Fitting to Float

Women write on their cardboard signs that they are pregnant and hungry. Men write that they are veterans in need of cigarettes and coffee. Anything helps. God bless. The man with the red handlebar mustache sits outside the pharmacy everyday on a black milk crate. He used to nod at me, when I lived downtown and walked Penny early every morning. And because one time, Penny barked at him and I scolded her for it. I think he appreciated my taking his side. 

So many stand atop railroad cars, sleep in suffocating automobile trunks and ride in rubber rafts to live here, to have what I have. Here I sit at a beautiful Apple computer. Designed, I'm told, by a real American ass hole. I used to fear being hated. I don't so much anymore. I see now why people in other places would hate me. I can see why the man with the red handlebar mustache would hate me, walking by with no money for him. But then anger creeps in to replace my old fear of being disliked. Not for Red Handle Bar Mustache Man for he seems entirely down on his luck. I once saw him at a creek a couple miles out of town, sitting beside a little blue tent, staring at the water. That was last spring. He has a limp now, a long walking stick and a full beard. When I see his bagged eyes and slow stagger, I want to save him with split pea soup and french bread, but I’m too shy to ask if he has any allergies. He doesn’t nod at me anymore. I never saved him. One early morning, he was walking out of a coffee shop while I was walking in. He had a small paper cup of coffee and was thanking the barista quietly and yet profusely for it. My anger does not creep in for him, but for when the word, pregnant, is written onto flattened cardboard boxes.  Perhaps it’s a desperate lie for money or the result of rape or cheap prostitution. In those instances, I have only sympathy. But to the homeless woman who chooses to have unprotected sex and gets pregnant. To her, I want to yell that I’d rather her malnourished fetus curl into eternal sleep rather than grow up sitting beside her handwritten signs and coffee cans of change. 

Does this make me into another American ass hole? Does it classify me as a cruel conservative who's too advantaged to see the poverty at my feet? Does that barbaric fetus talk label me a crude liberal who's too headstrong to sympathize with pro-life protesters? Why do we simplify our opinions to fit them inside defined groups? Why do we want to label ourselves with bumper stickers, politicians, dog breeds, television news channels and religious affiliations? Is it to choose the right answers? As if our lives will one day be returned to us with a letter grade and corrections written in red ink? Is it to organize our minds by filing away our metaphysical questions into perfectly alphabetized folders in order to reserve all other brain space for nonsense? Because when we define ourselves through labels and affiliated groups, it lends some comradery, but it also alienate us from the views of others. I admit that this is a natural human trait, declarations of belonging. I remember rattling “I’m Catholic," "my favorite sport is basketball" and "I'm a girl." I understand the importance of simplifying things for children. But once we become young adults, isn't it time we stopped trying to fit our every thought into generic boxes? Can’t I just float, landing only occasionally? Be open to the perspectives of others? I'm tired of conservatives snootily saying that their way is the only right way. I'm sick of the liberals assuming that those who do not rally beside them are apart of some separate species of the privileged heartless. I hate homophobic jokes and blatant fears of Muslims. I don’t like bullies. I hate litterers. I believe in gay rights and racial equality. I believe in women's rights, but cannot wait to be a stay-at-home mom. So, try to label me. I believe in abortion for rape victims, but do not believe it should a means of birth control. I believe in sexual health education. I believe in teaching our children how to take care of themselves. Teach them the proper way to brush their teeth, wash their feet and distinguish unsafe social situations.

I recently read a small article about Purity Balls in The New York Times Magazine. Formal events where young girls make yearly promises to their fathers to remain virgins until they are married. Oh my. If my father ever said he wanted to give me a necklace in exchange for my public vow to reserve my virginity for my future husband, I would have shouted, "WHAaahT? No Dad. GROSS!" My mother tried giving my little sister, Samantha, and I the Birds and the Bees talk while we sat in bathing suits in her big bathtub when I was somewhere near eleven years old. She pulled out a picture book and read, "When two people love each other very much….” We wailed with embarrassed laughter. The picture on the page was of a man and a woman lying side by side under bed covers. The next page showed the woman, man and a newborn baby. Samantha didn't understand. She kept that book under her bed, confessing years later to flipping back and forth between these pages, bewildered. "How did they go from hugging to a baby?"  

Now I love my awkward childhood of fumbling discussions, reddening cheeks and accusatory teasings. I embrace it. However, I must admit that I didn't know what sex was until I was nearly doing it. Though I suppose that’s probably most people. SURPRISE! That’s going into there! I also received no forewarning about the arrival of pubic hair, acne or armpit sweat. I’d try bringing up pubic hair in conversation. It took years to find out that others had it too and that that brillo bush of mine was for life. (I had high hopes that it would fall out at the conclusion of puberty.) I was not an openly curious child and I feared genitalia. I didn’t seek out pornography, I ran gawkily from it, mumbling unintelligible excuses to myself. It was a somewhat fierce fear, if I remember correctly, of the unknown penis. But I was a kid who embraced her naive youth, content to grow up at her own leisure pace. 

You want your daughter to wait to have sex? Tell her why. And if she's too stubborn or embarrassed to listen, sneak those pictures of herpes warts into her magazines. Have a few laughs. Figure out how to make it something you can talk about. Don't just sit back blaming Hollywood’s boner-inducing music videos and movies about perfectly dramatic (never awkward) airbrushed teen romances. Just accept that you'll never be able to completely control what your children are exposed to and be available for translations. Then boost their self-confidences so that they are ready to face peer pressure. Praise them. Personal empowerment is the best instrument in preventing groups of self-conscious children from following a few power tripping kids into hazing, pregnancy pacts, blow job parties, schoolyard gangs and Internet bullying. Even by the tender age of 12 many are mature enough to see the flimsy construction paper foundations that hold classroom cliques where snotty monarchs willy-nillily order the lynchings of innocent reputations. 

We all want so badly to build tribes around us, recruiting warriors to pick up the night shift every fortnight and help hunt buffalo. Except this is our new age survival. No longer are we forced to fight with bows and arrows to protect our tepees, caves and horses from strangers. All we have left are our words and when others try to fight us for them, we strike back with defensive insults and accumulating volume before retreating back to camp where we can safely criticize our enemy. I think we should all stop feeling so overprotective of our opinions. Just let them out (omitting, of course, anything offensive) and let others show you theirs. What’s the worst that can happen? You learn how to listen? 


Imagine a world where it was understood that individuality was something to shine and not snuff or paint beige. We would have so much more color. But instead we grow anxious when our sons do not marry their girlfriends or when our daughters are not pregnant by the time they are thirty. Why these unsettling feelings for when others are not settled? When Scott was a schoolteacher, it was so nice to say because others would exhale inside his seemingly safe permanence. No one would ask about his stress-induced misery so we kept it mostly to ourselves and when we decided he would quit, we kept that to ourselves too. We all want to believe that everyone has everything sorted out. But don't you see the crackling in this white picket fence mentality? Why not allow every life to be questioned and adjusted without judgment or fear? Why is it that as long as the women wear lipstick, snowman sweaters and bake a pie for Christmas and the men stand in circles, drinking scotch and talking about “the game,” everything is hunky-dory? Why ignore the elephants in the dining room? Why not feed them some of those delicious peanut butter balls and really get to know one another?