On summer, romance and animal cruelty (Part 1)

It’s summer. Rejoice. I cannot fucking wait for my vacation. I think that my last day to work, before vacation, a gin&tonic will magically appear on my hand the minute I step out of the office, my chair spinning behind me.

In view of this and of my need to escape, I have started a book club with my friend AnnaMaria. I would like to note that we are both intellectual women, keen on reading books, going to art galleries, theaters and talking about history while terribly, irresponsibly drunk. And we try (we really do try) to be classy. 

However, we are weak.

Allow me to explain. We always talk about books together, suggesting and discussing authors, themes and plots. It is an important part of our friendship and we decided to enrich it by starting the book club. It’s worth noting that the past 6 months haven’t been kind on our lives so we needed to blow off some steam and relax.

One would suggest Austen, Dickens, maybe some Sedaris or even Pratchett.

No. 

We went the highway. 

We chose a romance novel. And I am not talking romance like Romeo & Juliet or romance like Catherine and Heathcliff. I’m talking about romance like she-is-a-25-year-old-ex-model-with-a-son-and-reluctantly-falls-in-love-with-her-tenant novel (literally the plot of one of the two novels (YES, TWO) that we are reading. We have no shame and we love it, seeing the ridiculousness, sexism and clichés and we cherish every cringe.

Here is my very biased commentary on the books, written by Nora Roberts, a best-selling titan of the industry.

Book no. 1 The Best Mistake, written in the 90s. 

Plot: Ex-model Zoe Fleming is now a hardworking single mom—and she wouldn't have it any other way. Though she would like a tenant to share household expenses. What she gets is confirmed bachelor J. Cooper McKinnon. Coop quickly befriends her son and in no time has the reluctant Zoe charmed, too. But she has zero room in her life for a man! Either this was a recipe for disaster or the best mistake she's ever made.

Let me start off by saying there are literally no mistakes made in this book. Except maybe when the 4 year old son uses a word wrong.

While reading this I had the feeling that I kept reading the script for a cheesy made-for-TV 90s film. Both protagonists are the quintessential 90s male and female archetypes. She is tall, thin, a Kate Moss meet Claudia Schiffer ex model who is charmingly messy, listens to rock music (I bet its Bon Jovi)*, owns her house, raises a boy against all odds, works 2 jobs and reads books about everything (even books about drafting tenant contracts I shit you not). The man is tall, athletic, a bit rugged looking, 10 years her senior, a sworn bachelor, basically a tall Tom Cruise. He hates commitment, loves order, doesn’t like children and only wants to relax, drink beer and write about sports.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

What follows in the next pages is the clichest of all clichés. The Tom Cruise look-alike befriends the little boy, takes him to a baseball match, and teaches him how to throw (because his mother throws ‘like a girl’ as he said, great) and reluctantly starts loving the little guy. The fact that Zoe is jaw-droppingly hot helps a lot to fall for her. She is not just easy on the eyes, she has endless perfect legs that  our hero never misses a chance to drool over. He stalks her at her sexy workplace (the unsexy one is a florist shop - the sexy one is a late hour’s bar where she serves drinks dressed, well, like a teenager’s wet dream) to criticize her about the clothes she wears and basically be a creep. And then, realistically, she tells him she is in love with him. Come on, this is the stuff of life, it has happened to all of us to fall for the handsome but asshole tenant, no? They have casual sex (mind-blowing first time sex, that, again, has happened to all of us no?***) yet neither can go against their feelings.

And now, for the most 90s plot twist ever: 

When they decide to have the Talk, Zoe insists that he won’t be able to accept her as a mother and embrace his son (which is the only part of the book that makes sense, RUN ZOE RUN!), while he agrees since he is a hardcore Man who only wishes to watch sports and have his life in order. If the book ended here it would have been the 90s empowering masterpiece we all needed.

But sadly, it goes on. Tom Cruise realizes that he will lose the girl he apparently madly loves, he throws her a home date that her son helped put together (cue in the candles and many many flowers) and the neighbors brought the food. Touched by his putting-together skills, she decides to spend the rest of her lives together. The book end by her calling him ‘daddy’. Since I read it on a translation, I cannot be sure 100% for the use of the d word, but based on the book, I’m pretty sure it was ‘daddy’.

Shivers. 

Down my spine. 

If you fast forward to a few years, the marriage ends in bitter divorce full of bickering, shouting and regret.

Coming up: my comments on the second book. Spoilers below.

Book no. 2 Untamed

Plot: Jo Wilder had the heart of a lion and the temper of a wildcat. And when Keane Prescott crossed her path, she bared her claws. Jo was certain her charming new boss imperiled everything she cared for, but she couldn't deny the attraction between them. Though Keane's kisses left her breathless, it was his tenderness that threatened to tame her heart.

The plot lines don’t give it away so I’m just gonna say it.

She is a lion tamer in a circus. 

There, I said it. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

____________________________________________________________

*Whom I ADORE by the way, he was one of my sexual awakening guys**

** Along with Aladdin from the Disney classic, Johnny Depp, Gambit, Tuxedo Moon from Sailor Moon and many more select gentlemen. I was not very picky.

*** I should mention here that she hadn’t slept with anyone for 5 years (when she was 19) and that the last man was the selfish uber famous tennis player/father of her child)

On blackmail, plants and Pokemon score cards.

I will have to get back on you on my absence. I can confirm that it was not spent on a tropical beach, day-drinking.

I had a conversation with my friend Jol the other day. I said that if I was a Pokemon my score card (you know, the ones that had all the statistics and kids used to exchange and somehow stage fights with, sometime in the early 00s), my two signature moves would be: panic gardening at 10 am and panic face-waxing at 8 pm.

I don’t know why I do this. I get home from work, relax, talk to friends, watch a series (cause my currentlifestyle has rendered me incapable of reading any books) and then, out of the blue, I just have to go to my balcony, inspect my plants and proceed to garden the night away. I suddenly decide to repot plants that I bought months ago and never bothered, somehow believing that they will not survive another day in their tiny, constricting pots*.

But when they wither and they are nothing but twigs, I am at a loss. Momentarily, because of grief and because I can’t let go of things. But mostly because I don’t know how to dispose of the body. What do I do? Cut it in little pieces and let the wind take it? Viking funeral pyre? It seems unfair to just put it in a bag and throw it in the garbage. Not after what it’s been through.

And here’s where I think I may have turned them paranoid (much like me). See, when they die, and I don’t know how to dispose of the body, I just leave it there for weeks. Over time they turn into tiny crumbly toothpicks, bend to the will of the winds.

But here is where the magic (and paranoia) happens. I think that the other plants take this as an example. Their peer, lying there, lifeless, punished for not being glorious enough. Much like Crowley in Good Omens, I think my incompetence in dealing with plant death blackmails them and makes them fight for their existence.

After a few weeks I just shove the plant in a trash bag and they never see it again.

As for panic waxing, need I really dwell on it?

                                                                                             

*Oh, they will. Somehow the plants I get accept their limbo state pretty soon and are forced to adapt in order to survive. They have to patiently sit there, let me water them whenever and try to survive. When they wither, they are dead to me. And this is not because of my indifference,** I want to believe.

**I water them and give them a special medicine. The problem is that I do it irregularly. I overcare and then I care not.     I drown them in medicine, to the point they suffer from poisoning. I give them iron (a disgusting powder that turns water crimson red and makes your balcony like the Red Wedding just happened) and then I let the rotten leaves drown them.

On microclimates, frozen eyelids and old ladies.

I had a discussion once with my friends Kalki and Antinos about Kalki’s mom, who apparently wants to turn the inside of her house into a domestic jungle. This took an unexpected turn, as most of our conversations do; a turn towards the Weird.

Long story short, we concluded that we would love to create microclimates within our apartments. Kalki’s apartment was on its way of becoming a jungle, full of monkeys, vines and a small stream. Antino’s house would be a dessert – he favors warmth more than anything. The dessert would be spread across the apartment, complete with a (small) camel that Antinos wouldn’t ride because he hates them, and a couple of date trees.

Now, my house’s microclimate was not my choice. Fate chose for me. Cold. Imagine an unwelcome land of ice, spread across my apartment. Polar bears chasing fish in the bathroom and penguins sliding across the corridor. The remains of the Scott exhibition in the dining room.

My house is cold. In fact, all the houses I’ve ever lived in were cold, unwelcome and, oh, did I forget to mention, cold? The house where I grew up is old, made of stone and near the sea. This house really set the tone, because every single one after that was cold and drafty, the way I imagine the Middle Ages were. The house I currently live in, a beautiful 60’s apartment*, is cold. It’s so cold, I woke up yesterday night with frozen eyelids. The inside of my soul was cold.

See, it’s not enough that the house is drafty and frozen like a witches’ tit (how does that even work). No. There is no central heating. 2016 marked the year my building filled the oil tank. Oh the tears of joy and reverence***. The central heating is on in the evenings, for 3 precious hours, provided that the outside temperature is 11⁰C (or 52 F). I swear, if it is 11,5⁰C it won’t turn on.

To battle with the polar microclimate, I have a small gas heater, which works really well. But because it’s gas, I turn it off when I sleep, otherwise I dream of a fiery death****. In my bedroom, which has 3 exposed walls and a terrace above. I wake up and I can see my breath forming icicles.

My house is so cold I often catch myself thinking: What if I turn the oven on and just leave the door open? Will it warm the apartment?

Oh, did I also mention that during the summer the heat is unbearable?

Like, Sauron's volcano hot.

______

* Complete with its own service entrance (because God forbid the maids used the main entrance. I shit you not, each apartment in this building has a main entrance and a servant’s entrance that leads to a round metal staircase. You can kind of imagine the maids, chatting on the staircase about their idiotic ladies. To make things shittier, there is also a tiny room, with a tiny closet. Is this storage space? No. It’s the room the maid could curl** in.

** Because it’s not big enough for a human being to stretch their legs. I imagine them sleeping in the shape of a sad semi colon.

*** The tenant’s meeting was amazing. Half of them showed up and I sat there,uncomfortably, on the 1950’s velvet dining room chair. The initial small talk included one of the tenants saying that, based on his experience, girls are smarter when they’re young but get dumber when they grow, while boys are dumber when young and get smart as they go. I was about to perform the Darth Vader force-choke on him, when two old ladies (both tenants) ganged up on him telling him not to pigeonhole people and that women are equally smart, if not smarter. What a powerful moment! Five minutes later the same empowering ladies said that our country is going to hell because no one is a good Christian any more, and they also let out comments with heavy homophobic undertones. I was raised to the skies and crushed within 5 minutes. Please, note here that I was going commando. I don’t know why, I never do. But I picked the day to go to a tenant’s meeting, commando while people spoke about feminism and our impending doom as a nation.

**** My house is so drafty, I do not need to worry about gas leak poisoning. I only need to worry that, in case of a fire, the drafts will only make it stronger.

On dialup modems, books and all-forgiving screens.

My good friend Mala send me this very interesting article. It’s about teenagers who gave up being online for a day and the results that followed. Read it.

It got me thinking. I was raised at the time when there was no internet and phones were as big as remote controls. I was a teenager when the idea of fast internet entered in our lives and the sound of the dialup modem still haunts my dreams.*Hell, I even tried to create ringtones by adding weird number/letter combos that would eventually create a beautiful monophonic symphony of ‘Baby One More Time’. Shitiest maestro ever.

Point is, as a child and a teenager I had to entertain myself. I had to find ways to make time pass, especially when my sibling couldn't be bothered to deal with me. I used to read. I remember I read the Three Musketeer when I was ten. I was so mesmerised, that when it finished I cried because of the cruelty of Dumas to end his tale. Luckily, as with any good blockbuster, sequels ensued.

I was the type of person whose life was over when a favourite character would die. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself when a book ended, life was pointless, I could not imagine feelling joy ever again, and so on and so forth. From ages 10-22 I read all the time**, wherever I could, whatever I could get my hands to. I remember I had finals, the type that determine whether or not you’d go to uni, and I can see myself, crouching over Jane Eyre, crying my eyes out because of all the drama. I have destroyed handbags because I carried too heavy books dammit! And you can’t tell me that’s not commitment!

I can absolutely pinpoint the moment I started having difficulties reading books. I was 22 and I bought a phone that could connect online. That was it.

 The End (pun intended).

It has become harder and harder to concentrate on productive and creative things on my free time. It seems I am stuck in front of the almighty, life-giving and all-forgiving screen. As I write this entry I keep stopping just to check social media or change a song. Like the douchebag I am, I can’t even give proper time and care to this post (she said, feeling no remorse whatsoever).

And then fast internet happened, and series came into my life (I will get back to the topic of series, they’re my crack, heroin, lover and mother at the same time). And somehow, I forgot how to be submerged into a book, how to be completely taken over by a character, a story or even the pretty pictures on the pages.

Maybe people reach their book limit at some point. Maybe this is it for me. I will have to go through life with teenage books, English classics and Harry Potter (what? I feel no shame, judge away!) as my sole literary references. 

Im afraid this post will give you no closure. But we'll get there.

Won't we?

______________

*Once, I counted how many seconds were needed in order to download a second of a Youtube video. 15. 15 seconds to download 1 second of video. The horror. The horror. The shame.

** And very inappropriate books, if I may say so. I read Kinflicks, by Lisa Athler, when I was 13. It was laying around my cousin’s house and I stole BOTH paperback volumes. Shamelessly. It’s about the story of Ginny through the 60’s and 70’s in the U.S. Reading about pointy bras, lesbianism and tantric sex confused me and excited me at the same time. Needless to say, I understood half of the book, and mostly the teenage years of Ginny who was in love with a badass, cause, you know, wishful thinking. 

On flat lines, furniture and high heels.

I think I was born in the right time to be nagging about being born the wrong time in history.

Think about it.

I often find myself daydreaming, over unfinished tasks, about living in a different era. I would love to have been born at, let’s say, the peak of the industrial revolution, to be a member of the elite, shamelessly gaining wealth from child labor. I would be parading in the salons of the intellectuals, amazing gentlemen with my wit and beauty, cheering 'To Indusrty!'.

Now, knowing my luck, chances are I would be one of these children, working my fingers off inside a Dickensian factory.

See, it’s all fine and dandy (what?) when I think about it while I’m sitting in my living room, playing Assassin’s Creed, sipping my soda and enjoying the (admittedly occasional, I’ll get back to this) central heating.

I think it’s a harmless form of escapism, this wishful thinking. When an aspect (or the whole thing) of my life sucks, it’s easy to imagine I’m somewhere else where I would thrive and life would be oh! so much easier and simpler.

Ha! Imagine being a woman back then. There was a book, Flatland, written by Edwin Abbot Abbot (seriously) in 1884. In this book the world, similar to ours, is occupied by 2D geometric figures. The narrator is a square named A Square, who has triangular servants (the butler is the biggest triangle and the footman are smaller) and sons who are smaller polygons. The shapes with the higher status are polygons (our hero is a square, his sons are smaller polygons etc). You’d expect women to be circles, or at least a rhombus, what with fertility and general roundness.

But no. Women are depicted as, wait for it, LINES. Yes.

Straight.

Flat.

Lines.

Awesome.

Lines that actually wiggle their end around when they move (think of swinging crinolines and whatnot). Fucking lines.

I’m not saying that the book is bad, I haven’t read it (although it’s currently burning a hole in my Amazon basket). All I’m saying is that, considering Flatland is a metaphor for that time, it would have sucked if I lived back then.

And don’t get me started on hygiene.

Escapism works with job aspirations as well. Another daydream of mine is that one day I will own a flower shop, or a small repurposed furniture shop (hipsters around the world are throwing up right now – are there any left anyways?). In this shop I will have a beefy assistant to swoon at while I ask him to do the heavy lifting. Needless to say, I have zero knowledge, practical or theoretical, on how to repurpose furniture, apart from throwing a coat of paint on ‘em. Oh, and while we're at it, in this daydream I am also wearing high heels without being in excruciating pain all day.

Of course, it's easy to escape.

On crippling self-doubt and espionage

 You know, the kind that cripples you.

That pushes you to the wall and forces you to watch the paint cracks for a couple of hours.

Crippling self-doubt has been a dear and loyal friend of mine since I was little. I remember going to parties and thinking, moments before ringing the bell, all dressed up in hideous ‘90s floral dresses, I’d always think ‘What if it’s for next week? Or worse, what if it’s for tomorrow?’ Within moments I’d envision the said family and friend answering the door dressed in their pajamas, probably baking the cake for tomorrow.

It never happened to me. But IT COULD. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the crippling factor.

This specific fear followed me well into my adult years. To be honest, I rarely double check things and appointments, and I always remember the information from the first time I glance at it. However, I have often found myself on my way to a scheduled appointment or meeting and, moments before I arrive, feverishly scrolling up on Facebook chats or texts, trying to check the time and location of said rendezvous.

And of course (of course!) this manifests into many, many aspects of my life, because if you have crippling self-doubt, hell, it sticks with you like an STD. 'Should I have said that? Did I turn the stove of (for that, I have found the solution. I take a picture of said appliance and check it to see that it is turned off. I do not doubt photographic evidence. Yet,)'?

Crippling self-doubt has made me think twice before posting this. Not that people care. I know for a fact that the people who read this are 5 dear friends that I shove the link down their throats, as if I was attempting to make digital foie gras. They are good people. If it wasn’t for all that self-doubt I’d share this more.

Maybe I’ll get there.

Crippling self-doubt, and its good friend paranoia, cause me to double check if anyone overheard me talking to the phone.

While I’m on the street.

Next to a busy highway.

Talking no louder than a whisper.

I swear, if I ever talked in code, that I invented, I would always worry that someone would break it.

Or that I would forget it and go to an appointment the wrong day.

What I’m trying to say is, I would be a shit spy.

On lists, organisation and deep sea creatures.

Ok, so, I was writing down a list of possible topics for my entries here. Cause I want to act like an adult and make an effort and at least try to insert a smidge of organisation here. My life is completely unorganised, my home is a mess, and I write down my to-do tasks either on my hand or on post-its that I proceed to loose with mathematical precision. It’s like a well-choreographed performance. I am one of those people who will write down a list for the groceries and then forget it on their kitchen table. Result: I end up buying too much pasta and no toilet paper.

A smudge of organisation. See, I know for a fact that I will never be completely organised. I have friends who write down their appointments in their agendas, or diaries, or e-calendars. It’s beyond me. If I wanted to do that I would have to go all Faust on myself and sign a deal with the devil-potentially the shittiest deal ever made. It would go like this: ‘I wish to be organised, structured, methodical and visit the dentist at least once a year’. Devil would be like ‘You cray?’. Me ‘No. Where do I sign my immortal soul to you, oh evilest one?’

One cannot abandon hope. Strangest things have happened. Or, as they say worse things happen at sea (who says that, honestly? What is the basis of this saying? People who have seen giants squids, and the creepy fish with the light attached on their foreheads, that’s who says these things. I bet people saw that and though – well, that shit ain’t happening on dry land).*

I got very distracted from my original point. Which was meant to be about lists and how I realised that my first thoughts of topics about this blog would reduce feminists to tears. I swear, no. 2 on my list (right below ‘pooping at work’ which was, ironically, no.1) was shoes. Fucking shoes. Does that mean that my initial and basic thoughts and aspirations revolve around poop and fashion?

I should hope not.

Does it?

 It is such a disturbing thought that I erased the word shoes from the list. I was in a bus while writing it on my notebook (because I can’t write it on my phone, like a normal person, I need to have the hard ends of my notebook jabbing someone’s ribcage) and there was a bump, so I half-erased my no. 3 on the list, which is my thoughts on the book ‘Little Women’, that I might do on my bookclub with my friends Mana and Jol. Because apparently I am 80 and I only care primarily about pooping and my bookclub.

Have I crossed to the other side of wisdom? Have I reached the part where you are so self-aware, you only care about the things that really make you happy?

God, no.

I will write a new list. Or at least, I will throw away the shoes. But, dammit, I’m keeping ‘Little Women’.

*As I reread this I can only assume that my train of thought is clearly driven by Ozzy Ozbourne.