The week ended with all the animals being let out of their cages. Congress impeached the President, New York is full of shoppers, and someone on the subway gave me a long, lingering look.
"It's the most won-der-ful time... of the yeeeeeeear!" At least that's what the PA system at Macy's told me.
My officemate has a teeny tiny little TV in our office. She brought it in for Clinton's second inaugural, and we have watched all the important news events ever since. We watched the impeachment debates this week, and the bombing of Baghdad this week. All the important news. Like when Jax and Miranda almost had Blizzard Sex on GH. And the occasional Judge Judy when our favorite freelancer traipses in, fresh off a brisket lunch.
Meanwhile, the Divine Ms. H, for Christmas, got me Savage Love: Straigh Answers from America's Most Popular Sex Columnist. We read aloud from the book at the Pasqua Caffe while waiting to see the new, horrible Star Dreck movie. This proves that I am neither a snob nor a prude. Dan Savage (not his real name, though he says it is) has one of those puckish grins. He's grinning like Puck because he has had it all, like Erica Kane and all those other career gals. He's used a little nerve and a lot of sass to catapult himself from a video store in Wisconsin (if you believe the story) to a cushy suburban lifestyle in the Pacific Northwest. He and his boyfriend have adopted a baby, and that's all in another book. So in one book he can differentiate a butt plug from a dildo (the book's back cover declares he is "the queer who knows best" about sex), and he can tell you all about the joys of motherhood in the other.
"How do you do it, Yvonne (Goolagong)?"
"Isn't easy!"
And this sort of success is what defines our nation. Plucky, nervy, vervy, and a sheer paradox. A contradiction in terms. Able to advise leather fetishes on one hand, and letting his children lick the frosting off the spatula on the other. It will be interesting to see how Dan and his man talk around that child. If he's as honest and open in private as he is bitchy and forthright with his readers, the kid might have a chance. If he suburbanizes completely, well, that should prove interesting.
I might sound bitchy, but it's in the Dan Savage tradition. I am sure
he would approve. He advises people to sprinkle the word "fuck" into a
sentence as often as fucking possible. It's fucking great advice. Really
spices things up. Fuck year! Plus, carrying his book with the shit-eating
grin outward, it got me some attention en route home. As I got off the IRT
at 77th Street, a man who was looking at me on the train kept looking. I
stopped at the gate after going through the turnstile, he was still
looking, and he waved goodbye. Romeo for the night, or the father of my
children? I will never know. What I do know is this:
Once you
have found a local 6 train after midnight, you don't give it up. Not even
for the litle old me.
Next entry... The End of the Wick