I Often Fail to Live Up to My Feminist Ideals, to My Own Detriment

As you know, my right arm is covered in slowly-healing poison ivy. It no longer itches, but it’s still a gross, scabby mess.  And it’s pretty noticeable because it covers a great deal of my arm.

So, last night, the drinking buddy and I are out at a bar. And the drinking buddy is a big ex-football-playing looking dude. This is important, I think, when considering what happens next.

Sitting next to us was a guy. When my buddy got up to go to the bathroom, the guy asks me about the scar on my arm.

“No, it’s no a scar. It’s poison ivy.”

Blah blah blah. We’re still talking as the drinking buddy returns.

So, at some point, the guy grabs my arm, not forcefully, but grabs it and starts rubbing it. Which is weird enough, right? But it fucking hurt.  It hurts today.

And I had to my left an enormous dude. And this guy seemed nice enough. So it’s not like anything bad would have happened.

But I still didn’t say anything.

I didn’t want to cause a scene, make him uncomfortable, seem ungrateful for the attention.

So I just let him hurt me.

How fucked up is that?

“Wow, That Guy Really Hates Women”

So, I was at the eye doctor yesterday, explaining about how I can’t see in this particular way and hearing from her how I might fail to see in some other particular way and she was taking a medical history, so I was telling her about the obnoxious gynecologist I had when I first came to town.

And she said, “He said that to you?” and I said, “yes,” and she said, “God, it sounds like he really hates women.”

And I, my friends, had never considered that. I had always considered that a story about his hatred of fat people.

But, yeah, it is a story about a dude who hates women.

“A Christian Lawyer”

America, my dad called me on Sunday for reasons I cannot exactly say. It was one of those weird conversations where it seemed like he was calling to answer a list of questions I had, but I had no questions, except for “I thought you were coming this weekend and… um… you are not here.”

But no, he wanted to complain about how he’d gone to the trouble of finding a Christian lawyer for my Grandma and now she was going to let my aunt and uncle rework her will for her.

I know it’s in part just that he’s old and grouchy, but it bugs me because never, ever in my life have I heard my dad say something like “a Christian lawyer,” complete with that whole “It’s us against them” tone.

I don’t know. It really shook me.

They arrive tomorrow to return my youngest nephew to my brother and I think I’m going to talk to him about it.

I don’t know what good it will do, but it just seems so out of character for him (in some ways, I guess). I’m going to frame it in terms of “Do you really want to give your grandkids the idea that someone claiming to be a Christian makes him better or more trustworthy than other people? Because that seems like setting them up for trouble later.”

So, yeah, that will be the opposite of fun, I’m sure.

But he’s hard enough for me to deal with in a lot of ways, I don’t need him curdling into a weird Christian bigot as he gets old.