my friend

A passage from Anna Karenina. You ever have a long/intimate conversation with an acquaintance? Or maybe even a friend? It happens a lot in Sarah Lawrence. On the first days, freshmen would be camped out on the new dorms stairs or in the triangle at 4:00 am talking to each other. I met a lot of people that way, stopping them to have a conversation. As I got to know more about their family and past when the conversation exceeded 3 hours, I would often feel sorry for them. They are limited. I would feel like their lifestyle is somehow inferior to mine, or that they are less fancy free especially if their family somehow limits their options. Can't hang out in the city/pay for college because you live with your grandma? I'm sorry. In these conversations, you dig away at and replace the first impression, creating the illusion that you know somebody rather well. Oh, you have a fucked up family? Well, that completely changes my opinion of you. Part of me gets bored or imagines that I've reached the end of their personality, which I have to fight since it's obviously not true. The same way I get bored of being a woman if I think about women long enough, I get bored with femininity or attempts at masculinity. Having a friend gives me the opportunity to repeatedly peel away at what I think I know of her. While I partially get bored of something/someone when I imagine that I've thought my way to the end of them, I think that I don't know anybody. Especially not this friend. I merely have a stereotype of her personality and am always ready for her to surprise me. I don't even know my mom, least of all. Describing her to other people, I feel like I'm stereotyping her.

Right now I have a friend who annoys me and vice versa. It seems like when we get together, we irritate each other for no reason. She's into race issues, feminism, gay activism. So I get the sense she's annoyed because she thinks I have conservative attitudes, am a misogynist racist pessimist. Which isn't necessarily true. It doesn't hurt that she gets offended really easily. I am a feminist in my own way, ridiculously pissed off by American body issues and astonished by ridiculous attitudes that remain. I think her brand of feminism is pedestrian, while claiming to build up/have a positive attitude about women (which I do as well, by the way), she likes to take men down a peg, humiliate them. It's obvious and it annoys me. Race issues with her are essentially truckling with terms, I feel like I have to wear a padlock on my mouth. And being able to relax with a friend is really important to me. I'm not sanctioning slips or bawdy jokes that might come out of my mouth, they might be casual, but they call up huge complex race issues. Nonetheless, perhaps I can joke about "breeders" or bitch about men because they are the "oppressors" apparently. She thinks I make a lot of negative comments about myself, about other people. I happen to think that it isn't too healthy to repress negative comments or self talk, you're just shutting yourself up. Being catty with a friend is supposed to be fun, especially when I don't mean any harm by it. Being so offended by general identity issues, she's managed to offend me incredibly. I'm sensitive like a middle schooler when it comes to secrets about boys. I get really weird and creepy talking about it, not even corny pseudonyms, but I rely on hand gestures or terms like "my friend." Even though it's fun to talk about who you have a crush on, it's damn ridiculous and I get mortified. I asked her not to say someone's name out loud, made her promise something and she said, "Why should I follow your rules? You think I should be obedient like a dog?" She doesn't like the word "don't." I thought that was the most ridiculous shit I ever heard. I'm not the man, you don't gain anything by sticking it to me. The issue is, if she does this, she will hurt and betray me a lot. My little rituals might be ridiculous and I'm not offended on behalf of all the world's Russian Jews, but it would really hurt me if she rebelled against me in honor of the Age of Aquarius. There's a sense that she wants to prove me wrong or stick it to me like she does to men for the sake of some ideals, particularly in insisting that I'm all gay. Haha, you really don't want to be, but you're all gay you big dyke. Most of these perceived offenses are personal, plus my value system is different from hers. For instance, I was complaining that nobody danced with me even when I got dressed up and she suggested online dating. Which drove me up the wall. She doesn't think there's anything weird or offensive about it, but it seems to me most of the female population would find the suggestion an insult. Like, you, a college girl among boys your age, can't find anybody around you and have to go online. Commensurate to saying I'm ugly. Or that I should lower my standards. Ouch, I know I should frown on behalf of the dozen Russian Jewish girls shuddering with me.

What pisses me off the most is an idea expressed in the Anna Karenina quote above. Each one of us thinks that some part of the other's lifestyle is pitiable or a joke. She learned that my parents call me every day and decided that I'm dependent on them. That they smother me. Her parents happen to be screwed up in ways I won't elaborate, distant and selfish. Selfishness in parents drives me out of my head. She'll tell me something abysmal about her parents and then pity me when my mom calls. Most American people assume my parents are smothering or making me dependent when they learn how much my mother calls. They think I'm limited or unfree. It's a complicated situation, I want to say, it's not necessarily the case. I bet she wants to tell me the same. To some extent, it's a failure of the imagination on both our parts. A failure on mine to think I'm freer than other people. Tolstoy was so right about what happens when you encounter difference in friends.

It's weird how I can be so ridiculously mad at a friend who hasn't even done anything to me, probably. Someone who told me, "I like you," who I'm supposed to like. When she said, "I like you," it jolted me out of how I stereotype our friendship. This rant usually happens in my head when I think about being friends with her. She told me about how I sometimes read her wrong (which she does to me a lot grr), how do I know that she thinks the same thing about it? They often say that one of the best ways of quieting someone who's talking shit about someone else is to say, "well she thinks so well of you." "Really? Well, she's not so bad." Flattery makes the crow drop the cheese. Or else reflect a little like I should be doing. About how I shouldn't have it out for my friend. But I'm still pissed.

Man, yesterday I was angry at another friend for being different from me. People might say, why are you friends with them if they make you so angry? Venus opposition Mars, apparently I love my love/hate relationships. But seriously, friendship always contains some degree of annoyance that is part of the pleasure of being friends. Getting along completely would be absolutely bland. According to Tolstoy, it has to do with the extent to which they are different from you, or rather the extent to which they're not you. And this is an important factor in friendship. I don't know if I'd want to be friends with myself, although I do have a lot to say, and I do choose people similar to me in certain ways. Willing to talk a lot, with stories or conversation topics that would interest me. Someone who talks with urgency, which I notice just now that I do a lot. Willing to be emotionally sympathetic with me, willing to talk about superficial stuff like boys. Someone who doesn't fuck with my head (Sagittarian conspiracy theorists), lie to me for the sake of their own amusement (apparently Geminis are supposed to enjoy lying or debating, I don't), or elevate some conversation topics above others (I can think of some boys who perceive themselves as being philosophers who are guilty of this). With my friend I feel a kind of stagnant annoyance, though.

Wow, I really do talk with considerable urgency. Like I'm trying to get what I think out and don't care what it will sound like or look like on paper. Especially if it's for me. And now when I'm angry and annoyed. What's important is getting the whole story. Not leaving out a part of it or the memory will be lost. That's why I don't understand people who want to withhold things because they are worried what other people think or their reputation (Capricorn). Restraint in storytelling annoys me. I want to know all of it. The tidbit you left out might be a really juicy one.
God, everything that annoys me about people that I know is coming back to me, or not everything. I'm annoyed by excessive liberalism and attempts to break boundaries, this becomes predictable, angry, pathetically serious and urgent. There is a way to be truly rebellious by taking neither an extreme conservative or liberal stance. To hover above it in some way, to be above any "gender stereotypes" in your mind. You can be both (a stereotypical family woman/a gender activist), you can be anything. Both '50's family life and pitiful dick-cutting feminism scare me in their predictability. There is a poetic, a literary stance. I can be a woman, a boy, anything. I can walk Van Gogh's streets, both the muse and the poet himself. Although I tend to get bored with the super-feminine, idiotic muse. The muse is truly the ultimate woman stereotype. The adored woman who in being an end from the man loses the opportunity of being an endless possibility one can contemplate. I love to love the poet, the person contemplating an unending reality. It's like looking down an endless street with a person blocking your view. You don't know what's ahead, so it's limitless.

I imagine American sexual relations. Americans are profoundly grossed out by various body fluids and products, yet in sex, poets tell of smearing their lover's fluids on their face. They talk about musky Latin women (I mean Fermina Daza). Rodin sculpts big flabby butts. Yet there are douche advertisements on television.

A dialogue from Amelie when she calls a porn video store unawares:

"Palace vidéo, roi du porno." (voix)
"Bonjour. J'appelle pour l'annonce." (Amélie)
"Vous êtes majeure?" (voix)
"Oui." (Amélie)
"Vous êtes épilée?" (voix)
"Euh... pardon?" (Amélie)
"Bin j'vous demande si vous êtes épilée parce que le tablier de sapeur aujourd'hui ça rebute le client." (voix) (Amélie raccroche, écoeurée.)

Vous etes epilee means "Are you shaved?" Men waffle about how much they want women to shave. I don't understand American contradictory attitudes toward sex. I feel like food, sex, and excrement don't go together unless as a taboo. I can't imagine how people go on food dates, how they eat with one another. Food seems to put people off from sex. Hunger and sexual craving are two different feelings. Sex is promoted on tv (Calvin Klein ads with Natalia Vodianova). Virgins are teased (American Pie). Yet women are called sluts when they have too much of it. Marital sex is perceived to be vanilla and pitiful, but porn is thought to be deviant and disgusting. The honor of sisters is still defended in some places. A man keeps a mistress, but tells his wife during a drunken episode that he wants to perceive her as a pure, untouchable vestal virgin and do all the dirty things to his mistress. An anorexic girl is told to eat a sandwich, a girl with an ass is told to throw up. How can Amelie be quirky, cute, and romantic in the midst of all this? Is there a dividing line between sex and romance? The sex she has is so pristine and sweet, she isn't extremely and dully feminine like a porn star. There is a quality about her that separates her from a feminine porn star or the hyper feminine ideal. I identify with her.