Sometimes I decide to take a trip down memory lane and look through our old digital photo albums. Sometimes I come across something I intentionally blotted from my memory. Sometimes I have a little too much red wine and decide to make a blog post about it. This is one of those times.

So, Dom proposed to me a little less than a year ago, although we were living in Kentucky at the time and didn’t want the occasion to be tainted by… well… Kentucky. So, it was a romantic yet spur of the moment, low-key affair. Now that we’ve moved she’s decided to “do it right” and plan out a whole big thing I can’t know anything about. I think it’s sweet that she wants to do it the old fashioned way, getting down on one knee and all that, but even if she didn’t, I’d be perfectly content with our engagement the way it is.

I’m not really an “event” person. In fact, my childhood left me with a very deep rooted hatred/phobia of events, holidays, parties and even lengthier-than-usual shopping trips. But that’s a post for another day. I’m not a big jewelry person, either. For me to wear a piece regularly, it has to be really special and on top of that, I’m extremely picky. So, Dom wisely decided to save herself the headache and let me pick out my ring to order online.

It took me a couple of days, but I found the one I wanted. Pretty, simple and blue with opals instead of diamonds. Call me a hipster, but I hate the idea of someone somewhere in the world dying for a fashion statement. Especially when I can’t even tell the difference between the real thing and the $19.99 Walmart version.

I’d be lying if I said the ring was my first choice, though, or that I picked it out on my own. I’m not ashamed to admit that my first pick was vetoed both by Dom and my best friend. Um. You see, I wanted this:

Take a moment and reapply whatever respect or esteem you may have had for me as a human being to someone more deserving. Finished? Okay.

I know what you’re thinking:
1. It’s $14.99
2. There’s a rainbow in the fake diamond shaped like a heart.
3. Why are there hands?

All valid questions/statements with perfectly valid answers.

1. No, it was on sale for $12 at the time. Does that make it worse? Oh.
2. That makes it, like, 33.3% classier than a normal fake diamond. And also, rainbow stands for gays. Why do you hate the gays so much?
3. To hold the heart-shaped fake rainbow diamond. Obviously.

So, yeah, I basically have no taste but, in my defense, I was still on Vicodin for my wisdom tooth surgery. Lesson learned: Friends don’t let friends pick out engagement rings under the influence of heavy duty painkillers. It will be tacky and you will lose all your respect for them.

So, yeah, that’s the ring that I could have ended up with. Instead, I got this:

I’m not gonna lie. There’s still a little tiny part of me buried deep in my horridly tacky heart that misses that hands giving a rainbow heart a happy ending ring.

Anyway, the ring was a little big so we decided to get it sized down. Before that, though, I went to visit a friend who was moving back home for the Summer. We hung out in her dorm and watched the new BBC Sherlock series on DVD. It was a hall-style dorm, meaning she shared a public bathroom with about 20 other girls and their guests.

I’ll leave out the details, but the ring slipped off my finger and went down the toilet right as it was being flushed. To understand the magnitude of what’s about to happen, you must first understand that I was diagnosed with severe, clinical OCD at age 3. I take medication as prevention against an alphabetized spice rack and germ-induced panic attacks.

In a panic, I reached into the communal toilet and grabbed for the ring. It slipped through my fingers into the watery abyss and I proceeded to power wash my hands for the next ten minutes.

I finally trudged back to my friend’s room in a haze of shame and certain resignation to the fate of toilet AIDS. I didn’t say much. I tried to enjoy Sherlock, knowing it might be the last time I saw it before my newfound disease claimed me. Would they name it after me? Would it be called Lana’s Hand?

I returned home, immediately went into the bathroom, and soaked my hand in rubbing alcohol while I thought of a way to break the news to Dom. Needless to say, when I finally told her, she laughed her ass off.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: So… I flushed my ring down the toilet at Mya’s.
Dom: …wait, you what? *stifled laugh*
Me: I flushed my ring but don’t be mad, I tried to reach in and grab it but it was going too fast!
Dom: You what? YOU reached into a dirty public bathroom to get a ring?
Me: …Yes?
Dom: Oh my God. That’s disgusting. I’m kind of flattered.
Me: I’m glad you find this funny. I’ll just be over here, dying of toilet AIDS.

She was laughing too hard at that point for any real conversation to continue. She finally managed to reassure me that I probably wasn’t going to die of any toilet-related disease, and promised to buy me a new ring before she proposed again. We got a place holder ring in the meantime, but every time I happen to glance down at my left hand, I remember.

Hey, it could have been the Claddagh ring down there. Now that would have been a sight for all the sewer alligators and mutant gold fish. I have a feeling they would’ve built a cult around it or something.

And there you have it. The story of how I flushed my engagement ring down the toilet or, if you prefer, “How to get not one but THREE engagement rings out of your fiancee.” Pay attention, ladies. I might start teaching online workshops.

There’s probably some anti-gay marriage message that could be drawn from all this, but I’ll leave that to Fox and Friends. Instead, here’s another picture of that dead homing pigeon I got Dom to draw for me.

Cracks me up every time.

Source: Ashley Rose on Flickr

DISCLAIMER: The following article contains links with content potentially NSFW.

If you haven’t already heard of the Photoshopped image of a woman’s face plastered on a Facebook group for men who hate women due to their severe mommy issues and lack of overall social skills, read the article here.

I’m not going to post the image here, but you can see it in the article above. A woman’s face is Photoshopped to look badly bruised, cut and swollen with a caption that reads, “Women are like grass, they need to be beaten/cut regularly.” The image was reported for abuse by numerous users, to whom Facebook initially responded that attempts at humor, no matter how offensive, do not violate their TOS.

Just what does it take to violate Facebook’s policies? Well, according to their Community Standards, “We understand that graphic imagery is a regular component of current events, but must balance the needs of a diverse community. Sharing any graphic content for sadistic pleasure is prohibited.”

Uh-huh. So, I guess domestic battery jokes don’t qualify as sadistic pleasure. You know what? I’m in a benevolent mood. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were so excited that the creators of the page managed to spell a big word like “regularly” correctly that they just didn’t have the heart to take the image down.

Source: Cryptic Star on Flickr
“Sure, Billy Bob’s a misogynistic douchebag, but he can spell!! The system works!!”

Facebook eventually apologized for not removing the image at the behest of its users and took it down due to the media firestorm that ensued. This is far from the first time that Facebook has been criticized for its less than even-handed approach to enforcing its TOS and Community Standards. In 2011, the BBC criticized Facebook for allowing the continuation of a Facebook Page so eloquently titled, “You know she’s playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway.” The incident inspired me to do some research into censorship gaffes that Facebook moderators have made in the past. And so, dear readers, I present to you:

7 things Facebook Finds More Offensive than Battered Women and Rape Jokes

1. Breastfeeding women. (WARNING: CONTAINS ACTUAL IMAGE OF WOMAN BREASTFEEDING. GIRD YOUR SOUL FIRST, NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.)

2. Pages ABOUT breastfeeding women.(WARNING: CONTAINS ACTUAL IMAGE OF ANOTHER WOMAN BREASTFEEDING. HOLY CROWS IT’S AN EPIDEMIC!!!!111!1)

3. Groups that talk about pornography without showing any.

4. Bewbs. Because, apparently, the naked female form is degrading and disturbing. Maybe if the woman in the picture had been naked, it would have been taken down sooner.

5. Elbows that kind of look like bewbs. (WARNING: Lascivious elbow action.)

6. Feminists standing up to cyber bully misogynists.

7. Sexy Ukranian feminists.

Come across any more to add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

 

 

 

This is a different type of post from what I usually do, but with Valentine’s not far off I’ve been thinking a lot about how I met Dom and how we got together. Our relationship spans the better part of ten years, which is way too much to condense into one post, so here’s the beginning.

Dom and I get asked how we met quite often, and the answer often depends on how much shame we’re willing to abandon in the moment. This is the first time I think I’ve ever told the 100% honest truth. This newfound forthrightness may be at least partially due to the influence of my evening glass of red wine, but hey,

YOLOSODRORO (YouOnlyLiveOnceSoDrinkResponsibly).

Dom and I are both 22 and we’ve known each other since we’d just turned 13, so that means we’ve been friends just shy of ten years. We didn’t meet “IRL” until we were 18. This should help allay some of the confused looks we get when we explain to people that we met ten years ago. We are not, to my great and eternal sadness, vampires. We are only very nerdy humans who met online when we were very young, nerdy teenagers.

The whole meeting online thing isn’t particularly noteworthy in this day and age. I do think it’s somewhat remarkable that we started a friendship online and kept it alive and going strong for this long, but we’re not, by any means, the only couple to do so. What makes our story unique is that we didn’t meet on a gay site or even a dating site, we met on a forum.

An anime forum.

For Christian homeschoolers.

 

Art (c) Naoko Takeuchi & VIZ

 

If that’s not a niche, I don’t know what is.

Dom and I were both members of another similar forum that she left because she had a habit of starting arguments with the moderators. Being the independent revolutionary that she was, she used one of her dad’s servers to start up her own forum and poached some of the other discontent members from the other forum to start it up. I happened to be a law-abiding forum citizen, and I steered clear of her on the other forum since she was a troublemaker, but a mutual friend told me about the new site and I went over with him.

At the time, I assumed Dom was a guy. She had a guy’s username and always had male anime characters for an avatar at a time when it was every anime fangirl’s goal to have the trashiest, girliest anime avatar she could possibly get away with. She talked like a guy, too, so I wasn’t really interested at first. She was way too intimidating.

We didn’t talk much until our mutual friend on the forum went crazy.

When I say crazy, I mean crazy as only a teenage anime fan who also happens to be a zealous, fundamentalist Christian can be. If someone would post an image of Michael Jackson, Gerard Way or some other public figure he deemed to be “dark-sided,” he’d have a meltdown. We had a couple of gay/bisexual members and he’d make homophobic comments, so Dom was always having to reign him in. We bonded over his craziness and what to do about it, since I was a mod by then.

Then, The Apostle – as I will refer to him from here on out – decided he was in love with me. Being the 14-year-old problem-solver that I was, I decided that the best way to thwart his unwanted affections was to tell him I was horribly disfigured.

It backfired.

He started a thread of poems that were thinly-veiled love letters to me, and he ended every private message with, “I love you.” I don’t remember all the poems, but I do remember one line: “My love for you is not diminished by the physical; I see the beauty of the Bride of Christ inside.”

Sooo sexy.

I responded with, “That’s nice. I love you like a sister in Christ, too.”

Such was my social prowess at the age of 14. Keep in mind that, as a homeschooler who was too laden with social anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder to even attend a youth group, this message board was pretty much the only social interaction I had outside of ordering at McDonald’s.

Meanwhile, the focus of the forum had drifted away from anime and more toward that ever-addicting time-suck: text role-playing. Dom and I started role-playing a lot together, a hobby that we still continue today, to our great shame. In fact, it’s one of our #1 couple activities. (FACT: Role playing is one of those things that is infinitely more awesome when you are an adult, because you can use “bad words” and dress up in costumes. It is literally impossible to get bored in the bedroom when you have an arsenal of awesome characters and storylines to spice things up.)

That’s where Dom and I really started hitting it off. All our characters wound up pairing off and we started sharing our own novels with each other through PM for critique. I learned that she was, in fact, a female, which took me about a year. I was still so deep in the closet that I was having adventures in Narnia, but I was developing a definite crush. I knew I was attracted to girls in the way most of my friends were to boys even then. I just found no appeal in the idea of dating another girl who was, well, as girly as me. I’d never heard of butch or femme, so aside from the occasional tomboy at school during my younger days, Dom was the first butch I’d come across. I didn’t know exactly what it was about her, but I liked it. She wasn’t a boy (to my extreme relief), but she wasn’t like me, either.

A couple of years later, the forum was almost completely deserted, but Dom and I kept talking and role-playing and sharing. We even exchanged pictures and I learned when we finally got together that she, too, was convinced I was horrendously disfigured. In fact, when I went to the airport to pick her up on our first real life visit, it took her a long time to find me because she was looking for a female version of Quasimodo.

I guess one of the benefits of having BDD is that people you meet offline are in for a nice surprise.

Anyway, she visited for a week and we hit it off. It’s a cliché but it really was like we’d known each other in person for as long as we’d known each other online. I remember bolting up in bed the night before she was about to leave and thinking, “Oh my God, I’m in love with her. I’m gay and I’m going to Hell.”

Driving her back to the airport was literally the hardest thing I’d had to do up until that point in my life, and I’d been through some shit, too. A mutual friend was with me and I had to leave for the car before she even made it to the gate, because I was about to break down sobbing. I was an incredibly socially awkward, narcissistic teenager with some serious issues and a crazy family and she was the best thing that ever happened to me. So, of course, I sabotaged the hell out of it – I kept trying to pretend like I was straight and lived in denial for another three years.

Up next: A Geeky Lesbian Love Story, Pt. 2: How we got together.

This is where we get to the disappointing part of Disappointing Lesbians: Cat pictures. Lots of them.

Have you ever noticed that filters make everything look better? You can take a mediocre picture of tuna salad on a dusty table and slap an Instagram filter on it to make it look like something out of Victorian Magazine.

For instance, take this darling picture of the Special Kitty eating cake. Cute, right? But decidedly lackluster.

Now, take the same picture with a dramatic filter and a nice, lacy border.

Vastly improved!

Here’s an even better adjustment. Nostalgia and bows. Everyone loves bows. Look, she’s embarrassed by her gluttony! Teehee!

Here’s a picture of the Special Kitty eating cake in the snow. Snow always makes an image look super sad and tragic. It’s like instant poignancy without having to go through the hassle of taking a picture of anything substantive.

Discouraged by the inner conflict of a full belly and an insatiable desire for cake, the Special Kitty grieves her plight. I call this one, “Sad Cat In Snow.”

Wait, wait, wait. This is TOO sad. Time to lighten the mood with something no one can take seriously: Hipsters! Hipster Cat liked cake way before it became mainstream.

Now here’s a picture of her just having been bitten by a vampire. Wounded and fighting off her transition into an unscrupulous creature of the night, the Special Kitty’s love of cake is quickly turning into a thirst for blood.

And now here’s a picture of our dog eating the trash while my back was turned taking pictures of Special Kitty. He doesn’t deserve filters, only shame.

All filters and decorations thanks to PhotoWonder. I love and abuse these apps as much as anyone, so the jesting is all in fun.

Is it just me, or does anyone else have a serious problem with that phrase? I didn’t even realize how much it bugged me until Dom and I were talking about it in the car. We were discussing how much I hate Lori “Get Back in the Kitchen” Grimes from The Walking Dead, the word feisty came up, and my little femme heart was immediately broiling over with rage.

“What’s so bad about the word ‘feisty’?” Dom asked. I thought about it for a moment before replying, “It’s not the word, it’s how it’s used. It’s always used to refer to a woman who possesses characteristics that are somehow seen as unfeminine – like strength or assertiveness – while preserving her cute, harmless, docile image.”

Think about it. When was the last time you heard of someone referred to as “feisty”? I’ll bet you anything it was used to refer to:

A) a woman

B) a woman doing something that would normally be described by another word if she was male.

For example, imagine the following scenario: A woman walks into a coffee shop to order a tall mocha loca chatta latte or what have you. Said woman proceeds to wait her turn when the next customer in line butts in front of her and starts placing their own order. The woman says, “Excuse me? I don’t think you were first.”

Ooh, snap. She’s so feisty, standing up for herself and asserting her rights like that. Now, imagine the same exact scenario, only replace the woman with a man. Still feisty? No. In fact, there is nothing out of the ordinary or noteworthy about the situation at all. In fact, the most someone might say is, “Good for that fine gentleman, asserting himself like a sir. Quite right, quite right.” I’m not sure why that someone is from 1900’s England, but you get my point.

Let’s take a moment to examine the actual meaning of the word, shall we? According to Merriam-Webster, the most common definition of feisty is “having or showing a lively aggressiveness : spunky.” Ah, spunky. Another word I have an issue with for many of the same reasons. The example the dictionary entry gives is, and I quote, “the movie’s feisty heroine.”

Notice there is nothing feminine within the meaning of the word itself, and yet it’s used almost exclusively to describe females. Now, let’s look at the root of the word. Feisty apparently made Merriam’s Word of the Day 11/27/2011, so let’s see what they have to say about its origin:

“In certain parts of the United States, most notably the South, the noun “feist” (pronounced to rhyme with “heist”) refers to a small dog used in hunting small game animals (such as squirrels). Also spelled “fice” or “fyce,” it comes from an obsolete term, “fisting hound,” that derived from another obsolete term, “fist,” a verb that once meant “to break wind.” The term “feisty” has come a long way from its flatulent origin, but its small-dog association still seems relevant: the term conveys the spunk and determination that one may associate with a dog that manages to make its presence known (either through its bark or its bite) despite its small size.”

Source: Merriam-Webster.com

So, essentially, feisty is yet another word intended for dogs that has become associated with women. “Compared that bitch to a dog. Bitches love being compared to dogs!” And so we must, because I hear just as many women using the term to refer to other women, even themselves, as men. What was once meant as a diminutive description for the tenacity of a small, yappy, nippy house pet is now proudly coopted as a description for characteristics that are, apparently, so unnecessary and uncommon in women that they deserve special notation – characteristics like strength, boldness, assertiveness, standing up for yourself, calling out injustice, etc..

You know, man’s work. Silly women, taking breaks from sandwich-making to do things like playing professional sports, solving mysteries, chasing bad guys, and saving lives. So FEISTY.

This is the internet, so I’m sure some people are going to accuse me of overreacting. After all, “It’s not meant in an insulting way, it’s just how we describe a woman who’s being cute.” Well, you see, I take issue with that most of all. It’s not the way the word is used in a sentence; it’s the psychology that underpins its use in the first place. Don’t even try to deny that there isn’t some gender psychology going on behind the use of this term, either, because what was once a gender-neutral term used to refer to animals has become a ubiquitous description for female heroines, sleuths, whistleblowers and, generally, any female who deigns to set foot outside the kitchen.

It may seem harmless, but it’s not. It’s symptomatic of a general trend to “other” women and, in this woman’s opinion, that trend is toxic. If you still think I’m overreacting, just think about it for a moment. People are supposed to be forthright. People are supposed to be bold. People are supposed to stand up for their rights and the rights of others who can’t stand up for themselves. These characteristics are the basic ingredients for human decency that I think we can all agree we’d like to see in society at large and especially in ourselves. So why is it that, when a woman exhibits one of these basic characteristics, we feel the need to ascribe some special label to her as if she’s doing something unexpected?

Does being a female make one so hopelessly deficient that a woman exhibiting even the most basic symptoms of a healthy self-esteem calls for its own adjective?

Feisty is, at the very least, a double-edged sword. Even when intended as a compliment, it comes with the inherent assumption that something unexpected has been done. Kind of like a Trojan horse of patronization, or the friend who has one too many wine coolers and funkifies your face with her alcohol-powered “compliment” of, “You know, yer real purdy fer a lesbian.”

Yeah, thanks for that. Good to know my display of a modicum of human decency and capability is newsworthy.

Let’s not forget the other side of the feisty coin. Sometimes it’s used to diminish good behavior, but just as often it’s used to excuse abysmal behavior that no one would put up with from a child beyond the age of three. However, grown women get a pass for behaving in a manner that would be considered socially inappropriate if they were male. It’s like feisty is an all-access pass to being rude without the social repercussions.

Another example scenario: A woman is hanging out with her girlfriends at a restaurant, and the handsome waiter (or hot waitress) wanders over. He asks if he can take the table’s order, and the woman replies, “I know for sure I want a piece of that, but you can come back for our food later.” All her girlfriends proceed to laugh. “Girl, you are so FEISTY!”

Imagine the same scenario with a man, only it’s not called feisty so much as sexual harassment. Ever notice that double standard?

So, essentially, feisty is used both to indicate that a woman exhibiting positive character traits is out of place, alien, and the ever-diminutive “cute,” and that a loud-mouthed, lecherous, cantankerous woman is not only acceptable but downright adorable. Seems legit.

Let’s return to the other dog-word-turned-female-descriptor for a second, shall we? Bitch is a word laden with controversy for many reasons. Anyone who defends the use of the word in a defamatory sense can, in my experience, be quite easily shut up by challenging them as to why they don’t use the same word to refer to men.

Consider the following scenarios:

1. When a man fires someone, he’s “taking responsibility” and “making the hard decisions”. When a woman fires someone, she’s a bitch.

2. When a man cheats on his wife, he’s a player, a philanderer, an adulterer. When a woman cheats on her husband, she’s a bitch.

3. When a man climbs his way to the top of the career ladder, it’s “survival of the fittest” in all its Malthusian glory. When a woman climbs her way to the top, she “probably slept with the higher-ups” and, let’s not forget, she’s a bitch.

The list goes on, but I’ll leave it at those. Bitch and feisty share more in common than their Germanic roots that were used to describe small, yappy, submissive creatures intended to serve man and be put in their place. They also share the very useful ability to create a separate standard for female character. A bitch isn’t tough, she’s “tough for a woman.” A feisty heroine isn’t brave, she’s “woman brave.” Thanks to the combined powers of bitch and feisty, self-esteem now comes in original (man) and fuschia for the ladies.

(Note: If you’ve ever used the phrase “That bitch is so feisty!” … I have no hope for you and you should probably just stop reading now.)

How about we just stop with ascribing unnecessary labels to things that already have perfectly accurate words to describe them? The next time you see a woman railing at a cashier because her coupons for baconnaise are expired, just call her for what she is: a jerk. That brave woman who saved 1000 kittens from a burning tree in the newspaper? Brave will suffice. Even kittentastic, if you must, but leave feisty where it belongs: 18th century Germany.

How about we all try to reserve feisty for things like:

1. This kitten standing up to a Rottweiler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeaZz9Vt6Q

2. Small, yappy dogs hunting badgers.

3. Young children who talk like sassy adults. “Oh no she didn’t! *SNAPSNAP*”

4. Canadian singer/songwriter Feist.

Source: Flickr

So there you have it, the reason why I recoil every time I hear of a “feisty heroine” who would otherwise be described as simply “heroic” if she weren’t so woefully burdened with ovaries. The worst part is I know that, even after reading all that, someone out there is chuckling behind their Cheeto-dust covered keyboard and thinking, “She’s so feisty.” To that I say, good sir and/or madam, go feist yourself.

I was sitting down on the couch, relaxing with my morning coffee and some product review videos before Dom came back for our big road trip when I noticed something strange: I hadn’t been pounced on all morning. This of course meant that our female cat, Simple Kitty, was missing and, on further inspection, she was nowhere to be found in any of her usual haunts.

Whenever I can’t find her, my panic grows exponentially due to her complete and total incompetence to ensure her own survival. In the back of my mind, I think I’m still traumatized by those Final Destination movies where someone cheats death and then all of a sudden every blender, car and piano moving service is out to get them to even the score. Since she did have to be revived six times at birth, I’m pretty sure she has at least six kitty grim reapers coming for her scrawny ass at any given time. Maybe that would explain her tendency to stare blankly at nothing in a state of dismay for three hours.

When she goes missing, my head immediately forms a list of all the ways she could have met her demise:

1. Escape. When Cat Ass, Simple Kitty’s older brother, accidentally got out once, my first thought was, “Aw, shit, sorry birds.” If Simple Kitty ever escaped, my first thought would be, “Aw, shit, she’s gonna starve.”

2. She’s been crushed underneath a recliner.

3. She forgot how to breathe and we’re going to find her by the smell of her tiny decaying corpse in a few days.

4. There’s an inter-dimensional rift somewhere in our apartment and she fell into the Twilight Zone.

5. Cat Ass finally did it. He ate her. I’m gonna be cleaning up cat shit made from cat for a week now. Like a nesting doll of cannibalism.

6. Jesus was bored up there and decided he wanted a pet.

7. She’s under the oven again. Shit, we’re going to smell her tiny toasted body in a few hours.

It turned out, to my relief and dismay, that none of these actually happened. I was busy entering the first stage of Cat Grief when I decided to clean. I clean in the rare event that I get sad or upset about something. All of a sudden I heard a tiny “MEW.”

I froze. “SIMPLE KITTY? Simple Kitty, where are you??” Surely I must have missed her. I looked under the bed again, in all the closets, and made another full round of search to no avail. By the time I came back in the room I was trying to come up with ways to explain to Dom that our cat was somehow in another dimension now. My guess is that the Little Girl Lost episode of the Twilight Zone was really made as an instructional video for this purpose.

“MEW.”

There is nothing more frustrating and panicking than the sound of a panicked, mentally disabled cat in another dimension. I grabbed another pile of clothes and opened the dresser drawer to put them away and there she was, nestled in my pants with a blank look on her face.

I hate cats.

With humiliation. Not an actual human baby.

You see, I have Tourette’s syndrome and my least favorite of all Tourette’s related quirks is the habit of uttering a random, often profane but sometimes just incredibly awkward phrase or string of words compulsively when under extreme duress.

Unfortunately, I also have what I will one day officially term as Acute e-Social Anxiety Disorder. Otherwise known as, I have A SAD. I will not rest until it makes its way into the DSM-IV, because my ASAD is every bit as debilitating as all my other mental illnesses.

Actually, considering that I work entirely off the computer, I would make the argument that my ASA is even more serious than my OCD,ADD, SID, NPD and all the other acronyms I’m forgetting because of my… something.

It begins a little something like this. I sit down at the laptop, all giddy from the serene blue glow of the screen, a conditioned stimulus for the promise of internet to come. I click on the Facebook icon in my bookmarks bar and, after a quick glance at my barren news feed, accept the realization that I don’t have a life anew. I turn to email for comfort, because even if there is only one notification in my news feed, and it’s from the Meta Picture, I can count on at least five e-mails at any given time.

Granted, two out of the five are work e-mails and the rest are offers to enlarge my non-existent prostate or offer me 20% off home goods, but still. I feel loved. Those two work emails, though, pose a problem. My elation turns into mild panic as I realize that I have a response to something I’ve written and, in spite of obsessively checking every email at least six times before it’s sent I remain sure that THIS is the time I typed RAISIN MONKEY BALL HYMENS instead of “Have a nice day, Jim!” This reminds me that opening email is, in fact, a terrifying prospect.

First I spend at least five minutes staring at the screen in horror, convinced that one email has totaled my entire reputation. Then, I go into denial. Youtube time! Time to watch videos on tight lining your eyes and the perfect smoky look. Asian cosmetics reviews are the perfect distraction from the inevitable demise of a once sterling reputation.

This blissful stage can and often does extend for hours and even days on end. By the time I slip from denial into grief, genuine damage is done since I haven’t replied to what is often a time-sensitive email. All at once I realize this faux pas and return to my email where, if I’m lucky, only the one harbinger of humiliation is still waiting.

I don’t click yet, though. My mouse pointer hovers and I start to blink hard. At first it’s just a mumble. Then, as my newfound awareness of the time that has lapsed between when the person sent the email and now snowballs, I mutter just loud enough to make out, “I’m pregnant.” Usually, if Dom is in the room, this shameful admission is met with gales of laughter and an offer to check the email for me.

I’m not entirely sure when or why I started using this phrase to convey my humiliation. To put my psych major cap on, my best analysis is as follows: The situation in front of me is just too extremely awkward to cope with so my brain formulates a “much worse case scenario” to remind me that things aren’t really all that bad and distract me from my current predicament.

When I was younger, the single worst thing that could happen in my mind was getting pregnant. In fact, I was so horrified by this prospect that I considered becoming an atheist out of fear that the Lord’s second coming would involve yet another immaculate conception and, as a thirteen year old Christian girl at the time, I was surely a prime target for heavenly insemination.

I do remember that before “I’m pregnant,” my go-to verbal tick was “crunchy clitoris.” Fortunately, I never said it out loud, but the phrase would assault my poor brain every time a socially awkward situation arose. It was a that awkward period in my life where I was extremely repressed and went to any lengths to avoid anything, well, awkward. If two people kissed on a television show, and someone else was in the room, I would literally lunge across the room to change it.

So, I’m not really sure where such a… unique phrase came from. I have a theory that my disordered brain just has a habit of pulling out random words that disturb me and spitting them back out at me, like some kind of vengeful, grotesque generator.

Anyway, back to the email. Once I’ve satisfactorily announced my imaginary pregnancy, I finally read the email only to discover that, not only did I not sign off with “I love you, sugar butt,” instead of “Best Regards,” but my originally sent email was quite socially appropriate and not incriminating in the least. On top of that, I discover that the reply wasn’t even laced with horror at my brutish email ways, CC’d to the Ministry of Civilized Society with a direct order to have me excommunicated Bora Bora.

Unfortunately, by then it’s usually been a day or two and I need an excuse as to why I haven’t replied yet. At that point, I have two options:

1. Make up a half-baked excuse about how I couldn’t reply because my computer was down for the 500th time. Even my grandmother stopped believing my emails were getting “lost in the tubes” about the third time I used that one.

2. Procrastinate.

I choose option two about 90% of the time, which leads to days, weeks, sometimes even months of self-loathing. So tell me, do I suffer alone? Or am I simply one of millions of Americans suffering from ASAD? Should we form a group? Make t-shirts? Start an email newsletter?

Wait, no, that last one is a bad idea. Maybe we can communicate group news through homing pigeons instead. I have a feeling, though, that ASAD is not limited to the confines of email, and that said homing pigeon would starve to death while I held it in procrastination of sending a response.

Now I’m not really sure how to end this blog post, so here’s a picture of a dead homing pigeon.

We just got back from a road trip to the dreaded south to visit Lana’s parents and pick up my dog. Along the way, we faced the unavoidable obstacle that is known to many as West Virginia. Now I’m going to tell you why it sucks.

1. Every fucking truck drives in the cars only lane.

2. There is only one major highway. This means that if you take a wrong turn at any point, have fun in Deliverance.

3. In spite of having only one major highway, there are a million exits – all of which lead, as I have learned from experience, to creepy little towns hidden in creepy little woods that are, without a doubt, part of the Twilight Zone.

4. Every fucking mile of the one fucking highway in this fucking state is a deer crossing.

5. These deer are not normal deer. They are stupid-ass West Virginian kamikaze dear that charge out, crash into the median strip and double back to take out your car in case they missed it the first time in their senseless path of destruction.

6. “Speed limit enforced by aircraft.” What the fuck is that supposed to mean?? Does the chopper come down and land on top of your car? Or is it more of a paratrooper landing on your windshield, slapping on a ticket, and then doing a tuck and roll off the side of the road kind of deal? Okay, if so, that’s kind of badass and may actually be one of the few good things about West Virginia that I’ve seen so far.

7. The good news is, there are bathrooms everywhere. The bad news is, those bathrooms are trees.

8. Next Exit: 2 miles. Exit after that: 79 miles. Food: Subway. Time: 4am.

9. There is no GPS signal in 70% of this state. There is no internet signal. I have come to believe this is how they get people to live in West Virginia. No one moves here – they just drive through here, lose their signal, and spend days trying to get out with no map or GPS. They finally give up and build a shack in the woods with a star tacked above the door. I’m onto you, West Virginia.

11. Only in West Virginia would they advertise a hair salon as a “Mane Salon.” Because apparently, in West Virginia, bitches LOVE being compared to livestock.

12. The only public restroom around for miles had a single cracked, grimy bar of soap with green shit growing on it with which to wash your hands. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of soap?

13. We missed that exit mentioned in #9.

14. Having to go the speed limit despite trucks riding your ass because an alien pulled over by the CIA would have a better chance than a gay couple pulled over in West Virginia.

To be fair, I should include a list of the positive things I’ve noticed about West Virginia, too. I’ll be as exhaustive as possible.

1. It’s not Kentucky.

2. Lana’s mother doesn’t live there.

3. Gas is cheap.

Never let it be said that I’m unfair.

Part 1: The Lion (drag)King

I’m sure people are going to wonder what exactly it means to be a disappointing lesbian at some point, so I’ve decided to devote a series of posts to explaining the evolution of my uncanny ability to fall defiantly short of the expectations of others. Rather than a singular, underwhelming event, my existence has been a somewhat continual succession of disappointments.

I must have come into this world with an extreme sense of this purpose, because I got started early. In fact, I was supposed to be a boy, and I’m not sure exactly what was going on in those nineties ultrasounds, or what happened between the second and third trimesters, but I popped out with twice the expected X chromosomes and it all just kind of snowballed from there.

The next disappointment that I can remember (although I’m sure there are many more to speak of), and the first I had any direct control over, came when I was six and I first saw The Lion King. Now, I’m aware that most progeny of the nineties saw and were at least moderately obsessed with this movie.

However, the thing that makes my experience with this particular Disney franchise so uniquely, abysmally disappointing was that I decided to become a lion. No, not just to pretend that I was a lion during finite periods of play. I jumped in headfirst and wholeheartedly embraced the lion lifestyle.

First, I attached a tail to my leotard from ballet (I was also a very disappointing ballerina, but all six-year-olds technically suck at ballet, so the true test of disappointment came later). Then, I used that magic blend of precociousness and the ability to shamelessly throw a tantrum in Walmart so indicative of six-year-olds to weasel my way into a cat-ear headband. At first, the adults in my family thought this was just cute, harmless childhood role playing. Haha, grownups. Haha.

I refused to wear anything else. After all, due to my overzealous imagination, taking off that leotard was akin to ripping off my flesh. It simply could not be done. I slept in those ears. I bathed in those ears. I even went to the store in those ears.

Now, if we had lived in LA, where I’m pretty sure it’s in vogue to get actual cat ears stapled to your forehead, depending on the season, that would have been one thing. Small-town Illinoisans tend to be a little less tolerant of deviation from the norm. Sure, you can walk to the beat of your own drummer. As long as your drummer is Phil Collins.

Next, I decided to eat exclusively out of a bowl on the floor. Spoons? Forks? Lions don’t need forks, dammit. Lions eat with their faces, like the true kings of the jungle they are. What’s that? You want me to drink out of a cup, grandma? Okay, I’ll do that as soon as I FULFILL THE CIRCLE OF LIFE AND ROLL OVER IN MY FELINE GRAVE. My grandmother was wisely and immediately concerned. My mother took longer to see the burgeoning problem.

In fact, it wasn’t until I started competing with our calico for the affections of the tomcat next door that she realized it was time for an intervention. Every evening like clockwork he’d show up at the door, yowling for Princess. Now, I’d hate to lose my gold star in lesbianism, but I must confess, Jack the Cat is the only man I’ve ever loved.

I’m not sure if it was the stench of Friskies or the way his orange tabby fur vaguely resembled that of a lion’s, but I was all about him being the Mufasa to my Sarabi. Mystifyingly, Jack didn’t find my mating screeches appealing and Princess lost her suitor.

Not one to be disillusioned, I decided that just because I couldn’t make lion babies of my own didn’t mean I couldn’t be a surrogate. I began grooming Princess to be a proper lion cub. Literally. Three hairballs later, Princess became understandably irritated with my lackluster mothering efforts and tried to squirm away. When I wouldn’t let go, she scratched.

As a lion mom of course I couldn’t let such behavior slide without proper discipline. What kind of queen would she become? The only logical thing to do seemed to be a gentle nip to the ear. I’d seen that somewhere on Animal Planet, probably, so it had to be fool proof.

Now, I’m not sure if anyone else out there has ever tasted cat blood, but it’s basically a mixture of sticky metallic liquid and pure shame. Mom decided that the guilt and horror was enough punishment, but I did lose my cat holding privileges for the week, and my leotard was kept in a clandestine location and only taken out before dance class. It was also decided that I needed more human interaction. Immediately.

Three park trips later, I had a new friend and a scheduled play date with “Emily.” The prospect of a brand new, shiny friend was enough to keep me away from the cat, but unfortunately, my hidden motivation was not to reintegrate into the human world, but rather to convert her into my pride.

Emily had never seen The Lion King, and whether out of genuine interest or simply good-natured pandering, she humored me by listening to my endless barrage of Lion Facts. Mom was thrilled as Emily happened to be my first human friend with a non-imaginary presence in the physical world. The problem came when Emily’s mom invited us over to their house for the next play date.

Five minutes before we were ready to leave, I crawled into the living room in all fours in full lioness regalia. Now, I can’t remember exactly how I found that costume. My best guess is that it was some sort of preternatural lion sense leading me to my true form. But we were already running late, and mom was panicked. I do remember this excerpt from the conversation that followed:

Now, as a mother, I’m really not sure how you’re supposed to respond to that. Mine responded with pleading and bribery. Did I want candy? No. How about a new toy? No. What did I want?

Needless to say, we didn’t go to Emily’s house, and from that day on, any Disney movies I was allowed to watch were first screened for obsession-potential. Unfortunately, obsession is like an antibiotic resistant virus. It may seem to have disappeared and lay dormant for a time, but it’s learning. It will change and resurface in the most disappointing way eventually. Stay tuned for the next case study in a lifetime of disappointment: Cat Married.