Eat the Damn Cake

Clementines.

Don’t they look irresistible, piled in that slatted wooden box? It makes you think absurd things like, “I could totally eat a box of clementines. What is that, like, fifty of them? Whatevs. Bring it.”

I think I had that exact thought. But I have always, always disliked that song “Oh my darlin’ Clementine.”

I like the future. It is awesome. And not just because it will definitely contain flying bullet-shaped silver cars with snack bars that restock themselves automatically. But because it can contain anything. It’s full of second chances. And third chances. And a gazillion more chances. You might get it wrong today, and then try to get it right for two weeks, and on the 13th day you mess everything up and feel like you’re starting from scratch, but then on the 4th day after that everything might fall into place. Or five years later, everything might fall into place. Isn’t it cool that everything might fall into place?

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The touchpad on my laptop broke. I restarted my computer, which is my solution to all computer problems and some problems that are totally unrelated to computers. Nothing. I restarted it again. No signs of life.

It was worse than the whole thing freezing. I could see all my work laid out in front of me, like a glistening buffet with lox and kipper, but I couldn’t get to any of it, because the cursor wouldn’t move. Stupid arrow.

I restarted it again. Nothing. I yelled wordlessly and kicked something.

My foot hurt.

I had about twenty things I needed to be doing. All of them depended on that little arrow being able to move around.

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My brother got me a frilly apron as a joke for my birthday, and I actually wear it. Well, I cook a lot. And I’m messy. No matter what, ink ends up on my sheets.

I lead religious services, and love doing it, but I don’t believe in God.

I met Bear online, and it was romantic.

I have really short hair and I really want to wear floral print dresses sometimes. I can’t help it. I just want to.

Engaged at 23, after making extensive fun of everyone who got married young, behind their backs. Married at 24, feeling more independent than I ever have before at 25. I just read that women with graduate training have a median marriage age of between 29 and 30. This is the wrong kind of precocious, clearly. Shouldn’t I be Sex and the City single and fabulous? I’m in the city. I have sex in the city. I don’t know if I have sex AND the city. But I think there’s a good chance I do.

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Appreciating what you have is hard. People, as a group, are generally pretty bad at it. They are, however, good at pointing out how ridiculous it is in other people. “He cheated on her?! But she’s a supermodel!! I would NEVER EVER cheat on a woman like that.” We wonder why Paris Hilton is so bored, when she has everything. Why famous people have problems, too. If we didn’t wonder, all those supermarket rags wouldn’t be in business. “Did Jen really lose thirty-five lbs when BF split w/ much younger woman?!” would not be a question we’d care to have answered for us.

If we appreciated what we had, the beauty industries would suffer. Women would stop trying every day to look a little more like someone else. We’d be thinking things like, “See how easily I walked across that room? I’m in such good health. I don’t feel any pain, anywhere right now.” We’d be thinking things like, “It’s so cool that all these people I don’t even know lived long enough to reproduce and their kids lived long enough to reproduce and finally there was me.”

It might become bad for society at the point when we start sitting around staring at our hands in awe going, “It’s so intricate…”

Or maybe that would be good for society. Hard to tell.

Anyway, it’s clear that I could be more appreciative. To start working on that, I decided to take a walk.

I walked alone across the park and through the city with my camera. I made myself focus on details. I thought about how old this place is. How many people have had birthdays here. Have lived out their entire lives. Have changed the world here. Have been in love here. Have struggled and given up and somehow tried again.

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It’s embarrassing. And I don’t even get a fancy red car and a mistress out of it.

My birthday was yesterday (a Sunday made significant for the rest of the city by its unrelenting rain), and now I am officially twenty-five.

Isn’t it strange to be one age one day and then another the next? It doesn’t seem right. I’m pretty willing to give up linear time for one of those Native American models that goes in the shape of a conch shell or whatever. How great would it be to stop marching along day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year? Sometimes I get the sense that we’re all just marching right up to the edge of death and jumping off. Like robot soldiers. And, as are most things that involve robot soldiers, it’s upsetting. (I should admit here that there are plenty of instances in which robot soldiers are more awesome than upsetting. That was unfair of me.)

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OK, I’ve had it. People need to stop ragging on hairy guys. It’s mean. Also, it just doesn’t make sense.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people (and I mean real people, with souls and stuff, not tabloids and anyone who was trying to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president) are pretty careful not to say mean things about women’s appearances. It’s like, “They’ve suffered enough…” There’s this wall of political correctness that has risen around women in polite society. We didn’t even let them into Princeton until like thirty years ago. We should probably apologize. No, no, that’s too awkward. Not when I’m wearing my power suit. Let’s just be nicer to them at dinner parties.

But even at a dinner party, a woman could probably say something about body hair being gross, and it would be fine. People would laugh.

“Body hair.” Even the words sound gross together. It’s like “farting warts.” Or “advanced herpes.” Farting warts? I don’t even know.

Can someone explain to me why a man having hair on his body is supposed to be gross? And then, after that, can that person continue explaining and explain why it’s widely considered a safe assumption that all women agree on this point?

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