Censorship: Why you shouldn't advocate for it

I wasn't allowed to watch the movies that my friends were watching and I hated it. All I wanted to was to see Titanic. I'll never forget one of my classmates not letting me see a page in her Titanic movie companion book because she knew I wasn't allowed to see the movie. 

My mom still cringes when I mention my first R-rated film (Ronin, when I was in the fourth grade). I don't think I saw another R-rated film until high school. I still have only seen about five episodes of the Simpsons. I remember getting into angsty adolescent skirmishes with my dad because he wouldn't let me buy CDs (when people still bought those) with the "Parental Advisory" stickers on them. My parents were careful, and surprisingly united in their cause to protect us from content they deemed inappropriate.

However careful my parents were to keep me from playing violent video games and from viewing violent images, they neglected to monitor my reading to a certain extent. I'd wait eagerly for mom to finish reading Reader's Digest so I could have it, and she'd always tell me not to read certain articles. 

So those were the first ones I read. And yes, some of them were probably inappropriate for an 8-year old, but they also opened my eyes to the reality of the world around me. (I also watched both the morning and evening news, and Dateline, and stuff like that. I'm consequently terrified of fireworks, boiling water in glass bottomed containers, and swimming pool drains. But as a result, I'm also still alive.) 

Reader's Digest wrote about female genital mutilation years before it was a mainstream topic. Now, they're making a movie about Waris Dirie, the woman whose story appeared in that magazine at some point during my youth. I don't consider that inappropriate at all. I'm grateful. It allowed me to understand something I might not have been able to - and it allowed me to learn without being embarrassed to ask awkward questions. 

As a child, I devoured books. It didn't matter whether they were aimed at children, young adults, or adults, I read them all. My particular favorites were murder mysteries. I loved them. Agatha Christie, Lillian Jackson Braun, and so on. 

One year, someone bought me a big book of murder mysteries from Barnes and Noble. I'll never forget it. That purple and black cover, the fact that it was at least a thousand pages. I thought it would last at least a week (I read so fast that I had to start choosing books based on thickness so they'd last). And I started reading. 

Not far into the book, I came upon a story so grotesque, I had to stop reading. (It concerned the rape and murder of a young girl.) My usual morbid curiosity was gone. I was haunted by what I'd read. I closed the book and hid it at the bottom of my drawer. I never again picked up that book. 

Perhaps my parents would never have given it to me if they'd known what it contained. But it was given to me with the best of intentions - they knew I loved murder mysteries. 

I was young, yes, but I was also old enough to make the decision not to continue reading for myself. 

The article that this post is based on calls into question the maturity of young adults to choose for themselves. What are we exposing our kids to? Today's popular books don't have any new themes in them...Shakespeare wrote about suicide, bloody battles, sex, etc. What is scandalous today becomes blasé tomorrow. 

I didn't only learn about sex because of romance novels - one night, I couldn't sleep and Mom gave me a book and told me not to read past a certain page. I started reading and fell in love with the characters. I read the entire book that night. It remains one of the most romantic stories I've ever read, not because it was inappropriate (it wasn't), but because it was beautiful. I laughed and I cried. I slept well that night, knowing that somewhere, a fictional couple had found that love that all humans strive for. 

Books taught me about history, and tragedy, and famine, and war. I learned about the triumphs of humanity, the beauty of the natural world, the greed that comes with power. 

I don't regret the exposure I had through novels. They prepared me to lead the life I lead today. They taught me about inner strength, gratitude, poise, passion, intelligence, the best way to silence an enemy, all sorts of poisons, drugs, politics, the justice system, common sense, fact, fiction, wild adventures, and magic. They were my greatest escape, my greatest indulgence, the source of much of my happiness. 

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for letting me read. 

The text below comes from a Wall Street Journal article published on June 4, 2011:

Darkness Too Visible

Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

Amy Freeman, a 46-year-old mother of three, stood recently in the young-adult section of her local Barnes & Noble, in Bethesda, Md., feeling thwarted and disheartened.

She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

Journal Community

Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook. Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code. But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.

Raul Allen

If you think it matters what is inside a young person's mind, surely it is of consequence what he reads. This is an old dialectic—purity vs. despoliation, virtue vs. smut—but for families with teenagers, it is also everlastingly new. Adolescence is brief; it comes to each of us only once, so whether the debate has raged for eons doesn't, on a personal level, really signify.

As it happens, 40 years ago, no one had to contend with young-adult literature because there was no such thing. There was simply literature, some of it accessible to young readers and some not. As elsewhere in American life, the 1960s changed everything. In 1967, S.E. Hinton published "The Outsiders," a raw and striking novel that dealt directly with class tensions, family dysfunction and violent, disaffected youth. It launched an industry.

Mirroring the tumultuous times, dark topics began surging on to children's bookshelves. A purported diary published anonymously in 1971, "Go Ask Alice," recounts a girl's spiral into drug addiction, rape, prostitution and a fatal overdose. A generation watched Linda Blair playing the lead in the 1975 made-for-TV movie "Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic" and went straight for Robin S. Wagner's original book. The writer Robert Cormier is generally credited with having introduced utter hopelessness to teen narratives. His 1977 novel, "I Am the Cheese," relates the delirium of a traumatized youth who witnessed his parents' murder, and it does not (to say the least) have a happy ending.

Grim though these novels are, they seem positively tame in comparison with what's on shelves now. In Andrew Smith's 2010 novel, "The Marbury Lens," for example, young Jack is drugged, abducted and nearly raped by a male captor. After escaping, he encounters a curious pair of glasses that transport him into an alternate world of almost unimaginable gore and cruelty. Moments after arriving he finds himself facing a wall of horrors, "covered with impaled heads and other dripping, black-rot body parts: hands, hearts, feet, ears, penises. Where the f— was this?" No happy ending to this one, either.

In Jackie Morse Kessler's gruesome but inventive 2011 take on a girl's struggle with self-injury, "Rage," teenage Missy's secret cutting turns nightmarish after she is the victim of a sadistic sexual prank. "She had sliced her arms to ribbons, but the badness remained, staining her insides like cancer. She had gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she still couldn't breathe." Missy survives, but only after a stint as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Books We can Recommend for Young Adult Readers

BOOKS FOR YOUNG MEN:

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010)

This grueling post-apocalyptic National Book Award winner earns its scenes of menace and the odd expletive by believably conjuring a future in which people survive by scavenging materials from the rusting hulks of oil tankers. In a pitiless semi-civilization, one single act of decency launches a young man on a terrifying journey.

Peace by Richard Bausch (2009)

For older teens, a taut World War II novel set in 1944 that evokes the conflicting moral struggles of war. When a detachment of American GIs tramping through the Italian countryside discovers an escaping German soldier and a young woman hiding in the back of a cart, the resulting bloodshed—is it murder or self-defense?—sets off profound reverberations in the men's hearts.

Old School by Tobias Wolff (2004)

Set in a smart New England prep school in the 1960s, this story of a young man's search for authentic identity captures the mixture of longing and ambition that causes so many adolescents to try, if only for a time, to shape themselves along other people's lines. Here, the admired models are writers—Ernest Hemingway, Ayn Rand, Robert Frost—who visit the school and for whom the young protagonist contorts himself in painful and revealing ways.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

A science-fiction classic that offers surprisingly mordant commentary on contemporary American life. In a society where rampant political correctness has resulted in the outlawing of books, Guy Montag works as a "fireman" tasked with destroying intellectual contraband. His wife spends her days immersed in the virtual reality projected on screens around her. When Guy accidentally reads a line from a book, he finds himself strangely stirred—and impelled to an act of recklessness that will change his life forever. Teenagers whose families are maddeningly glued to screens may find Guy's rebellion bracingly resonant.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)

Told (with the occasional expletive) from the unreliable perspective of a high-functioning autistic teenager, this mystery recounts 15-year-old Christopher's effort to solve the killing of a neighborhood dog. When the boy himself falls under suspicion in the animal's death, his violent response propels him toward discoveries that will ultimately overturn his understanding of his own family.

True Grit by Charles Portis (1968)

The movie versions are fine, but they only approximate the drollery and tenderness of this tale of Wild West vengeance. Narrated in retrospect by a rawhide-tough woman named Mattie Ross, the novel recounts her girlhood quest to hunt down her father's killer in lawless Indian Territory, with the aid of dissolute U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn. The brilliance is all in the tone: Beneath Mattie's blunt manner lies a fierce intelligence and wagon-loads of grit. Girls will love this one, too.

BOOKS FOR YOUNG WOMEN:

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell (2008)

The events swirling around 15-year-old Evie in this sophisticated National Book Award winner seem to her, in the blinkered way of teenagers, mainly the backdrop to her own sexual awakening. In a story involving deceitful parents, stolen Jewish treasure, a handsome ex-GI, adultery and murder, all set in louche, off-season Palm Beach, it is only when Evie must decide whether to lie—and whom to save—that it is apparent that she is no longer a child.

Ophelia by Lisa Klein (2006)

An inventive retelling of the story of Hamlet from the perspective of beautiful, bewildered Ophelia. In Shakespeare's play, we are meant to understand her as a love-struck medieval girl gone mad. Here she is an intelligent if impractical Elizabethan who, with the help of Queen Gertrude, secretly marries Prince Hamlet, fakes her own death and runs away with—well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?

Angelmonster by Veronica Bennett (2005)

This elegant novel introduces us to 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, future author of "Frankenstein," shortly before she meets the dashing poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The events that ensue seem as jolting today as they were to the couple's early 19th-century contemporaries: an adulterous escape from London to Europe, the births and deaths of two children, a sojourn in Italy with the "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Lord Byron (which included a famous night of telling ghost stories), and Percy Shelley's tragic death at sea.

Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien (1973)

A post-apocalyptic novel for adolescents that is all the more frightening for its restraint. It has been a year since all-out nuclear war has left Ann Burden apparently the only girl in the radioactive remains of the United States; thanks to a quirk of geography, her family's farm (but not her family) survived the cataclysm. When she sees a column of distant smoke, Ann realizes that she is not alone, and soon she is nursing back to health a man who turns out not to be the person to play Adam to her Eve.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)

This vivid novel of early 20th-century Brooklyn is proof that mature material can be rendered with such subtle humanity that a younger teen can read it with as much enjoyment as a person many years older. I got my copy in a used bookstore when I was 11 and was so entranced by the story of book-loving Francie Nolan and her impoverished Irish-Catholic family—her beautiful mother, her handsome drunken father and various other misbehaving or censorious relatives—that I read it over and over throughout adolescence. Only years later did I grasp everything that happened between the adult characters. Isn't that what being a young reader, or indeed a teenager, is all about?

The argument in favor of such novels is that they validate the teen experience, giving voice to tortured adolescents who would otherwise be voiceless. If a teen has been abused, the logic follows, reading about another teen in the same straits will be comforting. If a girl cuts her flesh with a razor to relieve surging feelings of self-loathing, she will find succor in reading about another girl who cuts, mops up the blood with towels and eventually learns to manage her emotional turbulence without a knife.

Yet it is also possible—indeed, likely—that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures. Self-destructive adolescent behaviors are observably infectious and have periods of vogue. That is not to discount the real suffering that some young people endure; it is an argument for taking care.

The novel "Scars," a dreadfully clunky 2010 exercise by Cheryl Rainfield that School Library Journal inexplicably called "one heck of a good book," ran into difficulties earlier this year at the Boone County Library in Kentucky, but not because of its contents. A patron complained that the book's depiction of cutting—the cover shows a horribly scarred forearm—might trigger a sufferer's relapse. That the protagonist's father has been raping her since she was a toddler and is trying to engineer her suicide was not the issue for the team of librarians re-evaluating the book.

"Books like 'Scars,' or with questionable material, those provide teachable moments for the family," says Amanda Hopper, the library's youth-services coordinator, adding: "We like to have the adult perspective, but we do try to target the teens because that's who's reading it." The book stayed on the shelves.

Perhaps the quickest way to grasp how much more lurid teen books have become is to compare two authors: the original Judy Blume and a younger writer recently hailed by Publishers Weekly as "this generation's Judy Blume."

The real Judy Blume won millions of readers (and the disapprobation of many adults) with then-daring novels such as 1970's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret," which deals with female puberty, 1971's "Then Again, Maybe I Won't," which addresses puberty from a boy's perspective, and 1975's "Forever," in which teenagers lose their virginity in scenes of earnest practicality. Objectionable the material may be for some parents, but it's not grotesque.

By contrast, the latest novel by "this generation's Judy Blume," otherwise known as Lauren Myracle, takes place in a small Southern town in the aftermath of an assault on a gay teenager. The boy has been savagely beaten and left tied up with a gas pump nozzle shoved down his throat, and he may not live. The protagonist of "Shine," a 16-year-old girl and once a close friend of the victim, is herself yet to recover from a sexual assault in eighth grade; assorted locals, meanwhile, reveal themselves to be in the grip of homophobia, booze and crystal meth. Determined in the face of police indifference to investigate the attack on her friend, the girl relives her own assault (thus taking readers through it, too) and acquaints us with the concept of "bag fags," heterosexuals who engage in gay sex for drugs. The author makes free with language that can't be reprinted in a newspaper.

In the book business, none of this is controversial, and, to be fair, Ms. Myracle's work is not unusually profane. Foul language is widely regarded among librarians, reviewers and booksellers as perfectly OK, provided that it emerges organically from the characters and the setting rather than being tacked on for sensation. In Ms. Myracle's case, with her depiction of redneck bigots with meth-addled sensibilities, the language is probably apt.

But whether it's language that parents want their children reading is another question. Alas, literary culture is not sympathetic to adults who object either to the words or storylines in young-adult books. In a letter excerpted by the industry magazine, the Horn Book, several years ago, an editor bemoaned the need, in order to get the book into schools, to strip expletives from Chris Lynch's 2005 novel, "Inexcusable," which revolves around a thuggish jock and the rape he commits. "I don't, as a rule, like to do this on young adult books," the editor grumbled, "I don't want to compromise on how kids really talk. I don't want to acknowledge those f—ing gatekeepers."

By f—ing gatekeepers (the letter-writing editor spelled it out), she meant those who think it's appropriate to guide what young people read. In the book trade, this is known as "banning." In the parenting trade, however, we call this "judgment" or "taste." It is a dereliction of duty not to make distinctions in every other aspect of a young person's life between more and less desirable options. Yet let a gatekeeper object to a book and the industry pulls up its petticoats and shrieks "censorship!"

It is of course understood to be an act of literary heroism to stand against any constraints, no matter the age of one's readers; Ms. Myracle's editor told Publishers Weekly that the author "has been on the front lines in the fight for freedom of expression."

Every year the American Library Association delights in releasing a list of the most frequently challenged books. A number of young-adult books made the Top 10 in 2010, including Suzanne Collins's hyper-violent, best-selling "Hunger Games" trilogy and Sherman Alexie's prize-winning novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." "It almost makes me happy to hear books still have that kind of power," Mr. Alexie was quoted saying; "There's nothing in my book that even compares to what kids can find on the Internet."

Oh, well, that's all right then. Except that it isn't. It is no comment on Mr. Alexie's work to say that one depravity does not justify another. If young people are encountering ghastly things on the Internet, that's a failure of the adults around them, not an excuse for more envelope-pushing.

Veteran children's bookseller Jewell Stoddard traces part of the problem to aesthetic coarseness in some younger publishers, editors and writers who, she says, "are used to videogames and TV and really violent movies and they love that stuff. So they think that every 12-year-old is going to love that stuff and not be affected by it. And I don't think that's possible."

In an effort to keep the most grueling material out of the hands of younger readers, Ms. Stoddard and her colleagues at Politics & Prose, an independent Washington, D.C., bookstore, created a special "PG-15" nook for older teens. With some unease, she admits that creating a separate section may inadvertently lure the attention of younger children keen to seem older than they are.

At the same time, she notes that many teenagers do not read young-adult books at all. Near the end of the school year, when she and a colleague entertained students from a nearby private school, only three of the visiting 18 juniors said that they read YA books.

So it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives.

Relationships

This article in the New York Times is well worth your time.

Dan Savage is an advice columnist whose columns deal primarily with sub-cultural relationship problems. I don't always agree with him, but his advice is generally pretty solid and backed up by a wide knowledge base.
This particular article questions the point of a relationship: stability rather than monogamy, perhaps? Everyone does it differently, but I think it's important to realize that people have different needs. 

I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about what makes a relationship and what kind of relationship I'd want. (I can see you rolling your eyes right now. It's fine. I rolled mine when I started writing this and rolled them again upon re-reading.)

I've been more or less single since my last serious relationship came to its natural conclusion in January 2010. So a year and a half. I've had plenty of dates, and semi-boyfriends, in the months since, but no one has ever materialized as potential-long-term-partner material. 

I'd desperately wanted freedom. I found that, and have loved it immensely. I love being able to fall asleep knowing that I don't have to move my computer, or the stack of books I share a bed with. 

And yet lately, I've been starting to really question the idea of "partner." Through that questioning, I've begun to crave it. But perhaps with age comes selectivity, because people aren't managing to hold my attention as they should, or as I'd like them to.
The biggest test for me is errands. I find it romantic. I want someone who I will enjoy going to Costco with, someone who makes buying a blender exciting, or at the very least, less mundane. 

Of course, there are the few that manage to keep reappearing in my life. From a December party, at a friend of my then-boyfriend's apartment until now, we've maintained this strange and delicate relationship. It began with harsh words, thrown out off-handedly, then my answering, equally harsh lecture, then Mexican food, then this or that and a few other things. Flash forward to this January, actual consumption of Mexican food and then the strange events of that evening and Englewood. Then to April. I flew off to Chicago with few expectations, no presumptions, and came away tear-stained and puffy, joyous and fulfilled, hauling a backpack full of clean clothes. It was wonderful and terrifying because the glimpse of what I could have had screamed of normalcy. Here I am, off again, to walk on the edge of expectations and to figure out if my future lies therein. Is that the normalcy I've been seeking?

But what am I getting myself into? What is this? What will it be? We can't answer these questions because we're not sure if that's even where we want to go. "We"? Is there a we? Could there be one someday? What if it fails? The phone conversations are growing in length, in depth. What do I want? What does he want? I fall asleep with tired smiles on my face. I feel like he shares that (unless he doesn't, so that'd be awkward). It's weird to be on the same page, to have somehow gotten lost and landed there, separately. 

Jesus, this is ridiculous. 

But I like it. 

So I guess it's going to be alright. Or at least an adventure.

Ten days.

From Mom

I have kept a sticky note from mom for years (and by years, I mean, since maybe freshman year of college).
It came rubber-banded to a pack of Bicycle playing cards and reads:

Maybe these will come in handy on those Friday and Saturday nights when you don't want to go out and lose something. 

Thanks, Mom. 

When I grow up....

I've just launched into a speech about how I don't want to be proposed to, when the woman next to us leans over and asks if he's about to propose.
He laughs. I laugh. "No, definitely not."
Her boyfriend leans over to tell her that she's rude to ask questions like that.
She tells him that she overheard us talking.
We explain the situation.
We dated. We don't date anymore. We like to eat dinner together. I don't want someone to propose to me at a hibachi restaurant, although I'm open to the ring being presented on a tuna roll. I love sushi. And theoretically, I'll someday love the man who's going to be asking for my hand in marriage.
I laugh. I'm getting ahead of myself.
They're noticeably frightened, possibly wondering if we're unstable.
They've been dating for six months. They look like nice people. I hope it works out for them.

Life, as beautiful as it can be, is also an increasingly frustrating place. When I was little, all I wanted to do was grow up, so I could be independent and successful. Now that I'm grown up and independent, I'd much rather revert to the days of endless hours in the backyard climbing trees to read books than face the prospect of struggling mightily for the rest of my life.
Struggling for what? Success. What is that? I don't know. Self-sufficiency. The end of monetary worry. An increased hatred of government involvement and taxes. I don't know yet. I'll let you know when I get there.

It reminds me of this: When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
They're not wrong. But to a certain extent, money is necessary for survival. Ergo, work.

Which brings me to my big news of the day: I'd like to be a family/couples/sex therapist when I grow up. (So like, now.)
This may of course be yet another passing career path, although I think this one is quite a bit more attainable than previous ones. MBA? Sounds like a great plan in theory, but in reality, I'm really not good with math. Law school? Too many damn lawyers already, but I do look really good in a suit.
And, as Ryan so kindly pointed out at dinner, it'd be great fodder for my romance novels.  (The counseling part, not the suit, although you never know...)

How did this come about?
Well, you know I get all hot and bothered about women's issues and the like. And then I was reading this Catholic blog last week (which you'll hear about at some point) that entirely misquoted a study. So Madeline tracked down the original study to find the data. And I realized that I was excited. Truly excited. Gender studies fascinate me. The social implications of sexuality fascinate me. The whole thing is really exciting and wonderful.

We shall see.

From Bad to Worse: Catholic Sex, Apparently

Before I begin my rant for today, I'd like to show you my new shoes. I'm super excited about them. I needed a pair that was more slender than my running shoes, because they wouldn't fit into the cages on my bike pedals and that was causing a problem.
These are lovely. They work!
Yesterday, Mike and I went on a long bike ride. From our house all the way to Quebec and Mississippi. I thought I was going to die, but I made it!
As we were headed back, we were starting to run out of daylight and since I don't have any lights on my bike, I got nervous.
"It's not Cape Town, Katie," Mike was quick to remind me. Mama P wouldn't let me be out alone after dark. It wasn't safe.

After we got back, we made some stew and then went and got ice cream. It was a perfect night.
He's decided to name his car "Frank the Tank," which I entirely support.

Alright....


My dear friend Maddie sent me the link to an article yesterday. I started reading it not knowing what I was in for. I've included the text of the article in full below for your reading pleasure. The article is about Catholic relationships, living together before marriage, and the idea that sexual compatibility is a myth.

I beg to differ. I know plenty of Catholics who appear to be mutually satisfied with their romantic lives, with their marriages, and with their individual relationships with God. That mutual satisfaction might be that they are well matched conversationally, morally, spiritually and also sexually. There are plenty of options for compatibility, and I think that sexuality is one that cannot (and should not) be ignored.

There's nothing worse than trying to engage in a relationship with someone when there is not a hint of physical frisson present. It can be a deep friendship, but true union in the biblical sense can only come from blissful physical encounters, which supplement the other bonds formed early on in the relationship and maintained as part of the continuation of that relationship. Of course, as we age (or perhaps not, I'll let you know when I'm approaching "very elderly"), our focus on sexuality changes. It morphs, yes, changes over time, evolves, but it may never entirely disappear.

The author makes a very valid point in distancing living together from marriage by exposing the lack of promise in the non-marriage situation. To a certain extent, it is "I'll only stay with you until I'm bored, or can't stand you, or we have one too many huge fights." But to a certain extent, I think he's missing that point entirely. Many marriages begin unhappily, appear happy to the outside world, and then fail miserably, either in public or private.

"For better or for worse" isn't real anymore. "Try it before you buy it" isn't a bad philosophy as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I hope that people enter into marriage fully understanding the gravity of the situation, and that just because there are bound to be troubled times doesn't mean the marriage is lost. However, the reality is that even those people who most stand for that idea of marriage sometimes screw up. Sometimes it's better to get out. It's painful and it shapes the rest of your life, but honestly, trying to save something that's not worth saving isn't always in everyone's best interests.

I'd rather live with a dude, then hate him, and then leave him rather than marrying a dude, living with him, hating him, staying married for the sake of our offspring, and then eventually cheating on him and running off with my graduate school classmate who's ten years younger than me but really gets me and writes better poetry than my husband could ever produce.

He also ignores the real implications of living with someone. That's a strong relationship, whether it's religiously binding or not. There are things to take into account like joint-bank accounts, the lease on the apartment (only get it in one person's name in case of disastrous break-up), the cars, the potential for income discrepancy. Things that will have to be considered in marriage also have to be considered before co-habitation. Guests, dinner procedures, cleaning, shopping - the creation of a family unit doesn't necessarily have to be decided by a piece of paper or God's blessing. It can happen with two female friend living together. It can happen in a frat house. The proximity and presumptions create a family, regardless of definition.

Here's the part of the article that really irked me:

As someone who has only ever had one sexual partner, I cannot speak authoritatively on this matter, and I invite others of broader experience to offer their thoughts as well, but it seems to me that “sexual compatibility” so construed is a myth. It seems to presume that there is something almost biological going on wherein one must find someone with a similar sex drive, similar sexual tastes, even a compatible body.

But, from my limited experience, this simply isn’t how things work. If every man is to hold out until he finds a woman with a sex drive to match his, only a select few males will ever find a partner. Women’s sex drives are a different kind of thing than men’s. They require different stimuli, they naturally vary over the course of a mentrual cycle, and they are much more easily affected by the seemingly non-sexual aspects of the relationship. Sexual tastes and compatible bodies follow from this. If a man doesn’t recognize how a woman’s sex drive works, her sexual tastes (cuddling, for instance) will seem foreign to him, and her body will not respond to his in the way he expects. (One could write a whole other piece about how the porn epidemic is destroying any realistic expectations about women’s drives, tastes, and bodies.)

This poor man assumes that all women like cuddling and have low sex-drives. He assumes that his one partner is providing him with the best that she can do, but that's okay because she's just a woman.

Why would you ever marry a man who didn't like to cuddle? (Just a thought, ladies. Lay out your expectations before you get married. Before you co-habitate. Second date, at the latest. I throw all dealbreakers on the table - including toe-walking and mouth-breathing - and see how it goes. Sometimes, it's just doomed from the start.) 

He's neglecting biology. The almighty clitoris. An organ absolutely unnecessary for reproduction. It exists only for female pleasure. If God only wanted us to have sex to affirm our commitment to him, then why would he include that little bit? If it's meant to be the pleasure-less experience I can only imagine the author and his wife engage in, then why make it even possibly feel good? And why punish women for enjoying it?

(Don't even get me started on prostitution, sex trafficking, etc, all of which are basically male-run industries in which females are put to work solely based on their biological sex and therefore, utility.)

Sex can supplement and enhance a healthy relationship. Just like anything, it's often used in opposite and negative ways. It's been sensationalized by the media, made into a both a weapon and a punishment, and those who actually fight to enjoy or embrace their sexuality are sanctioned both socially and religiously. 

Read this comment from a reader: 

Excellent. Additionally, I think a discussion needs to focus on how the woman resonates with the male’s mood and desires and how the male unconsciously influences the attitudes and behaviors of the woman. Safety is the prime instinctive need of the female in relationships. Safety is established by the male and the female is always instinctively attuned to this aspect of the relationship.

I laughed at this comment, and then choked on it because I realized that there are men and women out there subscribing to the beliefs that they need to maintain this heternormative power structure. Man = provider, woman = vulnerable. There are no blurred lines, no allowance for strong women or emotional men. No deviation! 

And it's absolute shit. Yes, I will someday be the nurturer in my family structure. But it will be a role that I define for myself. There is no part of me that doesn't want the cooperation and compassion of my husband through all things, including decision making, etc. But that doesn't meant that I will be passive, eagerly awaiting his attention and direction. 

Surprisingly, I want to take on the traditionally feminine role in a future relationship. But I'd also like the respect, attention, and equal treatment that I deserve. I want someone who will adore me and listen, match my commentary with his wit, and who will make me laugh, yell at me for not squeezing the toothpaste tube correctly, but never protect me. I don't want to rely on any man for protection, and the assumption that the comment above makes is that no woman will ever be equal to her husband, and instead will have to look to him for protection and guidance. 

In short, I'm torn on whether or not I'd live with someone before marriage. I probably will. I'll also probably (statistically speaking) be divorced someday. 

But damn, I will enter into my marriage with love, with passion, and with great expectations, something that I worry gets lost in the mind of religious fanatics bent on procreation and utilitarian family creation. 

Here's the full article, enjoy!

"I recently returned from Twickenham, England, the home of Catholic satirist Alexander Pope, where I gave a workshop titled “How Far Can We Go? Talking to Young People about Physical Intimacy,” at the 3rd International Theology of the Body Symposium. It was a very fruitful experience. Apart from making all kinds of interesting connections with other conference participants, I had my thoughts on several issues stimulated by the excellent feedback I received in the Q & A sessions of my workshops. I hope to share some of these thoughts with the readership here at Vox Nova over the next little while.


At the end of my second workshop I was asked how to talk to young people about the pitfalls of cohabitation. As we are all aware, most of our contemporaries see it as foolhardy to marry someone if you haven’t lived with them. “Isn’t it just asking for trouble,” they suggest, ”to commit to someone when you don’t even know if you can stand to be in the same house with them?” This seems perfectly logical, of course, which is why, when a widely publicized study came out several years back (I read about it on MSN when I signed out of my hotmail account) indicating that cohabitation radically lowered the odds of marital success, people didn’t know what to make of it. It was simply inconceivable that people who did the smart thing and test-drove the relationship first would increase their chance of divorce by 60%.


The obvious explanation to many people was that it was religious people who didn’t live together before marriage, and religious people are less prone to divorce. But this second claim isn’t actually true, at least not very significantly. Furthermore, it was often suggested, religious people are more likely to stay in unhappy marriages, exactly the kind encouraged by the silly practice of not living together. But there is no evidence that religious marriages are unhappier than other marriages.
No, it turns out that it is not simply that a certain cross-section of society which doesn’t cohabitate also does not divorce. It is actually the case that cohabitation itself is a problem. Cohabitation ostensibly says, “We’re being prudent by not rushing into things. Our future will be happier if we make sure we are compatible by living in a situation that is very like marriage. And, if we find that this doesn’t work out, we can part ways before making a huge mistake.”


What is really says is . . . well, that last sentence should give it away.
In fact, though cohabitation looks a lot like marriage on the surface, it is missing the very heart of marriage, namely a promise to be faithful come what may. And without this promise, cohabitation ends up being not a close analogate of marriage, but it’s radical opposite. While marriage says, “I’ll be with you no matter what,” cohabitation says, “I’ll be with you as long as I can stand you.” It says, “If you do your share of the housework, and pay your share of the bills, and keep me satisfied sexually, I’ll stick around. But if you don’t, well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”


The kind of insecurity this un-promise engenders is at the heart of the increased failure of cohabitation-preceded-marriages (to say nothing of a series of cohabitating relationship which end without ever reaching marriage). When you promise to take someone in health, for richer, and for better, for as long as either of you shall like, you aren’t really promising anything. And, without a promise, the ambiguity of human relationships are unlikely to stand the test of time.


In the Q & A session I said that a test-drive says, “I will love you as long as you put the cap back on the toothpaste, and make the bed and remember not to use metal utensils in my non-stick cookware,” while a promise says “I will love you even if you don’t put the cap back on the toothpaste! I will love you even if you void the warranty on my cookware!”


Just as I thought I was hitting my stride, the questioner interrupted me and said, “We know all that. But kids are telling us that they have to live together to find out if they are sexually compatible. What are we supposed to say to them about that?” At that point, as happens with Q & A sessions, we were informed that we were over time. But I thought about the question and had an interesting talk with the questioner at the social on Saturday night.


As someone who has only ever had one sexual partner, I cannot speak authoritatively on this matter, and I invite others of broader experience to offer their thoughts as well, but it seems to me that “sexual compatibility” so construed is a myth. It seems to presume that there is something almost biological going on wherein one must find someone with a similar sex drive, similar sexual tastes, even a compatible body.


But, from my limited experience, this simply isn’t how things work. If every man is to hold out until he finds a woman with a sex drive to match his, only a select few males will ever find a partner. Women’s sex drives are a different kind of thing than men’s. They require different stimuli, they naturally vary over the course of a mentrual cycle, and they are much more easily affected by the seemingly non-sexual aspects of the relationship. Sexual tastes and compatible bodies follow from this. If a man doesn’t recognize how a woman’s sex drive works, her sexual tastes (cuddling, for instance) will seem foreign to him, and her body will not respond to his in the way he expects. (One could write a whole other piece about how the porn epidemic is destroying any realistic expectations about women’s drives, tastes, and bodies.)


The fact is that virtually every couple will go through times when their drives, tastes, and bodies seem less compatible and times when they seem more compatible. And, as most marriage counselors will tell you, in this their sex lives mirror the rest of their lives together. The real problem about the search for “sexual compatibility” is that it abstracts sex from the broader relationship. It makes good sex the result of a biological fluke rather than the natural outcome of a loving relationship. It absolves women and (probably, especially) men from taking the responsibility to be good lovers to their spouses. And, in doing so, it undoes one of the most important functions of sex in marriage.


The natural desire for physical intimacy should serve to help us focus on the other aspects of our relationship where our urge to serve the other person is compromised by human weakness. Foreplay starts with helping around the house and listening when someone has had a bad day. When “sexual compatibility” becomes something independent of relational compatibility as a whole, sex becomes less and less capable of confirming and sealing the commitment between two people who have promised their lives to one another. And when we strip sex of its power to hold people together by isolating it from its normal role in a relationship, we should not be surprised when marital breakdown follows."


Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one. He is the co-author of How Far Can We Go? A Catholic Guide to Sex and Dating.
 
http://vox-nova.com/2011/06/14/is-sexual-compatibility-a-myth-some-thoughts-on-cohabitation/
 

 

Gay

Gay is many things, but mostly homosexual. (It still always makes me think of the Village People, so that probably needs to change.)

This post is inspired by Pride Week, during which people of all sexual orientations celebrate the movement toward equality, recognition, and respect.

This week is Pride in Denver. From the Denver PrideFest website: "The mission of Denver PrideFest is to create a fun, safe and empowering space to celebrate and promote the heritage and culture of the LGBT and allied community in Colorado."

I'm an ally. I have gay and lesbian friends, straight friends, and bisexual friends. I love them all equally.

I don't really care how you stand on homosexuality. Because really, there is only one way to stand. And I'm not saying this because I want you all to share my thoughts, my political leanings, or my social theories. I'm saying this because every single human deserves the same rights.

Who cares if they get married?

Imagine not being able to visit your spouse in the hospital because you're not considered family. That's seriously fucked up.

It's like that commercial with Justin Long that ends with "...make them get married. Like the rest of us."

People of different races have fought for equal treatment, been awarded it by law, and yet are still persecuted for something they cannot change. Throughout the world, they are profiled, brutalized, enslaved, mocked, underpaid, overworked, disrespected, stereotyped, marginalized, and undermined. Laws are made to question their legitimacy, even in a nation built on the backs of and with the blood of immigrants from all over.

Women have struggled for the rights to their bodies, for the respect of men, for education, for freedom from familial obligations, for equal pay, for the rights to work and make the same as their male counterparts. They, too, have had to fight against all types of social injustice. Our work remains undone.

Change has happened, slowly. Perceptions have changed, slowly. But it's not finished. It never will be. In a world where victims of rape are criticized for their clothing choices and where poverty is more prevalent among people who aren't white, it's obvious that some of our well-intentioned policies are nothing but fluff, a big talk meant to quiet the outspoken yet leave the status quo unchanged.

Gay isn't something that just happened overnight. The gays didn't just materialize from thin air. They've been here all along. They've shared your drinks, eaten at your dinner parties, managed large companies, created and maintained traditional families. You work with them. You sit next to them on the bus. They've been a part of your world since you were born.

Gay makes some people uncomfortable.

It's understandable. Gay people do weird sex stuff, right? Well, newsflash, the straights are doing weird stuff, too.

Gay people will touch my children, you say.

Wrong. I mean, maybe a few. But so do your priests. So do teachers. So do people meant to protect our children. It happens, but it's not directly linked to gay.

Gay people have the HIV.

Actually, they're not the ones with the highest prevalence of new HIV infections these days. That heroin needle you're holding is probably more dangerous. Besides, you can't get HIV/AIDS from being near an infected person. Didn't we all see "Philadelphia"?

Last night, I was out with two of my dear friends, one gay, and one Katie. After having dinner with Mike, we met up with a new friend of mine and went to a Denver gay bar. Wednesday is drag queen bingo, and we caught the tail end of it.

My new friend was uncomfortable.

I understand that men particularly are afraid of gay bars. He told me that he didn't want any of his clients to see him and think he was gay.

What's wrong with that? I thought. I was annoyed by his behavior. He didn't want to get hit on. He didn't want anyone to think he was gay. He didn't want this, or that. He kept looking around nervously.

He never got comfortable.

Maybe it was the rainbow banners decorating the place? Maybe it was the drag queen standing by the door? Maybe it was the loud, shrill bingo announcer?

We ended up leaving.

It hurt my friends' feelings and I was rude to them because I wanted to placate the new friend.

What I should have done is smacked him and told him to man up, politely.

This behavior is typical. It reminds me that even the most educated people with degrees from liberal institutions of higher learning can come out of those hallowed halls without having learned anything about what it's like to be a human being.

It reminds me that people think that "the gays" are all sex-crazed monsters who will fuck anything that moves and is a man.

Not true!

Walking into a gay bar is just like walking into a straight bar (which is basically every bar) except there is more hair gel and better muscles, if you're into that sort of thing.

But there's also personal melodramas, bar snacks, shots of vodka, relationships being made and dismantled, laughter, tears, pictures being taken. Basically, it's like every damn bar you've ever been to.

Later, new friend was telling me he was struck by my intelligence. (I was drunk at this point, and drunk me loves compliments.) I was flattered and completely blind to my opportunity to remind him that perhaps intelligence includes willingness to adapt to unfamiliar situations. An open mind, humor, and humility. He reminded me that intelligence isn't something you can only get from As and good grades, that 4.0 and long-winded papers. I should have reminded him that intelligence is a continual real-life process, something you can only have if you're willing to think about and experience emotionally challenging things.

I am ashamed that I said nothing to him. "The gays" are a very important part of my life. My friendships mean more to me than anything else.

Part of living in a diverse and beautiful society is understanding differences. Part of it is realizing that people are born the way they are and embracing that. And who cares? I have a weird elf nose and people still hang out with me.

I didn't choose to be born a woman (although I'm glad that's the way I came out - thanks Mom!). And no one chooses to be gay. There's been a lot of discussion about this, and recently, a lot of suicides because of how hard it is to be gay.

While I generally hold that our children aren't getting the social support they need, and consequently are taking drastic action that's really stupid, I completely disagree about our discourse on taboo subjects needs to change. There's not enough of it! We wait until someone dies, or something kills someone else, and then we say, "oh, we could've, should've, wait, next tragedy." Nothing changes! Let's dialogue until we're blue in the face with our kids about a whole bunch of topics. Let's show them that it's okay to ask questions. Let's show them that families come in all different styles.

No one chooses to be part of a marginalized subset of society. No one chooses to be gay. It's a difficult life. It's also really fun, too. There are cheap drinks at X Bar on Tuesdays. It's normal. It's natural. It's really lovely. Just because that's not how you roll doesn't mean you have to hate on it.

Having gay friends doesn't make you gay. Trust me on this one. Still a hetero here. People won't think any less of you if you hang out with gay people; you won't be any less of a man. So get over it! Stop freaking out about gay and start embracing it.

Or, if you're still uncomfortable, start with baby steps. Gay is not always the stereotype. Remember that.

Gay makes good parents. Gay makes good teachers. Gay makes good thinkers, good bus drivers, good politicians, good postmen, good database administrators. But mostly, gay makes great dancers.

This week, reach out to your gay, lesbian, queer, questioning, and straight friends and remind them how much they mean to you.

And if you've got the time, head downtown this weekend and be a part of the celebration.

Breakups, the beautiful things that crush our souls. (Kidding)

There are those moments in life where nothing happens as you might have expected that it would.
And then there are the moments where everything goes like you thought it would and it's entirely underwhelming.
Beneath the small struggles that encompass our daily lives, there are something bigger and more beautiful at work.

To quote Ryan, who took me out for a wonderful dinner last night: "Maybe I have it all wrong and you are just some ruthless asshole that just roams the earth hurting 39 year olds.  But I don't think so.  Behind that tough facade I know you are very sweet...You are a shining star amid a crowd of 40 watt light bulbs. You seriously are an amazing individual."

I laughed when I read this, becuase he signed his email with a typical rude Katie Barry sendoff.

This weekend brought the end of the biochemist. We tried (perhaps valiantly) and failed. We both knew it was coming, but he brought it, and deserves credit for it.
I had announced the impending breakup (can you break up with someone you weren't actually with?) to several people, and so feel quite fulfilled by my ability to feel out my hunches.

I cried like a small child, much to my embarrassment. I later told him that the unleashing of cathartic tears was 80% the result of wine consumption and 20% my wounded ego.

I'm not sure that he understands that I was not solely involved with him and therefore am not as devasted as if I'd lost my house, or had my bike stolen again, or if my cat was run over by a truck. This registers at, "Damn, I spent that $20 I was going to save." on the emotion-scale. Upsetting, annoying, but entirely survivable.
By the way, that might be the worst analogy ever, but I am sticking with it. The more I read it, the more I'm alright it. And the more I want to check my wallet to make sure I have that extra $20.

I am slowly realizing that there are people who will not adore me. (Surprise, surprise. Something we've known all along but can finally catalogue for posterity.)
I realize that two people, no matter how lovely individually, can be perfectly wrong for each other.
I am realizing that perhaps the parting of the ways should happen after the 3rd bad date and not after the 20th.

I am young, free, and quite content to wander for awhile.
I know what I want. The problem is that it's in Chicago and needs to get its shit together.
I'm kidding - that's the most perfect non-relationship I've ever been it. I hope it only changes for the better and never for the worse. We've known each other for a year and a half, and in that time, there has been so much miscommunication and craziness, but also so many really wonderful moments.
I hope that my July visit is either as good as the April one or better.
And contrary to popular belief, I did not go to South Africa because of him.
(Just so we're clear on that.)

Ha.

Here's to the waning (and wonderful) days of my beautiful youth.

(I'm going to read this when I'm still single and 45 and have a lot of cats and thick thighs and quite possibly an addiction to TV dinners and not laugh at all. But for now I think it's funny. All of it. I am a walking episode of Seinfeld and I'm alright with that.)

The garage sale

My mom, on the garage sale:
"I'm glad you guys made some money. I think I lost money. Who has a garage sale and comes out with less money than they went in with?"

I ask how much.
Maybe ten bucks, she answers.

This from the woman who was giving things away for 10 cents.
She sold my childhood stuffed cow for a dime.
She sold as many books as kids could carry for a dollar.

Overall, Mike and I each came out of it $55 richer.

And I got to introduce Nancy Drew to some little girls who didn't know who she was.
We didn't sell the oak desk, so if you're in the market, hit me up.


Small success!

A quick adventure (from last Monday)

Summer always invokes those beautiful childhood memories, the feelings of infinite freedom, the heat.
We decided on a picnic in the park - wine, cheese, bread, fruit, baked goods.
We needed supplies. Jacob met me at my apartment and we were tasked with cheese procurement, as well as other odds and ends. We drove to the grocery store, singing happily like teenagers.
While he ran back in for allergy medicine (ah, the signs of aging have landed), I retrieved the car. Since the parking lot off Downing is super small, I had no choice but to move my car since another was queued waiting for it. As though by magic, when I rounded the lot, edging closer to the door, easing my foot off the brake only when absolutely necessary, he appeared.
Yoo-hoo! I yelled, our regular greeting.
And then there was a quick driver change so that I could prepare myself for the picnic. Stopped at a red light, he made the suggestion and neither of us spoke in response. We exchanged glances and then undid our seatbelts and ran around the car.
Connected space messaging, we call it, based on me forgetting what telecommunication was called.

We laid the blanket near the flowers, but closer to the wide openness being taken up by volleyball players.
And we sat there until the sun had excused itself from the earth. Darkness fell softly and the bats emerged. And we laid there, heads on legs on heads on legs and we were content.

There is something so familiar and comforting about laying in the grass staring up at the sky. Trees stand above you. You know they'll not look the way they do forever. The green will grow and then die off and fall away, only to reemerge.

It's beautiful.
My friends are beautiful.
The night was beautiful.

However, I made the uncomfortable realization that tire swings lose a bit of their excitement as you age. I wedged my legs into the tire that used to hold like four kids, but now could only hold me, and let Jacob push me. I swung around, waiting for the stomach-dropping thrill, but finding none, extricated myself and went on to other pursuits (including the digger. Which also isn't that fun anymore).

Ah, summer nights.

Babysitting.

I've been babysitting since I was twelve.
Well, sort of.

My first ever babysitting experience was with the Cella's infant daughter while they were off at another daughter's First Communion.
I was fresh out of the Red Cross certification session that we did as Girl Scouts and I was ready to go. Babysitting schmabysitting, it was going to be no problem.

It was horrible.
I was never asked back and I don't even have to hesitate as to why.
The baby was supposed to go down for her nap and sleep the entire time (thus making her delightfully rested for the after-party). Of course, when I went to put her down for that nap, she cried, and I, overwhelmed with the prospect of letting a small child cry, picked her up and played with her for the next two hours.
There was purple marker all over her by the time the parents came home and she was just getting ready to head to bed.

Since then, there's been marked improvement.

I babysat all through college. Since then, it's been a great way to supplement my income on a semi-regular basis. It's also giving me a crash course in pre-parenthood, so that when I get around to procreating (not soon, not for many years) I won't even have to bat an eye about the basics.
I tend to babysit for kids under five (I've got one six-year old now).
I gravitate toward babies. They're easy. They have few needs. They haven't yet learned how to lie. They are still amused by simple things.
However, I do like the imagination and conversation that comes with slightly older children.

The three boys (twin three-year olds and their five month brother, when I started in September 2008) gave me a run for my money. By the end of my year and a half with them, I was no longer stressed out about little stuff. I stared down tantrums and was getting better at being strict.
They were some of the best kids I've ever sat for, partially becuase of the bond we developed.
But trust me, it definitely made me rethink my plan for having three kids.

When I first started sitting for them, the twins were having trouble coming to terms with the fact that their little brother was there. He was interrupting their lives. "Can't we just put him back?" they'd whine. Biting back a smile, I'd explain that he really looked up to them and wanted to be just like them.
That baby was one of the sweetest babies I've ever had charge of. We'd go to circle time, or whatever it was called, at the library, and we'd read and clap and do baby things. It was always funny becuase there would be a handful of parents and then a handful of caregivers like me, who sort of had an idea what they were doing in the circle, but sort of felt awkward.

I love how intelligent the kids can be. I love the way their minds work; I love the questions they ask.

One day, we were playing with the magnetic triangles that the boys had. (I loved these toys. I am getting a set for my kids one day.)
One of the twins said, "Katie, pass the isosceles."
I handed him a triangle, taking my best guess as to what an isosecles might be.
If he could have rolled his eyes at me, he would have. "That's not an isosceles," he said, disappointed.

Lately, the twins here in Denver have been all about their music. Asking for classical music by name so that they can re-enact Fantasia in the bathtub is wonderful. Graham asked me if I knew who Beethoven was. "He made a symphony," he announced.

I also love how understanding they can be.

The twins in Chicago used to have a hard time falling asleep. They all slept in the same room, so it was understandable that someone was going to talk or interrupt the other ones and general chaos would ensue.
Sometimes, when they couldn't sleep, I'd go in and lay with them, holding their hands until they fell asleep. My last night with them, I held their hands and sang to them and then cried. (They had tricked me into the singing business by telling me that their mom sang to them every night. She definitely didn't, and I definitely am a horrible singer, so I'd usually end up humming the refrain to a Beatles song until they got bored and asked for a new one.)

While I was babysitting for the Chicago crew, I was dating someone who had the name name as one of the twins. The other brother, Luke, once asked me if I had another Luke. I told him that he was my only one.
After the breakup, little Hunter told me that it was okay, because he would go on dates with me. He thought about it for a minute and then said, "We can put my carseat in your car."

My last night there, they told me that instead of going to get ice cream that night, they wanted to go to the beach because I reminded them of summer and the beach. And so we went.
We always ended up messy at the beach. We'd stand with our toes in the sand, waiting for the waves to come up and wash over us up to our ankles. They'd scream and run back from the waves. I'd pick up the baby and he'd laugh.
These happy moments would usually dissolve. I remember one night carrying the baby and his tricycle (because he refused to get off), while I had two dinosaur backpacks on my shoulders as well as one of the twins. The one who was on bike wasn't wearing anything but a pair of underwear .
Hey, at least they get home safe and happy.
That's all I can promise.

I love intelligent, imaginative kids. In those situations, it doesn't feel like work anymore, and it feels as though we're just playing.

I love going to the park.
I love their inquiries.

My favorite quote from the past few weeks:

Me: Do you need to go potty?
6 year old: I went before I got in the bath!
3 year old: I went in the bath!
*Cringe.*


While I usually manage to create a routine that's satisfactory to both myself and the children, I've run into a situation I'm unable to control, and one that has little chance of changing.

I call her the Cryer. It's a terrible name, I know, but there really isn't much else to describe the situation.
She's eleven months old now, and I sit for them about once a week. I get there and she cries, we recover, and then she cries.
There's no cause.
There's no solution.
It's frustrating.
I feel horrible, having to listen to her tears and see her face scrunched up in that horrible baby bawl. I don't know how to explain to the parents that this is the first time I've ever run across this issue.

I walk with her. I hold her. I try to distract her with toys. I feed her. Together, we feed the fish and then watch them.
I'm not connecting.
But I'm trying.
Last night, she went down at seven and was up again at eight thirty. The grandmother is in town for back surgery, and I'm not wondering if part of that played a factor in the wake up. (Coincidentally, it happened the minute the grandma walked past the baby's room.) And once she was up, all she wanted was grandma, who can't lift her.
And so we went upstairs and watched tv.
That's not usually my go-to solution, but it seemed to work. We played peek-a-boo with a blanket and threw some toys around.
Eventually, she went back to sleep.

It's an adventure, that's for sure. But I'm hoping that she'll warm up to me soon. I'm hoping that we'll soon be getting along terrifically.
But until then, it's a stressful experience for both of us.

Ferocity.

Something I'm learning from Carlos.

Act preemptively and base everything on your gut.

Your past guides you more than you think but shouldn't affect anyone's future perceptions of you.

I'm hurt; I'm annoyed; I'm angry.

No one should make me feel like I'm less than a human being, whether it's intentional or not.

I am Katie Barry and I do what I want.

Friday.

Ah, beautiful weekend ahead.
For once, I'm not entirely bogged down by babysitting plans.
I actually have some unscheduled time ahead of me this weekend, and I'm positively giddy about it.

After a miserable yesterday, I woke this morning feeling entirely refreshed. I was literally up and cleaning my house at 7:30 am.
It's looking a little better.
Mike and I need to be better about keeping up with things like the kitchen. It's gross. I rarely eat at home, and so I push it all off on him. But the pile of dishes keeps growing, and it's really grossing me out.

I am the designated bathroom cleaner. Maybe it's all the babysitting, or the years spent making faces while mopping Dairy Queen, but I am not scared of bathrooms.
Hair from the drain? 99% chance it belongs to me, so I'm not scared. Toilet cleaning? Meh, it's just bleach.
That stuff I can do.
(And I do regularly.)

I even had a load of laundry and some clothes hung up before 9 am.

Carlos was running around chasing his toy mice. I can't tell if I love him most when we are just waking up and he is laying on me and yawning, or if he's sliding on the wood floors chasing something. He's definitely got something very seriously dignified about him, but he's also childish, when he's stretched out lengthwise with a mouse between his paws, having just somersaulted into a wall. (God, I love him. I'll never let anyone take him from me.)

It was all very cute.

We are expecting canine company this evening. I'm terrified. I adore Ely's golden Archie, but I'm also not so sure how I feel about forcing Carlos to have to adapt to a dog.
Given that Carlos is so wonderful at adapting to strange situations, I'm hoping that once they realize it's probably going to keep happening, both animals will relax around each other. Archie is curious about Carlos, and even more curious about his food. (Apparently wet food is like crack for all animals.)

Based on how Carlos reacts when he sees any dog, I'm assuming he was attacked by one or more during his Chicago years. And so I understand his fear of Archie, but I wish it wasn't so bad. While I'm assuming he'll just run and hide, I'm also worried about a confrontation happening. Carlos can be very nasty when provoked. And I'm not sure Archie would be prepared for that.

Alas, we have to get to the Rockies game first. I'm not going home after work; I'll meet Emily at the DU light rail station at we will head down from there.
And then after the game? God only knows how we're going to get my car home.
And get the dog home.

It shall be an adventure. I'm not sure if I should start stressing now, or just wait until it's happening and roll with it.

I'll wait.
In all honesty, trying to balance Emily's needs with Ely's is going to be a hot mess.
This might get interesting.

And Madeline is in town tonight. And she'll be out after. So I'm just going to give the rest of them my keys and go dance. (just kidding. or am I?)

Happy Friday!

War is an ugly thing.

Just cried at work while reading this article: 

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2005/nov/11/final-salute/

Carlos.

The weekend was quiet, but not terribly so.
I babysat, went to Boulder, came back down, had brunch with Emily, did laundry, went for a walk, babysat, helped Jacob clean his house, babysat, went to dinner with Heidi and Val and then saw a movie, and then went back to Jacob's to help him finish.

Saturday night, I brought Carlos with me to Jacob's. He hates cars, he hates being carried, he hates his leash. I don't know why I keep trying, but you absolutley cannot walk a cat. He won't behave. He'll try to escape. You'll pick him up, and for your trouble, he'll claw you.
You'll be bleeding, from your chest and your knees, and you'll have a squirming ball of angry black fur in your arms. And you'll have to throw him into your car and slam the door and then watch him look at you with wide green eyes.

And that's just the beginning.

We slept over, so of course, the litterbox was an issue. I'd brought a shoebox, but he didn't have enough room to turn around and get comfortable, so we were woken up by the sounds of scratching in the litterbox and then a sad sounding meow.
This was repeated.

We leashed him and took him out. He was a street cat, of course he'll know what to do.
Nope. Went under some bushes. And then tried to get under a fence into a construction site.

It appears I have much work to do. I wonder if we could join some doggy training classes at the Dumb Friend's League.
I wonder if they'd judge me for trying to make my cat into a dog.

Alas, we arrived home safely. He was immediately quite happy to be back at home. (I think that every time we go somewhere he thinks that I might leave him or that we're going to the vet, where he'll have to have surgery or some other horrible procedure. I'm hoping that enough nice outings will reinforce the fact that I'm not leaving him, that I do love him, and that he's stuck with me.)

I woke up this morning with him curled up in my arms. He, too, hates the alarm.

He's been eating dog food lately. I wonder if it's bad for his health. Last time Ely brought his golden down, Carlos was relcoated, and we just left the dog food in a container. I went into the kitchen the other day, and there was Carlos, crunching on dog food. Ely's dog tries to eat Carlos's wet food, so maybe pet foods are sort of interchangeable.

However, I'm hoping that soon we can get Carlos to get comfortable with the dog. This may prove to be an interesting situation, and honestly, I worry more about the dog than Carlos. He can hold his own. The dog, hwoever, has a sweet disposition and a curious nature. Carlos will eat him alive.

The answer?
Kitten mittens.

Tonight, I'm going to bribe him with wet food so he's not upset when I go to Boulder.

Musing

I wonder at what point my formative years will end and the formidable ones will begin.

The Russian situation, and then some kidney pain.

What did God get me for my birthday?
Renal failure.

Just kidding, but only sort of.
I spent all of yesterday in bed after a morning visit to the doctor revealed that I wasn't going anywhere.
Today, I napped in my desk chair at work.
I'm dehydrated, achy, and worst of all, fiercely ill-tempered.




So far twenty-three isn't that great.

But hey, I guess the only place to go is up!

Why I scare men and why he scares me.

Ely pointed out to me that men might find me intimidating.
He was hasty to add that he doesn't.
Of course not, dear.

We're at a concert, I'm pushing my way to the front, wiggling into the space at the bar, all the while talking to him about a man we've both met briefly and that we mutually despise. Maybe despise is a strong word.
I'm sure it sounded something like, "blah blah blah blah blah...and then he gave her this and that and then wrote this."

That's when he stops me. "You wonder why men find you intimidating? It's because of that." A romantic gesture? And I roll my eyes?

I was puzzled. He's probably right.
But then again, I've never been subjected to romantic overtures.
After that weird first date back in high school, there were roses, and there was a CD of songs that reminded him of me on it. One of them was this song.
So that was awkward.
The string of bad attempts at love could go on, but to spare us all, I won't.
So perhaps I'm jaded. Or inexperienced. Or just cynical.

I turn back to him. "I liked it when you made me waffles," I say, as though that would be some sort of explanation. (I actually don't like waffles. Don't tell him. They're good, just not something I go out of my way for.)

Later that night, we're walking home. I say something rude. (In my defense, it wasn't that rude; he has delicate ears.) "Again," he says.
I'm incredulous. How is that intimidating?
He explains.
I argue.
(I begin to understand what he means, but that annoys me, so I argue more.)
We concede (or maybe I do and forget to tell him) that men are mostly moronic and "chivalrous" at all the wrong times, and there's no reason I should have to conform to some lady-like ideal when we're breaking gender barriers daily.

***
We'll flash forward to last night.

I went up to Boulder to return his watch and retrieve my water bottle. (I'm glad that both of us seem to lose stuff. Or maybe his was an isolated incident.)

Last week, I was trying to be cute and I asked him to make me dinner someday. So he told me that if I went up to Boulder, he would.

I was thrown off my game. We cooked.
I am inept. We were going to bread tofu and I (I'm cringing even now as I replay this in my mind) pour the egg into the flour.
Uncle Mike White will appreciate how much I got made fun of over the next hour.
Constantly.
I was not born to cook.
He has a surprisingly snarky side.
I like it.

It's rare that someone is completely un-readable, and yet he is, and I'm intrigued.
We've cobbled together a slow friendship based on the things we have in common (zero).
And I'm curious.
And that's good.

Education Special: Ode to English teacher

Sushi Love

There we were last night, sitting side by side in a sushi restaurant, contemplating the meaning of our twenties.

Is 23 your mid-twenties? Or are you lucky if you get to push that off until you're 24? By 29, have you resigned yourself to the approach of 30?

I'm about to turn 23. I always thought that by 23, I'd be this successful, beautiful, somehow totally organized person. Obviously, that was some sort of pipe dream. Jacob laughed when I told him this. "I don't feel any older," he said. "Do I look older?"
"I still see all of us the same way I saw us when we were 17," I told him. And that's true. In my mind, somehow, I stopped aging at some point and am still 17. It happened previously around the age of 12, when I became aesthetically aware of myself for the first time. That sounds weird, but it was at that point that I became incredibly self-conscious about the way I appeared to other people.

And now, since I'm still battling the ravages of teenage acne and adjusting to the newly developed hips, I don't feel glamorous or 23. I just feel like I've entered adolescence all over again. Navigating the adult world is much like navigating your freshman year of high school. Or even freshman year of college. It's exciting, and it's fun, but it's also really scary, and at no point do you ever feel comfortable or adequate. But looking back, you realize if you'd just taken ten deep breaths and calmed the fuck down, you'd have been fine. Because you were fine.

It was all in your head.

Not to say that I'm not happy or infinitely more confident and secure than I was at 14. Even the last two years have brought about phenomenal personal and spiritual (and maybe even some intellectual) growth.

We were sitting next a lone woman, eating dinner and worrying about something showing up on her receipt. Business trip, I thought. She carried herself with a nervous air, as though this was the first time she'd found herself eating dinner alone in a strange city.
Next to her sat the woman who somehow doesn't look like she belongs in Denver. Her feet clad in Christian Louboutins, her hat cocked just so to accentuate her styled blonde hair, her facial features swathed in soft layers of mkeup. But reeking of privilege and confidence. (Not that those have to fall together. But they might. And do.)
And there I sat. Feeling 22.

But then dinnner came and my fears were washed away as I realized that there are parts of me that surpass some 30 year olds.

Jacob and I spent the after dinner moments scribbling awkward drawings on the back of the receipts and I realized that I'd never give up my youth to masquerade as someone I'm not and will never be.

Maturity isn't an outward characteristic, not something you can buy in 24 carat gold. (Ew, don't ever buy me anything gold, thanks.) That posturing doesn't show depth of character, or taste, or class. It shows that you've got money to burn (although I'd happily burn some for these). 

And so as we walked up the entrance ramp to the West deck of Cherry Creek mall discussing the disparity between doing what you love and doing what you have to do to survive, I felt secure.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, they say. I'm off, marching confidently onwards, it's just too bad I have no idea where that is.

Awake

Beautiful day, beautiful mood.
Is there anything better?

My mouth is gin dry, my hair limp, my body sore, and my mind gorgeously foggy.
My attention span is zapped; my day smacks of endless repetition; I am content. (Every time I write a triadic sentence, I flash back to Mr. Hilbert's classroom. I am 17 again. AP English is the bane of my existence. I'll never forget Mary Hayes' sentence:  He was grotesque; he was ugly; he was my prom date. - or something to that affect.)
These are the waning days of my youth, after all.

The night began with the procedures of self-preservation and ended with the tossing out of all best intentions, but doesn't that describe the best nights?

Woke up surrounded by cloud-white sheets. Rolled over and groaned at the coming day.

Oddly fulfilled.

I also have some nasty dubstep playing. There is not enough RedBull in the world to contain me. Or to fuel my future.

Off to be productive, to produce, to hit the grind....whatever it is that the corporate world might be.

On a sidenote, my desk is a hand-me-down (obviously). It's full of odds and ends, and they're all perfect for someone with my small attention span. My current obsession? A stamp that simply says "Acknowledgement." We are nearly paperless, although I find myself stamping things just so I can see the remnants of the 80s business mentality on paper. Acknowledgement.

It's almost as good as the PostIt that said "Relocate." Apparently I wrote it, although I'm not sure what for or why. I got into work one day, and there it was, sitting on my computer. "Relocate." I was furious - they don't want me? They don't like me here and the subtle reminder was there. Relocate.
Turns out, I had set it there. Of course. It was a cute joke for awhile.

Love your day, love your life.

Also, I miss Carlos. Jacob has him. And they're happy. I'm jealous.

Death and then more war

I am more of a pacifist than I'd like to believe.
I don't support the killing of anyone.
I don't support any war.
I get that sometimes it's "necessary" but the days of the World Wars have long since collapsed into wars of greed masked with good intentions.
The best of intentions don't always lead to the best of outcomes - instead, we find ourselves mired in wars we can't pay for, wars that kill our naive kids, wars that tear apart families and countries yet don't bring the peace we'd hoped for.
The rebuilding takes years. The pain lasts forever.
The world is not a better place for our occupations; it's merely a little bit more burdened, heavy with the right hand of America, that democratic bastard.

I don't believe anyone should be celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. I don't think we've done anything other than kill someone else. He'll become a statistic, as monumental as the toppling of the statue that stood in Baghdad. This day will be a memory. Nothing more. It is not the end. There is no winning. Not even Charlie Sheen can say that today.

And while I do appreciate that it's finally done - and now hopefully our tides of propaganda can shift our focus elsewhere - I regret that it's taken so long, taken so many misfires, taken so much American abuse of lands and peoples that don't belong to us.

And of course, we didn't even tell Pakistan we were going to do it. I understand why. But I think it will ultimately hurt our already fragile relationship with that country.

We dumped his body in the sea. I will give us credit for supposedly giving him a proper goodbye according to Islamic law.

In and out, swift justice for the wounded, for the dead, for the future.
Is it really justice?
Was it really worth it?

Is all that death for one life justification of creating the hell we thought we were trying to end?

Now let's move on.
We'll take the soft uptick in the markets that is sure to follow, we'll take the slight jump of poll numbers, we'll take the fuzzy bipartisan feelings reminiscent of a night spent on ecstasy, but we shouldn't let it swell our already full heads.

I read one blog today that mentioned planting peace roses.
I'm for that.
Let's remind the world that all this bombing and killing and bloodshed is supposed to achieve one thing: peace.

Don't tell your kids we won.
We didn't.
Because there is no we.

(I was listening to a man on NPR talk about Muslims and how he didn't feel any negativity towards them - good, why should he? - and how they felt the same way "we" did. Thanks man, for really showing the separation "we've" created. Who is us and what are they?)

Teach peace and compassion.
Teach understanding and love.
And hope that somewhere, some of those lessons take root in our souls.