Maternally Challenged

Is Maternal Depression a New Thing?

People ask me this question a lot, and the answer is, I don't know for sure. I'm not a scholar or a historian; I haven't done nearly enough research to offer a definitive answer. One thing I do know is that women--mothers in particular--have throughout recorded history been extraordinarily limited in having any time to themselves; every word they managed to commit to paper about their interior lives is gold, because it is all, relatively speaking, so very rare. (One of the reason for the explosion of momblogs in recent years, I think, is that, at last, we get to talk! To each other! Across time and space! Do you know how revolutionary that is??) Another fact is that every era and every culture has its own way of classifying and naming illness--so, no, women in the 18th century didn't get "depressed." They called it something else. The question is: what?

When I started researching my book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression, I did a lot of hanging out at the Library of Congress, where they have an amazing collection of first-person writing by American women in their American Women's History collection. There are diaries, letters, pamphlets--all written by American women, some of them famous but most of them not famous, detailing the fascinating mundane aspects of their domestic lives. They had no idea they were writing for history, but they were--and some of the things I found sounded to me an awful lot like despair, hopelessness, an oppressive sense of guilt and an aching sense of futility...something we 21st century people just might call depression. Not surprisingly, much of this emotion was couched in religious terms.

From The Diary of Martha Laurens Ramsay, a Charleston, S.C. woman who lived from 1759 to 1811, comes this entry, when she would have been 32 years old.

August 6, 1791:
These three past days have been black days. Lord, deliver me from sin, especially from those which so easily beset and so often oppress me. My soul longs for deliverance and rest.

And, from the 16th of the same month:
Terror and dismay take hold upon me. O, if men knew me as I am known to my God, I should be trampled under foot; the church would disown me; the greatest sinners would abominate me; my husband, that loves and thinks well of me, would wonder at me, and mourn, and I should be hated of all men.

Martha Ramsey was, from all I could tell, a loving wife and mother with no particular reason, in the culture in which she lived, to feel like such a sinner. Perhaps there was some event which she never wrote about which brought about her torment--a secret abortion? an illicit affair? a spiritual crisis? We can speculate. But one of the possibilities (and I speak as a child of the Bible Belt, who grew up convinced that hell was her destiny) is the beast we now call depression.

Why I Miss Newspaper Work, and Other Observations

Years ago, when I was working for the Washington Post, a mentally disturbed woman managed to climb into the lion enclosure at the National Zoo one night after hours. Her body was discovered the next morning. This was horrific, of course, but like cops, paramedics and other people who have to look at horrific things with some regularity, newspaper people develop coping mechanisms. One is humor. Very, very black humor.The reporter who was assigned to cover the story went out to the zoo to get the facts, and came back late that afternoon. My desk was next to the city desk, so I heard the ensuing conversation:

Editor: "What happened?"
Reporter: (Long sigh) "Oh, the usual. Each lion's saying the other lion did it."

Maybe black humor appeals because I"m a black mood. Birthdays aren't good. And on this one, I missed my mother, who died last December of congestive heart failure. For the first time in 50 years, I did not hear that warm Southern voice saying, "Happy birthday."  And yesterday, not even the hugs of my children and all their happy babble could make up for the one voice that was missing.

My Birthday

My husband and I have gift-giving issues. As in, he never really needs anything except, occasionally, new underwear and (currently) a new pair of shorts to replace the ones he's been wearing since college; and I always want things we can't afford. Like a Vespa. The consequence of this is that I never know what to get him, and he usually winds up giving me jewelry (much appreciated, but when you work at home the Fed Ex man is just about your only audience) or electronic gadgets that he really wants to play with himself.

So anyway, my birthday is on Sunday, and what I really, really want is a new entertainment center for the living room. This annoys my husband, who is of the opinion that there is Absolutely Nothing Wrong with our current entertainment center. His standard for Nothing Wrong is "still standing"; mine is a little higher. The piece in question was bought at Ikea pre-kids, which makes it roughly 10 years old. Ten years is nothing in furniture terms, except if you're dealing with the low-end Ikea stuff, in which case it's a looooong time for something made out of cardboard with a fake wood veneer. The back of our entertainment center gave out several years ago; the glass doors have never hung properly; the drawers have lost their little slider supports and now just sit forlornly on top of each other (if you stack them very neatly you can almost not tell), and in general I have gotten so tired of this fake blond wood (what WERE we thinking?) monstrosity that some days it's all I can do to not walk over and kick it. But if I did, it would fall over and that might hurt the TV.

Not long ago I found a gorgeous entertainment center at a furniture store that was going out of business. We didn't have any extra money in the bank then, either, but this thing was $600, marked down from something like $1,500, and when I saw it I wanted to lie down on it and say, "Mine! Mine!" I immediately whipped out my cellphone and called my husband, whose job is to say "no" to me at such moments. (Hey, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine, and he gets a vote on major purchases, so spare me the feminist empowerment speech.) David did his job. He did it that day in such forceful terms, citing the giant sucking sound that was our checking account that month, that for a few minutes afterward I felt like June Cleaver after a spanking by Ward. But you know what? I'm sorry now I didn't buy it anyway, and damn the torpedos.

Because here we are, six months later, the publisher is taking its own sweet time getting the next installment of my advance to me (it's August, everybody in New York is lying comatose on a beach, so I'm not even bothering to call up and ask when it's coming), the Ugly Entertainment Center is still uglifying our living room, and I want a new entertainment center for my birthday. Which is Sunday. So, as you have figured out by now, I am not getting my birthday wish.

I caught David the other night looking at new Plantronics headsets for my desk phone, which was tempting, except that to truly upgrade the one I have would cost about $300. I should have let him buy it anyway, because it gives him such pleasure to buy electronic gadgets, but what I suggested instead was that we not spend that $300 on a new headset and instead put it aside for....a new entertainment center. So now I have accomplished the trifecta: I'm not getting what I want, I'm not even getting anything I don't want, and David didn't get the pleasure of hitting the "one-click" button on Amazon (which is always a thrill).

Instead, I put in a request that on Sunday night I be absolved from childcare duties so that I can watch the entire Spike Lee documentary on New Orleans (I missed the first two segments), and David has agreed. Usually, Sunday nights are reserved for ESPN or whatever baseball game David can find--so that's my birthday present this year: this Sunday night, I get to hold the remote.

Oh, yeah, and I guess while I'm watching I can remind myself that my biggest problem is that I don't have a new entertainment center, as opposed to having a house held together by a few molecules of mold. Puts things in perspective, don't it?

Do Today's Moms REALLY Have It Harder?

That's a question which came my way today from someone who heard me speak about maternal depression earlier this week at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. (in connection with my new book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Chioldren and Struggling with Depression). It was a skeptical question, posed by a friend who is a member of my parents' generation, and it came in response to my contention that mothers today are swimming in a sea of stress that exceeds anything their own mothers had to put up with. Here's what I told him:

"Harder in some ways, not as hard in others. My mother's generation (yours and Eda's generation) worried about polio, or how in the world they'd possibly earn enough money to support the kids if hubby got run over by a Mack truck, since the only jobs they could easily get were teacher, nurse or secretary. Mothers of my day don't have to worry about stuff like that (well, money worries spring eternal)--but on the other
hand we do have to worry about what their kids are going to encounter on the Internet, whether they will stop giving multiple choice tests in school long enough for the kids to actually learn anything, and how to get it through their boss' concrete-block head that children are NOT A HOBBY and that real human beings of any gender should not be expected to put in 60-plus hours a week under the threat of having their jobs exported to some guy in Bangladesh named Raju. They also can't shoo their kids outside to play and go put their feet up for half an hour sans guilt, the way my mother did, either. The local Motherhood Committee would be on them like a duck on a Junebug for not spending 'quality time' with their kids. I am already on the "watch" list for the local Motherhood Committee for forcing--forcing!--my kids to walk to school. If they ever find out that I'm actually in here smokin' weed all
day, I'm done for."

Well, okay, I was joking about the weed (actually, I wish I had some) but that's about as well as I can put it. I'd be interested in seeing what other people think. I don't mean to portray the past as idyllic--my mother had plenty of worries, and her mother had even more, if you consider the fact that she lived in the days before penicillin and was, in fact, killed by a simple case of influenza which turned into pneumonia. So everything is relative.

But in terms of social pressure, the feeling that the standards of being a "good mother" have been racheted up and up and up over the years....yeah, I'd say today's moms face unprecedented pressure. Thoughts, anybody?

The Unintentional Criminal

This week I nearly hijacked an airplane, which officially puts me one up over the time I tried to rob a cemetery. If and when they ever come to arrest me, I will plead Felony Dumbness (although I think the statute of limitations has run on the cemetery thing).

What happened was this: we were coming back from Wisconsin, on a Northwest Airline flight that left Milwaukee at 2:15 a.m. Okay, it was actually 7:30 a.m., but it felt like 2:15 a.m. When the announcement came on to disconnect all electronic devices, I disconnected my Ipod (I don't know if an Ipod counts as an electronic device, but I wanted to be a Compliant Passenger), put it in the front pocket of my blouse and wrapped the cord around my neck so I could easily plug back in once we were aloft. Time passed. We took off, the seatbelt light went off, and an urgent need to pee asserted itself. I extricated myself from my Passenger Holding Device (comedian Lewis Black is right--in coach, they should can the pretense of seating and just give you a wooden rod; then you can stick it up your ass and sit anywhere you like) and slowly made my way down the aisle of the plane toward the lavatory. In my sleep-deprived state, I was working on the fixed idea that All Lavatories Were In The Back. I walked right past the lav and did not notice. The next thing I saw was a woman flight attendant coming up the aisle toward me with a cart of Passenger Kibble or whatever it is they call "refreshments" on airplanes these days. I continued my forward lurch. She looked at me and did a double take. What she saw was a passenger way in the back of the plane where said passenger has no business being, looking disheveled and rather stoned, with wires wrapped around her neck leading to some kind of small device concealed in the pocket of her shirt.

She began backing up. Thas' nice, I thought dreamily, thinking she was going to let me pass her so I could get to the lav. (I've known stewardesses who won't yield an inch to desperate passengers suffering a severe case of the runs; the kibble must be served, goddamit.) This flight attendant, however, kept backing up. At this point, her eyes were really, really big. We're talking approximately the size of salad plates. Something vaguely rang a bell; I had seen that look before. It began to penetrate my fogged-in brain that something here was not quite right. At that crucial moment, a male flight attendant appeared behind the woman with the cart and announced in an extremely loud voice, "THERE ARE NO LAVATORIES BACK HERE."

"Oh," I said, in my most intelligent "I knew that" tone of voice. It wasn't until I saw myself in the lavatory mirror that I realized what the flight attendant must have been thinking. By that time I think they had probably already started the chest compressions on her.

Some people embark on a life of crime; others have a life of crime thrust upon them. My previous experience with law-breaking happened some years ago, when I was a carefree single gal, traveling with my friend Ann in Paris. We decided to go to the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise, where, among others, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison and Frederick Chopin are buried. Ann was the map-reader; I, with my minuscule French, was the all-purpose translator. Somehow we got off one subway stop past the cemetery, and entered via the back way. For some reason, I had the fixed idea (are we beginning to see a pattern here?) that the cemetery charged admission, being a major tourist attraction and all. Ann didn't seem to think so, and I had to grant that I had never been to a cemetery which required paid admission, but hey, this was France. They do things different there.

So we wandered through the cemetery, me with the uneasy feeling that at any moment a gendarme was going to step out from behind a tombstone and say sternly, in French, "Yo! Numbskulls! Get your ass over here." Finally, we spotted a big administrative-looking building. "Here we go," I said to Ann, and marched in. Inside was a small lobby and a barred window--like the kind banks have in 1950s Westerns--and, behind the barred window, a lady sitting on a stool. Above the barred window was a single word: caisse.

Now, here's the thing: caisse is roughly translated as "cashbox" or "cash register." But, still working on my fixed idea, I immediately made the brilliant deduction that it meant "tickets." So I marched up to the window, presented myself and said in my best college French, "Pardonnez-moi, madame, mais j'ai besoin de la caisse"--which can be literally translated as "I need the cashbox" or, if you want a rougher translation, as "Hand over the money and nobody'll get hurt." This was my first encounter with the Eyes-The-Size-of-Salad-Plates phenomenon, and I was thoroughly baffled. Was it my grammar? My accent? At this point I began to repeat my request more slowly, but my attempts were thwarted by Ann, who being light years ahead of me, was suddenly pulling on my arm and yelling, "No, Tracy! No!"

In the end, Ann managed to turn me aside from my doggedly inadvertent attempt to rob the joint and we did not get arrested. The lady behind the barred window recovered her composure very quickly, with a Gallic shrug that said eloquently, "Goddamned fucking stupid American tourists," and we went on with our expedition. I believe that was the same day I discovered that those coin-operated street lavatories they had in Paris at the time (do they still have them?) had a door that operated via some electronic signal triggered by a person's weight on the floor, so that when--just to take a hypothetical example--a person is sitting on the john with her pants around her ankles and lifts her foot to take a look at a sandal strap that is getting ready to break--eeerrrrrrruuummmmmm--the electronic door slowly slides open, giving the person on the john a view of all Paris and all of Paris a view of the person on the john. But that's another story.

And people wonder why I don't get out more.

I did get out last night, however, to a book signing at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., where about 50 people showed up--including a significant number of people who I did not know and who were not related to me--to hear me talk about my new book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression. It was a terrific turnout, considering the fact that this is the month that anyone who can gets out of Washington and dogs can sleep undisturbed in the middle of K Street. Many thanks to the P&P folks and to all the non-relatives who bought books.

On Not Shedding a Tear

The other day, my five-year-old and I were at Staples, buying supplies for her first day of kindergarten. "I'm going to kindergarten," my daughter announced to the cashier, who didn't hear her. "Say it again," I told her, so she did. The cashier still didn't hear her (pay attention, woman!), so I announced loudly, "She's going to kindergarten."

"Oh, really," the cashier replied, without enthusiasm, and then informed me that I had bought the wrong kind of pencils (skinny, not chubby). I waved the list in her face.

"It says 'one box #2 lead pencils,'" I said. "That's what I'm getting."

"Well, I'm just sayin', we have the other kind," she said. (Where? Behind the DOG FOOD AISLE? You think I didn't look, lady? You think I'm going back NOW?) And then, handing me our bag of Stuff, she said to me, "Now, you're not gonna cry, are you?"

No, I am not. Did not. I dropped Suzanne off this morning and, just as I did with her Rebecca before her, walked home with a light heart. I am getting some return on my tax dollars, and my little girl is gonna have a blast; in fact, she's gonna blow them out of the water.

And, just like that, a whole chapter of my life is over.

I do confess to some nostalgia. It seems like only about two weeks ago we brought that first little bundle home from the hospital. (My husband carried Rebecca into the house in her car seat and put the whole contraption on the boot bench beside the front door, turned to come back outside to help me, and the carseat promptly fell onto the floor. I was recovering from a C-section, walking painfully up the front driveway, when I heard a big thump, following by baby screams. It is possible, though not advisible, to sprint two days after undergoing major abdominal surgery. Rebecca was pissed off, but otherwise fine.) That was nearly a decade ago--a decade of smelly diaper genies, stuffed animals, several million loads of laundry, lullabies, screaming matches, scrubbing barf off sofa cushions, playdates, birthday parties, Halloween costumes--it's a blur. Babies stretch your stomach past the point where any human stomach outside of an "Alien" movie could possibly stretch, and then they start ripping off the the ligaments connecting your spine with your pelvis. Children do the same thing, metaphorically speaking, to your whole world: they stretch your horizons, and rip you loose from everything you were attached to before. Sometimes it hurts like hell, and you will definitely look the worse for wear: my belly is never going back where it was, and my boobs are racing to see which one will reach my waist first. But who doesn't end life looking the worse for wear? Who wants to be a beautiful corpse?

So: today the baby who fell off the boot bench raced off to start fifth grade ("No kissing, Mom") and the baby who came after her starts kindergarten. A new chapter begins, and away we go.

A Handy Dandy Reference Guide

 This is blatant self-promotion, but I confess to being slightly agog at the number of mentions that The Book (The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression) is creating in the blogosphere. Since I don't have time to do anything else today, here's a list of who's saying what:

http://spyderkl.net/?p=175
http://jbjones.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-wouldbut-i-cant.html
http://www.amalah.com/amalah/2006/08/blog_interrupte.html
http://www.blogsheroes.com/feed/parentinganddepression
http://thismodernworld.com/3069
http://fortherecord.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/dear-dooce/
http://inneedofgrace.blogsome.com/2006/08/16/dooce-reviews-book-about-maternal-depression/
http://www.hipmama.com/node/24153
http://wakingupastonished.blogspot.com/2006/08/so.html
http://orangeconezone.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/more-on-that/

http://jujubeejenny.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/skip_right_on_o.html
http://limberlime.com/2006/08/13/maternal-depression-irritability-and-guilt/
http://welborn.blogspot.com/2006/08/ghost-in-this-house.html

And, just so nobody thinks I'm sitting here smoking Gauloises in my Chanel suit while fielding offers from film agents, here's how I have spent my day:

5 loads of laundry
dealing with three force-five swivets/ screaming hissy fits from the 9 year old
one screaming hissy fit of my own
trying, unsuccessfully, to get the 5 year old to nap
breaking up about 8 full-bore screaming sibling fights
packing for a trip to Wisconsin loooong before the crack of dawn tomorrow

This, ladies, is the reason Jane Austen never married.

Oh, yeah, and last item:
eating prunes to cure my constipation (Dooce, are you listening? Prunes, honey. Prunes are the cure.)

The Impostor Syndrome

We all know what this is--the feeling that, deep down, you don't deserve any good fortune, that sooner or later people are going to see past this lovely veneer of accomplishment you've managed to construct to find the Truly Inadequate Person within. Groucho Marx even made a famous joke about it: "I'd never belong to a club which would have me as a member." I don't know if Groucho suffered from depression; I don't know if depression is a prerequiste for this feeling. All I know is that I've had a bad case of The Impostor Syndrome lately.

The occasion for this is the publication of my new book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression, which debuted Aug. 8 and which has been getting raves in the mom-blog world ever since. All of which has induced in me an uneasy sense that the other shoe is about to drop--the somebody out there will sneeringly point out that my research is worthless, or that I'm a whiner/slacker mom, or that the book just plain sucks. And perhaps, soon, somebody will.

Or I could, as my friend Andi Buchanan (of Literary Mama fame) suggests, consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I've written a good book. And while I was digesting this idea, I got an e-mail from from oldest friend in the world, an e-mail containing some serious Buddhist-inspired wisdom. Meghan Caughey and I go back to Mrs. Hendry's Kindergarten on Highway 29 in College Park, Georgia. Today she is an accomplished artist, and a person who has walked through the hellhole of schizophrenia--a place darker and scarier by far than anything depression has to offer--and emerged on the other side. She lives in Oregon, we haven't seen each other in decades, but the spiritual connection between us is profound. Meghan, I hope you don't mind the quote, but it was so great I had to share:

"You are a vehicle, a vessel, the messenger. I know the compliments go against the self-critic in your head, so I can see why it is maybe hard to take it all in. But you wrote something that was genuine and about the truth. The self-critic hates the truth and wants you to feel bad. But people recognize your work as valuable and want to communicate their experience of this to you and to others. The self-critic must be over-ridden and the truth must prevail. The small ego is wrapped up with the self-critic. The deeper essential self knows the truth and recognizes the value of one's work and is gracious when recognized."

The small ego is wrapped up with the self-critic. Ooooh, that's tough, which is why I like it. It gets at the essential truth of the Impostor Syndrome, which is that it is itself an impostor: it is a form of arrogance masquerading as Poor Little Me. It's a way of saying that you, and only you, can be the arbiter of what's really good and what's not--and that your friends and admirers are either a) too dumb to know the difference between good and mediocre or that b) they are sucking up to you (which is a fairly unflattering view, to say the least). Deep down, the Impostor Syndrome is about Pride, which they don't count as one of the seven deadly sins for nothin'.

So: I'm giving it up. The Impostor Syndrome, that is. Which is not that hard to do, because the alternative is not raging egomania ("Me! Me! Me!") but simply the recognition that you've been given a gift and that this time you've used it well. You have not obstructed the cosmos; you have not impeded The Flow. Now, that, I gotta say, is a nice feeling, and one I'll take any day.

Meanwhile, I'd like to give a great big thank you to all the reviewers out there who have read the book and have their own penetrating insights to offer. For those of you who haven't caught up with your internet reading this week, here they are (and I'm sorry about not linking directly to your home pages, guys, but this is my third try at posting this thing and every time I try to do that I lose my post--so bear with me):

Monday--Jen Lawrence, of MUBAR
http://tomama.blogs.com/mubar/2006/08/this_blog_post_.html and http://www.mothershock.com/blog/archives/2006/08/mothertalk_the_1.html

Tuesday--Mir at Woulda Coulda Shoulda  http://wouldashoulda.com/2006/08/08/blog-book-tour-the-ghost-in-the-house/ and http://www.mothershock.com/blog/archives/2006/08/mothertalk_blog.html

Wednesday--Jenny at Three Kid Circus
http://threekidcircus.com/threekidcircus/archives/2006/08/mother_talk.html and http://www.mothershock.com/blog/archives/2006/08/mothertalk_blog_1.html

Thursday--Asha Dornfest at Parenthacks http://www.parenthacks.com/2006/08/mothertalk_blog.html and http://www.mothershock.com/blog/archives/2006/08/mothertalk_blog_2.html

Friday--Tracey Gaughran-Perez at Sweetney
http://www.sweetney.com/001372.html and http://www.mothershock.com/blog/archives/2006/08/mothertalk_blog_4.html

Keep an eye out for Heather Armstrong, aka  the fabulous Dooce, who promises to weigh in on this subject on Aug. 15 via her column on Alpha Mom.  And, if you still have time on your hands after all this, you can look up some mainstream media reviews on my  website.

Gotta go. The kids are pounding at the door.

Real Men Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

Back in The Day, when I was young and single, I was a member of a group of women co-workers known as the Female (pronounced fe-MAH-le) Ghetto. For reasons unknown but highly suspected, most of the women in the newsroom of which I speak were seated in close proximity to each other, and whenever some piece of dreck work needed to be done (this was the early 1980s, and not all consciousnesses were raised back then, by any means), a male editor named Herb would pick up the assignment sheet and head resolutely over to our area.

"Don't even THINK about it," one of us would growl, anticipating the chore of calling the Weather Bureau for the next day's forecast, or the unenviable job of doing the annual United Way story, or being dispatched to the zoo to see whether the snake eggs had hatched. Herb (who was always terrified) would manage to withstand the chorus of laments, complaints, bitching and moaning which would erupt, and eventually the Unlucky Person would heave a sigh and set to work while the male reporters nearby serenely finished the crossword puzzle and puffed on their cigarettes (this was pre-smoking bans, too).

No right-minded man who has ever heard the phrase "sexual discrimination lawsuit" would try such a stunt these days, but do not be deceived: we have not come a long way. The harassment these days is more insidious and personal. I speak, ladies, of requests from men that we shave our pussies.

This, at least, is what I read today in Cary Lewis' advice column in Salon, where a 40ish single woman in New York writes in to say she fears she will never find a guy willing to date her who doesn't want her to shave "down there."

Notice, ladies, this is not accompanied by any corresponding trend among men to, say, shave their testicles (do they even make electric razors for that?) or any other hairy parts in the crotch region. Most men go through life with the unshaken confidence that whatever they have hanging out down there is inherently beautiful, even though they may harbor some qualms about whether this is enough beauty, size-wise, for the world to admire. Most women go through life ashamed of their body parts--at least once they hit puberty, when menstrual periods begin and "down there" begins to be associated, however illogically, with the ewwww factor. (Up until then, in my experience, little girls glory in their private parts as much as boys do. I remember flaunting my nakedness way past the point where my mother told me to go put on some clothes, for pete's sake, and nowadays we  frequently have to forcibly dissuade my own five-year-old daughter from displaying everything south of Venezuela.)

So what's with the shaved pussy thing? It has to be the porn influence, doncha think? While I am not an expert in the genre, I've seen enough hotel-room porn to get the general picture, if you know what I mean, and all the porn actresses I've seen have private parts as innocent of hair as a baby's bottom, the better to display their (ouch) body piercing artwork. It's bad enough that this infantalizes adult female sexuality; what's worse is that what used to be the sign of the pro has seeped into  mass culture (and I may be talking about a five-year-old fashion trend; I do not pretend to be in the loop on these matters). In any event, the result is that now this poor lady in New York City can't so much as land a date without some doofus asking her to lather up, and I don't mean with passion. What's a girl to do?

Cary Lewis deferred to his readers on this one, and my answer to her would be simple: strike a blow for equality. If her date says, "Honey, will you--?" she should say, "Sure, if you will." Then, if he says no, she can say, "I am sorry, but I refuse to be in a sexually unequal relationship" and that will pretty much be that. If he agrees, she should let him--and then say so long. Either way, the only thing she stands to lose is the dubious pleasure of having sex with a Great Big Baby.

Ten Things That Piss Me Off

I am feeling poisonous today--as if, if I bit somebody, they would DIE. So I decided to go with the flow and use my negative energy for something mildly constructive: venting.

So, without further ado:

1. New Yorker fiction. Beautifully written, elegant paragraphs about people who don't do anything, which never comes to any conclusion, which sucks me into reading it and then pounding my head against a concrete wall wailing, "Why? Why?" over the hour of my life I will never get back.

2. People who park their grocery carts athwart the aisle and stand there in rapt contemplation of ramen noodles (chicken or beef?) while yakking on their cellphones, who then look at you like you have some nerve asking them to move.

3. People who do 45 in the left hand lane (sound of SuperBowl-sized stadium full of people cheering)

4. The editor who took months to read my manuscript and then sent back what I wrote without a single constructive suggestion except to say she didn't like it, and who did this over and over, who wrote insulting e-mails  about me to third parties and cc'd me without, apparently, realizing how insulting that was (even though this person is supposed to be a genius, go figure), who took weeks or months to return phone calls or e-mails and who, after two years, had the amazing gall to tell me that I had been "wasting time" and had not fulfilled my contract.

5. People who listen to what I say and then repeat it, slightly altered, as if it were some new and brilliant thought they had just come up with. And who probably actually think this.

6. Men who interrupt women without having a clue that's what they are doing, but who listen respectfully when another man is talking.

7. Women whose delicate sensibilities are so offended by the idea of their perfect, sanitary posterior coming into contact with a public toilet that they hover over it instead, spraying urine all over the seat for me to sit in when I come in after them. Notice to you ladies: of the 15 million cases of clap recorded in the last decade, not ONE was contracted by sitting on a public toilet.

8. Eight year old kids who say, "Pull my finger." Especially when I taught them to do it. (I plead temporary insanity.)

9. Black people who interpret every boneheaded thing I do as evidence of racism, especially that lady in Payless last week who got all huffy when I didn't see her for a moment and blocked her view, when I had one saleslady and two kids all yapping at me at the same time, and who refused to accept my apology because, clearly, my failure to see her was prima facie evidence that black people are invisible to white people, which historically she has a point about, but in this particular instance just wasn't the case, so get OVER it, honey.

10. Kids who say, "MOM!" from two rooms away, expecting me to magically appear at their elbow as if I were some genie who existed to fulfill their every wish, and who, when I say, "I'm in here if you want to talk to me," respond by saying, "WHAT?"

Okay. That's it. I feel better.