Eat the Damn Cake

That’s it. I’m moving to the Bahamas. It just snowed. These fat, confused flakes slipped out of the clouds and tried to pass my window as quickly as possible. I think they were embarrassed.

I’m sorry to talk about the weather, but it was so warm a few days ago that I realized I’d had seasonal depression for like four months. I mean, I didn’t know that I did at the time. I was walking around like, “My life is strangely tragic. But I don’t know why. Maybe I need more pizza.” And then it was warm and I burst out of my apartment building, singing, my arms flung out, skipping down the sidewalk, scattering flower blossoms in my wake.

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I will be participating in the Bloggers Day of Silence, out of respect for the gravity of the situation in Japan.

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I lost my virginity because of a really terrible book. But there’s a little more to the story.

I was one of those girls every parent hopes to have and every boy hopes his girlfriend isn’t. I was perfectly fine with saying no.

That’s not true. I don’t know that every boy wished I’d just please, for once, say yes. The boys I dated seemed pretty excited just to have a girlfriend. There was no pushing, urging, pressuring, or egging on.

As a teenager, there was no way I was going to have sex. Just no way. Why? Because I didn’t feel ready. It was very simple. And there was plenty of other stuff to do.

Once, when I was seventeen or so, a boyfriend whipped out a pack of condoms (“family size” I always said, retelling the story), and I laughed. “OK,” I said, “But we’re not having sex.”

“Just in case,” he said. “Maybe I should put one on.”

“Go ahead,” I said, fully clothed and completely entertained.

We did not have sex.

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Quick note: I’m over on iVillage, talking with the famous and amazing Virginia about cake. Virginia, I will love you forever. I promise.

My friend texted me. “Just boy stuff again, if u want to talk.”

When do I not want to talk about boy stuff?

She met a cute guy. He listened to her talking about yoga with real interest. They liked a lot of the same random indie music. He invited her back to his place, where she hung out with him and his roommates for a while and then left. He has not texted her since. Even though she texted him.

I have three friends with boyfriends who don’t pay for things enough. As in, “What if we’re going to see a movie? Can’t he just pay once in a while, instead of always expecting me to split everything? Why doesn’t he ever want to take me out?”

Dating is kind of a mess.

(and that’s not even counting all the clothes that go along with it.)

When I interviewed Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up (read my interview with her here. I mean, if you feel like it), last week, she told me that dating is so confusing for everyone now not because there aren’t any rules, really, but because everyone has a different set of rules that they’re following. And her reason for why people all have different rules is that people are on different career and biological schedules.

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2.3 meters of exposed fuel rods. Only essential 50 workers left to frantically try to fix everything. First there was an explosion at the No. 2 reactor. Seawater pumped in. Radioactive steam. Waiting for the wind to blow the wrong way. Over sunken buildings and floating debris and finally people. The pulsing, hungry, growing potential for monumental catastrophe. As if the existing catastrophe were not quite monumental enough.

I’m looking out the window right now, and everything is in its place. The sky knows what it’s supposed to do, and it’s obligingly blue, with a tasteful hint of clouds, nothing too showy. People on the street below walk towards somewhere familiar. They know where they’re going. Regular, harmless steam floats from a rooftop.

I can’t help but think about how much we depend on everything working the way it worked yesterday and the day before that.

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Clementines.

Don’t they look irresistible, piled in that slatted wooden box? It makes you think absurd things like, “I could totally eat a box of clementines. What is that, like, fifty of them? Whatevs. Bring it.”

I think I had that exact thought. But I have always, always disliked that song “Oh my darlin’ Clementine.”

I like the future. It is awesome. And not just because it will definitely contain flying bullet-shaped silver cars with snack bars that restock themselves automatically. But because it can contain anything. It’s full of second chances. And third chances. And a gazillion more chances. You might get it wrong today, and then try to get it right for two weeks, and on the 13th day you mess everything up and feel like you’re starting from scratch, but then on the 4th day after that everything might fall into place. Or five years later, everything might fall into place. Isn’t it cool that everything might fall into place?

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The touchpad on my laptop broke. I restarted my computer, which is my solution to all computer problems and some problems that are totally unrelated to computers. Nothing. I restarted it again. No signs of life.

It was worse than the whole thing freezing. I could see all my work laid out in front of me, like a glistening buffet with lox and kipper, but I couldn’t get to any of it, because the cursor wouldn’t move. Stupid arrow.

I restarted it again. Nothing. I yelled wordlessly and kicked something.

My foot hurt.

I had about twenty things I needed to be doing. All of them depended on that little arrow being able to move around.

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