Tearing at the Roots/ Dec. 2006

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Breathe.  Stop.  Let it sink in.

My room is a mess of small clutters.  Papers, cables, boxes filled to the brim but not yet sealed; never sealed. Could I ever seal them? I’m getting whiny and should stop.

Move-out is in eight and a half hours. Dad will come by with a truck from the store and give me an encouraging hug before getting to work.  I can’t expect much from him, but I can expect something, and it’s more than Mom will offer.

The walls are bare; painted a dusty light-blue, the wall along my bed–at my back–cluttered with small cards, a poster, train tickets.  I should take these down, but I won’t, not yet, not until the very last hour.  I will carry them with me, and these walls, and this dust, and this oppressive air, and the sourness between the woman who is my mother and myself.

Please stop breathing down my neck.

I hate it when W comes over my house.

My parents like having him over because he does stuff around the house. Shelf to be installed? Brother to tutor? Opinion to be solicited? W’s their man. Whenever he makes his once-a-month weekend stay at our place, the family monopolizes him. That’s great.

My mother makes things very difficult for me while he’s here. I cannot talk to him or engage with him in any meaningful way. My every action is scrutinized. Not even a single moment of mine goes noticed, nor a single detail. My mother is meticulous and doesn’t let any of that go. It’s a blistering silent interrogation process so horrible I can’t even begin to describe it.

Gather ‘Round the Radio, er, TV

Perhaps one reason I’m so interested in talking about TV, movies and books here on Subterfuge is because I was raised in a family that regularly shares and discusses the media we consume. The family that posts on Raising Amazing Daughters has put up an entry about how they shared time and interest in TV shows. It immediately evoked similar memories in me.

I have very clear memories of watching Lamb Chop with my mother. I was enrolled in afternoon kindergarten, so the mornings were ours. We would have a leisurely breakfast while PBS ran. I adored Lamb Chop, and my mother felt it was one of the better programs for kids at the time. We would talk during commercials, often about what was happening on the show.

I think the first shows I watched with both my parents were Brit-coms. Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced bouquet, if you please!) is very family-friendly (even if her sister Rose is not), and I knew all the little habits of the department store staff on Are You Being Served? (“Mrs. Slokum, are you free?”) Of course, no description of my childhood would be complete without a heavy dose of Monty Python. I was also introduced to Black Adder when I was very young, so I’ve always known Hugh Laurie as the buffoonish Prince. It was wonderful to share a sense of humor, to have inside jokes within our little family.

As I got older my mother didn’t feel such a need to screen what I watched. We had established an ongoing dialogue, and this conversation has never stopped.

Dry Eyes, Dry Brain, Dry Heart/ Fall ’09

In journal entries to my mother I am cruel.  I am to the point.  I am exacting vengeance.

I read them and feel… burning.  Burn out.  Sadness.

My eyes have been burning, for how long I’m not sure.  I haven’t been taking my medication as prescribed.  I could say it’s not entirely my fault, and that might even be true, but the point is that I haven’t been sleeping well, haven’t been eating well, and, *sigh* haven’t been feeling well.

I’ve been holing up in my room, mostly rolling around in my imagination.  I’ve been missing days at the social rec center, which is the only piece of structure I have right now.  I’ve been skipping out on Saturdays at the local clay studio, and I haven’t been telling D, the man who runs the clay studio, that some of the things he’s been saying sound too friendly.

A ninth anniversary

from stephenrahn.com

It is hard to believe that the horrific attacks on September 11th, 2o01 took place nine years ago. It seems cliche to say that we remember it as if it happened yesterday, yet that is the truth.

It’s our generation’s JFK assassination moment — we all know where we were when it happened, and what we were doing. We remember the deaths and the frantic calls to friends and family and the sudden need to watch the television day in and day out, looking for something in the permanently pressed images in our heads of the destroyed towers, the plumes of smoke, the heroic firefighters in neon yellow suits.

We at Subterfuge would like to ask you your stories.

Where were you on the eleventh of September? How has it changed the way you think of the news — the world — politics — or anything else?

Let us know in the comments.

Huge: Delving Deeper

I really like the Y.

“SCREW BODY FASCISM,” reads the handmade sign by Will’s bed. She made it, at least partially, from clippings taken from a magazine. A magazine that belongs to another girl.

“Ok, it fell on my bed, and when I see propaganda that I know is destroying girls’ brains, it’s my duty as an angry feminist to destroy it.”

Will really, really doesn’t like this shit. Amber has her own pin-ups, which she calls “Thinspiration.” Will puts up Rubenesque beauties from classical art. “They’re fatspiration,” she says pointedly.

I think she’s being snarky about the ‘angry feminist’ part. I hope so. Because destroying someone else’s property does not reflect well on any kind of feminism.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE. We do not advocate the willful destruction of property, even if it is propaganda.

Secret Life: Adrian, you are cleared for take-off. Please breathe deeply and count to one hundred.

Adrian with Amy's son, John

Another week, another round of craptastic ABC Family programming! My TiVo’s already filling up.

So, Adrian is having the abortion tomorrow. Her father is still opposed, but he seems to have come to his senses by episode’s end. He’s no longer threatening to break the family up. Ben is still waffling about what his role in this should be. HIS father insists that he should go to the clinic. Adrian doesn’t want this (or says she doesn’t), but I know that if I were in her shoes I wouldn’t be keen on the idea, either. They weren’t dating, it was an idiotic one-off thing.

(Perhaps the show’s arguing that idiotic one-off things are how you make mistakes. Amy & Ricky? One time at bandcamp = baby. Mr. & Mrs. Juergens one-off divorce sex = baby. Adrian & Ben = baby. The only ones to escape this pattern are Grace and Jock Boy. But her dad died, so she got her comeuppance. Still waiting on his.)

Visionary Daughters

I’ve been reading a lot about the Botkin sisters lately. And for you all to understand why I’ve been reading up on this particular family from Texas, I’ll have to start with an explanation.

Over the better part of the past two years, I’ve been scouring the Internet for points of outrage, places where I could read opinions that were very contrary to mine to see if there was any merit in these positions or whether they just reaffirmed what I already knew about them. Yes, I know that I should find something better to do with my time. But I figure that if I’m going to surf, I might as well make it a philosophically challenging experience.

On different roles, a subterfuge post

I’ve been really bad at this, but I’m getting better, I promise.

This weekend was a very interesting one. W came over our house while my mother was out touring the globe. Yes, that’s right — my mother tours the globe for a living, and she’s very good at traveling. D calls her “the professional tourist”. Good times had by all.

This moment of subterfuge was brought to you by a perfect storm of events and the letter “sex”.

On Sexual Double Standards

So here it is — the post I’ve been wanting to write for ages but somehow never got the opportunity to write.

I have been trying to figure out what more we could do with Subterfusex. As a blog, it’s a terrific idea. Two young women in a recession talking about sex and relationships in a frank way. I almost feel like a spy when I write on this blog, because I hide this part of my life from almost everyone that I know. D is a bonafide sex goddess who has nobody in the world to placate. I envy her. It’s certainly my fault that nobody knows about this blog, because the problem is, I don’t know how to tell anybody about it.

I feel like my vagina is a cobwebbed room. I can’t think about it. Or touch it. Or have someone else touch it. Or fuck it. Or tell anyone that it is getting the bejeezus fucked out of i t. Instead, I have to go about my life pretending that this part of my body doesn’t exist. I can’t talk about it, make off-color jokes about it. The fact that I am a sexual being can’t ever be revealed, like the biggest non-secret in the world.