Peek-A-Boo

This week I saw a 20/20 piece on upskirting and video-voyeurism. Please don't think me naïve, I have known about this for a long time, but a store's surveillance video of a lanky blond man pointing his cameraphone up a teenager's miniskirt just stuck with me.

I can't stop thinking about how much I wish I were that teenager so I could stomp on his hand—grind his metacarpals and phalanges to powder with the heel of my shoe. Past experience has taught me that very few people suspect that my first and strongest instinct is violent. Even the surveillance video of me doing it would not convince anyone to punish such a bland young woman.

On the other hand, I'm afraid that despite my hyperalertness, somewhere on the Internet is a photo of the shadow under my skirt.

This is why I'm more wary of suburban white men that of Latino gangsters. Gangsters attack when provoked, but perverts get off on the innocence of their victims. That means that I can control whether I am attacked by a gangster; I cannot control whether I'm the target of a pervert. And yes, I do know that perverts come in all colors, but most of those reported on TV are white, so white men frighten me more at the get-go.

Meditations on my Podiatric Condition

Why do I insist on wearing heels without socks to walk a mile uphill and a mile down? Do I hide secret masochistic tendencies deep within myself? Do bleeding feet fulfill me? Do I need to hobble?

Tri-Trist

Somehow I have entangled myself in a flirt-triangle. Usually I am so careful to avoid polygadate situations—moving on if too many women are competing for the same man's attention. Yet every day, there I am, tossing my hair when she touches his arm, laughing at his joke not because it was funny but because she didn't hear it, and mentally scratching her eyes out while we chat pleasantly.
With seven billion people in the world, I'm sure more than one of them has to be a straight male of an appropriate age who's good-looking, smart, interesting, and God-fearing. So why can't I give this one up when I'm making a fool of myself?

Ice Queen

My own subhumanity still manages to amaze me.

This evening, while trudging to the grocery store after nine long hours of work and classes, I saw a sobbing four-year-old boy walking right towards the road with no parents in sight. I started after him, but then hesitated, thinking of the contact solution I had to buy and the mile I had to walk home. I waited for someone more responsible to take charge. I waited for God to give me a sign.

Then I realized I was the only person who even noticed this kid. I knew what God wanted me to do. If I didn't stand in the road with my arms out, the next person to notice the child would be the driver who ran over him. Grudgingly, I followed the kid, asking for his name and where he was going, but receiving no response. Who would respond to someone as intimidating and hostile as I?

Another, better woman, a motherly woman who compliments everyone and stays up late because her friends need to talk and fixes her hair every day so no one will be assulted by her horrifying visage, would have turned that kid right around, he melting like putty into her warm, cinnamon-scented arms, and marched him back into the store. I am not one of those women. Not only am I not sure I'm a woman, I'm not really sure I'm human. It took me four blocks of following this kid and halting the cars he wandered in front of to get him to stop. Even then, I was cold and businesslike as I called 9-1-1.

I just wanted contact solution. I just wanted to go home to the bed I had left 12 hours before. I just wanted someone older and kinder and more kid-friendly to swoop in and save the day. But no one came (except the police). Today I'm not sure I like being on my own: I need someone caring to save me from freezing to death.

I guess I can do the right thing and still be wrong inside.

So, this two-job thing…

I have to say I'm not really a fan. Nor do I like scrounging dollar bills from the pockets of my laundry to deposit in the bank so I don't bounce a check. That's not very fun either.

However, I'm still pretty sure I love being grown-up.

Indie Musicians Voice Our Wordless Feelings

Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania.
—The Mountain Goats, "International Small Arms Traffic Blues"

Grace

Hold Thou, Greatest Thou,
Highest King,
Heavenly Father,
Father of my spirit,
Creator of my soul!

Thou who beholdst the infinite possibilities
of every fragile human life
spread tangling and gleaming before Him in the sky,
Hold Thou! That I might hold Thee,
for I am weak and bemused.

So mightily doth Thy Presence,
a Still, Small, Rushing of Great Waters
fill me,
and so quickly doth my feeble mind
let Living Water drain away.

O, that I might remember the Sun's brilliant warmth
when night cometh,
than worship the moon in His place!
O, that I might patch up every tear
in the fibers of my being,
and endure an endless epiphany!

Even in this, my weakness,
Thou giv'st me strength.
Even when I neglect Thee
and set Thee at naught,
Thou walkest beside me.

In a thousand thousand millennia,
I can never repay Thee for
these twenty years in which Thou,
with Thy Supreme Knowledge of
my destinies, guided my faltering stride.