that inner voice

I have been reading a couple of kinds of books over the past month (although less of all of them since losing my glasses ten days ago. grrr.): books about the high incidence of mania in people who emigrated and went to America; and groupie memoirs (one by one of the members of the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), who I used to listen to back when their album came out; and the other memoir by an East Coast girl instead, who has decided she is god's gift. Well, they both decide that, with much trial and error and in many different pairings, both concluding with great relationships with much younger men.)

In reading one of the groupie books, the West Coast one, I found a reference to a friend's son, and since I had recently got in touch with the friend I found myself thinking of her and her kid a lot. Wondering how they came through those years. And I kept hearing my little voice say, "Call K. Contact her." So I sent an e-mail, but haven't heard back and am not particularly surprised. She's in the middle of her life.

I wonder whether reaching out to Ms. K. is about when I knew her, I messed around with her then-partner's kid and his sister. I think I was ten or eleven. Between us the sister and I pushed the younger brother into doing things that really bothered him, without knowing he would be in physical (and emotional) pain until he was and it was too late. I have always felt bad about that. But just now I looked at myself and saw myself as a kid who did not know I was doing harm, who was just doing what I had learned from other kids and without much intervention from my parents.

I don't think some kids today, the ones who are micromanaged and thoroughly scheduled and under their parents' gaze from the end of school until bedtime, get as much opportunity for sex play as I did, growing up with my laissez-faire-in-that-respect parents. And those of us with kids now comment on having grown up a mere thirty or thirty-five years ago in places where our parents would just say, "Go outside and play," and we would, for hours with no one checking on us. The assumption was that if anything was wrong, they'd hear of it, but everyone was going to be fine on their own. And for the most part we were, but other times we raised hell and no one was the wiser. Now it feels like a kind of maturity, being able to forgive myself for not knowing better at times like those, for the hurt I may have inflicted and for the humiliations I put myself through not knowing it was okay to say no. I sure hope that one kid grew up okay, though.

smackeddown

I lost my specs. It is such a drag. Watching the movie wasn't as bad as I thought it would be (Thank You for Smoking, review: the little guy sitting upright in his theater chair). But I can't read as easily or as comfortably and find myself not wanting to write as much either. I had just said something smug about my glasses and I was concerned about losing something. I took my glasses off one too many times that afternoon, I guess. And now I'm not sure how to replace them. They were great glasses for me.

A question for the lovely and talented ms. L.

What would you say if I told you, ms. L., that I'd read your blog (like you, I often prowl the corners of the gomez online world). And then I told you I have questions, questions that pretty much boil down to "What's up with all the bad food?" I am struggling to understand that one thing you describe -- is it that you are more likely to blog around the time you are sick with food poisoning, or is there a remarkable amount of food poisoning in your world? (I've knelt at the throne too, don't get me wrong. My most recent bout was a year ago after some chicken at a restaurant. But that was the first occurrence in 10 years.)

The best "but" ever

I think Ian Ball of Gomez should trademark the way he says the word "but." You hear it on Split the Difference in the delicious ambiguous sexuality of "Extra Special Guy" and again in the bright and tart "Cry on Demand" from the new album, How We Operate.