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The Ultimate Bad Date

May 2, 2017 in Country Matters, Etiquette Matters, Spirit Matters

I am sorry to report that last night I dreamed I was brought into the Oval Office to help Donald Trump with the crossword and it was the blind leading the blind. The most embarrassing part of the story is not that I couldn’t do the crossword–it sprawled over three card tables and was full of Russian terms–but that I kept referring to him as President Trump while we stared at it glumly. DT had even worse skin up close, astoundingly slumped posture, and was pouting the whole time. As I sat with him, I realized his primary approach to sex was to guilt-trip women into bed, and that he treated the entire country as his sexual prey. Self-pity is a truly dangerous weapon in the hands of the malignant narcissist. So is unnecessary obfuscation–not something my unconscious ever practices, though my suitors often do. As I woke, I could hear those Rosemary’s Baby lines in my head: “This is no dream. This is really happening.” Exhausting.

A Few Notes on Mating Rituals

December 28, 2016 in Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Spirit Matters

The other day, I met a cute guy in a luncheonette. We exchanged numbers and flirty texts. Then he started messaging about video-gaming and I went radio silent. I am an old-school dame, and old-school dames don’t date boys (cis or trans) whose mating rituals include Mortal Kombat. Old-school dames prefer gentlemen who phone rather than text, speak in complete sentences rather than monosyllables and GIFs, and listen and learn as much as they hold forth. Old-school dames prefer suitors who ask, don’t tell, and old-school dames don’t chase so much as stride. Really, I most prize notes hand-lettered on engraved paper and stately walks through parks, but I’ll accept any heartfelt exchange that makes me shine, not shrink. True courtship entails communion, not coercion.

Death to the Cockocracy

December 12, 2016 in Country Matters, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters

Twice this weekend I was in a restaurant–one time in Soho; the other in Williamsburg–when a pack of youngish white guys–bearded, casually expensively dressed–grew so loud and rowdy that nobody else could hear themselves, let alone their companions. One group was clearly comprised of bankers; the other, hipsters who may even have considered themselves progressive. To me, they were equally offensive. I take this kind of rudeness very, very seriously, since white male entitlement is on a continuum that goes all the way to the oligarchy subsuming our country and our planet. You can argue that people are entitled to have a good time, that “boys will be boys,” but I am beyond tired of the privileging of this swath of humanity over the ears, needs, lives of everyone else. Bottom line: I’ve come to find bro culture violent in all its forms. If you are a white straight dude hanging out in public with your pals, check yourself.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy