The other day, I took a gender aptitude quiz available in the Life & Culture section of pbs.org. It labeled me as a “gender outlaw,” advising me that I was “too far gone to make the climb back up to ‘real’ man or ‘real’ woman” and that I should explore places that “really thrill” me.
I am so not a gender outlaw. While I have no problem with other people doing what they want to do, I have no doubts about what (or who) I want to do (or not do). Applying a definition to gender seems pointless to me. I mean, who really cares? All I want is to be happy with myself. I don’t need to explore any hidden places that really thrill me because I know what I like. Confusion about whether I wanted a penis or a vagina was never an issue for me.
As for those places that really thrill me... Well, I have explored (and continue to explore) quite a few of them. I have been kicked out of bars, caught with my pants around my ankles (literally) and seen more than one hotel room with a mirror on the ceiling (they got some kinky stuff in a lot of those rooms). There are still places that I would like to explore, but I don’t want to get arrested. For instance, I have always wanted to make use of one of those big trampolines that people try to cram into their tiny, unfenced yards. I imagine the trampoline owners wouldn’t appreciate it though and I would be creeped out if they did.
I guess this quiz bothered me because it had to label me as confused about my gender when I simply feel that people should choose their own happiness. If someone doesn’t think she or he or whatever is a man or a woman or anything in between, that’s fine with me. It doesn’t interfere with my ability to enjoy the pleasures of men (or various battery-operated toys). But that doesn’t make me a gender outlaw or render it necessary for me to explore unknown places. Maybe the quiz just ends by telling everybody they are a gender outlaw, regardless of how you might have answered the questions.
I am discarding the gender outlaw label and adopting the label of girl-who-dips-carrots-in-peanut-butter.

I began my internship at a local weekly newspaper today. My new editor told me that all the people in the company were good people, albeit a few of them might be oddballs. The guy I spent most of the day working with told me that it was a very dysfunctional company and that everyone there was a closet case. I tend to think his assessment is probably more accurate than than the editor's. Fortunately, I have a wealth of experience with dysfunctional groups of people to draw from.
I may be slightly (or really, depending on your point of view) pessimistic or cynical or both, but I don’t see most people as good people. What does that really mean anyway? Good people? Are you a good person if you go to work every day, pay your taxes and don’t bother anybody? Are you a good person if you lie in bed all day and don’t bother anybody?
I believe that for every malevolent human being in the world, past and present, there is someone who will say she or he was a good person: “Oh, well, Adolf really was a sweet boy. He used to carry my groceries home for me” or “Saddam isn’t as bad as he seems. He always gave me the orange skittles” or “Joseph (Stalin) was really a very considerate man sometimes,” etc, etc. As if those things ruled out their crimes. So, what does it take for a person to cross over from good to bad? (And why isn’t there any middle ground? You never hear anyone say, “Well, she’s not a good person or a bad person. She’s just a person.”)
People are too generous with their “good person” labels. We are comfortable in our passivity and don’t want to rock the boat by admitting that a person’s faults are more than just faults and that her or his occasional pleasantries don’t compensate for the pain she or he inflicts. And when someone else tries to call her or him out on her or his meanness, we label that person as over-reactive or emotional. We all just want to bury our heads in the sand.

In the sixth season of Sex and the City, Carrie meets and starts dating a man she refers to as the Russian (because he is Russian, not for any other reason). Frankly, she is a bitch to him. He tries to call her to ask her out. Because he has an accent and talks a little slower, she says “Sorry, wrong number” and immediately hangs up. He calls back three or four times and she hangs up three or four times before she actually takes the time to stop and try to understand what he is saying. And even then, she is really annoying about going “Huh? I can’t understand you.” I don’t know why he continues to pursue after she has been so extremely rude, but he does and the end up dating.
A couple of episodes later, they get into a fight when he says that he had a friend who had breast cancer and ended up dying in response to a conversation about Samantha’s fight with breast cancer. Of course, Carrie, acting like a spoiled five-year-old, once again refuses to understand him or take the time to hear what he is saying and throws a huge tantrum and calls him an asshole.
More than half of the men that I have dated spoke a language other than English as their first. Some of them had extremely different cultural values. While at times miscommunication can be frustrating and make you want to scream asshole, that usually doesn’t help. Miscommunication happens between people who were raised in the same culture with the same language all the time. Even those relationships are difficult and require work from both people. So, it would follow that to ensure understanding between yourself and a partner with a different background takes more work and time. Since Carrie is a fictional character, I feel no guilt in being judgmental and calling her stupid.
At the end of the series, the Russian invites her to move to Paris with him and she agrees. Of course, she is not a very good planner and fails to realize how much life can suck in a busy foreign city with no friends and no real grasp of the language or life-style. She ends up lonely and hating it. Duh. Why would you not think such a major life decision like that through thoroughly? I mean there are always unexpected things, but there are a lot of things you can avoid. She refuses to learn from her problems and take the steps she needs to in order to avoid the same problem in the future.
Sometimes she is just really annoying. I don’t think that you will ever hear me saying “I’m a Carrie.” It’s unlikely that I would ever say “I’m a Charlotte either.” Honestly, though, choosing which character you feel the most like is somewhat limiting to who you can be. So, I guess I would say “I’m Miranda” and I was born at least 15 years before the show, so I have more credible claim to the name than Miranda Hobbs, who is just a fictional character anyway.

Finding a good stylist to cut your hair is almost impossible. Especially when you are female with short hair. And you are picky about details. There are a lot of people that can cut hair well enough, but there are only a few people who can handle the fine art of hair sculpture. The essential problem in getting a good hair cut is communicating a blurry vision of yourself to someone else. There is no guarantee that when you say I want this part shorter than this part, that the other person will have the same image as you do attached to the words that you are saying. What exactly is short? One inch? An inch and a half? Somewhere in between?
You may not even know yourself what image exactly you attach to a word – or yourself. It is exceedingly difficult to conjure up a mental image of what you want to look like after your hair has been cut. A concrete, physical image of self is perpetually out of my grasp. Mirrors and photographs always run the risk of surprising me. The words other people use to describe me consistently leave me going “What the fuck?” So, how I am supposed to take this dynamic self-image and turn it into something concrete for a stylist to understand? No wonder I am forever waiting for that perfect haircut, my knuckles whiting as I clutch the arms of the barber chair.
The anxiety surrounding the end result of a hair cut isn’t the only thing that can render the experience objectionable. What if you get stuck with a stylist whose breath is so nasty it leads you to wonder if she or he might be Satan herself or himself? That’s at least twenty minutes of trying to breath through you mouth without inhaling any stray hairs. Or what if she or he is one of those people that gets really close to you or has really big breasts that keep getting shoved up against your cheeks as she (or possibly he) reaches for the top of your head? The physical intimacy potentially rivals that of a one-night stand. Or what if when they are smearing all kinds of styling products in your hair they carelessly get the skin of your cheeks and forehead all sticky with pore-clogging goo? I hate the hair cut by-product break-out. Or what if they spray a bunch of water in your ear when the wash your hair? You could end up deaf for the next to hours. Or what if they get a little to frisky with their scissors? I have actually left a salon with a bleeding ear. When you really stop to think about it, a trip to the stylist can be almost as horrific as a trip to the dentist. So, my hair cut... I’ve had better, but at least I didn’t start sobbing once I left the salon.

Before I left for Chile, I owned one tube of mascara and one duet of eyeshadow called “taupia.” Then, one night while I was visiting Perú, I let my friends talk me into wearing make-up. They painted up my eyes and spent the whole night exclaiming, “Wow, you have really beautiful eyes.”
After that, I feel in love with the concept of turning my own face into an empty canvas. Now, don’t get me wrong; I totally… hmm, I can’t remember the word in English. In Spanish it is proponer. Something like encourage, but not. So, I guess I totally encourage the idea of natural beauty. Promote!!! That’s the word. Okay, I totally promote the idea of natural beauty. But I have a lot of fun with the idea of being able to alter your appearance and, some manner, who you are. I have to say that there are times that I have more confidence while wearing make-up. There are just certain expressions that are really emphasized when I have make-up on.
Tonight, a friend of a friend is having a birthday party in Isla Verde. Isla Verde is filled with rich American tourists and always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. So, I opened up my make-up door and pulled out my various eye-shadows. There is the cheap set of twelve colors from Chile that sometimes gives a special tint to the others. There is the set of three different greens that I also bought in Chile. It is rather special to me, because it suddenly made me realize that my eyes are actually slightly more green than they are blue. Then there are all the single colors that I bought at Fred Meyer: light pink, dark pink-almost-crimson, purple, light blue, and a very dark blue that sparkles. There are the two single ones that I bought at the PC Market: opal and “northern lights” (a sparkly darker pink). There is a duet of light and dark blue that has been such a staple in my make-up supply. There a couple of different brilliant greens. And then there is the risk-taker: a turquoise bright blue powder. Oh, and the sparkly silver tube.
I decided to take a risk tonight and cake on the turquoise across, up and down my eyelid. Next, a stroke of sparkly midnight blue around my eyes and a shade of blue similar to what you might expect a dull blueberry to look like covered the middle of my eyelids. Black eyeliner and mascara completed the look…
Well, I had planned on taking some pics to show what I just described, but my main photographer (Becca) had to leave Puerto Rico. Nobody else here really understands my photographic style. While I got some good pics of friends, there were no good pics of me. Maybe I could use Photoshop... We’ll see.
It was a good thing I decided to wear make-up and a low-cut top so that most people would focus on everything above my waist, because my shoes broke. Fortunately, the bouncers didn’t kick me out for having to go barefoot, but feet did get disgustingly dirty. And tomorrow, I will have to go pick out a new pair of heels. While the ones that broke were really cheap, they were also really comfortable. So, please join me in a moment of silence in remembrance of the $5 comfortable, black heels that broke tonight… Don’t cry too much; It would be a shame to have that sparkly midnight blue eyeshadow running down your cheeks.