This morning on the way to work, spurred by a radio discussion, one of my carpool boys mentioned he’d seen a 60 Minutes episode wherein they discussed New York’s efforts to change the legislation so that if a drunk driver kills someone, he’s charged with murder rather than manslaughter. The proposed changes increases the sentence from possibly no jail time, to minimum twenty-five years in jail. I nodded while they discussed it, and shrugged at appropriate spots, but I was gritting my teeth to hold back my furious tears.

Yes. You know what? Yes. Yes, jail the fuckers till their teeth fall out and they’re used as the prison gloryhole. Yes, they have committed murder. A weapon is a weapon. It doesn’t matter if you’re waving a butcherknife in a crowded mall and shouting “If I kill anyone who gets in my way it’s their fault, not mine!” or have just had six drinks and gotten behind the wheel of a big, heavy slab of Detroit steel going at ninety klicks. It is murder. There is intent. Because the minute you drunkenly fumble the key in the ignition you’re like a suicide bomber: full of intention.

My friend Chelsy Shillington – my beautiful, generous, matchless friend, who had gone hang-gliding in Thailand and eaten live ants in Costa Rica and made seitan stew to share at our night classes, who feared nothing and loved everything – was killed by a drunk driver in 2006. Her death still haunts me because it was the death of someone extraordinary, not just because it was the death of a friend. And because it was such a terrible, terrible death – alone on the highway, far from friends and family and help, murdered by some douchebag boozehound in a speeding truck.

At the memorial, both of us dehydrated from weeping, her mother told me the coroner in BC had insisted the death of her youngest daughter had been instantaneous. Well, OK. Good if it was. Good for her to not suffer. But what if she did? We can’t know that. Can we? We can weigh up the evidence and say, Yes, I hope, I pray it was over quickly. . But that’s all we can do.

And I don’t know if drunk drivers, especially repeat drunk drivers, the ones who get caught eighteen times, have felt that kind of pain for themselves. They can’t have, I suspect. Standing beside a posterboard full of mementoes, clutching a bouquet of kleenex, trying not to imagine the last moments of someone killed by someone else’s selfish stupidity. Maybe jail is too good for them.

So I was invited recently, by a well-known sexpert, to go man-hunting.

Does anybody remember Prissy? God I really used to identify with her. The other hens, wealthy, fecund, and comfortable, picked on her behind her back. “Oh, you know Prissy! She’s A-L-L W-E-T. What a D-R-I-P. Teeheehee!” Which has led to one of my darker theories that regardless of the battle figures and torture statistics, women are far crueler than men. But I digress.

The lesson we take from our poor, skinny, big-beaked, near-sighted spinster is that some women just go unwanted by men. Men can sense when to steer clear, and then your only option is to go after them with a rolling pin conveniently hidden in your biggest purse. Let us contrast her with Pepe le Pew, who has never met a female creature of any species to whom he didn’t want to mahk sweet, sweet loahve in zee unattended rowboaht. (If those two ever meet I assume there would be some kind of immediate universe-destroying quasar event.)

Well. Let us contrast indeed.

Single for over two years, I’m just as tired of thinking about it as I am of talking about it, and as tired as all my friends are of hearing about it – though I know it affords the other singletons a good laugh every now and then. But I’ve never bothered getting to the root cause: which is what my sexpert proposes to do after an evening of observation at a manhunting… park? Preserve? Someplace, anyway, where I will have room to swing my rolling pin.

“Root cause?” I keep asking her. “Have you been eating LSD again? What root cause? We know the root cause! I just don’t got what it takes!”
And she just looks at me and shakes her head.

In the past I’ve been told that I’m sweet, fun, witty, and ‘interesting.’ (I love ‘interesting.’ Isn’t that a loaded one? “I invited you to this thing. I told everyone you were the most interesting person I know.” This normally means I get stared at all night whilst people wait in vain for me to demonstrate my imagined double-jointed elbows or banjo-picking skills.) Once, a middle-aged businessman stared at me for half a minute then said in a voice of wonderment, “You’re a real bright spark. Did you know that?” So that was flattering and possibly even true, though sparks burn out, it’s nice to be thought of as bright. I don’t get ‘beautiful’ but occasionally I’ll get ‘pretty’ – you know, “That liner looks pretty on you.” “Those heels are pretty.”

I get ‘adowable’ a lot. “Oh my Gaaaaaawd! You look adowable!” I don’t get ‘hot.’ I get ‘cute.’ If I strike a sultry pose, people pinch my cheek and squeal. Even exposing my acres of cleavage is not seen as a come-on, but a handy spot to rest a drink. I have guy friends who sometimes spend whole nights at a bar or houseparty with their head on my shoulder, admiring the smell of my hair and asking me to tell them about girls; three hours and five drinks later, we’re normally arguing vociferously about Batman’s utility belt and have punched each other in the neck at least twice. Guys don’t look at me and think ‘Girlfriend.’ They look at me and think ‘Hey, man!’

The, ah, interesting thing about all this is that we see quite clearly where my limitation is: I’m not seen as a sexual being. Which is the root, so they say, of all unconscious attraction and the foundation of ordinary romance. And I don’t disagree with that! I think that sort of attraction is necessary and healthy and normal and it’s really very, very evolutionarily sound – all that research I’ve read about how the majority of self-made matches will have different histological profiles and compatible gene markers and scent profiles. (For instance, there’s someone at work whose smell I liked immediately –I think it’s noticeably pleasant and reassuring. What if he’s the one? Or what if we just use the same laundry detergent and I’m smelling myself? Are we looking for Self, when we look for the One? Or are we looking for Other? I shall go find a philosopher, and ask him.)

Truly, I think there’s a lot to be said for the kind of attraction I have never elicited – the kind that’s instinctual and immediate, rather than the kind where you have to wear the guy down until at last, after six months of exclusive dating, you nag or shame him into a goodnight kiss. Someone told me very sincerely on New Year’s eve that he thought I was sexy, and God bless your colossal English heart, Dean, dearest, for humouring me; but lying is a sin and you’re probably going straight to Hell.

The lesson I take from this is not that I can’t be liked, but that I am unlovable, because my few attractive qualities are completely hidden. (For instance, I have very healthy gums.)

I wonder if my pheromones are broken. Or if I am, myself, somehow broken. Along some subtle line which can’t be felt or seen.

I wonder if there’s a way to encourage guys to see me as an ordinary, sexual human female instead of an ungendered podperson from Mars who quotes a lot of Futurama in order to fit in with the other human beings, that they may not penetrate her disguise and put her immediately on Oprah.

I wonder if my perfect match, my soulmate, the great love of my life, is out there somewhere pining for me, but locked in the maximum-security wing of a Russian psychiatric hospital and not allowed to use metal utensils, let alone date.

I wonder why the few times I’ve tried online dating, I instantly attract the kind of lumpen dope who bores me to an immediate torrent of tears.

I wonder if I’ll die alone in a houseful of cats and one wall-eyed golden gecko who spurns all foods except dried blueberries.

Ees very strange.
No?
So we shall see what happens when I return from the hunting expedition.

PS. No, I’m not posting at work. This was written on the 15th and scheduled to publish today. :-p

So my old pal Dave is moving to Cuba for work! It is phenomenal, and he will make lots of money, and have adventures, and do something with nickel, and drink mojitos, and probably get some really interesting parasites. I’m terribly excited for him and looking forward to visiting, especially after he drunkenly texted me an official invitation. No go-backsies, mi amor!

There is a part of me gloomily saying, in the heavy accent of my middle-brain, “Oh! How sad that he must go! For Dave Gordon ees a good man. He waits up for cabs with me, leaning against the washing machine! He attends events as my gigolo. Always he makes me laugh, and prevents me from killing that one guy in our carpool; and he banters wittily, which is so very rare, for so few people have that skill! Of all my surviving friends he surely is the most adventurous, and loyal, and amusing, and true. He always tries to make me feel included. He helped end my seven-month unemployment streak! When things get tough, he always watches over I, like some kind of gropey gropey angel. And he has never tried to kick me in the junk! There is, truly, no doom on his watch. How sad that he must go. A single tear rolls down my cheek.”

But then there’s another part of me remembering that I turned my back on him for ninety seconds at my housewarming party and ended up with this on my fridge.

So the final verdict is instead, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, you squinty-eyed communist bastard!

(Long-distance hug)

I went around my apartment and got down all my poetry books (plus a book of prose poems by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn whose name I am quite sure I have just butchered) so I could work on this for a while. The pile is almost three feet high, not including kids’ nursery books. Jesus! I have a poetry disease. And not the clap. That’s a poet disease.

Anyway, I swept through some Milton (pleh: totally inappropriate) and then slowed down for some Ondaatje and it’s so good, so much better than I remember, I just cannot resist posting a piece of his (which may be illegal, anyway, I will reiterate that all copyright belongs to Michael Ondaatje, 1989.)

There is a note at the back of the book, and I quote, “…A few lines get dropped and a few get added every year. It is based on those horrendous dances where a caller decides, seemingly randomly, who should not be allowed to continue dancing. So the piece (I still hesitate to call it a poem) is in the voice of a mad, and totally beyond-the-pale, announcer.” So put on the voice and read along!