I just like the headline of this article, and the fact that there's a blog called "Arkansas Blog".
Hot checks, beaver pelts, deceased (?) balding middle-aged crooks, Arkansas... it's a tale full of titillation and debauchery. I think. Full disclosure: I stopped reading at "Beaver Controller".
Also, thanks, D, for this bizarre story.
"Nobody drink the water! The water has gone bad!"
Some nights when I was little and sick, or when I woke from a nightmare and looked out my bedroom window into the dark tops of the trees and saw terrible things in them, I would muster my nerve, slip out of bed and half-run half-tiptoe into their room.
I would always go to her side of their bed.
“Mom,” I would whisper into the dark, “I’m scared.”
Always on her stomach, I wondered how she breathed sleeping like that, her face pressed into the pillow. While I stood there quietly breathing in the musty smell of a warm down comforter in a cold room, I worried that she was suffocating, she was so still. And then, suddenly, on intuition and my single whisper alone, she would be up, tiptoeing from her room to mine wordlessly, leading me with her hand on the top of my head.
Once in my room with her, it was no longer a scary place. Trees were trees. Shadows were shadows. My fear seemed ridiculous, misplaced. I always half expected her to leave upon our discovery that there was nothing to be afraid of.
But instead, she would slip into my twin bed, scooting all the way to the edge and motioning me in. Gratefully, I'd join her. There we would lay on our sides, an S next to an S, her arm over me, both our heads on one pillow.
And just like that, in a minute or two at most, she would be asleep, perfectly still. It was the only time I ever knew her to be still, I think.
I would listen, wide awake: Her shorter breaths became long ones, rhythmic in and out, in and out. Sometimes the pause between them would grow so long my heart would almost stop in a panic, but always it came and went eventually... in and out.
I would want to move, adjust. Maybe I had an itch. But she was always so still that I never could bring myself to. Instead, I willed myself to be like her -- I willed my bones to be heavy, my body to go numb. I listened to the in and out. I made myself be very still in the black.
In and out, I listened.
In… and out.
I trained my body to be restful, my breath to be long like hers.
In… out.
And her great, warm, rhythmic stillness would press me down slowly into the night, as I listened to her sleep song. And a terrifying night would transform into something known; something velvet-deep and calm.
I never woke until morning was brassy and bright upon me, the night like a vague memory. She was always gone by then, up and busy.
She was always moving until I needed her, and when I needed her, she taught me the secrets of being still.
If you have nothing to blog about, let someone smarter and funnier than you blog, instead.
Ryan Reynolds (formerly Alanis Morrissette's better half) is now writing for the Huffington Post. I didn't realize I loved this man until the moment I read this (click link at top), his first contribution, which includes the brilliant phrase "grotesque displays of boundless, unapologetic shitheadery".
I would apologize for the gratuitous posting of a picture of Ryan half-clothed, but the thing is that I'm just not sorry.
I mean, take a good look.
...Yeah, you're welcome.
Have a great weekend, all. Check you Monday... maybe.
--UPDATE--
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After recieving two rapid-fire email complaints about the sexism of this post, I have agreed to include a second photo to right my wrong. Here for all male Legwarmers readers to enjoy: Jessica Alba in one of her many swimsuits shots! Happy?
I looked up from my second set of leg presses to see a mid-thirties man I'd never met standing over me at my feet, his mouth moving, but no words coming out. I looked quizzically at him, and he gestured to his head.
I touched mine, realizing my headphones were in, music blaring, which would account for the fact that this man was making zero sense to me. It still didn’t account, though, for him talking to me when I was clearly busy working out.
I jerked out an earbud and glared at him.
“Yeah?” I said, too loudly of course, due to the other bud still crammed in my right ear.
“Um, I was just wondering if I could hop on there for a quick set in between yours,” he asked. “I just have one more to do, and…”
I hadn’t realized I was hogging the machine in the near-empty gym, but apparently this whole sharing equipment thing was status quo for homeboy, so I nodded cautiously, standing. “Sure, no problem… but you might wanna—“
Before I could suggest wiping down the machine, as I had just completed a 3 mile run and was… glistening , we'll say, he was on his back, legs up, lying in my little sweatmarks, in the middle of his first squat.
I stretched while he finished, and when he got up, I was hit with a dilemma: Either I could lay down in my/his sweat and finish my last set, something I really didn't want to do, or I could walk across the gym floor to the nearest little sanitization station for a papertowel and some of that pink weird equipment spray, which might come off a little insulting, as this guy hadn't seemed to mind my sweat at all.
I paused for a moment, and then... fuck it. I layed back down on the machine and started pressing. I figured if he could do it, I could do it.
And then, four reps in, there he was again at the foot of my machine, mouth flopping.
I jerked up, plucking out an earbud again.
He leaned over and handed me a paper towel, already covered in the weird pink stuff. What the hell? I thought. Now he wants to clean the machine? “Uh, thanks?” I said, wishing he would just go away so I could resume my workout in peace. But instead of leaving, he stood there, expectantly.
He wanted me to wipe the machine down while he was there, when I was already in the middle of using it again.
Flustered and completely weirded out, I twisted around, wiping down the back of the seat, then the handles, and crumpling up the towel like There. Happy?
“Thanks for sharing,” he said, and reached out his hand.
“Sure,” I said, again willing him to vanish. But he continued to hold out his hand. I was totally perplexed, unable to think of anything else to do with it but shake it. So I did. Kinda a “Well, see you later,” shake, I thought.
But instead of shaking back, he kinda half-pumped and then let go, wiping his hand like I might have just given him some sort of disease.
“No, I meant I’d take the towel now,” he said, all uncomfortable, like I was some strange gym girl hitting on him when HE was the one who approached ME and then layed on MY sweaty machine and insisted on talking to me instead of just waiting 30 goddamn seconds for me to finish my set.
“Oh.” I said, ever-eloquent, fumbling for the crumpled, sweaty, pink-stuff covered paper towel. “Right.”
I am clearly a master of interpersonal communication; an example for all people interested in having non-awkward interactions with humanity; a veritable book of rules for those who want to go gracefully in this world amongst their fellow man.
God I hate it when strangers talk to me at the gym.
"I seriously don't understand how anyone ever ends up together," I said, shaking my head at a friend and his wife across the breakfast table.
They had just finished telling the "how we met" story, and let me tell you, it was epic:
At a party, boy meets and schmoozes girl. Girl remains aloof and chilly. Boy asks for phone number. Girl denies. One week later, they bump into each other again. Boy is hammered at a bar, drinking with the bartender. Girl is sober. Boy again asks for girl's number. Girl gives it to him, verbally. Boy belligerently swears to remember it. Girl leaves. Boy (surprise!) forgets number. A few days go by. Boy runs into mutual friend, who he asks for the girl's phone number. Friend gives him girl's work number. Boy calls girl at work, interrupting her while mispronouncing both her first and last names. Girl asks if she can call him back at a better time.
A few hours later, girl calls boy who has now been schmoozy, sloppy and forgetful around her, and possibly doesn’t even know her name. That is far more than three strikes, is it not? A few weeks later, they're inseparable. Now, they’re married (and adorable).
"I mean, you didn't even say her name right!" I rolled my eyes, thinking about all the poor schleps I'd dismissed for crimes far less eggregious.
“I know,” he chuckled, as his wife looked at him adoringly. “My success with women can only be attributed to my ability to be so ridiculously persistent that they finally give in and give me a shot.”
Ain’t that the truth, too? There is much to be said for the persistence of a man who simply will not take “no” for an answer.
Why is that “eye on the prize” approach so attractive? It should be interpreted as arrogant, but its effect is sometimes positively the opposite, compelling women to do exactly what these overeager types ask, as if we simply have no choice in the matter.
According to Webster, "persistence" is the quality of continuing steadily despite problems or obstacles. So is that it, then? Is it purely biological? Are we all ultimately seeking someone we know isn't going to give up only because we realize in life there will be obstacles to overcome that will seem monumental enough to make it feel like quitting is the best possible option? Is this our built in "stability-meter"?
Whatever it is, there’s just something about a man who thinks he wants you badly enough to treat pursuing you like it’s a full time job.
I have absolutely fallen for it before, against all my better judgment. But it’s not a surefire path to success -- if there’s no chance for a relationship’s survival, someone will ultimately snap out of it. In my case, it took about a month and a half before I realized I was somehow mysteriously dating a bi-curious man who only ate Jack in the Box chicken sandwiches, failed out of school twice and who had... wait for it... just pierced his tongue.
Two days after I saw the light and after the world's hottest and most exfoliating shower, it was over. But props to him for a strong, if manipulative and ultimately creepy, start.
By the time breakfast had wrapped up with my lovebird friends, I was thoroughly convinced that dating, love and marraige was just a game of chance that God invented one day to keep him entertained (okay, and ensure procreation) -- something like a bully with a magnifying glass on a sunny day might keep himself entertained by scorching ants on the asphalt between his dirty feet.
(Sorry, God. I hope we can still be friends. I'm just saying...)
Except the ants have tiny brains and get to burn to death. We just have to go on hideous date after hideous date, having the same exact conversations with different versions of the same exact people, all of whom likely find us as boring or crazy as we find them, until someday, almost against our will and certainly with no help from us, something is just... different. And then, maybe even all the things that would have otherwise mattered (hell, even the pronunciation of your name) just won't.
I hope that makes it all worth it in the end.
I like to think it might.
Legwarmers got a makeover this weekend. Why? Well, I wanted to go shopping, but am trying a new thing called "fiscal responsibility" so as to not have to live in an apartment with a cat for the rest of my life, so instead of buying completely essential things like clothes, shoes, an animatronic monkey head, a lifetime's supply of Otter Pops and tires for my car (all of which I otherwise likely would have purchased last weekend), I chose to wear my roommate's clothes, drive a car with dangerously bald tires (oh, and STILL no front license plate) and change the outfit of my... blog.
Happy Monday, all!
Today's word of the day is one I am going to seriously have trouble working into everyday language. It just sounds dirty. Or maybe that's just my mind. You be the judge:
fecund \FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd\, adjective:
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.
For 21 years after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the fecund royal couple produced children at the rate of two every three years -- eight boys and six girls in all.
-- Saul David, Prince of Pleasure
In her first novel she portrays a lush, fecund landscape palpable in its sultriness and excess.
-- Barbara Crossette, "Seeking Nirvana", New York Times, April 29, 2001
Miss Ozick can convert any skeptic to the cult of her shrewd and fecund imagination.
-- Edmund White, "Images of a Mind Thinking", New York Times, September 11, 1983
Fecund comes from Latin fecundus, "fruitful, prolific." The noun form is fecundity.
