we are ugly but we have the music

Ever since Andrea expressed her change of heart about privacy, and Mad commented that her daughter may be more mortified by what she says about herself than what she says about her daughter, I've been thinking about some of my old flashback fridays. On the one hand, there probably aren't (m)any appropriate occasions for discussing one's sexual history with one's children - certainly not the details - but I do remember asking my mom, and feeling a little let down that she was a virgin when she married my dad. My friend's mom was much cooler: not only did she smoke (and let us smoke around her) but she had had love affairs before she married my friend's dad.

Officially, I was a late bloomer. I didn't have my first date and first kiss (on different days) until I was 17 and almost all of my friends had already lost their virginity. I didn't actually lose my virginity until I was 19, an old hag by any standards, as far as I was concerned. But still my mom made moralizing noises about anything she caught wind of, and I didn't much care for that disapproval.

When I was in high school, right around that time of my first love (the first date, first kiss guy), we listened to a lot of Leonard Cohen. I've probably written this before but my friend and her boyfriend had built a cabin in the woods, complete with dugout beer cellar, hammock, and battery-operated stereo. It was great, and we spent a lot of time drinking, talking, and listening to Leonard Cohen, among others, there. I had his Best Of tape, with So Long Maryanne (it so happened that one of our friends was named Maryanne and the night before she moved out west we sang it loudly, badly, and repeatedly), Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy (which I found faintly shocking at the time), Famous Blue Raincoat, and Chelsea Hotel No. 2, which everyone said was about Janis Joplin, so I always picture Janis and Leonard on an unmade bed high above the city some short time before she died when I hear it. We all fancied ourselves poets, and Leonard had the perfect mix of poetry, melancholy, and blatant sex for us.

In my early twenties, I became a one-woman political movement. I wanted to prove that the teen magazine view of female sexuality was all wrong, that women could have sex without love, could do it without wounds. I may have had a wound I was trying to heal, but if anything I blame the magazines for that wound.

Through high school I pored over teen magazines. Apart from my friends' boyfriends, they were my only way to learn about boys so I sopped up the advice columns and the quizzes and the feature articles about how to please your guy. I read all about how if a guy really loves you he won't pressure you for sex, that any guy who pushes for sex is an asshole, that all guys want sex with anyone, any time, anywhere, and all girls need time to be comfortable and firmly in love before sex is an option. I really hate that stereotype, that guys only want sex and women only want love. So I set out to prove it wrong, at least to myself.

Now that I'm on the other side of that experiment, I feel like my silence is a weapon. Like all us married women whisper behind our hands or comment on my blog that yes we had casual sex too but shhh... we don't want to admit anything other than this staid, settled, married front. And I really don't think that's helpful to our daughters. Sometimes I catch myself feeling like that experiment was a mistake, another misguided hiccup of youth, like the time I got into a car driven by a drunk driver who pulled from the 26-er of whiskey riding down the highway in the middle of the blizzard. But was it really? Or did I learn important things about myself?

At the bloggy weekend, the same one Bon left early to see Mr. Cohen himself, I asked around the room, how will you discuss your sexual history with your kids. I think that's the one thing I want to do differently from my mom. In some ways I'm proud of my brazenness, proud of not letting my Amazon-ness prevent me from discovering my sexuality, proud of the work I've done to enjoy and accept my body. Mad wondered if in fact I'd had any good experiences, because my Flashback Fridays are mostly ... shit I can't remember the word she used but it was quite apt... something along the lines of damaging or troubled. This tells me I still have stories to tell, even if I find it difficult or embarrassing. I have the good stories to tell still, and yes there were some.

At this point, I think I have to send you over to Bon and Sage for their discussion of Leonard Cohen's songs and his portrayal of female sexuality, if you haven't read them already. They're that good, and much more articulate than I could ever be.

This afternoon, I decided to listen to him again, for old time's sake, and I picked Chelsea Hotel No. 2 first. As I listened to it, and then commented at Sage's place, I realized he had influenced my own sexuality. I think I was trying to become the woman at the Chelsea Hotel No. 2, from the "I never once heard you say, I need you, I don't need you, I need you, I don't need you And all of that jiving around" to the "clenching your fist for the ones like us, Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, You fixed yourself, you said, "well never mind, We are ugly but we have the music" to the "I don't mean to suggest that i loved you the best, I can't keep track of each fallen robin. I remember you well in the chelsea hotel, That's all, i don't even think of you that often."

where the flashback fridays are

I bet that Mad is the only one who's wondering where the feminist flashback fridays have gone. I always said I would only write them until I ran out of stories, but the truth is I haven't run out of stories. I've just run out of easy stories. On top of that, I've begun to question my motives for telling the other stories I'd like to and reconsidering the boundary between privacy and silence. And there's the matter of my sister enjoying my blog, which is great but I felt a bit weird when she said she'd been reading about my love life and been impressed by how engaging it was. I worry people (like my sister) will think I'm weird for telling some stories.

On the one hand I'm not sure I'd want Swee'pea to read some of these stories when he's older but on the other, I want it documented that I was once young and stupid and invincible-feeling too. I'm worried I'll be one of those parents who completely forgets what it was like to be young. And my memories are still so vivid right now. I realized at that fancy Christmas dinner I went to, when the parents around the table talked about their kids (between 5 and 10 years old), I always had my own anecdote to relate from the kid's perspective. I felt weird when I realized this, but perhaps that just means I have a lot of stories to tell.

On a third hand, I continue to have this niggling feeling that by NOT writing such stories, I am helping to perpetuate the madonna-whore thing. And finally, I don't like that when I die, these experiences will die too.

My choices and relatively brief promiscuity were deliberate and political as well as a journey. In high school I was a nerd and a late bloomer, respected only for my intellect. In my last year and through university, I'd had enough of being admired or desired for my brain and wanted to be admired for my body. Once I conqured that frontier, an impressive feat as an aggressive Amazon, I settled into confidence in my brain and my body, just as they were. Now I do some of the admiring myself, although mostly it's just acceptance.

So I'm going to write them, but I probably won't publish them.

Flashback (Not) Friday: The Second Last Stand

(Yes, I know it's not Friday... but it's been so long since I had an idea for the series that I don't want to wait...) The Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. Thanks to Sunshine Scribe for the Flashback Friday idea.

My second last one-night stand felt like a conquest at first. The guy was tall and thin, with long reddish blonde hair, a long, angular nose with a nose ring I think, and a constant, cultivated scruffiness of facial hair. He had been involved for years with an acquaintance of mine, and they still spoke amicably so he couldn't have been all bad. From the moment I first saw him, just returned from the pilgrimage to the pot haven out west that all the cool Ontario kids were doing but which I never quite got around to, I thought he was hot, and way out of my league.

I can picture him pretty clearly, but I can't for the life of me remember his name... it flits away from me like a hummingbird, unwilling to be caught.

I don't know how it came about that we hooked up one warm August night weeks or months later. I remember it was at the Jimmy Jazz, but I don't remember how it came about that we were walking back to his place through the warm night air, our short walk alternately dark and dimly lit by the orange glow of the periodic street lights. I know what my intention was, I knew it then, and I felt pretty pleased with myself for landing such a fine specimen.

His bedroom was big, just inside the front door of one of those grand old Victorian houses with a thousand bedrooms, and he had many roommates who left us alone while they went into the living room. Someone started playing Massive Attack's No Protection, and it played on repeat all night long.

At one point, the guy went to the bathroom or something and when he came back he said there was an orgy going on upstairs. I wasn't sure whether to believe, but he seemed pretty sincere and unruffled about it. That scared me, shocked me. I made sure not to leave the room until morning, afraid of seeing a tangle of naked, writhing bodies, of being unable to identify whose limbs were whose, like so many snakes. Orgies were something that happened in Jilly Cooper novels, not real life. Surely this must be a wicked house.

I don't remember details of my exit in the morning; likely there were the usual “see you around” comments or charades of exchanging phone numbers with no intentions of ever dialing them. I think I felt some haste to get out of there.

Nevertheless, I felt like I had just made a successful conquest. So what if the sex totally sucked, if he was a lousy lay? A total hottie had wanted me. But as I walked the lonely Sunday morning streets home under a moist grey sky, I realized that my memory was darkened like the room it had taken place in, muddied and obscured by way too much drink. Details began to emerge, like approaching cars on a foggy road, becoming clearer by the moment.

He'd used an awful lot of Astroglide instead of like, um, having any interest in me. He'd taken the condom off partway through. And although he'd put one on again at my request, he took it off AGAIN. I'd been really really drunk; so drunk I don't think I could really move after a while. I think I might have even fallen asleep before he was finished. As I walked, I began to feel violated, to feel angry that he'd endangered my life, my health, for his own pleasure; angry that he'd been so indifferent to my experience.

I also felt responsible and stupid. I'd freely chosen to suck back the uncountable number of pints I'd had that night. I'd gone to his place with my eyes wide open. I mostly just chalked it up to a bad experience.

Over the next couple of months, though, that experience started to gross me out. I did have one more one-night stand, which was a much more pleasant, fun experience, but it was really that August incident that eventually pushed me to the realization that these casual encounters were not doing much for me, that I didn't really want to conduct myself that way anymore.

I never thought I would ever blog about that night. It came up in my mind pretty much as soon as I decided to write Flashback Friday: Feminist Editions, but I discarded it. For one thing, it would require sharing more details than I'd like to.

The other night a friend mentioned that every woman he knows has a creepy story about a man, or a bad sexual experience, a date rape. Every woman he knows. And it makes him worry for his 14-year-old daughter.

I thought about the man I saw by the trees late one night when I walked to the all-night convenience store, the man who I thought was just peeing but who was shaking off the last drop a little too enthusiastically. I thought of the man who sort of stalked me for a while and how the police didn't or couldn't really help. I thought of my old employer when I was only a few years older than my friend's daughter. And then I thought of my own sexual assault, the one I've just described.

I don't feel like a rape victim. I consented to the sex; I just didn't consent to the shittiness of it or the removal of the condom. I didn't suffer psychological pain afterwards. I wouldn't want to minimize the wounds of real rape victims by placing myself among them. But I was violated, and I think I consider it a sexual assault.

The other night, I realized that I didn't want to blog about this experience because of a squirmy feeling of shame in my belly. The experience makes me feel dirty. I'd swallowed this shame with my own complicity, and it has just been curled up inside me for all these years, like a sleeping poisonous worm.

Do I want Swee'pea to know about this some day? Do I want my dad to know about this? (And isn't it interesting that I am most concerned about the opinions of the men in my life? And now that I've noticed that bias, I must revise the question. Do I want my child[ren] to know about this someday? My parents? Possible coworkers?) Not really. But do I want to participate in my own silencing? In a global silence of shame?

As I write this, I have been wondering if I really want to hit publish. I've been wondering if perhaps I should make sure it's ok with Sugar Daddy for me to post this. Maybe I could publish it at HBM's basement. Like Sugar Daddy has an interest in letting this story out into the public domain. Like my sexual history has some bearing on his reputation, his honour?

I think he would be ok with this, and I'm not going to ask his permission.

I am going to own this story, this part of my learning, of my becoming. And I will not be ashamed anymore.

Anyone care to join me in the unsilencing?

Flashback Friday: A Decent Proposal

Gah! It's been SO LONG since I've written a Flashback Friday post. In case you've forgotten, the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. Thanks to Sunshine Scribe for the Flashback Friday idea.

Pretty much as soon as we met, Sugar Daddy and I embarked on a heady spend-every-minute-together relationship. Marriage, in a way, came up fairly early, but not for the reasons you might think. My sister got married when we'd only been dating for about three weeks (if you can call spending every minute together dating). Sugar Daddy gamely let me cart him off to my parents' place for the weekend, and I totally left him to fend for himself among my family while I acted as Maid of Honour.

(Knowing him now, I can't believe I put him through this. But at the time I still thought he was a happy go lucky surfer type dude who just chose not to talk to other people very much. Now I know he's actually quite shy, and it must have really been a big deal for him. Regardless he made it through no problem. My aunt got drunk and started going on about how Stella got her groove back and that she'd like to get her groove back -- winking at SD all the while -- and my brother approved of my choice in date, citing three reasons: Sugar Daddy went back for seconds at the buffet, he looked uncomfortable in a room full of people he didn't know, and he smiled easily.)

So it was a beautiful wedding, and while people in most early relationships try to avoid the m-word, it was pretty unavoidable in our case. I remember Sugar Daddy said that he thought dating for about a year was a good timeframe to starting thinking about getting engaged. I thought this was a little soon, but didn't say it. (A few years later he had absolutely no recollection of ever voicing such a thought.) On our first anniversary, we went out for dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown, and I wondered if he would pop the question. I didn't feel ready, and ended up spending the meal going back and forth to the toilet. In retrospect, I think it was my first panic attack (the first of many to come). I think Sugar Daddy enjoyed the wine and both our meals without me.

A year later I was feeling ready to move forward in our relationship. We'd been living together for over a year, and we seemed to be going along tickety-boo. Our second anniversary came and went, and I can't actually remember what we did to mark the occasion. I think he gave me the silver bracelet with the Greek key pattern that still adorns my wrist today.

Patience has never been a virtue of mine, and I was starting to get impatient. Before I met Sugar Daddy, I never understood those relationships where one partner wants to get married or have some other form of commitment and the other one totally balks. Well, I can understand that part, but I never understood how uptight the commitment-philic one can get, and how it often eventually deteriorates to an ultimatum. I mean, if you love living with someone enough to commit for life, why is that not enough? Why would you want to consider starting over with someone else?

But all of a sudden I found myself in that very situation, in that very frame of mind. I had never really been keen on marriage itself before, never really had the dreams of the big white dress and the fancy cake when I was growing up. Actually, my teenage fantasies always involved reclusive behavior with either a bottle (or several) and a typewriter, or various large animals, for companions. I had decided that I wanted some kind of life partner eventually, but I never felt that marriage was a necessary part of that.

But once Sugar Daddy started putting the brakes on the commitment train, I started really reving the engines. I got really focused on marriage. By our fourth anniversary, we were living in our house, and having frequent heated discussions. Besides the marriage thing, there was the kids thing. I knew I wanted kids, he didn't know what he wanted. I don't know how to explain it. I really wanted to share my life permanently with Sugar Daddy (as permanently as anything can be), and I wanted him to be the father of my children, but if that wasn't going to make him happy, then I'd better hurry up and start looking for someone else. I worried that he could spend his whole life trying to figure out what he wanted and not figure it out until it was too late.

By Christmas, I was getting pretty heated up about all this. I sort of figured that if he didn't propose on Christmas or my birthday, that that would be it. I really wanted to be with him, but I'd already invested 4 1/2 years of my life with him, and felt that eventually one of us had to shit or get off the pot. We went for the usual Christmas at my parents' place, and we opened our gifts Christmas morning. No ring. No down on one knee thing.

I caught sight of tomorrow's birthday present for me under the tree early in the day, and it was obviously not a ring, since it was a shoe-box sized gift. This really upset me. I spent the whole day alternately ranting and weeping to my family about how we were going to have to break up, and why didn't Sugar Daddy want to marry me? I mean, I was smart, I was kind (mostly), I had red hair, AND I belly danced... what kind of man wouldn't want to marry me?!?

That night we sat around playing cards and laughing, and drinking, and I got quite drunk. By the time Sugar Daddy and I went to bed, I finally started ranting at Sugar Daddy instead of my family. He said, "Look. I'm tired. Can we talk about this tomorrow?" I think I tried to keep going, but he just turned his back and went to sleep. I don't think it took me long to pass out, after such an emotional and alcoholic day.

The next morning, I was not particularly enthusiastic about opening my birthday gifts but I went through the motions. I left Sugar Daddy's for last, I think, and eventually got around to that damn shoe box. It really was a shoe box under the wrapping paper, just as I suspected. In the shoe box were some random items: a wooden elephant sculpture, that I felt touched that he would give me because he'd had it a long time, an old glass bottle, and something else I think. Then I found an amber ring with a piece of paper rolled up in it. I put the ring on my left ring finger, and it fit, and my brother said sarcastically, "Yeah right. Wishful thinking."

I unrolled the paper, with its handwritten question written simply, "Will you marry me?"

My heart seriously pounded and I looked at Sugar Daddy disbelievingly, a little out of breath. He sort of nodded, and his eyes looked wet, and I hugged him. I remember my brother saying, "Holy shit!" at some point. My parents laughed ecstatically, and hugs went around like glasses clinking, and finally in a quiet moment, Sugar Daddy looked at me and said, "Well?" I guess I hadn't actually answered him yet (as if he didn't know).

Even though I'd been totally pushing for it, I never questioned the sincerity of Sugar Daddy's proposal. He came to it in his own time, despite my pushing (certainly not because of it -- he's stubborn like a bull), and his wet eyes and tentative, "Well?" gave away how important this was to him.

Getting engaged really changed the tone of our relationship. We became more of a partnership, and really shared in the decision-making, knowing that we were in it for the long haul. After the proposal, when we fought, instead of constantly wondering if it was time to leave, if maybe this was it, we wondered how to get through this, how to resolve it so we could both be happy. Planning the wedding was our first real joint project, and I'd say we did a pretty great job.

I'm awfully glad he proposed. I can't imagine undertaking the crazy job of parenting a new life with anyone else. And he is a truly wonderful person. Sometimes I think he is all the things that I can never be no matter how hard I try: kind and gentle and tolerant. He articulates the things that I can't, and elevates my pragmatism with his dreams and idealism. He is a better father than I could ever have dreamed of, and I think that is what I most enjoy sharing with him: the amazement and wonder at the small life that embodies and expands our love for one another.

Oh crap, now I've got tears pricking at my eyes again.

Two for One Flashback Friday: Summer Camp

Not sure what happened to that blogging hiatus I mentioned a few days back...

One summer, when I was around 11 or 12, I persuaded my parents to send me to a riding camp for two weeks, with my horse. It was fantastic. I rode twice a day, and was taught by an excellent coach. I think my riding improved immensely, and my horse enjoyed the change of scenery.

The next summer, I convinced my parents to send us for a whole month. This was considerably less fantastic. It was the summer when all my peers were talking about getting their first period. I remember I looked in my underwear a lot because I sort of wanted to join the club, but my heart really wasn't in it. I really had no interest in becoming a woman. My mom had to force me to wear a bra. And when I finally did get my period, I counted how many years, approximately, I'd have to wait until menopause would release me. But that didn't happen at camp.

During each two-week session, the counsellors would get one night off to do whatever they pleased, leaving a skeleton staff to man the camp. The campers were collected in the dining hall and we spent the evening watching movies. I remember the first summer I was there, my counsellor didn't come back until 7 the next morning, and she flopped on her bed with her bra in her hand. I was too young to be scandalized.

The second summer, when we were collected in the dining hall, all ready to watch Dirty Dancing, or something like that, one of the younger campers was crying. Her name was Crystal, which I later learned was frighteningly apt, and she was only six years old. Her parents sent her to camp for the whole summer, and she'd spent the whole previous summer there too. I think her parents were high-powered executives in Toronto, and it always made me sad that she spent so long, so far away from home, at such a young age. Anyways, that night she felt certain that someone was going to die. She pleaded with her counsellor not to go out, because she was terrified someone was going to die. She was so adamant, she scared all her cabinmates, and the fear swept through the rest of us.

I remember being one of the relatively older campers, and therefore somewhat responsible when we couldn't find any counsellors or adults around. We didn't know what to do, how to settle the scared campers, so we went to the big house where the owner lived with her family. We knocked on the door and no one answered. We could see a light on upstairs and we tried to throw rocks at the window, but still no one came to our rescue.

I remember phoning my parents, crying because I didn't know what to do. But they were out at a movie, and just the answering machine came on. I think I left messages.

I guess someone eventually came, and settled us, and we went to bed. The next morning, the camp owner came around to us in small groups to tell us the news. There had been a car accident the night before, involving the counsellors' car. The adults had been at the hospital when we couldn't find them the night before. Apparently, a boyfriend of one of the counsellors was driving, and tried to pass on a hill, colliding head-on with an oncoming car.

Crystal's counsellor was dead.

Another was head injured and remained in a coma for three months. Last I heard, she'd gone to a special rehabilitation centre in the states, but I don't know if she ever recovered. A third broke her neck, but I think she was going to be ok eventually. I think a fourth came out with cuts and bruises.

So Crystal was right.

I don't remember much of the rest of my time there, except that my horse didn't get outside enough and she went sour; my teacher was young and inexperienced and didn't teach me much. Shortly after the accident, we had an outing to the general store in the tiny village nearby. The camp had its own small bus, and we rode it to the village. I remember seeing snaky black tire tracks on the road, and wondering if that was the hill. I still don't know. I never went back to that camp.

Years later, I met the daughter of the camp's owner at university. She had a car, so she gave me rides home on holidays a few times. Turns out, she was my counsellor that year, which I'd completely forgotten. In fact, I'd blocked out a lot of details, or merged them with the year before. Discovering the huge black gaps in my memory made me realize just how traumatic this experience was. I still think about little Crystal, a fellow redhead, and wonder what has become of her.

The Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments. Thanks to Sunshine Scribe for the Flashback Friday idea.

Flashback Friday: Fire at Hunter and Water

The Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments. Thanks to Sunshine Scribe for the Flashback Friday idea.

One day in first year, I went to visit my friend at Trent in Peterborough. I borrowed my parents' car and drove. I think it was in January during Christmas break; I don't know but it was really fuckin' cold. We debated whether to drive downtown from her room in residence and leave it there overnight, or leave it at the rez and take a bus. I don't know why exactly, but we decided to drive downtown and come back and get the car the next day. Thank goodness.

We went to the Trasheteria, an 'alternative' dance bar. We drank and danced and laughed. I noticed a guy exhibiting all the traits I admired in a guy at a bar. He danced well but with a clear sense of humour and a hint of self-mockery, he was good-looking, and most irresistible of all: he was apparently attracted to me. I was still a virgin, but I did occasionally enjoy leaving bars with guys I'd just met.

One time, while I staying with my parents, my friend and I met two very cute if totally alcoholic roommates while at a bar in the Shwa (Oshawa: Armpit of Ontario). I phoned my parents and told them I was staying at my friend's place, but I got totally busted the next day when we couldn't get anyone to come pick us up and I had to work or something. I remember my mom told me to look up the word slut in the dictionary because I might qualify. I protested that I was still a virgin, but she said that a slut is as much about appearances as about anything that actually goes on. Whatever. (Do I need to spell out that I really hate the s-word and the way it's gendered? Frankly, I don't even like the concept. If someone chooses to be promiscuous, I don't see what business it is of anyone else's.) Later that day, I asked my mother if she had ever enjoyed a casual sexual encounter. "No!" she replied with horror. "Well," I said, surely with a mischievious glint in my eye, "Don't knock it till you've tried it." I loved shocking people, especially my mother.

Anyways, back to the guy in Peterborough. My friend went back to rez and I went off with this guy, who said we could go to his friend's place. I should have noticed that he looked a bit cagey about why we couldn't go back to his place, but I didn't. So we hung out in his friend's living room, and we weren't there for very long when the phone rang, and the caller was looking for the guy I was with. When he hung up, he said he had to leave; he had to go home. Apparently, it was his girlfriend on the phone! A girlfriend he lived with!!

He said I could still spend the night at his friend's place, but I didn't feel comfortable with that, so I left with him. I guess I was walking to where my car was, and he was walking home, so we walked together for a bit. I was still in shock. I really couldn't believe this was happening. And then we saw the fire. A building, at least four or five storeys tall, was on fire on the corner of Hunter and Water. There were fire trucks all around, and water running down the street. It was really really cold, but I could feel the heat of the inferno on my face.

The guy called his girlfriend from a payphone, and told her there was a fire and he'd be home soon. Apparently there were a lot of fires around Peterborough then. An arsonist was suspected. That guy pushed off, and I was left standing, breathing in the icy air and scratchy smoke, cheeks hot. I couldn't believe what a total shit that guy was. I felt like the fire represented my loss of innocence, my faith in humanity flying away with the smoke. I was almost surprised that no one was screaming from the burning windows, but thankfully it seemed that anyone in the building had made it to safety. I watched the fire a little longer, the way the flames shimmied and moved, watched the irony of a firefighter stopping for a smoke break, listened to the roar of the flames (I had no idea that fires were so loud!) and tried to think what to do.

(I know. I was terribly naive, although I find it sweet that this incident, which was really not so bad at all, was my loss of innocence.)

By this time it was probably 3 a.m., and I hadn't drunk that much, so eventually I figured that I would drive my car back to my friend's residence. I phoned my friend, and finally she answered, and she told me how to get back to her dorm room. It was so lucky that I had driven my car downtown, because otherwise I wouldn't have known where to get a cab (if I could even get one at that hour) and I would have had no idea how to get back to the rez on foot.

The building was completely destroyed by the fire, and the next summer there was a brand new parking lot in its place, smooth and barren. I searched the area and the wall of the building that used to be adjacent to the one that burned for some leftover soot, some tiny mark of charcoal, any kind of evidence of what for me was momentous, but there was nothing, no sign.

Flashback Friday: Love and Daniel Lanois

I wasn't planning to do a Flashback Friday post today, but this morning I wanted some music I hadn't listened to in a while so I downloaded some Lou Reed and Daniel Lanois. Swee'pea is napping in our bed (again! I'm getting spoiled), and I am reeling with flashbacks. Mostly from second year university, when I shared a 2-bedroom basement apartment with a friend from high school. She was brilliant, a fantastic writer, painfully shy at times, and had been through a lot. She still struggled with anorexia during times of stress. We both liked to drink. I think we were a good match, me with my boisterous big red mane of hair and mostly matching personality, and her with her dark blonde more subdued hair and personality.

Right now, I am listening to songs from Daniel Lanois's Acadie for the first time since that year. It has totally transported me back to one particular night, when I was, er, awake most of the night with the cd on repeat. We had a full apartment that weekend, with four or five extra houseguests in the living room, and I was falling in love with the friend of a friend. Everyone else in the tiny apartment was also subjected to the cd on repeat, and I don't think they ever let me listen to it again. The cd got mysteriously lost.

Although I was enjoying the headiness of mutual attraction, I was the only one falling in love, and I spent the next six months mooning about, trying to impress him, or being deeply sad. This music has seriously made my chest ache remembering the pain and angst of unrequited love.

It was in this apartment that I learned about woman lovers and womanizers. They're both equally promiscuous. But the womanizer approaches seduction with a hint of deception; there is a sense of victory and triumph, like a warrior, when they are successful. They can be good in bed, but it's with a cold skill. Luckily I didn't attract this kind of man very much.

Conversely, the woman lover finds something attractive about pretty much every woman they meet. They are genuine and warm and enthusiastic, but also not very loyal. They are great fun, and make you feel special, because they genuinely see the special-ness of every woman. But encounters with woman lovers are heartbreaking if you forget that you are with a woman lover. Neither type makes for good marriage material, I think.

Earlier this morning I was listening to Lou Reed, and I was transported to a perfect day the fall before that late winter encounter. My roommate, her boyfriend, and I started a Saturday morning at the Farmer's Market and bought a couple of bulbs of organic garlic. We couldn't decide on anything else so we went to a dark little pub-type operation in the sad, failing, dim downtown mall. They served beer at 11 am. So we drank a pitcher or two, then went to the beer store. We spent the afternoon in the backyard of our apartment, drinking beer, enjoying the warm sun, listening to the Trainspotting soundtrack and singing along loudly with "Perfect Day," likely pissing off our upstairs neighbours to no end. They were two quiet serious women who studied (unlike me, although my roommate was more balanced) and spent their Saturday nights sewing. They asked us not to play music after 10 pm, which we thought was grossly unfair, so we'd play church bells at high volume at four in the morning. Man, we were shits.

Anyways, that afternoon, we did something I have never done before or since. We got high on garlic. If you eat a clove (which we cut with a small piece of cheddar), it makes you high, but only for a minute or two, then you want more before you come down. Or at least, it made us high that day. So we disposed of two bulbs between the three of us. By 9, a fourth person had joined us and we were out of beer. So we decided to go to the bar on campus, and we decided to ride two bikes between the four of us so we'd get there faster. This was a mistake. I ended up sprawled in the middle of the quiet street a few meters from our driveway. That's when we decided to walk.

When we got to the bar, amazingly, no one could smell the garlic on us. But I didn't last long. I got kicked out for being too drunk, and woke up on a couch outside a friend's dorm room the next morning with a massive and excruciating, purple and swollen elbow from my bike accident the night before. It hurt for months and I still have a scar.

But it is mostly the sun and warm friendship and music I remember from that perfect day.

Writing this silly post about my former crazy self reminds me of Faulkner Fox's Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life, where she writes about a fun evening getting to know a couple of other parents.

"I was truly happy that evening, and yet I also felt sad that the stories making our faces brighten were all solidly rooted in the past. Of course sharing stories about your past is a primary way of getting to know people beyond the surface -- in our cases, beyond the harried day-to-day hustle of life with young kids. I was glad and eager for our backward-glancing talk for that reason. On the other hand, weren't our current lives funny and interesting? Didn't we do anything adventurous or carefree now?

Apparently not. We were laughing at our foolish, younger selves, but it was also clear that we mourned the loss of their footloose ways. Still, I felt certain that none of us would trade what we had now for what we had then. Even if more were possible, verbally reminiscing about the past was as far as any of us wanted to go."

Somehow this also fits into the post I read last night (very late to the party) by Andi Buchanan. But I'm not smart enough to figure out how exactly.

Flashback Friday: In Sickness and In Health

Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

Just over a year ago, in late September when I was 5ish months pregnant (I could never really translate weeks into months), Sugar Daddy got hit by a car while riding his bike to work. Luckily, despite his lack of a helmet (never again!), he emerged from the crash unscathed. Until he kicked the car in a rage.

I can understand this rage. I once got hit by a car while I was walking. He was turning right on a red, looking down the street at the traffic coming up to the light, and I was crossing with the walk signal. He was inching forward but I kept walking, figuring he was gonna stop. I remember being confused that he wasn't stopping, and next thing I know I was on top of his hood. He finally stopped, and I got off the hood and started screaming obscenities at him. It felt like he had deliberately tried to hurt me, like it was personal.

"You fucking asshole!!!" I screamed.

"I'm so sorry... I didn't see you," he apologized.

"I should hope fucking not you didn't see me!!!" I kept screaming.

"Can I drive you to the hospital or something?" he asked.

"No! You fucking well can't!"

And I walked away. As I walked I started to sob and sob and only just stopped when I got to my destination. But I broke down again as soon as I saw another person and sobbed for another 15 minutes before I could calm down enough to get on with my day. And I was fine. My knee was a bit bruised but I was fine.

So I can understand Sugar Daddy's rage that day. And apparently he kicked the car very hard.

I didn't find out about the accident until the end of the day (I don't know why he didn't phone me), when I called him to see how his day was going and when he'd be home. He mention casually that he'd been hit by a car that morning, but he was fine. His toe hurt a bit though. I told him he wasn't riding home, so I picked him up in the car.

His toe got more and more sore that night so the next day we went to the doctor. He got x-rays and his big toe was broken in three places. But they can't do anything for broken big toes so they just gave him some tylenol-1s. Over the next day or so his toe just kept getting more and more swollen and more and more painful. Eventually Sugar Daddy couldn't sleep, couldn't sit in a chair or on the couch, couldn't crawl, couldn't walk, couldn't stand... couldn't really do anything but lie on the floor and moan like a wild animal.

We made several trips to emerge and our family doctor and every doctor had a different answer. It's gout. It's not gout. It's an infection, here are some antibiotics (that's when he developed a rash and started puking) and some Tylenol-4s (I didn't even know those existed!). But the Tylenol-4s didn't do anything except make him forget how many he'd taken so I had to confiscate the bottle and count the pills left.

I'd gone to work after that last trip to the doctor, thinking he'd be ok once he got the stronger pain meds. But he phoned me to say he'd thrown up and felt awful and the Tylenol-4s weren't working. I'd had Tylenol-3s before, which were awesome as far as I was concerned and couldn't understand how they weren't working. He mentioned that he'd taken a bunch and they still weren't working.

I panicked at this, worried about an overdose, and came home right away. But when I got home and saw him lying on the living room floor, moaning and sweating, and slightly fuzzy-headed from the pain meds, I freaked out. I ran upstairs to our bedroom, shut the door, and phoned my mom.

I felt trapped and panicky. I didn't know that wild animal in the living room and I wanted to run away. I felt like that horse in International Velvet that freaks out on the plane and has to get shot, except there was no one to put me out of my misery. I thought about our marriage vows and how it'd only been a year and here I was already wanting out. But surely there must be some kind of clause if your spouse becomes a wild animal who can't even keep track of how many pills he'd taken. I thought about the evening and night stretching endlessly ahead and wondered how I would get through it, sharing our too-small house with this feral creature. I didn't think there was any way I could get through it by myself.

Somehow, my mom calmed me down, and started making phone calls to telehealth and pharmacies to find out if Sugar Daddy was at risk of dying from that many pills. Somehow we got through the night, I went to bed and left him with strict instructions and a budget of pills, hiding the bottle in the bedside table. I don't think SD slept. I don't think he slept really at all for several days, which didn't do anything for the wild animal effect.

The next day, my mom came down and the three of us went to the family doctor. (Warning: Graphic photo coming up). This is what his foot and toe looked like by then. The swelling went all the way up to his ankle.










Finally the family doctor decided she didn't like the look of his foot (no shit Sherlock!) and referred him to an orthopedic surgeon. When he saw the surgeon, he just said, "Oh, we'll just take the toenail off and that should relieve the swelling. So he did, which SD said was an excruciating procedure but the relief was almost immediate.

And then SD turned back into his regular self, the man I married. Wounded, on crutches, and in need of help, but the man I'd known and loved for six years. Now he could stand upright with the help of his crutches, and sit in a chair, and sleep, even in our bed. I feel bad about the panic I felt, because as awful as it was for me to watch him morph into a wild animal I was afraid to go near, it was much much worse for him. Sometimes we joked afterwards that maybe that's what labour would be like, but with the shoe on the other foot (no pun intended).

And I think maybe I was also a bit like a wild animal when I was in labour. I remember moaning a lot, and it helped somehow. And I remember not really paying attention to much going on around me, except to be annoyed if people started talking during a contraction. And then being more annoyed when I told them I was having a contraction, to have them say, "What? What are you saying?" My mom said I was mumbling. Before the birth, I decided that I would just need to remind myself that every contraction brought my closer to the baby. But in the moment, I'm ashamed to say I stopped really caring about the baby. It could have been a defensive measure because he was in distress from the very beginning and I didn't know if we'd ever get to actually meet him, so maybe I was just trying to distance myself. Or maybe not.

Both those experiences taught me a lot about myself, and how I'm really not particularly self-sufficient. I need people around me, and even at nearly 30, I still call my mom when I'm scared, or in pain.

Photography is the new Crack

Sugar Daddy, last night: "Yeah, you may want to avoid taking pictures of crack houses when you're out walking with Swee'pea. Just a thought, ya know."

Yesterday on flickr, I saw this. And because it was in my neighbourhood, I just had to go shoot it myself. It was raining, and had been all day, so I took the car. Swee'pea started grumbling, but I had to get my shot. I wasn't sure how my new digital SLR would handle the rain, so I was hesitant to go outside shooting.

So I dipped my toe in with this.

Then I turned my car around to go back closer to the store, and saw this. I turned the windshield wipers off because I thought the raindrops might look cool. Sitting there I was disturbed. I still don't know how to take this sign... whether it's all a joke because that part of the neighbourhood is so depressed, or whether there's a crack house nearby or what. But the "I don't care" was what really got to me somehow.

I drove the car closer, while Swee'pea got grumpier, and quickly got out and ran off a few more shots. I felt very guilty about leaving Swee'pea in the car for the minute or two I took, and for proceeding when he was slightly grumpy, but I had. to. get. my. shot.

I scoffed when I read that a city councillor candidate said that the biggest problem facing our ward was crack houses, thinking she was just being classist. But now I wonder.

After we got home, Swee'pea immediately fell asleep and I spent his hour and a half nap reading this series from 2005 about how Guelph has a major crack problem, especially since the mafia has really slowed down. And how there are crack houses in every neighbourhood, and one was busted in a nicer neighbourhood than ours, adjacent to ours. And how deals are going on downtown all the time. And it makes me a little scared for my afternoon walks. And then I got angry that I was a little bit scared. And skeptical about the size of the problem. I'll keep walking anyhow.

The other day I noticed our neighbour's place is for sale, the one with the muffler in the driveway. And I noticed that the muffler is still there and down the side of their house are piles and piles of garbage. I think maybe I should cut that older man some slack. Because if they don't even clean it up to put their house on the market, something is a bit strange. Haven't they seen House Doctor, or Sell this House or any other of the many many shows where they pretty the house up to get a faster, more lucrative sale??? Now I'm wondering if it's a crack house. My thought processes are so embarrassing but I don't have enough shame not to put this shit up on the web.

Sorry, folks, no Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition today. I started to write a post about how my first boyfriend became my first boyfriend because I asked him out and how our relationship was challenged by my media saturation. But I discovered there are just too many gaps and cracks and holes in my memory. And unlike our living room wall after we removed the heavy textured wallpaper that everyone warned us was hiding something, I feel it would be cheating the flashback genre to fill the cracks and repair the holes with imagination. And I really wanted to blog about crack.

I'm running out of material... anyone wanna be a guest blogger and inject some new life into this series? Any story about being or becoming a woman or feminist... pretty broad guidelines. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

And now I'm probably going to take a bit of a break from blogging. If you're looking for something more to read, take a dip into my archives... Now watch, I'll probably be back in like two hours.

Flashback Friday: Bikinis and Binoculars

My Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Jack were snowbirds when I was younger. They, like many others of their generation, spent the winter in Florida. They had a young man (in their language), who was a professional race car driver, drive their car down for them while they flew down. A few times we went to visit them in the sunny orange juice state. Once, when I was around 5 we flew down (highlights included seeing Lady and the Tramp and throwing up in the bus home from Disney Land or World I can never remember which), and then when I was around 7 we drove down in the mini-van (highlights included Busch Gardens and discovering that my mom was 29 years old and weighed 105 lbs; I figured out later this was a total lie because she was already 33 when she had me; on this trip we also met John Candy filming Summer Rental just down the beach from my grandparents' condo but I was more excited to meet the dog in the movie).

For March Break of grade nine, my parents decided to take me and a friend of my choosing down to Florida once more. I think it was after this trip that my grandparents decided they were too old to travel, and they pretty much settled in to hibernate through the winters in their London, Ontario apartment.

Anyways, the grade nine trip. My friend and I were in the giddy throes of discovering boys. I'd been asked out -- by an 18-year-old no less when I had only just turned 14 -- and she'd started going out with him after I turned him down (one time when we got in a fight I took great joy in making some nasty remark about my hand-me-downs). I remember I read Lace by Shirley Conran in the car on the way down, which was full of sex (I'd already read Riders, Rivals and Polo by Jilly Cooper, and I'd rejected the Jean M. Auel books because the sex scenes were too few and far between; also those descriptions of Jondolar's -- or whatever his name was -- prodigiousness were disturbing... I pictured something around 2 feet long). Other than that, I remember nothing of the car ride. Oh - we stopped at the Kentucky Horse Park I think. Or maybe that was on the way home.

Anyways, once in Florida, the first thing we needed to do was buy bathing suits. We went for the two piece variety, despite the fact that I was beginning to hate my body. I found one with a frilly skirt-like bit that I thought sufficiently covered my ass to wear it in public.

My grandparents always stayed in St. Petersburg, in a condo, and we soon made ourselves comfortable. My friend nearly had a fit when my grandma was making the king-sized bed in the main bedroom and exclaimed, "This is like making it on a football field!" Or so my friend heard and her mind went immediately to the gutter. I kept my mind firmly on the subject of making beds. It was my grandmother after all!

There was a boardwalk nearby with neat shops, and one was a fantastic cookie shop that we went to a lot. This fantastic cookie shop also had tons of young good-looking guys working behind the counter and my friend and I made fools of ourselves in awkward attempts at flirtation. My mom even sent us out of the store once because we were being so ridiculous.

One day we went to see a world-class horse show where Ian Millar, Captain Canada, was riding horses he hoped would replace his recently retired best horse ever, Big Ben. I spent most of the show, however, moonily following his son, Jonathon Millar, around hoping he would see me and be immediately struck by my beauty and declare his undying love then and there (a la Sugar Daddy a decade later). I didn't actually think he was good-looking but he was tall and he had good horses so I figured it would be a good match.

The weather wasn't great during the trip; it was mostly pretty cool and grey. One day, the sun came out and my friend and I decided to go for a swim in the building's pool, which was right on the beach and from which we could see the colder ocean.

As we frolicked in the pool in our new bikinis, I noticed a man standing on the beach with a pair of binoculars apparently trained in our direction. What a perv, I thought. It was possible that he was just checking out the real estate but somehow I didn't think so. I suddenly had a thought that my bikini top was not securely fastened. So I reached around behind me to fix the clasp. Sure enough, it was partly undone. But because I wasn't very familiar with the bikini and the clasp went in the opposite direction from my bras, I pushed it the wrong way.

THWACK!

The ends of the bikini top flew out of my hands and hung, useless, from my neck, fully exposing the girls. I shrieked and ran to hide behind a wall while I did it back up. When I emerged from hiding, the guy with the binoculars had gone, but I always worried that it looked like I deliberately undid my bikini for him. This experience remained my most embarrassing moment for a long time. Now I just think it's funny.

Flashback Friday: Uni Years

Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

Since I started this series, I have been struggling to remember some material from my university years. I just know it was full of gender dynamics. Unfortunately, my memories from that time are decidedly hazy. I drank a lot. So much so, that after second year I promised myself I would never sign up for a class before noon because I just never made it, no matter how good my intentions were at the beginning of the semester.

I also played a lot of pool. The bar at the UC had a broken pool table, which they didn't fix for at least a couple of years, where we could play for free. So we did. all. day. long. A lot of gender politics played out for me across pool tables. Most days I skipped my classes to play, and I learned so much about technique from the guys I played with: Big Paul, with his intimidating shiny bald head, was an incredible player and did all kinds of crazy trick shots. Often he'd clear the table in one or two turns. But when he got too drunk, there was a violence and rage that emanated from him. Luckily it only happened a couple of times that I saw. And he was always great about sharing his pool knowledge with me; and he never ever made comments about girls playing pool or not being as good as guys. None of the guys I played with did.

Then there was Flicky Hair Geoff... he had glorious long hair that he always flicked back before he took a shot. He and I once tried unsuccessfully to get together one drunken time. He wasn't as good a player (pool that is) as Big Paul, but he was always up for a beer and a game. I think he and I probably logged the most hours at that table. Sadly he's had his heart broken a couple of times since those pool playing days, and cut his hair, but he keeps plugging away at grad school in various Ontario towns.

Occasionally Matty Ghan stopped by. He was also a wicked pool player and had a much bigger cool factor than any of the other guys I played with. I started crushing on him the first time I saw him, and soon struck up a conversation and invited him to join our pool posse. My crush sort of disappeared as I got to know him, I don't know why. But my roommate and I had a great time with him. Before we met him, he used to be a dj and made tons of money, most of which he snorted up his nose. But he'd cleaned up and started school as a mature student. He had scars on his forehead from when he broke his neck and had to wear a halo screwed into his skull for weeks or months. My favourite thing about him was that he only let me and my roommate call him Matty Ghan; he never tolerated it from anyone else (of course I don't know if anyone else tried) and it made us feel special. I haven't seen him in years and years and years. But I still think about him and I hope he's still clean.

There was also Little Paul, who was lousy at pool but kept us in stitches with his crazy talk. He was mostly sane, except when he smoked pot, and then he thought aliens were either about to steal his penis, or just had. I had a crush on him too, but it never went anywhere either.

I loved the guys I played pool with every day. I also loved going out to bars with my pool skills, and kicking some serious pool ass. Some guys were totally unenlightened, mostly jock, asses, who invariably made comments when I put my loonie on the table, or when I racked the balls up to start a game. They thought they'd walk all over me. Everybody knows that women can't play pool. It's a man's sport. Sometimes the pressure would get to me and I'd choke. But other times I'd kick their asses and they'd either get really angry and walk away, or shake my hand, new respect in their eyes, and attitudes changed.

One time, a woman joined our little group for about a year. She even had her own cue, which she carried in a case, and she had reportedly paid for at least one year's tuition by playing for money. I loved playing with her at bars because she always picked up my slack. She was a lesbian, and once told me that I was too, I was just so far in the closet I couldn't see it. I stopped liking her so much then. I started liking her even less after one time when I was so hammered I was falling down (so I was told, I blacked out and can't remember anything). She was so desperate to get into my friend's pants, she let me walk home alone in that state (granted I was apparently pretty angry at the thought of anyone helping me but still). She was completely sober, so she has no excuse.

Anyways, what I pieced together from the Short Stop clerk, was that I walked (weaved, staggered) home, and stopped on my way at the Short Stop for a chocolate bar. But the clerk couldn't get it through my head that I had to pay. Eventually I did. Apparently the police stopped me outside the store because they thought I was driving in that state. About a half-hour later I poked my head back in the store and asked the clerk if the coast was clear (ie. no police). She has no idea where I was for that time.

Eventually, I must have made it home. The next morning I woke up to the phone ringing and another friend was asking me where the friend with the pants was. I had no idea. I thought I'd had a dream of being at the pool player's apartment and said so. Sure enough it wasn't a dream. When I checked my pockets, I had six loose cigarettes that I must have bummed off someone, a chocolate bar and change from a twenty. The pool player ended up dating my friend for several months, but I never really forgave her for letting me walk home in that state. I know, I shouldn't have gotten myself in that state in the first place, but still...

My university years were a constant stream of crushes and unrequited love. I was brazen and contrary and excessive at every opportunity. I was proud of how much I could drink, I was proud of the guts I had, to keep putting completely unsubtle moves on guys I didn't know. It was certainly a time of testing my limits and experimentation, or at least what I can remember of it. I had some great girlfriends and we were a tight-knit group of five until T started dating D's thumping crush, and W slept with M's girlfriend, and we splintered.

D and M loved to experiment with their hair, and I loved hanging out with them, 'cause it made me feel cool (I never had the guts to shave my head but I so admired theirs). Each week was a different colour and style; but they always involved crazy bright colours and copious amounts of gel. My favourite was when D did a Pinhead sort of hairstyle from Hellraiser, with fuschia and electric blue spikes sticking out of a mostly shaved 'do.

Eventually, my gut gave out, and I had an unpleasant encounter with a guy from a bar, and I gradually stopped drinking because it made me feel sick, and I quit school and therefore playing pool (I get so sad on the occasions when I try to play again and I totally suck), and started working full time and blah blah blah... I started a real life.

I still have real nostalgia for those years and the freedom I didn't appreciate then.

Yay! Sunshine Scribe, from whom I stole the Flashback Friday idea from, has been nominated for a Canadian Blog Award, for that very series. Congratulations, Sunshine! And, to toot my own horn, can I pick great ideas to steal, or what?

Flashback Friday: Like a Virgin

Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

When I was 8, my family got moved by my dad's employer, away from the (comparatively) thriving metropolis of Kingston to a farm outside of a tiny sleepy town. I was pretty much miserable until grade 7. I don't know exactly why the kids hated me so much but I think it may have had something to do with the fact that the previous school board tested every child's IQ in grade 2. So I was labelled gifted. The new school board didn't do such things but because of my label, they felt they needed to do something special for me. So the teacher told my classmates about my specialness and took me out of classes and really I just wanted to fit in. Anyways, I didn't really make friends until I started senior public school (why couldn't I have gone to junior high like Degrassi???).

One day, in grade 5, I went out for recess and saw a girl who was a year older than me crying on the swings. I went over. I don't know why 'cause she was way cooler than me but I did. And I guess I asked her what she was crying about. She said, between sobs, that she was going to die a virgin. At first, I thought she said she was going to die of a virgin, like it was a disease, but I think she specified.

I didn't know what a virgin was. I mean, I recognized the word because Madonna was my favourite singer at the time, and I'd seen the video for Like a Virgin several times on Video Hits, but I didn't know what it was. And not because I hadn't had sex ed. Not only did I undergo sex ed in grade four, but -- horror of slouching down in your seat with your hand over your face horrors -- my mom taught it. Yes, she was a public health nurse and taught the friggin' sex ed class at my school. My class. Plus, I lived on a farm with cats and horses. You tend to learn a lot about sex and death on a farm.

Anyways, despite those things, I didn't know what a virgin was. I tried to piece it together from Madonna's video: lacy gloves, lying on your back, prowling lions. Oh - and gondolas in Venice. When your heart beats next to miiiiiine... ohh ohh ohh.... ahhh. I thought it had something to do with cats, maybe cuddling them close to you?

The girl in the playground lamented that no boys would ever like her. According to this girl's sobs, dying a virgin was just about THE worst thing that could happen to a girl. It just didn't occur to me that it had anything to do with sex, or that anyone my age would actually want to have sex (eeewwwww!) or imagine wanting sex sometime in the future.

That night, at dinner, I asked my family, "What's a virgin?" And was met with stunned silence for a moment. "Well?" Finally my mom said, "It means something that's never been touched before." So I spent that night continuing to process just what a virgin is, and why it was so bad to die as one, with the primary resource of Madonna's video. That video still doesn't make sense to me. And in retrospect, I'm rather disappointed with my mom's copout answer. I mean, she was a public health nurse. I got the talk when I was 7 and when I said, "That's gross, I'll never do that," she said, "Well you might feel differently when you're older." And really, it just confused me. A parent shouldn't leave her child to work out these kinds of things from a Madonna video.

Flashback Friday: The Stud Farm

Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. Thank you to Mad Hatter for being the first last week. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

When I was 16, I got a summer job at a stud farm (for the pervy readers that's a horse breeding establishment). I was really excited to get the job because it paid $6 an hour, which I think was like $1 more than my Burger King job, and it was with horses, my passion. It was physically demanding and I worked 6 days a week. But I really enjoyed it. I liked my coworkers (who introduced me to smoking – well ok they didn't introduce me to smoking but they helped me along by giving me free smokes all summer), and although the owner of the farm, A, was an asshole, the manager, N, was a dream to work for.

Being an adolescent and watching the horses breed, or worse helping to collect semen from a deluded stallion humping the leather dummy, was pretty uncomfortable. Especially when Asshole A leered at me. But I kept on, because I'm stubborn that way, had lots of ways to spend the money on my own horse, and I liked the job. The encounters with A were relatively few and far between. Through the school year, I worked on weekends, and the following summer I started working 6 days a week again. But that summer I had my first boyfriend, and by mid-August I was not so enamoured with the job. I remember one day a photographer was coming to do some promotional shots of one of the studs. I volunteered to help, thinking it would be a good opportunity. After everyone else had left, it was just me and A waiting for the photographer. While we waited, one of those sun showers started pelting down and I was wearing a white t-shirt. Well, Asshole A just stared like the dirty old man he was. I don't remember how the evening ended, or even if the photos were shot or the photographer showed up. I only remember how exposed I felt with the sun and the rain coming down on me, an unwilling participant in a one-person wet t-shirt contest.

Not long after that, A decided one Saturday to take his sister and her family, who were visiting from Germany, to see the Medieval Knights in Toronto. He hadn't bothered booking someone to keep an eye on the farm, and wanted one of his day staff to do it. No one else was willing, and he decided to pick on me. I wasn't feeling well, and felt way too young to be on that farm all by myself until like midnight, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. So I said no. He tried to cajole me and tempt me into it with an earlier day off and more money. But still I refused. Eventually he just shrugged and gave up.

I went back to the barn and N asked me what the deal was. I said I didn't know but I wasn't doing it. She phoned A for clarification and he said, “I told her if she doesn't come in tonight, she doesn't come in again.” When N told me this news, I was shocked. But, upon consideration for all of five seconds, I decided maybe getting fired wasn't such a bad thing. I'd miss N and my coworkers, but not enough to try to keep my job.

When I told my dad that night, I thought he'd be disappointed in me but he was supportive as usual and just said, “That A is an asshole. You're better off without that job.”

When fall came, I decided to help the farm out at the annual yearling sale in Toronto. They were short-staffed because A had fired so many employees since he'd fired me. Working at the sale was fun, paid well, and got me a day or two off school. I think it was on the second or third night that A decided to take us out for dinner and some drinks. Fine with me, I thought. Free dinner and beer: rock on. A drove us in his truck and we went to a pub for dinner and then onto some cowboy bar. At dinner, A started stroking my hair, telling our dining companions, “Look how shiny it gets when I stroke it.” This was my inkling that perhaps this evening wasn't the best idea.

At the cowboy bar, it wasn't so bad. I mostly avoided A, and I loved drinking underage with no one having the slightest suspicion except my companions. But occasionally A would sidle up to me and try to do some of them dirty dancing moves I used to love watching Patrick Swayze do. But A was no Patrick Swayze. At one point, A handed me yet another beer, and because I was starting to get weirded out, I decided to stop drinking. “No thanks.” He insisted I take it... He said, “Take it or you're fired.” So I took it and sold it to someone for $2.

There was one highlight of the night though. I got to see the craziest men's urinal ever. It was a big trough, like you might see for feeding and watering livestock, that stretched all along one wall and it had three targets: one said under 6 inches, one said 6 to 12, and one said over 12 inches. And I felt so ballsy for just walking in there and looking.

Eventually, it was time to go back to our hotel and I figured we'd take a cab, because A had had like at least 6 or 8 beers. But he said he just needed to eat a few hot dogs and he'd be fine. Everyone else said he would be fine too. So the three of us ladies got into the camper extension of the truck, and the three guys got in the cab. I was petrified. A knew I was scared. So he spent the whole trip back to the hotel deliberately swerving around the road to scare me. I don't know how long it took to get back to the hotel, but I was sure we'd die on the way. When we got back, I nearly kissed the ground.

I called my boyfriend, sobbing, who was training horses in Pennsylvania. He told me to call my parents because he couldn't do anything. So I called my parents at like 2 in the morning, and we talked and I calmed down and decided to stick it out for the next day or two. But my dad showed up the next day, gave A the dirtiest look I've ever seen on my dad's face, and he announced that he was taking me home. I was pretty relieved.

I never saw A again. A few years later, a boy I went to high school with was working there, and saw A go into the barn carrying a shotgun, heard a shot a few minutes later, and upon investigation discovered A's dead body with a hole in his head. I don't know why, and I can't say I'm sorry. Not that I have any lingering hard feelings... those evaporated on his death. But I have no real sympathy for this man and whatever reasons he had for suicide.

Flashback Friday: All 80s Retro Night

Oops! Edited to add the rest of her post. Sorry, Mad Hatter!

I am so pleased to present the first ever guest blogger on Write About Here. So to introduce the fair Mad Hatter, what better way than to spread the love once more. I first discovered Mad Hatter when I did a search for accidental attachment parents, and I liked her blog immediately. She's a wonderful writer with a great librarian sense of humour that makes me feel smart because I even get some of her literary allusions, but not so smart as to get all of them. Her posts are always finely crafted, from the title to the last word. Since that discovery, I have learned that she is passionate, not just as a mother, but as a citizen and as a woman. Without further ado, I give you the Mad Hatter.

I became a feminist when I was 21, a half a lifetime ago. I was in my third year of an undergraduate degree at the University of Western Ontario majoring in English, and I must admit that my early feminist politics were more textual than sexual. During that year, I became aware of just how little of the literature I was studying was produced by women. This was the
great age of canon revision in the academy. Feminists, race scholars, working class scholars and others were just beginning to call into question the assumptions behind “great literature” and just how such assumptions excluded a vast range of exceptional artistic voices. Gilbert and Gubar had published Shakespeare’s Sisters and The Madwoman in the Attic not long before. To be a young woman on campus at that time was to notice this slip between literary theory and institutional practice and to be impatient for change. Most of the courses I took were definitely
behind the times.

Not to mention the fact that in three years of an Arts degree I had only encountered one—yes one—female professor. There was a male Canadian Literature professor in the department who wore a tie with a pig on it that carried the slogan “male chauvinist pig”; he seldom included women on his syllabus. This was Canadian literature in the mid-1980s and he included no women: no Atwood, no Laurence, no P. K. Page, no nothin’. Go figure. There was another professor of Modernism who referred to T.S. Eliot as “the real Eliot” in a deliberate sneer at the great 19th-century woman fiction writer, George Eliot. Change was on the breeze and it left many an old boy with his hackles up.

As I became aware of this reality in the academy, I started noticing it everywhere I looked. CFNY, the hip Toronto radio station at the time, had a play-list that was almost all male artists and bands. Any end-of-the year, top whatever, music countdowns seemed to exclude women altogether. This was happening in the age of Patti Smith, Chrissy Hynde, Deborah Harry, Siouxsie Sioux, Exene Cervenka, and the Go Gos. Once again, go figure. I noticed that it cost me 5 times as much to get my hair cut as it did for my male friends. My clothes were more expensive, more restrictive, and more sexualized. Movie stars were usually men or sexualized women. The rich ones were all men; Julia Roberts had not come along to put women actors into any kind of colossal income bracket. At the time, Fatal Attraction was playing in movie theatres. Men beware women. Women beware women.

In retrospect, it seems to me that my early feminism was “consumer feminism”. I saw discrimination in all cultural and consumer products. At this age I desperately wanted to see my life and my experience as a woman reflected in pop culture and so I approached cultural revision with a missionary zeal. I made all-women mixed tapes. I wore men’s clothing. I only attended foreign films at the rep cinema. I read the classics of the women’s literary tradition. (Ya, I know there are problems with this philosophy but I was very young at the time.)

It was only when I started my Master’s degree at Queen’s University in 1988 that I really began to see issues beyond my own insular academic and entertainment world. In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s therapeutic abortion law as unconstitutional. A short while later a young woman in Quebec, Chantale Daigle, was taken to court by an ex-boyfriend who tried to prevent her from having an abortion. Reproductive freedom became a heated, mainstream issue. Rallies were common across Canada and I found myself staunchly on the side of choice. My feminism was now one of the body politic—the body as a battle ground for autonomy and control.

During this same period trouble was brewing at Queen's. There were a number of sexual assaults on campus and for the first time ever I was afraid to walk alone at night. I had uncomfortable sexual experiences with men I had chosen to escort me-nothing too untoward but uncomfortable nonetheless. I began attending "Take Back the Night" marches.

In the fall of 1989, the university launched a "No means No" date rape awareness campaign. Date rape was a relatively new concept at the time. At Queen's, residence culture was crass and strong; a number of young men in one of the residences started mocking this campaign by posting signs in their windows: windows that faced an all-women residence; signs that carried
slogans like "No Means Kick Her in the Teeth" or "No Means Tie Her Up." When the university failed to hand down disciplinary charges to the men involved, a group of strong-willed young women on campus donned scarves to protect their identity and staged a sit-in of the University President's Office. The story made national headlines. Queen's tried to cover up the mess rather than deal with it. Feminist politics were now front and centre on this now confrontational and polarized campus.

I can say now that I have been a feminist for 20 years but in doing so I don't want to make it sound as if I have always known who I was and what was right or wrong about the world around me. I didn't know then and I still don't know. I like to think I am always evolving but I am sure there have been patches of regression along the way. When I look back now on this turbulent time, I realize that in these years what I was really doing was growing up. I was learning who I was as an individual and as a woman. I was testing out ideology and I was trying to find a way to make the world a better place and to make it a place that was a better reflection of who I was trying to become. Sure, I was short-sighted and narrow-minded in many of my beliefs but wasn't I doing exactly what one is supposed to do in university? I was growing up and trying to learn something important in the process.

And then, in the midst of all this, it was December 6, 1989 and the world changed. Forever. I have written about the Montreal massacre on my own blog but I still don't feel as if I have said what I need to say. Perhaps I never will.

In December 1989, I had just turned 24. I was a female student, a feminist, attending a sexist institution 2.5 hours down the road from l'Ecole Polytechnique. According to the terminology in the suicide note Marc Lepine pinned to his body, I was the kind of woman he intended to shoot. Most of the women he did shoot were younger than me. These particular women didn't matter to him. Most didn't even self-identify as feminists but they were like me in one key way: they simply wanted to grow up and learn something important along the way. They wanted careers and the respect of their peers. They likely wanted life partners and some if not all would have gone on to be mothers. All of them were looking forward to the end of term and a chance to be with their families over the holidays.

Marc Lepine killed 14 innocent, intelligent, vibrant, well-loved women. He also killed something deep in the soul of just about every university-educated woman my age (and many more besides). He made us afraid. He made us realize that just by being who we were, we could be objects of hate, targets for his assault rifle. He cried out in his own pain but, to this day, I refuse to believe his pain was simply that of a lunatic. His misogyny was rooted in our culture, a culture where everywhere you turn (then and now) women are seen to be less. They can still rise to token positions of power but they are not given credit for being the best: not the best literature, not the best pop stars (unless they are also unbridled sex symbols), not the best politicians, not the best in business, and not the most influential on the world stage. If they want to write about the experience of motherhood -- a topic that we all know is worthy of unending intelligent and emotional analysis, they are relegated to the style section of the national newspaper. Yes, this culture still has its systems that relegate women to the margins. A lot has changed since the 1980s but I'm still standing here looking for the voices of brilliant women outside codified spaces for discourse. And I am still having to lobby for choice.

I promised myself I would end this post with a sense of hope even though I still come up against a brick wall of despair each time I remember this period in my life. When I blogged about it back home, I built my post around the metaphor of Pandora's box. The one thing remaining in the box is, of course, hope. In that post, the hope that I had was for my daughter. In this post, I am going to shift that onus back onto myself. If I am going to raise a confident daughter with a critical mind bent on changing this world to make it better, then I need to show her that I have not and will not be defeated by all the injustices I have seen.

I need to keep my voice. I need to say, "Marc Lepine, you cannot win for I am strong, I am a feminist and our numbers our legion and our faces are as bright and myriad as a kaleidoscope. We will shine light. We will not be darkened. You cannot shoot out the lights."

Each week will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. Guest bloggers are welcome if you have a story you want to tell; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

Hair Apparent

Yes, this is the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition but I couldn't resist using that title. I am hesitant to post this, because who wants to read about puberty and body hair? But then I think about how many commercials are on tv involving various forms of hair removal and wonder if maybe my hesitation is just a hangover from puberty and a reluctance to revisit that horrible awkwardness and insecurity. So here it is, and please let me know if I've overshared.

Puberty was a painful time for me; I believe it's when I began to perfect my skills in denial. When I saw hairs appear under my arm, I thought if I ignored them, no one would notice. This strategy worked until the first time I went swimming, when my friend noticed immediately. I'd actually managed to forget about them until she pointed them out. So I decided to trim them with scissors; I didn't want to use a razor because the thought scared me, it would be admitting that I had hair to shave, and because everyone knew that as soon as you started shaving you'd develop thick black stubble, no matter what colour the original hair was. I can't remember when I actually started shaving my armpits, but I remember the first time I shaved my legs.

In grade 8, we all wore cut-off jean shorts for gym class, and all the girls tried to avoid getting sweaty. Darlene Gillan, who was Popular (yes with a capital P) and had a fantastic upswish of bangs that I was totally jealous of (my hair was frizzy and never went in any direction I wanted it to); well actually half of her bangs were curled up and half came down over her forehead in the way that all the Popular girls did their hair in 1989. Anyways, for some reason she had started to speak to me occasionally. Maybe it was because I had a special way of pissing off our teacher, Mr. Smith, that would make him turn red and bellow for me to go out in the hall with just a twitch of one eyebrow. So one day I was sitting next to her in gym class and somehow the conversation turned to shaving legs. She looked at my hairy limbs in shock, and was all like, “You mean, you don't shave your legs?!?” And I was all like, “Well, I thought maybe it wasn't a big deal since the hairs are blonde but whatever...”

That day I went home and shaved my legs, with a razor and everything. There was about an hour between when I got home and when my mom got home so I did it then. For some reason I really didn't want my mom to know. Unfortunately I cut myself on that rough bit of skin above the heel, the place around the same level as your ankle. And my mom, who was a friggin' detective and had eyes like a hawk, noticed the cut and asked what it was from. And I was all like, “Oh, you know, the cat scratched it.” Trying to be nonchalant but failing misrably. And she was all like, “Really. That's funny because it doesn't look like a cat scratch.” Busted. I went into a long and involved story about how I was stepping over the cat when he scratched me, blah blah blah, but she wasn't buying it. The bottom line is I was mortified to be singled out for something as gauche as not shaving my legs and then doubly mortified to have my mom discover that I was *shudder* becoming a woman.

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Each week, I will tell a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. Guest bloggers are welcome if you have a story you want to tell; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments. Next week, I'm hoping Mad Hatter will share a story... Mad Hatter: will you please?

Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition

Each week, I will tell a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. Guest bloggers are welcome if you have a story you want to tell; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.

When I was 17ish, I was friends with a pretty girl who was a raging flirt, had low tolerance for booze, and often made out with guys when parties and booze mixed. Despite her extensive snogging, she was saving her virginity for marriage and she nearly made it. She lasted until she got engaged. But that's beside the point. Anyways, back when we were 17 or thereabouts, she'd started dating a guy at another school and she maintained she was in love. We were planning to go to a party and she asked me to make sure she didn't make out with anyone there because she was in love. I tried my best to do my duty at the party but was failing as she got drunker and sillier, and a cute jock attempted to take advantage.

I kept telling her, “You're in love, remember?” Eventually, the jock turned to me and said, “Why are you so cynical?” I can't remember what prompted this line of discussion. I replied, “I don't know.” And he said, “Maybe you're a lesbian.” I guess he was getting annoyed with me that I wasn't falling under his spell and letting him get off with my friend. I'm not sure exactly what happened next; I probably left them to it. But his comment upset me. I wondered if he was right; after all I was big and butch like an Amazon, I didn't take his shit, I wasn't impressed by a popular jock boy, I hadn't had a boyfriend, I didn't like the few boys who had liked me, I was angry, I wore plaid shirts (c'mon I was 17, give me a break), the list could go on and on. I guess he was making the equation that a woman who doesn't immediately fall under the spell of a popular guy must be a manhating lesbian. Eventually, I got over it and I did meet a guy I liked who liked me back shortly after that, but still the comment lingers in my ears more than a decade later. I can't remember who the guy was but I remember what he said.

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Fave Grey's Anatomy quote from last night:

"If I do die today, I don't want to be remembered as the slutty intern who dated two doctors."

Yang: "Uhh, one doctor and one vet."

I didn't much like last night's episode. People kept doing things I didn't want them to do. Meredith should have chosen Finn (for his name alone); Cally should have given George another chance, and she definitely shouldn't have invited McSteamy back to her hotel room. Though, who can really blame her? That man is steamy. And what's up with Izzy just getting $8.7 milion??

And there was yet another story of a woman so focused on a natural birth that she endangers the life of her child. First off, if she wanted a natural birth, why in hell did she choose the care of one of the top obstetrical surgeons in the country? And second, are there really women like this? I wanted a natural birth but more than that I wanted to trust my caregivers' decisions and go with the flow; I didn't get a natural birth but I did achieve the latter. That storyline does nothing to help fight the overmedicalization of childbirth. Oh dear, I'm ranting again. It's just a tv show. Step away from the tv.

Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition

As I mentioned earlier this week, the posts I've been reading about feminism and raising daughters has inspired me to start writing Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition. Each week, I will tell a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. Happily, Sunshine Scribe, from whom I stole the Flashback Friday idea from, has given her blessing. This series will continue until I run out of stories. Guest bloggers are welcome if you have a story you want to tell; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments. So here we go.

When I was in university I drank -- a lot. And I walked home alone at night after the bars closed. Sometimes I was nervous, but I felt like I should be able to walk home without fear. I was also too broke or cheap for cab fare. So I kept doing it. Until one night a man in a black dodge ram stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I said no and continued. When I got a little further on, I discovered he was waiting in a parking lot with his lights and engine off. Luckily a group of revellers was walking behind me so I stopped and asked if I could join their group because of this creep. Nothing happened and I filed a report with the police the next day.

Sometime later my roommate and I were walking home one night and he started circling us, going around the block, slowing down at the intersections, around us. His truck is distinctive so I know it was him. We stopped at the cop shop because it was on the way home and asked if they would give us a ride home because we were scared. They said they would call a cab for us but we couldn't afford cab fare (literally. We were both days from a paycheque and had spent our last dollars on beer) so we just walked home scared.

Months later the guy came into Black's Photography where I was working and gave me a roll of film to be developed. When the film was developed, we discovered they were all penis shots – blurry and underexposed but unmistakably penis shots. I told my manager of my experiences with this guy and we tried to get some action so he couldn't come into the store again. I was concerned because Friday and Thursday nights I was by myself. I went to the cops to see if they could do anything but they couldn't access my previous reports, because I had lost or hadn't been given an incident number. The Powers That Be at Black's decided they wouldn't do anything to prevent this guy from coming in the store if the cops wouldn't do anything. That was around the time I decided to quit and go back to school. I still think about this guy, more than the boyfriend I had around the same time, and just the other day I noticed him driving down my street when I was out walking with Swee'pea.

There is a tunnel under the train tracks I walk through on the way downtown. On its wall someone has painted, “Take Back Every Night!” followed by a female symbol. Yesterday when I walked through I noticed that the message had been painted over with the words Penis, which was accompanied by a drawing, just in case we can't read, and Hoe, in gold paint.

I think I need to add another regular Friday feature, and that is my Favourite Grey's Anatomy Quote From Last Night:

Callie Torres to George: "Right. And if you'd been a toddler and used your words during one of the four times I asked you then maybe you wouldn't have had to..." or something like that.

Oh - and George with the superhero geek talk. Too funny. Oh - and Meredith's dream.