“See! Doesn’t he?”

GS cocked his head sideways, murmured, “Why yes,” he leaned closer, “He does look like me.”

The Olympics were good for a girl in a longish distance relationship. A replicate of my boyfriend was skimming across the ice in a tight bodysuit, starring in commercials, and giving interviews. Even J, who previously was only half aware that the Olympics were on and didn’t know who this athlete was, didn’t quite believe me until a promo flashed on the screen and stopped him in mid-ridicule as I sat glued to the TV in the living room for one of the nights. “Wow, now that’s creepy.”

The darkened eyes, a smile with wattage, and similarly tossed hair were all a build toward the doppelganger effect, but what caught me was the duplication of the smile in conjunction with the facial hair.
GS has what I can only call an extended soul patch that adds definition to his face and that I hadn’t seen too often and now see everywhere.

I have never been a girl to actively go for a guy with facial hair; it has always been something that had come with the package. However, I’m very much aware that it’s their face to do with as they please and that love should not be a coercion of self. [That said, GS threatens me that someday he’ll grow out a real Mexican ‘stache and I will admit I cringe a bit.]

The first interaction with facial hair was with someone who I had known previously as not being able to grow any and who, when older, had grown a goatee. The new look was something I found somehow to be an amusing sign to how time had changed us on the surface. He had shaved it not too long after we came together, randomly, and as he picked me up for a date, I recoiled from him. There was too much remembrance of us when we were 17 and he looked immature and anachronistic. I was horrified. He grew it back.

J I knew only shaven clean, yet constantly grumbling about his five o’clock shadow that was sometimes a bit more of a midnight o’clock after he let it go a day or two. A few months back I suggested he grow out a beard just for the hell of it since his facial hair does grow so fast. Two days later, J was Evil J, who invoked a Commander Riker feel. J was suddenly a twin of himself who had just a bit of a darker edge. It made me actually twinge when I saw him and lament, “Where did J go?” He shaved it. I guess its upkeep was more of a mug than just trying to keep it all shaved.

I love to watch a man shave however. It’s one of those glaring male/female differences I find fascinating. It’s a strange calming noise to hear the blade slip or scrape against skin. You’re watching a man handle something dangerous with utmost calm and gravity. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel as if that must be up there with the couple of key ideas of masculinity.

Other thoughts on male facial hair, can be found at Tales of a Mom (who inspired the topic).

2. I think stagnation is different than building a sense of self. Is it wrong to buy into the idea that, sometimes, making opportunities for yourself takes time and reflection about the direction you might want to head?

3. That said, I still cringe when I have to call myself a librarian. Even though finding someone a obscure piece of information for visibly grateful people is nice, it’s the intangibility and lack of connection to the subject of the job that irks me. I had an exchange not too long ago where a student gushed about how much she liked looking at how buildings on campus had changed over the years. I followed her enthusiasm to that point, but then her glow led into minutia and I felt a glaze come over my interest that must have appeared on my face. She hesitated and asked, “Doesn’t this fascinate you?” “To an extent.” More forcefully, “But, you work here. You must really like history.” I peered up at her and doled out a session of awkward silence.

4. I really want to try ordering my daily burrito in Spanish but I’m too damn chicken, *ahem* gallina, because there are fierce, focused, and mean-looking Latina women that would chew me up, spit me out, and serve me with a side of frijoles. Maybe someday…when I’m feeling a touch Teutonicly balanced enough for that sort of showdown.

7. Sometimes I take my iPod and go dance in the Archive’s stacks for a few minutes if a good song comes on. It has to be a gentle sway that can be converted to a weaving movement to appear as if you’re just enthusiastically looking for a specific box. I have mastered this art. I admittedly have also mastered the art of not caring terribly if I get caught dancing.

8. Dancing alone in the elevator is foolproof however.

In other blogging news – which also precipated a renewed focus on dusting off the cobwebs on this site – is that I have been picked to be a volunteer at BlogHer 2010 in August.

This means I get the registration for the conference for free and get to mingle with a whole crowd of Real Life Bloggers. Last time I went, I was a total groupie.

And where is it? New York City baaaby. YEEEEEEHAW.

I’ve commented on this before, but I do have a lot of testosterone in my life. And while I do think that several of the men I have interactions with are not necessarily loading their representations of masculinity with things that media might value – beer-swilling, roof-fixing, sport-watching – they do decidedly inhabit a different gender model. [This is starting to sound very grad school theory here.]

The point: when a female friend of mine, K, was scheduled to arrive from Colorado to spend a couple days around the end of the year, not only was I happy in the idea of catching up, I was crazy excited to do things that established me firmly in the role of woman. Moving away from high falutin’ language, I wanted to do damn girly things.

“Oh my God. You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.”

I sneak through the racks behind her as she says this to the boy behind the counter.

“Please, please tell me you’re dating someone,” she breathes.

He gives a bit of an abashed chuckle. “Yeah. And his name is Jesus.”

And did we. I own two new purses. My toes are flaking off purple nail polish. I discovered that I might never be able to do eyeliner because I’m a white girl and not because I was doing it wrong.

We also talked of course, rambling nonstop, speculating on the failings of men, our failings with men, our failings with ourselves, then turning around and highlighting the good, questioning life, questioning the future, and reaffirming who we were in retrospection of the choices we made, good or bad.

“Guess what our song was?”
“Oh?”
“‘It’s Been A While’ by Staind.”

I walked past her in the aisle as we browsed Target. She had frozen, her mouth hung open and her head dropped cocked to the side. She mimicked a strangled noise. “But!”

“I know,” I replied.
“BUT!”
“Oh, yes, I know.”
“BUT THAT’S NOT EVEN A DAMN LOVE SONG.”

I laughed, “It’s called foreshadowing.”

(Alert! Overarching generalization ahead that I’ll be quick to tell you doesn’t always work like this, but keeping this in mind as a woman is helpful.) Men are solution-oriented: don’t like the girlfriend? Break up with her. Don’t like yourself? Workout more and fix it. What is the meaning of XX? Why… is there a problem with it?

On the first night from the ride to the airport, I had K stop me and tell me straight-out in midstream: she didn’t need a solution from me, she just wanted to hear herself think. I think I’m a hybrid when it comes to this. I like to talk myself into and out of a lot of mental briar patches, but I’m very willing to hear other sides to what I have fall out of my mouth. I won’t necessarily take advice, but I will use suggestions to trigger the new paths of where my own mind goes. These suggestions can still come from women, who in their own rambling, will highlight something to you and take something from you and highlight it for themselves, and in the same breath tell you that both of those purses look very good on you.

I think, however, that the demand toward knowing your audience came when I was in my first incarnation of college education. I hesitate to mention it, but I never really aimed high when it came to my college education. I had the pick of full-rides to any schools in the state when I left high school and I simply decided to continue on with my high school educational career. I was into computers, enjoyed the tinkering, was hoping to get a bit more provoked into that sort of study *insert waving of hands* at a higher institution. [This is why letting an 18-year-old mold your career path can be a very bad thing.]

I went to the state’s premier research institution and was wildly excited by two things: they gave me money back at registration and that male to female ratio was about 4:1. I was rebuffed by the type of people I encountered – nope, I did not find numbers interesting, nor lines on graphs, or hacking into my graphing calculator. Interestingly, I enjoyed my writing classes the most.

These were embarrassingly small classes. A technical writing class of three people and a teacher was one I took one of the two semesters I was there. The teacher liked the idea of bringing in people from “the field” who would tell harrowing tales of working with engineers who didn’t like to shower or comb themselves and who would write worse notes than a doctor on LSD. As one such professional started off her thirty minute presentation, she ultimately gave my entire initial common sense reasoning behind why one should know their audience.

She stood in a huff in front of us, trying very hard to emulate the harden Technical Writer that she had in her mind of herself. She nodded curtly and said her name and where she worked. She grabbed a piece of chalk and walked up at the blackboard.

“We are fortunate that we speak English. English is varied. There is color. We could be speaking German.”

I sit a little higher in my seat. She moves to write on the board and scrawls the following:

INSWOHNZIMMERGEHNUNDESSEN

She smirks at us, “This,” she says, “Is how a German would say that they would like to have a snack.” I gasp audibly; she ignores it. “Isn’t that just incredible? It is a verb. Imagine if we, as technical writers, had to deal with this sort of thing.”

For as little as I tended to speak in class back then, I was shocked when I couldn’t help but blurt out, “That’s not a German word.”

“Oh, I assure you it is.” She peered at me. Silence in the room. The other two students and the teacher stared at me. I looked at the speaker, “We would never say anything of the sort.”

She straightened, “I was told exactly this by a German.”

“Yeah…great, and I can tell you that this in no way accurate. I speak the language.”

I’d like to say she was knocked off her game, but no, she steadfastly ignored me. I spent the rest of her time talking pointedly ignoring her, because if she didn’t take the time to research this key opening point and did not think that there might be someone who spoke the language in her audience, what else might be faulty and craptastic in her presentation? And from there on out, Audience 101 was checked off on my educational general requirements list.

Two summers ago I had the chance to go to Washington, DC for a job funded trip to take a class at the National Archives. I don’t think I actually blogged much about the trip (even though I did stumble upon the handwritten notes that I took during that time) because…somehow I wasn’t doing much blogging then. [I just opened up my flickr set of the trip if you're curious. Few pictures are of me because the ones I did take where I wasn't on a Segway left me looking like a wilted flower. I am very unused to this thing called humidity.]

The National Archives, the main building down the street from Congress, lends itself much natural grandeur, with tan marble floors and eight foot wooden doors. During my two weeks there, we used the back entrance, the researcher’s entrance, that had us taking our bags through metal detectors guarded by surly workers. We’d march past the office of the Archivist of the United States; those in the biz being properly awed.

The National Archives in DC

After the first couple of days, becoming jaded quicker than I usually do, I sadly noted how much more I could be learning if we were not trapped in a room being lectured to for eight hours. The best parts of the trip was when history became something active, something that had a hands-on component, and touring both conservation labs at the Library of Congress and Archives II, the newer complex out in College Park, was the most captivating to me. In hindsight, this was a concrete gain in learning about myself, but, I’d have to say that this didn’t get sorted out at the time and is now more of a common theme for me.

Digression aside, at the end of week one we were told that we weren’t able to have our tour because the contraption that held the documents needed to be fixed. [It's a pretty nifty deal they have. For security and conservation purposes, they lower the documents into the floor every night.] With an air of smugness, the director told us that we could use our lunch times to go see the rotunda with everyone else. Great, and take the hour to stand in the line that snaked out of the building, I thought. I lamented this to my seatmate, a jovial and Southern-snark-equipped woman who was creating a library/archives for a small Christian sect in Oklahoma. She urged me to wait what would happen the next week.

Week two led me to being a bit of an archivist rebel, touching things I shouldn’t, wandering away from the group to get my free Library of Congress researcher card, and leading a small band of hungry mini-archivists into a gated cafeteria.

No, I say! Step on it!

“Hello,” I called to her a few times as the rest of the group muttered to themselves. “Can we come in?”
She barely glanced in my direction, “Do you work here?”
I gave an exasperated sigh as this is the same cashier we’d all seen the previous week, our group routinely coming in much earlier and before hours the building was open to the public. I called out defiantly, “Not yet!”

Now, sometimes librarians get a bad rap about being meek critters, and sometimes the stereotype actually has real-life origins, and sometimes I fit in nicely, but, I don’t when I have a key card to try out. “You shouldn’t be doing that,” hissed a librarian from a Catholic library as I strode over the a nearby set of double doors with a key scanner. I threw a look at her and the rest of the bunch who looked at me blandly. I swiped. Green light and a click.

Did you know that there was a yoga room in the National Archives? No? You’re welcome. The cashier said nothing as I paid for my hot chocolate and the rest of group mulled around in the snacks and giggled behind me.

Friday of the last week, we were told that there was just no time in our schedule to go to the rotunda. I gave a small mental gasp and as the speaker started on…and that’s just it, I can’t even remember what most of these people spoke on because it was all so very blandly done.

The couple hours of presentation I remember: the records manager who glowed and screeched her principles, frightening the bun-wearing librarians in the first row, but infecting me strangely, with “YEEE, Records Management for the WIN”; the audiophile who came to talk about how audio could be cleaned and repaired and who spoke with such a calm manner that our class actually lived up and asked sincere questions; and, the worker who made snide remarks about himself, the system of archival work in DC, the system of the government in general and how he decided to make it clear that he understood that cubicle work had damaged him for social human consumption. But this was more droning and I leaned my head onto the table and waited.

Operation FauxPowers

“Where have you been?” she whispered.
“Looking at the Declaration of Independence.”
I shifted triumphantly in my seat and then continued on as she chuckled,”Oh, and I’m sorry, but I forgot about the hot chocolate.”

Because we tend to forget it's of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Of all the cutting differences between GS and I, the one I find the most amusing is his style of driving. It’s a very boyfriend modified version and I dare not speculate how he drives on his own, but I’ve told him that to an observer it’s very much a “25 percent pleasant smiles and 75 percent fuck you” surgical style of driving. It’s like being on a roller coaster and I rather love it, yelling “Weeeeeee” and clutching the door; because if I don’t stand out for other things in Mexico, the word “Weeeee” culminates the process to a shorthand.

It’s… not, to be honest. I have to conjure up a lot more discipline for myself than what I have currently. [And I was so damn gung-ho.] What has stopped me lately is the metaphor “taking it to the next level.”

This is exemplified with the janitor in our department that is completely enthused about my learning Spanish and my autentico novio who she likes to ask about. We ask each other every day how we are, and by god, I can say, “Muy bien” with astounding certainty. I even can play nice and give apt descriptions for my state – tired (cansada), there is lots of work (mucho trabajo), look! – snow! (mire!…snow!) – the thing is, I want to have other conversations with her and then realize I need to focus on the asking words. I think I asked her how much her children were the other day when I meant to ask how old they are. *hides*

But, I am toying with discipline and I told this to GS.

We were walking in the mall when I had a giddy flash of insight. “How about I decide on a goal for a mini-conversation that I can have with you at the end of a week? Something I can research vocabulary for and figure out the needed questions…anticipate your questions…maybe?” I trailed off a bit.

“That’s actually a great idea.”
“Yay!” A pause from me, “So what kind of topic?”
He turned his body toward me mid-stride and continued to walk, “You know what I’d like to know about and don’t really? American history. Tell me about American history.”

“American history…what part of American history?” I said slowly.

“All of it!” He waved his hands gleefully.

“That is crazy broad! Holy moly. Like, I’m supposed to research how to say the emancipation of slavery?” He grins at me. “La emancipación de la esclavitud.” I sigh and stretch my arms over my head and tell him that we have to narrow this topic down a bit. We walk silently and I ask again what topic.

“Lightbulbs,” he says without hesitation.
I glance over at him, “I will give you the best damn conversation about lightbulbs ever.”

I was third in line at the bank, rocking ever so slightly back and forth on my legs and had been debating the sexual lives of the men in front of me, an obese older gentleman with a Seattle Seahawks hat – when was the last time he had a come hither moment of raw virility – and a short man in a red, plastic jumpsuit whose coloring, complexion, and sneaking tendrils on his neck and on his knuckles spoke to a hidden blanket of man hair.

Rapid-fire is a tired way to describe listening to a language you don’t know, because it’s natural that this is going to be the speed that a native would speak it. But the back and forth by the two Chinese girls was robotic in their vocalizations, one girl in glasses seeming to cut off the slightly smaller next to her in barking orders.

These were girls I had seen on campus before. Both barely hovering around the five foot mark, but dressed in layers as is decidedly not the style elsewhere on campus – think Harajuku for the Kmart audience. The smaller girl gave off the air of club diva, grey stiletto boots, a few non-matching belts, a good smattering of makeup, and this was 12:20 on a Saturday afternoon. The other was more subdued in appearance but the spearheaded PR face of the duo. They spoke loudly and the latter girl stomped past the line and headed into the commercial teller line, calling out to her friend in a whispered yell and maniacal wave.

“Neeeeey,” the other girl would call and wave back until, with a huff and heave of her oversized purse onto the counter, the girl with glasses pulled her friend in front of the teller line that was closed but had a somewhat baffled and miffed bank employee sorting paperwork.

There were a couple of glares from our line as the girls exchanged money, again the girl with glasses now prodding a bank manager for explanations. It made me think how screwed Americans could get in an environment where the cultural norm is whoever can push their way up wins all the cookies.

Cue to a few weeks back, mid stretch in my Friday yoga class. The teacher reminds of a lithe Amazonian, not a woman who lumbers so much as commands, is perhaps a little tightly wound, and is very, very focused. We were in the second portions of class, winding down from fast cardio flow movements to simple stretches.

The creaky door to the mat room opens and two small girls in school uniforms walk into the edge of the room. Our instructor looks up and narrows her eyes. They talk loudly to each other and I think, ‘Hey, Chinese!’ Now, since I can’t stretch as far as others, I get a better view of everyone rump, but also, interplay like the following.

“Can I help you two?”
The girl with glasses is pushed by her cohort: “Is this kickboxing or yoga?”
I suppress a giggle.
“This is yoga, please, if you’d like to join, come in and close the door.” The girls talk amongst themselves and one girl leaves. The girl with the glasses remains by the open door.

“Are you staying or are you going?”
“My friend does not know.”
“But are YOU staying or going?”
“My friend…”

The instructor yells out, “I do not want to be rude, but I am trying to foster a tranquil environment and I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR FRIEND. PLEASE GO. JUST GO.” Her voices ends up shrill. The girl in glasses is mute for a split second and then bows over, hands clasping in front of her and mumbles her apologies. “Yes, yes,” the instructor imitates the movement, “Namaste. Now, GO.”

Give me TRANQUILITY NOW.
Welcome to America girls.

No.

So, I wiggle around as I sit for a mold of my teeth and smile wider than I do naturally for my Before Shot. The consult with both the doctor, a laid back Texan, and his business end, his polished early-fifties ex-cheerleader wife, went well. He told me that I had a whole slew of problems, crossbite, overbite, orthoitis of this and orthoitis of that with a bout of snaggle. A little of this and bit of that and in 20-24 months, you’ll be set. Holy moses, two years, I thought and sunk into my chair. Oh, and before we start, get your wisdom teeth removed, missy. He gets up to shake my hand.

Right.

With the business end, I nodded blankly to the figures, still mulling the time in my head. Now in January, I was still thinking Japan! and Sushi! and Hot Japanese Guys! so I told them I needed to wait, but that I’d take them up on the wisdom teeth idea and after that I’d get back to them. I set up for the wisdom teeth removal, blessedly only the top because the miracle of evolution made me not have any on the bottom, and this is another story not to be told here except that you know that someone loves you when they take wads of your blood-soaked bandages and only wrinkle their face.

[Thanks J. ^_^]

[Oh, and I hear that they couldn't shut me up when they put me under, plus I decided to get bossy until the meds wore off. I vaguely remember trying to grab my laptop and telling J sluggishly, "I need to set up my Command Center, duuuuuude" as he just shook his head and led me to the couch.]

Then I let the option of braces weigh on my mind for a while. Should I invest in this? Should I be doing this now at this age even as my blonde and stunningly beautiful dentist reassured me that she got them when she was just a bit older than me? And then I had to fight with something I’ve had for many years, TMJ.

TMJ is a hip nickname for jaw problems. In my case, mine doesn’t align properly and I have to sometimes manually click it open and hear grinding noises. It seemed like something had happened after I got my wisdom teeth out, whether they dislocated my jaw to get the job done perhaps, but as I couldn’t correctly eat good food in Germany because of my jaw, I had had it. Damn this, when would I have another health plan that would throw nearly two grand at me to say, “Hey Gorgeous, go fix your teeth.”

So last Wednesday I nervously sat in a chair to remind them to get the clearer, ceramic brackets on me ["Oh yes, I'll pay extra." Um, thanks Mom!] and couldn’t help laughing as they snapped on the wire. Just for the experience, I couldn’t say no.

For now, they’re just on the top, stretching my bite before they descend on the lower teeth. I have to admit that it felt, and still feels, really good. It’s like my teeth very much wanted to be in marching band and I denied them and now they get their crazy hats, roll their feet, and there is a lot of squealing of glee. Now, my co-worker did love watching me gum at Chinese food two days afterward and I ordered some pizza only to gum at that in private, but after the pain had faded, it’s pretty snazzy.

In my mind, I’ve optimistically planned for a year to be able to mentally coerce my teeth into, you know, scuttling into order a bit faster. Because of too immediate access to Internet between hopping around on projects at work, I googled my orthodontist again today, trying to find reviews. One review started, “Dr. X estimated two years but I was done in less than a…” I choked a bit on my tongue and I clicked the more button only to get “Read the rest at a low rate of $14.95.” Curses! Foiled!

Nicely played Interwebs, though, I sometimes hate thee heartily.

But back to the braces. I am getting used to them, but the novelty is wearing off. I’m starting to get this feeling of, “Alright, that was swell fun, but seriously, let’s take these out.” But the 13-year-old in me is quite pleased when people have narrowed their eyes and said, “Wow, you really can’t tell you have them at all.”