7 08 pm pdt [ oh so odd ]
I awoke this morning from a strange dream that I was
watching a friend Michelle [whom I haven't seen since college] lube up her
vibrator. Only it wasn't at all sexual, and her vibrator looked an awful
lot like a juicer. I clearly didn't understad how to use it and when I
asked how she was going to avoid poking herself with one of the sharp
corners she only smiled and shook her head, like I was really missing out.
What struck me about the dream is that it involved
watching a woman in one of her rituals. That tends to make me
uncomfortable if it is anything more complex than brushing her hair.
I don't own any moisturizer or toner. I don't leave
anything in my hair after a shower, nor do I add anything additional. I
don't sleep with anything on my skin.
In travelling, which seems to be all I do, I have very
few essential items. If I were spending the night somewhere, and could
only take one item, it would be deoderant. If I could bring another, it
would be a hairbrush. If I could bring a third, it would be a toothbrush.
If I could bring as many items as I want, I would bring
deoderant, a hairbrush, and a toothbrush.
On my plane ride up to Berkeley, I sat in the third
row on Southwest, so that if I looked up I was looking right at the first
row of people, who face backwards. The woman who sat in the isle (most
directly in my line of site) spent three quarters of the flight applying
her make-up in slow ritual.
I didn't want to watch, but no matter how arduously I read my book, I keep
glancing up and seeing her. She had tubes and sticks and powders and
pastes. She was apparently into the new ultra-wet lip look. I wanted her
to stop. I wanted her to be done. To my mind she didn't look any better
in the end anyway...
I don't really know why feminine rituals make me
uncomfortable. Perhaps it is simply their foreignness, or more likely
their lack of appeal.