Ruining Christmas Part II

Maybe you want to ruin Christmas but won't be around to do it. Consider the often-mocked Christmas Newsletter for your vehicle of holiday smear! Have a grudge against a family member? Want to pump yourself up a bit? With a little self-effacing phrasing and a few backhanded compliments, you can craft a newsletter that preemptively ruins Christmas for those who no longer include you in their celebrations! Make sure to mail the newsletter to your entire extended family! The accused won't be able to respond in kind for another year! And there's nothing like the printed word when it comes to a searing reminder of the ways one has fallen short over the past year.

Merry Christmas Asswipe

When my husband and I lived in the North End, we witnessed a Samuri-meet-on-the-bridge situation in which two package-laden businessmen faced off on a narrow sidewalk. Equally matched, neither Samuri was willing to back down. After some grunting, shoulder-bumping, and package-knocking, the men moved past each and each continued on his way. Fifteen feet on, the weaker Samuri revealed himself by turning to scream, "MERRY CHRISTMAS ASSWIPE." So began the holiday tradition of the Christmas Asswipe.

Let us now speak of the Asshole Who Ruined Christmas

With Christmas nearly upon us, I ask you all to take a moment to reflect on the proud tradition of The Asshole Who Ruins Christmas, and plan your role accordingly. The Asshole comes in many forms, and although my personal experience is only with Christmas, I believe that he or she can, if truly devoted, ruin any holiday, religious or secular. The Asshole Who Ruins Christmas is one of the true blessings of the holiday season, and each one of us should take a moment to reach deep inside and think, "What can I do this year to ruin Christmas for those I love and the assholes they've forced me to spend time with?" Just a little extra effort and alcohol can turn this holiday from another boring day into a memorable occasion and beloved family anecdote.

I'm sure that many of you are thinking, "I want to participate in this wonderful holiday tradition, but I don't drink/I'm not angry/I don't like to yell/dance/vomit/fight." My gentle friends, you can still play an important role in selecting and nurturing this year's Asshole by selecting likely candidates, plying them with drink, encouraging them to stay up too late, and then asking them leading questions on politics, child-rearing, or weight loss. It takes so little to bring out the Asshole in each of us. Please do your part this year to keep the true spirit of Christmas alive. And, when the season is over, retain what you have learned for weddings!

Others of you are probably thinking, "I think I have what it takes to be the Asshole, but I'm not sure." I am here to tell you that anyone with a little drink and a lot of motivation can rise to the highest level of Assholery, and ruin Christmas not just for themselves and their families, but also for visiting friends and even people who are not present but hear about it later.

Could it be me this year? It seems like just yesterday I was delighting a small group of friends by screaming insults at a family member on this most blessed of days.

And who among us will forget the time I, in response to a family dispute over wood-gathering, flung myself out the door to gather said wood and save the day, only to sprain my ankle and start a new and better fight over whether or not I was malingering or did I need emergency attention? Sometimes ruining Christmas can be a group effort, with everyone playing his or her very important role.

For Asspiration, look into your hearts and think, "what really irks me?" Does your father in law like to refer to our president as "Obumba" and make jokes about our "Commander in Thief?" Does your sister-in-law regale you with stories of her perfectly-behaved, night-sleeping, exclusively breast-fed baby who can already use a spoon and spout Haiku, and offer you helpful hints on improving your own wayward retard shrimp? Are you lucky enough to have a Drunkle who can be counted on to forget you are blood-related and attempt to feel you up?

These people want to ruin Christmas, but they can't do it on their own. They need YOUR help. Won't you ruin Christmas this year? Just a little effort on your part can result in a treasury of stories that will pass from generation to generation and possibly also go viral as well, delighting millions around the world.     

Miss Lucy had a steamboat

I'd originally written this on facebook, but as it's an important topic for many people I am reposting here as a public service:

Going on day 9 of "Miss Lucy" [stuck in my head], I've come to believe that the "steamboat" represents Miss Lucy's sexuality, which is why Lucy, despite her depraved acts, goes to heaven, while the steamboat goes to hell. This disconnect of mind and body causes Miss Lucy to act out in inappropriate and sometimes dangerous ways, from prank calling to anal disfigurement. 

I hadn't connected the lady with the alligator purse to Miss Lucy until my friend Citizen Smith mentioned it last week -- my regional version ended with a group masturbation scenario taking place in a darkened room. However, The Lady is featured in an eponymous baby book which details Miss Lucy's abusive treatment of her infant son and the Lady's facilitation of that abuse. The book, with its particular cadence, must be what triggered my repressed memory of Miss Lucy and her rapid descent into madness and sexual violence. The Lady represents the forceful, "take-charge" side of Miss Lucy's persona -- while Miss Lucy explains away her early attempts at infanticide with weak justifications -- "to see if he could swim," she insists, after submerging her infant in a bathtub -- The Lady with the Alligator Purse gleefully force-feeds the injured child. One may see the doctor and nurse, whom Lucy first calls, as the the "angels" on one shoulder, and The Lady, to whom Lucy ultimately defers, as the "devil" on the other. The alligator purse itself clearly represents a tough, hide-like vagina, in which The Lady secrets her many weapons, chief among them pizza.  

Nor can we ignore the pitting of the Lady against "Tiny Tim." While The Lady is powerful enough to override even the medical professionals called to attend to the "problem" of male desire, the representation of that desire in the form of the infantile, diminutive Tim is totally vulnerable and unable to express his needs, much less defend himself from the oral violation ultimately delivered by The Lady, under the approving gaze of those who were supposed to protect him. One may suppose, then, that The Lady is entirely the creation of Miss Lucy, conjured for the purpose of carrying out brutal acts Lucy herself is too weak to perform. If I may make what I believe to be a credible leap -- is it not possible that the end of the song (as told in my region) is actually the beginning of Miss Lucy's troubles? Was there a female witness -- or participant -- in that bathroom, as the crowd of boys "zip[ped] down their flies?" Was the rest of Miss Lucy's troubled existence marked by the events in that dark room, leading to her horrific anal self-mutilation with broken glass and subsequent creation of a domineering, leather-vaginaed alter ego? Perhaps, then, we may read her attempt to drown her infant son as a metaphor for her own desire to be cleansed of male taint -- in some versions of the story, by urine. 

Next week: elder abuse and anti-Irish sentiments in "This Old Man [He Played One]"

You might not give a rat's ass

. . . but someone does

bigmouth strikes again

In Star Wars fashion, "Sweetie" has again taken his/her cryptic ramblings to the only one who will listen -- the Lincoln Street footbridge. Professing a love for "Fang" while describing an attempted double-murder, Sweetie's backwards-written story manages to transform the dramatic into the numbingly banal. When does it end?

 

In other graffiti news, this scary grar man's visage is now gracing the bridge:

 

Who dunnit? Perhaps these floating torsos with invisible buttocks and thighs?

 

(If anyone knows the name of this footbridge, I would be very grateful to learn it.)

An aside -- I know what's in this building. Do you?

you said it, buddy

this is not a trash can

Back in the North End, the oldsters made a garden out of anything they could, utilizing every available space. When, in the 1990s, the city replaced the corroded stone sewer pipes, section by section, the oldsters snuck out in the dead of night and hauled those sections back to their sidewalks, courtyards, alleys, and rooftops to use as planters. Recylcling bins were free and, with a few added holes and a layer of gravel, could accommodate two heirloom tomatoes or smallish herb garden.

sewer pipe right

The oldsters were in a constant battle with tourists/drunks over the sanctity of public planting. One flower garden was comprised of a barrel cut in half and bound around a streetlight. Impatiens bloomed in the soil around the base and morning glories and moonflowers climbed twine trellises strung from barrel to pole. A sign on the barrel read "THIS IS NOT A TRASH-CAN" to which some clever vandal had replied, "YES IT IS." And the yeses had it -- daily the oldster would emerge, cursing loudly in Italian, to remove cigarette butts and beer bottles, cigar stubs and dorito bags, soda cans and the unseemly detritus of the after-11 PM lifestyle. My landlord and I devised a clever plan to thwart these ill-wishers -- we chose the thorniest roses at the nursery for our sidewalk plantings. My landlord, who did not sleep, would sit by the door, watching the bushes on his security camera. When an unsuspecting drunk made a pass at our bushes, he'd wait for the cry of pain before emerging to mock the injured party: "You got the THORN!" he'd caw, "You wanted the FLOWER. But you got the THORN!" It was an ongoing battle, and the drunks will eventually win it because there are more of them and they are stronger.

But in my adopted home of Allston, open spaces are more plentiful and therefore not cherished.

Or perhaps the drunk-to-oldster ratio is more pronounced. And, of course, the city does not dedicate the resources to cleaning and preserving this neighborhood as it did the North End.
Whither fair trash barrel? What is the garbage-laden to do?


And while we slumber, the vacant lots revert to a prehistoric state.

Big Trouble in Little Boston

It was a lovely day for a ride. The sun was shining, but not too brightly. It was warm, but not hot. A gentle breeze stirred the grasses along the banks of the Charles River. A stately bird stalked the shoreline, his pea-sized brain comprehending only the probability of fish.


I was struck by the majesty of the beast, and paused to take some photos. I pondered this prehistoric creature existing within city limits, and man's relationship to nature, and Olmsted's wisdom in creating the Emerald Necklace as a way to elevate the poor (me) from our miserable lives by opening a world of beauty to us. As a long-time city dweller, I owe a lot to Olmsted's vision of a better future for the smog-choked, ricket-stricken urbanite. When the Harbor Islands opened for camping ten years ago, my husband and I were among the first to stay overnight on Lovells Island. I could feel the spirit of Olmsted there with us, pleased that his dream of turning these islands into parkland had finally been realized.


But this day was ill-fated. Like the falcon who appeared in my North End window, pigeon head dangling from his gore-splattered beak, on the morning our cat was diagnosed with cancer, this bird was a portent of terrible things to come. Within the hour, Bikey II would be dead beneath the wheels of an SUV driven by a reckless teen.

Bikey II: Last Known Photo

detachment parenting

Every few years I get a masochistic urge to re-read Mary McCarthy’s The Group, a fictitious account of the lives of a Vassar clique from graduation in 1933 to the death of one of the characters in 1940. I like McCarthy’s writing (Memories of a Catholic Girlhood remains one of my favorite books), but this work is particularly biting and, I think, mean-spirited — and from what I’ve read in collateral materials, it’s based largely on the real-life experiences of McCarthy and her friends, a fact which makes the “quiet desperation” of the book more upsetting. Depending on where I am in my life, I’m frustrated and depressed by different aspects of the plot — the women’s dealings with each other and with men, their personal compromises, their (in retrospect) ill-informed social or political stances, etc. I also feel grateful for the lucky accident of being a woman now instead of in the 1930s, and I have increased sympathy for women my mom’s age who had fewer and much poorer choices. It’s particularly telling that McCarthy’s characters were the privileged, educated elite, too — women of slightly lower “class” had even more marginalized lives. We still haven’t achieved a classless society, but at least we have the decency now to be ashamed of that fact.

Last night I reached the part where “Priss” is bullied into breastfeeding by her doctor husband, who wants to prove his “new” technique of baby-rearing in the interest of publicizing his practice. “Sloan” believes that the health benefits of breast milk outweigh the shameful indecencies of the physical act, and sets his wife and infant son on a four-hour feeding schedule (for the uninitiated, my daughter, a typical newborn, nursed every two hours for twenty minutes at a time — in other words, we usually had a 100-minute break from the end of one feeding to the beginning of the next, during which she wanted to be held against my heart). When the child is not being fed, he is left in the hospital nursery to cry — for sanitary and disciplinary concerns, nurses have been instructed to never touch the children except to feed or change them. The bottle babies are fed (and therefore held) more frequently and so cry less, a connection totally lost to everyone involved — including, it seems, the author. The act itself is thoroughly medicalized, with nurses bringing the baby to his mother every four hours, swabbing the nipple with rubbing alcohol, and improperly positioning the baby on the breast so that the mother feels pain and the baby is unable to suck effectively (in addition to being overwrought from hunger and loneliness, and repulsed by the smell of alcohol). The baby is forced to nurse for a set amount of time, after which he is removed, weighed, and returned to the nursery. Priss is alternately terrified of and resentful toward her baby (and her husband). The nurses believe that Priss’s problem is class-based — the lower-class women in their care are able to produce enough milk to sustain and comfort their babies, although they defy hospital rules by nursing “on demand.” Priss’s mother and her contemporaries are horrified by Priss’s decision to breastfeed — for them, the bottle was a release from the servitude of nursing. They discuss her folly over martinis and cigarettes in her hospital room while she sits, mutely miserable, listening to her baby screaming in the next room. Missing in all these machinations is any consideration for the baby, who cries for “ten hours a day” and is held for comfort by only one renegade nurse, who must hide the fact for fear of disciplinary action.

When I read this section five years ago I probably felt bemused and slightly superior, but it didn’t register with me like the loveless marriages, frustrated career aspirations, or attempted rape — I barely remembered it at all. As the mother of a nursing infant, however, I found it almost unbearable. I kept thinking back to my own daughter as a newborn, how small and vulnerable she was, how her only comforts were the warm skin of her parents and the milk from my breasts, and how eagerly she’d take to either when distressed. I remembered the first time I nursed her — immediately after birth, with the umbilical cord still attached and all the gore and stuff covering her, and the intense love and surprise I felt at the sight and feel of her. It made me indescribably sad to think of the mothers and babies who were denied these joys for so long (and out of such noble motives).

In my final trimester, my mother-in-law, a veteran La Leche Leaguer, gave me her 1960s copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, along with other contemporary informational tracts. The materials described the struggles in store for the expectant mother — she would deliver alone, under a doctor’s supervision, and would likely be drugged, regardless of personal wishes; hospital staff would remove the baby from the room after birth for testing, weighing, and cleaning; the baby would usually be given a bottle before being returned to the mother, and may be given a bottle every time the mother asks for the baby, in an attempt to discourage breastfeeding; if the hospital does allow breastfeeding, the mother should expect to have her nipples swabbed with alcohol and to feed only at hospital-approved times, at the discretion of the staff. Because of these rules, and because of generational gaps in breastfeeding knowledge (and resulting prejudices), mothers will likely have a difficult time mastering “the art” upon leaving the hospital.

I felt so sad for those women, separated from their babies and shamed for their natural, healthy impulse to nurture, and proud of women like my mother-in-law, who persevered in the face of accepted medical practice and public disapproval. I also feel amazed that anyone was able to learn to breastfeed from a book — I delivered under the care of midwives and was supervised by a lactation consultant from the first latch, and it still took a long time and many consultations and visits to support groups before my daughter and I really got the hang of it.

Books like Mommy Knows Worst are funny now, but to parents of the time these government-issued tracts regarding the dangers of excessive displays of affection to newborns were dire warnings against a terrible future of laziness, addiction, and sociopathy. Just like parents today, these parents wanted the best for their children, and it was probably very difficult for them to ignore the cries of their babies and their own natural yearning to comfort and connect with their children. And the reach of the “spare the rod” school was long — those 1960s breastfeeding tracts gave equal time to parenting advice espousing then-radical ideas which would become the basis of the attachment parenting movement. “Babies are for loving,” they urged, “You should never feel ashamed to hold and comfort your baby! You cannot spoil a baby, regardless of what your doctor tells you!” Luckily, most parents probably started out with the best of intentions for following tough-love guidelines and then went about everything in a half-assed manner — just like parents today. For who among us can hear the crying of our own infant and remain unmoved?

After leaving Priss and her son crying in separate hospital rooms, I snuck into my daughter’s room to watch her sleeping in her crib. Sensing my presence, she stirred and cried out, and I gathered her up in my arms and brought her to bed, where she opened her tiny mouth to my breast and waved her hand in the air until she found my face. With a little contented sigh, she explored my face in the dark as her sucking grew rhythmic and slow, until finally it faded to the subtlest unconscious act, and I felt her body grow heavy and soft with sleep. I held her like that for a long time and thought about how lucky I am, and studying her tiny face in the glow of the night-light, I promised her that, whatever mistakes I may make with her, I’ll never deny her the full extent of my love. My whole heart belongs to her now.