Guys and Dolls

I watch movies, so I've come across a new type of film that, by virtue of being prolific, deserves its own genre. For lack of anything better, I'll call it the dick flick.

A dick flick is the dude’s companion to a chick flick. The hero is some stammering, video-game-playing, public-restroom-masturbating schlob (Jack Black, Vince Vaughn, more recently Jonah Hill). These antiheroes have one thing in common: they’re in love with a girl. She’s incredibly hot, incredibly sweet, occasionally smart – and she doesn’t give a damn about him. Whereas he has her home address programmed in Google Earth, she doesn’t even know they go to the same high school.

Also: the mere presence of the girl reduces the hero to an inarticulate, rambling freak who accidentally says “suck my cock” when what he really wants to say is “you’re the most beautiful girl in the world and I want to lovingly insert my penis into your mouth.” Ok.

The movie begins. Schlob is hanging out with his friends, whom we’ll call C++, Han Solo, and BJ, each named for his favorite conversational subject. They’re talking about how they all got pants-ed in elementary school, and their assailants are all guys who now play lacrosse/football/beer pong with women far more attractive than Schlob and Co. will ever talk to. Boohoo. Well, along comes the girl. We’ll call her Hot, because that’s all we ever know about her.

“Hey Hot,” says Schlob helplessly, “maybe we can hang out some time and do our homework together.” She glances at him. Encouraged, he blurts out, “Penis.” Oops. Anyway, Hot moves on. The Company all take a moment to appreciate Hot’s…well…Hotness. “If she were an equation, she’d be perfectly balanced on both sides,” says C++. “If she were a lightsaber, she’d be green,” says Han Solo, inexplicably. “I whacked it to her facebook picture last week!” shouts BJ, triumphantly. “You guys, we’re such losers, and girls will never want us,” says Schlob. The audience, uncomfortably relating to their plight, can’t help but agree.

Fast forward 1.5 hours. By this point, Schlob has done all kinds of things to get Hot’s attention. They include: buying her alcohol, cracking jokes, babysitting her little sister so she can have sex with her lacrosse player boyfriend, etc. His ventures have fallen hilariously flat – witness the time he tried to get her drunk but ended up puking on her himself, the time he tried to send her flowers online but accidentally sent her a year’s worth of porn, the time he told her “I'd rate you so much higher than any girl who’s ever been in Playboy. I mean it. It’s all in the face for me.” Hot thinks that he’s an uncultured buffoon, although she probably doesn’t use those words in her head.

By the end of the film, however, God seems to have realized that he’s dealt Schlob a raw deal, and makes up for it by having Hot love/date/blow him, depending on the film’s rating and intended audience.

I just saw Superbad, one of those films. And while I laughed my ass off, I also feel like this storyline is a little played out. I mean, here’s how Seth (Schlob) “gets” Jules (Hot). He mimes jerking off all over her, asks her to scratch his cock, tries to get her drunk because in his opinion she’s too hot for him and won’t blow him while she’s sober, and then he punches her in the face.

In Will Smith’s Hitch, we laugh at the subplot where Kevin James falls in love with gorgeous heiress Amber Valletta. What does he see in her? Her incredible hotness. What does she see in him? A talentless slob. However, by the end of the film he charms her tiny leopard-print pants off. Despite the coy sweetness of the ending, I was left asking, wait, this movie is so awesome because Amber falls for his dorky cute-on-the-inside moves whereas all he cares about is her ass?

There are more mature variations. Witness Jack Black using his “original” (read: canned) sense of humor to win Kate Winslet’s heart in The Holiday.

Is there a cult of girl dorkiness? Can you imagine a movie in which Kelly Osbourne, despite her lack of ambition or talent, spends 2 hours cracking jokes about Pi only to get head from Jason Lewis in the end?

I guess there’s always Bridget Jones. If for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, then for every Matthew McConaughey lookalike who runs after a departing plane shouting “the thing is, Loralei, I can’t live without you because you make me a better man” there’s a Schlob who vomits into Jessica Alba’s lap but still gets love.

The dick flick. It’s a little emo, it’s a little ‘revenge of the geek’ but really it's about a flawed person with flawed standards shouting at their beloved's departing back, "Why don't you take me as I am? Believe me, you're getting an incredible deal..."

Is this a public service announcement?

According to official documents, Congressional pages spend their junior year of high school ferrying messages back and forth for members of Congress. They make the eyepopping (for a high schooler) wage of 18-20k a year. They have their own school and dorm! What could go wrong with this arrangement? It sounds even cooler than Hogwarts!

Sadly, the age of page innocence has come to an end. Sen. Larry Craig, recently arrested for doing a gay tap dance next to a police officer in Minneapolis Airport (not exactly sure what said gay tap dance entailed, the officer said that Craig tapped his feet on the bathroom floor in a way that suggested the Senator wanted sex. Again, not exactly sure how you communicate a message like that by foot-tapping. Perhaps Morse Code? Maybe ask Craig's wife if this is common foreplay for him?) Anyway, Craig is also famous for a big scandal back in 1982, when he - this is just so awful - got several Congressional pages drunk and tapped a real long message (if you get my meaning, dot-dash-dot) on their helpless schoolboy asses.

And then there's the now-defunct Rep. Mark Foley, who used the Internet (that bastion of sodomy) to have cybersex with former male pages.

So all in all, it seems "messenger" is no longer a Congressional page's only duty. Little Republican boys beware.

Gwen Stefani makes an effort, makes the news?

So I always thought Malaysia was one of those free-love tropical paradise-type nations (even after a quarter of intensive Southeast Asian history, even after learning what utter crackpot dictators they've been under, etc.) So of course, I was surprised to hear that Gwen Stefani was performing there, and that, in order to prepare for her arrival, the nation instituted a new dress code.

Any female performer must be covered from her shoulders to her knees while performing. Obviously, this puts a kink in Stefani's plans, because the biggest part of any Gwen performance is not the music but the nudity. Apparently adapting to the Malaysian dress code required "a major sacrifice" on Gwen's part. Seriously? Major sacrifice? To put on a pair of pants?

Personally, I don't think of Gwen Stefani as the single-handed destroyer of Malaysian purity that this article paints her to be. (cf. The political authorities "blamed her for promoting promiscuity and corrupting the nation's youth.")

Don't get me wrong, I think free love is great. I think if you can't get it for free, you might as well pay for it. (You might as well - but I'll still judge you for it.) So I have no love in my heart for the Bible-thumping, burka-pushing, female-infant-killing protectors of women's virtue who ply the nasty religious backwaters.

Nonetheless, every time an item like this surfaces, the author of the article relies on some stock assumption that the more conservative culture comprises female-empowerment-hating fuddy-duddies who still haven't cottoned on to "moving pictures" and live lives of miserable sexual repression.

I know, I know. I'm talking about an article in People magazine. But the same article appears in multiple respected newspapers, with everyone making the grand point that Gwen Stefani, poor thing, is some great Western cultural scapegoat who has to take the heat for our enlightened ways.

I take offense. First off, why is it empowering for a female artist's bare ass to be part of her "image"? Why is Gwen's midriff okay but Britney's bare crotch or Janet's naked tit a no-no? Talk about a culture that gives with one hand but takes away with the other. Second, why do people who dress modestly automatically have crappy sex lives? If Adriana Lima can be a virgin (not saying I believe that or not) then why can't a girl in a headscarf be a freak between the sheets if she wants? Okay, maybe between the sheets of her marriage bed, I get it, but so what? Thirdly, how long can Gwen Stefani dress like she does (or any girl pop star, for that matter) and claim that somehow she doesn't represent promiscuity, that the bad-girl sexual allure of her outfits is part of her routine, and indeed her appeal derives partly from her attracting our feelings of a) lust and b) rebellion.

Don't blame the Malaysians for seeing with their eyes. Gwen Stefani is a cultural ambassador, she makes millions as such, and she's definitely encouraging promiscuity. Maybe not in words, but she's putting the image of it in their faces. Do they have to love it? No. Should they try to ban it? Frankly, I think they're exacerbating the problem. Also, I think they're disrespecting her style. But her style is a function of her background, just like the Malaysians is. Just like we prefer our pop stars in pearl bikinis, Malaysians prefer theirs in full-length leotards.

No getting around that fact. No getting around the fact that that's why Gwen came under fire. And no getting around the fact that it was entirely fair that she come under it. Because ultimately she's the one who chooses her clothes, not the other way around, and because she does represent the United States. And the other way around.

Asians: Not Getting Our Skank On?

I swear, if I see one more study about American teenage life that compares “whites” and “minorities” and defines “whites” as whites but “minorities” as black-and-Hispanic, I will throw up all over myself.

I still remember having detention once with the bizarre and entertaining Ms. Bryant and talking about race. She said, “it’s hard being black,” I said, “you sure about that? Because so far it’s all right being Indian.” And she gave me this look like I was from another planet. As if only someone from another planet would compare the black and Indian experience alongside each other. “You’re not part of a minority that enjoys a lot of negative stereotypes.”

Actually, there are plenty of negative stereotypes about Indians, just visit England, the land where Winston Churchill once referred to Gandhi as “a dirty little man in a loincloth” and yet still counts as a national hero. Fuck you too, Churchill. However, this is America, so we’re all in the “Fuck Churchill” boat together.

Nonetheless, Ms. Bryant had a valid point. I was hanging out in college with a bunch of kids once. And we were chilling and talking about race (by the way, I chill and talk about race all the time with nonwhite friends. In case anyone’s wondering) And one of the kids made a comment about how a lot of kids who were white just didn’t get it sometimes, and one of the others said, “Chill out, there aren’t any white people here – just an Italian and an Indian.” Guess which one I was (there were about twenty of us hanging around). The point is, sure, these folks didn’t consider me white, but it’s not like I was in the great big black-and-Hispanic boat either. It’s not even like there is such a boat, as anyone who hangs out in Chicago’s gang-controlled neighborhoods can probably tell you (I haven’t, so I can’t tell you.)

My point is personal. I want to see separate stats for “non-white, non-black, non-Hispanic” populations because I think those stats would be very different. And let me present a case study, where I contrast my experiences with those of that arbiter of teenage behavior, the CDC. The CDC recently released a “landmark” report about teen sex and drug use. Although in general I think people who use the phrase “teen sex and drug use” are not teenagers (since the most common teen term for “sex and drug use” is “party”) I also think they erred by presenting the entire population as a breakdown of “black, Hispanic and white.” In other words, the CDC simply ignored everyone else.

Which is fine, except that I think the behavior of Asian Americans is different from that of several other ethnic groups. At the risk of playing to type, while the average kid may define “party” as “teen sex and drug use,” most of the Asian kids I know (I’m kinda including myself in this sample) spent their formative years with a very different definition. It probably involved textbooks.

I know. How sad. But the thing is, the culture is so overwhelmingly different. We’re talking arranged marriage different. We’re talking when I was twelve, my aunt sat me down on the couch after a NickKids video and said, “These films you see, they show all these kids holding hands and things like that before marriage. Indian girls don’t do that.” My cousin’s parents told her she couldn’t date until her junior and senior year of college, and then too only guys she was interested in marrying. (This was a bad parenting strategy for several reasons I probably don’t need to explain to anyone who remembers being a teenager.) I have dozens of these stories I can tell you. I remember talking to a friend I met in college who’d been dating the same guy since she was twelve, and my first thought wasn’t, “Wow, you could be getting so much more variety out of your young years” it was “Wait, how do your parents feel about this?” And on that note, I’m going to stop sharing stories.

Anyway, my point. I suspect – in fact, I am pretty much positive – that the sex stats, like many other stats, would be different. Remember that condom manufacturer who couldn’t turn a profit in China because unmarried people weren’t having enough sex? That’s what I’m talking about. That is no accident.

So on to the second part of my argument. Which is: why do expanded, more inclusive studies matter? I’m not sure they do. Perhaps Asians don’t get that much action because, as Jezebel kindly suggested, they’re spending too much time with World of Warcraft and not enough with Jim Beam. This is the saddest but most likely cause.

However, as this other study suggests, maybe there is another reason. A reason rooted in biology and environment, a reason related both to culture and to varying development of sexual maturity.

A reason not related (let me establish this for the record, and contravene Walling’s study) to the absence of attractive Asian men, or the un-impressiveness of their “swords” as the green swordtails would put it.

(Although we here are big believers in Walling’s theory. Definite believers. In fact, we have spent long, painful afternoons believing in Walling’s theory long before we knew who the hell Walling was. But I’m not going to tell any more personal stories.)

Poor Moves

So the first time I heard Maroon 5's This Love (incidentally, not sung by the band), I thought the lyrics were...well, inappropriate. Also a little ungenerous, considering that the singer seems to be complaining about how demanding his girlfriend is in bed. But what do I know about it? Nothing!

Then along came Kiwi. After I first heard it, my friend turned to me and asked, "Was that about..." The answer, I later discovered, was yes. It was about. That. But also, in a way, kinda hot, especially since most oral sex songs since Leonard Cohen tend to focus on, well, not the girl. "Here's a guy who wants to go down on you!" says Kiwi. "How great!" (There are some songs by women MCs but let's be honest, those raps sound like something you'd hear from the Head Warden in prison when she catches you stealing cigarettes out of her back pocket.)

Anyway, my point is, TMI has always been Maroon 5's style and it was ok, because they were kinda dorky and energetic and overall good for you, like musical vitamins. But now here's Adam Levine (and let's be honest, he was always a little too into those girls in the videos considering as they were paid models) complaining about Maria Sharapova's sexual habits. No offense, but it's not so endearing when the names haven't been changed and he's clearly nursing a grudge over the breakup.

I feel as if - and I may be wrong - guys often worry whether girls are discussing their sexual behavior behind their back. And although we do, it's usually in a complimentary or advice-seeking way. Bitching about your ex's lack of talent, in any department, may be a part of breaking up, but I always thought it was in really bad taste. Especially when you live in the public eye. Also, it's a poor strategy if he ever wants to have a girlfriend again. I won't suggest, although Jezebel does, that Maria's lack of enthusiasm had anything to do with Levine's lousiness as a lover. He may be awful, he may be great, what's more likely is that they were just a poor combination.

But also, Maria's only 19 years old!! Maybe she's no porn-stunt-performing Paris Hilton, but what does he expect from someone who's only been above the age of legal consent for 3 years??? He's 27, which means he's been disappointing groupies and girlfriends for a decade, and he has the balls to insult some young girl? In the newspaper?

It takes some shine off Kiwi, that's for sure.

Stocking stuffer?

So here’s an exciting Christmas gift tip for all those people who shop obscenely early! Sadly, I don’t celebrate Christmas, or I would definitely have the iPod vibrator on my list. And by “on my list” I mean it would be the only thing on the list. Haha.

I don’t see how this vibrator – or any vibrator – is particularly empowering, unless the thought of getting off to your “recently played” list is empowering (and it isn’t, to me, since most of my recently played list consists of gym songs like Kylie Minogue’s “Fever.” Eek.)

And now, a look at what is on my iPod…Beach Song?

Woke up this morning it was 1969 and I was tangled up
like Christmas lights around an old girlfriend of mine
We'd watch the east bring up the dawn, race west and drink
our kisses as the sun sank down to drown within the sea.

Seasons came and seasons went, love got made and love got meant
Wake up late to pass out spent, play all day and pay the rent
And things were finally starting to make sense, the world was ours to save
And every day it seemed like it could last forever”

Except for that part about you’re pretty good but you’re not great…that’s no good.

Before He Cheats?

Right now he's probably slow dancing with a beach blond tramp,
and she's probably getting frisky...
right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink cause she can't shoot whiskey…

Hmm, this song kinda gets to the heart of why anyone would be using a vibrator in the first place, which is to say, again, a strike.

There’s 50 Cent getting his jealous groove on in Best Friend, assuming you want 50’s voice in your ear ever…

Maybe Don’t Stop? Who can say it better than the Brazilian Girls, don’t stop, don’t stop, just keep on going until I…yeah, well.

Endless Summer Nights? And I remember how you loved me, time was all we had…I remember every moment of those endless summer nights…which is also sort of depressing, actually.

ESPN Radio? Why the hell do I have this podcast?

The Jailbait Game

So, how old is this girl? If you can't tell, look at her again, here. If you still can't tell, you're not alone. If you got a little...umm...distracted...by her hotness, you're gearing up for a career in the clink, as she's a mere 15.

Which makes her yet another exhibit in the "I can't believe it's not legal!" gallery of fashion models. The most famous models in the world are probably those Victoria's Secret girls, who manage to look both vapid and mysterious at the same time, and also signify the tense relationship between celebrity and product, between endorser and endorsee. Most are Brazilian, which means they're at once Brazil's most famous citizens and its most profitable export. In a sense, they are the product, which is good, because most of them are probably too old to get work as actual models anymore.

I'm not trying to be mean, I swear! My point is, the modeling industry is a little crappy, but I normally wouldn't care - except in the case of 13-year-olds passing themselves off as sexually mature adult women. It kind of blurs the distinction for most of us as to what an adult woman actually looks like, and tacitly promotes barely-pubescent teenagers as a sexual ideal. (And for all the dudes out there who say they can't help what they're attracted to, the New York Times would like a word.) I don't know if models were always so young, but I wasn't always alive to comment on it, so again, I don't care.

The moral is: at the risk of whining, it does seem like a symptom of serious malaise that the "hottest women in the world" (isn't that what models are supposed to be, eh?) are not, in most nations on earth, above the age of legal consent.

That time of the...life

So the crazy-sexy bloggers over at Jezebel got kinda pissy about this study, which shows that all women feel bad about their bodies after viewing advertisements featuring models. "Wake up!" they said to the women leading fashion magazines. "Doesn't this study prove that you're doing the wrong thing?"

Au contraire, femmes. The study proves that these ads are doing the right thing! Click over to this absurdly hot Guess ad. Will I ever look so glowy and skinny and full of hipbones wandering around in no shirt on a tropical island surrounded by glowy, skinny men with removable tattoos?
(That may have been a gratuitous number of links...) AH...no. Will I ever look this artfully disheveled and nakedly happy? Ah...probably not. Will I live out my dumpy, unadorned life far from the happiest place on Earth? AH...maybe.

But will I ever purchase a pair of Guess Jeans, which for the modest price of $170 will let me believe, in my own fantasy life, that I am not this but this? Really, nearly $200 is not that much to ask. It's almost nothing!

The point of these ads is to make people feel bad and, to compensate, purchase whatever the undernourished Estonian 15-year-old in the ad is schilling for at the moment. Do I feel bad? Sometimes. But that is the point. And, in the case of all those ads featuring people making out, I also feel, well...never mind.

Let's just say I might be taking my lunch break in the bathroom today. (Which kinds leads to my other, more important, question - does anyone else think Guess ads are a little like porn? I guess it makes sense, because of course sex sells, because it's the one thing we all want...ok. Really. Time for a break.)

---

Oh, and, Maryland is great! I can honestly say that I had the best sex education of anyone I know, and that the teacher never shied away from awkward questions (Condoms? Great. Gay sex? No problem. "Can a woman get sick from swallowing too much semen..." Uh...yeah, thanks for that charming memory, 13-year-old boy in sex ed class.)

The Carne Conundrum

A humorous excerpt from America’s tax code:

“It is important to emphasize that IRS estimates of the tax gap are associated with the legal sector of the economy only. Although tax is due on income from whatever source derived, legal or illegal, the tax attributable to income earned from illegal activities is extremely difficult to estimate. Moreover, the government’s interest in pursuing this type of noncompliance is, ultimately, to stop the illegal activity, not to tax it.”

I realize, in putting this up, that I’m losing my mind. First, I thought a section of the tax code was funny. Then, I admitted it. Which reminds of the time I told a roomful of people that my first crush was Peter Jennings. They laughed, but in the way of people who have just realized I might be truly ill. The laugh of denial.

But I have no dignity. Which brings me to my main point: women who have no dignity. Apparently, according to the New York Times, women have now resorted to eating steak in order to lure men into marriage.

The article tells the story of a diehard vegetarian, a skinny woman who once wore a “Meat is Murder” T-shirt. Around the age of 30, depressed that she was socially responsible and yet single, she swallowed her scruples and posted on Match.com that she loved steak. She immediately got asked out. A year of burgers and beef fajitas later, she is engaged. She had her rehearsal dinner in a steakhouse. If she has sons, she plans to name them Chuck and Shank. What if she has girls? Please. Not with all that USDA-approved hormone in her bloodstream.

According to the article, the next red-hot dating tip for women is to start chowing down on burgers. Women who eat beef are unneurotic and don’t have issues with food. They don’t worry about their weight! They’re “guys’ girls,” they play video games, watch sports, shoot Jager, hunt moose and drive sport utility vehicles even though, let’s be honest, the closest they come to ‘sporting utility’ is tossing a basketball in the trunk and forgetting about it! They get misty-eyed over Brian’s Song. And by misty-eyed, I mean, something got in their eyes. That’s all. So shut up, all right?

“Hey guys!” they shout subtly, cutting across the noise and clutter of a crowded bar, “We’re just like you, but with breasts! And vaginas! Best of both worlds, really!”

Ok. I’m done. Clearly, these are not the days when high heels were an excuse to lean on some strong man’s arm. Haha. In fact, why wear high heels at all, except on the off-chance that one encounters a stray bison and needs to stab it and harvest its meat mass?

Now I’m really done.

The reason I’m being so judgmental is because I always secretly admired vegetarians. I believe all those arguments: animals aren’t treated humanely, it’s more sustainable for people to eat veggies now that the population is massive, meat has a lot of fat in it, and it isn’t a primary source of energy.

Considering I’m so thoroughly convinced, why haven’t I converted? Well, let me explain. My parents and grand-parents are all vegetarians. So is my entire extended family (vegetarianism is very common in certain Indian communities). And they’re a royal pain in my ass. I remember once, when I bought lunchmeat to put in a sandwich. My aunt, who was visiting at the time, held out the packet between the tip of her index finger and thumb, like it might bear cooties or some other hideous illness. “Are you going to eat this?” she asked, looking as if she might faint.

Or. When I was four years old, my doctor recommended that I eat an egg everyday. A regular, unfertilized egg. I had to wake up early and do this in secret, because my vegetarian grandmother was living with us. Well, my grandmother came into the kitchen one morning, saw the eggshell on the counter, screeched and refused to eat in our house until the entire kitchen was disinfected.

Or. When my father, who by the way ate meat I saw it happen with my own eyes! converted to vegetarianism and told me he could no longer man the grill at cookouts because he “can’t touch that stuff.”

Or. My other grandmother, who averts her eyes if I ever eat meat because she can’t stand watching me violate my Hindu dharma.

Am I sensitive? Well, I was always a rebellious kid, and my crush on carne only intensified in proportion to everyone else’s aversion to it. So you could say what I really fed on was my delight at pissing my relatives off.

Ignoring any character flaws that admission might reveal, I’ve recently gone one step further. I have all but given up chicken in favor of pork and beef. As a chicken girl, I thought I could regain some of the moral cachet I secretly desired. But the other day, sitting in a substandard Chinese restaurant and savoring the gooey, gummy texture of the no-man’s-meat they referred to as chicken, I thought, “Since when is cardboard the other white meat?”

I finally had to admit it. I love red meat. I can’t resist it. But that doesn’t mean, in a corner of my heart, I’m not a little bit ashamed of myself. That doesn’t mean I don’t keep my feelings hidden. That doesn’t mean, once in a while, I don’t feel like an irresponsible baby animal killer whose veins are filling up with cholesterol.

So you see, when some vegetarian suddenly cops to loving meat simply to get a guy, I feel pretty conflicted. I have a long and contentious personal history of meat-eating. I have heard my relatives condemn it, I have weathered their scorn, I have defended my decisions, I have tried to reform. But in the end, all this did was lead me further down the same damn road.

Try to get a guy with that line, fakers.

Last year, right after her daughter passed away, Ms. Gesterling came over to our house for coffee. It was strange to see my old math teacher - the one so many kids had chortled about, convinced she was a horseback-riding lesbian - sitting at my breakfast table. The memory of her story, which started out about the funeral but ended up an account of how her daughter fell down dead in the halls of her own high school, is one I can't dwell on. Back then, very few things made me cry, but the things that did managed to do so every time (the choice paragraph from Sophie's Choice, for example). So with that afternoon, a story I've never spoken aloud but which I mentioned in this space.

I was eating lunch alone at the counter today, reading Empire Falls. (I wonder, now, if in years past I ever read books to avoid looking like I was eating by myself...at any rate, these days, it's a choice I don't regret) I didn't notice the man in the all-cream suit until he leaned over and asked, "Do you know how much tuition costs at GW?" I stuttered. I wondered if it was a pick up, but he must have been at least 55.

"Probably about 40,000 a year," I said, although I honestly had no idea. Partly I wanted him to stop talking, partly I was curious. So I kept my book propped open with a finger and paid lazy attention.

"See, my son, he's looking into college here." The man shifted, smiled, looked away and back again. "My wife, you know, she likes this area. She - " he paused. "You know, actually, she passed away in April. She had cancer, it was very unexpected." He paused, not for tears, for thought. I waited for the rest of the story.

Which, once it started, was actually about his family, not about GW’s tuition rates. He’d moved from [Iran] as a boy, intent on studying in the United States. He’d met his wife in college – she was “my best friend, my partner in life, my sweetheart, everything” (it’s strange how some people can say things like this without making me cringe, but maybe I cut him slack because, after all, the lady in question was dead) and they’d had both a Christian and an Islamic wedding. The family moved from [California] so he could work for [a government group]. They had two sons, one of whom was in the [Navy], the other of whom had just been arrested. “He’s in jail, he killed someone, believe it or not, I’m ashamed to say it.” The killing took place just two months before his wife died. The man and his wife had purchased a huge new house, their dream house, “she was going to decorate it, everything” and their younger son had brought his pregnant mistress to the place when no one else was there. (The man says the family knew nothing about the mistress, since the son was married) The son and the mistress fought about the baby, next thing anyone knew, the woman was dead at the bottom of the stairs.

“It was an accident. He’s not a murderer, for God’s sake,” said the man, tucking photos of his wife and kids back into his wallet after showing them to me. The man’s organization paid for the son’s lawyers, but the man himself had trouble. “When I told my wife, I couldn’t not tell her even though I didn’t know how, I’d never seen her yell like that.” He said, sadly enough, that he partly blamed his son for his wife’s demise. When he returned to the house without her for the first time, he “collapsed – I woke up [15] hours later and the doctors thought I might die. They still don’t know what it was.”

He said his colleagues didn’t understand how bad it was – many of them were also [Iranian] and didn’t “understand how marriage is in this country, an equal partnership.” They advised him to marry again. “But,” he reflected, “it wouldn’t be fair to the woman.”

At the end of the conversation, wherein he just talked and I listened, I went back to my desk but had trouble concentrating. I don’t know how much of this story is true, although I changed the identifying details just in case, but I realized that I was momentarily cured of my own misery.

Recently, I have been having some issues with an individual. He was born fifty years ago in a reactionary country where women had few rights, and he’s spent most of his life abusing his wife and kids. Also, the past three books I’ve read all feature wife-beaters in prominent roles (Empire Falls, A Thousand Splendid Suns, the Virgin Blue). Imagine how surprised I was to find that a man born in a reactionary country can get a scholarship to the United States, marry a woman of a different faith, and genuinely mourn her unexpected death. Maybe this happens all the time. Maybe he made her miserable while she was alive. I don’t know. I’m just saying that maybe some people do love each other. Maybe it can happen, without being twisted.