On the last day of the month, and with heavy hearts, let us say goodbye to the Month of Love — now, now: don’t get your girdle all in a bunch. February may be over, but the love goes on. To quote our resident favorite e.e. cummings “life’s not a paragraph / And death i think is no parenthesis”

Yeah, like what he said.

I am, however, going to do an Official Sign Off of the Love Project with a video of my Grandma (who I love) and her new favorite drink she discovered over the holidays (which she sure seems to love). Let it be known that I tried to contact Rockstar to see if they’d be interested in the video. So far no dice.

Rockstar_Grandma.MOV

(Apologies for no sound on the recording — she’s reading the ingredients and telling me how strong it makes her feel. I love my Grammy.)

I’m doing a show tonight at the Make Out Room in San Francisco called “Mortified” which is a show that stars everyday adults sharing aloud their most embarrassing, pathetic and private teenage diary entries, poems, love letters, lyrics and locker notes… in front of total strangers,” — a kind of “personal redemption through public humiliation” so to speak.

I’m reading some diary entries from when I was in Junior High School, and participating has made me acutely aware of how much I love imperfection and the perspective it affords.

The journal entries I’m reading concern themselves with my adolescent crush on a boy named Aaron, and the ways in which I decided I would go about changing all the things wrong with me in order to win his love — a typical story of trying to change one’s literal and metaphorical glasses and braces, if you will. (You can, if you like, read the diary entries here.)

The wonderful (and essential) thing about this show, of course, is that a bunch of “pathetic crap” (as the Mortified website calls it) written in childhood now serves to entertain others. If we were all perfect in Junior High there would be fewer hilarious stories to tell, and might I venture to say, fewer interesting people in this world; people shaped by the embarrassing, trying, and dispiriting experiences of their youth.

Yes, I just included myself in that group. But I think it’s true that I’m a lot more well rounded (or at least just learned some good lessons) due to the fact that I was a relative dork as a kid. A really, big, dork.

With all this perspective-inducing, imperfection-loving going on, this morning when I awoke to heavy sheets of rain — and the reality of having to wear my glasses today, having lost one of my contacts over the weekend — I decided to go for broke: I removed my glasses walked to work without any visual aid.

I am legally blind.

I didn’t get glasses until I was twelve.

When I was eleven-and-a-half, my mom finally realized there was a problem when she took me to McDonald’s and I couldn’t even read the neon menu right in front of me.

Yes, I was literate at the time.

As such, walking to work without the ability to see anything more than two feet in front of my face afforded me a particularly unique experience; it fundamentally changed how I felt, my actions, who I was. It was utter Monet

1. I was less sure-footed, both physically and mentally. I had less balance, was less confident crossing the street, and had to walk much more slowly for fear of running into people. Luckily, the traffic lights were easy enough to follow (thank goodness I’m not also colorblind…) but I had a hard time crossing the street where there were no lights, nor people; there might have been an errant car without its headlights on that I was just unable to see. When normally I would make a dash, I didn’t sprint to cross the street on the blinking red hand (manifested as simply a flashing red blob), because I couldn’t see the numbers count down; couldn’t tell how many seconds I had left.

2. I had to trust people more because often I would rely on them to indicated my own movements. I couldn’t see their faces, their legs blurred into the street which rendered them phantom-like splotches of color, canopy’s of umbrella-halos hovering above them. I could, however, follow their movement, and when they crossed the street, I crossed the street; I had to trust that they knew what the hell they were doing.

3. I felt both more present and less present. I had to pay a lot more attention to my surroundings and depend on my other senses more heavily. I also, however, felt more isolated, being unable to see other’s eyes or facial expressions nor words on buildings or even at one point any defined objects at all (walking through the Financial District was rather harrowing, when the presence of the buildings limited the amount of light that filtered down until I couldn’t see anything but shades of charcoal and grey and shadow.) It was as if my inability to see these other things meant they had an inability to see me; I felt almost invisible; it was as if without proof of reflection, the mirror doesn’t exist.

4. I got a lot, more, wet. I got soaked, in fact. It took me much longer to get to work, thus more time in the rain, because I had to proceed so slowly. Additionally, I stepped in countless puddles, because I — well — couldn’t see them.

Sitting now in front of my computer, getting ready for work, my pants are drenched and I feel a little pathetic. Coworkers are wondering why I didn’t just take the bus. I tell them I needed a little change in perspective.

And my mom said I should Lasik surgery. Pfft.

When speaking of love, it is important to acknowledge — in addition to the things which one does love — that which one does not. You know, for the sake of balance. God forbid I write of yin while neglecting the yang.

* * *
Scene: An apartment building in San Francisco. Morning. A light shines from a window on the second floor. Inside, a girl sits drinking tea on the couch. A Chet Baker CD is playing softly in the background. Out on the street, a car sits idling. Loud music is playing from inside it.

Shannon: What the fuck is that?

Chet Baker [singing]: Myyy, fuuunny valentiii– wha’s what?

Shannon: That. That noise. I can’t believe someone is playing the Beastie Boys before 6 in the morning. That’s just — wrong. The BB are for night time, yo — nighttime!

Chet Baker: I hear that. I’m for the morn, right, Shanny? I’m your morning dude?

Shannon: Damn straight, Chet. You and me, pal. In the A.M. It’s you and me. I don’t know what this person is thinking. Disrespect, man… disrespect.

Shannon walks to the window and looks out. Through the tinted windows of the car a thin ribbon of cigarette smoke leaks out, an extension of the driver’s wrist. Shannon slides open the window.

Shannon: Damn it. [speaking to the driver of the car:] Uh, excuse me? Hey, sweetheart — mind turning your music down? It’s not even 6 in the morning.

The girl in the car does not indicate she’s heard anything.

Chet Baker: Maybe she didn’t hear you.

Shannon [yelling]: Hey — hey! You, in the car! It’s SIX IN THE MORNING. Turn your music down, woudja?

Chet Baker: I didn’t mean yell.

Shannon: Go get lost, Chet.

Chet Baker [hurt]: Jus’ tryin’ ta help. You don’t have to get so — so, aggressive…

Shannon turns around, shuts the window. She turns up the music.

Shannon: Come on, Chet. You can take on the Beastie Boys, can’t you?

Chet Baker remains silent except for his lonely crooning. Shannon sighs in exasperation.

Shannon: Wussy.

The thumping of the car stereo below grows louder.

Shannon: (Beat.) Oh, so we’re going to play like that now, are we?

Shannon opens up the window, grabs the nearest object in site, and does what any mature, self-respecting city dweller would do: she throws the object out the window onto the hood of the car. The music stops. There is clicking of the car door handle as if opening. Shannon, in a moment of panic, dives away from the window. Yelling comes from outside.

Shannon: Shit. Now she’s pissed.

Shannon hears the car door shut again. Then the horn blares for 10 long seconds. The music resumes, louder than before.

Chet Baker: Now you’ve done it.

Shannon: Shut up, Chet! Man, I can’t believe this. What a bitch. When I say I love most everything about my city, you know — all this B.S. I write about on my blog –well, most of it’s true. From the places to the food to the people, I do, I really do love it all — the people! O! I love the people. From canvas-KQED-bag-toting literaries to suited bankers to barefooted neo-hippies to Timbuktu-saddled bike messengers — even right down to the goddamn pigeons, if only that I love to hate them.

Chet Baker: I don’t mind the pigeons so much.

Shannon rolls her eyes.

Shannon: But something I do not love at all, cannot love, with any portion of my expensive-yoga-class-induced open-heartedness, is what these people — always quirky, often stupid — do; I can love them when they manifest themselves as graceful extensions of the complexity and uniqueness of humanity, embodying the continual bliss and mystery of what it means to be a human being…

Chet Baker rolls his eyes.

Shannon: I do not, however, love these people when they decide to manifest themselves as skanky-ass, Hundai-driving, chain-smoking, crinkly-haired, music-thumping assholes. I love many things, but this? I cannot love this.

Shannon crawls to the window and peaks out. She can see the driver straining to see from where the aerial assault has come.

Shannon: Now, I’m a morning person you know?

Chet Baker nods.

Shannon: It wasn’t that she woke me up when she started blasting “Brass Monkey, That Chunky Monkey” from her cheap-ass speakers this morning at 5:45–and don’t get me wrong — the Beastie Boys and I go way back.

Chet Baker: That you do.

Shannon: It was her audacity, you know? It ruined my mood; I was drinking tea. I was chilling with you, my old buddy Chet Baker. I even had on slippers. Slippers! And then with the thump-thump-thump.

Outside the girl revs the engine of the car once, twice — three times. The music continues to play at an increased volume. The horn honks intermittently.

Shannon: Wow. Okay — wow. This girl really just wants to piss somebody off, doesn’t she?

Chet Baker [mumbling]: Looks like she already has.

Shannon: I’m not listening to you anymore.

Shannon hits the pause button on the CD player and stomps to the closet, grabbing a sweatshirt. She grabs her keys, and runs down the two flights of stairs to the apartment building lobby. ‘Now you’re really going to get it’ she thinks. Just as she flings open the front door of the building, she sees the taillights of the Hundai as the car pulls away. Shannon, standing now on the sidewalk at 6:15am wearing nothing but a nightie, slippers, and oversized sweatshirt, fumes.

Shannon: Fuck!

A window above her slides open. A head appears out of the darkness

Head: Hey! It’s not even 6:30 in the morning. Mind keeping it down out there?

Shannon pauses for a moment, stunned. Then a smile cracks over her lips.

Shannon: I love this city.

Although my “Poetry to a Transvestite Prostitute“ Project is now complete, I am not done with the poetry, nor the love. It may be a short month, but February ain’t over yet. For all of you wishing I would stop with the smoochy-smoochy-love-fluff stuff already, know that March is just around the corner, and it will be All Business.

But until then, I’m still operating within the confines of the The Love Project, even if all of the Valentine’s Day paraphernalia has been appropriately removed from store windows. With no further ado, I present a Poet I love, a Palliative I love, and a Place I love (mixing the three together comes highly recommended…)

Poet:
“The heart uselessly opens
To 3 words, which is too little”
– George Oppen

Palliative:
Woodford Reserve

Place:
Portsmouth Square on a cold sunny Wednesday (narrative):

I want someone with thin, intelligent wrists. I want him to own hands nimble and sure; that look like they’re capable of taking risks, capable of telling stories.

I love watching them. I love it when they squat, sit light and deep in their haunches. It makes me want to sit deeply, too, makes me want give up ferocious legs untamed for a sturdier stance. The men play Go in the Chinatown park, shifting like sea kelp from game to game. One man in particular, about 65 years, plays with such deliberate hand it shakes me, makes me feel cold with youth. He is losing — has lost every game he played since I started watching 2 hours ago –- but he plays with such confidence, moves each marble piece with a bittersweet smile that comes only from a reconciliation, a negotiation, with loss; it is a wisdom beyond acceptance, such that he has come to revel in — prefer it, even. He knows that even the losing feels good.

And with that, I’m ready to fall in love again.

9,
The seasons are changing.

She’s dressed in a short — what looks like leather — mini skirt, a few straps of fabic dangling down, like seaweed tendrils. She has on strappy heels, a black low cut shirt, and carries a matching purse looped around her thin wrist. She really is the epitome of style.

We call that “tenderloin swank.”

With the trusted SF Party Store as backdrop, ever-loyal in its recounting of the holidays present, Cop Number One questions her. To every question she responds with a defiant shrug, as if to say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wear this skirt everyday. She points to something in her bag. Her wispy hair glows green in the halo of neon shamrocks and creepy balloon figures — an eerie ode to Saint Patrick. Cop Number Two gets out of the vehicle and stands on the other side of her. She’s flanked. Her broad shoulders are thicker than the taller of the two cops; yet, she appears surprisingly delicate.

All this happening outside the blur of the party store.

For a moment, she looks up toward my apartment, and I swear she shakes her head at me. I think she knows I’m watching. She raises her hands, palms upward, as if to say, what’d I do? She’s still looking in my direction.

The disco ball burns bright behind her.

I turn down the lights of my studio, just so I am less visible in the dark. I’m hoping in this way she can’t see me watching her; that I’m not able to be seen, typing and talking on the phone, and gawking, watching her life as Spectacle.

I take another sip of wine.

Sadly, I don’t move. I continue typing, talking, watching, in this sick perversion. Who am I to be able to watch her tragedy as entertainment? I told myself I’d end this project on a light note — more humor! I kept telling myself funnier is better! –

but she keeps looking up at me. I know she sees me; sees the glare of my computer screen. Her gaze pierces through my window even as she’s asked to turn around, put her arms against the wall, spread her legs. I begin to mourn the end of Candy when — suddenly –

“Oh wow, they’re letting her go.”

She turns around. There is some gesticutlating, the cops are indicating to where she can walk, telling her she can’t turn left down deeper into the tenderloin, but has to turn right, up Larkin. She nods in understanding. The cops return to their vehicle, pull away, and Candy takes one last long sip of my presence with her eyes as she walks and walks and walks down Post, further down the block, her hips still swinging…

(what is this?)

8,
Ummmm. Hey, Candy. How’s it goin’? Soooo I’ve run this by a couple of friends, and they fall into two camps: those who think I should just ante up and talk to you, and those who think me crazy. Well, okay, there’s a third camp: those who think I should stop with the poetry already, and move on, start an online dating service, plaster famous actor mug shots around the city, or just get my act in gear and actually write something “real.” But where would the fun be in that? I ask them. Accomplishment is so overrated.

So, tonight, when I saw you standing outside of Diva’s, I was really ready to go with the friend’s advice from the first camp and just talk to you. But then I saw you bitch slap that girl, and decided not. So I guess, instead, I’ll be proving the second camp right. Hope you like nihilist absurdity.
[Night eight: Dada, with a 21st century flare]

www.Relâche.Uf.EEei.UUoia.Enh.Whoooo@o-shshsh\shshssshoopé!p’
p’pickiwe’reallgoingtodiesolomonosoaporaki
akiakiakiaka/duchamp=tran?.heoiadkaodm
< ,aakbbbbbbygmpsohyperlinkkkkbbthts-
ktskclikkkkitchhha_Ianesco!
Ip/ .com

(what is this?)

I bought 100 Speed Racer, Barbie, and Looney Toons paper valentines and handed them out to strangers in the financial district while wearing a satin wedding dress. I’d have pictures, but there’s this whole waiver of using someone’s likeness without consent thing I didn’t want to deal with, so you’ll have to trust me.

And a love-word for the ole vocabulary: spoony (foolishly or sentimentally in love)

Happy V-Day, folks.

(To make your very own custom candy heart, follow this link.)

Oh, dear.

I’ve fallen behind in my poetry venture. Blame it on the weather. There was [gasp!] sun here in the city. It was February. It felt like summer. Can I be blamed for spending some days in the park rather than writing Odes to Trannies? Please, dear readers, forgive me. Please.

(What’s that? No one has been reading anything since the Craigslist dates? Oh, well, then. No worries.)

Despite no poetry, don’t think I haven’t been ruminating on the subject. It’s funny, though, because tonight this morning I look out my window — the streets already cleaned, vacant of the usual white noise buzz that hovers just outside — and there is no one about. This, a rare occurrence; there is always, always someone there; always always someone to watch; always always someone to occupy my attention.

Interesting, how on Valentine’s Day it parallels so closely that I, also, for the first time, have no one romantically in my life. (I always, always have before).

This is not a sob story! This just is. But this condition, of being alone, of being merely an observer to others being alone and how they handle their alone-ness has made me acutely aware of the spectrum and diversity of the ways in which human beings can relate to each other.
Here I am, Little Miss City, feeling very connected and most sympathetic to online daters and prostitutes. Go figure. Either that, or I am a true graduate of Berkeley, Politically Correct and all, and I am having Delusions of Empathy. Who knows.

But something in these observations has made me believe these things — prostitution, dating, poetry, money, loneliness, power, love, and what-have-you-I’ll-make-connections-between-anything-just-try-me — are connected somehow, and at the root of all of them is the sense that we, as human beings, have something fundamental in common; that, by the very nature of being alive, we can relate to each other on some sort of deep level, to the point where perhaps it could be defined as an utter sense of similar objective — we’re all just looking for love. For acceptance. For contentment. For a fuck.

Oh, sure. It’s manifested in a medley of different ways. Some of us are needy, lonely, heartbroken, depressed; some are utterly self-confident, content, loved, privileged; some are addicted to sex; some addicted to love; some just plain addicted to addiction; some, still, are after money, or drugs, or greed, or power, or food, or a deep, aching desire to write really bad poetry.

But doesn’t it seem relevant that somewhere, below all that, each of those desires and wants and needs are fundamentally the same? Isn’t that, by definition, the essence of empathy?

Hell if I know. Here’s some more poetry:

5,
Tonight I’ve named you Candy. You have beautiful glossy bubble gum lips, and your heels light up red-blue, red-blue, red-blue with every step, step, step you take.

[Night five: no idea]

more, more with that click
it’s become my nervous tick
there now, Candy: one more trick

6,
How are you tonight, dear trannie? I almost got up the courage to speak to you today. We passed by each other, like two ships in the night: me, on my way home from work; you, on your way to — you looked at me ever-so briefly, almost caught my eye, but diverted sharply. Is it because you sense I was not worth your time? I’m not sure, but my eyes lingered longer. I felt the words nearly fly off my lips: “might I have a moment of your time?” (oh, I’d pay you, certainly. Just to talk? Would that be okay?) I want to pick your brain a bit. If I’m not too presumptuous in saying, I think it’d be the easiest hour of work you’ve ever had.

[Night six: Limerick]

There once was a prostitute, trannie
Who went by the nice name of Candy
She strutted her stuff
Perhaps liked it rough
And her resemblance to a woman? Uncanny.

7,
Okay, now I’m almost hurt. I walked right up to you, all direct-like, and you turned your back to me and faced your pimp. At least I think that was your pimp. Wow. I feel really bad writing that (“pimp”); like I’m irreverent and sarcastically insulting to your profession. But I don’t know how else to describe that guy who always stands in the doorway of the apartment complex next to mine and watches you walk Post Street from afar.
Step, step, step.

[Night seven: e.e. cummings inspired]

there once was for me (a
love, certain then, perhaps of
something I once fell upon) shores of youth
;something in you triggered it. Perhaps it
was the desperation I, felt
you felt
I felt, and how
the only, other, time I’ve ever felt such desperation,
was when I was Willing to allow myself
the (insatiable, surrendering, drowning flavor) / (pleasure-privilege)
of love.

(what is this?)

4,
Trannie: Tonight, as I “get lost” with Chet Baker, I look out my window and see you, there, in front of the SF Party Store, (from) whence I bought my tasteful white Christmas lights on a string. I don’t know, tonight, if you are a transvestite or not. I suppose if you’re not, then this poem is mis-titled. If, however, you are: you are quite feminine.

[Night four: McWhirtle verse]

Do men who pay money
for services rendered
by you, dearest trannie
(who’s open for sale),

E’er stop for one moment
when dimming their headlights;
consider that, maybe, ain’t
woman but male?

(what is this?)

3,
Today I really think I’m going to ask you to, you know, talk—but I chicken out. I want to yell this to you, yell: How Much Do You Cost? But I think this might be construed as rude.

[Night three: Acrositic poem with dactylic tetrameter (kinda); rhyme scheme ababbaba]

Trannie appears with the fleeing of day
Reaching her hips out across lonely streets
Ah! How I want to have confidence! Say: ‘
Now, look here, Girl — are you going for sweet?
No one believes you are anything but meat
Ipso (jons) Facto: they’re looking t’get laid
Enter the world of passion and heat!
S‘pose, though, you’re looking for more than just pay?’

(what is this?)

2,

(dear Trannie,)

I really mean you no offense. I am so fascinated by you. You look so stunning and strange there in that silver off-the-collar V-neck thingie. (I couldn’t pull that off.) You have these great shoulders which shine. I wonder today: how much do you cost?

[Night two: rhymed, metered]

I see you, Trannie, getting ready
to take your flight upon the night
Despite stilettos, ever steady
Your body sells, I wish you well.

My Dearest Trannie, where do you roam?
O’er to the park cloaked now in dark?
Stay the car? Abscond to someone’s home?
I feel there’s no suitible go –

And, Trannie, love — about this here fee:
(so deserving for your serving)
High or low? What is the price pays he?
I pray the Dip includes a tip…

And so we sew a difference
you and I — for you: pay, for me: love
but really what’s the difference
when it comes to sex, or hope, or — love

(what is this?) 

I got three hours of sleep last night — I’m not complaining. I’m using this as a preface to this Project Launch. I am including this little anecdote, now, which I’m about to deliver, in the next sentence, for a reason.

You see, I went to bed late (11PM) and had to get up early (4AM). And in between those hours, the hours of about midnight and two, I spent giving a witness testimony to the police about a pimp who was beating up a prostitute. I’m not being crass here — that’s how the police officer with whom I spoke — bleary-eyed and dressed in my silk pajama bottoms, long flannel shirt I had put on accidently inside-out, and my rain jacket, flip-flops, a beanie — put it. He said:

“Oh. So it was a pimp beating a prostitute?”

I said yes, yes it seemed to be.

They had arrested some guy who fit my description. Only thing: he was the wrong medium-build, dressed in black, running Westbound on Post Street, 6-foot-tall male. So I corrected them — that this wasn’t the guy I had seen — was thanked for my help, and dismissed; afterwhich, I went upstairs and cried (for the fact that I had witnessed a beating, that I wasn’t getting any sleep, that people turn to prostitution and drugs or that they had arrested an innocent man because of me, I don’t know) and locked myself in my studio.

I tell this story now, just to say, I don’t think prostitution is a joke. Except when, of course, we make jokes to cover up for the fact that we are cowardly and would rather make something funny than actually confront it. Pain is funny.

LAUNCHED: Poetry to a Transvestite Prostitute
A simple literary project that you can find out about here. And if you can’t figure out how this relates to love (the theme for the month), then just stop reading right now.

1,
(dear Trannie)
I see you there, nearly every night, outside my bedroom window. I am too shy, scared—something—to speak with you directly; I write you poetry instead:

[Night one: Haikus]

It starts with a click;
at first distant, then louder—
heels signal the night
* * *
Clothing feminine
hangs soft from her waist: dainty
And yet her jaw: square
* * *
More poetry on
transvestite prostitution?
Hold on, it’s coming

Dad came into room and said

“Shan, it’s 6:15 — you want another half an hour?” and when normally I would think no, no I need to get up now. I am visiting Sonoma County for only 48 hours; I must rise and meet the day like Sultan-Warrior-God and go forth and Accomplish (capital “a”), I instead pause for a sleepy moment and say “yes.” And so it was then, finally at 7:00, his second attempt, that dad came in with watery coffee, but warm enough, to summon me from bed, I decided my only thought for the morning would be all that I would not do.

I wrapped myself up in my old terrycloth robe, the one I’ve had since high school and hangs patiently waiting for when I return home, and padded downstairs. Dad had the fire going because he knows my thermastat runs cold (God bless him) and I paused for a moment before its hot breath. Then, into the backyard, where I shed my robe and felt the prick of the morning cold against my nakedness, and sunk deeply into the hot water. And then, I did nothing.

At first, I had to work for it. I thought Watch the birds, Shannon. Watch. The. Birds. But then I settled a bit, and all I did was look. I looked at the side garden, with it’s vines and plants I had planted a few years back after seasons of prepping the soil — naturally clay and unyielding to growth — so that I was proud just to see anything grown, no matter that they grew unruly and restless, all of them off-kilter and leaning East to catch the rising sun. I even stopped myself from thinking they needed pruning, because I was, after all, Thinking Nothing.

Then this thought crept in: I’m a fraud. I am a faker. Nothing is ever really as sentimental as you write it. Nothing is ever really as symbolic as it feels. All this poetry and beauty and shit, you write so that you can pretend it’s your life, when really, it’s all in your head. Everything you project out, to others, doesn’t exist.

But doesn’t it? I mean, I really did sit there, this morning, in that hot tub, and think of nothing, think a void, stopped thinking but for feeling, stopped feeling but for being — and it really was, if only for a moment, beautiful. And doesn’t it stand to reason, then, that everything is that way? That when I paused for a moment, and watched one bird fly across the synapse of one branch to another branch, to another branch — like a thought –

that I stopped, and when I stopped,
it really was?

And it was true when the freeway was so far away it sounded like rain.

[for M.W.]

You knew it had to happen: with the dawning of the second calendar month of this glorious year of 2006, we witness the infamous V-Day approaching. Yay, Love! [!@#$%giggle*&^!]

In all seriousness, I’m not really in the mood. (I’ve been on codeine and antibiotics all month; I’m just ready to leave January behind, damn it. In fact, I considered doing a Bukowski-inspired project called The Codeine Chronicles where I spend a year on codeine and write dopey-nonsense-prose. But I digress.)

The most important reason we’re excited about February and Valentine’s Day, is that over here at Not Keeping Score we are “all about the love:” we explored the realms of online dating and the magic of Craigslist (a service for which we all have love), we love San Francisco, (we even love writing in the third person,) and we most certainly love Edward Furlong.

Speaking of the Furlong Project, I have a confession: it didn’t happen. But instead of going into why it has been postponed (rain, sickness, lobster cravings) I will instead perform a rapid About Face and present in its place: The Love Project, a grand over-arching project that contains within it such sub-projects as “Poetry to a Transvestite Prostitute“, “Generation Now”, “Get it Together”, “20/20/20 Hindsight” as well as some miscellaneous observations on love-associated topics and the subsequent definitions, manifestations and consequences of, thereof. (More Project information here.)
(Phew!)

I should make one thing very clear: I am not an expert on Love. In fact, there are some out there that would assert that I’m the last person that should be writing on the subject; I am confused by love. I am afraid of love. But, perhaps the thing that qualifies me to wax philosophical on the topic is that — ah, hell. I love love!

On that embarrassingly touchy-feely note, let’s dive right in:

I found this ad on Maxim’s website, where I was reading an article “100 Things You Should Need To Know About Women” (not a bad read for complete misinformation), which is funny because when I went to Cosmo’s site there was an ad for hair removal and cellulite reduction. Go figure.

I could comment on the different ways men and women are taught to approach love in the media, or about the striking similarities between the models’ sex appeal in the two ads geared toward men and women, thus creating a society where women are taught to objectify other women as sex objects, too–

but I won’t. We all know it all ready, and none of us care. I just liked the idea of being “soaked by love” — so very “romance novel meets soft porn,” and in that way, hovering just above male and female stereotypes so as to be almost charming in much the same way mass consumerism of disposable goods in America is charming. But let’s move on, shall we?

Welcome to February. It’s time to get wet.