ten reasons the brujo blows my mind
Monday 1 October 2007 | 4 cookies in the jar
1. He actually likes my abominable cat. And plays feather with her, and scratches her behind the ears, and picks her up and carries her around the house belly-up so that she (round-eyed and uncomplaining) can see things from a new height and perspective;
2. He willingly reads my course proposal even though it’s for a ridiculous course called Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Fictions. And then when I ignore him for hours obsessing over said course proposal, he a) makes dinner for the two of us, b) does the washing-up afterward, and c) starts reading Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and laughing out loud over it to himself in the bedroom. “It’s satirical,” he divines, “but no one got that because women at that time weren’t supposed to be Jonathan Swift.” My pissed-off undergraduate marginalia entertain him as well: “You so wanted this to be serious feminism, but she’s just fucking around”;
3. He came up with a subtitle for Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Fictions which I can never, ever use, but which leaves me helpless with hilarity every time I think of it: “Do Things Go Better with Cock?”;
4. He understands my desperate need and love for the 50¢ Brazilian strawberry-creme filled cookies;
5. He moved the bulk of the dead branches out of the front yard, swearing at the ants and the tree trimmers and suburbia, and obligingly climbed up into the dumpster to smoosh them down to make room for me to throw in more;
6. He actually seemed to enjoy his goofy birthday presents, not a few of which came from Walgreens (e.g. a fly swatter, because he hates flies in the bedroom at night—you know your Buddhist girlfriend loves you, I informed him solemnly, when she buys you a flyswat), with another major component from Ross Dress for Less;
7. The brilliant blue of which actually exactly matches his eyes, somehow;
8. He lets me give him tech support and tax advice without any visible damage to the fragile male ego;
9. He is satisfactorily jealous of those whom he grumpily calls my “Facebook boyfriends”;
10. When I complain that I have computer-head and can’t sleep, he orders me to turn over and gives me a backrub that begins serenely enough but ends with him head-butting my kidneys, me giggling and the two of us wrestling aimlessly all over the bed, grappling in an exhausted tangle until we somehow are thrown back down into our bodies and without further fanfare pass into unconsciousness.
And these are but ten from today’s hundreds, mind you; and the platonic ones at that; and now I have only a few hours to finish Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Fictions, which I hope hope hope will be chosen from among its competitors, the better to liberate me from a comp section next fall.
4 cookies in the jar
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Isn’t it miraculous that the forms love comes crawling in are as multitudinous as bugs? Even swattable ones? For me, that realization that someone was paying so much attention that he’d spot some couscous salad in Wild Oats and say “This is exactly what you would like!” meant so much more than flowers.
But does the feminist apocalyptic vision include the Parable of the Sower? I swear reading that made me so freaked I considered going like this re-wilding guy — http://www.urbanscout.org/ — sometimes Portland makes me feel so, so conventional, so boring.
Does _The Wanderground_ make your syllabus? I read it in one of Jean’s classes and loved it desperately at the time (I was 19, okay?)…
The Parable of the Sower yes, I *lurve* Olivia Butler; The Wanderground not yet, I never heard of it? If I can get the dang course approved I’ll add in all kinds of craziness, so keep the suggestions coming! (JGo offers the Resident Evil movies, as well as another Marge Piercy I haven’t read….)
oh sure, just dodge the subject of how unrelentingly *great* I am by jumping right back to the syllabus.
Actually, as I’ve already said, a person just does what a person does. What sort of dastardly company have you previously kept?
Herland is hilarious.