My mother and her sister have much to say about my love life (or lack thereof). And while I would rather stab my face with a fork than talk to relatives about anything having to do with sex or dating, I do sometimes realize that I have much to learn from these old broads. I recently discovered, for example, that my parents' generation was already on top of the Viral Dating game. Observe the following conversation.
Mom: So your friend, Danielle, is married?
Me: Yeah.
Mom: How did she meet her husband?
Me: She was an undergrad here, and he was a law student.
Auntie: You're saying there's a law school at this campus?
Me: Yeah. And a good one, from what I hear.
Auntie: And there's also a business school and medical school.
Me: Yeah...
Auntie: Then why is it so hard for you to find a boyfriend??
Me: ... uh... What am I supposed to do? Walk into the medical center with a head wound and go, "Help! Help! I need a doctor! But wait-- Are you single?"
Auntie: No no no. You find out where the medical students go to eat lunch, and then you go there, too.
Mom: Should be simple.
Auntie: That's what Auntie Mimi did.
Me: Who's Auntie Mimi?
Mom: You know, your cousin Amos's mom.
Me: I have a cousin Amos?
Mom: I've TOLD you about Amos! He's very funny. His wife is a doctor. They just had a baby.
Me (still not having any idea who these people are): Um. Okay.
Auntie (cutting in): Anyway, Auntie Mimi and her friends would go to the place where the Stanford medical students would eat lunch, and she would whistle at them.
Me: WHAT?
Auntie: Yes. She would whistle, and that's how she got Uncle Gerard's attention.
Me (seriously impressed): Wow. But wait... I thought Uncle Gerard was married to Aunt Vivian.
Auntie: He is.
Me: So he and Aunt Mimi dated?
Auntie: No no no. Mimi was interested in Gerard, but he didn't want to date a Shanghainese girl. So Gerard introduced her to his brother Raymond.
Me (thinking, "What's wrong with Shanghainese girls?"): Oh really!
Auntie: And at first Mimi hated Uncle Raymond, probably because she was still mad at Gerard. But eventually Mimi and Raymond started dating. And then they got married.
Me: Huh.
Auntie: So that's what you should do, too.
Me: You mean whistle like this? *Demonstrating my best suggestive whistle*
Auntie (laughing): Yeah!
Mom (cutting in): Where did you learn to whistle like that?
Me: Don't you know, mom? I got mad skeelz!
Mom: ...
Auntie: See, so easy, right?
Me: So I guess I'm ready to find myself a doctor now!
Auntie: Don't go by yourself! Go with some friends. Or people will think you're weird.
END.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Artemis Struggles with a Pirate
Artemis recently struggled with a pirate. There was some hand to hand combat, but mostly the conflict resulted from ego brushing against ego. She and her pal Viola demonstrated their wide knowledge of vocabulary with the word "defenestrate." With the help of a dictionary and a brief reading of the first place she ever read that word--a beautifully drawn Calvin and Hobbes gift from her brother--they were able to counter the dread sociological pirate who claimed a dislike for poetry. Stop, Stop, he cried, unwilling to listen to the lovely story about a boy and his pet tiger. Viola partly won him over with her limeric-ality, but he betrayed his elitist mores by insisting that bawdy poetry does not count. Particularly poetry that takes as its major source E News. He prefers Charles Bukowski and angst-ridden masculinity. When he mocked her for listening to commercial radio, Artemis privately wondered if he doesn't think Holden Caulfield his hero.
Poor Artemis. She wants a pirate who likes that he's a pirate. Not one who hopes to one day be the Governor! Alas. She'll have to continue to search the high seas for the man who'll both challenge her received ideas and love her passion for the choice and arrangement of words.
Poor Artemis. She wants a pirate who likes that he's a pirate. Not one who hopes to one day be the Governor! Alas. She'll have to continue to search the high seas for the man who'll both challenge her received ideas and love her passion for the choice and arrangement of words.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Introducing: Viola
In response to the common question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?," the savvy little girl that I was would provide the approved answer of, "Pediatrician," or "Teacher," or "Veterinarian." Secretly, though, I only wanted to be one thing:
Julie Andrews.
Why? Because Julie Andrews fucking rocks. Especially in The Sound of Music. She would sport that boyish haircut with finesse, showing me how I could take every wretched mop my mother would sculpt on my head and just work it. As a child whose head was bursting with thoughts but could never quite find the words or the guts to speak them, I loved how Fraulein Maria would blurt ridiculous things in front of the Reverend Mother and rip the Captain a new one when he was being an ass. And, of course, there was her impressive ability to turn old drapes into lederhosen-- I had to wear a uniform in Catholic school (pleated skirt, sailor tie, knee-socks, guilt and shame, the whole bit), and thus truly empathized with the Von Trapp's children need for "play clothes." Julie Andrews inspired in me a need to boldly turn the mundane into the fabulous.
One of my favorite ways to break up the mundane-ness that is childhood in the suburbs was to subject my younger cousins to my directorial projects. We would almost always reenact The Sound of Music. I was Fraulein Maria, of course, and I would decide which of my cousins got to play which parts. Since there were usually only three or four of us at one time, we had to double-up on parts in order to play all seven of the Von Trapp kids. Sometimes I was Liesl (since she was the oldest and got a solo), and sometimes I was Brigitta (since she was the smart one with her nose in a book). I had no qualms about playing Kurt or Friedrich, either (since a true thespian has to be able to play cross-gender). This game of pretend extended beyond the privacy of my parents' living room. On Sundays we would accentuate our usual bike rides through the neighborhood with our vocal renditions of "Do-Re-Mi." My dad and mom would ride alongside on their tandem Schwinn (with baby brother, whom I often adorned with "white dresses with blue satin sashes," in tote on the back), and my dad would videotape our performance while my mom would lead the way. As if being the only Chinese family on our street didn't already brand us as oddities, this Rodgers and Hammerstein extravaganza must have only given the neighbors more to gawk at on their way back from church. (That must be why they all eventually moved out of the neighborhood.)
In order to understand me, Viola, one must understand this childhood obsession. I am a performer and a pro, and have always been drawn to people with a flair for the dramatic. When it comes to my ideal man, I seek someone who can "play" with me, who will react to my cues, throw cues back at me, and improvise with ease as I change roles time and again. Not too long ago, I thought I found a suitable partner. He was exciting and took me on surprising excursions. He knew how to say the right things at the right time, and I didn't mind when the script was less than original. He knew how to command a room; and with a certain look in his eye, a devilish "come here" motion with his finger, or playful tug at my hair, he knew how to command me in a way that I welcomed. I soon realized, however, that underneath this confident persona was an amateur who could not take direction or share the limelight. As soon as he lost control, his only impulse was to retreat. Resign. End Scene.
Perhaps he realized that I am more of a woman than he could ever have.
I realized that I could easily be more of a man than he could ever hope to be.
Julie Andrews.
Why? Because Julie Andrews fucking rocks. Especially in The Sound of Music. She would sport that boyish haircut with finesse, showing me how I could take every wretched mop my mother would sculpt on my head and just work it. As a child whose head was bursting with thoughts but could never quite find the words or the guts to speak them, I loved how Fraulein Maria would blurt ridiculous things in front of the Reverend Mother and rip the Captain a new one when he was being an ass. And, of course, there was her impressive ability to turn old drapes into lederhosen-- I had to wear a uniform in Catholic school (pleated skirt, sailor tie, knee-socks, guilt and shame, the whole bit), and thus truly empathized with the Von Trapp's children need for "play clothes." Julie Andrews inspired in me a need to boldly turn the mundane into the fabulous.
One of my favorite ways to break up the mundane-ness that is childhood in the suburbs was to subject my younger cousins to my directorial projects. We would almost always reenact The Sound of Music. I was Fraulein Maria, of course, and I would decide which of my cousins got to play which parts. Since there were usually only three or four of us at one time, we had to double-up on parts in order to play all seven of the Von Trapp kids. Sometimes I was Liesl (since she was the oldest and got a solo), and sometimes I was Brigitta (since she was the smart one with her nose in a book). I had no qualms about playing Kurt or Friedrich, either (since a true thespian has to be able to play cross-gender). This game of pretend extended beyond the privacy of my parents' living room. On Sundays we would accentuate our usual bike rides through the neighborhood with our vocal renditions of "Do-Re-Mi." My dad and mom would ride alongside on their tandem Schwinn (with baby brother, whom I often adorned with "white dresses with blue satin sashes," in tote on the back), and my dad would videotape our performance while my mom would lead the way. As if being the only Chinese family on our street didn't already brand us as oddities, this Rodgers and Hammerstein extravaganza must have only given the neighbors more to gawk at on their way back from church. (That must be why they all eventually moved out of the neighborhood.)
In order to understand me, Viola, one must understand this childhood obsession. I am a performer and a pro, and have always been drawn to people with a flair for the dramatic. When it comes to my ideal man, I seek someone who can "play" with me, who will react to my cues, throw cues back at me, and improvise with ease as I change roles time and again. Not too long ago, I thought I found a suitable partner. He was exciting and took me on surprising excursions. He knew how to say the right things at the right time, and I didn't mind when the script was less than original. He knew how to command a room; and with a certain look in his eye, a devilish "come here" motion with his finger, or playful tug at my hair, he knew how to command me in a way that I welcomed. I soon realized, however, that underneath this confident persona was an amateur who could not take direction or share the limelight. As soon as he lost control, his only impulse was to retreat. Resign. End Scene.
Perhaps he realized that I am more of a woman than he could ever have.
I realized that I could easily be more of a man than he could ever hope to be.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Artemis Introduces Herself
I, Artemis, have been told to introduce myself. I myself am not used to introductions, which are useless for godesses. My blooming face and hearty laugh typically either scare folks away or encourage unearned banter. Why, just the other day, I, Artemis, met two lovely men in the student union. I asked them to share a table, and before I started my salad, we were already discussing the niceties of the much maligned missionary position. Though they did not yet know I am Artemis, the men could sense my sympathy for celebacy and so were shocked when I explained the pleasure of a tongue properly placed. And all this before introductions.
This happens often, this unearned intimacy. I am both more and less serious about sexual matters than anyone else I know. And I always shock people with this: they think I'm a virgin.
But I'm not a virgin, I protect virgins; I sympathize with virgins. And I often get mistaken for a virgin. As a result of this and my playful nature, I often end up just as celebate as any virgin; and don't think I haven't wondered whether I believe that someone can revirginify herself.
But I'm a smart goddess, and I'll learn how to make introductions so that it will be clear and up front once and for all: I'm not a virgin, and I want to have sex!
This happens often, this unearned intimacy. I am both more and less serious about sexual matters than anyone else I know. And I always shock people with this: they think I'm a virgin.
But I'm not a virgin, I protect virgins; I sympathize with virgins. And I often get mistaken for a virgin. As a result of this and my playful nature, I often end up just as celebate as any virgin; and don't think I haven't wondered whether I believe that someone can revirginify herself.
But I'm a smart goddess, and I'll learn how to make introductions so that it will be clear and up front once and for all: I'm not a virgin, and I want to have sex!
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Viral Dating: Parte Tres
At long last. Thumbelina emerges from her den. And she prays:
1. Please dear gods, send me someone--anyone--in this town you've forsaken. More than true love, I want to date. ONE date I do not somehow end up paying for. ONE date where I get treated like the well-raised, smart, sassy, sweet woman I am.
2. May he be single. May he be respectful enough to tell me if he isn't. May he be man enough to meet me halfway, even if that means being friends. Good ones do make my world go round.
3. May he be honest. With himself: about how he treats others, weighing pluses versus minuses, the state of the union and the globe.
4. May he delight like a cactus found on a desert trek: tough on the outside, succulent on the inside. Persistent in heat, nourishing in drought. An utter relief.
5. May he have the heart of a lion. Without courage, there is no real integrity.
6. May he have the wisdom of an owl. Book wisdom AND uncanny intuition. Because it takes both to navigate this jungle.
7. May he have the rare beauty of a dolphin. Joyous. Communal. A creature who has crossed borders: sea to land back to sea.
8. Pam Houston writes: "You fall in love with a man's animal spirit . . . and then when he speaks like a human being, you don't know who he is." May his animal spirit awe mine.
9. Aretha Franklin sings: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. May he know the song and live it.
10. May he have a funny bone and tickle mine. May he have boners that do it for me.
1. Please dear gods, send me someone--anyone--in this town you've forsaken. More than true love, I want to date. ONE date I do not somehow end up paying for. ONE date where I get treated like the well-raised, smart, sassy, sweet woman I am.
2. May he be single. May he be respectful enough to tell me if he isn't. May he be man enough to meet me halfway, even if that means being friends. Good ones do make my world go round.
3. May he be honest. With himself: about how he treats others, weighing pluses versus minuses, the state of the union and the globe.
4. May he delight like a cactus found on a desert trek: tough on the outside, succulent on the inside. Persistent in heat, nourishing in drought. An utter relief.
5. May he have the heart of a lion. Without courage, there is no real integrity.
6. May he have the wisdom of an owl. Book wisdom AND uncanny intuition. Because it takes both to navigate this jungle.
7. May he have the rare beauty of a dolphin. Joyous. Communal. A creature who has crossed borders: sea to land back to sea.
8. Pam Houston writes: "You fall in love with a man's animal spirit . . . and then when he speaks like a human being, you don't know who he is." May his animal spirit awe mine.
9. Aretha Franklin sings: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. May he know the song and live it.
10. May he have a funny bone and tickle mine. May he have boners that do it for me.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Viral Dating: A Manifesto, Deux
Play the Viral Dating Game. Stay tuned for the rules... more like guidelines, really.
Preamble: Viral Dating is hereby founded by three women in graduate school, who--as the Bayer ad exhorts--expect wonders. We expect to find men--not boys--who are not boring, who challenge us, inspire us, and enjoy us in the fullest sense. We expect to find men who are scared by our 'high expectations,' but we have little sympathy for their fear. Face it and enter the Viral Dating challenge.
Article ONE Be it hereby understood that Viral Dating -TM refers neither to Hezbollah dating sites nor to Herpes dating sites.
Article TWO All Viral Daters shall be issued noms de guerre.
Article THREE Viral Dating is about entertaining yourself, your friends, your dates, and your lovers. Viral Daters thrive on narrative and the pill.
Article FOUR Viral Dating is not for the Faint of Heart. The Faint of Heart are hereby forewarned and forethreatened that cowardly action will result in their objectification and subjection to fantastical narrative and/or limerick-ality.
Article FIVE Viral Dating is about finding EVERYONE a date. Viral Dating is about developing options for women over the age of 25, who are smart, creative, beautiful, sexy, flawed, and funny. Viral Dating is about choice. Should your Viral Date prove attractive but piratical or fishy or motardy, then you should politely relegate your date to the Friend-Circle and move to your next Viral Option. Should the Viral Date be commandeered by someone outside of the Viral Dating Network, all Viral Daters have the obligation to expel the interloper or teach him or her the rules of the Game whereupon the interloper shall join the Friend-Circle.
Article SIX The Friend-Circle, Friends with Benefits Square, Casual Dating Diamond, and Monogamy Parallelogram constitute layers of the Viral Dating Network.
Article SEVEN Viral Dating neither entirely excludes nor requires commitment, love, or sluttiness.
Preamble: Viral Dating is hereby founded by three women in graduate school, who--as the Bayer ad exhorts--expect wonders. We expect to find men--not boys--who are not boring, who challenge us, inspire us, and enjoy us in the fullest sense. We expect to find men who are scared by our 'high expectations,' but we have little sympathy for their fear. Face it and enter the Viral Dating challenge.
Article ONE Be it hereby understood that Viral Dating -TM refers neither to Hezbollah dating sites nor to Herpes dating sites.
Article TWO All Viral Daters shall be issued noms de guerre.
Article THREE Viral Dating is about entertaining yourself, your friends, your dates, and your lovers. Viral Daters thrive on narrative and the pill.
Article FOUR Viral Dating is not for the Faint of Heart. The Faint of Heart are hereby forewarned and forethreatened that cowardly action will result in their objectification and subjection to fantastical narrative and/or limerick-ality.
Article FIVE Viral Dating is about finding EVERYONE a date. Viral Dating is about developing options for women over the age of 25, who are smart, creative, beautiful, sexy, flawed, and funny. Viral Dating is about choice. Should your Viral Date prove attractive but piratical or fishy or motardy, then you should politely relegate your date to the Friend-Circle and move to your next Viral Option. Should the Viral Date be commandeered by someone outside of the Viral Dating Network, all Viral Daters have the obligation to expel the interloper or teach him or her the rules of the Game whereupon the interloper shall join the Friend-Circle.
Article SIX The Friend-Circle, Friends with Benefits Square, Casual Dating Diamond, and Monogamy Parallelogram constitute layers of the Viral Dating Network.
Article SEVEN Viral Dating neither entirely excludes nor requires commitment, love, or sluttiness.
Viral Dating: A Manifesto
The other day, I was on the phone with my mother, who is very invested in finding a good husband for her 26-year-old, overly educated, highly opinionated daughter. She tells me about an old high school friend of hers who now lives in L.A. and has two 28-year-old twin sons. One is an accountant, and the other is a software engineer. And they're not at all ugly, she tells me. Fine, so maybe it's a little weird that they're both still living with their mother, but that just means that they value family and believe in saving money. (Yeah, okay, mom.) She also tells me that she forwarded to her friend my email address. Great. Generally, the idea of my mom setting me up with a man, regardless of how good he may look on paper, makes me queasy. I don't like my parents getting involved in my personal life, and I'm pretty sure that the kind of guy my mother deems ideal would probably want nothing to do with a loudmouthed girl like me. That aside, I'm actually not opposed to the principle of being introduced to random boys. With luck, maybe mummy will find me a Mr. Darcy (sans reindeer jumper and bad sideburns, of course).
What choice do I have, really? In the four-and-a-half years I've been in graduate school, I feel like I've joined a fucking convent. Most of the few men in my department are already married or taken. From what I hear from my girlfriends from other departments, the pickings aren't any better in other parts of campus, either. (Interesting, though, that there seem to be plenty of single women in graduate school. My mother's anxiety about my career choice is not so unfounded, apparently.) I frequent the popular graduate student hangout spots, sometimes play eye contact games with boys, but mingling doesn't really happen in such a small town. One can't help but run into the same damn people, even with a routine change. (I recently submitted my lazy ass to a Capoeira class, and who is the most attractive guy there? A former student.) I've done the online dating thing, too-- That experience was exhausting, traumatizing, and bitterness-inducing.
Thus, I have to promote an idea that my genius friend, Artemis, calls "Viral Dating." Spread people like diseases. (And, yes, there is the risk that you end up with a virus you want to get rid of, so the pestilential connotation is totally appropriate.) If we're able to accept that networking works in our professional lives, why not use that same philosophy in our personal ones? And I'm not even talking about hooking up friends with each other, because I'm open to a variety of possible relationships: friends, friends with benefits, casual dating, serious dating, etc. (Really, I'm not looking for a baby daddy. I just want to meet people, and see what happens from there.) I'm just talking about a willingness to introduce friends to other friends and fostering interactions between people who would normally have no opportunity to get to know each other. One would think that this should be a no-brainer, right? But the social stinginess I see on a daily basis staggers me. I can't tell you how many times I've met friends of friends, had to introduce myself to the stranger, and rack my brain for casual conversation so that we're not sitting in awkward silence. It's quite possible that graduate school breeds and attracts people who lack social graces, but really, how hard can it be to just say, "Friend A, meet Friend B."
Since I devote so much energy to getting a date once in a while, I should also institute a system for spreading myself like a goddamn contagion. I should just invite random groups of people to a party at my place, tell them to bring friends, get everybody drunk, and make the whole motley crew play embarrassing icebreaker games. (Ooh, Two Truths and a Lie seemed to work back in college!) I should bombard acquaintances with emails and myspace friend requests and ask them to do random shit like go bocce balling or apple picking. I should subversively insist that boy-who-doesn't-want-to-date-me-but-for-some-reason-doesn't-
-want-to-be-friends-either-despite-claiming-to-really-like-me to be friends with me anyway (because, really, it makes no sense for us to behave as strangers), just in case he has a buddy who actually would want to date me. And, of course, I should introduce my girlfriends to guys whom I'm not interested in dating. Shit, I should introduce people to my ex-boyfriends. It's like in that Beatles' song: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." If this kind of social generosity were the norm, I'd imagine there would be much fewer lonely people in this world. If one person can introduce you to, say, four people, and if each of those four people can each introduce you to another four people and so on, certainly someone among this tangled web could be your soulmate.
Yes, there's the potential for creating a lot of weirdness when worlds collide, but really, that already happens anyway. As it is, the aforementioned boy-who-doesn't-want-to-date-me has a friend who's dating one of my cousins. And I just found out that another one of my cousins broke the heart of a friend of a girl I work with. I could get weirded out when degrees of separation get smaller all of a sudden, but instead I'm just going to revel in it. I like when people get under my skin and into my system. I should insist that it happens more often. Yes, dating should absolutely be viral.
What choice do I have, really? In the four-and-a-half years I've been in graduate school, I feel like I've joined a fucking convent. Most of the few men in my department are already married or taken. From what I hear from my girlfriends from other departments, the pickings aren't any better in other parts of campus, either. (Interesting, though, that there seem to be plenty of single women in graduate school. My mother's anxiety about my career choice is not so unfounded, apparently.) I frequent the popular graduate student hangout spots, sometimes play eye contact games with boys, but mingling doesn't really happen in such a small town. One can't help but run into the same damn people, even with a routine change. (I recently submitted my lazy ass to a Capoeira class, and who is the most attractive guy there? A former student.) I've done the online dating thing, too-- That experience was exhausting, traumatizing, and bitterness-inducing.
Thus, I have to promote an idea that my genius friend, Artemis, calls "Viral Dating." Spread people like diseases. (And, yes, there is the risk that you end up with a virus you want to get rid of, so the pestilential connotation is totally appropriate.) If we're able to accept that networking works in our professional lives, why not use that same philosophy in our personal ones? And I'm not even talking about hooking up friends with each other, because I'm open to a variety of possible relationships: friends, friends with benefits, casual dating, serious dating, etc. (Really, I'm not looking for a baby daddy. I just want to meet people, and see what happens from there.) I'm just talking about a willingness to introduce friends to other friends and fostering interactions between people who would normally have no opportunity to get to know each other. One would think that this should be a no-brainer, right? But the social stinginess I see on a daily basis staggers me. I can't tell you how many times I've met friends of friends, had to introduce myself to the stranger, and rack my brain for casual conversation so that we're not sitting in awkward silence. It's quite possible that graduate school breeds and attracts people who lack social graces, but really, how hard can it be to just say, "Friend A, meet Friend B."
Since I devote so much energy to getting a date once in a while, I should also institute a system for spreading myself like a goddamn contagion. I should just invite random groups of people to a party at my place, tell them to bring friends, get everybody drunk, and make the whole motley crew play embarrassing icebreaker games. (Ooh, Two Truths and a Lie seemed to work back in college!) I should bombard acquaintances with emails and myspace friend requests and ask them to do random shit like go bocce balling or apple picking. I should subversively insist that boy-who-doesn't-want-to-date-me-but-for-some-reason-doesn't-
-want-to-be-friends-either-despite-claiming-to-really-like-me to be friends with me anyway (because, really, it makes no sense for us to behave as strangers), just in case he has a buddy who actually would want to date me. And, of course, I should introduce my girlfriends to guys whom I'm not interested in dating. Shit, I should introduce people to my ex-boyfriends. It's like in that Beatles' song: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." If this kind of social generosity were the norm, I'd imagine there would be much fewer lonely people in this world. If one person can introduce you to, say, four people, and if each of those four people can each introduce you to another four people and so on, certainly someone among this tangled web could be your soulmate.
Yes, there's the potential for creating a lot of weirdness when worlds collide, but really, that already happens anyway. As it is, the aforementioned boy-who-doesn't-want-to-date-me has a friend who's dating one of my cousins. And I just found out that another one of my cousins broke the heart of a friend of a girl I work with. I could get weirded out when degrees of separation get smaller all of a sudden, but instead I'm just going to revel in it. I like when people get under my skin and into my system. I should insist that it happens more often. Yes, dating should absolutely be viral.
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