I Love This Poem

The Planned Child
by Sharon Olds

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken
a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me--I would have
liked to have been conceived in heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the
rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion
cartwheeling across the dark, not
the earth, the sea--none of it
was enough, for her, without me.

The Gays

Getting undressed in my house is an event, mostly because I haven't become fully accustomed to Phil's need to drop everything and anything, be it web surfing, doing dishes, or brushing his teeth, and watch me get naked. Too much information? Trust me, it's going somewhere other than my bare bum.

Without bowing to standard narratives of men "just naturally" being more visual or more sexual or more aggressively, visually sexual, I want to understand this. I know it can't be that exciting, especially knowing the show gets worse with every decision to stay in and eat creme brulee instead of running around the block. Besides the curves that are just getting curvier, there is also not much of a change from day to day. These are my boobs. They don't change color or radically increase in size when you stare at them. I love Phil, and do so without my pupils dilating at the sight of exposed flesh. I mean, don't get me wrong, the sexy beast of a man in my house gets visual attention, but it is more of an are-you-really-wearing-THAT? flavor.

So, with this weighing heavy on my mind, Phil embarked upon a staring spree last night as I most un-gracefully changed pants and I said:

"you know, when you do that it makes me think of all the feminist scholarship on The GAZE."

Phil heard:

"you know, when you do that it makes me think of all the feminist scholarship on The GAYS."

What began with a fit of laughing and a very wide-eyed and confused Phil ended with:

"What? You think I'm immaculately dressed and well-groomed?"

Lists! Lists! Lists! AKA "I don't have any well-constructed declarative sentences left after my week of paper-writing"

Top 5 Songs in My Life Right Now:

1. Lovely Head......Goldfrapp
2. Moses......Patty Griffin
3. Elephant Woman......Blonde Redhead
4. La Foule.......Edith Piaf
5. Daniel......Elton John

Top 5 Books in My Life Right Now:

1. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig (I'm having a very promiscuous love affair with Taussig and Marx right now....I think they both would understand.)
2. What's Love Got To Do With It?: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic by Denise Brennan
3. Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology by Kate Crehan
4. The Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
5. NOT My Friend Leonard by James Frey.....When all this stuff broke out, I couldn't bring myself to finish this book. Ick.

Top 5 Random Phenomena in My Life Right Now:

1. Style.com's new LOOKBOOK function.
2. New Cydwoqs. Ebay is my bitch.
3. Not freaking out over the fact that I may not get an A in my Primate Behavioral Ecology class. It may happen, and I'm prepared, sort of.
4. Seeing the Violent Femmes tonight.
5. The following conversation:

P: You need to stay warm...you need lederhosen! (he pronounced it LEEderhosen)

T: No, Lederhosen are shorts and shorts aren't warm...and besides, it's "LAYderhosen," not "LEEderhosen."
P: Well....(long pause)....I say it LEEderhosen, 'cause I'm the LEADER of the household! And you say LAYderhosen because you're a LADY!

Hmmmm, you say to-may-toe and I say to-mau-toe, let's call the whole thing "using gender inequalities to weasel your way out of BEING WRONG."