Happy

I THINK I might be happy. Feels strange. 

There have been long, cold times in my recent life. Sustained happiness is a feeling I had kinda forgotten--perhaps even wished to forget, so as not to suffer unpleasant comparisons. I have been (mostly) glad for good happenings in the lives of other people, but tried to keep such concepts at a safe remove from myself. Better not to dwell upon that which is not quite an option.

But I'm pretty sure I recognize this warmth on me, feeling like For lo the winter is past. Looks like happiness.

I DON'T know about this happiness business. Really though. It's disturbing. Unhappiness has a cool certainty and deflated expectations. Happiness is such a wild risk. It's bound to crumble at some point. What if I get accustomed and can't bear the crumbling?

And if this whole happy thing keeps up...will I become obnoxious? Will I become the sort of person with an endless parade of charmed-life Facebook status updates, tormenting those less fortunate? What if I start expecting my life to be good, rather than being grateful for goodness? Will I turn into a total brat when little shit goes wrong? Will I avoid the sorrows of others, lest they tarnish the sheen of my bliss? I suppose I make the depressing, psuedo-Buddhist assumption that misery makes you empathic and happiness makes you arrogant. But I know some humble, happy people. Wonder how they do it.

Perhaps the best way to avoid these troubling questions is by dampening my emergent happiness with worries about the nature of happiness itself. Phew. I feel better already.

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Men Necessary, Alas

I'VE BEEN THINKING about men a lot lately. This is not unusual. I don't mean that any untoward way. Just that I try to understand them, as I try in general to understand people who are different from me. You know--like it's a good mind exercise.

I quite like men. Sometimes they make more sense to me than women. Men like to verbally joust, roughhouse and trade quips, whereas many women seem so delicate and polite that I can't relate. I often imagine there is some soft sisterhood out there to which my application is yet outstanding.

And men usually seem to like me back. So all is swell, right? Alas, no. Because it's always fraught. Probably something to do with sex. Specifically, the conjoined twindom of desire and derision.

Ladies, you probably already figured out, consciously or un, that being an object of desire is a form of power. Conversely, to desire is powerless. So when some guy harasses you in the street, maybe what he's really shouting is that he hates you because he wants you. Come to think of it, how much of sexism is just men trying to reassert power over those who rob them of it? (My research thus far indicates that power is very important to men.)

I often get the vague impression that older men in particular want to think I'm at least a little stupid. And I wonder if that isn't because if I'm cute and younger and smart it's just going to piss them off. I'm thinking, for example, of a co-worker with whom I share undeniable mutual fondness (and respect, or so I thought) who, in venting about his job stress, once remarked that it must be nice to, as receptionist, "just sit there and look pretty."


IT'S EASY FOR heteros of both genders to team up against one another. Like Frenchy telling Sandy that men are amoebas on fleas on rats, or Rowlf singing to Kermit that you can neither live with nor without 'em. The generalized group wielding the power to hurt you makes a ready target. (Man, I guess that's one more way it's a challenge to be gay. Who do you scapegoat?)

I'll say it plain: I've had a lot of men treat me like shit. Enough to make me wonder if there isn't something about me that turns otherwise decent guys into hole-in-wall-punching, insult-yelling, heart-breaking assholes. Not a pleasant thing to wonder.

Surely there are many reasons for this, many of those to do with my own many faults (not least among those many, the fact I think it's my fault [thanks, Dad!]) and just as surely I am one of many, many women to wonder approximately the same thing. (Just for the hell of it, here's that word one more time: many.)

But to unabashedly side with my own sex for a moment...All too often when men treat us this way, it is, once again, a bid for power in a situation in which they find themselves lacking it. When, in addition to a body and a mind that attract them, you possess various skills (kitchen, bedroom, couch, &tc.) that would make them want to stick around...Well, that is power indeed. And it may piss them off. And make them want to cut you down to size by hook or crook--by objectification, by possessiveness, by cultivating dependence, by infidelity, or simply by rejecting you before you ever get the chance.

But ladies, if we're being honest with ourselves we will admit it goes both ways. That a man who attracts us also scares us. And our fear may become self-fulfilling.

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On Hotness

I WAS running the other day, wearing a wifebeater and Old Navy knockoffs of Lululemon capris, soaked in unearned perspiration. And this Orthodox Jewgirl is walking toward me. (Her Orthodox Jewgirl status was made conveniently evident by both her attire and the fact that she was heading right for a synagogue.) As she got closer, I realized that not only was she averting her gaze from the impurity that was sweaty, meagerly-clothed Me, she was actually shielding her eyes with her hand! Lest the sin corrupt her holy soul.
It didn't help my case in the courtroom of my self-loathing mind that I was, at that moment, listening to Pitbull, he who says things like:

I party like a rockstar
Look like a movie star
Play like an all-star
Fuck like a porn star


IN RECENT YEARS I have tried to trod a path of embracing whatever personal hotness I may possess, having prior pursued a path of sweats and misery. And shouldn't it be thus? For surely the world is better when we're all doing our best selves. In looks, and all things.

The danger of course is that hotness suggests a dearth of other qualities. It somehow signals that one cannot be, for example, serious or tender-hearted. This is true for women, especially. I'd venture to say, too, that to look good in a certain way--non-dainty, and without Tina Fey glasses--is particularly damning. Genetic fate decreed the variety of attractiveness available to me to be (in Mad Men terms) less pretty Peggy, more jiggly Joan. With implications.

Hotness also connotes invincibility. Which can be a useful trick.





I HOPE I sound smart, and that if I sound smart you won't suppose I look bad. And I further hope that if you believe I look good, after a jiggly fashion, you won't disbelieve me a decent person.

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I Am Photosynthetic

I shrink and languish when the days are short. Unfurl before the sun's rays like a large-leafed plant extra open on a hot day. I thrive in the desert. When I lived under dim Northeastern light I was miserable. I figured it out: I'm photosynthetic.

Think about it. You might be too.

I totally fall for the notion of a healthy tan. I don't want to be a leathery old broad, but I find it hard to fear the *sun's damaging rays* of the Coppertone propaganda. Maybe the stereotypes linking darker skin to the possession of more soul predate James Brown. Maybe the soul is photosynthetic.

Good then that the longest days are here and I'm set for a beach week some four hundred miles closer to the equator. Photovoltaic cells ready. Chik-chik-chik-aaah.

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On Turning Thirty

Saturday I turn thirty, and my pose is 'not approaching it with dread'. That's my little contrarian streak showing, because you're supposed to approach it with dread.

Anyone over thirty will tell me I'm still young, and I buy that. If I can hope to live long, and if I value my older years rather than expecting diminishing returns from them, then I am indeed young at thirty. I feel pretty old to be young. Thirty years is a hell of a long time, just objectively. To get to live that long and still be technically young is a pretty neat trick. I know a few things by now, and I have some road ahead to apply them.

But when I turn fifty, I don't want to hear some bullshit about how I'm still young. I won't be--and what's wrong with that? What's wrong with being, in my thirties, at what Updike called "the midpoint," in full bloom rather than just a rosy bud full of potential? Most people seem to prefer bud status. Maybe it's scary to be smack in the middle of life. Easier to dream on what we might be in the future than admit the future has arrived. But unambiguous adulthood could be a good thing. No more school and throat-clearing. Now I play for keeps.

I started thinking of myself as 'about thirty' when I was twenty-eight and a half. That was my attempt to avoid surprise, one of three major factors behind Decade Dread. (Followed by fear of mortality and life dissatisfaction. This according to my research. My research was inferential, meaning I didn't look any stuff up; I just thought real hard.)

The Precor at Gold's thinks I've been thirty for quite some time. (And bless that Precor for being as forthright about these matters as humans wish we could be.) In the leadup, I have wanted to remind myself of both the youthful qualities I want to keep and the mature qualities I wish to own.

Old enough and young enough. I thought surely the overlap could be positive, not just some nightmare of confluent wrinkles and pimples. So I have made myself hunker down hard on my big writing project. (Mature and serious.) And I made myself learn, in full, the dance to "Single Ladies." (Fun and flippant.) Apparently project creation and execution is my approach to life. And I know that about myself because, hey, I'm thirty.

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Siren Song of the Virtue Princess

There is a certain sort of person, inevitably female, who makes me feel bad about myself. A selfless, correct sort of person, who has no car and does social work and exercises outdoors. (The exercise is only for health because the virtue princess cares not for silly things. Be she hot, it is purely accidental.)

Virtue princess candidates, if you're reading: wait! I may sound resentful, but my resentment is borne of the highest admiration!

If only I could admire the virtue princess from afar, without being lured into her sensible shopping habits and prediliction for lentils. We should cheer on the virtue princess, thank her for educating our underprivileged youth and working at our shitty nonprofits and volunteering in third world villages. Thanks for doing all those hard things I'm not doing! Glad that's taken care of! But guilt can instead goad us lesser souls into mocking the virtuous. How naive they are, world-saving goals doomed, &c.

I'll grant that the virtue princess doesn't quite exist. She's more of a mythic creature, an amalgam of perfectly selfless traits.

Some real asshole, someone who throws away cans, might even think I am a virtue princess, to the meager extent that I waste money on organic food and like animals.

But I push back on virtuous tendencies. Because dammit I want to listen to rap and buy the fancy jeans. (Oh, I forgot to mention that the virtue princess listens to non-sexist vaggie music and wears amorphous mom jeans.)

Maybe some people, those who approach virtue princessness, just are that good. If I say "good for them," it sounds snarkerrific, but I mean it for real.

And if it's my nature to be a little bit bad, I can at least try to relish my sins.

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Sweet E!, I Pine for You

I have accidentally and only semi-willingly become a participant in a locavore experiment. The experiment does not involve local food, but it does require adherence to rules of virtue and eschewal of trashy modern pleasures and is therefore in the potentially obnoxious, self-righteous mold of a locavore experiment.

I face: no cable all summer.

This was the idea of my virtuous and budget-minded (euphemism alert) boyfriend, who doesn't watch nearly as much cable as I do. I like CNN with lunch and MSNBC in the evenings and E! and more E!! and more E!!! on the weekend nights, when the liquor ads suggest that cooler people are out partying. With my boyfriend.

Okay, he's not partying. He's out winning bread for me and the kitties. Djing. Saturday he had a particularly utilitarian gig, one at which he was forced--by a coercive requester--to play "What Is Love." You know, Baby don't hurt me/Don't hurt me/No more. He was looking for a paper bag to put on his head.

My fate was worse: an evening home alone. Normally, when he's djing and I can't come, I hang out with Joel McHale and the Kardassians and those sad clown Playboy bunnies (or, if I start to feel E!-icky, the Whiskers family).

Dear reader, it was terrifying.

I began in the network region of the dial, thinking surely those channels exist for a reason. But their raison d'être appeared to be crappy reruns. Technically I could have watched SNL, but they were rerunning the George Carlin-hosted debut and I didn't want to be home alone late at night crying; I was rather fond of George Carlin.

My next turn of logic: if I enjoy E!, a whole channel based on titillating entertainment news, maybe I should try the working man's E! I sat through a tedious half-hour about Barbara Walters' memoir on Entertainment Tonight and decided it was made for old people, but palatable nonetheless. So I doubled down and went for TMZ.

That was a mistake. Apparently I like my celebrity gossip cut with the baking soda of irony. I couldn't take the straight stuff. The rest of the night I watched nature shows on PBS, just to scrub clean. Did you know there's a cute little critter in Patagonia that's like a mix of a hamster and a deer? Did you know Patagonia isn't just a type of fleece vest? (Actually I did know that last, I'm just being cute and self-deprecating.)

I suppose if I do this every weekend all summer, I'll be purer and more adequately disturbed about global warming. And imagine all the charming species I won't know about if I watch E! instead.

I don't know, 'Keteers. Can I do this? Do I want to?

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Why I Keep Up

I KNOW it's counterintuitive: Keeping Up With the Kardashians is good for my self-esteem.

The Kardashians bump is remarkably reliable. I watch the show, wondering how anyone could be so flagrantly incestuous, wondering what draws me to such trash, wondering when it will end already, and walk away thinking half an hour is squandered.

Not so! After a certain incubation period, generally between one and three hours, I feel better about myself. This is partly due to what I call the Girls Next Door Effect, the comforting realization that people living ostensibly glamorous lives are bigger losers than oneself.

But the other part has to do with a circuitous logic that seeps into my subconscious during the one- to three-hour incubation period. To wit: this is a show on television, actually a quite popular one, and there are various hazy reasons one could proffer for the show's existence--the family is vaguely famous, hot, rich, glamorous--but these are merely derivative. The kernel is the Kard.ass.ian badonkadonk. And, of course, specifically, that of Kim. This has to be the grandest celebration of the tuchus the world has yet seen.









Thank you, Kim's butt.
(Kim's butt: "You're welcome, Kleb Kardassian.")
Once this realization seeps in, I can expect to see myself in the mirror differently for up to a week. Why, I'm no chubalub, I'm Kim without the tatas and the nose job! Serious booty is always served with a side of cellulite, as Khloe helpfully explained to the camera in the calendar-for-Reggie ep.

It wasn't always this way. When I was wee, my mother warned that I stood to inherit the dread Miller butt. (Which only became farcical when I grew up to pack far more back than any Miller.) Mum came of age under the reign of Big Tits, Tiny Ass and has never had a Mixalot awakening.


THE RECENT Kardashians highlights special "Junk in the Trunk" really encapsulated the concept. The featured highlight? A how-is-this-on-tv shot of Kim trying to stuff her big back cheeks into little jeans, a muffin top of nekkid butt meat attesting to her failure. I have since been informed that this is a common porn trope.

Imagine my shock. Because, how many times have I faced just such a vision (albeit, with skivvies) in a dressing room mirror and fled the store drowning in a pool of shame?

Never again.

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Lululemon Bag, Don't Preach

When a lululemon athletica opened on College Avenue, I judiciously planned to avoid it. Because, frankly, I don't approve. Three-packs of wifebeaters from SuperLongs make fine workout wear. But before long, I caved. Snuck in and bought the $80 Boogie Pant.

It turned out to be a sound investment. When my pain is bad, demand rises for pants that won't pinch but won't make me hate myself either. (That would be in contrast with jeans on the first hand and sweats on the second.) The so-called Boogie Pant is cute, too: superb butt containment.

The problem is the bag. The store supplies, with purchase, a real bag--something you can bring to the gym to match your new clothes and give them free advertising. I couldn't chuck such a sensible bag.




Which means I must encounter this bag daily--and face a barrage of unsolicited lululemon advice. Do one thing a day that scares you, the bag challenges when I wake up in a grim mood. Stress is related to 99% of all illness, the bag chides when my back is fucked the fuck up, causing my stress level to skyrocket. Friends are more important than money, the bag thoughtfully reminds me, and I suddenly feel lacking in both.

Who authorized this dispensation of life lessons from an athletic wear bag? One that was thrust upon me, that I didn't even have the free will to choose to acquire? And who is writing these gems? Do they employ a wisdom board, full of gurus and health experts? Or is it just some schmuck in corporate who thinks I should visualize my "eventual demise" and not trust that a pension will carry me through old age?

lululemon: The world is changing at such a rapid rate that waiting to implement changes will leave you two steps behind. DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW!

Cleb: AAAaaaaahhhh!!!

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Vay Iz Mir

You've probably heard someone say Oy vay, or, if you're fortunate, Oy vay iz mir, which usually comes out as Oyvayzmir.

Vay is Yiddish for pain. Oy vay iz mir translates to Oh, pain is to me.

Which captures my feelings at present. When I chose my own adventure back here, I bet poorly, and lost. My disc is back out, pressuring my nerve. Or so I picture it. I don't really know what's happening back there, and it doesn't quite matter. (I also like to imagine a friendly giant holding me upside down, letting the pain slowly drain back from my ankle to my spine.)

Have I been to The Doctor? Yes, many doctors, many years ago. Now I can't afford health insurance, what with my pre-existing condition. But I don't wish I could go to The Doctor. Sure, it would be nice if I had someone with whom to consult, someone to help. But doctors had little to offer me, and so it is for many people with serious back problems. So, you stretch, you swim, you ergonomize; you develop your own system.

What happened? Nothing. And that's the stupidest part. All I did was have a part-time job, sit up five afternoons a week. And those few extra mornings.

Of course one doesn't want to be dreary, especially one like me who wants people to read her blog. And I am rather masterful at anticipation. So I can, sometimes, know how happy I'll be when it's better. When I am able to walk around Lake Merritt, when I get to hear "Superstar" in the club, when I can putter carelessly in the garden, it's gonna be sweet.

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On Passing Black Men in the Street

DURING The Speech, Barack Obama talked about the shades of racism he saw in his beloved white grandma when she admitted sometimes fearing black men who passed her on the street. He also described this in Dreams from My Father; it was a troubling moment for young Obama. Revisiting the matter in a radio interview last week, Obama gaffically referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person." (But I'm sure we're gonna let that go, seeing as Obama is himself white, if atypically. No? We're offended? Okay. Wow, and we act like black people are touchy.)

I've been pondering this issue, as a white woman avec bootay. Maybe white women sans bootay have a different relationship to black men on the street, maybe they don't; unless I get a sudden case of Amy Winehouse, I'll never know.

I've remarked previously on the abundance of street harassment my bootay has garnered, almost always from black men, and on the racial disquiet I've felt as a result. After Obama's comments, I've been full of shame. Because, have I feared black men on the street?


BACK IN Brooklyn, I lived in a neighborhood called Boerum Hill, which is now "cool" but was then awkward. The projects were two blocks one way, becoming-bougie Smith Street was two blocks another way. (My community garden was in a third direction, so I mostly walked there.) In retrospect, racial tensions were quietly boiling. New York is like that.

It was never a case of looking good and getting hit on. In fact, I tried to remedy the situation by looking bad. But the more busted and miserable I looked, the rattier my sweatpants, the more I seemed to get it. These guys weren't talking to me. They were talking about me, often amongst themselves, like I was an involuntary stripper on an invisible stage. The things they said were caustic and obscene, and I started to respond in kind.

Which was why I became a racial profiler: I tried to know when harassers were on the approach so I'd be steeled to "snap back and have the last laugh." (Would that it were as fun as it sounds.) On one occasion, three twentysomething black guys, all with gold fronts, started saying shit to me while I was walking home on Dean Street, my street. They kept staring as I walked by, and I tossed off a "fuck you." Which made them very unhappy. I suddenly realized that I was on a deserted street and had just pissed off three of the most thugged-out dudes I'd ever seen. I was scared.


OBAMA actually recounts a similar story in Dreams:

That night, well past midnight, a car pulls up in front of my apartment building carrying a troop of teenage boys and a set of stereo speakers so loud that the floor of my apartment begins to shake. [Normally, he'd let it go, easygoing guy that he is, but, thinking of his sleepover guest (?!) and his neighbors' newborn, he goes out and asks the guys to move along.]

The wind wipes away my drowsiness and I feel suddenly exposed...I can't see the faces inside the car; it's too dark to know how old they are, whether they're sober or drunk, good boys or bad...I start picturing myself through the eyes of these boys, a figure of random authority, and know the calculations they might now be making, that if one of them can't take me out, the four of them certainly can."

[Finally,] the engine starts, and the car screeches away. I turn back toward my apartment, knowing that I've been both stupid and lucky, knowing that I am afraid after all.

I mention this not to suggest that my own fears or prejudices are mitigated by Obama's, but because the story--especially his complete telling of it (pp. 269-271)--shows how complex and vexing these questions are.


MY harassment experiences seriously affected my quality of life in New York. They cast me in a uncomfortable relationship with my body, and with black men as well. It was a sad state of affairs. What with the ugly, old stereotype of black man as sexual threat to white womanhood, nothing could have made me feel more racist than my harassment-anticipation game. And I can't help but wonder whether some of those guys sensed my anticipatory dread, felt angry that I seemed afraid of them, and on some subconscious level chose to make my apparent fear self-fulfilling.

At least I can say I don't play that anymore. I now live in Oakland, where there's a little more, you know, integration. I do get harassed sometimes, but it occurs to me that something else often happens instead: compliments. I get flirted on rather than accosted with obscenities. Several gentlemen of African American descent have specifically liked my boots with the fur. Thank you kindly, sirs.

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Ceding Telegraph

WE were strolling down Telegraph Avenue, popping into Amoeba and Rasputin and all the little hipster shoe stores and tattoo joints. Each place had a nook that I would have otherwise ignored where stacks of high-gloss fliers sat, neatly or messily, depending. They advertised events at Shattuck Down Low or Luka's or clubs in the city. Brian added a stack of his Influence fliers to each collection.

The walk was so familiar (Dwight...Haste...Channing...Durant) but something felt off-kilter. And it wasn't just my "It's Spring!" outfit of denial, which was leaving my toes cold.

I used to own this street. A decade ago, I would pound my way to class to the beat of Drummer Larry, and if my hips were swaying, well I just couldn't help it. Shades on, hair bouncing: I was on my own and on my way. I'd trade smiles with the guy selling Rasta hats and grab coffee at C'est Cafe and take a mercy "Dollar Off at Amoeba" card from that lanky dude who looked like an Addams family cousin. I dined at Mario's La Fiesta and the old Pasta Pomodoro. I treated myself to custom-scented lotions at the OG Body Time. I even enjoyed my quiet irritation with the old hippies hawking bumper stickers and tie-dye onesies.

There are plenty of eulogies for Telegraph these days, after Cody's, but they mourn a place I never knew, a memory that the gray-ponytailed street salesmen render into nostalgic tourist wares. On that mythical street, students in berets and bell bottoms debated anti-war strategy in cafes and pored over philosophy books in Cody's and threw molotov cocktails at campus police.

My Telegraph, with all its thumping vibrancy and Tupac shirts, was a disappointment to sixties Berkeleyans. A sad hangover.


AS I walked down the street last weekend with my latte and my inappropriate sandals, I realized that I was an old lady. Everywhere I looked was a new breed of Telegraph rat. Punky girls in black skinny jeans and preppier girls in leggings shimmied along with effortless sass. A tribe of gay black teenagers dodged in and out of the sneaker stores alongside us, one guy sporting a big gold handbag. A table of students in Peet's argued over a brain teaser in adorably pompous tones. An Asian guy walked hand-in-hand with a white girl, white guys flirted with black girls. There were lots of those Bay Area kids whose ethnicity is so delightfully indistinguishable.

I had just read that morning's Frank Rich Times column, so I knew what I was looking at: millennials. The smoke shop and the Wet Seal and the slick new ATMs--all crawling with millennials.

"The so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included," Rich explains. He adds that "roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign."

Most interesting.


OF COURSE one's initial instinct in revisiting an old haunt or alma mater is to poo-poo the new population and lament the ruin they've brought to the place that was so perfect. That inner grump saw my funky Telegraph replaced by a teen shopping Disneyland, scrubbed of seriousness and homeless people, just as the boomers before me saw their lefty mecca overrun with apathy and street punks.

But if there's one thing I hate it's being hated on by baby boomers. So I wasn't about to do my successors like that. When I set adrift my feelings of being a dork and belonging to a bygone era, and opened my eyes a bit more, I liked what I saw.

These millennials, they're very charming. It appeals to me the idea that each new generation will make progress, that my children will evolve beyond my limits. Millennials have something going for them in that respect: a personal swagger, an open-mindedness, fewer hangups about race and gender and sexual orientation. And of course they are great followers of Obama: supporters, but also heirs.

Maybe it was nothing more than a big gold purse confidently tossed over the shoulder of a black teenage boy that won me over. That's doing sixties Telegraph proud.


SO, no back-in-my-day grumbling from me: I'm ceding Telegraph to the millennials. It's as it should be. My thirtyish brethren and I can hit up the Lakeshore Farmer's Market and go to the clubs on the fliers. Telegraph is theirs now. I'll trust millennials to do their thing, and watch with curiosity.

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My Fascination With Hip Hop -OR- If Black People Eat Bagels, Does That Make It Okay?

Last night, at the Bay Area Record Rockers party The Influence, my friend Matt asked me if I'm into hip hop, or if that's just Crim. I muttered something half-assed about how if he hangs around the American Coot long enough, he'll probably start bird-watching.

But it occurs to me that I've been asking myself the same question.

To wit: if I blast KMEL every time I get in the car, if I catch myself in otherwise casual conversation unleashing diatribes about the phony high-mindedness of Kanye West, if I can recite every word of not just "Bust a Move" and "Baby Got Back," but the double-time Biggie verse on "Notorious Thugs"...

Am I a big hip hop fan?

I try to be a good white girl and listen to rock, but it's really fucking hard. At the peak of my efforts, in high school, I officially listened to just rock, with, like, the requisite Beastie Boys and Bob Marley extras. Only alone in the car did I sneak down the dial to Power 106, where hip hop lives. I didn't even want to program it! Fortunately, at 105.9, it was just four button pushes down--beep-beep-beep-beep--from 106.7 KROQ.

I wasn't always such a little conformist. Earlier I had treasured my cassingles of "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around," beginning my lifelong study of the ambiguities of Tupac. (He loves women! He hates women! Loves! Hates! Loves! Hates!)

I also tired out my tape of The Chronic, and could spit every nasty, skeezy verse of "Nuthin But A G Thang" by age thirteen. (All you parents, take note: I turned out fine.)

Hell, I was a SoCal kid in the Golden Age of LA rap.

Then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam and four years wandering the desert. By college, I had amassed a collection of what I now know to be exactly the kind of hip hop white college kids listen to: Beastie Boys, Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest, more Beastie Boys, Fugees. Nowadays, I suppose that list would be supplanted by Kanye and more Kanye.

Of course it was Crimmie who sealed my fate. Nine years of living with him and his thousands of hip hop records. I usually credit him with getting me to like all this stuff, thus abdicating responsibility. But I wonder if he gave me my affinity for hip hop or if my affinity for hip hop helped feed my affinity for him. He did, after all, woo me by meowing "Push It" by Salt-n-Pepa. (Granted, he has other charms too.)

And cohabiting with those records sure has worn me down. It's not just Snoop, Dre and Pac anymore. I probably couldn't stay in this relationship if I didn't revere Nas. And then there are my secret affairs with Shock G and The Game. Plus I love any beats by Dr. Dre or Timbaland, and probably the Neptunes, too, and anything with either Akon or Nate Dogg singing the hook, and any early 90s LA song with high-pitch synth. Anything by Outkast, whatever the hell Andre 3000 is wearing. All the Bay rappers, especially Keak da Sneak. I've even had to disavow my stated dislike for Wu Tang. So come on in Ghostface and Method Man, RZA, GZA, ODB and all those other ones I can't distinguish. Group hug.

Ever since those days in the closet, the problem has been the same. I don't feel like I should love hip hop. Because it doesn't feel like it should be mine. At my high school, there were plenty of non-white people ready, willing and able to listen to Power 106. I think I felt it was my duty as a white person not to crowd the ranks.

And there are serious questions of cultural appropriation here. Just think the word "wigger." Shudder.

On the other hand...

Black people eat bagels.

Check out the Lakeshore Noah's if you doubt me. So, if black people eat bagels, does that make it okay?

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Fast Times at John W. North High

Of all the people from the John W. North High School Class of '97 stupid enough to plunk down $75 for a reunion, apparently I'm the one who HAS CHANGED THE LEAST. By crowd reaction vote, no less.

Oh sure, I might have pleaded, But, but...what of my crippling back problem and battle back to health? My gain and subsequent loss of some forty pounds? My dripping-with-drama severance from my dictatorial dad? It would have been no use.

I figure if anyone wants to tell me I still seem eighteen, hell, I'll take it. And despite my grumbling about how I had! changed, in point of fact I enjoyed feeling popular and pretending I was following the classic high school reunion narrative of triumphant return.




[In despair with my "I Changed The Least" button.]

But that narrative really requires one to have been a big nerd in high school and I was not. I fought my way hard out of nerddom, disappointing the old dadctator, who desperately wanted me on Academic Decathlon.

There was a huge contingency of unreconstructed nerds at the reunion. And I'll kill a sacred cow here and say that they annoyed me. These may have been the pitiable and picked-on in high school, but they're now full adults with intellectual superiority complexes and no social skills.

Oh, how they disdained the superficialities of the once-popular with their hair and their make-up and their ability to dance. As if the nerd patrol alums don't cling to their own petty shit: techie job titles and enforced-frump outfits and gadgets bought with their new money. Awkward and antisocial just doesn't age well. That classic high school reunion narrative is really about growing out of it.

My friend Shaun was pretty much a nerd when I met him in fifth grade, but that didn't stop me having a fat crush on him. (He responded by throwing rubber balls at me and my sister and shouting, "Big butts! Big butts!") We stayed friends through high school, commiserating over our five hours of nightly homework. And he was the person I most wanted to see at our reunion, because, unlike those unreconstructed nerds, Shaun is a good swan story.

Right around the time I had my back problem, Shaun suffered a medical crisis that left him essentially blind in one eye. I didn't know it then, but he was also struggling with his identity.

The once skinny, slumping salutatorian showed up to the reunion a proud gay man in Diesel jeans, standing his full six feet five inches. He lives in West Hollywood (even!) and has been with his boyfriend for five years now. (Which he says = 30 monogamous gay man years.) And best of all, both our boyfriends are maniacal reef aquarists, which means we'll all have to get together so they can do tank talk.

It's been a tough decade for the Clebster, and it meant a lot to reconnect with an old friend after we've both come such a long way. It also meant a lot when we hit the dance floor and he said I seemed the happiest he's ever seen me. He's known me for eighteen years.




[Sorry ladies, he's gay.]

Lest I get too weepy, though, one more bit of commentary. After my reunion, Bri said my relatively healthy understanding of race made sense. Riverside is a real middle class haven. People who don't have a lot of money move there from LA and Orange County to buy a tract house and nab a slice of American dream pie. The second generation Riversidians are mostly black and Latino (okay, Mexican) and many are upwardly mobile.

Virtually all of the black North alums at the reunion were doctors, lawyers or on their way there. Of course reunions skew to holders of i-Phones, but still. At my high school there was no racial majority and it just wasn't such a thing that white people were richer and black and Mexican people were poorer. Not utopia by a long shot, but not as segregated as New York or, sad to say because I love it so, Oakland.



[Riverside. Not giving a fuck about race since 1992. Or thereabouts.]

When it was time to drive back up to the Bay, Brian unwittingly gave me a poem:

Take the 60
To the 15
To the 10
To the 210
To the 5

We're both native SoCalians, and when we talk freeways down south, the definite articles kick back in. (Nobody in the Bay says the 580.) I made him repeat it a few times, and not just because it's been a while since I've driven out of the Inland Empire.

It sounded like home.

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Thirtynothing

I'm turning thirty. What's that? Aren't I six months shy yet of twenty-nine? Oh sure.

But have you ever noticed how shocked and unprepared people are when they hit decades? Ten is fine. (Double-digits!) Twenty is yippee, I'm an adult. After that, decade birthdays are all too often taken as crushing reminders of failed hopes and mortality.

But isn't the real problem that these birthdays take people by surprise? ("Shit! I'm forty! I sort of vaguely thought I was still in my twenties.") This is very startling, and engenders feelings of panic. ("Jesus, I need to get my shit together.") So I'm getting ready for the big three-oh starting toDAY. 542 days should be enough for me to come to grips with everything I haven't accomplished, and maybe accomplish some of it on the side.

So here I sit, almost thirty and acutely aware of it. You may be almost thirty, too. Or possibly almost forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty. (If so, thanks for reading a kid's ramblings!) So I beseech you, start freaking out about it now. In fact, I'm going to start anticipating fifty now, too. It's like saving for retirement, easier if you start young.

I'd like to start anticipating eighty, but that's a bit of an optimistic presumption. Then again, if I start anticipating eighty now, surely I couldn't feel anything but lucky to make it there.

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You Can Do Sidebends or Situps

“You might be in danger of losing your butt.”

Whoa. I’ve been on a bit of a buff-bridesmaid fitness kick lately, but the possibility Brian now proposes had never crossed my mind.

Buttie and I go back a long way. She burst onto the scene at John W. North High School in ’94, provoking giggles from the guys in my French class when I was called to the blackboard. (Confused about what was so fucking funny, I frantically erased and rewrote my French verbs several times.) Later the same semester, Buttie was grabbed on the stairs en route to the same French class. The perpetrator was a cute senior, a football player and—it merits mention, because butts are racial—black. I was a white freshman aspiring to coolness and, though taken aback, supposed it was a compliment.

Buttie snagged me a man in college. Oh sure, Brian’s probably stuck it out the greater part of a decade thanks to my good character, but it was Buttie that caught his eye in the dining hall of Berkeley’s Clark Kerr dormitory.

So it's worrisome to hear him now, saying, "I just don't want you to be on the J. Lo track." Apparently J. Lo has lost her butt. I hadn't noticed. But then, maybe she was ready to pass that butt torch to Jessica Biel. I can sympathize.

It was when I moved to New York after college that Buttie really started to seem like a liability. I could barely turn a corner in Brooklyn without hearing, "DAMN, where'd you get all that ass from?" One day I was harassed ten times just walking the few blocks to and from my apartment and the Hoyt/Schermerhorn A stop.

Not only did I become terribly self-conscious, I turned into a racial profiler. (I'm not going to dance around the truth here: almost all the guys who harassed me were black. No less an authority than Mixalot himself notes that "the average black man" will surely take an interest if you "pack much back".) I realized how bad the situation had become when I registered a youngish black guy approaching from a side street, and then felt great relief when I noticed he was carrying a coffee--placing him solidly outside the hindquarter harasser demographic.

These days, it's not so bad. I hear it now and then in the Bay. When we were at Hip Hop in the Park last month, I was too busy admiring a ten foot cardoon plant to notice a rapper freestyling for a camera nearby. Brian had to break it to me that Buttie had entered the guy's flow, calling up all the old ambivalences.

I don't think Brian has any reason to worry. Buttie is tenacious, and I'm really not the athletic type. Anyway, I suspect I could be a Nicole Richie stick figure and still have a badonkadonk. I checked in the mirror this morning and she there she was, undiminished.

Even if I could, would I banish Buttie?

Nah. She is me.

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A Little Ten Plaguesy

Sorry for my absence, Clebketeers, but it was a little Ten Plaguesy around Clebilicious way last week. Food poisoning. Kitty surgery. Shell-less eggs. Disappearance of free cable. (Feel free to pour a drop of wine for each plague, lessening your own cup of joy in recognition of my suffering. Or pour for homies lost--interesting how similar are the two customs.)

Anyway, expect intriguing new posts soon. Will they be about Hennessey and Camilla's quest for oranger egg yolks? Or the delicious denouement of Bush's second term? Chickens roosting, either way. Stay tuned.

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