Month: June 2010

Yesterday, since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by my friends’ new house. C and K live there with their 3-year-old son and 3-and-a-half-month-old twins, and I tell ya, you walk in and the atmosphere just brims with love.

First of all, C and K have one of those relationships that, were they to break up, you would doubt your whole existence. That’s how perfect they are for each other. Each is affectionate and kind to the other. C clearly thinks K is the funniest person on the planet (arguably true). K was just mentioning how ridiculously supportive C is, that C would support her getting a forehead tattoo, if that’s what K wanted. The other day, all three kids were down for a nap, so they went out in the front yard, in the rain, and played whiffle ball together.

And their kids! I told a friend of mine recently that their 3-year-old is one of my favorite people. Not one of my favorite kids, one of my favorite people. He’s just a ball o’ energetic sweetness, and he repeats every question you ask in statement form. Me: “Do you want to sit up here next to me and snuggle on the couch?” Him: “I want to sit up here next to you and snuggle on the couch.” And he asks about me when I’m not around. I’m smitten.

So are C and K. They love their son and their twins so much. And they are just wonderful parents.

Remind me again why they’re not married? Oh, right, because our government says that, because they’re both female, they’re not allowed to.

Yesterday I was to be floating down the Dan River in an inner tube (by the way, woot!—so awesome), and I was going to miss the pick-up time for my CSA produce. I emailed Friday night and asked if anyone would be at the farm earlier. No, came the reply, just go on into the walk-in refrigerator—the produce boxes are under the tarp.

My Subaru bounced along the gravel driveway, past a passel of sleepy pigs. I was reminded of Joel Salatin, the farmer in Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Inc., who urges his fellow humans to “honor the pigness of the pig”. In the book and movie, his words are juxtaposed against the CAFOs of the midwest and the kill floors of the Smithfield processing plant, which slaughters 2,000 pigs an hour.

The pigs at the farm up the road from my house are clearly honored, raised in the woods, flopping around in mud, hanging out with their porcine pals. I took a moment to honor them myself, and felt a little guilty for having feasted on four strips of bacon the prior evening.

I pulled around past the greenhouses. Four sentries sprinted out to meet me. First, the two herding dogs that I always see trotting around, yoked together by the stick each grasps in his mouth. Today they were emboldened by their comrades—they charged up to the car and barked. One of their peers was a big yellow dog, a labradoodle maybe, shaved down to his patchy skin, and the other a white lamb with a black face. All of them circled the Outback, sounding the alarm. Well, except the lamby; he was quiet.

I disembarked and patted each animal on his fuzzy head. The produce boxes were, indeed, right there in the walk-in under the tarp. As I got back in the car, the lamb tried to join me. Tempting. He was so cute! But I would be traveling this coming week, and my two beasts are already handful enough. Not sure how my mom’s family would respond to having a baby sheep resting on their feet under the dinner table. Plus, I don’t know shit about taking care of farm animals. I would not be able to honor the lambness of the lamb.

The herding dogs honored their herding-dogness by escorting my four-wheeled pack animal back down the driveway for a ways, woofing and nipping at my hubcaps. A black kitty bounded through the brush on the side of the road.

Maybe a couple more things.

All right, seven more things….

First, thank you, Rachel, for being devil’s advocate. Her points: (a) Was what Marty said so bad? (b) Do I really want to hear only comments that make me comfortable?

Second, my response: (a) Not really, but I realized I was feeling a little wonky about having a dude I’ve never met, who found me on a dating site, make sexual comments on my blog. (b) No. I do want to hear everything. I also want to be able to ask for what I think I need. Doesn’t mean I’ll get it, but I want to ask.

Back to 2(a) for a second: Why was I uncomfortable?

I think every woman has had some experience where she has felt sexually threatened—not that that’s what it was in this case, but it does put us on edge. It makes us more sensitive to the next comment, touch, sound, movement.

The son of my music teacher, when we were both about 9 or 10 and waiting in the car while his mom ran into the grocery store, started poking me in the chest and, when I covered myself, poked me between my legs. When I protected that part of me, he’d move back to the top. I kept telling him to stop. He laughed. I didn’t tell anyone that until two years ago, when all of a sudden, it bubbled up and spilled out in a deluge of tears.

Guys groped me practically every day in the Mexico City subway when I lived there. One pinche cabrón came up behind me, stuck his hands down the sides of my overalls into the front of my underpants.

In 2002, in a crowded NYC number 6 train, a young man pressed his hard-on up against my ass and started breathing in my ear. I was pinned up against the door and couldn’t move.

Just last year, a dude followed me, jerking off, as I was hiking Occoneechee Mountain with my dogs.

There’s more, but I’ll stop. And I won’t even bother enumerating the verbal assaults I’ve received, though they are often no less scary.

My response, as an adult, to these experiences is to scream things like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU’RE FUCKING SICK!” Except on the 6 train. Get this: I could see his reflection in the window, and I was pretty sure I had met the guy. I don’t know why that made me feel even more powerless, but it did. I just evacuated the car at the first possible moment.

So there you go. Was that seven things?

All I’m saying is that there’s a reason I reacted the way I did. At least I didn’t scream profanities at Marty.

I’m so glad we all had this little talk.

Here are my conclusions, and then we’re going to be done with it. Because I am the Great and Powerful Avid Bruxist and I can decide that.

1. “You guys are making me out to be a lot more important than I really am. Likewise, I don’t think my last comment was important enough to ascribe any real intent to it…” Marty, my intention was never to make you important. My assessment of you is intelligent, well-written, sometimes funny, sometimes inappropriate, and a mite pretentious. But not important. To me. My intention with writing about this was to explore why I felt the way I did and discuss the boundaries and norms of blogging, commenting, editing, and blocking, which is exactly what I did.
2. “…it isn’t as though I was fishing for guffaws.” Oh, Marty, but you were.
3. “But as a fourth grade teacher, shouldn’t you know that the best response is none at all? It’s pretty obvious (to me at least) that I’m just trolling for attention.” I don’t know if it was obvious to you, until it was put in your face. And no, in my eight years of experience in the classroom, more often than not, I’ve found that shit about ignoring the bad behavior doesn’t work. What does work is talking directly to the kid, bringing the behavior to his attention, exploring with him why he’s acting this way, asking him directly to stop, and reinforcing the change in some way.
4. “…and then you’d terminate me while averting any crisis of conscience (also silly, IMO) as a blog admin.” My boyfriend also mentioned my “crisis of conscience”. I wasn’t having a crisis of conscience, silly or otherwise. I wouldn’t feel guilt in deleting your comments and/or blocking you. But I do think that’s censorship. For me, this was an intellectual question.

So here’s what’s what: I spoke directly to you, I brought the behavior to your attention, I explored with you your motives, and now I’m asking you directly to stop. Not to stop reading or commenting, but stop being disgusting.

And that’s hard for me to say, because it brings up a lot of questions. Where’s the line you must not cross? Have I crossed it myself? And why do I get to be the arbiter?

The answers: Who knows? Yes, probably. And because I’m the GPAB.

Ready for your reinforcer?

…

Nah. Whatever.

The votes, both in the comments section and on Facebook, are overwhelmingly in favor of my deleting our friend Marty’s comments and blocking him altogether.

Following are some of the Facebook responses.

My girl Erika: i think it’s crass and gross, both of which are fine in some circumstances (namely, when you know someone well and feel mutually comfortable making crass and gross comments together) . . . but not here. with this. i say you block him, like, forever. some random dude doesn’t get to freely, on a whim, make my friend feel uncomfortable.

I agree, definitely, with the first part, the part about knowing someone and feeling mutually comfortable being crass and gross. Excellent point, and thanks to her for articulating that distinction.

BUT this is the internet. I’m choosing to put my stuff out there for the world to see—and comment on. It’s Marty’s right to read and respond and, indeed, freely, on a whim, make me feel uncomfortable.

My BOYFRIEND added: Can you mark those comments as spam? Akismet may be able to learn that his comments are spam and block him based on the username alone. Otherwise, I can go through your server logs this weekend and see if we can’t figure out which IP to blacklist. pwnd.

And his IT compadre added: You might consider blocking the MAC address too while you’re at it.

…which are total fix-it answers, but don’t address my question of whether I should delete/block The Maggot. You guys are such guys! “Here, lemme fix it fer ya!” Ha ha. (For the record, I don’t know what a MAC address is.)

From my friend Sam: yah, I agree. The maggot must go.

And my homeboy from elementary school: The Great… and Powerful… Avidbruxist… has spoken… (while fumbling to find the hole in your curtain to duck into)…I say bounce him….

Everybody in the comments section voted ‘bounce’ too.

And Deborah made this point: Let me put it this way: if Marty were leaving these messages on your phone, wouldn’t you have him blocked? If he were walking past your house all the time, wouldn’t you shut and lock the door? Why let someone abuse you and your friends just because you’re too nice to say ADIOS ASSHOLE!

Am I (or are we) being abused? I don’t know. Margo said she’s always been uncomfortable with his comments, so maybe it is abuse.

In any case, I’m definitely not “too nice” to tell him to fuck off. I just—

Marty, is there anything you’d like to say? And I don’t mean that in the now-is-when-you-say-you’re-sorry way. I mean, really, I’m interested. What was the point of that last comment? To be funny? To shock? To make me all squirmy?

If it wasn’t to make me uncomfortable, does the fact that it did change anything for you?