Britters.

Since it’s the holidays and my eyes have been plastered to the flatscreen, my ocular orbs have absorbed the nearly non-stop advertisements for the Tom Cruise as Nice Nazi film.  So, Maverick dons an eyepatch for his role as would-be Hitler assassin, which seems to fit in well with the rest of his military garb and doesn’t come off at all pirate-like.  Which is a bit of a disappointment, since wouldn’t a Nazi flick need a little lightening up with a touch of swashbuckling? 

Once when I was a young tot, just barely a seedling of six years old, my father bought me an eyepatch at a local drug store.  I doubt you could hit up a Duane Reade today for an eyepatch, since it seems to have lost favor to the glass eye.  On a recent trip to London, I attended a dinner party where someone did indeed have a glass eye.  He was quite the gentleman, not that having a glass eye would instantly scrub away one’s manners, but if one were a creep, having only one eye would definitely contribute to a good nickname.  Pervy McOneEye, say, or The Sly Cyclops. 

At this dinner party, I was seated next to One-Eyed John, as he apparently was known among friends behind his back.  (The English take kindly to physical impediments by cementing it to your name.)  We chatted and, as I struggled to maintain focus on his good eye, he described life on the high seas.  Yes.  He captained yachts for long-haul sailing competitions in which tiny boats sail from New Zealand to the South Coast of England or some other completely daft distance.  So, in some essence, John had all the trappings of a modern-day pirate including a salty sense of humor. 

After a bottle of rum and our collective dancing on a dead man’s chest, the party took a decidedly boozy turn.  My new friend John popped out his eye.  It wasn’t menacing at all – more an oddball gaff, as though we might now start playing a game of flip cup with it.  Which is it say that perhaps eyepatches have been put out of favor, since they are creepy, like a little manhole cover for a look-see into a skull. 

According to legend, there was once a commander in the British Army who wore an eyepatch because it made his men serve him better.  I can understand how this might make him appear brave and threatening, but wouldn’t you want a leader with depth perception?  Perhaps this is what ultimately dooms Tom Cruise’s attempt to exterminate Hitler.

In the run-up to Christmas this year, I confined my shopping to three or so days of fast in-and-out, idea-in-mind purchasing.  Otherwise, you are RISKING YOUR LIFE.  When did it get this dire?  Obviously, the financial implosion spiked the usual cocktail of fanatical bargain-brained Black Friday shoppers and last minute maniacs.  The result convinced people that our nice little tradition of present-swapping was as randomly murderous as a round of Russian Roulette.    

Miscarriages and trampling hordes notwithstanding, 2008’s season-sealing shopping stats are the worst in decades.  Now isn’t that comforting?  You’d think with death on their heads retailers and consumers would be a little less maniacally blood-thirsty.  But no. 

A pet store is located on my block.  It’s one of those sad city pet stores that urban children think are par for the course, since it only sells small, pathetic things that could only be termed a “pet” if rocks weren’t available.  Much excitement will be had when one of these creatures has a scamper.  Soon after this immensely tiring exertion, the little beast will expire and be awarded a funereal flush with full-military honors.  Many New Yorker parents willfully mislead their kids into believing creatures incapable of much beyond sitting and defecating are prime material for a “Best Friend.” Here’s how the parental negotiation goes:

“Daddy, I want a doggy!”

“How about a salamander?”

“What’s that?”

“A small, but stealthy creature who can live in two worlds at once.”

“Wow.  Can I walk it in the park?”

“Sure, you can bring the cage to the park.”

“Huh.  OK!”

So, the pet store cross-ways from my apartment sells newts, slime-covered, soon-to-die goldfish, and fast-multiplying gerbils plus bags and bags of food for these creatures.  Usually, I pay its grubby window displays little heed, since, honestly, it’s all just a bit too emotionally-trying.  But, last week, I was in mid-holiday shop mode and therefore peering in all windows to see if a present purchase was piqued.  Talk about holiday discount!  A massive sign with fluorescent bubble lettering read:

“Pets make a GREAT gift for the kids!  HAMSTERS: 99 cents!”

Now, I know we all want a bargain, but is that even allowed?  Doesn’t it seem as though the store might be, say, trying to get rid of these hamsters?  As in, they might be a little long in their toilet-roll gnawing tooth, aka, ancient with one paw already in the grave?  Wouldn’t the death lesson be a rather one lesson to learn so swiftly after opening your big Christmas present?  Plus, you couldn’t even return it for anything better because goldfish are two bucks a piece.

At a holiday party this weekend, a young woman with thick dirty blond hair announced to those gathered that she was “half Cherokee… it’s my nose, gives it straight away.  Thanks, Dad!”  And then she did this aw shucks arm dig that incorporated a finger-snap.  It was boggling. 

Far be it from me to query her genealogical roots, but this chick looked Native American like I look like soup. 

As in,

Me: “Tell me quickly before we go out tonight, do I look like soup in this?”

Roommate: “What?”

Me: “Great, let’s go.”

Absurd, I know, but so was this girl’s claim to be a member of a dwindling tribe.  She kept milking it brilliantly — “Oh, life on the rez is all hardship, let me tell you…” and “Blue corn chips can’t match the heaven of fresh off the cob.”  I started to feel like I’d been massively out-snarked, like this was a routing in super-earnest.  Here was a grifter, for sure.  And then, she somehow managed to top the seeming untruth she opened with. 

“So, once I was in a bar and this thick-necked cowboy ambles over and distracts me from the game I was watching and roofies my drink… [pause for audience shock and awe]. Of course, I noticed immediately and told him, ‘Man, I’m an ex-heroin junkie, you can’t pull that shit wool over this wolf’s eyes.’  I was gonna tell him that Swift Wolf is my Cherokee name, but I thought he might be a racist, as well as a rapist, and then throw me out of the bar and beat me.  Rough times being from the rez.”

And then she proceeded to get very high, which one would think wouldn’t mesh so well with her being a recovering addict and all.  I guess peyote is condoned on the rez.

The world is aswarm with contradictions and blatant dissemblers.

Did we all hear about this?  Nicole Kidman blew into a didgeridoo and now she’s been cursed.  Pretty fantastic if you ask me.  According to an Aboriginal spokesman, the didge isn’t to be played by lady-folk and due to this major tribal snafu, she will lose the opportunity to make a Monday for her Sunday.

“It bastardizes our culture,” award-winning actor, screenwriter and Aboriginal language teacher Richard Green told the Sydney Morning Herald. “I will guarantee she has no more children. It is not meant to be played by women, as it will make them barren.”

What?  So only men are allowed to blow the massive dong-shaped instrument?  How… homoerotic.  This isn’t about corruption of culture.  This is about guys hanging around together worshipping at the altar of an enormous playable ween — could this get any more masturbatory?  If a woman does a job traditionally reserved for men, Green claims, she is bastardizing their culture.  Get over it.  Do we need to have a didgeridoo-off? 

But apparently, there are just some things women are not allowed to do and that is didgeridoo.

Okokokokokokok.  I realize I am just a tiny vespa in the fifty car pile-up that is this Twilight phenomenon.  But a film so back-handed by critics, yet so beloved by girls deserves inspection.  Usually, I am a “vote with my dollar” type of gal – the sort who won’t give movie-makers twelve bucks for another must love dogs in 27 dresses dreg that opens to crappy returns and gives assholes like Jeff Robinov (Time Warner’s Prez of Prod.) fuel for their misogynistic fires.

Honestly, I’ve been intrigued by Twilight because of the oddly handsome, girly leading man who seems to have shorn his hair with a Flowbee.  He looks as though he’s carrying around 117 years of sex-mussed bedhead up there.  Apparently this is NOT the case, as Mister Vamp ixnays on the ex-say since, in his passion, he would chew up his lady lay before the rumpy-pumpy par-tay.  This leads me to believe the bedhead is due to 117 years of ferocious self-love. 

And here is where the film lost my twelve dollars.  No vamp nasty and I’m bored.

No fear for Twilight however, since this is exactly where Caitlin Flanagan, smug freak-show that she is, comes galloping in to explain that the whole fiercely felt celibacy business is exactly what girls want.  She essplains for us in The Atlantic,

“The Twilight series is not based on a true story, of course, but within it is the true story, the original one.  Twilight centers on a boy who loves a girl so much that he refuses to defile her, and on a girl who loves him so dearly that she is desperate for him to do just that…”  (Emphasis hers)

Now what do we suppose Flanagan is pointing to regarding the “true story, the original one”?  She so swiftly moves us into Biblical territory mixed with animalistic male-female coupling.  For Flanagan, Twilight has it both ways – chaste, Old Testament, fucking designed solely for baby-production intertwined with King take Queen by-any-means-necessary brutality.

I’ll agree the whole Twilight business is centered around copulation.  Flanagan’s not a retard.  She’s just a hysteric who believes deep down that sex isn’t about pleasure.  Edward, our bouffant-toting vampire, “refuses to defile” the woman he loves.  Sounds like a pussy-tease to me.  For Flanagan, the sex in Twilight is sex that leads to ruin, insult, pollution of reputation.  In a larger sense, she implies that sex degrades women and that no clever girl would EVER allow herself to be taken.  A young woman is CRAZY to even consider thinking that sex is what she wants.  For Flanagan, the sex Edward wants is as brutal as rape.  And, more interestingly, the sex Bella imagines she wants with Edward is just as violent and painful as forced sex. 

Construing sex as an act of terror that girls want is just a massive, massive mind-fuck and it plays into the patriarchic notion that women:

A)   are safe virgins or dead whores – no in-between here

B)   don’t know what they want and need men to tell them and then give it to them

C)   find sex scary, terrifying, and soul-gobbling

The dude here has all the power.  Not only can he fly, but he’s also just a boy who CAN say no (pace Oklahoma).  In any case, plenty of women have what are termed “rape fantasies,” which aren’t really about rape as much as submission.  These fantasies stem from books and films like Twilight, which play up the scariness of sex for dramatic tension.  Girls who carry expectations of searing, violent sex into adulthood will be disappointed by the milque-toast boning they get from most guys.  On the other hand, they might also moronically suss out guys who treat them badly in the hopes that these boys might bite them.  But those guys just fuck and run. 

Flanagan concludes,

“The Twilight series so resonates with girls because it perfectly encapsulates the giddiness and the rapture – and the menace – that inherently accompany romance and sex for them.”

She condones a major lie.  It’s a lie that she hopes will keep girls safe – safe in their pink and white painted rooms, flopped in their four-poster reading instead of out exploring how it actually feels to be around the opposite sex and not be terrified of them.  Twilight can’t portray the menace of sex, but I know what can and it definitely should be required reading for all young women:

Portnoy’s Complaint.

I will assume we all carry telecommunication devices, be they phones, inclusive of the i or not, bberries, pdas, etc. And I will also assume inside this device is stored a digital rolodex that alphabetizes Friends, Parents, Local Chinese, Dealer, Hook-ups, Exes, DO NOT CALL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR LEVELS OF INEBRIATION.

Recently, I was discussing various romantic transgressions with a companion and mentioned that in addition to the ills perpetrated during an unfortunate love affair, the man in question continued to have a ghostly presence inside my phone. Post break-up, random half-formed texts would arrive at booty calling hours waking me so I would peer bleary-eyed at my phone thinking, “Now what the fuck does HE want?” And on opening the text, “eep elusive. I wa” would come stuttering into view. These were easy enough to ignore — sun spots, spotty reception, messages held in mysterious queues up in the ether. Whatever.

But then there is another form of passive aggressive communication that is slightly more difficult to ignore. I am referring to the “Pocket Call.”

Phone rings. You look to see who it is — screening is second nature — then grumble, “Now what the fuck does HE want?” Heart beating, you press ignore. I won’t lie: the mushroom cloud of self-satisfaction grows nice and fat, as you wait to listen to the voicemail. Punch in the code, etc., waiting for a nice pathetic roll-out to get going:

“I, uh, was just… uhmmm… thinking about you. Uh, cause I was just in Duane Reade and saw that shampoo you use, and I… thought about how you… might want to know it’s two for one now. And I know you, uhm, like a bargain. HA! OK! Gotta go. BYE.”

But, no. Not to be.

Nope. Punch in the code, and you get two full minutes of rustling. Of pocket change banging into the phone. Of far-off chatter. Useless deflating crap that you listen to very intently.

Of course, this is all due to a random mistaken trot across the frequently called list and an oopsy-daisy bump against the green call button. But, when I confided this little incident to my companion, she said she too had been a victim of the same exact treatment. Her ex had also infiltrated her calm by engaging in a “Pocket Call.” Now, I’m cooking up a theory that recently some man magazine — FHM, Maxim, Details (wait, that’s for ‘mos), Esquire (oop, that one too) — had some sort of article about how to continually irritate your ex until she wises up and changes her number.

“Bros, here’s how to get back at your ex hoes: call her, make sure it goes to voicemail, then leave the phone in your breast pocket and engage a member of the opposite sex in a thrilling discussion. Laugh, rip it up, be Mr. Chuckles, just until the two minutes are up. Then, you can pull out your pocket square and go back to your weeping.”

On the flight back from Berlin (packed, oh so ridiculously packed, like fish we were), I was slotted in by the window in seat 37J. Seat 37I could access the aisle and was inhabited by a small brunette person pecking at her Blackberry. Right after she let me sit down, she stayed standing and promptly peeled off her jeans.

Instantly, I thought, “To each their own, I guess. Probably a nervous flier coming from her connecting flight — she peed her pants.”

She turned around and said, “Don’t worry. I have tights on.”

I nodded my acquiescence, since what could I do — argue that tights aren’t technically pants? You know, whatever makes her comfortable so her little hand isn’t death-gripped to mine as the wheels leave the tarmac. My preferred method of relaxation is xanax washed down with some Chateau Clois du Blah.

But then our little tete-a-tete was interrupted by another passenger who was seated in our row one seat in, which I suppose would be 37G. Quite a wide plane. His interruption wasn’t a mere tap on the shoulder or asking a question.

No, his wild boar musk plowed like a tire-iron into our conversation and brought it to a halt. Anyone with receptive mucuous membranes in his vicinity stood blinking as though the flight attendants had come around asking if they would like a complimentary Mustard Gas.

“Oh, why, yes! That would be lovely! Do you by any chance have any napalm?”

Two people up and fled from 37H, the seat between him and us. One, a fey, very stylishly dressed black guy, leapt up and said while waving at his face, “My asthma. My asthma is working up!” I looked at him and thought, “Yeah, my asthma too… ALL OUR ASTHMA IS WORKING UP.” After this mini exodus, my seat mate turned to me while wearing her scarf like a ninja and whispered, “I am sorry those two have left because they acted as a human shield!” We both grimaced and turned to look at 37G.

He appeared completely nonplussed and was doing the things people do on trans-Atlantic flights: buckling in, chuckling that he took his neighbor’s half of the seat-belt while she passed out into the tray table (no one told her about the importance of being in the up-right and locked position?), and fingering the in-flight magazines to plan out his movie selections. I could practically see his little smelly thoughts slipping off his body into the cabin: “Dark Knight, yes! And then, maybeeee, Mama Mia? Or what about Bee Movie? Ah, it’s a long flight — I can watch both!”

A flight attendant walked through the aisle and addressed our little group. Our faces were all bundled up and we pressed against the window, which I longed to crack open for some sweet, sweet engine oil fumes. She looked apologetically and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have any cabin spray.” Slightly taken aback, I thought she may have been making a joke. I’d never even considered that the airline would have such a thing as cabin spray and now that they DIDN’T have it?! What an outrage — come on, not even a little can of Febreeze? Or maybe some of that gloopy anti-bacterial handwash? We’ll just douse him!

Then, I thought she was just going to lean in and whisper to us, “Oh, stop being such pussies. Just breathe through your mouths!” I know I looked stricken at the mere thought of having to taste this man. His little Pig-Pen particles were swarming through the cabin, zooming around in our collective recycled air.

The upshot is that as the flight began to taxi onto the runway our fetid friend settled in and stopped smelling. He just sort of collected up his stink and laid it around him, as one would do with a blanket on cold knees.

However, when we landed in New York, as soon as we reached the gate, every single person stood up, took a deep breath and wished to flee at once. He stood up as well and made amused banter with people in the aisle: “God, isn’t that just how it is? You’re on a flight for seven and half hours and when you finally land, you gotta stand around for twenty minutes til they let you off the plane.”

Blue-faced, we all just nodded.