2/10/03

This is my week for catching up. Last week, I had plans every single night of the week. Granted, I blew off my Wednesday plans to catch up on sleep, but still, it left no time for grocery shopping or cooking or writing entries or cleaning my entire apartment in anticipation of having a bunch of people over last Saturday or more importantly, in anticipation of my mother's impending visit, which begins this Saturday.

Last Monday and Tuesday, I went to go see Sleater-Kinney. I've been to see them a bunch of times before, most recently this past November. These were not the best shows I'd ever seen them do (Corrin, the best singer in the group, had mostly lost her voice), but it was fun, because they were playing in a small venue, and also because about half the people I know were there. Also, on Tuesday night, I got to elbow a guy and then (along with several other women) shove him across the room as I yelled "get the fuck out of here!" It was provoked, though. He came into our section and started dancing so wildly and violently he was actually knocking people down right and left. I was standing next to my co-worker Jed who told me that this was the same guy who'd been "democratically ejected from the pit" the night before. I asked the guy to tone it down, but he only complied for a second or two. Then Jed grabbed him and said "I guess you didn't learn your lesson last night," to which the guy replied "what's that?" Jed let him go, he started dancing again, and then all the chicks attacked him and threw him across the room.

As I was leaving, I recounted the story to Jay (who I'd gone to the show with, but who wound up standing on the sidelines so that he could lean against a pillar instead of having to stand for a couple of hours, which is apparently too much work for him) and the doorman overheard me and said "Yeah, that guy did get the fuck out. We threw him out. White shirt, right? That guy was an asshole."

Wednesday, I was supposed to go to the Exploratorium with some school friends, but I was too tired from staying out late on Monday and Tuesday. I took a nap instead.

Thursday, I went out for fancy vegan food and then the Symphony with Phil. We got to see Mstislav Rostropovich conduct music by his buddies Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Rostropovich is really old and a little bit palsied now, but he can still conduct, and I think the orchestra was trying their best to impress him. Also, I love Russian music, so it was a good concert.

And then Friday night, I went to go see "Secretary" with Jen, Pete, K. and K.'s boyfriend M. Mo also came to dinner with us, but couldn't stay for the movie because she had to go home and work. Anyway, the movie, which is about a dominant-submissive relationship between a lawyer (James Spader) and his secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). It was really terrific, especially Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance--her character, the submissive secretary could have easily come off as a pathetic loser, but instead, she came off as charmingly quirky.

Along the same lines, a few days earlier, I'd received a Christian magazine called "Answer" in the mail. According to their website, people pay to have it sent to those on their postal route, so I guess one of my neighbors thought the sinners in the 94122 could use some salvation. The first article was entitled "What's So Scary About Submission?" and deals not only with submission to God, but also a wife's duty to submit to her husband. It starts thusly:

"One summer Saturday, hot and sweaty, I finished mowing the lawn and realized, this is the perfect time to spray Weed & Feed on the grass. I didn't have any Weed & Feed, though, so I walked into the kitchen and told my wife, Karen 'I'm going to the store.'

She said, 'but the kids and I are waiting for you to go to the pool with us.'

'That can wait,' I said flatly.

'Honey,' she said with emphasis, 'we promised the kids we'd all go.'

The next thing I knew, we were arguing

Some time later I thought, she wanted you to go to the nice, cold pool, and you argued for the right to stay and work in the heat? You are terminally dumb. But the argument wasn't about logic. It was about what I wanted, and what she wanted could wait."

Ahem. The article then goes on to say that "submission leads to liberty, the liberty to be able to let go of the terrible weight and burden of always needing to get my own way." I posted that quote to a chat room I was in at the time, and we all laughed at the absurdity of it. It's obviously ridiculous to suggest that getting one's way is a burden. But I couldn't help but think that there was a nugget of truth there. A couple of weeks earlier, I'd been in a meeting at work. I was trying to figure out how to manipulate a piece of DNA, and the person I was meeting with suggested 6 or 7 different ways I could do it. But she wasn't being very helpful in helping me sort out the one or two strategies that would work best for me. I banged my head on the table and said, half-jokingly "aggggh, can't you just tell me what I should do?" So, I have to admit, there are times when I wish someone else would just tell me what to do. Does this make me a closet Christian? Or does taking joy in hurling a guy across the room on Tuesday night cancel that out?