Cover Your Mouth When You Blog

Sensitive Skin and Other Impediments to Righteousness

A friend of mine says that whenever something moves her - a film, a piece of writing, a song - whenever she can feel the truth in it, she gets goosebumps. I think I may possess a gauge that operates from the other end of the truthiness spectrum. Whenever I see or hear or read something that is total bullshit, my eczema flairs up.

This holds true even for nuggets of bullshit that I produce - in a fight with J, a session with my therapist, and repeated instances of tapping out the first sentences of a would-be blog post, calling "bullshit" and starting over. I'm almost obsessive about it and can usually recognize the falseness of a statement before I've uttered or typed the last syllable. "You don't care about poor people," I sobbed to J once in bed.

"What!?"

"I know. What a totally ridiculous thing to say." I couldn't let the contrived, self-indulgent sentiment, I care about poor people! And you don't!, contaminate the air above the sheets for more than a second. The truth was that I felt that he didn't sufficiently appreciate my commitment to the volunteer work I'd been doing for the last four years. So eventually I just said that. And after I said that and the stench of fallacy still remained, I discovered that the real truth was that I wanted him to recognize my volunteer work as very important because I was afraid that I wasn't doing anything meaningful with my life. So eventually I just said that.

So I'm saying I can relate to the reflexive desire to mask one's true, perhaps more compromising, emotions behind a smelly facade of crap. What I can't relate to is the ability to continually emit falsehoods and not end up feeling sort of itchy and nervous about one's responsibilites as a thinking human being.

Take this guy for instance: David Frum, a writer for the National Review, a reputable conservative publication that I read on occasion to see what "the others" are up to. Regarding the recent revelations about Christian evangelist Ted Haggard's homosexual affairs and potential meth use, Frum argues that Haggard's apparent hypocrisy on the issue of homosexuality (i.e., cheating on his wife on a monthly basis for the past three years with a male prostitute, while speaking publicly against same-sex marriage and the "sin" of homosexuality), should not be denounced, but actually admired. Frum's reasoning goes as follows:

"Consider the hypothetical case of two men. Both are inclined toward homosexuality. Both from time to time hire the services of male prostitutes. Both have occasionally succumbed to drug abuse. One of them marries, raises a family, preaches Christian principles, and tries generally to encourage people to lead stable lives. The other publicly reveals his homosexuality, vilifies traditional moral principles, and urges the legalization of drugs and prostitution. Which man is leading the more moral life? It seems to me that the answer is the first one."

Frum goes on to reprimand the media and general public for piling on the condemnation of Haggard for his actions and duplicity, suggesting that, "Instead of regarding hypocrisy as the ultimate sin, could it not be regarded as a kind of virtue - or at least as a mitigation of his offense? If a religious leader has a personal inclination toward homosexuality - and nonetheless can look past his own inclination to defend the institution of marriage and to affirm its benefits for the raising of children - why should he likewise not be honored for his intellectual firmness and moral integrity?"

Reading Frum's article this morning, I could feel the scaly, itchy patches rising on the backs of my legs. The vapors emanating from my computer screen were almost suffocating. As I massaged a glob of Cetaphil into the crooks of my knees, a feeling of despair brushed over me. This man has been given a vast forum and an (I would imagine) ample salary for digesting the world and emitting a thoughtful appraisal of it and this is what he produces? And here I sit wondering if I will have left any mark on the world when I leave it. While this man, with the rare and enviable opportunity to make an impact with thoughtful, honest words, decides instead to leave this skid mark?

Beyond finding Frum's decision to plumb the depths of moral equivocation to come up with his argument depressing or enraging, I find it bewildering. How does one release themselves from reality and truth so completely? How does one's gut or flesh not reject the bullshit immediately on the occasions that it slips past the mind, the mouth or the fingertips?

Some days I wonder if life would be easier without the obsessive need to admit errors in judgment committed to cushion my ego or to fess up to the projection of my own fears and feelings of inadequacy onto those around me. Some days I envy the ability to handle bullshit with bare hands - to scoop it up and squish it through one's fingers until something that resembles solid logic can be constructed from it. I'm sure this ability would make for much smoother living in a sometimes abrasive world, but I guess I've always known my skin's too sensitive for that.

Bin Laden - 1; Bobby Brown - 0

So less than one month after it is revealed that Osama Bin Laden is infatuated with Whitney Houston, having stated, "how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband Bobby Brown," whom Bin Laden talked about having killed, "as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed," Mr. and Mrs. Trainwreck are calling it quits. Coincidence? Or proof that Hollywood really is soft on terror?

Though Whitney has been quoted as saying, "I've got a good man. He takes care of me. I don't have to be scared of anything because I know he will kick every ass . . . disrespect him and you've got a problem," I wonder if a toe-to-toe with the most infamous terrorist leader of our time was more than even notorious bad boy Bobby Brown was willing to contend with. Or perhaps, given Bobby's shriveled career and Whitney's having almost completed it's own nose dive, she was simply hedging her bets. The money's got to be running out and maybe that mansion in a suburb of Khartoum that Bin Laden promised her started sounding more appealing.

Whatever the reason, it's apparent that Hollywood couldn't even hold together ONE of its measly marriages to support the War on Terror. And just days after the fifth anniversary of 9/11? When two disfunctional has-beens can't salvage their profanity-laced union just to gall the leader of al Qaeda, the terrorists really have won.

Remember

You wake up to the normal beeps at the normal hour with the normal sun slanting through the blind slats onto the bed. Still something feels abnormal. You step into the shower, adjusting the water to the usual temperature, squeeze the usual quarter-sized amount of shampoo into your palm and lather into your hair for the usual amount of time. Still something feels unusual. As the apartment building's heavy outer door claps shut behind you in its typical fashion, a scarce moment from crushing your left ankle in its momentous slam, you panic suddenly that you've forgotten your keys, your wallet, your post-9/11 magnetic ID needed to get into the office. You check your purse and all are with you. Still something seems to elude. You arrive at the office, log into your online bank account and then you remember. You're broke. You forgot that you are broke.

You forgot that you now have a mortgage $1,000 a month heftier than your rent used to be and you have to save money throughout the month to pay it. You forgot not to buy a $146 sundress on Wednesday just because you were in your old neighborhood across the street from one of your favorite boutiques and had twenty minutes before you had to meet your friend Angie for dinner. You forgot not to have takeout maki from Tank four times last week. You forgot not to spend $26 at the airport on celebrity gossip magazines that all had the same picture of Nicole Richie looking like a sunkissed Holocaust survivor and the same story about Kate Hudson's affair with Owen Wilson and the jumbo-sized package of peach rings that will give you a stomach ache somewhere over Indiana. You forgot not to spend the mortgage money. You forgot.

Throughout the day you ponder trimming the fat. Entourage and Lucky Louie seasons end in two weeks. Perhaps HBO gets the plug pulled. But you love to On Demand old episodes of Six Feet Under on hungover Sunday afternoons when its cloudy out and you want to feel heavy and sad. You decide to cancel the extra appointment you scheduled with your therapist for later in the week. This saves you $95. You consider attending the group Pilates class on Tuesday, rather than paying $30 extra for a semi-private lesson. But you are going to Mexico in one week and can't risk that, without a trainer waiting for you to arrive, you will skip exercise all together. You consider calling your parents for a short-term loan, but remember that this admission of irresponsibility, of financial need, will dash a pellet at your mother's view of you as The One We Don't Have to Worry About and that if this pellet causes a crack, she will begin to ask questions and if the crack spreads, she will begin to worry and eventually the whole windshield through which she sees you will shatter and have to be replaced. Such an event would clearly warrant extra therapy sessions and, therefore, prove counteractive in the grand scheme.

Finally, peeling a conventionally grown banana (purchased at the Supermercado on the corner, rather than an organic banana purchase at Whole Foods - you are making some concessions), you begin to scour your home for items to sell on eBay. In round one, you garner the mustard yellow faux leather purse you bought at a street fair last summer, but never found an occasion to carry, the mint green lace-up pumps you coveted in the window of Niche on the walk home from the train each evening, finally bought at 30% off, and wore, regretfully to your cousin's wedding in Clay Center, Kansas enduring sidelong glances and "compliments" on your "interesting" taste, and the black beaded scarf you bought out of guilt while visiting your friend Holly at the overpriced North Shore clothing boutique she quit managing two weeks after your regretful purchase. Round two yields more optimistically purchased, infrequently employed items that with any luck will help offset the $89 gym membership fee you could not forego, again because of the upcoming trip to Mexico. You kick yourself in the bleeding-heart-liberal ass for dumping two grocery bags of perfectly eBayable (some designer!) clothes in one of those Green Earth bins last month.

For the next two hours, you navigate the eBay seller system, quickly becoming annoyed and uncreative in inventing new words for "cute". I have better things to do with my time, you think. This orange sequined scarf would look really nice with that dress I bought last week, you tempt. Finally, you click on the TV and remember that Spike Lee's documentary on Hurricane Katrina airs tonight on HBO. You congratulate yourself for vetoing that stupid idea to cancel your subscription.

Soon, footage of homes crushed into toothpicks, sweating women guiding severed refrigerator doors that ferry children through murky, thigh deep water, an old black woman, slumped dead in a wheelchair, cast along side the Superdome, and you remember. Soon, a young, muscled black man in a soiled white tank top is angry, holding a tiny baby in the air with both hands, "Where's FEMA? Where's the federal government?" and you remember. Soon, another man, face drooping with a rage that once was, but now worn with thirst, hunger, hopelessness, "we've got nothing," and you remember.

You forgot to remember that you are charmed. You forgot to remember that you can cancel your HBO, sell your TV, your couch, your shoes, your computer, your silverware and have mountains more than most. You forgot to remember that it is by luck alone that you were not born into poverty in the lower Ninth Ward and herded, feeling hopeful and safe, into the Superdome on August 29th of last year and left to rot for five days. You forgot to remember until you saw real worry, real pain. You are thankful for the heartbreak bursting into your esophagus. Thankful to remember. Ashamed at having to be reminded.

The Creeps

On a typical weeknight, I hit the sack around 11pm, right after the Daily Show and Colbert. These are my bedtime stories, assuring me that someone can make sense - sharp, ironic, hilarious, and somehow comforting sense - of the absurdity and horror of the daily news. Jon and Stephen tuck the sheets in tight at my sides, leaving a glass of water on the nightstand and the door cracked open an inch, the hall light on to interrupt the darkness. They're my warm milk. My lavendar sleep balm.

Lately though, it seems more and more that  my cozy nighttime ritual is compromised by tense commercial breaks with the remote at ready, eyes and ears vigilant. I am waiting for the spine-crawling voice of a girlchild, intoning something ominous. "There is a lady . . . in the waaaater . . . " Or a deep, gravelly voice describing the gruesome fate of a group of young, attractive cave explorers. I've become quite adept at perceiving these subtle warnings in only a split second, clicking over quickly to bull riding on the channel just above. Possibly more than horror movies themselves, I hate horror movie trailers. They sneak up on you like the man who's painted his entire body to blend in with your exposed brick wall. You're just going about your evening, q-tipping your inner ears, when suddenly a deranged clown puppet is cackling at you from your TV; you puncture your ear drum and scramble for the remote. Sometimes I plug my ears and hum, eyes closed, until I think it's safe to come out. I feel assaulted by these commercials. Why is it assumed that just because a person stays up relatively late, they want the crap scared out of them just before bed? These movies exist, obviously, because they make money. For some, there's a certain climax in getting the creeps.

I suppose I have my own self-horrifying habits. I scour the news daily with a quiet, trepidacious hope that the president has done something frighteningly stupid or that a self-righteous pundit has been caught pants-down. My heart thumps at Ann Coulter's latest gratuitous rant. It is with disturbing pleasure that I witness the ugly guts of an idol of the Christian Right come oozing out. There is a certain thrill in the repulsion.

Much like watching Jon Stewart skewer the gaffers of the day serves as a Valerian Root for me, perhaps some are comforted by the make-believe boogie men who I click past on commercial breaks.  With the constant horrors of the real world - train bombs, tsunamis, genocide, war - I suppose I can understand the desire to escape to the fabricated frights of M. Night Shyamalan and Wes Craven.  It's a respite from the "too much" of the world. Something we all need, most of all, in the quiet of the night.