A Thought About Kissing and About Love
I’m reading Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists. About halfway through the book, two characters are debating whether or not everyone’s actions are selfishly motivated, that maybe good people are only good because they want to feel like good people, and that counts as a self-centered motivation. Within this discussion, one character asks the other, “So why do you kiss someone? To give pleasure or to take it?”
I wasn’t planning on thinking about this point for very long. I was almost satisfied with simply thinking, “aw, snap!” and moving on to the next paragraph, but then my brain switched on because the posed question is a combination of two of my favorite things: critical thinking and mushy romantic shit.
At first it seemed shamefully obvious that the answer was the latter. I kiss because I want to. We all kiss because we want the erotic pleasure of our mouth on another’s mouth (or other body part). So we kiss to take pleasure. But with only a little more thought, it becomes clear that A) there are other ways of kissing besides erotically, almost all of which are to express love, be it romantic, friendly, of familial, and B) even with erotic kissing, a kiss cannot truly be be enjoyed without the kissee deriving pleasure from the kiss as well (unless one is sadistic, and for our purposes we are assuming one is not)–in fact, it is the same in case A; love is not so well expressed or enjoyed if it is not mutual. And it is only in unfortunate circumstances (or, I suppose, circumstances of prostitution) that one is kissing for the purpose of giving pleasure, but not to receive it (we’ll file such circumstances, along with sadism, under “things we will ignore for our purposes).
So, unlike so many other things in life, kissing falls under the category of mutual give and take, a perfect example of an act that (except for those few circumstances we are ignoring) breaks open the “selflessness is selfish” argument.* It can only be properly executed by both parties simultaneously wanting to give and accept the gift of physical intimacy. And if your mind is mechanical in the same way mine is, you can see that a kiss is the definition of love. Cue “The Shoop Shoop Song.” **
* Devil’s advocates: I’m sure if you wanted to debate this with me, we could. Heck, I could debate this with me. But in the end, kissing is awesome, so shuddap.
** Actually, I will cue “The Shoop Shoop Song,” because it’s an awesome song. Here:
Anonymous Cat Callin’
I know I’m a little behind the times, but I started reading Tina Fey’s Bossypants today, and I’m obviously loving it. In it she talks about the moment that a woman knows she is a woman, and that almost all of the women she discussed this with discovered their womanhood via a man yelling at them from a car – that there were no positive experiences of discovering womanhood. My first reaction was that this seemed strange. I don’t remember the exact moment that I felt like a woman instead of a little girl, and I am pretty sure it had something to do with being interested in boys, or noting their interest in me, but I think for me it was a positive experience. It certainly had nothing to do with being shouted at from a car window.
As someone who, nowadays, gets shouted at on the fairly regular by boys in cars etc, it seemed weird to realize that this only started about halfway through college for me. Was I not worthy of being shouted at until I was 20? No, I don’t think that’s it – being shouted at has little to do with one’s worthiness, and more to do with the shouter. So what was different about potential shouters before I was 20? I knew them all.
Yup, until I was 20 I lived in quite a small town. I grew up in Glover, VT, where the population is just under 1000. That’s right, a number so low I don’t even have to put a comma in it if I don’t want to. Everyone knew everyone. And for my first 3 semesters of college, I lived in Aurora, NY, which has a population of less than 400. It’s almost as if any would-be cat-callers in these towns realized that cat-calling is not a very nice thing to do. It wasn’t until I moved to Farmington, ME, with a population almost 8 times bigger than the town I grew up in, that I was lucky enough to be shouted at by strangers – and there is the key. True cat-calling needs to be done by strangers to illicit the proper level of creep-out upon the cat-called.
It follows in kind that fake cat-calling – like when you whistle to a dear friend that you see in the street – doesn’t work if it’s anonymous. You can’t know your friend is being ironic if you don’t know it is your friend. One time when I was walking down the street in Farmington, I did hear someone whistle at me, and then a minute later my friend Mark texted me to say that it had been him doing the whistling from his car, and he felt bad when he’d seen my look around uncomfortably afterwards.
In this way, cat calling reminds me of insulting someone behind their back. It’s a mean-spirited thing to do. And sometimes I pretend to talk behind my friends’ backs, but purposely within their earshot, because what I’m saying is in jest, and what I really mean is “I love you.” They get the message if they hear my fake insults, but if they don’t hear me even though I meant for them to – well then I am just straight-up being mean behind someone’s back, and it doesn’t work. In the above scenario, the cat call was taken as mean-spirited until I knew it was really just my friend saying “I love you.” Which is kind of fucked up because the insinuation behind a cat-call is usually that the cat-caller is enjoying the existence of the cat-called. That’s what they are pretending. But both parties know that it is a creepy thing to do, which is why the cat-caller wants to be anonymous.
On that note, I will leave you with Khaela Maricich‘s interpretation of boys yelling out of car windows:
Manipulation, or Why I might stand up Mainers United instead of standing up for equality.
Edit: If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that this post disappeared pretty quickly after I wrote it, and now it’s back. A friend pointed out to me that while I am entitled to my opinion, it was still more important to have marriage equality than for me to have this particular blog post. I don’t really think that what I put on my blog affects the votes of many, nor that people would vote against marriage equality because I have beef with Mainers United (and yet I state clearly that I am on their side politically), but even so, I felt it was best to take this post down until after WE WON! WE WON! LET’S ALL GET GAY MARRIED!
Yesterday I was approached on the street by a nice young man with a plan. He didn’t have his clipboard out yet (must have had magically huge pockets in those skinny jeans) and he spoke a little shyly. At first I thought he had asked me for a cigarette, but when I asked him to repeat, turns out he was asking if I support marriage equality. I want to make this perfectly clear: OF COURSE I DO. Even though I tend to identify as straight, I do have a personal connection to many people who cannot marry due to this ridiculous law. But for me it isn’t even about that. It isn’t about gay people being able to marry, it is about everybody having equal rights, and it’s about separation of church and state…but I’ll leave it at that, because that isn’t really what this post is about.
The young man asked me if I support marriage equality, and I was instantly on my guard. Why? Well, I’m generally not into talking to people I don’t know and wasn’t planning on speaking with. Also, I’m selfish (though I don’t think unreasonably) with my time and money, and I suspect anyone who speaks to strangers from a script around election time is after one or both. But it’s actually the script I hate the most, and this is how it went (paraphrasing, of course):
Marriage Equality Guy: Do you support marriage equality?
Me: I do.
MEG: What is important to you about this issue?
Me: Um… it’s about equality for me. I think it’s just common sense.
MEG: Right. It IS about equality. I want to get married some day. And right now we only have three weeks… (okay, this is the part of the conversation where I nodded a lot and couldn’t get a word in between statistics and the importance of getting the word out because last time, etc. etc. Somewhere in here he did whip out a clipboard and binder.) Would you be available to help us man the phone banks this Saturday?
Me: Um…no, I’m busy on Saturday.
MEG: What day works better for you.
Me: (pulling out calendar, not sure if I want to help, but kind of do) I don’t know… what days is it?
Notice how he didn’t actually ask me if I was willing to volunteer, but somehow it looks like I agreed to it? The language is so subtle and strategic. In the long run I signed up to help out on Wednesday evening and the fella (whose name was Daniel) gave me a piece of paper with my day and time and the location and phone number. I walked the rest of the way home feeling a little uneasy, but happy about my decision to help out. I have been approached by the Mainers United folk a couple of times before and I always say no to them like I do to everyone else who approaches me on the street because I am not friendly when caught off-guard. I also got a phone call from Mainers United a week or so ago… here’s how that went (again, paraphrasing):
Late evening call from an unknown number – already not into it.
Mainers United Girl: (Okay, it was a couple weeks ago, so I don’t quite remember the beginning of the conversation. Pretty sure she asked me a similar question to the other guy, though, and I said yes I support marriage equality, and then she explained that I could help out by volunteering, which at the time I was less into.) If you don’t have time to volunteer, another way you could help out is by donating.
Me: Um… (Again, trouble getting a word in edgewise. She explained that they needed money to help spread the word and campaign, etc. I was about to agree, until.)
MEG: If you could make a donation of $150, that would really help.
Me: (What? I do not have $150 for you. Maybe more like $25 or something…) Sorry, I just don’t have $150 to spare.
MEG: That’s okay. There is still one more way you could help, and it’s really easy. (First of all, what? Some of this I don’t remember, but I do remember that she didn’t give me any donation options other than $150 – that’s just bad business.) If you just pledge to vote absentee and vote for marriage equality, that would really help us.
Me: Um… How does that help you?
MEG: It’s really easy, if you just give me your email address, I can sign you up and they will send you an absentee ballot.
Me: Yeah, I mean, I don’t mind voting absentee, but I was just planning on going on voting day, and I’m not sure what the difference is.
MEG: Well, if you vote absentee, then you can just vote from home and you have time to (blah blah blah benefits of voting absentee – I interrupted her).
Me: I know, but I am just wondering how it affects YOU, like how does that benefit you guys?
MEG: Oh… well, we still have 5 weeks until voting day, and we’ll be… making lots of phone calls to make sure-
Me: So, what you’re saying basically is that you guys are going to call me again unless I vote absentee.
MEG: (giggle) Well…yeah.
Long story short (too late) I gave her my email address so she could sign me up to vote absentee, and then I never got an email. I did take the initiative myself to sign up online and have now voted absentee anyway.
Okay, so, I was feeling good about my decision to volunteer, because this issue actually is pretty important to me. However, I was already plotting to rebel against them a little, because this organization keeps rubbing me the wrong way. I wasn’t going to work from their scripts if they were as manipulative as the one they used on me. I know it is hard to find people, and the approach-on-the-street method is probably difficult to avoid. Nonetheless, if someone had approached me and asked me only these two questions:
1) Do you support marriage equality?
2) Are you willing to volunteer for us?
I almost certainly would have answered unhesitatingly yes to both questions. It’s that feeling of not having a choice that I hate, not the choice itself. Later that evening, I got a call from a different person from Mainers United, and she came at me with the same script! First of all, she called me in the evening. I wasn’t super busy, but she was interrupting me, and she did not ask if it was an okay time to talk, or if I have just a few minutes, or even sorry for calling, but I just want to confirm blah blah blah. She just went right into it – why is this issue important to you? It IS about equality, and we only have 3 weeks blah de blah and last time blah blah blah – it was almost verbatim what I’d heard from guy on the street, and I tried to interrupt her to say, “yeah, that’s what the other guy said,” but I couldn’t. The reason she had my number was because I’d signed up, so I expected by this time I’d be “on their side” and they could cut the bullshit. No such luck. Finally she ended up just confirming the time and place of the volunteering, and then asked me to bring “a snack to share.” And basically I’m thinking, great, now I need to bring her food too.
I was still planning on going, but I was complaining about all this to a friend today (a friend who actually sought out Mainers United and has been volunteering for them, incidentally) and she suggested that I not go. That if it bothers me this much, one volunteer wasn’t going to make a difference. I feel like that is a good point. I still want to do what I can to help out, so I am still undecided. I think the whole situation just bothers me on a level of common sense and good business as well. If you are trying to talk to undecided voters and convince them that marriage equality is the way, I can understand using manipulative language, even though I don’t agree with it. But if you want volunteers to help you get that word out, you’re going to need people who are enthusiastic on the issue, and you won’t need to manipulate those people – asking should be enough. If you manipulate people into going, they either won’t do a good job because they don’t care or aren’t as inclined/ outgoing enough to do that sort of thing, or they simply won’t show up (as I might not).
An Unexpected Feeling of Contentment
Over the summer I’ve done a little volunteering at an awesome organization here in Portland called The Telling Room (and you should really click on that link, because to make it I went to their website to make sure the address was correct, and holy mackerel, they just got a sick new makeover and the site looks fantastic). The Telling Room is writing center for young folk, where kids ages 6-18 can come and hone/ explore their writing chops.
When there’s volunteer downtime there, people tend to ask each other how they found The Telling Room, and I feel like I found it by wishing it into existence. See, I’m a big fan of a publishing company called McSweeney’s. Their books are so pretty and nice to handle; the words inside so often appeal to me. I like all their periodicals, and I love how they interact with their world. They’re one of the only fairly well-known companies that accepts and frequently publishes new, unsolicited authors. They also put a lot of effort into helping people in the community that need it. I mean, they’re basically super neat, and I have a celebrity crush on them as an entity. Anyway, there is a similar writing center in San Francisco called 826 Valencia, which was co-founded by Dave Eggers, the founder of McSweeney’s. When I first heard of 826 Valencia, I really wanted to work there. I even briefly considered applying as an intern and moving to San Francisco, but moving across the country to a city more expensive than anywhere else I’ve lived so far, for a non-paying position, seemed like not the best idea at the time. So I moved to Portland instead, wishing that there was and 826 here. It only took me a couple years to find out we have an awesome, and very similar writing center here – The Telling Room folk even got the idea from 826.
So far I have helped out with one Young Author’s summer camp. For 5 days, 6 hours a day, I chilled with some really awesome middle schoolers, and some amazing writers. This is the perfect age, where kids are coming into their own as writers, but still lack a lot of the self-consciousness adults have about their writing. They’d confidently share almost anything, a lot of it good, but even less-than-stellar-writing was read aloud with no shame.
I wouldn’t say I exactly had fun. I mean, I did have many fun moments there, but there were also times when I was confused about what I should be doing, or bored during free-write times, or worried that I was suddenly alone and in charge of 5 kids I barely knew. Or overtired because I was waking up way earlier than a normal Emily ever should. But I did notice that, all week in the afternoons and evenings, I felt fulfilled in a way that I am unused to. Like I didn’t want anything I didn’t already have. Like I had done that day everything I should do, and that life was good. I wish I could have participated more this summer, but now that the school year has started, there are way more events going on, and I’m pretty excited to go back and feel again like I’m doing just the right things with myself.
Comfort and Control
I’m in England, folks. I had hoped that I would have more time to blog while traveling, but guess what: traveling itself takes up all the time.
This trip has been a whirlwind of cities and towns in the UK and in France, with no more than two nights spent in each place. In just two weeks, we (my brother Sherwin and I) have traced a meandering clockwise route around Scotland, with a quick drop down to France, and then continuing around England back up to Manchester, where we started. We have been couch-surfing, dropping in on strangers in each place and sleeping wherever they have space for us, wearing the same clothes for more days in a row than we normally would, and being, for much of the time, rained upon. It has been a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t trade these experiences, but I have not been comfortable for more than a handful of moments on the trip.
We were in Fort William, Scotland a week ago, and staying with a Polish fellow named Piotr. Piotr was a very talkative guy, and within the first half-hour of staying with him, we had somehow already gotten into a existential conversation about comfort. I don’t remember how it started, but I can remember Piotr asking “what is comfort?” Now, Piotr was talking about physical comfort, referring to the constant rain, and the circumstances of sleeping on couches. There was more to it than that – I wish I could remember, but I know he was speaking of the merits of discomfort, how it keeps a person from stagnancy, and perhaps how it is a useful character-building tool. What I do remember is when he asked that question, I immediately thought to myself that comfort is control. This is because at the time, and for most of my time in Europe, I have felt acutely my lack of control. It’s almost physical, like I’ve gone out wearing sneakers but no socks, and it all feels very wrong.
Back home, I am the most in control I have ever been in my whole life. I have lived alone for two years, I’ve recently been single for the longest I have been in quite a few years, I’m out of school but feel empowered by my degrees, and of the two jobs I had, I quit the one where I felt more like an underling, and now I only work at a place where I feel respected enough to work on my own. Most importantly, I have had more money in the last year or so than I had before. I am by no means rolling in it, but I am not literally living paycheck-to-paycheck like I did in college. It sort of startled me the first time I realized that it had become my routine to collect two, sometimes three checks before depositing them, because I didn’t need to use that money.
All that has changed in Europe, and I am very uncomfortable. I am not in control of where I live – instead I live in a new place every two days, and none of this stuff is my stuff. This is perfectly okay, and even exciting, but even this lack of constancy would get tiring after a while. And as I’m staying with strangers and my brother, I am certainly no longer living alone.
Romantically I am still single, but I am constantly with my brother, a person I know better than almost anyone else, but I have never spent this much time interacting with him with very little pause. It’s like being in a relationship. I don’t think we have been outside of each other’s company for more than a half hour the entire trip. And I rather like being alone.
Lastly, and most importantly, I don’t have a job and I barely have money. Through circumstances that would be boring to elaborate on, my money has been accessible during the trip while Sherwin’s has mostly not, so not only am I spending lots of money and not earning any, I am spending two people’s worth of money. (Don’t worry, Sherwin’s money will be accessible when we get home, so it is a temporary situation (is what I keep telling myself).)
This lack of control is exhausting, and I keep feeling myself panic a little. I am learning about myself though. I thought it was important for me to be in control, and it is, but an addendum to that is it is important for me to be in control when it’s possible. I realized this in France when we had some vague instructions as to where we would find our ride from Paris to Angers. My friend Laurene had arranged the ride for us, and while we knew where and when we would meet the driver, we didn’t know how we would recognize him. I told Sherwin I was fine with this scenario, and I was happy to go to bed and just go to the train station in question in the morning. Basically, we’d see what happened, and if it didn’t work out, I said I “wasn’t worried.” Sherwin gave me a nervous look and said he didn’t believe me.
Now, I’m afraid that I have not been the best traveling companion for Sherwin, because I have become stressed out easily when we’ve missed a bus here or there, or been unable to find where we are on a map, or when I fully realized our money situation, so I can understand why he didn’t believe me, but it was true that I wasn’t worried, because I knew the situation was out of my hands. I had sent a text to Laurene asking her how we would recognize the guy, and she hadn’t responded. I knew she had to work early and it was late, so I didn’t want to call her. In my estimation we had done everything we could do. Also, I believe there was a degree of trust involved – I felt sure that Laurene had set us up with a ride that would work out (and it did).
In contrast, most of the times I have been uncomfortable on this trip, I’ve felt I could have been in better control. When we missed the bus, it was essentially our fault. I felt we should always have been able to find ourselves on a map with enough squinting, so it was frustrating when we couldn’t (the times when we didn’t have a map, I was actually less worried about it, so maybe I should just stop bringing a map when I travel). And we certainly could have more carefully assessed our funds before embarking. Money is a big factor, and if I had run out of money for reasons beyond my control, I think I would have been okay. Sure, I would have been a little stressed out, especially if I were in Paris where I don’t speak the language, but I actually find it calming to say to myself, “Emily, there’s nothing you can do about it, so you just have to wait and see what happens.”
As much as I am looking forward to going back to my little kingdom where I’m in charge of everything, I thing being uncomfortable has done me some good. I am curious to do an experiment: I wonder how I would fare alone in a country whose language I didn’t speak, not knowing anyone, and not having a map. I don’t think I would do well without money, but if I ever try it out, I’d like to try to limit myself, bring emergency money but try not to spend it. It would probably be rather freeing in some ways. On the other hand, though I agree with Piotr that stagnancy can be a problem, I quite enjoy my life, and I’m pretty good at keeping it from becoming stagnant while still keeping a degree of comfort and control.
Emily Jane Young 