Like A Monkey In A Zoo

‘Treats’ by Lara Williams. Review.

Loved the book. Raw, clever, sad, sweet and funny stories. Lots of break up, moving back home, flat slash job hunting etc. Her style, her use of the second person (‘It Begins’, ‘One Of Those Life Things’, ‘Sundaes At The Tipping Yard’…) is amazing. It literally reads itself!

Her recurrent protagonist is a messed up female but there are a few stories written from a male’s point of view (‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ and ‘A Selfie As Big As The Ritz’ for instance). These awkward women with their funny and sad faux pas, reminded me quite a lot of some characters in Miranda July’s stories. The character of Elaine in ‘Treats’ for example, or the protagonists in ‘Toxic Shock Syndrome’ and ‘Safe Spaces’.

From ‘Treats’:

‘She ate at the kitchen table, watching the fish circle its bowl, the seventh fish, she thought, Moby Dick the seventh. She set down her fork to sprinkle fish food onto the water, pink and orange flakes, that had the texture and smell of chicken stock. She felt subversive, transgressive; radicalising the food chain like that. The fish wriggled hurriedly to the waterline, its orange mouth nipping sweetly at the surface, its big black eyes, frozen in a kind of permanent disbelief, a doubtful and necessary trust.’ (p.54)

My favourite stories are the ones that are written in the second person pronoun like ‘It Begins’, the very first story. ‘It Begins’ is a wee narrative of a lifetime. It’s as if saying; listen to me because I know what I’m saying, don’t expect much, life’s what it is, a bit shitty at times but in the end it doesn’t really matter, it’s actually quite alright in the end, you’ll see. It feels sort of prophetic, which is scary.

‘You sit in front of the television stroking the cat. You are waring pyjamas. You cannot believe you are a person who has had sex, who has driven a car.’ (p.1)

‘You get an office job. You assimilate with business graduates, with their hearty sense of cynicism, a premature world-wariness, worn like a badge of honour. So pleased with their early resignation, their: this, this is life. This marching course of spreadsheets and workflows and thin-lipped jokes in strategising brainstorms, this is all there is and we knew all along, while you were dilly-dallying with your Chaucer, frolicking with your intertextuality, we were squirrelling away the capacity to deal with this. Imagine being that lacking in idealism, you think. Imagine being that lacking in wonder, aspiring to jobs in logistics or IT services, imagine never entertaining frothy careers scouting bands, imagine never picturing yourself in front of a glossy iMac. Did it make the heartbreak easier or earlier? You grip your rosy ideals, your soppy security blanket.’ (p.1, 2)

‘You sit across from him in a hammy Italian bistro, winding spaghetti around your fork between sips of white wine. You look at him and his face is old and unfamiliar. Who are you? you think. And why are you touching my hand?’ (p.3)

‘You cry and sleep, a routine of sorts, performed several times daily. And yet you worry that maybe you’re not quite feeling it fully, that it hasn’t quite reached the tips of your fingers, lying dormant under a few layers of skin, when suddenly it shoots out, pouring forth from every orifice, spinning circles around the room and it is all there is. It is all there is. You are now one of them. You have joined that special club and your initiation rites are a series of squeezed shoulders, of weak smiles. Stories of former breakups, bad boyfriends, husbands cheating, confessionals offered up, little titbits of consolation, like treats. Fuck you, you think. Fuck you, this is different. This is different because this is happening to me. Your friends want you to talk about it but you cannot. ‘There is no vocabulary for heartbreak’, you say. ‘There is no point’ (…) You think about how strange it is to still have absolutes like this, like marriage, in this day and age. Couldn’t there be another option, leasing it out for five, maybe ten years then reviewing it when the time comes. We are a generation of renters not buyers. Your friend Suze tells you to stop being cynical.’ (p.4,5)

The ending; a woman gardening in the sun, looking forward to her lunch, (oh, the little things!) is a soothing and peaceful image.

‘Dates’, that reads like a manual for dating, the small rituals and the codes and conducts of it, is really funny.

‘Prepare conversation topics, little flash cards fixed in your mind; things like responsive design and capitalist realism, in a pinch, bring up Syria.’ (p.49)

‘Say something whimsical, something like; doesn’t the light bounce off the walls like something that might have been seized by the Third Reich, something like, don’t the rose jellies look like two bloodied kidneys, which do themselves, in turn, look like quotation marks; something like, doesn’t the sound of you smacking your lips together when you chew make you want to stab out your own eyes with a salad fork.’ (p.50)

Another funny one and probably my favourite one after ‘It Begins’ is ‘Sundaes At The Tipping Yard’, which I presume is quite autobiographical.

‘You meet your classmates; they are bankers, lawyers, caretakers; they work for restaurants, call centres, nautical engineering firms. No one owns a Kindle but everyone has a Mac. There is a lot of knitwear.’ (p.89)

‘Your mind keeps turning to your ex; your old brown shoe. One night you accidentally like one of his girlfriend’s photographs on Instagram. You send him an email telling him you have not lost your mind though quite evidently you have. He does not reply. There are no accidents, rattles through your brain. There are no accidents. Did Freud say that? Or Cher?’ (p.90)

‘Your tutor tells you there are choices to be made; and are there ever! Choose a wild boy who will rip out your heart or a nice boy of whom you will grow tired. It hardly matters. It all ends with the same miserable solitude. But he means more to do with your essay; have you picked a question yet?’ (91)

‘You write some short fiction for workshop. It is about a girl who quits her job, her boyfriend, her flat and does a Creative Writing MA. It is the first time you have read in front of our class. A bit like losing your virginity you feel more or less the same, but you would like to have a bath. ‘How about,’ your tutor suggests, ‘you write a story that’s not about your ex-boyfriend?’ You go home and write a story you are sure is not about your ex-boyfriend, one about a mermaid living in Queens; a mermaid who quits her job, her boyfriend, her flat and starts a Creative Writing MA. ‘You can’t make these things up!’ you scribble in the margins. You literally cannot make these things up.’ (p.92)

The longest story from the book, ‘Here’s To You’ is quite excellent with a brilliant ending. It’s got one of my favourite moments of the whole book (again, it’s a bit Miranda July moment) when Aahna, the protagonist, is drunk at home with her mum on Halloween and three young trick-or-treater girls gather at the front door. They are dressed like Madonna, Cher and Tina.

‘Anna looked them up and down. Bitches, she thought. Bitches. ‘You look more like Pinot girls, am I right ladies? She held their gaze. ‘You want to see a trick?’ Madonna asked, and then she spat on the floor. They screamed with laughter and turned to run away. They tripped and fell into each other, hysterical and squealing. Children are awful. ‘Hey, that’s not very polite,’ Aahna shouted after them. ‘That’s not very fucking Mother of Jesus.’ The clip clop of their heels echoed down the street. They whooped with glee. ‘Cher,’ Aahna shouted after them. ‘Hey Cher. I’ve got a question for you.’ They stopped, breathless. Holding onto each other. They turned around and their eyes shimmered with expectation. ‘Oh yeah,’ Cher replied. ‘Yeah,’ Aahna shouted. ‘Do you believe in life after love?’ The girls looked at each other in disbelief. They giggled, giddy and drunk; drunk on this crazy lady, scampering back down the street like wild things into the night. ‘Well do you?’ Aahna yelled after them. ‘Do you? Aahna closed the door and went back inside. Her mother was laying the table. ‘Am I a good person?’ Aahna asked. ‘Hmm?’ ‘Am I a good person?’ she repeated. Her mother patted her head. ‘Good at what?’ she asked.’ (p.82,83)

These are more of my dearest quotes from the book.

From ‘One Of Those Life Things’:

‘You skip your period. It makes sense. You have been eating less, beginning only to feed, handfuls of cereal, snatches of bread, meals now seem a pointless ceremony. Food has lost its flavour, only its texture can be noted. Your menstrual cycle has grown dopey. Wha? Today? It slipped my mind! You are, if anything, grateful for the reprieve, one month off in two hundred and twenty eight, it seems only fair, heck, it seems like basic common sense. (…) ‘You can take a little time off? your boss cooed. ‘If you think that would help.’ Can you not cut the same slack to your reproductive faculties? Can you not afford this base level of human compassion to your own body? What are you, a monster?’ (p.13)

I like that the protagonist of this story texts her friend for coffee or drink and always ends up with ‘In hell’: ‘I need to talk to you’, ‘In hell’. ‘Would you like to go for a coffee?’, ‘In hell’. Might start doing that. It feels like a matter of time.

From ‘Where I Am Supposed To Be’:

‘It balled up, eventually, the loss, sitting inside my body, knotted and out of place like a hot diamond slotted behind my lung. I found myself squinting at my laptop, back to work, my hair damp, my pyjamas freshly washed. I thought: I feel like Helen Hunt, in a movie about Helen Hunt, squinting at her laptop, back to work, her hair damp, her pyjamas freshly washed. Triumph over adversity, life felt like a series of small battles, of smaller wins, twisting and mutating, always, into something else.’ (p.26)

From ‘This Small Written Thing’:

‘How was she supposed to know this thin sliver of untruth, this morsel of fiction, was being dispensed to her future husband, the future love of her life, to grow fat, to develop wings. She hadn’t realised she was signing such a lengthy contract with this small fabrication, but then, she hadn’t yet realised that if you’re not in it for the long haul, well, best not to bother at all. She hadn’t yet realised that in a relationship, honesty was just one of many options, a sort of moral high ground, yes, but no more so than vegetarianism or recycling. And she was both a vegetarian and a recycler.’ (p.32)

From ‘Taxidermy’:

‘We need to talk,’ her boss said. ‘About your performance.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Neala replied. ‘But I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who gives a fuck.’ (p.58)

From ‘Penguins’:

‘They go to an art gallery. She wears a backpack and jeans. She looks at him. He is wearing a backpack and jeans. She looks at the other couples in the art gallery. They are all wearing backpacks and jeans.’ (p.63)

‘Would you like to meet my parents?’ he asks. ‘And we should go away.’ There is a long inventory of things to do. They dine with other couples, touring their friends. They take turns to make food. A lot of being in a relationship, she realises, is negotiating what you are going to have for tea.’ (p.63)

From ‘A Selfie As Big As The Ritz’:

‘She left soon after they returned. There was no decisive moment; she just sort of faded away. One day he looked around the flat and realised none of the stuff in it was hers. It was a relief really; the sleepy calm that comes after the exorcism of grief. And so, he slept it off. Slept like slowly seeping caramel. Slept like the biggest marshmallow there ever was. He didn’t so much mind his life without her.’ (p.106)

Maybe the only story that I didn’t like much was ‘A Single Lady’s Manual for Parent/Teacher Evening’. It didn’t feel natural in a way, as if she were trying to hard to be in this cool mum’s head but not quite succeeding it. In the same line, the stories that are written from a male’s perspective are among my least favourites. As she herself says it, ‘you can’t make these things up!’

PS. Notice what the girl in the cover of the book is reading. Yes. ‘Men Explain Things To Me’, by Rebecca Solnit. That’s going to be my next book, because I’m trying, like the character in ‘Sundaes At The Tipping Yard’:

‘Look at your reading list and buy only the women.’ (p.89)

PEACE.

‘MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS’, by John Gray. Review.

I few weeks ago I watched ‘Clueless’ for the first time. Pretty good like. Then, on the same weekend, Jonny found this book at his parents’. It was his dad’s, not his mum’s. ‘From the movie!’, and I started reading pretty excited.

So this was a really popular book in the 90’s. It sold millions and millions. One of the first ‘self-help’ books. According to wikipedia, lots of other books (by the same author), audio tapes, seminars, theme vacations, a Broadway show, TV sitcom, workout videos, fragrances, travel guides and ‘his’ and ‘hers’ salad dressings’ have been inspired by this bestseller. I mean for fucks sakes.

‘When you remember that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, everything can be explained’ (p.10)

So, as you might have already guessed, the book’s central idea is that men and women are from different planets, Mars and Venus respectively; i.e., they are very different and so they speak different languages, they communicate differently, they have different needs. But if we understand this, ‘unlearn what we have learned in the past’ (p.286) and integrate his new wisdom we can all enjoy amazing loving relationships. Oh, and he’s quite confident that he will exactly do that, change your life, save your marriage. ‘Literally thousands of those who attended my weekend seminars saw their relationships dramatically transform overnight’ (p.3), ‘They come on Saturday of my weekend relationship seminar and by dinnertime on Sunday they are in love again’ (p.285) and ‘Thank you for letting me make a difference in your life’ (p.286). It seems like he’s really scared of people getting divorced. He doesn’t like that.

Let’s start with the title. The order: Men first. ‘Men are from Mars’, written in big, blue, capital letters. Secondly, ‘Women are from Venus’, in smaller, pink, lower case font, a very tacky font. Mars, named after the Roman god of war, representing masculinity and youth. And Venus, the only planet in the Solar System that is named after a female figure, representing femininity.

The whole planet thing is really annoying. Instead of using ‘men’ and ‘women’, he keeps saying ‘Martians’ and ‘Venusians’, as if he were talking to kids, it’s very tiresome. And the wee story about how Martians and Venusians met. Genius.

‘One day long ago the Martians, looking through their telescopes, discovered the Venusians. Just glimpsing the Venusians awakened feeling they had never known. They fell in love and quickly invented space travel and flew to Venus. The Venusians welcomed the Martians with open arms. They had intuitively known that this day would come. Their hearts opened wide to a love they had never felt before. The love between the Venusians and Martians was magical. (…) For years they lived together in love and harmony.’(p.9)

This book is obviously intended for heterosexual middle-class couples, potentially married and with a couple of children and cars (I’ll get back to this later) where usually the husband is the bread winner and spends too much time in his office making the moneyz and has no time for his demanding wife and kids. So if you are a homosexual, or you are poor or unemployed etc. first get your shit together, have an unhappy relationship and when you’re on the verge of getting the divorce papers, read this book.

The subtitle is quite something too: ‘A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships’. I’m fine with the communication part, but the last part? Hm, it’s a bit like, yeh, give me what I want woman! (because it’s written by a man, that is). I don’t like it.

I mean, you have to read this book with a lot of distance and presence. Especially, if you are like me and get quite into self-help crap. It’s not hard in this case, though. The book is mostly funny but it’s got some good points too.

The first funny thing can be found in the introduction. So the author is telling a personal anecdote about her wife being pregnant and in pain, and they arguing and then he leaving and his wife telling him not to, telling him to just hold her (‘I just need to feel your arms around me. Please don’t go’, p.2). And then he just does that, and miracle! It works!

‘How had I missed this? She just needed me to go over an hold her. Another woman would have instinctively known what Bonnie (his wife) needed. But as a man, I didn’t know that touching, holding, and listening were so important to her. By recognising these differences I began to learn a new way of relating to my wife. I would have never believed we could resolve conflict so easily.’ (p.2)

LOL. All a woman needs is a hug.

The book is full of clichés and generalisations obviously but he tries to justify that somehow at the beginning.

‘I make many generalisations about men and women in this book. Probably you will find some comments truer than others… after all, we are unique individuals with unique experiences. Sometimes in my seminar couples and individuals will share that they relate to the examples of men and women but in an opposite way. The man relates to my descriptions of women and the woman relates to my descriptions of men. I call this role reversal.’ (p.6)

Yeh, you can call that whatever the feck you want but you wouldn’t have to call it any way and you wouldn’t confuse your reader (‘hm, am I experiencing too much of the ‘role reversal’? Is that OK?) if you would acknowledge in the first place that we are not aliens to each other and we essentially want the same things, men, women, whatever.

In Chapter 2: ‘Mr. Fix-it and the Home Improvement Committee’, the author describes the different values Martians and Venusians have. So, for example, Martians’ ‘sense of self is defined through his ability to achieve results. They experience fulfilment primarily through success and accomplishment’ (p.16).

‘Everything on Mars is a reflection of these values. Even their dress is designed to reflect their skills and competence. Police officers, soldiers, businessmen, scientists, cab drivers, technicians and chefs all wear uniforms or at least hats to reflect their competence and power. They don’t read magazines like ‘Psychology Today’, ‘Self’, or ‘People’. They are more concerned with outdoor activities, like hunting, fishing, and racing cars. They are interested in the news, weather, and sports and couldn’t care less about romance novels an self-help book.’ (p.16)

Etc., etc. You get the idea.

On the other hand, Venusians’ ‘value love, communication, beauty and relationships (…) They experience fulfilment through sharing and relating.’ (p.19).

‘Rather than building highways and tall buildings, the Venusians are more concerned with living together in harmony, community, and loving cooperation. Relationships are more important than work and technology. They do not wear uniforms like the Martians (to reveal their competence). On the contrary, they enjoy wearing a different outfit every day, (…) They may even change outfits several times a day as their mood changes.’ (p.18)

Yada, yada, yada.

Then the chapter is about how women should give up giving advice to men (unless it’s required) ‘cause men don’t like that, it’s like an insult almost to their virility; and on the other hand, how men have to learn to listen to women, without trying to give solutions, ‘cause women just like to talk and complain and they want empathy, not necessarily solutions. Common examples are a woman telling a man: that shirt doesn’t match your pants/ your hair is getting too long/ there’s a parking spot over there. And a man telling a woman: if you really hate your job then you should just quit!/ I’ve heard all this before, I thought we had established that/ It’s not such a big deal etc.

In Chapter 3: ‘Men Go to their Caves and Women Talk’, the author explores different ways men and women cope with stress. Men need space and solitude and find relief in their caves whereas women want to discuss their problems openly and they think out loud. Obviously, women don’t understand when men go their caves and they don’t like it and men don’t like to talk about their problems all the time, of course, because they are from different planets, remember.

Chapter 4: ‘How to Motivate the Opposite Sex’. ‘Men are motivated and empowered when they feel needed. Women are motivated and empowered when they feel cherished’ (p.43). There. There’s this funny extract on how differences attract:

‘The strange and beautiful Venusians were a mysterious attraction to the Martians. Their differences especially attracted the Martians. Where the Martians were hard, the Venusians were soft. Where the Martians were angular, the Venusians were round. Where the Martians were cool, the Venusians were warm. In a magical and perfect way their differences seemed to complement each other’ (p.44)

And this is just excellent: ‘In an unspoken language the Venusians communicated loud and clear: “We need you. Your power and strength can bring us great fulfilment, filling a void deep within our being. Together we could live in great happiness.” This invitation motivated and empowered the Martians.’ (p.45).

There’s also the thing about ‘giving and receiving’. A lot of my girlfriends complain that they ‘give too much’ or they ‘give more than they receive’ in their relationships. That always pissed me off, really. I empathise and all, but then I think, what do you bloody mean? You mean you give too much love or you mean you pay his phone bills? I mean, I don’t know, just stop doing that then, I guess? I guess I’m not as generous as my girlfriends.

So it seems to be the pattern with the female sex. According to the author, women give too much and that’s tiring and then they resent and blame men for not giving them back whatever it is they give. Or when they do give back, women are like ‘too little too late, I don’t want it anymore’ LOL. He suggests the same thing really, give if you want, just don’t expect them to give back, giving should be an altruist thing anyway. Take responsibility, set your limits. Apparently, ‘Just as women are afraid of receiving, men are afraid of giving’ (p.56). He just makes random stuff like this up and hopes to sound insightful.

Chapter 5: ‘Speaking Different Languages’. There’s a very interesting list in this chapter to help women support their man when he’s in his Cave. Women shouldn’t disapprove of his need for withdrawing, nor try to help him offering solutions, nor nag him asking questions about his feelings please, nor wait for him to come out of his cave nor worry or feel sorry for him. Instead, woman, why don’t you do one of these fun girl things and leave me the fuck alone? Here is a list:

- Read a book
- Listen to music
- Work in the garden
- Exercise
- Get a massage
- LISTEN TO SELF-IMPROVEMENT TAPES
- Treat yourself to something delicious
- Call a girlfriend for a good chat
- Write in a journal
- GO SHOPPING
- PRAY OR MEDITATE
- Go for a walk
- TAKE A BUBBLE BATH
- SEE A THERAPIST
- WATCH TV OR A VIDEO (p.77)

I took the liberty of highlighting my favourite ones. My favourite one is maybe ‘see a therapist’, ‘cause you are so annoying, there must be something wrong with you.

‘It puts too much pressure on a man to make him the only source of love and support’ (p.128) Poor sods.

Then the author shares another of his lovely personal anecdotes to illustrate this.

‘Venusians love to shop. My wife Bonnie, sometimes uses this technique. When she sees I am in my cave, she goes shopping. I never feel like I have to apologize for my Martian side. When she can take care of herself I feel OK taking care of myself and going into my cave. She trusted that I will come back and be more loving.’ (p.78) How very wonderful.

Chapter 6: ‘Men are Like Rubber Bands’ and chapter 7 : ‘Women are like Waves’. So here, the author is basically repeating himself and using another metaphor for men needing space and autonomy, pulling away and then coming back for intimacy and women’s self-esteem rising and falling like a wave along with her ability to love herself and others.

Usually, ‘something she says or does often triggers his departure’ (p.98). For example, she would say ‘We need to talk’ or ‘let’s talk’, and the man would pull away like a rubber band. ‘A man can only handle so much intimacy before his alarm bells go off, saying it is time to find balance by pulling away.’ (p.98). This is like the men’s period.

Then it may also very well happen that a man won’t pull away. That’s even worse ‘cause that means that they are being passive-aggressive and building a lot of resentment toward you, woman. Woman, you gotta find the right moment to talk to a man! He will come back to you woman! So let him pull away, go pray and take a bubble bath.

Women are very needy (‘Understanding Neediness’ p.118) and sometimes when they’re feeling very low, hit bottom and they’re in their well it’s time for a ‘Emotional Housecleaning’ (p.120). Interesting choice of words here as well.

‘Emotional Housecleaning’ is basically a emotional cleansing but while she’s at it, she can tidy up the house a wee bit, so much the better. This cleansing is necessary if a woman doesn’t want to end up numb and passionless over time.

This is also related to women’s menstrual cycle. There’s some insight about premenstrual syndrome (PMS) in this part. According to the author, PMS has to do with women avoiding dealing with their negative emotions and ‘resisting the natural wave motion of their feelings’. Only women who are unable to cope with negative feelings in a positive way will experience PMS.

To end the chapter, there’s a part dedicated to the wealthy ones, giving advice on ‘How Money Can Create Problems’ and how ‘Money doesn’t Fulfil Emotional Needs’ and how ‘A Wealthy Woman Needs More Permission to be Upset’. Just because they have a lot of money, that doesn’t mean that they can’t complain. That’s not fair. In fact, it’s very disrespectful.

Chapter 8: ‘Discovering Our Different Emotional Needs’. Here’s another interesting list about ‘The Primary Love Needs of Women and Men’.

Women need to receive:
1. Caring
2. Understanding
3. Respect
4. Devotion
5. Validation
6. Reassurance

Men need to receive:
1. Trust
2. Acceptance
3. Appreciation
4. Admiration
5. Approval
6. Encouragement

Again, another example of the author writing random shit to complete a list. You move stuff here and there, from one list to another, change the order and no one would notice.

There’s also a great story in this chapter. It’s called ‘The Knight in Shining Armor’ (p.138). Reminds me of this crappy books one of my uncles (kids’ psychologist) used to get me for my birthdays, like ‘The Knight in Rusty Armor’ and ‘The Princess Who Believed in Fairy Tales’. I used to love them, I should blame him for introducing me to cheap pop psychology and the world of self-help. Dang!

Anyhow, so the story goes like this. The Knight in Shining Armor is travelling through the countryside with his horse when he hears a woman cry from a castle. She’s trapped by a dragon. The brave knight pulls out his sword and slays the dragon. He’s acknowledged as a hero in the town. They throw a party, he and the princess fall in love.

After a while, the knight goes off on another trip. On his way back, the same thing happens. The princess is crying, there’s another dragon in the castle. When he’s getting his sword ready, the princess shouts from the window, ‘honey, use the noose, it’ll work better’. The knight seems a bit rustled but he obeys anyway. The dragon is killed, they throw another party but he’s not happy. In fact, he’s a bit depressed.

Again, he goes off on another trip. On his way back, same thing. Princess crying, another dragon. Princess shouts: ‘honey, use the poison, the noose doesn’t work’. The dragon is killed. They throw another party. The knight is very annoyed.

And again, he leaves. The princess is like, ‘babe, don’t forget the noose and the poison’. He takes’em.

This time, he hears another woman crying in another castle. Another dragon as well. He’s full of beans, his depression is lifted, he feels alive. But when he’s face to face with the dragon, he’s bloody confused, what should I use? The sword, the noose, the poison?? Help! But then he remembers that back in the days he only carried a sword and was completely fine. So with renewed confidence, he throws off the noose and poison and slays the dragon with his sword.

The knight never returned to her princess. He stayed in the new village and fell in love with this other princess who wasn’t such a control freak, got married and lived happily ever after.

So the moral of the story ladies is that you should stop pestering your men, otherwise they’ll run off with another woman. If they do, it’s your fault. Woman, stop trying to change a man!

‘Remembering that within every man is a knight in shining armour is a powerful metaphor to help you remember a man’s primary needs. Although a man may appreciate caring and assistance sometimes, too much of it will lessen his confidence or turn him off’. (p.140)

Fantastic.

On Chapter 9: ‘How to Avoid Arguments’, we’re told that ‘As a basic guideline: never argue’. And then, ‘The secret to avoiding arguments is loving and respectful communication’ which is true enough, easier said than done, but true enough.

According to the author, there are four ‘F’-s for avoiding arguments: fight, flight, fake and fold. Needless to say, they’re short-term gains but don’t work in the long run.

So men usually take the first two ‘F’-s. ‘Their motto is: the best defence is a strong offense’ (p.154). They either do that (fight) or they might also retire to their caves and never come out.

Women, on the other hand, fake and fold. They either smile and pretend everything is fine, like a good girl; or they give in and they take the blame for peace’s sake.

At the end of the chapter, he shares yet another personal story about his wife and himself. They were going on holiday, they just got in the car, when his wife Bonnie ‘gave a heavy sigh and said, “I feel like my life is a long, slow torture”. I paused, took a deep breath and then replied, “I know what you mean, I feel like they are squeezing every ounce of life out of me”. As I said this I made a motion as if I were wringing the water out of a rag. Bonnie nodded her head in agreement and to my amazement she suddenly smiled and then changed the subject. She started talking about how excited she was to go on this trip. Six years ago this would not have happened. We would have had an argument and I would have mistakenly blamed it on her.(…) I would have taken it personally (…) I would have become defensive (…) Then we would have argued and had a long, torturous vacation.(p.175)

Now, the way his wife Bonnie reacted isn’t necessarily reflective of women’s behaviour when their husbands empathise and made a little joke about what they’ve just said. It’s not really worthy of his merit, sorry. She could have reacted like, ‘Are you taking the piss out of me?’ in another time maybe. Just saying.

Chapter 10: ‘Scoring Points with the Opposite Sex’ is quite funny, actually. Basically, ‘a man thinks he scores high with woman when he does something big for her, like buying her a new car or taking her on a vacation’ (p.177) That’s the middle class voice talking right there. ‘He assumes he scores less when he does something small, like opening the car door, buying her a flower, or giving her a hug.(…) This formula, however, doesn’t work because women keep score differently. When a woman keeps score, no matter how big or small a gift of love is, it scores one point; each gift has equal value.’ (p.177).

Then there’s a huge list on ‘Ways to Score Points with a Woman’ (p.180). Here are the funniest:

- Upon returning home find her first before doing anything else and give her a hug.
- Ask her specific questions about her day that indicate an awareness of what she was planning to do (e.g., ‘how did your appointment with the doctor go?’)
- Give her 20min. of unsolicited, quality attention (don’t read the newspaper or be distracted by anything else during this time)
- If she usually washes the dishes, occasionally offer to wash the dishes, especially if she is tired that day.
- Give her 4 hugs a day.
- Tell her ‘I love you’ at least a couple of times every day.
- If she washes your socks, turn your socks right side out so she doesn’t have to.
- Notice when the trash is full and offer to empty it.
- WASH HER CAR.
- WASH YOUR CAR and clean up the interior before a date with her.
- Take her side when she is upset with someone.
- Make a point of cuddling or being affectionate sometimes without being sexual.
- Be patient when she is sharing. Don’t look at your watch.
- Display affection in public.
- When holding hands don’t let your hand go limp.
- Get season tickets for the theatre, symphony, opera, ballet, or some other type of performance she likes.
- Pay more attention to her than to others in public.
- Buy her little presents, like a small box of chocolates or perfume.
- Buy her an outfit (take a picture of your partner along with her sizes to the store an let them help you select it)
- Let her see that you carry a picture of her in your wallet and update it from time to time.
- When staying in a hotel, have them prepare the room with something special, like a bottle of champagne or sparkling apple juice or flowers.
- Surprise her with a love note or poem.
- Offer to fix something around the house. Say, ‘What needs to be fixed around here? I have some extra time’. Don’t take on more than you can do.
- Offer to sharpen her knives in the kitchen.
- When listening to her talk, use eye contact.
- Touch her with your hand sometimes when you talk to her.
- When listening to her, reassure her that you are interested by making little noises like ah ha, uh-huh, oh, mmhuh, and hmmmm.
- Laugh at her jokes and humor.

Even though you have this long list, mistakes can be made and misunderstandings can arise with regard to keeping score. Here is an example:

‘When a woman is sick with resentment she tends to negate what a man has one for her because, according to he way a woman keeps score, she has done so much more. When the score is forty to ten in favour of the woman, she may begin to feel very resentful. Something happens to a woman when she feels she is giving more than she is getting. Quite unconsciously she subtracts his score of then form her score of forty and concludes the score in their relationship is thirty to zero. This makes sense mathematically and is understandable, but it’d onset work. When she subtracts his score form her score he ends up with a zero, and he is not a zero. He has not given zero; he has given ten. When he comes home she has a coldness in her eyes or in her voice that says he is a zero. She is negating what he has done. She reacts to him as if he has given nothing- but he has given ten. (…) Of course, this isn’t fair, but it is how it works.’ (p.190) LOL.

Chapter 11: ‘How to Communicate Difficult Feelings’, shows a good technique to express difficult feelings: ‘The Love Letter Technique’. This isn’t a free style love letter, but a very organised one. You have to write your feelings about (p.211) 1. Anger, 2. Sadness, 3. Fear, 4. Regret and 5. Love. All of them, you can’t skip any point or otherwise it doesn’t work. And then you should also write a PS. with the response you would like to hear from your partner. He even gives the reader some lead-in phrases to help you start expressing your feelings such us: ‘I don’t like it…’, ‘I feel frustrated…’, ‘I am sad that…’, ‘I feel embarrassed…’, ‘I want…’, ‘I don’t want…’, ‘I love/appreciate, thank you for…’ etc. In case you are stuck and you don’t have a clue what you feel.

He also recommend 5 ways of sharing your letters (p.223):

1. He/she reads her/his love letter and response letter out loud while she/he is present. Then he/she holds her/his hands and gives his/her own loving response with a greater awareness or what she/he needs to hear.

2. She/he reads her/his own love letter and response letter out loud while he/she is listening. Then he/she holds her/his hands and gives him/her own loving response with a greater awareness of what she/he need to hear.

3. First he reads her letter out loud to her. Then he reads her love letter out loud. It is much easier for a man to hear negative feelings when he already knows how to respond to those feelings. By letting a man know what is required of him, he doesn’t panic as much when he is hearing negative feelings. After he reads her love letter he then holds her hands and gives his own loving response with a greater awareness of what she needs to hear.

4. First she reads her Response letter to him. Then she reads her love letter out loud. He holds her hands…

5. She gives her love letter to him and he reads them privately within 24h. He holds her hands…

So writing a love letter like this one should take up to 20 min. If you’re rustled but you’re in a rush, the author suggests that you write a ‘Mini Love Letter’ (p.226)

Here’s an example:

‘Dear Max,

1. I am so angry that you are late!
2. I am sad that you have forgotten me.
3. I am afraid you don’t really care about me.
4. I am sorry that I am so unforgiving.
5. I love you and I forgive you for being late. I know that you really love me. Thank you for trying.

Love, Sandie.’ (p.227)

You can write love letters to your partner, friend, child, relative, business associate, client, yourself, God or Higher Power. If you wrote a really nasty one (‘Monster letter’), you can burn it. Or you can write a ‘Role Reversal Love Letter’ if it’s hard for you to forgive someone. Pretend that you are them for a few minutes and write the love letter from them to you if that makes sense.

The secret for successful love letters is writing the true feelings, ‘cause as the author knows that ‘many of our negative emotional reactions are not real feelings but defense mechanisms we unconsciously use to avoid our true feelings’ (p.233).

I did try to write a love letter to myself and I felt stupid. I did it anyway.

Chapter 12: ‘How to Ask for Support and Get It’. For women, ‘love is never having to ask’ (p.246) and ‘if I have to ask, it doesn’t count’ (p.247). Whereas for men, if a woman isn’t asking for support, they assume they’re giving enough. Here are some steps women can take in order to ‘get what they want’:

STEP 1: ASKING CORRECTLY FOR WHAT YOU ARE ALREADY GETTING.

In this step, woman shouldn’t use a demanding tone to ask for something, it’s annoying for men. She should use an appropriate timing and should be brief and direct as well, don’t give a man a list why he should help you, it’s also annoying for men apparently. But the most important thing is to use the correct wording. Do not use ‘could’ and ‘can’ in your request but ‘would’ and ‘will’ even though women might think ‘could’ and ‘can’ are more polite, they don’t imply immediate action. Let’s see an example.

‘Just this last week my wife asked me, ‘could you plant the flowers today?’ and without hesitation I said yes. Then when she came home she asked, ‘did you plant the flowers?’ I said no. She said, ‘could you do it tomorrow?’ and again, without hesitation, I said yes. This happened every day this week, and the flowers are still not planted. I think if she had asked me ‘would you plant the flowers tomorrow?’ I would have thought about it, and if I had said yes I would have done it’ (p.254)

STEP 2: PRACTICE ASKING FOR MORE (EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW HE MAY SAY NO)

This is an interesting one. The thing here, woman, is to ask for an annoying thing to your man (let’s say they’ve just put their pyjamas on and are going to get in bed and you go: ‘can you take the rubbish out?’) knowing that he probably will say no and you’re going to be fine about it. It has to be in instances when you don’t mind doing it yourself, that’s important. So imagine he says ‘no, I’ve just put my pyjamas on, I’ll do it tomorrow’, you say, very graciously, ‘OK’, you can also add ‘no problem’ to that if you want. The trick is to make it perfectly safe and comfortable for him to say no.

‘Would you help me with the dishes tonight?’
‘No’
‘OK’

‘Would you take me dancing tonight?’
‘No’
‘OK’

‘Would you spend some time with me?’
‘No’
‘OK’

‘A relationship is healthy when both partners have permission to ask for what they want and need, and they both have permission to say no if they choose’ (p.265)

It’s interesting because this chapter is all about women asking for things and men refusing, but.

STEP 3: PRACTICE ASSERTIVE ASKING

This is a funny one too. So after you’ve been practising the second step and saying your OKs graciously, it’s time for the next step. This time you are not going to be OK if he says no. This time you’re going to ask ‘would you pick up some milk from the shop?’ (again, at night, he just put his pyjamas on). He’s like ‘I’m tired, I want to go to bed’. And you say nothing. You just stand there and wait. He’s going to ‘moan, groan, scowl, growl, mumble and grumble’ (p.266). But that’s good. That means he’s processing your request, working on his resistance. Here woman, you shall be strong and don’t go ‘Oh, you know what, forget it! I’ll do it, I do everything in here!’ blah blah. Ignore the grumbles. Remain silent.

Sometimes they won’t say yes straight away after the grumbles. Sometimes he might try to argue by asking some questions. The author warns you to be careful with that. He might ask: ‘Why can’t you do it?’, ‘I really don’t have time. Would you do it?’, ‘I’m busy I don’t have time. What are you doing?’. They are just rhetorical questions. Remain quiet. Don’t speak unless it’s clear that he is really looking for an answer. In that case, be brief and ask the request again.

‘Can you go pick up some milk for the morning?’
(moan, groan, scowl, growl, mumble and grumble)
‘No, I don’t feel like it’
‘I don’t feel like it either. Would you please do it?
(remain silent again)

He should say yes at this point according to the author.

Chapter 13: ‘Keeping the Magic of Love Alive’. Here are some paradoxes of what couples experience in relationships sometimes.

1. You feel like you really love your partner and the next morning you are annoyed and resentful of him/her.
2. You can’t imagine not loving your partner and the next morning you have an argument and you begin thinking about divorce.
3. You are attracted to your partner and next morning you feel numb in his/her presence.
4. You feel confident that your partner loves you and the next morning you feel needy and desperate.
5. You are generous and loving and the next morning you become judgemental, critical and controlling.
6. You are attracted to your partner and when he/she makes a commitment they lose their attraction and you find others more attractive.
7. You want to have sex with your partner but when he/she wants it, you don’t want it anymore.
8. You have a great day and look forward to seeing your partner but when you see him/her you feel depressed, repelled, tired or emotionally distant.

The author says that 90% of the time, when couples fight it’s ‘related to our past and has nothing to do with what we think is upsetting us’ (p.275). It’s all either our parents fault or someone else’s from the past, for sure.

There’s a part called ‘The Delayed Reaction Response’ and it’s about building up resentment (the author provides us with another intimate anecdote, long story short, when he wanted to have sex with his wife, she kept refusing it and when after a month she finally agreed, he didn’t want to, but then he did, after the talked). Resentful wives resenting their husbands for 20 years wanting their husbands to suffer for another 20, just as they did etc.

There’s a social level to this delayed reaction. In sociology, it’s called ‘The Crisis of Rising Expectations’. It’s when minorities are given more rights for the first time and anger, rioting and violence arises because of all the repressed feelings surfacing. This happens in countries with abusive government leaders and stuff.

The author finishes his book explaining ‘The Seasons of Love’.

‘A relationship is like a garden. If it is to thrive it must be watered regularly. Special are must be given, taking into account the seasons as well as many unpredictable weather. New seeds must be soon and weeds must be pulled. Similar, to keep the magic of love alive we must understand its seasons and nurture love’s special needs.’ (p.283)

Beautiful.

In a nutshell: in the springtime everything is beautiful, you think you’re going to be in love forever, everything is magic and harmony. In summer you start seeing your partner’s ‘faults’, frustration, disappointment, disillusion. Some people give up here ‘cause it requires more work for the relationship to flow. In autumn, those who survived feel fulfilled after the hard work. It’s time for thanksgiving and sharing, relaxing and enjoying. In the dark winter men hibernate in their caves and women sink to the bottom of their wells. But then spring comes again and so on.

That’s it, really.

Now I want to share this ‘three rules for life’ by Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed that I heard on the radio the other day when Lauren Laverne was interviewing Laurie Anderson.

1. Don’t be afraid of anybody (imagine what your life would be like if you are afraid of no one)
2. Get a really good bullshit detector and learn how to use it (very important)
3. Be really tender.

: - )

THE FIRST BAD MAN by Miranda July

This is not a review. No time for that. This is an urgent recommendation that you should read this book because it’s simply the best thing you’re going to read in a long time. It’s so twisted and fearless, heartbreaking, brutal, sad and hilarious, so clever and stirring. It’s just brilliant and I cannot recommend it enough. You won’t be able to put the book down. Go get it gurl, soooooooooo good!

‘But as the sun rose I crested the mountain of my self-pity and remembered I was always going to die at the end of this life anyway. What did it really matter if I spent it like this- caring for this boy- as opposed to some other way? I would always be earthbound; he hadn’t robbed me of my ability to fly or to live forever. I appreciated nuns now, not the conscripted kind, but modern women who chose it. If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have? These exotic revelations bubbled up involuntarily and I began to understand that the sleeplessness and vigilance and constant feedings were a form of brainwashing, a process by which my old self was being molded, slowly but with a steady force, into a new shape: a mother. It hurt. It tried to be conscious while it happened, like watching my own surgery. I hoped to retain a tiny corner of the old me, just enough to warn other women with. But I knew this was unlikely; when the process was complete I wouldn’t have anything left to complain with, it wouldn’t hurt anymore, I wouldn’t remember.’(220).

‘I Love Dick’ by Chris Kraus, review (SPOILER ALERT!)

I was really excited to read this book. Firstly, because I thought it was about a girl who was really into dick, hence the title. But then I realised Dick is also short for Richard and read wikipedia and found out Dick was actually a real person, Richard Hebdige, an English cultural critic, even though in the book his name is never revealed, on purpose, that is.

God, what a great title.

Still, the eponymous Dick could be any man’s dick. As Chris Kraus herself put it in an interview, ‘Dick… Uber Dick… a transitional object.’ And also, it is indeed about a girl (or rather a middle-aged woman looming 40) who is really attracted to the opposite sex. ‘My entire state of being’s changed because I’ve become my sexuality: female, straight, wanting to love men, be fucked. Is there a way of living with this like a gay person, proudly?’ (202).

Emily Gould (‘No Regrets’) explains that a female that acknowledges that she likes men and wants to have relationships with them will have to do so within the existing economic and social structures (i.e., patriarchal etc.); ‘that women who love men are going to have to come to terms with their complicity in their own repression and subjugation, and find ways to address it’.

This book is considered to have created ‘a manifesto for a new kind of feminism, a new kind of female’ and it’s a genre-bending tale between epistolary and fiction. Also referred to as confessional literature, I much prefer Kraus’ definition: ‘The Dumb Cunt’s Tale’ or ‘Lonely Girl Phenomenology’.

So the book has two parts. The first one is called ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ and it’s written in the third person pronoun. The reason I say that is because as Kraus explains toward the end of the book, the third person is ‘the person most girls use when they want to talk about themselves but don’t think anyone will listen.’(229)

The second part is called ‘Every Letter is a Love Letter’ and it’s written in the first person pronoun. As Joan Hawkins puts it in her afterword, at this point the letters become an art form in and of themselves and have nothing to do with Dick. In this part, there’s a very interesting criticism about the art world; she wants us to consider who gets in, who doesn’t and why. We can also find really nice essays on different artists (e.g., Kitaj, Hannah Wilke), schizophrenia, Guatemalan politics… as random as all these subjects might seem at first sight, they all help to make her point about her research on romance and infatuation inspired by Dick and based on the love triangle they’ve created. Chris tries to explain to Dick in one of her letters.

‘It’s more a project than a game. (…) Don’t you think it’s possible to do something and simultaneously study it? If the project had a name it’d be ‘I Love Dick: A Case Study’. (153)

‘I want to own everything that happens to me now. Because if the only material we have to work with in America is our own lives, shouldn’t we be making case studies?’ (155)

‘For months I thought this story would be something about how love can change the world. But that’s probably too corny. Fassbinder said once, ‘I detest the idea that love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity.’ (167)

This first part apparently reads like ‘Madame Bovary’ as if Emma Bovary had written it. If you, like me, have never finished ‘Madame Bovary’, maybe you should, sometime. Chris, like Emma, is bored as hell in her long term relationship with much older partner (known for his sadomasochistic behaviour when young) Sylvère Lotringer. In these circumstances, one evening, the couple meets up with Sylvère’s acquaintance DICK. They share a lovely time and they even stay at Dick’s for the night, due to a snow alert. The next morning, the couple wakes up in the sofa bed and Dick is gone.

Chris thinks that Dick had been flirting with her all night, lots of eye contact and the like. She tells Sylvère that all that flirting ‘amounts to a conceptual fuck’ (21). That’s the other thing, Chris and Sylvère are VERY open with one another because they no longer have sex; ‘the two maintain their intimacy via deconstruction: i.e. they tell each other everything’ (21).

Sylvère ironically regrets it: ‘I mean before that night Chris and I had a good thing going. Perhaps not passionate but comfortable. We could have gone on like that forever and then you came, …’ (35)

‘Sex became short and somewhat wobbly. (…) We had sex rarely pretended it didn’t matter. Our friendship strengthened, our love increased and sex was sublimated to more worthy social endeavours: art, careers, property. Still, occasionally the troubling thought surfaced that a couple without sex is hardly a couple at all. It’s at this point, Dick, after we’d convinced ourselves that a life without sex was a better life, that you entered our lives like an angel of mercy.’ (111)

From that evening on, the couple become exaggeratedly infatuated with Dick. Chris is ‘sexually aroused for the first time in seven years’ (25). The two of them, like neurotic teenagers, decide to write Dick a letter respectively. Then, all they do is talk about Dick and write more letters to him. In no time, they nearly have a couple of hundred pages written to him. Chris is not sure what Sylvère’s motivation is to do this. She has a few theories, one of them is that he’s perverse.

And as with any adolescent obsession, there’re different phases. This extract on Chris’ frustration and self-analysis could have perfectly been taken out from an adolescent diary: ‘It’s an impossible situation! I don’t know what I want from Dick anymore. Nothing good can come of this. The only thing I’m thankful for is that it’s not the 70’s and I didn’t already fuck him. You know that anguish? Waiting by the phone until the burn and torment finally goes away? Our only hope is for some resumption of our normal lives. What seemed so daring just looks juvenile and pathetic.’ (59)

Chris describes very accurately what it’s like to be in a teenager’s head when in love. The intensity, feeling very much alive, the contradictory emotions of omnipotence and powerlessness.

‘It’s like this: someone falls in love an in a universe that once was closed, suddenly everything seems possible. Love and sex are mediums for semiotizing mutation.” (239)

‘Lived experience’ said Gilles Deleuze in ‘Chaosophy’, ‘does not mean sensible qualities. It means intensification.’(235)

She’s also discovering a new version of herself. It looks as if she’s letting herself finally go (her recent failure in her latest experimental film plays a big part in it). Maybe Dick is just a perfect excuse to do so; surrender and accept. ‘That I don’t want to be the person who always knows anymore, who has the vision for two people and makes the plans. I never understood before people who would do this (i.e., turn their whole lives around)- I thought it was idle, self indulgent, another way of just avoiding doing things in the world. But will, belief, breaks down… & now I do.’ (131)

Dick is also an excuse to break up with Sylvère. ‘I’m drawn to you ‘cause I see how you can help me take my life apart.’ (132)

There’re a lot of parts in the second half that reminded me of Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’, Book II (only because I read it just before this book lol) Like the Tomboy/Ugly Girl vs. Pretty Girl dilemma here, is reminiscent of e.g., ‘The Lesbian’ and ‘The Narcissist’ part in de Beauvoir’s book: ’And weren’t all these passionate interests and convictions just evasions of a greater truth, my cunt? I was an innocent, a de-gendered freak, ‘cause unlike Liza Martin, who was such a babe she refused to take her platforms off for Kundalini Yoga, I hadn’t learned the trick of throwing sex into the mix.’ (173)

‘What put me off experimental film world feminism, besides all it’s boring study groups on Jacques Lacan, was its sincere investigation into the dilemma of the Pretty Girl. As an Ugly Girl, it didn’t matter much to me. And didn’t Donna Haraway finally solve this by saying all female lived experience is a bunch of riffs, completely fake, so we should recognise ourselves as Cyborgs?’(181)

Or the discussion on female writers’ ‘insincerity’ is also discussed in de Beauvoir’s same book, in the part ‘The Independent Woman’. Why female writers/artists in general come out as ‘mediocre’ compared to the few ’great’ male ones.

‘Dear Dick, it hurts me that you think I’m ‘insincere’ (…) And isn’t sincerity just the denial of complexity? (…)’(181)

The letter Jane Bowles writes to her husband Paul, the ‘better’ writer in Kraus’ book is also very relevant, with the mention of de Beauvoir.

‘Dearest Bupple,

… The more I get into it… the more isolated I feel vis-à-vis the writers whom I consider to be of any serious mind… I am enclosing this article entitled ‘New Heroes’ by Simone de Beauvoir… It is what I have been thinking at the bottom of my mind all this time and God knows it is difficult to write the way I do and yet think their way. This problem you will never have to face because you have always been at truly isolated person so that whatever you write will be good because it will be true which is not so in my case… You immediately receive recognition because what you write is in true relation to yourself which is always recognisable to the world outside… With me who knows? When you are capable only of a serious approach to witting as I am it is almost more than one can bear to be continually doubting one’s sincerity…’(181)

Or the case of Louise Colet, French female writer of the 19th- century (and regular lover of Gustave Flaubert) who wanted to maintain her femininity and be a writer (unlike apparently her enemy George Sand who chose to ‘live like a man’, Kraus’ words). Louise made the challenge of combining the two (writing and being female) into the subject of her art. Flaubert told her: ‘You are a poet shackled to a woman! Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art. No! The heart’s dross does not find its way on paper.’ When Louise asked Gustave to meet his family, Flaubert’s biographer said that ‘Flaubert’s depiction of Emma Bovary’s vehemence was doubtless nourished somewhat by Luise’s shrill demands.’ Flaubert broke up with her, she wrote a poem to him and he replied: ‘You have made Art an outlet for the passions, a kind of chamberpot to catch the overflow of I don’t know what. It doesn’t smell good! It smells of hate!’ Kraus writes, ‘To be female in the 19th century France was to be denied access to the personal. And still-‘ (197)

More on the effort to make every woman artist neurotic, self-centred and purely psychological:

‘And why’s Janis Joplin’s life read as a downward spiral into self-destruction? (…) Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, River Phoenix all suicided too but we see their deaths as aftermaths of lives that went too far. But let a girl choose death- Janis Joplin, Simone Weil- and death becomes her definition, the outcome of her ‘problems’. To be female still means being trapped within the purely psychological. No matter how dispassionate or large a vision of the world a woman formulates, whenever it includes her own experience and emotion, the telescope’s turned back to her. Because emotion’s just so terrifying the world refuses to believe that it can be pursued as discipline, as form. Dear Dick, I want to make the world more interesting than my problems. Therefore, I have to make my problems social.’(186)

‘The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his diary, ‘Understand or die’. (…) Both men admitted (Dick and John Hanhard) that though they found my work (Kraus’) repugnant, it was ‘intelligent’ and ‘courageous’. I believed that if I could understand this link I could extend it to the critical misreads of a certain kind of female art. ‘ I have just realised that the stakes are myself’, Diane di Prima wrote in ‘Revolutionary Letters’ in 1973. ‘Because we rejected a certain kind of critical language, people just assumed that we were dumb’, the genius Alice Notley said when I visited her in Paris. Why is female vulnerability still only acceptable when it’s neuroticized and personal; when it feeds back on itself? Why do people still not get it when we handle vulnerability like philosophy, at some remove? (…) what happens between women now is the most interesting thing in the world because it’s least described.’(207)

Unlike Simone, who sort of sees this personal and neurotic girl talk (TMI) as a transitional phase in the history of women literature and thinks it’s a matter of time that women became more involved in -and I quote Simone ‘challenging the human condition’ (a.k.a men talk), Kraus sees it as a subject in itself, a new form of philosophy even (‘Chris’ ultimate achievement is philosophical’ writes Eileen Myles in her foreword).

‘Because I’m moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, ‘cause there’s not enough female irrepressibility written down. I’ve fused my silence and repression with he entire female gender’s silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else ‘public’ is the most revolutionary thing in the world. I could be 20 years too late but epiphanies don’t always synchronise with style.’(210)

‘Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? (…) What hooks me on our story is our different readings of it. You think it’s personal and private; my neurosis. ‘The greatest secret in the world is , THERE IS NO SECRET.’ Claire Parnet and Gilles Deleuze. I think our story is performative philosophy.’ (211)

Kraus uses the artist Hannah Wilke’s work to reinforce her statement. Hanna Wilke began addressing the following questions in the early ’70s: ‘If women have failed to make ‘universal’ art because we’re trapped within the ‘personal’, why not universalise the ‘personal’ and make it the subject of our art?’ (211)

The passage where Kraus is talking to her friend and art critic Warren Niesluchowski is very interesting. Chris tells Warren that Hanna Wilke became a ‘monster’ in the art world and Warren chuckles and says: ‘Yes, she did. But of the wrong kind. Not a monster on the order of Picasso, or-‘ (and here he named several other famous males). ‘The problem was, she started taking everything so personally. She refused to take a leap of faith. Her work was no longer art’. (217)

What would a leap of faith be? I wonder. Here, Kraus’ meditation comes in handy: ‘Art supercedes what’s personal. It’s a philosophy that serves patriarchy well and I followed it more or less for 20 years’. (230)

Kraus responds to Warren: ‘I explained to Warren the difference between male and female monsters. ‘Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who’s not invited to the party, they have to understand the reason why.’(218)

Now the end is a bit harsh. I don’t want to spoil it for you but let me say that Dick turns out to be a complete Dick. The outcome of our love triangle is that the woman is left again as an object of exchange between the men.

It seems to me like the prize one has to pay for being brutally honest with one’s feelings and letting one’s romantic self dream.

The dream crashes, of course, but the best part is that in my opinion it doesn’t feel degrading and humiliating, but rather generative, full of hope and positivity.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote in ‘The Second Sex’: ‘Few books are as fascinating as certain confessions: but they have to be sincere, and the author has to have something to confess.’

Well, I think this one here is fascinating, intelligent, funny, VERY SINCERE and she has certainly A LOT to say. At this point, I’m too afraid to admit that my first contact with the book wasn’t too great. I disliked both Chris and Sylvère ‘cause they come across as a pair of bored (bored people are boring) and perverse intellectuals killing time and showing off their empty/banal bourgeois lifestyles with nothing better to do than laze around and write love letters to someone they’d just met. Fear not, if this happens to you, let me tell you that once you get past this first impression, you’re going to start liking them (at least Chris, you’ll really like her) and you are going to be hooked. You are going to be hooked because the book is about feeling that crazy teenager love again, and everyone wants to be reminded of that feeling, ‘cause sometimes it feels like the only love that actually makes sense, if you know what I mean.

Personally I can’t wait to read ‘Torpor’, which is the prequel/sequel (a bit of both) to this book. I’ll keep you posted : - )

My Summer Reading Recommendation: ‘I’m With The Band, Confessions of a Groupie’ by Pamela Des Barres.

I have just finished what was supposed to be my summer reading at home, before going home. Ah well. I imagined myself immersed in the book while in the sun at the beach, dreaming about being her, Pamela Des Barres, the most famous groupie from L.A.’s Sunset Strip from the ‘60s and ‘70s and meeting all The Beatles, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page (lots of Jimmies she met) etc. Well, I would have changed almost all of the idols to some more contemporary ones, but still.

I got the book because I read in the paper that Kim Gordon recommended it as one of her favourite autobiographical music books. Apparently Kim thought; if Pamela can write a memoir, so can I. Fair enough.

There is a foreword by Dave Navarro warning male readers to, and I quote, ‘keep a box of tissues handy while reading this book’ and on the other hand, telling women to 'try to keep your deep feelings of jealousy and hostility at bay… you know you wish this was your story.’

I thought that was a very sexist and stupid thing to say. I sometimes got horny reading it and had to suggest to my bf to come with me to the boudoir at not very common times of the day, kinda out of the blue when we were both reading peacefully, in separate couches and not talking to each other. He refused a couple of times.

I got jealous as well. But in a good way, as if I were living vicariously through her.

It’s a very honest, blatant and sexy coming of age story of this brave girl who is trying to, of course, figure life out! This is some ‘young life well lived’ as she puts it. Indeed. Rock and roll and boys (not always in that order) would occupy her life from a very early age. She recalls shaving her legs (under the knee) at 14 as a moment of independence, an initiation into womanhood. She was a precocious child. She discovered sex (not necessarily penetration/intercourse, she wanted to ‘save’ it for Mr. Right because deep down she was a good gurl) with her first bf Bob Martine and it turned her WILD. Behold, here she comes… - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!

It’s a long journey in pursuit of all those things, but mainly, she pursues LOVE. She loves EVERYONE because she is very generous and very hippie but, most importantly, what she wants is to meet THE ONE. She bloody wants a husband (who will ADORE her, she’s a little needy), a marriage, a baby and all those things. She just wants an easy life, as my bf would say it. At some point she wonders why she can’t meet a nice engineer or CPA (Certified Public Accountant), or some ‘normal groovy guy’ because all these musicians are rather narcissistic. But then, so is she.

Her first crush was Elvis. The second was Paul McCartney (Paully Waully Paul Paul!).

I developed a series of rituals that I had to perform every night, or I would never meet Paul: 1) Write “I love Paul” at the top of my diary in my most perfect handwriting; 2) Listen to a  Beatles record before sleep. No other sound could assault my eardrums after the ‘sacred’ sound. If the dog barked, I had to climb out of bed and start over; 3) Put a Sweet Tart under my tongue as my head hit the pillow, and let it dissolve as I pictured myself in his arms. In addition to these rituals, I had to write HIS name down every time I farted, and I carried the list around with me until it reached well into the thousands before I came embarrassed and hid it underneath the clothes hamper.

That OCD part with the farts is HILARIOUS.

Then it came Don Van Vliet (a.k.a. Captain Beefheart).

April 26, 1965 … Vic (cousin of Captain Beefheart) asked me to be the local president of Beefheart’s fan club! Out of a million girls, he picked me! He tells me that he is super human and in the fourth dimension. Who knows? No matter how much he keeps asking me, I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE MARIJUANA!! He was reading Sigmund Freud today.

So sweet.

About Chris Hillman, from The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers.

April 6 … Chris messed up a song because of me, I know it. He was watching me very avidly and he made a wrong chord… I’m not digging his young, virile, stocky body too much… SLURP!

April 26 … Operation Chris has now gone into effect. I am preparing for the future. I must have a smaller waist and bigger hips, longer nails and prettier hair. I must grow spiritually. I must obtain Mr. Hillman.

She goes through a lot of phases during her teenage years;  she joins marches in Sunset in her politicised/hippie phase; goes to Kentucky to visit her relatives and find God in her spiritual torment; does a lot of drugs… and philosophises a lot in her young head.

November 6, 1967… Does God disagree with the things I am doing? If he will put up with me, I’ll straighten myself out. Perhaps if I had been born in Idaho none of these things would be burdening my head… but I’m in L.A. and here I’ll stay. Too late now. What makes me walk up to the stage and boldly touch Daryl’s (from Iron Butterfly) private parts? What am I trying to prove to whom?

February 28… I made a fantastic resolution that I am definitely going to keep. NO MORE STRIP! It’s ruining me. Groups aren’t important, hippies are just as phony and screwed as execs. I need something to sustain me other than cavorting up and down the dirty streets, begging and dying for a smile and a kind word.

September 14… It’s hideous being 21. It makes me feel as if I should run out and do something before it’s too late. Our album comes out soon, really this time. I wonder if I’ll be sorry for not developing some sort of real ‘career’. At least I’m creative which is more than I can say for a lot of people. Everyone flips out for my shirts, at least it’s artistic; I’m making something someone will enjoy and I’m putting MYSELF into it, it’s better than sitting behind some desk or working at some store… isn’t??? I can play ‘Home on the Range’ on the piano. What kind of person am I, really? … I’m not sure of anything… except God and Love (and both are the same thing). I’m not up to my expectations, I mean, somehow I’m limiting myself; not living up to my fullest potential. But does anyone? What counts anyway? Does it matter what someone does, or rather who he IS?

Dear Doll, So much heroin, so much diseases, scum, filth, crabs, clap, needles, fucking, boys not caring, methedrine, people existing only for their penises and needles (…) God must be trembling and nervous waiting, watching us, wondering if we’re going to stumble into something inescapable. We’ve been so lucky, so blessed not to have fallen into the traps. Ah, I feel relieved already. I’ll probably do this several times in my life; step back, observe and evaluate myself… sort out faults with NO excuses. (…) I can be so crude and obnoxious, I know it at last and I will be able to conquer it. The moon is in Virgo for the next few days. Amazing evaluation period. (…) My main fault is dishonesty. That’s how I lost my Nicky (Nick St. Nicholas from Steppenwolf) … Why have we found it so urgent lately to parade our bodies in front of ogling spectators? I’d love to be psycho-analyzed. I have a grand idea! Why don’t we both go to group therapy?! It’s a thought. My mom confessed to me last night that she was worried about my pervertedness.

May 16 … I am so confused with my life. Where am I? In between a girl and a boy, in between sane and insane. I scare, offend, shock and dismay most everyone living, but Spark says you can’t live to please others, and I know that’s right. I’m so rude to the ‘other breed’, but they have a right to their perversions, as do we. How can I become enlightened? I don’t want to remain on this level. I’d like to meet Bob Dylan or John Lennon or some other prophet I really admire, and have a conversation.

May 8… Amazing revelations in my head. What is life about? Something pretty much like I thought it was, only it’s all clearer now. My needs are so simple; love between a man and a woman. Now I know why hippies ‘see God’ when they take LSD. Everything is opened up; senses, perception, spirit un-boundless forever.

Her favourite word is ‘exquisite’ (‘he made exquisite love to me and I to him; I’ve never seen a more exquisite face’, ‘Tony is such an exquisite boy’ etc.). I’m also totally going to copy her teenager style of repeating words like ‘the FREEFREEFREE feeling’ or ‘It was HARDHARDHARD work’ and the use of capital letters for emphasis.

She goes to Disneyland A LOT and every time with a different guy (Woody Allen was going to take her once but I don’t think he did in the end).

She does exaggerate A LOT. Or maybe that’s me being ‘jealous and hostile’ and a little bit sceptical. Maybe. I mean, she falls in love (true, passionate, boundless, spiritual L-O-V-E with big letters) ALL THE TIME. And every time is THE ONE. I mean, come on. She acknowledges that feeling so many things for so many people (all TRUE and HONEST) might seem ‘phony’ but she insists she is not phony. See, I’m going to open the book on any page, and i’m going to pick a random passage.

January 19… I fell asleep last night by the fire and Chris came home and covered me with his bedspread, he brought a girl named Lizzie home, but fell asleep beside me in the living room… there are no words… My feeling for him is so true, boundless love.

February 8… Brandon. It can’t be purely sexual. Oh God, it never will be, there’s too much going on between us, but our attraction for each other is boundless. This stuff is definitely no good for the head (talking about drugs)… Brandon and I had strawberry and spare-rib flavored kisses, we make love so well, so completely satisfied, we sometimes laugh and scream and roll and over with joy. Am I not a good girl anymore?

February 21… My first experiences of honest-to-God love-making, Brandon and I lift form this earth, I climax every two or three minutes and the feeling is not to be believed, there are no words in the dictionary to describe it. Brandon feels the exact same way and is ‘with me’ every second. But, alas, too many drugs, God forgive me.

November 25… I left with dear Mr. Jagger last night, and we got along so well; honestly, freedom and joy. Genuine. The most luscious ‘plating’ and kisses.

March 20… Very strange about Marty. … Right before he left, we really looked at each other and liked what we saw; the realisation was lovely.

September 23.. Feeling amazing on the full moon, Sandy and I have an amazing affinity; beautiful eyes looking at me, soft touching and gentle trust. … I’ve been spending every moment with the man of my dreams, I think I finally found him. I want to be with Sandy forever, I’ve certainly been with him in another life; spiritually, heavenly, cosmically, simply, somewhere over the rainbow, or maybe right here. God always does this for me. When I lost Nick, Noel came ‘round. When I lost Chris, Brandon was right there. When I lost Jimmy, Marty was sitting on my lap, and now, Sandy. I feel as if God has  blessed this life I’m living for some divine reason. I want to be closer with Him, the ultimate Lover.

November 7… It appears that we’re both madly infatuated. It’d be quite nice, for here all his (Donnie Wayne Johnson) attributes: 1. Really into acting 2. Getting very into music; writing it, learning guitar 3. On THE path. 4. HUGE cock. I’m getting off like I haven’t in AGES. We do ‘get in on’ perfectly, last night was heavy wildness. I kept seeing myself in his eyes so beautifully, and forever it seemed. We were either fucking or laughing, sounding like a hysterical comedy team! … I think I can safely say I’m falling in love.

December 28… With the help of my Donnie, I’ve been figuring it out. Our relationship is so high. I didn’t know two people could be so closely related; feeling the same things, seeking the truth and looking for it in the same way. He really makes me look at myself. He says I’m the most aware chick he’s ever known…

February 22… I can see the UNITY, The I AM!! He is in a ‘Hare Krishna, you Motherfucker’ mood. But if I look at in in another way, it’s like taking a test.

March 12… I sink into Michael (Michael Des Barres) on all levels, drown, drool, and COME forever! We stay up for hours all night, every night, fucking and sucking beyond my wildest dreams. I’m getting hot just thinking about it. Sometimes I think I want him with me FOR LIFE, but he’s such a street rat… Madly in love, rolling and foaming, fangs hanging out.

It wasn’t all random but you get the idea.

She went on to marry Michael and had a baby, Nicholas Dean Des Barres. They had a long run (14 years!) but they are separated now.

Sometimes it’s quite painful to read her. She tries TOO hard. She gets disappointed far in too many occasions. But she admits that a couple of days of misery (big breakdowns, moaning, screaming, crying) is better than a whole dull lifetime.

She goes on to make more well intentioned resolutions such as ‘I’m going to forget men for awhile’  or tries to be truthful to her bf-s (she rejected Mick Jagger a couple of times when she was going out with Jimmy Page; she even rejected ELVIS when she was with Michael Des Barres) yada, yada, yada. She does this by taking up acting classes (her lifelong ambition is to become a successful actress. She appeared in several films- including Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels, and TV-series); yoga and healthy eating (part of THE spiritual PATH); focusing on her freelance cowboy shirt making business (she sells handmade shirt to the Hollywood elite) … but she loves dick too much.

I may sound like a hater and that Dave Navarro was right on his warning, but that’s the opposite of the truth. I really liked the book. I devoured it. It’s funny and girly. You can easily empathise with her even though you had a totally different upbringing in the other side of the ocean. This wonderful definition of Happiness at 16!

HAPPINESS- JANUARY 1, 1965

Happiness is being 16

Happiness is Cleveland High

Happiness is knowing you are loved

Happiness is a cuddly doll to sleep with

Happiness is Johnny Mathis (?)

Happiness is a blue mohair empire

Happiness is a kiss

Happiness is hoping to have a clear complexion

Happiness is getting a dark tan

Happiness is and orange

Happiness is Freedom

Happiness is a cooler on a hot day

Happiness is an electric blanket

Happiness is dreaming about entering “Miss Teen USA”

Happiness is bowling

Happiness is E.S.P.

Happiness is The Beatles

Happiness is my love for Paul

Happiness is Ringo, the one and only drummer boy Beatle, The spine that sends chills up mine. Ringo of the jewelled fingers and golden drummer hands (whew!)

Happiness is baby Julian Lennon

Happiness was August 23

Happiness is knowing you are loved so deeply by your boyfriend who is so bitchen’

I also identified with her complex of having small tits although I never went as far as bra stuffing, but it’s a classic one. Then she discovered it was cool to have small tits. It’s also a feminist tale, (sure why not!). These first groupies were sexual/political pioneers and creative (she was part of the all girl band ‘GTO’ who realised their only album Permanent Damage in 1969 under the mentorship of Frank Zappa . They were not daft sluts drooling over their idols’ penises. They did so consciously, with self respect (most of the time) and freedom.

Pamela Des Barres has been trying to clean the term ‘groupie’ from the later on acquired negative connotation. I used to think of Courtney Love as the historic number one groupie, in a bad way (although I quite like her now tbqh). A groupie being an evil fame and fortune seeker opportunist (usually or always?) girl vampire sucking the blood of tormented geniuses (poor Kurt!). After reading this book, I must say, I have quite a different idea of what a groupie is meant to be/used to be. Originally, it just meant ‘a person who hung out with rock groups’, as she puts it in the epilogue. They were girls who were really into music, big connoisseurs who loved people composing this music and wanted to fuck them and luckily marry them and have babies with them. She says there are girls who dig sailors (sailories), girls who dig doctors (doctories) and girls who dig music groups (groupies!). They also wanted to be famous and millionaires, but hey, everybody wants a little bit of recognition and money, no shame in that!

She’s a super honest writer. The book is basically her diary. She changed diary to ‘journal’, a more serious word for a grown-up who still writes mostly about boys and what happened to her day (I found that very sweet). Nonetheless, by the end, I got the impression that she is too proud sometimes, as if she wants to come across like someone who has no regrets and is always grateful and smily (…I am one happy chick. Every morning I wake up and say, “Yay!”- yeah…?) when it’s inevitable to see through her and see the emptiness. Everyone feels sad and sorry for themselves sometimes, has regrets. AND THAT’S OOOOOUUUKKKKEEEEEYYY Miss Pamela. That’s part of this business of life, no shame in that, either!

So in a nutshell, groupies are nice people. A little bit nymphomanic and with borderline personality disorder some of them, but hey, who isn’t a bit of a crazy slut sometimes?

The thing I admire the most is that at least she didn’t lead a boring life, which is more than most people can say. It makes her very interesting to read. I’m sure there were boring passages in her diary/journal that she skipped because life can feel a little uneventful sometimes, even if you are a young sexy groupie in Hollywood, but she understood that boredom is a choice. You can choose not to be bored because boring people are bored (?). She thinks life should be interesting all the time and she works to make it so.

September 29… Nothing should ever bore me. There is always something to look at, something to think of, or another position to put your body in, or something to feel. If we realized every little thing, we would never be bored. How great to be that advanced. Please, God, have I advanced AT ALL this year?

Me: July 21, 1968.

Pamela Miller. Age 19 ¾. 5’4” in height. Blonde (most of the time) Blue eyes (that don’t see very well without spectacles) 116 in weight (about 6 pounds too many) Budding actress, afraid to go on stage, too busy to study, no confidence, too lazy to acquire it.

Dreams of fame, lovely clothes. 92 exquisite men to love me, beautiful wooden houses in Laurel Canyon, Porsches, Pop-star.

I am now in my very own group, the GTO’s, with my idol, Frank Zappa at the helm.

Weeps privately and alone quite often… because of Nick St. Nicholas (love?… love!) lost dreams, superficial things. And why am I so rude to the poor people who don’t know any better? (do I?)

Wondering what life has in store for me, just about ready to plunge into it. (bellyflop?) Am I late? I feel I haven’t lived much- and what have I been doing if not living? When shall I begin? Now! My God, I began living when I was born. (I don’t believe in the theory that you begin to die when you’re born. How can it be that you ‘live’ for nine months and die for seventy years? What can I do except live within the boundaries of my mind? How grand to escape, tho ‘I’m not as confined as most, all bottled up in their cliches and prejudice. At least I’ve broken some molds.

Pamela Ann Miller, 19 ¾, blonde hair, blue eyes, 116 pounds: ready, willing and able to LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST! TAKE ME I’M YOURS!!!

Thanks Pamela for a real amusing time.

Your true, truly, truest… lovelovelove

<3

horseshit

It’s my birthday today. I’m 27 years old. Thank you.

Woke up at 8.30am. I was dreaming about work. David telling Celia* that she was predestined to become a MILF.

Washed my face and then brushed my teeth lying in bed, looking out the window. Turned on the phone. Answered all the WhatsApp birthday wishes and a couple more on Facebook. Facebook doesn’t say it’s my birthday because I really hate when people post vain, empty, boring birthday wishes on your wall. I stopped posting them too.

People who care about you should know when your birthday is. It’s acceptable if they forget too. No biggie.

I’m at the park now. It’s mostly cloudy but it’s nice when the sun comes out. I’m glad I brought the book.

I had a take-away coffee from my favourite place in town. It’s a weird pro-Palestinian/communist/ anti-Putin/ bike-themed cafe. The owner is a legend. He’s so rude and intimidating to customers it’s great. I arrived when they were just opening, obviously a very annoying time (I hate early customers) so he was like literally ‘what you want’. A legend. I had to wait at least 10 minutes for the guy to get everything ready. After that, he was like, ‘what kind of coffee you want’, just like that. Amazing.
I was browsing magazines, stuff on the wall, postcards… anything, really, not to look impatient. Just letting him know I didn’t have to rush anywhere. My behaviour inspired coolness. ‘I am totally fine with this, take your time pal’.

Man, did he take his time! Totally worth it though. It’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.

I checked a few charity shops and got some good bargains. I got a similar t-shirt to the one that the pretty black girl in ‘Kids’ is wearing. It’s quite big on me and it’s not nearly as nice as the girl’s but it does the job.

On my way home, I went to the corner shop to get some milk and yogurt and a really nice woman at the counter said to me, and I quote: ‘I hope you have a good day and make the most of it’, as if she knew it was my birthday! You do wish a happy day to customers, but the addition ‘make the most it’ it’s very odd. In fact, I’ve never heard it in any shop. I’ve never been in that shop either, I’m not a regular there.

Right after that, across the corner from the flat, I saw a cat chasing a rabbit. It all happened very fast. It was quite cool. I’m definitely having a great day.

I also read this at the park from the book ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men’ by D. F. Wallace. I apologise in advance because the text is really insulting for us, women. It is meant to be this way though — it’s ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men’, you see. Some parts pissed me off incredibly but at the same time, I can’t help but agreeing with some stuff, which I find quite worrying-slash-revealing at this point in my life — NTS; I definitely need to read more female authors. Here.

K—: ‘What does today’s woman want. That’s the big one.’
E—: ‘I agree. It’s the big one all right. It’s the what-do-you-call. …’
K—: ‘Or put another way, what do today’s women think they want versus what do they really deep down want.’
E—: ‘From a male.’
K—: ‘From a guy.’
K—: ‘Sexually.’
E—: ‘In terms of the old mating dance.’
K—: ‘Whether it sounds Neanderthal or not, I’m still going to argue it’s the big one. Because the whole question’s become such a mess. (…) Because now the modern woman has an unprecedented amount of contradictory stuff laid on her about what it is she’s supposed to want and how she’s expected to conduct herself sexually.’
E—: ‘The modern woman’s a mess of contradictions that they lay on themselves that drives them nuts.’
K—: ‘It’s what makes it so difficult to know what they want. Difficult but not impossible.’
E—: ‘Like take your classic Madonna-versus-whore contradiction. Good girl versus slut. The girl you respect and take home to meet Mom versus the girl you just fuck.
K—: ‘Yet let’s not forget that overplayed atop this is the new feminist-slash-postfeminist expectation that women are sexual agents, too, just as men are. That it’s OK to be sexual, that it’s OK to whistle at a man’s ass and be aggressive and go after what you want. That it’s OK to fuck around. That for today’s woman it’s almost mandatory to fuck around.’
E—: ‘With still, underneath, the old respectable-girl-versus-slut thing. It’s OK to fuck around if you’re a feminist but it’s also not OK to fuck around because most guys aren’t feminists and won’t respect you and won’t call you again if you fuck around.’
K—: ‘Do but don’t. A double bind.’
E—: ‘A paradox. Damned either way. The media perpetuates it.’
K—: ‘You can imagine the load of internal stress all this dumps on their psyches.’
E—: ‘Come a long way baby my ass.’
K—: ‘That’s why so many of them are nuts. (…) in today’s postfeminist era it’s unprecedentedly difficult and takes some serious deductive firepower and imagination (to determine what it is women really want). (…) And I do agree that you can’t necessarily go just by what they say they want. (…) What modern feminists-slash-postfeminist will say they want is mutuality and respect of their individual autonomy. If sex is going got happen, they’ll say, it has to be by mutual consensus and desire between two autonomous equals who are each equally responsible for their own sexuality and its expression. (…) And it’s a total horseshit.
E—: ‘They all sure have the empowerment-lingo down part, that’s for sure.’
K—: ‘You can easily see what horseshit it is as long as you remember to start by recognising the impossible double bind we already discussed.’
(…)
E—: ‘Plus remember the postfeminist girl now knows that the male sexual paradigm and the female’s are fundamentally different—’
K—: ‘Mars and Venus.’
E—: ‘Right, exactly, and she knows that as a woman she’s naturally programmed to be more high-minded and long-term about sex and to be thinking more in relationship terms than just fucking terms, so if she just immediately breaks down and fuck you she’s on some level still getting taken advantage of, she thinks.’
K—: ‘This, of course, is because today’s postfeminist era is also today’s postmodern era, in which supposedly everybody now knows everything about what’s really going on underneath all the semiotic codes and cultural conventions, and everybody supposedly knows what paradigms everybody is operating out of, and so we’re all as individuals held to be far more responsible for our sexuality, since everything we do is now unprecedentedly conscious and informed.’
E—: ‘While at the same time she’s still under this incredible sheer biological pressure to find a mate and settle down and nest and breed, for instance go read this thing The Rules and try to explain its popularity any other way.’
(…)
K—: ‘The real point is that in fact they’re just logically incompatible, these two responsibilities.’
E—: ‘Personally, I blame the media. (…) Schizophrenic media discourse exemplified by like for example Cosmo — on one hand be liberated, on the other make sure you get a husband. (…) I can bring home the bacon mm mm mm mm fry it up in a pan mm mm mm mm.’
K—: ‘And that, as such, they’re naturally going to want what any human being faced with two irresolvably conflicting sets of responsibilities is going to want. Meaning that they’re really going to want is some way out of these responsibilities. (…) Hence the timeless importance of : passion. (…) what they want is to experience a passion so huge, overwhelming, powerful and irresistible that it obliterates any guilt or tension or culpability they might feel about betraying their perceived responsibilities.’
E—: ‘In other words what they want from a guy is passion.’
K—: ‘They want to be swept off their feet. Blown away. Carried off on the wings of. The logical conflict between their responsibilities can’t be resolved, but their postmodern awareness of this conflict can be.
E—: ‘Escaped. Denied.’
K—: ‘Meaning that, deep down, they want a man who’s going to be so overwhelmingly passionate and powerful that they’ll feel they have no choice, that this thing is bigger than both of them, that they can forget there’s even such a thing as postfeminist responsibilities.’
E—: ‘Deep down, they want to be irresponsible.’
K—: ‘I suppose in a way I agree, though I don’t think they can really be faulted for it, because I don’t think it’s conscious. (…) the sex wasn’t a matter of conscious choice that they can be held responsible for, that ultimately if anyone was responsible it was the male. (…)
‘I don’t believe that today’s feminists are being consciously insincere in all their talk about autonomy. Just as I don’t believe they’re strictly to blame for the terrible bind they’ve found themselves in. Though deep down I suppose I do have to agree that women are historically ill-equipped for taking genuine responsibility for themselves.’
E—: ‘It’s getting to be time to answer nature’s page if you know what I mean.’
K—: ‘I mean, even simply looking at the evolutionary aspect, you have to agree that a certain lack of autonomy-slash-responsibility was an obvious genetic advantage as far as primitive human females went, since a weak sense of autonomy would drive a primitive female toward a primitive male to provide food and protection.’
E—: ‘While your more autonomous, butch-type female would be out hunting on her own, actually competing with the males for food.’
K—: ‘But the point is that it was the less self-sufficient less autonomous females who found mates and bred.
E—: ‘And raised offspring.’
K—: ‘And thus perpetuated the species.’
E—: ‘Natural selection favoured the ones who found mates instead of going out hunting. I mean, how many cave-paintings of female hunters do you ever see?’
K—: ‘Historically, we should probably note that once the quote-unquote weak female has mated and bred, she shows an often spectacular sense of responsibility where her offspring are concerned. It’s not that females have no capacity for responsibility. That’s not what I’m talking about.’
E—: ’They do make great moms.’
K—: ‘What we’re talking about here is single adult preprimipara females, their genetic-slash-historical capacity for autonomy, for as it were self-responsibility, in their dealings with males.’
E—: ‘Evolution has bred it out of them. Look at the magazines. Look at romance novels.’
K—: ‘What today’s woman wants, in short, is a male with both the passionate sensitivity and the deductive firepower to discern that all her pronouncement about autonomy are actually desperate cries in the wilderness of the double bind.’
E—: ‘They all want it. They just can’t say it.’
K—: ‘Putting you, today’s interested male, in the paradoxical role of almost their therapist or priest.’
E—: ‘They want absolution.’
K—: ‘When they say “I am my own person”, “I do not need a man”, “I am responsible for my own sexuality”, they are actually telling you just what they want you to make them forget.’
E—: ‘They want to be rescued.’
K—: ‘They want you on one level to wholeheartedly agree and respect what they’re saying and on another, deeper level to recognise that it’s total horseshit and to gallop in on your white charger and overwhelm them with passion, just as males have been doing since time immemorial.’
(…)
‘Basically it’s all still an elaborate semiotic code, with the new postmodern semions of autonomy and responsibility replacing the old premodern semions of chivalry and courtship.’
(…)
‘The only way not to get lost in the code is to approach the whole issue logically. What is she really saying?’
E—: ‘No doesn’t mean yes, but it doesn’t mean no, either.’
K—: ‘I mean the capacity for logic is what distinguished us form animals to begin with.’
E—: ‘Which, no offence, but logic’s not exactly a woman’s strong suit.’
K—: ‘Although the whole sexual situation is illogical, it hardly makes sense to blame today’s woman for being weak on logic or for giving off a constant barrage of paradoxical signals.’
E—: ‘In other words, they’re not responsible for not being responsible, K—’s saying.’
K—: ‘I’m saying it’s tricky and difficult but that is you use your head it’s not impossible.’
E—: ‘Because think about it: if it was really impossible where would the whole species be?’
K—: ‘Life always finds a way.’

* names have been changed for obvious reasons.