Tall Green Tea. Two Bags.

I have fallen in love with a man who has nice eyes and a kind smile. Who speaks to me gently and who lets me alone into his small store of tenderness.

The fact that the man of whom I am speaking is not the man to whom I am married makes this inconvenient.

It also makes it honest.

We learn quickly that a certain amount of fibbing is necessary to make it through life. The classic example being when your mother asks you if said outfit makes her look anything less than fabulous, your answer must be in the affirmative. Even if she is wearing paisley.

The first mistruth I remember telling was a lie by omission. I was three and my reaction to this situation would eventually explain why establishing long-term relationships would prove to be such a problem for me.

My neighbor friend Robbie made me a fish. It was gold and black and crafted from very short popsicle sticks. It had a magnet on it’s back and was meant to hang on our refrigerator. I don’t remember the occasion, but I do remember having to pretend like I liked it.

I remember thinking that being upfront about my feelings toward the magnet fish would result is disaster. The truth was that I didn’t want this fish. I didn’t know why Robbie gave it to me. And I didn’t know what he expected in return. I had a feeling he had some feelings for me and I wasn’t about that. I was three years old, way too young to make a commitment.

But I took the fish, thanked and smiled and it lived on our fridge for about the next decade or so. When I graduated from high school, Robbie sent me a graduation present in the form of a piece of luggage. Considering the fact that there was an event tied to this gift and that we hadn’t talked since the fish incident, I was much more comfortable with this present and sent him a sincere thank you note.

There are plenty of reasons why we have to tell the truth. Ostensibly, the biggest reason is so that we don’t hurt someone’s feelings. Robbie would have been upset if I said thank you but no to the fish and handed it back to him. Hostesses all over the country would be in tears if guests were honest about the fact that yes, the house does look untidy and the chicken is a bit underdone.

Grandmothers would keel over if grandchildren offered honest critiques of their Christmastime gifts. Outdated articles of clothing that smell of mothballs and insecurity. The species would cease to evolve if sex were given and received only when both partners were honestly excited about it.

And so we spend most of our days and years learning to massage the truth to make it palatable. Studying norms so we know what we can and cannot say to the barista when there’s whip in our non fat latte. Judging reactions and escape distances when we need to have a sit down with an employee or boss.

There exist very few circumstances under which one can actually tell another how one actually feels. One of these places is therapy, but let’s face it. Anyone’s who’s talked to a therapist only tells them the parts of the truth that support their ability to continue with the open prescription for xanax.

The other place is in the arts.

The problem with most art is that it’s isolating. Painters hole up in their apartments and studios and commune with only their canvases who ask nothing and say nothing in return. The paper accepts the truth the artist puts on it and gives no critique. Then the piece is put into a gallery where people pretend to know exactly what the artist was thinking. And the artist says whatever is necessary to make the buyer think that the $10K they’re about to drop is an investment. No really, an investment.

Musicians and writers are the same. They create their work in a vacuum. They don’t need to talk to anyone else to get the thing made. And once they make it, they send it off to give it a new life. A life that exists apart from the artists. Apart from the truthteller. Other people have conversations about the work, but these discussions don’t involve the creator and the discussees often lie themselves so they don’t let on that they have no idea what said piece means. They only know it’s supposed to mean something.

And then there are actors.

Don’t laugh. The acting is serious business.

There’s acting the commercial art. Being pretty enough to be put on a DVD cover or magazine page and coherent enough to rattle off lines and look longingly into the distance while the camera rack focuses on the stalker in the background.

And then there’s acting. The discipline. The thing you have to be willing to do in order to one day get to the cerebral vacation that is The Break Up.

I did theater for fun growing up, in college and after. Then I moved to LA where it is impossible to act for fun because everyone in every acting class and every small theater is sure that this is going to be the little dive that the next big thing is going to come out of.

But I loved being on stage. Admittedly one of the things I liked about performance was that people had to like me. They couldn’t reject me if the script said otherwise and I always had something witty to say in return.

I had tried the honesty thing with my parents, but quickly learned that that was not going to work so well. So for example, when I said, “Mom, I think I like my friend Nathan,” my mother responded by telling me I was a slut and that I was more likely to end up pregnant and homeless than graduating with my classmates.

When I very honestly told my father that I had tried to commit suicide one evening, he told me to wash my face. That dinner would be ready soon.

Theatre was a place where one did not have to endure conversations like that. And if you did, it would all be worked out by the end of Act III and you might even get a hug.

It’s no secret that artistic places are havens for people whose lives resemble a badly written miniseries—not the ones about the unfrozen dragons and giant earthquakes whose fault lines mysteriously stop at the shaken hero’s feet. But the ones that girls like to watch when we menstruate. And after each curtain call, we’d wander, slightly dazed, hugging and kissing each other sincerely. Looking for something true to grab on to before we went home and lied to everyone there.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I swore that I would not act. I convinced myself that I could not. And that even if I could, I wasn’t pretty enough to make it, so why bother. Thanks to my mother’s encouragement, talking myself down out of dreams was old hat and came very easily.

Then I met my friend Chuck.

Chuck worked in casting and ran an acting class in Culver City next to the Sony lot. He asked me to come occasionally when he needed an extra body to round out some scenes.
And he taught me to act.

There are many acting techniques and the one Chuck taught is I think, the most effective. And the most dangerous.

Many teachers will teach an actor to dig inside themselves. Find something that makes them happy or sad or envious and project that emotion on to their scene partner. They cause their students to dredge up unhappy memories and pretend like the person they’re acting opposite is the one causing the pain. The problem with this is that eventually, things stop hurting. Wounds heal. You’re not always in love with your spouse, so pretending like your scene partner is your husband doesn’t work the days that your husband has insisted once again that yes, you are the only one who can clean out the catbox. And the playing video games for 12 hours in a row is totally acceptable behaviour.

Chuck does not teach this way. If you need to be in love with your scene partner, then you need to fall in love with them. And only them. If you need to hate someone, then you hate them. You let yourself go and you allow yourself to develop the emotion. You have a bodily reaction to it and then you act. And it’s amazing.

If you ever share a ride with me, you will find that I clearly was never popular. I like having a complete emotional experience on the way to work, so instead of the music that’s contemporary or was contemporary in any previous decade, I listen to showtunes.

I emotionally bruise like fruit and I like it. I like that I wanna cry over stories I’ve read and listened to a thousand times before. I love falling in love with Hugh Grant every time he flutters his droopy blue eyes and says, “…if you’ll just allow me to say ‘no’ to your kind request.” And I like going back to being a kid, remembering all the things that mom and dad said and crying again.

Because those things are real. How important they are in the grand scheme of things is open for debate, but doesn’t your average person care much more about making a connection to another human being be it good or bad than memorizing some dates and figures to be regurgitated in an annual report? The things that really make a person’s day are the strangers that smiled at them, the compliment the barista gave as she handed over the whipped, non fat latte, doing something good for someone who’s down. Our feelings matter and they matter most when they’re real. You can tell when someone’s lying to you and it’s almost not worth the effort. You’d rather them just say the dress isn’t your color.

On my honeymoon, my husband decided to risk the twenty thousand dollars we spent on the trip and go bungee jumping. He stood on a bridge above an icy cold river in New Zealand with about a dozen other fools as loved ones watched, prayed and seethed from a lookout areas many meters away.

Greg was third in line. The first two people jumped silently. Falling to what could have been their death without so much as a loud exhale. But when Greg jumped, he screamed his heart out and everybody loved it!

The crowd clapped and cheered and when he walked back up the hill, he had new friends. People clapped him on the back and congratulated me on such a great catch. And the only two things they knew about him was that a) he might be an idiot and b) he wasn’t afraid to be honest.

It’s fucking scary to jump off a bridge above icy cold water anywhere and the two people who went before Greg tried to pretend like it was no big deal. That they did this kind of shit all the time. But Greg was honest about his fear and that honesty made him a star.

The truth isn’t always neatly presented, it’s not always dignified, but it means a hell of a lot more to people than biting your tongue in hopes of looking strong.

This is not to say there’s no room for tact, but that’s another essay.

And as I started training with Chuck, I was soon told that one of my biggest problems was my inability to be honest. “I can see you have a lot to say,” Chuck would tell me, “but you’re refusing to say it.”

I protested that what I had to say was ugly, uncomfortable and inappropriate. He said that it was real and that was all that mattered.

“But what will happen if I say these things out loud?” I asked.
“We’ll see,” Chuck said. And smiled.

And so one Tuesday night, Chuck told me to go up with a handsome man with nice eyes and a kind smile. And a very intimidating stare. The object was to talk about what we felt.

“You scare the shit out of me,” I said.

And immediately, his stare softened. He leaned forward and looked genuinely concerned that this was my reaction.

“I don’t want to scare you,” he said. “I want to make you smile.” And I believed him.

Acting, the real stuff, not the commercial stuff, is a dangerous thing and not for the feint of spirit. But having a voice for the first time in my life, and having people respond to it not because they have a script that says they have to, but because they have decided to do away with society’s norms long enough to learn this one craft really well is an awesome thing. And that night, the truth was, I loved Derek and standing in front of him and smiling was all I wanted to do. And I adored Chuck for giving me the chance to do it.

When I was a senior in high school, I left snuck of campus at lunch with my friend Samantha one day. This was against school policy, but I had a car and a pass to be gone until 2 p.m. I thought I was golden.

But later in the afternoon, after we were back from lunch, the vice principal called me into his office. It was the first time I’d be summoned to any office for something other than accolades. I was a good student with a perfect record and only one absence that was incurred in the fourth grade because my heart had briefly, but decidedly, stopped beating.

The vice principal asked me what I was doing off campus and I lied to him. I told him that I needed to go home to get a disk for computer science that I left in my bedroom. I was only slightly surprised at how quickly the lie came to me. But in this case, the truth was so lame. Retrieving a furtive disc with a hard to understand computer language on it was way more exciting than saying I was jonesing for some mcnuggets.

When I left his office, I almost asked him not to call my house. But that would have been a very honest thing to say and would have invited questions.

I’m not sure which would have been worse. The questions my VP would have asked. Or the wrath that was my mother when she found out the news.

Being reminded that I was a failure, a slut an embarrassment and a fool seemed all right. It was a truth I’d grown used to hearing. Whether it was real or not, I could take it. Had my VP learned the truth about the bruises on my arms, I’m not sure what I would have become. Or if I could have handled it.

A few weeks later, I was called back to the office, being awarded for something. And mother was there, telling everyone how she’d always supported me. Always encouraged me. And never doubted me for a second.

Such was the case with my mother and me. Truth was relative and at her discretion. On my wedding day, she made out with my caterer and refused to speak to me. She stood me up in my dressing room and sat as far away from me as possible during the dinner. When I tried to ask why, she said she had no idea what I was talking about.

About ten months after the wedding, we started talking again. Neither of us mentioning the months that had lapsed. Both of our lives had changed so much and we acted like the things we didn’t know weren’t there to begin with.

I had learned from my dad that my mother was seeing someone new and that he had spent nights at her place over the thanksgiving weekend. With both my parents now involved in other relationships, the family I knew was gone. Yes, the family sucked more days than it didn’t. But it was mine. And now it was gone.

When I called her to give her my holiday wishes, we ended up talking for a couple of hours. I told her about my class and about Derek. And about how amazing it is to stand in front of someone and be that honest. To lay exactly how you’re feeling on the table for scrutiny. To tell the truth. The whole truth. The absolute and uncomfortable truth.

She agreed that it was amazing and said she wanted to do the same.

She told me about the meal she cooked for thanksgiving. All the food. The delicate place setting. Then told me she ate alone. I said it was good to talk to her and that we should do it again soon.

So much for the truth. Suddenly my experience with Derek became that much more important. And equally as meaningless.

But I knew we were both lying and took comfort in the fact that I could be honest with myself about that.

Heat

One of the saddest things is when you find out that someone you thought was special was in fact, more ordinary than most. When the good things you committed to thinking about them turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.

I met David at work and didn’t think much about him. He was cute and funny, but as we were both otherwise engaged, I didn’t think much of it. I asked him once if he ever rubbed people the wrong way. He took it in stride. He was one of those guys that could be really open if you asked and since most people never did, I began to learn secrets. I wanted nothing more than the knowledge and when my friends lusted after him from afar, I took pleasure in knowing truths I’d never share.

I changed jobs and our friendship waxed and waned. Secrets aside, we were never that important to each other. So I was appropriately surprised with two and a half years into our friendship, I leaned against my car while David kissed me tenderly and sweetly and called me beautiful.

For about three weeks, that moment was extremely important to me. The usual ravages of life had taken their toll and anything to boost the self esteem was not taken lightly. I had gone to see him perform—something I’d done several times before and not thought a thing about it. But I remember seeing him on stage that night and something was different.

To say the David is sexy as hell is a real understatement. He’s on the short side, but his body is absolutely incredible. Strong firm, well define chest, six-pack abs that descend into a thin, trim waist. He has dark hair and light, bright blue eyes. A wonderful genetic specimen. If I were to go artificial insemination and there was a picture of him in the donor book, I’d insist on his sperm. Unless Adrian Brody’s was in there, but in that case, I’d insist on fucking the donor.

After the show, we went drinking, which you really shouldn’t do if you’re feeling lonely, and I swung by his apartment. I was awake and buzzed from the sugar in my amaretto sours and didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. He walked me downstairs to my car and it was clear there was something in the air. I asked him what he was looking at me like that for and he shrugged adorably. I jokingly asked him if he wanted to make out and when he said “yes” I knew I had gone too far and that it was only a matter of seconds before…

Contact.

Kissing someone new always takes a little adjustment. If the person you previously kissed had large, full lips—as was the case with me—then you spend a moment searching for the flesh you’re used to. But seconds later, you find your rhythm and it can be wonderful. He put one arm around me and held me against him. I could feel the strength his well cut biceps holding me to him. I even let myself fall back against them to test the strain. There was none. I was happily trapped face to face with my friend who kissed me like I mattered.

My kissing history is dodgy at best.

My first kiss came at a church convention in Detroit when I was 13. An ugly 13 at that. I look at pictures from that trip and the fact that I’m so hideous overshadows the fact that the guy was 18 which borders on illegal. But I did have boobs, so what did he know of my age.

His name was Brennan and he was chewing gum. I hate gum. It is impossible to look sophisticated while chewing gum. People chew gum to stop smoking. They replace one nervous habit with another just to have something rolling around in their mouths. Gum turns people’s breath from unnoticeable to impossible to esacpe. Sure it’s minty fresh, but it wasn’t anything before. Why do we now have to announce each exhale. And cinnamon gum is even worse. Cinnamon the spice is warm and sweet and reminds one of Christmas. Cinnamon gum smells like my dog’s feet.

That day, however, my curiosity over being kissed far overshadowed my hatred of gum and the fact that this guy was the least impressive person I’d met in a long time.

He came for me and I was terribly awkward. My mother was teaching a class nearby and it was all I needed for her to see me. While most mothers probably would have thought it was adorable, mine would have likely performed a clitorectomy on me and then made me write an essay on the perils of communinig with the other sex.

I knew I was supposed to do something with my tongue, but I wasn’t sure. I had braces and I wondered if Brennan could feel them. I couldn’t feel anything except the rising nausea in my gut and I hoped I wouldn’t throw up just yet. Brennan insulted me, wrote me two letters over the next few months and never spoke to me again. I had stomach cramps for two days and figured this whole boy-girl thing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I didn’t kiss anyone else for the next three years.

My second foray into physical relations was no better and slightly more scandalous.

Again low on the self esteem, I took my friend Brian’s invitation to join him at a party at his place with some of his friends from college. Brian was two years older than me and was already living on his own. Very impressive. And he had alcohol. Even more impressive, but I was firm in my boundaries. I was NOT going to drink.

But apparently I was going to let a stranger stick his tongue down my throat while another played with my breasts.

I was out in the living room and realized I was by myself. Things had gotten quiet. So I went into the bedroom to discover that everyone had piled up on the bed and were touching each other. I wanted in. I wedged myself in the bed and felt like I actually belonged.
The things is, I know that this is what I’m after. Belonging. Feeling like I matter to someone. And I know that people regularly do things that allow me to feel this way. That the problem is with me. Whatever the receptors are inside of a person that allow them to feel love and connection are missing in me. And so without the proper machinery, my desire for connection defaults into a desire for sex.

And not even really sex. But some currency of physical expression that feels like might be used for me and for no one else. Or at least for a select few. Anyone can shake a hand or get a hug, but kissing. Well, that’s resevered for fewer people. Touch my belly, that’s something else you just don’t do to everyone. Hold me to you. Let me feel the strength in your arms pulling me closer to your mouth. I may not be the only one, but really, how many girls can say they know you that way.

I think the boy’s name was Billy and his kissing me was also illegal. I was 17 and he was 23 at least and likely in the military. The room emptied save for myself and two boys. One of them slid his hand under my shirt and ran his fingers across my middle, telling me I had a stomach like a dancer. I made a mental note to continue my cycle of binging and purging. I’m sure this was not his intended effect, he really probably just watned to get my pants off. But you never know what people’s baggage is, so you should be careful with the compliments.

Billy pushed my hair behind my ears and started kissing me. This was the first time I felt someone’s tongue and I thought it felt like a clam. I was surprised at how easily my mouth opened for him and how steadfast he was at sticking his tongue in there. I didn’t get it. But I knew it was what popular girls did. I knew that only pretty girls got to do this kind of thing and so I let it happen, hoping that made me at least one of the above.

The next day, I told my friends what happened. They were impressed and thought I was cool. I didn’t tell them that I cried for hours after. That would have killed the mood.

Which is in part, why I resolved not to cry when David kissed me against the car. I tried my damndest to remember that David didn’t give a shit about me. But his touch was so sweet and I was so lonely and craved loving attention. And I would have gotten away with it if he had not turned out to be really sweet over the next few days. He emailed me regularly at work and told me that he missed me. We kissed again in his office and it was just as good. He whispered sweet things to me and I could see in his eyes that he wanted me. He opened up to me about feelings. About when he called his ex and she was a jerk to him. He was shaking that day and I could hear it in his voice. He told me I was the only one who knew and I figured since we were back to sharing secrets, things were good.

We decided to arrange a full on tryst. We would meet at his place and see what happened. In the days leading up to it, I felt something tentative in his voice and I accused him of not wanting to see me. But then he called me, frantic, hot and bothered. It was more than just a come on, it felt like a connection. We were both two hurting people who filled unique places in each others’ psyches. And I thought that meant something.

I went over to his place and it was wrong from the start. It was very hot for one, so the tricks I’d learned to use to turn him on, to really get his attention, didn’t work. His skin was too damp with sweat for my soft touches to glance off his taut stomach or my kisses to feel wet against his neck. Instead, my lips just got lost in the moisture that was already there.

I was nervous. The stakes were high. I was pretty sure we weren’t going to have sex and we didn’t. but the sloppy near sex that did happen was comic in its bumbling. It was like we were kids who’d never been with anyone else. The chemistry of that night was missing and neither of us could find our footing as we looked for something meaningful in each other.

That being the case, I probably shouldn’t have made him cum.

But by that point, it became about power. He was content to walk away, but he was being gruff and I knew that a little release would ease his mind and get him to be kind to me again. He was easily convinced to lay back down and like teenagers, with clothes on, we worked until he made a little mess and seemed in much better spirits.

The minutes after orgasm are much more important to women than the orgasm itself. And David performed well. When we walked from his apartment to the parking garage, I reached for his hand. It felt natural to do so and he held it back. He kissed me twice before we left like an old, comfortable couple. He smiled and our connection seemed in tact. I felt shaken, but okay. Sure in the knowledge that this was one more secret that would keep us close. Not that I had a monopoly on David’s hidden life, but it’s nice to be needed and it feels good to be told you’re important.

That was Thursday.

David was too busy to talk that Friday and that weekend, he was out of town. When I hadn’t heard from heard from him all day Monday (the first hiatus from flirty emails in 3 weeks) I emailed him with a joke. He wrote me back to tell me that week was really busy. And so was the next one. And I realized what he’d become.

The man I’d thought was sweet and sincere was so, but only inasmuch as it got me in bed. It’s such an old adage, so tired and staid that it doesn’t even sound possible anymore. After all, we weren’t just a hookup, we had two plus years of friendly connecting of sharing things of relating to each other in a special way. If his plan two years previous was to be nice to me only until I made him cum, it was a stupid plan.

But it worked.

I thought back to the comments he made. The sweet nothings he whispered and instead of feeling a lover’s blush grace my cheeks, I felt hot anger there. Embarrassment and shame. And I regretted the day we met.

I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t do those kinds of things. I only did it because I needed to feel something and he allowed me to feel that. Turns out, I mistook chemistry for connection and I became a notch. And David became a stranger.

It’s sad when the person you’ve looked at with admiration and trust for years turns out to be an asshole. But as much as I was disappointed in my ex-friend, the same went double and triple for myself. I am frighteningly ordinary and hardly special at all.

I know what my issue is and I know what the solution is not. I know that no person will ever fill the hole in me that I was trying to shove David into. Frankly, it wasn’t fair for me to kiss him, for in doing so, I obligated him to things he knew nothing about. And instead of a clean break, should he ever talk to me again, he will find that I resent him. And no one likes to be resented.

Not even assholes who stop talking to you when you allow them the pleasure of release.

To Michelle

Well, dammit, that award-winning collage I did in the third grade is totally obsolete now. I spent a lot of hours gluing those packing peanuts on just right. And don’t even get me started about the paprika stains on my mom’s kitchen table cloth that I put there because I had to make the surface of Mars red and dusty!

Ultimately, I’ll get over my science project and a few years after that, I stopped caring about things science-related anyway. I had no choice. In about the fourth grade is when the “experts” start harping on how girls don’t like math and science and how they’re not good at it. So I got paranoid, put away all my cool space books and tried to like dolls. I never warmed to Barbie, but I did fall in love with books and literature. And so with the science drive kicked out of me by statistics, I looked toward my future as a writer.

And thank goodness. Because as a writer today, I think I’ve finally amassed the skills to talk about something science related that I think is quite important.

As a person of faith, a Biblical Christian to be exact, I am often forced to defend myself even if only in my head. There have always been those who don’t believe around and I’m cool with that. People are generally kind enough not to bring up religion in mixed company—unless they wanna rip on the Mormons or Scientologists and then everyone gets on board—and I follow suit.

But thanks to our President, his harping on “family” (read: conservative Christian) values and his very vocal religious right supporters, the topic of religion and especially Christianity has come up quite a lot lately.

Last year, when the school in Maryland voted to remove a paragraph from a textbook that said basically “some people believe in Intelligent Design. Now back to evolution,” my boss said “why is it that only the people with no intelligence believe in Intelligent Design?”

When the DaVinci code book picked up steam, I had more than one person scoff in my face because I was still going to church despite the “damning evidence” that Dan Brown published as a work of fiction.

In a meeting at work, the fact that I used to watch Captain Planet before going to church came up and one of the execs laughed. I thought he was laughing at the fact that I watched such an inane and obviously propgandic show. But he clarified. “Church??” he said, flabbergasted.

And of course, every now and then I pop into an online forum where the argument goes back and forth, back and forth about whether or not God exists and if He does or does not, if people who believe in Him are weak and/or mindless and/or just looking for something to give them false hope.

Let me clarify my beliefs just in case anyone is curious. I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Sure the Trinity is a confusing topic, but I’m pretty sure it holds up. I believe that people are sinners and that Christ died as prophesized to take the blame so that we can be reunited with God.

I don’t hate gay people. I don’t care if they marry or adopt kids. I don’t hate people who have had abortions. I love my tattoo and desperately want another one. I don’t mind social drinking. I think marijuana should be legal. I’m glad the morning after pill is available over the counter. I voted for Gore, then for Kerry. Who do I hate? Dr. James Dobson.

And I’m glad that Pluto has been kicked off the planet list. What has that cold, unfeeling rock ever done for any of us anyway?

I recently attended my brother-in-laws PhD ceremony at Berekely. It was probably the most boring thing I’ve done. Ever. There were only about 32 graduates, so we thought we’d be in and out in an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Two hours later, we were still there and my toes were numb.

His degree was in molecular biology and the program listed each graduate and what specifically they had done. The program might as well have been in Russain. At least then, I would have an excuse for not being able to sound out the words.

Each graduate got up with their professor and instead of just handing them their diploma, each professor shared with the audience of lay people exactly what each project was about.

After having listened to all of the speeches, here’s what I can tell you: the big guy with the beard was the first one in the class to buy an iPod and telomerase makes that one girl laugh.

The profs has no mercy on us folks without science degrees. I wondered whether or not I would have understood more about what was going on if the “experts” hadn’t scared me off of the subject 16 years ago.

But there was one speech that stood out. The keynote speaker gave a speech that really roused the scientists on stage. He started off talking about how important science was in the business of making sick people well, making dirty fuel clean and making regular sized tomatoes much much bigger. He encouraged all of us to follow movements in science and vote accordingly. He reminded us that bills and measures that affect scientific research pass through Washington all the time and we should be aware so that we can make informed decisions.

Then he decided to rip on the Christians. He closed by saying that scientists must do everything in their power to prove that Intelligent Design was totally false and that people who believe in it or in God or in anything but science were misled people who needed to be shepherded back home.

He had me. Then he lost me.

There’s a speech in Dan Brown’s other book, Angels and Demons where a priest addresses a crowd of people. He explains that yes, science is important and a wonderful pursuit. But not at the expense of faith. He asks the people if they’re happier reducing life to only atoms and molecules and bursts of energy. He asks if they feel inspired to go out and do good when they rest in the knowledge that this is all some crazy cosmic accident.

I happen to not believe in macro evolution such as is necessary to create all that we have out of absolutely nothing. I think about a square foot of space and how much nothing there is inside and there’s not a thing that anyone can do to convince me that that vacuum decided to start living. All by itself.

When I think of tar pits and the idea that lightening struck on and random proteins decided to become living cells, it just doesn’t wash.

Not only are we to think that something came from nothing, but that life and the desire to keep on living came from nothing. And in my heart of hearts, I can’t believe that’s true.

Not that I know where God came from either, but hey. He’s God!

And as a reason why I continue to believe as I do, all I can say is this: my life is better when I make God a part of it. I have specific examples too involved to mention here, but they’re there. Times when I’ve prayed and something so exacting has happened that it is impossible for me to think even for an instant that it was an accident.

And I agree with the priest in Angels and Demons. For all of our advancements in science and policy, what has it gotten us? The United States leads the world in the diet industry, yet we’re the fattest nation in the world. Only about a third of our citizens are at a healthy weight.

We have a billion dollar self help industry, yet divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, STDs and every other social ill is on the rise. We’re putting our faith in books, pills, sex, even science. And it’s not working.

One of the arguments people give for not believing in the Bible or in God is that things change. Why was it okay to own slaves in ancient times? Why were women so subjugated. We know these things to be unhealthy nowadays, they say. The Bible changes and so therefore it’s bunk.

Or. How can you prove any of it? We can’t see it? We can’t talk to these people. So it’s possible that it was 100 percent falsified. So there, it’s bunk.

Well, Pluto has been a planet for 76 years. And today, it’s not. It’s gone from a basic fact to just a mislabled rock running around in a weird-shaped orbit somewhere out in space. The science that we’ve had faith in for so long has changed. Not that Pluto was going to make or break someone’s life. But it was a “real fact.” And now, it’s not.

There was a story hidden in the back pages of The Seattle Times years ago about how scientists were not as sure as they were about dinosaurs. Evidence had come up that because fossils are often found all mixed up, it was possible they’ve been put together wrong. For years.

If you look hard enough, you will find these little chinks in the armor of science. Does that mean that I think the pursuit of it is worthless? Not at all! I think science is one of the most important things we can pursue. But should it replace God as where we lay our faith? No. Not even for a second.

The truth is, neither theory is anything special all by itself.

If science and only things you can see and touch are where you lay your faith, then were is your reasoning for being anything other than the sum of some impulses? Where is your justification for self control, discipline or striving to be better than you are? It doesn’t matter in the end, right? And we’re just animals, so you can’t blame us for screwing around, right? Do you find comfort in that? And if it the idea of “dust we are and to dust we return” doesn’t bother you, why attack someone because it gets under their skin?

And to the people of faith. Salvation is the most important thing personally, but after that, then what? Is it enough to believe and silently judge those who don’t? No! What are you doing with the riches and wonders that God has given you. If you truly have the joy in knowing that you are something more special than an accident that crawled out of a pond, why not share it with someone. Tell your story. Learn about science and your faith. And help others to bridge the gap.

And throw away those old astronomy textbooks. You never know what’s going to happen next.

Dear Dr. Dobson

Dear Mr. Dobson,

There is nothing inherently Christian about being a Republican.

I just read an article in the Los Angeles Times about how your organization, Focus on the Family, is encouraging pastors and preachers to preach Republican rhetoric from the pulpit. Not only is this illegal, but it’s horrible.

I am a Christian. A tried and tested follower of Jesus Christ. My parents dragged me to a horrible church from birth until I left town for college. I hated that church because while I figured that there was something to this whole God/Jesus/Holy Spirit thing, my church certainly didn’t exhibit that.

We were told that if we masturbated, we’d turn into rapists. That God hated fags and that the only way to worship was to sit through a four-hour service, speak in tongues and maybe lose consciousness once or twice.

Oh yeah, and our pastor stole about $60K from the coffers.

There was very little of God’s love, compassion and the most important thing—what saves all of us from an eternity without him—grace.

I hate to compare you and your organization to a group like this, but I feel like I have to.

I started listening to your show about five years ago and I was thrilled. I’d managed to hold on to my faith through college and beyond. I was out on my own for the first time and I found Focus on the Family to be refreshing and encouraging. There were a few times I thought you were a little old school, but that was okay by me.

I do not feel that way anymore.

To see what the evangelical Christian Religious Right has done to the image of Christianity in this country is appalling. The fact that you guys are falling in lock step behind Bush and the Republican Party is completely abhorrent to me and even begins to go against the Bible you say you love.

Aside from unemployment, the Republican Party has let this country be taken to a bad, bad place. The war in Iraq was based on a lie (and don’t say that it’s not because guess what we did not find in the bunkers and desert. Oh yeah, and Osama isn’t tied to Iraq, either). The war in an unwinnable thing. We aren’t giving anyone their freedom; we’re just making them more indebted to others to rebuild the rubble we’re creating.

Bush laughed in the face of the world and called France names and boycotted Yoplait because they dared to have a different opinion than the great United States.

Bush called himself the great uniter during his campaign, but considering exactly how partisan he is, he never had any intention of uniting anything except his buddies and new jobs.

Why is Bush pushing to drill in ANWR when we have more than enough scientific know-how to create cars and homes that don’t depend on oil for fuel? He acts as though there’s nothing else to do besides find more oil, when there is an amazing array of ways to reduce dependency and consumption including increased public transportation, modernizing engines, etc. The internal combustion engine is basically the same as it was 100 years ago. I find it hard to believe that computers can fit in your hand now, but the car companies can’t come up with something better. The crude oil is really the only thing we can use to power our country.

Sure, it’s nice to have people on the bench who share your political views, but you cannot legislate people into behaving the way you want based on whatever book you happen to read.

The problem isn’t that abortion is legal. The problem is that we have an incomplete sexual education program in our schools and access to birth control is hindered and difficult for the poor and the young.

And so what if gays marry? The Bible also speaks out against divorce and adultery, but I don’t hear any of the RR trying to outlaw those things. Picking on just one issue really shows your bigotry. Jesus ate with tax collectors, prostitutes and cripples. If you’re really concerned about gays, why not get to know some. Understand their struggle, then see if you can so cavalierly legislate them out of your life.

Stem cell research will not create abortion farms. If the RR can’t see that, I don’t know what else to say about it.

It’s embarrassing that the only thing the RR is interested in promoting about Christianity is a handful of verses that are taken out of context. It’s embarrassing to hear folks say that they’re doing this in the name of Jesus. It ruins the chance of moderate Christians like myself to have any impact among friends or when witnessing because people are so put off by folks like yourself.

I recently re-read the New Testament and I was blown away by how much it talked about love, compassion and taking care of people. I would encourage you to get back to those ideals and not be so concerned with judgmental legislation. And keep the views out of the pulpit. People in pews trust the ones up front to be honest with them. My pastor let me down as a kid when he took that money from our congregation and it was only the grace of God and a strategically placed Wendy’s that brought me back into a church after that. Please don’t preach ideals from the pulpit that will push others away.

There may not be fast food so close to their dorms. And who knows what will happen then.

at the very least, they could have given us forks

Should I have felt that bad that I didn’t stuff dollar bills into my friend’s panties? I don’t think so.

I do not begrudge people their obsessions. Obsessions are important. They give us 12purpose and keep us from concentrating on things that might really matter. Why pay the bills when you can watch Love Actually for the 10,000 time and make sure that whoever is in earshot knows about the continuity problems with Hugh Grant’s tie in sc. 24?

And I have plenty of obsessions of my own. I refuse to listen to popular music. I like only show tunes and I sing and dance in my car in a way that indicates that I, like babies, believe that people can’t see me if I’m not paying attention to them. Much to my husband’s chagrin, I like Renaissance Festivals. Oh sure, it bugs me that the faires cram about 500 years of history into a bizarre mishmash of free sex, warlocks and busty shop vendors. But the Ren Fest kids were the ones in college who didn’t mind my eccentricities, so I will always owe them a debt of gratitude.

I think my cat’s old man chin is the most adorable thing in the universe. And I demand that people relate to me. Open up to me and tell me things that they would normally never tell anyone else. I can usually make it happen if I really put my mind to it. But generally in the end, it does neither of us any real good and I end up annonymisng their comments into a screenplay or piece of sketch comedy.

I don’t expect people to relate to my obsessions and I tend to let others have theirs without much interference.

So when my friend Heather started telling me about her belly dancing exploits, I asked the appropriate questions and quietly resolved to never see her dance.

It’s not that I wasn’t interested. I was. In the way that I was interested in my brother in law’s thesis until he wouldn’t shut up about the details of the sexual development of drosophila melanogaster. An appropriate response to my question of “so Chris, what’s your thesis about?” would have been “oh, I’m researching fruit flies and what protein makes their sexual organs develop.” Instead, Chris spent the next 45 minutes pretending like I knew what the hell telomerase inhibitors were. Our meal came, I stared over it, glassy eyed until he stopped speaking and the blood began trickling out of my ears.

Heather came to me by way of my husband. She was a friend of his for years before I met him and friends they stayed. He had gone to a belly dancing event and decided that it was one of the most pointless endeavors of his life. I was impressed that he went and the fact that this all American boy willingly paid $25 to sit at a tiny table and watch a belly dancing showcase probably got him laid by me more than once. If nothing else, it proved that he was loyal…or gay. But I was pretty sure by that point that he did in fact like girls.

Though with my dating history, it wouldn’t have been too far off. Over two sequential three year periods, I was in love with two boys. Both named Jeffrey. Both sang bass. Both gay. I was drawn to their sensitiveness. The fact that they would cry in public. Their mutual love of Sondheim. All this I did with wild abandon, oblivious to the obvious. Straight boys don’t know who Sondheim is.
So when I met Matt, there was something wonderfully refreshing about his crassness. His like of beer and football. And mostly, the fact that he wanted to have sex with me and not with either of the Jeffreys.

Over time, that appreciation grew into love and we got married. And being the anti social girl I am, I had no friends of my own and that left plenty of room for his to move in to my life.

It took a while for me to warm to Heather. She and my husband had shared a few nights together. Nothing meaningful, I’m told. Strictly fun. Both of them were seeing other people anyway. And both of those other people were sleeping around on them. So really, there was something quite poetic about all of it.

And once Matt and I became something real, Heather backed off. I was told there were times when she acted out her jealousy. But that was before I met her. And long before Matt and I got married. After it was clear where we were headed, Heather was nothing but wonderful to the both of us.

Despite being terribly lonely for girlfriends, I avoided Heather. Maybe it was the fact that we never talked about the days when she was shagging my husband. Maybe it was because she was too much like me. More quiet than not which doesn’t always make for lively conversation. Maybe it was the fact that though I liked her very much, I didn’t feel like we had too much in common. Or maybe it was a sadness I saw in her. The sadness that made her stay with a man who regularly cheated on her. Who put unreasonable demands on her. Who lived in her house in a separate room where he fucked Spanish speaking girls and told Heather that he would never commit to her unless she learned his native language. Both of them knowing—her deep down, him on the surface—that her proficiency in Spanish wasn’t the problem. They were never going to be an item, but she gave him her virginity, let him live rent free in her home and told everyone that an engagement was pending.

But whatever the reason, it became less and less important as I became more and more lonely. I moved to LA with a boyfriend. The relationship might have worked out had he not turned out to be a bigot. And had I turned out not to be black. But his friends were my only friends and so when our relationship was over, so was my company.

I tried to get close to other groups, but I never quite fit in. I was too liberal for my church friends. Too eccentric for my non-writer friends. Too goofy for my writer friends. And too far away from my old friends who lived in New York and held jobs that were much more important writing cartoons.

When I met Matt, his friends became my acquaintances, but there were no real bonds. Even between me and his friend who so desperately wanted just one night with me. He and I actually had things in common. He was a writer, able to be sensitive and had a lot of angst. He was a nice enough guy, but his constant hitting on me in front of his fiancé made me uncomfortable.

Every now and again, I would think of Heather. And finally, I started calling. It took a little while, as is the case with all new relationships, to work out the kinks. To get over the awkwardness. And for her to learn to work around my stubbornness. For example, I will not go to Matey’s. No, Bec, not even to say hello. Why? Because simply put, I hate Matey’s.
Matey’s is a karaoke bar. And I am way too prideful to stand up in front of a bunch of drunk people and sing mediocrately to a midi version of Where the Boys Are. I’ve been three times and each time is worse than the one before. By the end of the night, drunk strangers are screaming incoherently into microphones and the white DJ is way too comfortable singing the uncensored version of “Golddigger.”

But Heather is nicer than I am, so she goes to Matey’s. I do not. And I feel that she feels snubbed.

Likewise, I forget that she’s arranged a happy hour to which I am invited. But I am fiercely jealous of my own time. So I do not go to happy hour and again, I feel that Bec feels snubbed.

Enter Anna and Mike. A wonderful couple that Matt and I befriend at my manager’s house. They’re our age, married, perfect. We decide to have them over. And just in case it’s weird, we invite other people to dilute the living room. But everyone is out of town. Only Heather arrives and somehow, she gets left out of most of the conversation. It’s not entirely our fault. Heather is quite like me and truthfully, it’s Matt and Mike who are doing most of the talking. And Anna and I have more in common than Heather and I do. Anna and I worked for the same company for three years. The only real thing Heather and I have in common is Matt. And that’s just awkward to bring up in mixed company.

So, for a third time, I’ve snubbed Heather so I resolve to make an effort to correct that.

The belly dance event was at a restaurant in Hollywood. A short drive from my job, so it was an easy plan to scoot over the hill after work and enjoy the show. It was billed as a belly dance showcase with a family style meal. I asked Heather if I could enjoy the family style meal alone—Matt wouldn’t be going. Heather said she’s put me at her friend Sarah’s table. I was disappointed that I would have to make small talk. I was hoping for a quiet table out of the way where I could brood and maybe sneak out early.

I looked up Sarah on Heather’s myspace page. She billed herself as “that Goth chick.” So upon entering the restaurant, I looked for someone who might fight that description. When that didn’t work, I looked for the girl who was the exact opposite of that description and I immediately found Sarah’s table where sat Sarah, Karen and Tim.

I’m not sure what about herself led Sarah to call herself Goth. I’m sure that maybe in high school, she was what one thinks of when one thinks of Goth. Maybe her hair was dyed black and her nails were painted dark and her skin was more ashen and her bright bouncy curls were blow-dried out straight and her cute skirt and blouse were oversized and dreary and her smile was a frown. A world hating, soul destroying, iconoclastic frown.

But that night at Babouch, Sarah looked exactly like what she was: a teacher. She had pretty brown hair that was pulled back into a cute bun, happy makeup and even though she was pretty heavy, she carried herself well, looked comfortable and made it clear she was glad to meet me.

I’d never been to a belly dance showcase before. But I assumed there would be some sort of stage whereupon the dancers would dance. And we would enjoy our family style meal at tables that sat in front of the stage. I imagined the girls in costumes like I had seen in books—veils, sheer sleeves, puffy pants or big skirts with big bunches of jewels, sequins and other noisy trinkets at the hips. What would happen would remind me more of a brightly lit strip club than something I would label a “belly dance showcase.”

The first thing I noticed after realizing that just to be sure, I should look up the current popular definition of “goth,” was that there was no stage. And the eight or ten tables in the restaurant were awfully close together for group dancing. I inquired after these things. My table told me that they were dance solos and that they love coming out to watch Heather dance. In fact, they had just seen her dance on Melrose the week before.

Again, not that I begrudge folks their obsessions, but this evening was going to set me back about $40 and several hours of my time. I’m not saying I wouldn’t come see my friend belly dance twice in two weeks. But I’m guessing I would have had other plans at least one of those nights.

After the appetizers, the showcase began. Each dancer would come out, dance to two songs, then shimmy away.

Immediately, I was disturbed.

The first dancer was in pants. Now, I have no education in the art of Middle Eastern and Arabian dance, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t wear hotpants. And definitely not bright turquoise hot pants. The girl weighed maybe 89 pounds and there was something way too juvenile about her to justify such a costume. She wiggled her way over to a giant of a man. Not fat at all, just big. He was probably 6’5”, 225 and had hands the size of the whole chicken that was plopped down on our table for us to eat without the benefit of utensils.

The man pulled out a $10 and waved it tentatively at the girl. Her body language seemed to indicate that she wasn’t going to take it. She would wiggle up to him, then wiggle away, but never take the money. I tried to stifle a laugh. I thought the guy was a total asshole for treating this girl like a stripper. She finally took the money—I assumed to make the man feel less awkward—and wiggled away. But before her set was done two or three other tables followed suit and put money into her bikini line. And after she was done, she came back out in a robe and sat in his lap and kissed him on the mouth. Either the two were an item or there was a lot more from where that ten came from.

I thought surely this was some sort of fluke and that it wouldn’t happen again. And it certainly wouldn’t happen with my quiet, innocent, not overtly sexual friend, Heather. But it did. The other three people at my table excitedly jumped up to shove dollar bills between her tight costume and her gyrating hips while she smiled, flirted and taunted. I decided that I didn’t know Heather well enough at all to participate in something I thought was reserved for stag parties and dark rooms where the men put condoms on before they enter just in case they get too excited.

Already feeling woefully uncomfortable with the idea that my friend was hoping I would treat her like a common stripper, was the placement of the tables in relation to the dancers’ private parts.

The tables were low, plush affairs, designed to make the patron feel like they were not on the busy, polluted corner of Hollywood and La Brea, but in a Moroccan temple. The men in their djellabas were meant to invoke the same feeling. But the traditional outfits obviously came in standard sizes and were not tailored to look like these people cared a whit about how they looked.

The seating arrangement was easy to relax in until a dancer came to your table. To look straight ahead would be to stare at her pubic mound, but looking them in the eyes didn’t seem right either. So began an uncomfortable dance of shifting positions and moving one’s head to figure out exactly where to look. You wanted to look at the belly as that what was ostensibly featured in a belly dance, but even then, with the belly inches from your face, it was less beautiful and more voyeuristic.

As the night went on, my emotions ranged from uncomfortable to curious to generally unsupportive. I wondered if that meant I was just a huge bitch. After all, the three other people at my table—including one seemingly normal guy—were having a blast. The smaller of the two girls was even planning on taking the class and one day dancing at Babouch just like Heather. Why then were neither Matt nor I impressed by this display? Why in fact, were we put off by the thing?

There was something desperate about the situation. It’s not that the girls weren’t pretty and I’m sure they were all lovely girlfriends, wives, daughters and friends. But they reminded me of our drill team in high school. The sixty or so girls who so desperately wanted to be cheerleaders, but pretended that being a Tigerette was just as prestigious and meant they were just as popular. They marched proudly into the stadium on their toes and you had to know just how and when to look to catch the jealous, furtive glances they threw at the cheerleaders—the girls who were really pretty. The girls who actually measured up.

There’s something empowering about the belly dancing. It’s about being sexual without being sexy. It’s about creating desire rather than owning it. And in that way, it makes everyone feel like they’re sitting at the cool table. The guys were hooting and hollering at the clearly plus sized dancer with her fat roll proudly unhidden and flopping about as they were at the girl who did have a great body. Maybe the first woman wouldn’t have been kicked out of someone’s bed, but she wouldn’t have been invited in, either. And still, she held their eyes, she earned their praise.

The belly dancing is an equalizer. Even if we all know that outside of the walls of the Babouch, none of this created equality holds a candle to reality.

As I let these thoughts sink into my head, I felt sorrier and sorrier for the girls and couldn’t wait to go home and tell my husband that I finally know what he was talking about and yes, it’s all very sad and strange.

But then I turned my thoughts inward. Why do I care so much about whether or not these girls could have been on the homecoming court? By reducing them to what they looked like in their sequins, I became the girls that I hated in school. The ones who were pretty and popular. You think the Tigerettes were a social step down? What about marching band? We never stood a chance. And we hid behind musical talents and state level competition and acted as if those things to a 16-year-old were just as fulfilling as being kissed on prom night.

And I wondered if I might not be full of pity, but terribly jealous. After all, these girls weren’t afraid to get in front of a crowd with their imperfect bodies and plucky smiles. They weren’t afraid to shake their money makers and they assumed that people wouldn’t laugh. And that strangers would happily touch their skin to wedge the dollar where it should go. I have no such confidence. I won’t strip tease for my friends. On the surface, that sounds all right, but it’s nothing more than false modesty and a healthy dose of self loathing.

I refuse to be in front of people unless I am 100 percent rehearsed. Not only with my own performance, but my rehearsal includes finding out every possible detail about every person who will be there. I have to know how to play them. I have to know how to make them listen. My natural self isn’t good enough and I have to know what costume to put on before I throw myself to the lions.

These girls had the balls to celebrate themselves. The only time I allow myself such an indulgence is when I’m alone and there’s no one there to look at me the way I looked at Heather and her friends at Babouch.