A Trivial Comedy for serious people archives

I feel extraordinarily vulgar lately.

Nothing like dressing up like a sex worker as the creative outlet of my evening.

At dinner, my friend noted that I was showing some leg. I said "I'm going for that middle-aged hooker look." She said "Huh, and I thought you just looked cold." My use of fashion to signal people about my sexuality has failed yet again! Thwarted by my own incompetence. You think I'd get used to it by now.

Acquiring party music, and all I want to listen to is Fuck the pain away on repeat. It'd be better to actually do that, but whatcha gonna do?

I'm a kind of attracted to someone, but she's seeing someone. Ms. J said "But I thought you had sworn off girls, because you kissed one and didn't get all swooney," and we supposed that I hadn't kissed the right girl. Who knows? I don't understand sex anymore. Wait, that makes it sound like I ever did.

Prurience and nudity tomorrow! Ms. J gave me lessons on keeping The Girls in their respective Pouches. She gave me a boa (despite threatening not to, because I'd been grossing her out all evening) to wrap around my neck.

Slutty and cool.

2003-12-11, sweet fuck, all tonight

My coherence is about shot. I think sleep is in order. Murnau and Griffith! I have a wild, unsubstantiated argument and it's great fun but I'm tired.

12 years from now, I'm going to be so glad I recorded this. I love reading my past entries and seeing "Today I showered." It makes me so proud of my past self. Way to take care of personal hygeine, way to record that for posterity. I can't remember these individual showerings that are referenced, though, and I can't help but feel the loss.

P.S. Scott is Disgusting.

2003-12-11, the night you can't remember

P.S. Ariel

Thank you. Love is in the house. I hope the end of the semester is not murdering you. Don't get sick! We should talk before we go home for the semester. I know I can probably arrange a drunken phonecall on Friday. (Actually, anyone who's interested in Drunken Phonecall From Marge should let me know and get in touch, because I love making Drunken Phonecalls almost as much as writing Silly Drunken Loveletters.) My Germany class has been the most amazing, intense experience. My professor gave me comments on my (dismal) performance on my presentation, and they were just... encouraging and constructive and honest and true and I love her for that.

Ahhhh, it's the end of the semester.

2003-12-10, dear ariel

I read a lot of advice columns and I think I know why, and I shouldn't be talking about it right now when I should be writing essays, but can I just say that I love Cary Tennis?

I just do.

You should too.

2003-12-10, fire of a thousand suns

I am thinking I won't work over winter break.

friend: margaret, I'm having technicolor syndrome
me: what is that?
friend: you know what technicolor is? that funky color from 70s movies?
me: yeah
friend: its the feeling that if you're elsewhere, anywhere else but here, everything will be in technicolor, different, away, more interesting, and not here

I can understand that.

2003-12-10, technicolor

I'm getting a cold.

I didn't need this.

Weary weary weary. My room is a pit.

2003-12-09, gross

Oh, yeah!

The other day, my friend was complaining about her ass.

I said "Don't talk trash about my friend!"

"What, you're friends with my ass? When did that happen?"

And I said "Behind your back!"

To Conclude: I WIN!

2003-12-08, PUN

I feel like writing constantly. I feel kinda thoughtful and pensive, and it's nice.

My friends have joked that I should have majored in "Margaret studies," because I'm much more likely to apply myself towards dissecting myself than my actual schoolwork. What am I feeling, what's bothering me, what's on my mind.

I think that my feminism is a matter of style. I think it's always been this way for me. I think how I carried myself and how I felt about myself had everything to do with my (self created, this is not for you, Gloria) feminism.

I also don't think I'm crazy for thinking it works like this. I think that clothes have power, and that people adorn themselves to tell other people about themselves. There are signals and signs. And clothes have a lot to do with how people interpret our sexuality. I think I was doing something by dressing exclusively in grey during highschool, and I'm doing something now by wearing little black dresses, red sweaters, gold and pearls and fine parfum.

So here I am now. Now that I'm pearls and gold, symbols of status and high birth, flashy gold and the red sweater with the amazing collar, long blonde hair, large mammary glands, blue eyes (but not a classic beauty, not slim or thin, thick waisted, substantial thighs) - today I feel like a feminist. Today I feel independent and tough. As I put on my perfume I think - it has everything to do with men (how I imagine what they find attractive, since I don't entirely know), but it comes from having everything to do with me, first.

And I think this is a good thing, since I'm no use to anyone - man or woman - unless I'm happy with myself.

---

Music! So much music in my life lately. I don't usually have a taste for folk music - it died a few years ago - but Moxy Fruvous have been making me swoon. Bargainville is a fantastic album. Then I assembled some of the songs I feel are so true and beautiful. "The Man you are in me" by Janis Ian. "Valentine's day" (makes me cry) as rendered by HEM. Then the silly goofy love songs! I love those. "Do not forsake me oh my darling" by Tex Ritter. I love western music. Cowboy swing. Cowboy songs. Which reminds me that "One hundred names" by the Nields has the loveliest love song line to date - "You're my favorite cowboy song."

I feel like myself when I'm listening to music and caring about it.

2003-12-08, love in triplicate

You know what?

People might let you down, people might have issues, people might be difficult, but what a drag it is to go on bothering about that when otherwise they give you so much delight.

I think I'm really happy with the people in my life.

I've felt really overwhelmed with appreciation for them. I love that there are a lot of parts of me that get brought out by a lot of different people. I love how eclectic my friends are.

(One thing I don't love so much is the way my very eclectic friends don't always get along. One thing I'm unlikely to tolerate at this point is people telling me that my friends aren't good folk. They're mine. I choose them. I see something in them and appreciate them, and you don't have to, but they're mine.)

But no matter.

I'm sure it seems a bit of a caricature at this point - to sit around and talk frankly with your girlfriends about sex. But it's really important to have people you can do that with, it's important to find good people you can talk to about sex. It's been increasingly important for me, and it's also something that I'd only done online until recently. My friend and I encourage ourselves in debauchery, share perspectives, try to figure out what's going on. It's so good to have.

And it's not a shortcoming, but not everyone is right for these kinds of conversations. Really, all that matters is that I have this somewhere in my life. It's important that I have hilarious, goofy time with people in my life too, and someone to discuss the various sexy merits of characters from Roman antiquity, and people to talk about art with and play hearts with. Backrubs at midnight, tea at two, hugs and linked arms.

I'm very mercurial, but sometimes people bring out my best parts from me, and oh! That's love. It just happens.

My friends irritate me sometimes, but I get over it so quickly. I'm just so glad to have other people I love and trust in my life, right now.

2003-12-08, outrageously beautiful

Guten abend.

I've been rifling my computer, trying to find some of the first photographs I ever took of myself with my digital camera. I can remember most of the evening fairly well - I took a bath and carefully washed my hair, I brushed it and blew it dry, I dressed up in my finest dress and wore a scarf. I lay on my bed and took pictures of myself to look like I was dead.

You know, the older I get, the less I know what to make of my highschool self. She was jocular but mopey, and probably mopey because she made herself mopey. What freakin' feminist angst did I need to suffer from, then? What was wrong with me? My friend Jessie sometimes says that I act like the world is resting on my shoulders, that I martyr myself, that I make myself suffer. I just think she should have known me in highschool. These days, jocularity and sadness get relatively equal play. They're both intense, and they're both players in my life. But man. Highschool. What a peculiar child I was.

Well, what're you gonna do?

So I come to the photographs. Hundreds. Maybe even a thousand. I haven't counted the files in a while. I took them because men asked me to, a lot of the time. But I remember how beautiful taking photographs made me feel. It still makes me feel pretty. I look at them and think "That's me!, I'm beautiful! I'm blonde, I'm clean, I'm young and lovely, I smile, I dance."

friend: you discovered the secret to self acceptance margaret early on--photography
me: and everyone thought i was vain in highschool!
friend: whatever
me: but sometimes peacock-esque behaviour is good
friend: yeah
friend: it's good to pose and feel attractive--it's silly but its effective
me: i used to eat up praise from men
friend: really?
me: yeah
friend: you should put this on the web---maybe not
me: i would say no
me: i'll attract the wrong crowd
friend: yeah probably
friend: HAHAHA
friend: that would be funny
me: they'll send me pictures of their penises
me: i have a whole file already
friend: of peni?
me: they think they need to pay me in kind

It makes me sad that I have a difficult relationship with my body. It upsets me that some nights I feel gross - tonight I feel icky - and sometimes I feel spectacularly sexy. It's so weird that I can be a variety of different sizes and shapes over the course of a year, and feel sexy and unsexy with little regard to what actual size I am. All of this without taking any regard of the men who are or aren't attracted to me.

So I can't get over the files upon files I have of photographs of myself from highschool. I look uncomfortable, and I'm rarely smiling. I look very pretty but it's in spite of the fact that I look like I'm trying to be beautiful, tragic, and proud.

What's that Orwell quote? "What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person." Not that this has anything to do with nationalism, I guess.

But at any rate - I happen to be the same person. I just wish I could find those photographs, with my pink, clean, shiny cheeks and my grey mourning clothes. The theatrics of my 1840 self amuse me. Sometimes I think I get the joke she's playing on us - even though she didn't always get it herself.

2003-12-07, photography

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