Dirty Little Secrets

Daily Non-Sequitor: "I play hockey and fool around because those are the two most fun things to do in cold weather." (Mystery, Alaska)

I'm finding it difficult to update my blog, recently. As a fully-functional member of Tribe Vagina, my conversational defaults are (in order of merit): 1) boys, 2) juicy gossip preferably about people I know but really, I'm not picky, and 3) bitching about relationship issues with other card carrying Soros-titutes. My blog follows this outline unless I have something topical to discuss, and recently the Witty-Well has run dry. Unfortunately, one of my conversational defaults has been rendered...uhm...defunct...through total fault of my own. There are two bits of village wisdom that I try to live by -- to whit, "never shit where you eat" (both literally and figuratively), and "never tell people more than they need to know". I made a bit of a strategic error in giving out this web address to any and all, and for that reason, I can't really discuss boys anymore...at least not boys with a direct interest in me. Too many partisan factions read this for me to be able to be really honest about my current lovelife. Honesty is a wonderful thing...but sometimes it's just not appropriate, and it's hardly in my best interest to over-share.

(Let's face it girls, there are times when we want the potential men in our life to know we aren't available (read: when they have girlfriends), and times when it's much more prudent to keep that information under wraps (read: when they don't).)

I think people (read: my father) assume I'm having a lot of casual sex (*winkwinknudgenudge* nothing casual about it!) because there's not much else to do out here in Iraq. I think I mentioned that earlier. Probably several times. For the record, dear readers both related to me and not, it's none of your damn business who I'm seeing over here, unless you happen to be that person. And, as I just broke it off with the one person over here who reads my blog, I seriously doubt that's the case. Unfortunately, since he DOES read my blog, I will not be issuing any more relationship updates...at least not until I get back stateside. Curious parties, feel free to query me directly. I will say this though, since there are at least three people who have a seriously skewed image of how easy it is to get into my under-roos: 1) I do not have sex with boys without prior emotional engagement, 2) Contrary to popular belief, security surrounding my under-roos is roughly similar to say, Fort Knox, 3) who exactly has access to my under-roos is a state secret on par with the true mastermind behind the Kennedy assassination, and finally (yes, I mean you) 4) emails, however polite, are not going to grant you an all-access pass.

My dad's been flipping out recently about my little sister. She's gorgeous, I'm not sure if I've mentioned -- she's the pretty one in the family, all dark-haired and mysterious. Boys flock to her like ants to a sugar-pile, and my dad (crotchety and suspicious old man that he is) is convinced she's doing things she ought not to be doing. She's 14, for cripes' sake, on top of which she's adopted a Straight Edge lifestyle...no drugs, no alcohol, and no sex. She's a nun, for as long as it lasts, and Dad should really count his blessings that his daughters have such a strong sense of self. Well, my prudeness probably stemmed more from lack of opportunity (I was a late bloomer, you understand), but Molly knows her own mind. I'm proud of her, and Dad ought to be too. She's not going to bring you home a grandkid any time soon, Old Man. Chill out, willya?

Until next time...

Ghoul

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness

Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.
A Babylonian meditation on death
From: Masks of God, by Joseph Campbell

I found that poem (prayer?) in the first volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, Preludes and Nocturnes, tucked inside the last story where Dream contemplates his sister, Death. Most people, he recalls, are scared of her, or revile her...this long-dead Babylonian celebrated her gift and longed for her the way exhaustion longs for sleep, or pain for release.

You can tell a lot about a culture by its image of death. Mayans had Ah Puch, the owl-headed ruler of the 9th hell, who's screech-owl children heralded when someone was fated to die. Lithuanians had Giltene, a maiden dressed all in white who strangled the sick with her hair. The Norse had Hel, the demon offspring of a half-mad father, a hag with a beautiful face whose legs crawl with rot. The Sumerians had Ereshkigal, the dark and obsessive goddess of the underworld who threatened to loose the souls of the dead on the living whenever she felt snubbed. (Interesting side note: most of these examples are of a female incarnation of death -- death wasn't violent so much as sneaky; Greek sirens stealing the breath from heroes, or mermaids seducing doomed sailors with watery kisses -- Italians call orgasms "the little death", so I guess it's no wonder that in many cultures death is not only a woman...but a beautiful one.) And we Westerners, we have our Pale Rider, the 4th and most terrible horseman, riding towards creation with his scythe sharpened, all hell following after.

Some cultures look on death with horror. Americans certainly do -- we view it as a tragedy, as some terrible boogeyman that comes to collect our souls like a crow after a shiny object. We look at bodies much in the same way we look at bodily functions -- perfectly natural but all the same, slightly embarressing and best kept out of polite conversation. Egyptians used to venerate their dead, but of course, that was back in the days when well-to-do Egyptians used to let their wives...uhm...ripen...a bit before shipping them off to the embalmer...who knows what those sickos got up to when no-one was around to watch. The general feeling was that it was better not to provide them with any temptation, especially if the wife in question was especially good-looking. I leave you to ponder the ick factor.

Dear reader, you may be asking yourself what the deal is with today's admittedly morbid blogspot. Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking about My Life Plan, and I've made a decision. (As my father told me today, I'm not getting any younger, and I need to stop...in his immortal words, not mine..."farting around" and get started achieving my goals.)

Well, I've decided -- I want to be a death investigator. You know, like the creepy blonde lady on the original CSI or the girl from Crossing Jordan. I haven't -- quite -- decided if that means I need to go to medical school and specialize in forensic medicine (just a nice way of saying "morgue mama", really) or if I ought to get a combined JD/Masters of Forensic Science and specialize in hard tissue analysis. Hard tissue -- bones and teeth -- is a lot easier to deal with than soft tissue. Soft tissue is the squishy stuff of horror movies. It has the bad manners to retain human-ish characteristics like facial features, tattoos, nail polish. It preserves the rude bits...genitalia, that sort of thing. It tends to get infested with maggots. And it smells vile, even fresh...like a boiled boot mixed with rancid pork. It's the sort of smell that crawls up your nostrils and sets up camp. Hard tissue, on the other hand, doesn't really smell. It's a bit waxy when it's fresh, yellowish and slightly offensive, the sort of smell that apologetically tugs on your sleeve to get your attention. Dry bone doesn't small at all. I wonder if that says something about me -- that I can handle all manner of gore and ghoulishness, as long as it doesn't offend my tender nostrils.

Currently reading: Teasing Secrets from the Dead (Emily Craig, PhD) and The Egyptian Bookshelf: Disease (Joyce Filer).

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them. Lois McMaster Bujold

My Fair Lady

"My Aunt died of influenza, so they say," said the actress, who is not Audrey Hepburn and never will be, "but it is my belief that them she lived with done her in." You can't help but laugh, watching this girl slip into the character of Eliza Doolittle like a shoe (though the shoe doesn't fit the lady as well as it might, and her singing reminds me of nothing so much as a canary stuck in a vacuum cleaner -- a mixture of warbling and sucking air). "And what become of her new straw hat, which was to come to me?" Pregnant pause. "Somebody pinched it."

Daily Non-Sequitor: Has there ever been a more beautiful woman than Audrey Hepburn? Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza Doolittle on Broadway, and fully expected to get the role when the smash hit musical was made into a movie -- she was seven different flavors of pissed off when they chose to give the role to young Audrey instead. Oh, how that must've rankled! Audrey Hepburn, who couldn't even sing, but had to mouth her musical numbers while a sort of pinch-voice subbed in (Marni Nixon, who had a career of providing the voice for tone deaf actresses during the golden age of musicals in Hollywood). I wonder if Julie Andrews asked the producers why they'd picked the dewy-eyed little twig over her, and what answer they gave. "Sorry, Miss Andrews, she's prettier than you are"?

Any relationship (romance-like or otherwise) is by necessity white space on a map, uncharted to those looking in from the outside. It needs to be that way -- the inside jokes are what makes it yours.

Thought: Maybe that's how we know relationships are truly dead, when we lose that white space. When whatever was between the two of you becomes common knowledge and fodder for the peanut gallery. I deleted a whole bunch of names off my buddy list last night, and all I felt was a casual disinterest as I did it -- one thing I've learned is that longing for people is most often longing for the past. You don't really want them, you want the you that used to be with them, the you that could be seen reflected in the mirror of their association.

Anyway, back on topic -- white space, inside jokes. A casual observer will notice that my mother and I are close, but how would they ever know that our favorite movie is My Fair Lady and that we fall into witchy cackles during the Ascot Races scene, when Eliza twists the usual small talk concerning weather and everybody's health into something darkly comic and hilarious? At Wolf Trap yesterday she and I spent the entire show trying not to burst into wild peals of laughter -- once or twice we even got shushed by the people in the box in front of us. Shushed. The indignity. My little sister was there with us, so it was three Reid women, dressed to the nines in skirts and fancy jewelry, sniggering like street urchins throughout the entire show.

Last night, for the first time, I was truly happy to be home.

And...rest.

So I'm finally home again -- for two weeks (slightly less now because I've been exceedingly delinquent in updating this little treasure trove of my intellectual and emotional detritus). Two weeks is a teasing length of time -- it's just long enough to cement a habit, as Shape magazine explains in this month's alliterative Better Booty article (not that I need a better booty, you understand, but one needs something to read when one is on the stair-stepper) -- but it's not long enough to completely shake the dust of Baghdad off my heels. That and there's the looming specter of Going Back hanging over my head...there's a niggling little part of me that wonders if I should've just stayed in Iraq.

People have asked me what it's like to be home, if it's weird, or if I'm having trouble adjusting...the tenor and scope of their questions leads me to believe that they expect me at any moment to scream "incoming" and dive under the table or attempt to lead a raid against the communist-sympathizers next door. Newsflash, civilians -- delusions, flashbacks, and all the other nifty symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder do not typically strike sheltered little chemical lieutenants whose experiences of the war thus far have closely resembled a survivalist summer camp (complete with scary wildlife, homesickness and bed checks -- general order number 2 is a real bitch). Anyway, no...I'm not about to take a nose-dive off the crazy tree, you all may stop worrying (or taking bets, either or).

Everybody expected me to come home and drink myself silly -- I tried that last night and it didn't really work. It felt so bizarre to be out at a bar with "normal people", competing for time and attention with all the other skantily dressed females in the room -- females who don't have biceps the same size as half the guys and shoulders like a defensive lineman. I felt out of place, to say the least. I stood in a corner watching my friends salsa dance, explaining to "Beautiful Grant" why I didn't need him to find me someone to sleep with (and we were sober having this conversation), nursing a vodka-cranberry and wishing I was home in bed. Now I'm sitting at my kitchen table with my aching feet up on a pillow (you try going from 8 months of combat boots to sparkley pink sandles and see if your tootsies don't complain -- mine are singing Ave Maria) in sweatpants and a chemical corps pullover with my hair pulled back...and this feels slightly more comfortable. Has the Army destroyed my ability to be a girlie girl? God I hope not. I don't have the energy for another major personality shift.

I'm meeting my replacement tonight -- my dad has this pharmacy tech named Becky who apparently walks on water. She's 21, married to an Army specialist stationed at Fort Belvoir, and she has "THE CUTEST BABY" named Alan, who's picture currently graces my picture phone, which has been commandeered by my little sister because her phone wasn't cool enough. I'll have to break her fingers to get it back. Anyway, Becky apparently comes over all the time for dinner because she's lonely, she runs errands with Molly to the mall and my parents love her. Why this bothers me on some innate level I don't really know, but it does.

Anyway, no more complaining. I have two or three extremely exciting things in the works and I'll post on those as they occur -- until then, dear reader...