching garbage like that anyway? Why the fuck are you defining yourself by celebrities? What’s more, why are you comparing yourself to them solely in terms of their appearance, and not their wealth or success? You may retort with some convoluted feminist theory about the “beauty myth” and how society forces these standards on you, but you’re the one obsessed with your looks. And certainly don’t drag male sexuality into this. While pornography may impose narrow boundaries on beauty, sometimes, men are not pornography, and our tastes vary considerably farther than those addressed by the fashion world. Interestingly, the compulsive kicker was married…what does this say about her respect for her husband? His desire for her, his appreciation of her beauty, totally immaterial when compared to how she would fare as a contestant on “America’s Next Top Model”. This morbid, self-destructive fixation women have on their looks has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with men. It’s some rotting left-over from before women had lives, before they could participate is society as a whole, and the only measure of self-worth they could obtain was in comparison with other women. Tragic…and disgusting.
So yes, our new roommate is young, talented, funny and beautiful, and we’re happy to have her move in and be a part of our little family. And I’m happy that what ever potential conflict that may eventually arise, it will be a result of apartment related issues, and not issues resulting in different sized waist, bust or thighs. I’m also happy that this post will be deleted long before she ever becomes aware that I keep a blog, rather than have her think the Girlfriend and I are a couple of total creeps.

P.S. In getting this article ready, I googled ‘menage a trois’ and ‘threesome’, to find some pictures to illustrate this with. Dear lord, the things I saw. I don’t want to traumatize you with the endless mess of limbs and penetrations I encountered. Okay, I can’t resist; here’s one link. Enjoy.

remember, teddy bears equal sincerity

I lied, or at least I changed my mind. When I wrote the first posting on Psychotic Reaction I made it clear that I had no interest in wallowing in the kind of self-obsessed prattle most blogs engage in. While I’m sticking to that commitment there, I can’t help but feel the pull of exhibitionist self-analysis. As such, I’m creating this extra blog as a safe place to dump all my more selfish and self-important writing.
There is a consider feeling of power in creating a totally contained forum like this, a corrupting sense of authority. I once dated a blogger, who aside from endlessly dragging our relationship into the public arena on her website, reacted to the inevitable dumping of her by focusing far too much space of her book to trashing me. Setting aside the degree to which her book distorted or outright lied in it’s depiction of me (setting aside for the time-being-we will be returning to this particular vulgarity in the future, I promise), I kind of understand the compulsion to use the free internet stage as a place to savage your enemies and exercise your demons. That this specific girlfriend exerted so much energy to a relationship that didn’t last a full three months…well, that part reflects more on the teller than the tale.
A lot of the tone of blogs, journals and e-diaries leaves me cold; Dave Barry is not a writer I hold in high-or any-esteem, the loss of Erma Bombeck’s life was the written word’s gain and I’ve never found myself reading the comic strip “Cathy” and nodding my head in knowing agreement. What’s more, the entire “sweetly irreverent” school of wit that’s found a home amongst bloggers confuses and depresses me: is it really that funny to fix the suffix “oholic” to every minor vice you might have? Do you seriously mistake yourself as clever when you begin every entry with “what’s the deal with…”? What’s more, plenty of us watch the monologues of late-night talk shows, so rephrasing the observations of Conan O’Brien or Jimmy Kimmel does not make you appear funny. I’m sure if I could suffer more than thirty seconds of “The View” without wanting to yank my eyeballs out and stuff them in my ears to shut out the infernal screeching, I’d find the source for even more recycled humor. And now that that inhuman monster Rosie O’Donnell has returned from her netherworld lair, I expect even more warmed-over bon-mots of tired observation and timid stabs at complaint will work their way through the internet, like a tapeworm through an Appalachian child.
I’m keeping this particular blog low-key; I’ll link it from the main site, but I have no intention of drawing attention to it. It’s only purpose is as a catch-all for any observations, memories, complaints or ideas that can’t reasonably be put on Psychotic Reaction. I do suffer a sense of disproportionate importance, a grandiosity of spirit that threatens to burst forth in all the pixelated glory.