Mad Men and the women they love

We've been watching a lot of Mad Men lately, and it's gotten me thinking about my love of 60's clothes, my inability to emulate the hairstyles of that period (seriously, where do women learn that?), and the obvious miscasting of my body in this time period, when clearly it is of the vintage ilk. The show, not surprisingly, has also triggered a nagging desire to examine gender roles.

In Mad Men, the women cater to the men like mothers and whores, submitting and stuffing down their desires, thoughts, and opinions in order to be proper subservients. And yet, through all of it, you get the feeling the women think the joke's on the men, as they employ the tricks often utilized by the oppressed--manipulation, lies, beauty, and a tight-knit cameraderie. Books and books have been written on the subject of mid-century gender roles and I don't have the credentials or genius to add anything on the matter, but I do find myself doing the third (or is it fourth?) wave feminist thing of wondering what we as women have lost while we've gained so much in the period up until now?

From my perch as a modern day housewife, at least for the last four months, there's something a bit intoxicating at the idea that your husband goes to work and provides for you and the family, while your expectations are to run the household and raise the kids and all that entails. There's no nagging fear about re-entry to the workplace, no constant jockeying with your husband over how long you'll stay home and when you need to start contributing to the house fund. You don't have to find yourself defending your decision to stay home to everyone you come into contact with, from the grocery store checker to your relatives you never see but are somehow allowed opinions on your life decisions. There's no existential crisis over whether or not this is the right decision and are you going to destroy your career/marriage/friendships/finances by staying home with them. There is, in point of fact, freedom that comes with restriction.

On the other hand, I don't like anyone making decisions for me, and the idea of being essentially yoked by marriage and motherhood into a foregone conclusion doesn't sit well with me.

So this is what it's like to have time to myself?

I'd honestly forgotten. And clearly I haven't blogged in, gee, a long ass time. Long enough that I am now a mom for god's sake. A mom! Like a fish with a bicycle or an emo kid who washes their hair, it's all a bit incongruous.

I've been reading "Madness" by Marya Hornbacher, author of my beloved "Wasted," a woman of brilliance and insanity in equal parts. It's good--not as good as Wasted--but good, darn good. Her typical stream of consciousness vignettes of startling imagery interspersed with totally head-screwed-on wisdom style clicks with me, our thoughts like long-forgotten Legos snapped simpatico. I don't know if that makes me crazy, or what. Note to self: analyze later.

The book makes me feel a little off. Dopey. Drugged. Again, part of her genius and I'm sure, knowing her, wholly intentional. I find myself muttering absently as I pour my add-water-and-stir "chicken" soup into a bowl, giggling at nothing in particular after reading too much. My hands are clammy; my back sweaty. Maybe it isn't even the book. I have, after all, been starving and retching and shitting my way through the last four days, as I battled (battle) food poisoning Armageddon. Midget thinks it's norovirus. The word scares me, so I avoid it.

In the book, Hornbacher talks about her constant fear, during a cycle of depression, that she's stupid and has forgotten how to write. I get that. It's my fear as well. It gnaws at me; wakes me at 3 a.m. when a full bladder or a peep from Indie hasn't done the trick. "What if I'm dumb now?"I whisper into my drool-stained pillow. "I will be found out. I am a fraud." I get the desire for mania, for the manic bursts of energy-driven excess and creativity. Aren't all artists of all ilk a bit cuckoo for cocoa puffs? Or is that just the romantic myth? It sure seems to fit most of the talented freaks I know.

Signs you may be ready to leave your twenties

10. The word "club" makes you break out in a cold sweat and you don't own a single halter top, a curling iron, or a push up bra.

9. You spent two weeks looking for the perfect commuter bag, that was age appropriate and didn't make your back/shoulders hurt, then bored all your friends with a running monologue about the features of said bag.

8. You recently purchased a "skort" from an outdoorsy company because it was "practical," and you wear clogs almost every day.

7. You think guys in their mid-twenties are cute until they open their mouths and say something. Anything.

6. You can't sleep without melatonin, valerian, benadryl, wine, or some combination therein.

5. When a kid starts screaming at a restaurant, your first reaction isn't to smother it with a paper bag. Babies start seeming endlessly fascinating.

4. One night of stoned grazing causes you to gain a whole pound. Jogging starts to seem like the only viable option for fitting into your pants.

3. Someone mentions the latest 'it' band playing at the Showbox and your first reaction is "who?"

2. You compliment your 60-year old coworker on her outfit from Chico's... and you mean it.

And the number one reason....

1. You're spending your birthday dinner at an all-organic restaurant with your husband and mom, because that's what you wanted to do.

This Vagina-American needs some hair of the dog

On the cusp of my 30th birthday, things are looking awfully bleak. On a personal level, life is a-ok. I just had a champagne-fueled birthday party, where I may or may not have engaged in a lurid display of my finer dance moves, and I'm about to head out on a European adventure like the yuppie I am. I have a sweet Hobbit house and am hemorrhaging friends and loved ones. I'm pretty much the Scrooge McDuck of joy right about now, diving in my giant pit of luck and imported chocolate.

The bleakness, my friends, is not personal, but is affecting me personally, as I'm wont to internalize such things. The election, the economy, the war--it seems to have whipped up a shitstorm of anxiety among my peers. I don't think it was a coincidence that my party made haste of no less than ten bottles of bubbly alone, in a Gatsby-esque attempt to drown whatever discontent is gnawing at our temples, etching permanent worry lines into our faces.

With how bad things have gotten over the last, gee, eight years, we of the liberal salon set were smugly sipping our over-priced macchiatos and gleefully planning our victory outfits for inauguration day. Now that She-Ra, Princess of Hicksville has entered the arena, we're running scared. I can only speak for myself, but it isn't even the prospect of a McCain/Dumbshit with a vagina presidency that sends me into a crying jag. It's the idea that the American public, having lived through the Bush years, would blithely turn around and vote in another pair of bass-akwards, cronyish, fear-mongering, racist leaders. It's the idea that my fellow countrymen would invite more of the same against their own self interests? And for what? To keep gays from getting married? To keep 16-year olds from getting abortions? To keep their taxes down? Or to simply keep a half-black man out of the white house?

If fear and ignorance end up winning out over rationality and progress yet again, I don't know that I can continue living in this country.

A rush of love to the head

Trying to write the entire story of evilcat and povertyrich's wedding would be like stuffing an entire Christmas ham into your craw. Impossible. It was too rich, too lush, too lovely, too crazy and too indescribable. So here I'll commit the snapshots: the little vignettes that stick out in my mind.

Standing in Kamaria's house with inumerable girls--gorgeous, smart, strong women talking about makeup and hair and sex and life and love--giggling and singing and playing with the baby, eating toast with brewer's yeast and drinking gin and juice while we prettied ourselves for the main event. And then, evilcat's arrival. Snapping her up in her corset and crinoline, helping her through the dress and standing there, while Pohaku cried behind the lense of his camera, looking at such a breathtakingly beautiful bride. Then all of us jumping on a trampoline (and not a Mormon in sight?) in our wedding finery.

Processing through the woods to "Sympathy for the Devil" played on acoustic guitar and banjo by Chelsea and her girlfriend, emerging on the bank of the stream to see 200 people beaming down at us from the bridge and across the creek on folding metal chairs, holding their breath in anticipation of seeing the bride and groom. Seeing Po out in the creek, up to his knees with that massive camera. Catching Alissa's eye, and seeing Presley on her hip in his bow tie and suspenders. Watching the creek run past, hearing the vows and reading (without throwing up) what I'd written about these kids to all those eager faces.

Eating tacos on hay bales with friends I hadn't seen for years. Laughing and eating and drinking a compostable keg cup full of champagne until I was past the point of caring that I was on the verge of a wardrobe malfunction. Dancing in the dark to 80's hits and country songs I don't know, almost falling down on the uneven ground, and laughing and laughing.

Watching Zeb take mushrooms and setting off into the dark to find Rachel only to find a woman named Marigold who talked to me for half an hour about the strange twists life takes, until she brought me to a giant pot of hot soy chai, simmering under a tent. Leaving the chai to continue my quest, but being waylaid by Shoshanna by the fire. Staggering off into the night with a punched can lantern to the other field, where I finally found Rachel asleep in the motorhome.

Watching hombrelibre puke up Gatorade and breakfast burrito on the side of the road outside Junction City, taking the wheel and driving almost to Portland, then both of us napping in a rest stop when my eyes started to cross.

Spotted yesterday on the bus...

...the most fetchingly nerdy couple I have ever laid eyes on.

She had milky white skin liberally adorned with freckles, coke bottle glasses and light brown wavy hair that fell past her butt, held in place by a ridiculously large irridescent butterfly clip. But her outfit was even more amazing: a baggy light pink sweatshirt, intense pleated mom jeans with tapered ankles and a bright purple leather fanny pack worn over both articles, making her look not unlike an overgrown six-year-old from 1989.

He was in a white polo shirt, almost white khaki pants and white tennis shoes, his baby gut straining at the pants, giving him the appearance of an angel gone to seed. His accessories were less angelic, however, as he flashed large yellow gold rings shaped like horseshoes and a tasteless goldtone belt.

They read the paper together, he on one side of the comics, she on the other, and made snarky comments in the sort of distinctively smug nerd voices developed from years of communicating only with one's parents and being reassured that they were "too smart to be popular."

I wanted to sell them as indentured servants to South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone could copy them intricate detail for detail and have another hit on their hands.

What to do on the bus when you can't read

My leetle bus riding experiment has gone swimmingly well. It takes longer, but my stress level has dropped considerably. In fact, on Thursday I ended up driving because I felt like ass and it was raining, and the resulting commute wrecked my physically. I was so tense and angry on the way home (at 2 p.m., I might add) that my one consuming thought was, "I wish I was on the bus right now."

The only problem with the bus is that I get violently sick if I read in a moving vehicle. Heck, I tend to get car sick no matter what, but reading really pushes me over the edge. To keep the ralphing at a minimum I have opted to spend my trips staring. Out the window, at my fellow passengers, at the molded texture of the plastic on the seat in front of me--you name it, I've stared at it.

More fun though, are the games I play while staring. My first diversion is a game I like to call "If there was a nuclear holocaust and you had to repopulate the earth with the people on this bus, who would you pair together, and why?" Let's just say my neuvo earth village would be highly interracial.

I also like to play "makeover" where I mentally redress and rehairstyle my fellow passengers. Only one rider has remained unscathed, and he is so painfully fashionable I'm hardly qualified to stand in the glow of his vintage reproduction Raybans. Naturally, he works at Bellevue Square. Boys that hot and gay always work retail or bartend or pursue whatever occupation gives them the best opportunity to shoot lasers from their soul-piercing eyes.

Today I played a new game, courtesy of my pink mini Ipod, which has languished, unused, since I stopped working out at the gym. As we rolled through town I scrolled madly through my playlist to find an appropriate soundtrack for the voyage. Cast in my own little movie I moved in dramatic form with the music--slowly turning in repose over the sweep of Keane, bouncing in the early morning sun to Ereland Oye and even sucumbing to Bright Eyes' 'Arc of Time' as we crested the 5-20 bridge. Bathed in the blinding reflection off the water, barely separated from the seagulls who glided past, I closed my eyes and felt, if only for a minute, like I was flying.