Technically, it’s the afternoon, but whatever. My friend Sir Joseph Carloughrider has started a blog that is full of various nebulous qualities, such as quirk, whimsy, and preciousness. Go look! Snailboat, Snail Away.

Anyhoodle, he’s collecting dreams from people, like the BFG, although, knowing Joe, he will keep them in a fishtank rather than jars. So here is my favorite dream; it’s from waaay back in seventh grade, although this write-up is one I did freshman year for an acting class. It’s long and not terribly good, sorry, but since I haven’t posted in months, I don’t care.

It starts in media res, and I find myself standing on a stage that looks like the one in my elementary school’s gym. There are the same dusty blue velvet curtains, the scuffed oak boards, and the multicolored lights that hang rather precariously from a metal bar. There is a great commotion a few feet from where I am standing in the wings. People rush around the stage and suddenly they are coming towards me, they are behind me, brushing past and taking no notice.

Max Christian, my sister’s high school crush and the school district’s favorite musical prodigy, appears on stage. He is tall and lanky, stretching up over six feet, his youthful gangliness almost completely filled out. Everything about him seems exaggerated, from the broad Slavic cheekbones that give his face a strong diamond shape, to the unruly mop of black curls that sprawls on his head, to his giant hands, the long fingers knobby and indicative of a dedicated pianist.

Posing ostentatiously in the midst of the madness, he plops a top hat on his head, a wide-brimmed, Dr. Seuss-type chapeau that curves in before opening at the top in a dramatic flare. It easily sets him over seven feet, and that’s when I notice his black platform shoes. Covered in the same shiny material as his hat, they peek out from under his white bell-bottoms. His attire appears to have been modeled on John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever by way of Elton John: the lapels of his jacket are covered in white sequins with more sequins mincing up the seams of the sleeves as well as the pants. The black silk shirt underneath is open in a deep V, revealing a slice a beefcake that is attracting a fair amount of attention. As I watch disbelievingly, he takes out a pair of white sunglasses and fussily settles the enormous round lenses on his nose.

What the hell is he supposed to be, I wonder. I may have said it aloud, maybe not, but one of the harassed-looking stagehands tells me Max is Bottom the Weaver in this modern adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And I am supposed to be in make-up but of course I couldn’t be expected to know that because heaven forfend the actors use their brains for anything except regurgitating lines and coming up with asinine demands for the overworked people who really do something, the screws that hold the cogs together, and speaking of being screwed—

“I’m an actor? Wait, what am I, like a tree that sings or something?”

“Are you serious? You’re the fairy named Tupperware, now get your ass into makeup.”

Fab.

Confronted with a situation like this, there isn’t much that anyone can do. I reluctantly find my way to an area where people are being slathered with paint, so that I can be plunked unceremoniously into a chair by a surly man. He circles me, stroking his goatee before thrusting his hands through his close-cropped gray curls and letting out a frustrated yelp.

“You are clumpy,” he says.

“’Clumpy’? Do you mean ‘clunky’?” This is not any better but I’ve never not taken advantage of an opportunity to quibble semantics.

“No, I mean clumpy because it is what I say and it is what you are, a clump of a person made of clumps of hair and clumps of skin and clumps of ill-advised makeup.”

“Please stop saying ‘clumps,’” I ask, feeling slightly nauseated.

“Stop being clumps,” he retorts. “There is nothing I can do for you, you are not fairy-like in the least.”

As though it might actually help, I offer a timid, “I’m named ‘Tupperware.’”

“Hmm.” He stalks around me again. “You shall be my Everest. Yvonne!”

A frightened-looking lackey scurries over. I quickly wipe the meek expression off my face, not liking how it looks on Yvonne.

He gives her the same eagle-eye that I had been treated to and abruptly announces, “No! You are too much like the frozen rabbit. I need a lemming, ready to be herded over the cliff at my convenience. Yvette!”

A bland woman quietly appears at his side. Without looking at her he snaps, “Get Eggshell and the Hanes cotton thingies. And the plastic.” She melts away, the giant pile of costume supplies rustling as she burrows into it like a hamster into its bedding. Every so often an arm pops out holding some new element, filling me with increasing trepidation.

Faster than I can register what is going on, I am hauled up and shoved behind a scrim with instructions to change into the “Hanes thingies,” and quickly before someone has to come back there to deal with my unfortunate clumpy self. To my relief, the disconcertingly skimpy garments are nothing worse than a white boy’s undershirt and cotton short-shorts. Yvette rubs Eggshell paint on my exposed limbs while the Maestro, as I have begun to think of him, critically supervises. I sense him leave his post right behind but can relax for only a second, as he is soon back with a stepladder. He mounts it with precise steps, and, with a perfunctory “Watch out,” proceeds to dump a bucket of silver glitter over my unsuspecting head. While I sputter, trying to get the metallic shards out of my mouth, I am hustled over to dry in front of a giant fan. As the breeze swirls the glitter in sparkling eddies, I wiggle my toes, the only parts of me that can move while the Maestro directs Yvette in the wrapping of clear cellophane about my person.

He stands back to gain perspective of the fruits of his assistant’s labor. He prances ten feet away. He skips forward fifteen. He leans in very close, his pointy nose thisclose to my own undoubtedly clumpy feature.

“She is missing something. What is she missing?” he demands.

“Her name is Tupperware,” stammers Yvette.

“But of course! She needs a lid. Get me a lid!”

I resign myself to wearing some sort of plastic bucket on my head for the next few hours. Yvette, when she returns, doesn’t seem to be carrying anything of that nature, but my happiness is short-lived when the object of her retrieval turns out to be a blue trucker hat. It is crammed onto my head with little ado, my hair, huge from fan, fluffing out crazily from underneath. After a dizzying spin of appraisal, I am sent stumbling towards the stage, the Maestro behind me like a farmer’s wife behind a wayward hen.

“Shoo! Go, sparkle fabulous, make magic! Be the best Clumpyware you can be!” With these wise words, he gives one last fierce tug on the hat to cock it sideways. Suddenly, I am in the middle of the stage, hundreds of eyes staring, the footlights harshly glaring, and it feels like all the air has been knocked out of me.

Advice columns are a weird combination of well-meant psychology and a gossipy voyeurism, like what people did before they could read and comment on LiveJournals. Of course, this means that I totally love them, because there’s nothing I like more than telling people how to handle their business, especially when it’s scaaaaandalous </squeal>.

There are, of course, some that I enjoy reading more than others. I tend to prefer columnists who are blunt and sassy, like “Dear Caroline” from the Philaldelphia Inquirer (is she still there? I haven’t sullied my hands with print media in years.), although Mums thinks she’s harsh. I’m a fan of “Dear Margo,” who would be like having a less-crazy, still awesome Marlene Dietrich as your grandmother. Mums likes the “Dear Abby”-type, whose brand of wisdom matches her hairstyle. I can appreciate it with an irony that is utterly obnoxious, but really, I can’t actually agree with someone who commiserates with a father who’s annoyed his daughter’s fiance didn’t ask him for her hand before proposing.

Her advice was thus: “While I agree that the formality of asking for a woman’s hand (or whatever) may be outdated, particularly if a daughter is self-supporting and out on her own, it is still a gesture of respect. It would have been nice if she had held your feelings in higher regard, but perhaps she didn’t feel her fiance would pass muster.”

Really? What century is this? What effin’ decade is this, actually, because this sexism is, sadly, not as far in the past as it should be. Why does this question keep coming up, in advice columns, and books, and movies? Abby’s right when she says that asking for permission is outdated, but I think she goes of the rails when she says it’s a “gesture of respect” (not to mention her somewhat condescending supposition that it could have been the daughter’s poor choice of fiance that precluded the formality.).

That’s the argument that people who are in favor of the tradition seem to use most, that it doesn’t mean anything real, that it’s just symbolic. So what’s it symbolic of? It’s a holdover from a time when women were property to be passed from their fathers to their husbands, enacted literally by the father giving his daughter away at the altar. It’s symbolic of a time when women were not allowed to make decisions for themselves or were not allowed to enforce those decisions without the approval of men.

The little interjection “particularly if a daughter is self-supporting and out on her own” is another stinger. The implication is that, beyond the regular development of the parent-child relationship, there are degrees of independence, based on her material achievement, that a daughter has to work to establish. Her autonomy is not assumed but something she has to actively pursue. The tradition has a relative value: the more materially dependent she is, the less inherent is her personal autonomy, as expressed by the greater propriety of a request for her hand.

Do I think that asking a father for permission for his daughter’s hand is the downfall of feminism? No, because I don’t think that most fathers think their blessing is a dealbreaker, or that most women would treat it as such. I do think, however, that it is a loaded tradition: it’s a gesture of disrespect to the woman to act as though her consent alone isn’t enough, that her word as a person means less because her person has a vagina. A relationship has two people in it; everyone else is optional. I would never ask my boyfriend’s mother for permission and none would ever question that. The expectation for him to appeal to my father is pure sexism, even if it’s packaged as just a symbol. Symbols by definition stand for something; the fact that the “something” isn’t on the surface makes it more insidious and does nothing to remove its poison.

I heard previews of the song a week or so ago, but just saw the video tonight. It’s crap. BUT! …and I’ll get to it.

The song is undoubtedly stupid. It’s unoriginal in content and sound, the lyrics are as facile as most of her other songs, the chorus isn’t even catchy, etc. The video, while marginally better, doesn’t do much to redeem it. Britney is sweaty and not wearing a bra! Britney wears wigs! Britney seduces a skeezy dude! Feh. Give her an umbrella and a Frappucino and it’s B. Spears ‘07. BUT!

And here’s my big but (hee). How amazing is it when she stares into the camera and says, “You say I’m crazy? I got your crazy.” On one level, it’s typical scorned-woman “he’ll never even see it coming” threat you hear in songs that don’t sound like real women. Below that, it’s a lame attempt to be all meta about her behavior the past two years; it’s fine to be naked and wear wigs and admit you’re crazy when it’s being filmed in HD. Seriously, though, that can’t continue; there’s no way to class up the shit that went down, so quit while you’re at least breaking even.

There’s a level underneath it, though, that’s far more interesting, and it’s encapsulated in the line I quoted above and the image at the end, when the doors open and she’s a whirlwind of women. It’s not until then that he recognizes who they all are, and isn’t that just perfect? How much of herself did she leave behind when she followed him out of love or lust or misguided hope? There’s a message in our society, constantly broadcast, that tells us how unloved we will be if anyone gets to know us, so cover it up with clothes and make-up and technology and self-help books. This applies moreso to women, and it’s partly from the outside, but partly from the inside, too. So bury all the things that make you a bad girlfriend, a bad wife, less than the ideal woman – strike a balance between being a best friend, a stripper, his mother, a psychiatrist, whatever you are being told is perfect until the second that it’s not.

And he doesn’t get you, because he doesn’t know you, because you’re hidden somewhere, so the problem is on both of your ends but he’s giving it all to you. So why not give it back? Why not be crazy, if you can? Why not dig up all the parts of yourself that you pitched in a deep, dark grave, and why not claim them again? The best thing about this video is that it has joy. This is not a woman destroying cities with lightning and high heels, though there’s a time for her, too. This is a woman swinging her hair and jumping on the bed and rising, rising, rising till she’s engulfed in flames and it makes her laugh and say, “Since I’m here, why not burn the motherfucker down?”

They’re taking pictures of the man from God
I hope his cassock’s clean
The burden of being our holy fellas
Your halo’d better gleam, better gleam

What of all those wayward priests?
The ones who like to drink
Do you suppose they’d swap their blood for wine
Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink

You wrote me oh so many letters
And all of them seemed true
Promises look good on paper
Especially from you, from you

The weight of all those willing words
I carried all alone
You wouldn’t put your pen to bed
When we hadn’t found our own, our own

Your sentences rose high at night
And circled round my head
The circle’s since been broken
Like the priest before me is breaking bread

I’m being asked to drink the blood of Christ
And soon I’ll eat his flesh
I’m alone again before the altar
Shedding all my old regrets

The last of which I’ll tell you now
As it flies down the sink
I never knew a part of you
You didn’t set in ink, in ink

The letters that you left behind
No longer shall I read
Your blood’s between the pages
And I can’t stand to see you bleed

And I’ll soon forget what was never there
Your words are ash and dust
All that’s left is the song I’ve sung
The breath I’ve taken and the one I must

If you’re born with a love for the wrote and the writ
People of letters your warning stands clear
Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit
Don’t say in a letter what you can’t in my ear

- Johnny Flynn and The Sussex Wit

MoxyCrimeFighter: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/08/sea-turtles-depths.html
DearAlthea: i want to own one
DearAlthea: and i want him to putz around my house but not in water
MoxyCrimeFighter: you’d probably have to rub lotion on him
MoxyCrimeFighter: oo but you could get him a pair of spectacles!
DearAlthea: and a tiny tophat
MoxyCrimeFighter: and spats for his flippers
DearAlthea: and we could stage little arguments between him and his wife, a fiery, hot-blooded lobster
MoxyCrimeFighter: with a portuguese accent
DearAlthea: she could say “Shellington, you need thicker skin!” and he could say “Not all of us can have a carapace, Martha!”
MoxyCrimeFighter: she would often chide him for his lack of ambition
MoxyCrimeFighter: and unfavorably compare him to his coworker, a hammerhead shark
MoxyCrimeFighter: “his eyes don’t even point in the same direction, shellington! and look what he’s accomplished! he’s up to six remoras a year, shellington!”
DearAlthea: and he’d say “well why don’t you just run away with him then? you two have so much in common; you both scavenge meat, neither of you have bones, and oh, look, neither of you make a delicious soup.”
MoxyCrimeFighter: and she’d say, in her fiery portuguese accent, “perhaps i will! he’s got all those teeth, maybe he’ll actually make me feel something!”
MoxyCrimeFighter: and he would call her a mollusky trollop
DearAlthea: woof
DearAlthea: man
DearAlthea: you’b be good at that. you should write an underwater play
MoxyCrimeFighter: lol maybe i will
MoxyCrimeFighter: enter it in this year’s writing contest
MoxyCrimeFighter: “the lost city of love: an ocean story”
DearAlthea: adapt an old novel into a new, underwater love story
DearAlthea: Dracula: Waterlogged and Lovelorn
MoxyCrimeFighter: frankenstein: soaked all to pieces
DearAlthea: Love in the Time of Anemonies.
DearAlthea: hahaha Clams and the Giant Sea Cucumber
MoxyCrimeFighter: haha
MoxyCrimeFighter: Remora and Juliet
DearAlthea: hahahaha
MoxyCrimeFighter: clamlet!
DearAlthea: MacPerch
MoxyCrimeFighter: a midsummer night’s drown
DearAlthea: Crabthello
MoxyCrimeFighter: schoolius caesar salad
MoxyCrimeFighter: (they come with anchovies….)

I was raised by ghosts,
some more corporeal
than others.
Flicking in the wake of reality,
pages in books
offered comforting susurration,
assurances of stability.
Static and cyclical
people I knew and never met
whispered their yearnings,
their furies and failings,
lessons for lives
barely like mine.
They slept on bookshelves
in attic alcoves and hallways,
scattered in disorder
only in bedrooms
where other ghosts
would reside. On weekends
and holidays, in my mother’s room,
a poltergeist with bear-hugs
and piggyback rides,
trips to church
and chores to assign, would haunt
the Monday – Friday lives
he had left behind.
Beyond my mother’s room,
their room,
he ultimately ventured,
and I retreated,
my books shelter
from his presence
the same as from his absence,
from the spit-polished aura of calm
surrounding his tarnished wife,
from the infinitesimal tears
I felt on my bindings.

(with thanks to Kelly Norman Ellis)

Diablo Dibujo: sup fishmonger
moxycrimefighter: nothing much…wainwright?
moxycrimefighter: is that the theme of the evening, antiquated professions?
Diablo Dibujo: well, bootblack, you tell me
moxycrimefighter: you’re a strange one, you chandler, you
Diablo Dibujo: i wouldn’t say that if i were a highwayman
moxycrimefighter: well since i’m a dead-collector, i think i’m well within my realm of experience
Diablo Dibujo: at least i have my apothecary to keep me warm; i am, after all, an alchemist
moxycrimefighter: what a coincidence! i’m a midwife/wisewoman
Diablo Dibujo: ah, well, the fletcher’s life for me
moxycrimefighter: as you deserve. and you’d best get to it, since i’m also the hangman and could have you swinging in an instant
Diablo Dibujo: well, who would hang a simple squire?
moxycrimefighter: the corrupt magistrate, perhaps
Diablo Dibujo: or perhaps are you just afraid i’m a wizard?
moxycrimefighter: in the guise of a goatboy? i think not.
Diablo Dibujo: you’ve caught me! i am but a simple troubadour, from town to town to make my sheckles
moxycrimefighter: how exotic! you’ve seen far more of life than i have, a simple tavern wench/occasional bit of rumpy pumpy
Diablo Dibujo: oh, but do not tell me, as the town crier soon everyone will know!
moxycrimefighter: as the madame of the local brothel, i know things that would make your wife’s ears shrivel, so i would avoid doing such a thing. go drown your secrets in a pint.
Diablo Dibujo: i’d have to steal it, the rogue that i am, like everything else i’ve ever gotten in life
moxycrimefighter: and as the jailer, i’d put you away to rot…but as the smitten goosegirl, i’d also aid in your escape
Diablo Dibujo: and as the scribe i’d record your deeds, and as cleric i’d sooth your weary bones….and guilty mind
moxycrimefighter: i can attest to your ecumenical skills. after many years as the choirmaster, i’ve seen enough to know
Diablo Dibujo: you praise me a goldsmith when i am nothing but a peasant; you’re too kind
moxycrimefighter: i work with nothing but dull iron, so my eyes are always on the lookout for a glint of the finer things. i do envy your skills with a hide, though
Diablo Dibujo: i am a fair tanner. although, i am an even better shipwright
moxycrimefighter: i know this well, but even after decades as a sea-widow, i still walk my roof in a state of agitation
Diablo Dibujo: i won’t lie, the only one i’ve got left is barrister. i’m a barrister.
moxycrimefighter: haha, so i’ll be your bailiff