girlfiend

When I finished college and returned to Philadelphia I was bored and lonely. It was March of 1999 and most of my friends had moved away or were still at school. The only people I knew were my coworkers and customers at the bagel shop in Wynnewood- the same place I had worked throughout high school. Desperate for human contact that didn’t involve carbs, I turned to the internet.

I had no desk, so my computer rested on the carpet, the monitor precariously perched on an ottoman. For hours I’d sit with the keyboard on my lap, hanging out at the antisocial.com message boards, or searching personals on AOL. Most of the time was spent waiting for pages to load. Knowing that men can be scumbags, I didn’t post an ad of my own, I just browsed through the ads of others. Most of the personals at the time didn’t have photos. My internet dates were based upon my perceptions of the possible suitor’s intelligence. I’d read a personal then write the person if I thought they might be worth seeing. Depending upon their response to my email, I’d either ignore them, write back, or message them.

Eventually, two guys made the cut for actual face to face contact. I dismissed one of them immediately after our first meeting. He was an actuary and bored me to tears. The second guy was far more interesting. Tom was exactly what my late nineties sensibility was after- he was artistic, well read, well spoken, and a very witty writer. On the internet he was ideal, so I was convinced he’d be ugly. But he wasn’t. He was a 24 year old victim of male pattern baldness, but he was tall and muscular and he was hot. He looked like a cross between Matthew Modine and Woody Harrelson.

Tom lived in an apartment off of South St. with a woman he wasn’t sleeping with. He took me to dinner at Fork then we walked around the city. The conversation lasted for hours, leading us back to his apartment. He had art on the walls and books and magazines littered the floor. We watched a film he had made in college and I took home old issues of a zine he used to write. His book and music collection was ideal, full of classics and quirky items that gave him the indie street cred I needed in a man. I really liked him.

Our next few dates were as good as, if not better than the first. Interesting restaurants, films, ice cream and good conversation. There was only one problem. As much as I enjoyed his sense of humor, I could not understand the deal with the Canadian jokes. He worked at a local medical insurance company, in a large office with hundreds of cubes. Most of his coworkers were Canadian and he couldn’t stand them. Tom constantly mocked Canadians, discussing their ineptitude and stupidity. He bitched about having to work with them more than I bitched about having to get to the bagel shop at 6am every morning. I didn’t press the issue much, since he always seemed to be joking, but I couldn’t understand why his office had so many Canadians on staff. Don’t get me wrong. One of my favorite episodes of This American Life is “Who’s Canadian.” I enjoy a good Canadian joke as well as the next person, eh, but it started to get on my nerves.

Some time after our 4th or 5th date I had a startling realization. His Canadian jokes weren’t about Canadians! His Canadian prejudice was actually his way of letting me know that he hated black people. Of course I dumped him immediately. The racism was bad, but what was worse was the fact that he wasn’t even ballsy enough to be open about it. What a pussy. I was so pissed that I had been fooled by his indie facade, I never went on an internet date again.

Today, in the doctor’s waiting room, I was reading The New York Times. A former theatre geek, I started reading the article Blessedly Short but Not at All Short-Shrifted (registration required) when an article that I believe was on the same page distracted me. I was a paragraph into this very interesting article when it was my turn. As I walked into the office, I thought to myself, “I have to remember that article so I can read it later. I should write this down.” Of course I didn’t and now I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the article. I searched the NYT website, but it hasn’t done me any good because I don’t remember the subject or the title. If you have a paper copy of the NYT, help a sister out. Help me find the article and the karma gods will smile upon you.

Don’t laugh, you know it has happened to you.

Thanksgiving was fantastic. For the first time in years I actually had a nice time. Boyfiend’s family is just so normal. They actually like each other. My dad arrived around four and didn’t leave until ten. Usually he’s racing me to the door. I was so happy that he seemed to get along with everyone. As expected, he told his usual blonde jokes and shared an inappropriate email forward with a punch line about a woman keeping her legs closed, but after that he relaxed, and it sounded as though he was having actual conversations with people. Everything was good. It’s going to be hard for me to adjust to not despising the holiday season.

One of the best parts of the weekend was seeing old friends. I had brunch on Friday at Murray’s with one of my best friends from middle school. She spent two years in Ghana and now she’s in law school. It seems like only yesterday we were lying about our age with boys old enough to know better. It’s hard to believe we’re grownups.

Friday night at the bed and breakfast was incredibly relaxing. I love steeping in a steaming hot whirlpool, dizzy from the wine and the heat. I love 9000 thread count sheets. I love that even when we’re in a king size bed, Boyfiend and I cling to each other when we sleep. And the spa shower. Oh, how I loved the spa shower, with its two showerheads and four wall jets.

I saw college friends Saturday. I love that E2 brought me the entire season of My So-Called Life on DVD. I hadn’t seen it in years. It turns out I still have a massive crush on Jordan Catalano- the character, not the actor who plays him. It’s sort of similar to my love affair with Lloyd Dobbler. He may be a fictional character, but he’s still the great love of my life.

I had brunch on Sunday with E, a prince among men, who has the patience to grocery shop with me. Thank you. Then I made a chicken in the Baby George Rotisserie my mother gave me. Cleaning that thing is a bitch, but the chicken was delicious.

I also read an entire book and two magazines, watched most of season one of The Office, saw the original The Manchurian Candidate, and the first two episodes of My So-Called Life. In between the good stuff were the icky parts. I was my usual malcontent self, picking fights for no reason, while insisting there was nothing wrong. Every time I see my mother I turn into a monster for the hours beforehand, and it usually takes me a day or two to recover. The sad part is that this happens even when we don’t fight. At least I’m aware of it. You can’t fix it if you can’t admit it’s happening.

I save everything for the last minute, so even though I had a four day weekend to get stuff done, I woke up in a panic. It was eleven o’clock and I needed to get Boyfiend to his car, buy groceries, clean the house, and do lesson plans for the week all before yoga at four. I somehow managed to clean the house, stop at Pep Boys with Boyfiend, listen to Russell Banks read his story “The Moor“ on This American Life, have lunch with E and buy and put away groceries by 3.45, leaving me 15 minutes to change for yoga and walk to the gym when I discovered Phyllis’ new spot.

Remember how I was thankful for my standoffish orange cat the other day? I take it back. The little bitch has found a new spot to piss. It’s just not normal. Boy cats are supposed to spray, not females. She’s not supposed to piss on my Tiffany lamp, spraying the entire wall behind it with urine. I shouldn’t have to skip yoga so I can wash dried urine off the table, lamp and floor. I hate her sometimes, I do. On days like this I dream about driving her to a farm in the country and leaving her there. Then I feel incredibly guilty for wanting to abandon her. How will I react when my kids don’t want to be toilet trained?

• For lazy holiday mornings
• For Boyfiend who brings me coffee in bed.
• For Boyfiend who then brought me a refill
• For fat gray cats with black leather collars purring on both sides of me
• For nights in front of the fire watching black and white movies
• For friends, even the ones who flake out when they’re supposed to hang out the night before Thanksgiving.
• For friends who are still friends even when we don’t speak as often as I’d like
• For two pairs of Seven jeans and the ability to say, “Damn the expense.”
• For using the Hitachi Magic Wand as a back massager. Really.
• For knowing that Felicity Season 3 Disc 2 will arrive in just a few days.
• For heavy down comforters and red sheets
• For my skittish and stand-offish orange cat, with her silent meow, especially when she lets me pet her
• For Biotherm self-tanner and Clinique’s almost makeup and colour rub
• For Bed and Breakfasts at the shore with king sized beds, hot tubs and spa showers
• For Boyfiend making me strawberry pancakes for breakfast
• For high speed internet access and TiVo
• For my locked in rate of $35/month at my gym
• For yoga and my newfound upper body strength
• For finally finishing a book for the first time since September, proving that my ability to read is not broken
• For friends and strangers who leave nice comments here
• For sharing Thanksgiving with my dad and my new family
• For my ring and the future it represents
• For the sound of rain on my skylight

1. I accomplished just about nothing on last week’s to do list. In fact, after I wrote it I never bothered to look at last week’s to do list.
2. I still have a cold. I blame the fifth graders who hang all over me and wipe their tears and noses on my shirt when they cry.
3. Dana’s funny. Yesterday I realized that I’ve been reading her journal since 1999 or 2000.
4. Christian blogs really, really creep me out. (Sorry, Christians)
5. If it were up to me, no one would be allowed to put smilies or midi files on their websites.
6. If you’re stuck for gift ideas, buy The Misadventures of Dreary and Naughty. My friend Shawn did the illustrations.
7. I think that Robin Quivers getting her own talk show is a terrible idea. She’s fun on Stern, but as an interviewer I think she sucks.
8. My parent conferences weren’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Not one parent blamed me for failing their kid.
9. Even though I’ve been there for dinner countless times, and my mother won’t be there to embarrass me, I’m oddly nervous about Thanksgiving with the Boyfiend family.
10. Every time someone complains about traffic I fight the urge to make a Steve Winwood joke.

ig·no·rant \Ig”no*rant\ adj.

1. Lacking education or knowledge. 2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake. 3. Unaware or uninformed.

Anonymous left a comment on my blog reading:

It must suck to be so ignorant and to drive a corolla.

I had two questions. One, what’s wrong with driving a Corolla? I know it’s not stylish or hip. In fact, it’s a hideous color and it’s almost ten years old. But in the years I’ve had it, not once has it had any mechanical problems whatsoever. I’ve only ever taken it to the shop for inspections and oil changes. And really, I’m a teacher. I’m not made of money. I’d rather have a matronly and reliable vehicle than some stylish, piece of shit Jetta that’s bound to fall apart. (I apologize to all Jetta enthusiasts, but every Jetta owner I know thinks their car is a good-looking piece of shit. Especially the ones from ‘94 and ‘95. One friend’s engine went after less than a year. )

But more importantly, here’s my second question: why would this commenter think that I’m ignorant? Is it because I’m writing honestly about driving through the Philadelphia ghetto? Does Anonymous feel that this post somehow implies that I’m racist or bigoted? If so, let me put it this way. Nigga, please. Ghetto is ghetto. I don’t care if you’re black, white, Puerto Rican, Cambodian, Chinese, Dominican, Portuguese, Irish, Polish, or Nigerian. Ghetto mentality is just that: Ghetto.

A little while ago, Boyfiend and I were on the corner of Broad and Girard. We were discussing the tragedy of beautiful North Broad Street must have been before it turned into a slum, when our mouths simultaneously dropped open. In front of our eyes, a grown man in the ghetto chucked an enormous, empty supersize drink cup towards a trashcan. He missed. The astonishing part was that this man actually picked up his discarded cup and placed it in the proper receptacle. We had never seen this happen before, especially on a corner that is known for the empty fast food wrappers and potato chip bags piled in the gutter.

Clearly anonymous does not live in the city. One can differentiate the ghetto from your typical blue collar or working class neighborhood in a variety of ways. In the ghetto, residents don’t care enough to pick up the trash in front of their homes. Only in the ghetto will you find children who eat a bag hot fries and a barrel of blue “fruit” drink for breakfast. Only in the ghetto do parents give their kids 50 cents a day for a bag of chips, but can’t cough up $3.00 to pay for a field trip to the museum. You will only find adults who cannot afford to pay their electric bill, but insist upon driving an Escalade in the ghetto. Where else but the ghetto will you find someone who drives a 1988 Cutlass Sierra with spinners? If you’re on a city block where half of the houses are either boarded up or burnt out, but the cars on the block all sell for more than $30,000, you know you’re in the ghetto. And where else will you hear a parent yell from the stoop, “Get out the goddamn street before I shove my foot up your ass,” to a five year old?

I was pleased to see that someone else knows where I’m coming from. I’ll leave you with a comment from Bentley G .

Damn straight anonymous, driving a Corolla must suck, but really anonymous, nothing sucks more than having to drive through the ghetto. Like, you might say that living in the ghetto sucks more, but it doesn’t. I live in the ghetto. I know. Most my neighbors use their access cards to buy chips, soda and candy at the corner store to feed their kids. They’re not bad people, they just don’t do such a great job of teaching and feeding their children. The kids in my neighborhood play tag, basketball, and wrestle one another in the street. There’s a baseball field around the corner and they play kickball in the street. It don’t make any sense. When a car drives down my street, the kids get all pissed and take one step out of the way so the car has to slow way down so it doesn’t run them over. But yo girlfiend, your problem is you drive a Corolla. If you drove an Escalade you couldn’t afford you’d get much more respek.

Bentley G.

Celebrity Smack is my new favorite blog for celebrity nipple shots. Fugging It Up has more to offer in terms of a variety of different celebrity snafus to mock, but the smack site seems to be all about the boobs. I never dreamed that some day I’d be fascinated by Tara Reid’s surgery scars, or by a glimpse of Jessica Simpson’s nipple.

And the picture of Britney Spears picking her nose? Brilliant.

That’s what it has come to my friends.

I’m sick. It started on Thursday. My throat hurt and my nose was a little runny. By the time I got home from my parent conferences it had developed into a nasty cold. I thought about taking the day off, but it’s always easier to show up and teach than it is to write sub plans, so against my better judgement I went to work on Friday.

My first class of the day is my sixth grade Reading and Language Arts class. They’re not bad kids, but I don’t particularly like them. The class has only one boy and the girls are that breed of twelve year old vicious that people write books about. Most days they make me shudder at my own memories of grade six and the cruelty of the sixth grade bitches who tortured me. The girls immediately recognized my weakness and pounced, complaining about the amount of work I give them, comparing me to other teachers who let them play games on Fridays, telling me that I’m ‘Joe’. I made it through 25 minutes of attempting to teach action verbs and direct objects before I retreated to my desk on the verge of tears. My work-study students from a local university took pity on me and supervised the remaining hour of free time.

My fifth grade class surprised me. They recognized my weakness and chose to comfort me. They gathered around me with hugs and sympathy and took care to keep their volume at a minimum. My sweet fifth graders worked quietly on their personal essays in the computer lab, typing industriously. Boys and girls read each other their work aloud, complimenting each other while self and peer editing. When we returned to the classroom, they quietly, and without complaint, finished reading the story we started Thursday and helped each other answer comprehension questions and complete a story map while I slumped over my desk with my head in my hands. When class ended the little cuties implored me to go home and feel better. I approached my vice-principal and with one look at my white face and glassy eyes he asked, “Why are you still here? Go home.” So I did.

I hate when I haven’t accomplished anything, so I put a deposit on a wedding gown and did twenty minutes of cardio at the gym, before I curled up on my couch with my Tivo and season three of Felicity, where I remained for hours. Boyfiend brought me cold medicine, the good tissues, and hot cups of echinacea tea with honey and whiskey. He even suffered through a few episodes of Felicity. I love him. It’s so nice to be taken care of.

Philadelphia is a huge city made up of hundreds of unique neighborhoods. Some of the neighborhoods, like mine, are lovely. Many leave much to be desired. Earlier this evening, I had to return to school for Parent Teacher Conferences. Knowing that traffic would work against me, I left half an hour earlier than I would have under normal circumstances. I would have been early had it not been for the ghetto.

I usually take scenic Kelly Drive, home of the boat houses, to work without incident. Tonight, traffic was worse than usual. Halfway down the drive, on my way to the Roosevelt Boulevard, traffic stopped. For what seemed like miles ahead I could see nothing but brake lights, so I made a quick right onto Fountain Green Drive. It felt like smooth sailing as I wound my way through Fairmount Park. Driving through the park is slow, but at least traffic was moving, and I felt confident I’d make it on time.

As I drove down Ridge Avenue I saw that the exit ramp leading from the Schuylkill to the Boulevard Extension was just barely crawling. It was too late for me to take an alternate route, so I took a deep breath and accelerated up the ramp. I merged without incident and traffic soon picked up to about 25 miles an hour. When I got to the point on the Boulevard where it ceases to be an expressway and turns into a local road with traffic lights I looked at the clock and decided to turn off early and drive through the surrounding neighborhood rather than sit in traffic for twenty minutes.

I first realized my mistake when I turned left to cross the Boulevard. That turn was the official start of my drive through the ghetto. I was immediately cut off by an Escalade on my right, who decided at the last minute to turn left as well, narrowly missing my car. The light changed and I proceeded through the intersection, I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting three dark skinned teenage boys dressed in black crossing on red. Who the hell crosses a four lane road, notorious for accidents, without looking both ways?

My goal was to go a a block or two north then turn right to get to 2nd street. My Corolla bouncing through the ill-maintained street, I passed Wyoming, a street that was fire-bombed a few years ago. Slaloming(is that a word?) with all my might, I was unable to avoid the cavernous potholes on 9th street. I turned right, a few blocks sooner than I intended, onto a road inhabitated by several men drinking out of brown paper bags and cursing. I had no intention of providing the winos with the settlement they so desperately wanted, so I turned left onto 7th St.

I had gone about a block when I saw a car pulling out of a parking spot. Typical of ghetto folk, the driver chose to leave his spot by the curb for a more spacious spot in the middle of the street. No one entered or exited the vehicle. I waited. Two minutes passed. I flashed my lights. Nothing. In addition to the spot the car had recently vacated, I saw great expanses of parking on both sides of the street. I began to maneuver my way around the car parked in the middle of the street, to pass him in the parking lane when the driver graciously decided it would be a good time to continue his journey.

My next obstacle took the form of children playing basketball in the dark. Unlike normal children, ghetto children have no fear of moving vehicles. Rather than moving to the sidewalk, these fine young men chose to stand their ground, glaring at me as I passed. One threw the ball over my car, missing the milk crate basket as his charming friend spat at my car.

For the next ten minutes until I reached my destination I was plagued by the ghetto and its inhabitants. Drivers ignored stop signs. Mothers with small children chose to cross the street, emerging in the dark between parked cars-without looking both ways. I exhaled a huge sigh of relief as I crossed the street that separates the city from its suburbs, knowing that except for the soul sucking energy sapping parent teacher conferences ahead of me, I was out of danger.