Conversations with Strangers

So the other night, on the way back from the club, I struck up a conversation with the cab driver. He asked me if I had a boyfriend, I told him no. He said, "no one pleased you, is that it?" I said, "must be it." And he started in, talking about how love is painful, and we all get our hearts broken, and it's just worse if you try and prevent it. The day before I was walking out of the post office and I saw a man with a clipboard limping along the sidewalk. "Do you have five minutes, ma'am?" I am a total sucker for anyone who calls me ma'am. I stopped. He told me he was collecting money for a hospital, I asked to see his permit. He told me his legs were paralyzed, and that he'd collected money in the past. He said, "Come back and I'll take you to the hospital, you will see incredible need." And he took off his hat and showed me the scar where he'd been hit in the head with a hammer years ago.

From other cab drivers, I've learned that Nigeria has a Christian South and a Muslim North and an entirely conflicted present, that it's been ruled by various rival factions for years. That UIC is more racially diverse than Northwestern (an observation a blind man could make, I'm sure) and that Romanian is more similar to the romance languages than the Slavic languages. I've gotten directions around town from the mendicants outside of CVS. I've discussed love and relationships with tour guides, beggars and missionaries. Last year, I spent an hour debating liberal politics with the janitor, and this year I exchange all kinds of greetings in Spanish with the woman who cleans the bathrooms.

What's the point of this monologue? That I start conversations with strangers. And while occasionally these conversations end creepily, overall they prove extremely rewarding. How often does it happen that you're driving home through the rainy streets of Chicago with someone born fifty years ago in another country, lamenting the fact that both of you are looking for love in all the wrong places?

(Don't count all the times you've seen "Lost in Translation.")

Facebook and the female brain

In a recent column, Dan Savage blames Sex and the City for perpetuating the "cruel hoax" that women want to have lots of sex. In fact, he says, "all that yammering about women with voracious sexual appetites during Sex and the City's reign of terror?...a figment of the straight-male imagination, a Big Lie picked up on and promoted by self-serving female sexperts eager to tell straight men what they wanted to hear."

Since when did straight men take their cues about female sexuality from Sex and the City? I have never met a straight man who could stand that show! Also, it's a revelation to Dan that women talk about sex a lot more than they actually do it? In this, I think his ignorance is showing. As a gay men, Dan probably has twice as much sex as even he talks about. But for the straight population, with neither bathhouses nor 80's bars to abet us, well, we tend to run long on talk.

Also, I recently read a poll in Glamour that suggested 49% of women wish they had sex every day! What is this, Dan Savage? Another Big Lie concocted by female sexperts to torture all the poor, unfortunate straight men who read Glamour? Sure sounds like it! Listen women, don't ever talk about sex again, otherwise someone will assume you want to do it right then and really, you'll be obligated.

What a boatload of crap.

Speaking of Sex and the City, remember that one episode when Carrie's boyfriend dumps her via a Post-It he sticks to her computer screen? She wakes up, he's gone, she has just the Post-It to console her? Well I have a story to top it. One girl didn't realize she'd been dumped until she logged onto Facebook and News Feed told her that her boyfriend had reset his relationship status to "single." Yikes. It's like that scene from When Harry Met Sally, when Harry rushes up to Sally and says, "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to begin right now." Well, there's a little-known corollary to that statement, and it goes, "When you realize you don't want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you still want the rest of your life to begin right now. In fact, you want it more than you did before."

Neither shaken nor stirred

So I came home from break and reconnected with my family by watching a TV screen for two hours. Specifically, Casino Royale. What I didn't realize until watching the film was that this movie, unlike the ones that came before, attempts to take us back to the days before the signature drink and polished cuff-links. Back when Bond, much like Madonna and Cher, went by his first name.

The movie assumes that most of us, long-time Bond fans or at least acquaintances, actually care. The truth is, I don't think much can explain James Bond - he's a cartoon character. He's bizarre and quirky and unrealistic. I never felt tempted to look behind the curtain. I just assumed the rooms back there were empty.

So what to make of the heartrending hero in Casino Royale? He gets poisoned and beaten up and doesn't even know what his signature drink is. Worse, he has emotions. He declares to his erstwhile lover, "You've stripped me of my armor." Oh Bond, you certainly haven't stripped me of mine. Part of my disbelief might stem from Daniel Craig's wooden delivery of the deeply emotional love scene. He sounds like he's reading a teleprompter.

Or perhaps I was distracted by his barrel-muscled chest. This may be the first Bond film to boast more male nudity than female. At one gruesome point Bond is tied to a chair, and a villain says to him, "You've certainly worked on your body, James." And James has: he looks fresh from the gyms of Hollywood, waxed and tanned and ready to fight evil (or at least flab and unwanted hair.) I saw Craig in Layer Cake and he looked great, or at least, on the far better side of average. Now he resembles an amateur bodybuilder. As the villain goes on to say, "such a waste." I couldn't agree more. As an action hero, he does all right. Despite being handicapped by his awful spray tan, Craig has an amoral rawness that makes Peirce Brosnan's Bond look, well, girly.

And then there are the real girls. Judi Dench steals every scene she's in, delivering lines like "I might have to have you killed" with such spine-tingling sincerity that even I, miles away from England, was looking over my shoulder. The hapless wife of some millionaire ends up dangling from a hammock as thanks for her attraction to James, but the real Bond girl, Vesper Lynd, is amazing. If there were more accountants like her, there would be no such thing as tax evasion. Her scenes with Bond are interesting, but the two lovers get sacrificed on the altar of poor writing (Case in point: Lynd says to Bond, "You know, even if there were nothing left of you but an easy smile and your little finger, you'd still be more of a man than anyone I've ever met." He answers, "Well, that's because you know what I can do with my little finger." Poignant. Perhaps Lynd is confusing Bond with Judi Dench's character.)

And finally, some things about the film are just bizarre. The opening chase scene, set in a construction yard, casts Bond and his prey as Chinese action heroes doing parkour. In the penultimate scene, Bond tenders his resignation to M16 - through Gmail. And how about the fact that Bond is chasing terrorists (or so we're led to believe, the only villains I see are some especially violent stock-brokers.) By the end of the film Bond has wrecked a construction yard, an embassy and a Venetian palace. Honestly, who needs car bombs when this guy is running around?

Bad Lighting Blues...

So these days, what with my impressive Pilates regimen, I've been thinking of myself as a bit of a Jessica Alba lookalike. From the neck down, of course.

Imagine my surprise when I slipped into the Nordstrom's dressing room and stood tall (relatively speaking) in front of the three-way mirrors in the flourescent light. I discovered several things. First, that I bear more resemblance to Alba from the neck up than from the neck down. Second, that high-end stores are still using circus-style fat mirrors. Third, that I will never ever install flourescent light in any of my residences.

But instead of thinking about this from my selfish perspective, I looked at the problem like the marketing major I am (fast) becoming. I mean, what kind of strategy is this? Women don't want to see what their clothes look like on them! They want to see what their clothes look like on other, hotter women. (One of the few similarities between the sexes.)

So when I got home, I took several steps. I put on my marketing hat. I tossed all the carbs and refined sugars in my fridge out the window. And I wrote down this plan:

1. The flourescent lights have got to go. What about artistic overhead track lights? Or even candlelight? The pioneers were on to something. Not only is it flattering and mysterious, it doesn't contribute to global warming! Al Gore could use a fitting room like this!

2. Why the white walls and plastic doors? This isn't a high school bathroom stall - we're not sneaking in here to smoke. I want a whole new decor, let's say green and yellow (a pre-prison Martha color scheme, shades that remind the viewer of vegetables and other foods that make her thin)

3. And why the silence, broken once in a while by some midwestern mother drawling to her teenage daughter next door ("Oh god, Allie, not another size 0. When are you going to grow some hips?") Why not play music...maybe old-school Marvin Gaye. Or, for those who don't want to hear a 50-year-old man lay his game down, what about Twista? Who cares if these jeans are, like, a 24?

4. Who looks in all those mirrors anyway? Believe me, if I wanted to stare at my own ass, I'd get a three-way mirror installed in my house. Replace the mirrors in high-end department stores with classy art. In lingerie stores? Opt for windows (with drapes for the milder-mannered shopper.) All those "adult costume" stores in Belmont? Try a life-size reproduction of the Italian soccer team's Dolce ad. Sales will skyrocket.

Of course, all this is just the beginning. I see a future where we don't have fitting rooms at all, but high-end "shopping lounges" where women pick a series of outfits for a model to try on, and then choose the outfits they like best. In fact, why stop at outfits? Dispense with those, too. Soon enough, every woman in America will see this when she walks into a department store.
"God," she'll think, "when did I get that tan?" And buy everything in sight.

It's not dishonesty. It's good business.

Oh my God, Becky, look at her...

A little while back, Glamour ran a short blurb criticizing cosmetic vaginal surgery. What does that tremor-inducing phrase mean? Cosmetic vaginal surgery covers a variety of completely voluntary procedures: among them, surgeries to tighten your vag and to reattach certain elements, making you feel, in the words of Madonna, "like a virgin." I know - just thinking about this makes me want to cross my legs and weep.

There are some women, of course, who denounce this surgery as an anti-feminist outrage. Personally, I prefer to think of vaginal surgery along the same lines as penis enhancement. Neither seems to improve the receiver's sex life, both can cause severe complications (think permanent loss of sensation, discoloration, oozing, and other things associated with never getting laid again). Interestingly, no one has stepped up to call the penis enhancement industry by its real name: an anti-manist outrage. But let's be honest, who gives a flying, discolored fuck about men's identity issues anyway?

Nonetheless, I think I sense the source of some female outrage. And it has nothing to do with prosthetic privates. The truth is, I too felt a twinge of foreboding when I read the article. I suddenly saw, in my mind's eye, a blazing future in which beautiful women walked around with pencil-thin, constantly virgin vaginas. In this world, I felt outdated and out of place. I faced a terrible choice: go under the knife or die alone.

Then I woke up and realized it was all just a terrible nightmare. But what about those women who never wake up? God, it must be terrible for them.

And at the risk of getting too far out there (let's be honest, I'm pretty far out there already), I have a suggestion for all the dissatisfied women who shell out $5000 to have themselves surgically 'revirginized.' Consider seeing a professional dominatrix. You'll still get a night of awkwardness, pain and bleeding, but it won't cost nearly as much.

For those who really can't get enough of the word "vagina," there's a great article about this surgery in the Wall Street Journal. (Non-subscribers can get a brief summary at Slate.)

Whack Snake Moan

...or, another movie I won't be seeing this season. The director seems to believe he's made a real revolutionary cry of a film. In my opinion, anytime one person chains another to his radiator it's a felony.

Heroes can be felons (Layer Cake, anyone?). But what about Christina Ricci, in her torn-up Confederate flag shirt? As one man says, "she's got the sickness. She goes crazy." In some perverse way I'm a little thrilled by what a fallen woman she is. She has sex with four men in a single night, and wakes up naked and bleeding by the side of the road. Samuel Jackson says to her, "I will cure you of your wickedness" but really, why be so ambitious? He could just cure her of her scrapes, bruises and broken bones first.

And since when is Ricci's "nymphomania" (a mythical psychosexual disorder, by the way, since most sufferers of hypersexuality usually don't enjoy it) a wickedness? Let's not get carried away: it's not wickedness that gets her into trouble, it's carelessness. If she were having this much sex with, say, her husband, she'd only be obeying the injunction to "be fruitful and multiply." It's not her sex drive that's the problem. It's her addiction to self-mutilation. But the two are not the same.

I've seen the same mentality in the recent book Unhooked. As pointed out on Slate.com, the author assumes that young women who pursue casual sex are going to wake up in a world of pain. I'm not trying to be excessively modern, but I just don't buy it. The world of pain that Ricci experiences (particularly in the long hours clanking around Jackson's Tennessee shack) has nothing to do with the fact that she's been so "violated." And what about Jackson, the down-home hero who, Bible in hand, tries to restore Ricci's lost purity? The entire movie feels like a religious experience: temptation, the suggestion of all these kinky sex games, but in the end, they swear, they're just friends.

I don't buy that either. Friends don't chain their half-naked, drunk friends to the wall. I'm just saying.

Of course, one could argue that it's all allegorical. Fallen woman and knight-errant, devil and angel, left shoulder and right. But my spiritual battles tend not to be so dramatic. Also, for the most part, they don't leave chafe marks.