I bought Kiki a new comic on Amazon. As I pulled the graphic novel from its package, I announced its arrival and she came running around the corner to get it from me. On the cover was the title, “A Girl From the Sea” and on the back was a drawing of two girls kissing.
I groaned, “It’s about lesbians.”
She said, “That’s okay, I love lesbians. You’re the one who hates lesbians.”
“I don’t hate lesbians, I didn’t know if you’d be interested in a romance story,” I retorted.
She snatched the book from my hands before I could add, “I love lesbians too… I agree with Germaine Greer, for Pete’s sake, but I’m just too much of a pussy to commit to the revolution, and I feel like a betrayer of my sex every time I bask in hetero post-coital pleasure.”
It seems revolutionary for kids to be such advocates of the sexuality spectrum because it’s about sex. By the time I was their age I already read The Joy of Sex, and leafed through Playboy magazines, which likely contributed to the construction of my sexual self, but if there’s a rating scale, my early exposure would be G rated compared the what the internet provides.
We were driving around the other day and Kiki announced, “I don’t know if I’m straight yet, so that’s why I say I am bisexual.”
I gave a heavy sigh, and didn’t know what to say, although my instinct was to shout, “You’re asexual. Alright, all ten year olds are asexual.”
The internet is the only thing holding me back from ever wanting to buy my kids cell phones. It was in fifth grade I came home from school, and asked my mom, “What is a blow job?” She looked at me and said, never say that word again.
“So, it’s one word!” I thought to myself, as I pranced upstairs to my older brother and sister who told me exactly what a blowjob is. I don’t even remember thinking, “Blowjobs seem weird.” Actually, I can’t remember thinking much about it after they told me.
Social media is scientifically proven to be awful for young people’s mental being, so it seems like a no-brainer to deny them the time-vacuum of scrolling through meaninglessness. Young boys have uncontrollable, wall-punching, rage when their cerebral cortex isn’t being hijacked by screens, and girls are lured to cut all their hair off, dye it green, and make everyone call them by a chosen name, like “Pickle.” The green hair and name change are a lot less terrifying than untethered aggression.
I wonder how long it took for gender theory to trickle down from academia to now being on the forefront of young people’s radar, and how Greer’s theories never seemed to make it. I suppose The Female Eunuch has to combat capitalism, and the gender spectrum embraces the free market, since you can buy a t-shirt at Target labeling yourself as fluid.
I have a t-shirt that says, “I’m the Boss.” My t-shirt lies, and I don't wear it often, mostly on laundry days when I’m down to wearing crotchless panties and twenty year old stained sweatpants. My laundry’s been elevated lately after buying amazing fabric softener beads at Costco. I’ve steered clear of fabric softener the last eight years because my sister told me, “Fabric softener causes vaginosis.”
“Say no more. Vaginosis sounds horrible, I’ll stop using it.” But the little pink pellets added to the wash make it smell amazing, and there hasn’t been a medical side effect yet.
I’m going off social media for lent, and we’ll see if it decreases my anxiety. I’m not a stress case, but I’m no poster child for calmness either. I’ll give my boyfriend an early birthday shoutout before I make my non-Irish-exit, because he’ll appreciate it. Reading comments on his active social media accounts sends my anxiety through the roof because I read some of them as creepy desperation from people slobbering at the mouth over his key strokes. They’ve ruined the internet for me, and I guess I should thank them, but their strange inclination to insert themselves into a person’s reality makes me consider them wayward soldiers. Consider if they put that energy into the revolution, or anything progressive for that matter.
If Greer’s plan to abolish monogamy for the sake of the revolution didn’t trickle down, I’m grateful because it’s nice sharing a bed with someone, and late-night planning the inscription on our massive shared tombstone. I missed him when he left town last weekend for work. I had big plans to walk around and fart freely, but it was boring at night. The kids were excited for his return too. When he was back he played Barbies with Kingsley, and was directed to play the Barbie whose hair is all chopped off and colored with a permanent marker because she lost all her Ken dolls. I told her I turned some of my Barbies into Kens too, when I was a kid. They even used the proper pronouns and called the desecrated Barbie they/them.
I received a terrible phone call this week that my Grandma fell over in the parking lot in Carson City, and is in the hospital recovering from a fractured pelvis. I told Johnny, and he said Geoffrey asked him to get three tickets to watch a King’s game, so they could take Grandma J because she loves basketball too, and it made me feel so proud of my little boy and his beautiful heart.
I told my kids about their Great Grandma, and they were relieved the news wasn’t worse. I said, “Always have the thought of Grandma’s healing in your heart, and picture us all at her 100th birthday party.” I want her to be a great-great-grandma one day. She is so close because that’s what happens when you get married at 15.
Greer would despise her life, but she’s a perfect example of living without stress. A non-technological existence, she never has to worry about announcing to her kids, “I have to take a poop,” bored, during a zoom meeting, not realizing her microphone is turned on.
My reliance on technology isn’t all bad. I get embarrassing joy playing Sudoku on my phone, and I told my boyfriend I play to get comments, “You’re faster than 95% of players” or my all time favorite, “You’re brilliant!” And he told me he gets the same joy from playing golf on Xbox, and lately the commentators have been calling him “The greatest golfer to ever play the game.”
With our growing dependence on technology, a part of me advocated for Ted Kaczynski in the new biopic, and I wondered if he’ll be viewed as a revolutionary in 100 years when the people of the world abandon wearing t-shirts with labels and slogans for the sake of saving the planet.
Like Ted K, I’ve convinced myself there’s a war to wage on technology, but I haven’t conjured up a plan. Given my lack of tenacity with last year’s lent, making it one day in before I thought, fuck it, I’m eating gummy worms, I doubt I will be able to do much more than stave off depraved google searches from my kids and learn never to read comments on social media posts. A very small revolution.
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