I'll Stop Slapping You if You Stop Being a D-Bag: Further Reflections on Thanksgiving

The following is my account. I welcome the reflections from observers. As Cat said, "When you're around your family, you act a little crazy. You go from 0-10 in no time." This is true. And my patience, after missing a night of sleep due to an early flight, was threadbare.

The turkey had been eaten. Dishes were being swept from the table to the dishwasher by my parents, the only two people that fit in the five foot-by-seven-foot kitchen. When help was offered to my parents, it was declined--my father is o.c.d. about dish deliberations. The rest of us, minus one sister who was standing in the kitchen likely berating my parents about some need or another, were in the living room. My last grandma. My only aunt. My oldest sister, exhausted from the retail season in full swing. I was sitting on the floor next to Cat, whose flight had been delayed and a connection missed, herself arriving just in time for a 4:30 dinner after being re-routed through Boston and catching a bus. I could feel Cat's sleepiness beside me, her body sinking into the ottoman. I actually felt settled.

Then the discussion turns to the Penn State scandal. My sister's fiance, a "few drinks in" as Meredith whispers over the turkey, their second dinner of the day, begins debating me loudly about how this is not, in fact, about football culture but about individual choice. The scandal at Penn State is about just one person who should probably go to jail. It's a bigger problem, I say. A cultural problem. My aunt, politely and democratically from the couch, "Can't it be about both?"

"You know," I said, "I think it's a bigger problem in big ten football schools when the officially-sponsored game day gear calls Michigan a "whore" and then says "Fuck Michigan". I think there's a bigger problem of gendered violence. I think that's why we have people defending this coach and this kind of assault."

"Football isn't like that," fiance contests.

"It's not a problem inherent in the sport," I contest, though frankly, I'm not sure I even believe that but I'm willing to believe it to make my bigger point. "It's a problem about the kind of violence that is sanctioned in the Big Ten Culture."

"No no no," fiance is yelling now. "This is about who saw what. And I think everyone did what they were supposed to do. And you know that in the case of some girls, when they are dressing--" This is the point where I lose it. I stand up. I approach him in his seat. My arms are flailing. Cat thinks that this is indicative of my watching too much Real Housewives.

"No you didn't!" He tries to interrupt me. "You can not go on saying that women deserve it. Because that's just what you were about to say." He tries to interrupt me again. I raise my left hand, think for a split second before feeling the roughness of his cheek hit my palm.

The room erupts. My mom runs from the kitchen, grabs my hands and holds them behind my back (she has de-escalation training in her role as a middle school special ed director) and ushers me into my father's study. I'm pacing in a 2-foot-by-2-foot space, surrounded by bibles and devotionals. "Just calm down." My mother is waving a dish towel in hand. "Just calm down."

My throat is heavy. I'm heaving tears. I'm gagging. "He's drunk--"

"He's not drunk."

"He's drunk and he just said women deserve to be raped. That is not okay. That is pretty much the most offensive thing you can say."

"I'm sure he didn't say that."

Meanwhile, fiance informs my sister they are leaving. He tells Cat that we aren't staying with them. We're on our own for a place to stay. And suddenly our first family thanksgiving as taken a rather unexpected turn.

I call the next day. My sister won't answer her phone. Possibly she never will. Fiance does and I apologize. I say I shouldn't have slapped him. He says he knew he had a few drinks "and maybe I wasn't as p.c. as I needed to be but I wish you would have let me finish". I don't feel like getting into it. I feel defeated. There's no way he could have followed up his defense with a non-woman-hating recuperation. But, of course, I don't say that. The crime of the evening was my violence, not his. "Let's not get into it," I say. "I was tired. It's a complex issue." It's not that complex. Don't hate women. "I shouldn't have hit you."

"It's forgotten," fiance says.

But I know it isn't. And the nausea stays with me until saturday night when, in a fit of laughter at my bestie Prema's house, sharing our third glass of wine and homemade flatbreads, Prema offers to bring me to her family's thanksgiving next year, slapping skills in hand.

The Treatment Dream

Perhaps its because Thanksgiving is looming, a dark hooded figure for bulimics that starts a holiday season of food faux pas and consumption gumption. But I had that treatment dream again. The one where a medical-like figure tells me my behaviors are irreconcilable and I silently contest, wondering what the behaviors are that compel one to call me a "danger to myself" as they handcuff me into a facility that, in the dream, I've been to before. In real life there were never any handcuffs, of course. But there was a bag check. And confiscation of nail clippers and pepto.

And so, in the dream, I sit around in groups, pleading that I don't belong there, that I've been sick before but this time, this time for real, it was just one mistake. One accidental purge. Nothing serious. Nothing compulsive.

And they tell me that we all say that.

That we are all alike.

The other faces around me in the dream are shadowy, a mixture of childhood friends and college roommates and my middle school crush.

And then they tell me my tests are back. My electrolytes are fucked again. I'm on i.v. again.

And I wonder, how did this happen?

The thing about the dream is that the hospital changes every time. Once it was the actual hospital. Another time is was my childhood church. This last time, it was the bedroom in the parsonage that I grew up in, the one my sisters and I shared, seventies wallpaper garishly beckoning an era before our arrival. And my roommate: my sister.

I could spend a lot of time wondering what kinds of tales my subconscious is spinning together but I think the answer is boringly obvious.

Tomorrow morning, I have an early flight home. My partner and I are meeting in my hometown airport. My sister's fouton is waiting for our arrival. This is our first Thanksgiving that we've been invited, as a couple, as part of the family. Our student debt is buying our flights. We're both guarding against expecting too much but there's a part of me that's hopeful. That my grandmother and aunt will welcome Cat around the table, asking about our lives together and our plans for children, as they do with my sisters, our conversation droning out my father as he excitedly discusses Newt's recent climb in the poles.

But the thing about going home is to just accept what's available. To not look for too much. To remember that my sister, after dinner, will have a bottle of wine waiting for us where we will decompress and she will worry again about how my parents are pushing her into a wedding she doesn't care about. A wedding she can't afford. She, oblivious to the dinner where Cat and I sat awkwardly with our mashed potatoes as my grandmother asks me, again, why I don't have time for a boyfriend.

And we will sip from our glasses, wondering when we can be alone, the Thanksgiving turkey heavy in our stomachs.

And I wonder, why was I put here? Whose in charge? How can I get out? What are my test results?

And I remember, this time, it was my choice.

I Have My Beans to Thank

I was just eating lunch and wondering to myself: "Will this ever end?" The usual November gray stares back at me through my kitchen window, menacingly. My bowl, steaming but bland colored, bores me.

Here's my roster of meals I've been making lately: three bean vegan chili, navy bean soup, black bean soup, minestone with extra red beans, vegan chowder with pureed white beans and vegetable stock, black beans and rice, vegan jambalaya over rice, and baked beans with fried eggs and brown bread (this is a throw back to the Maine roots of my bestie, Prema, a meal she taught me in college). The only time I mix this up is the occasional mini-frozen pizza (always a disappointment), lentil soup, or stir fry with tofu (also a bean) and peanut sauce. Sometimes, in the co-op, I walk by the chicken and think, "I could buy some of that" , and my mouth waters at the thought of a chicken taco or chicken pot roast.

As I finished up what only feels utilitarian, I remembered one of the reasons why beans are my staple:

This weekend, I did the megabus to Chicago. The megabus always says it's only seven hours but it ends up more like eight--a full work day cooped up with my laptop, waves of nausea reminding me of my childhood car sickness (a condition that lasted well into my 20's) and the aches in my hips disrupting any meaningful studying I can get done. By the time I arrive in Chicago, I want only Chinese takeout and my partner's arms.

Thursday, we gave ourselves one night without work but the next day, it was back to the grind, absorbing cultural theory in between keynotes at a media historiography conference. I felt exhilarated by the conference material (a field only loosely related to my own but much more in line with my partner's work) but by Saturday, as Cat and I drained a bottle of malbec and watched Cleopatra Jones (this was work, too, a piece Cat it working on regarding Blackploitation), I wanted more time. I wanted a day with Cat that was just us.

The next morning, we got up, walked the dogs along Lake Michigan, and headed downtown for my 9:40 bus. Seeing we still had plenty of time, we popped into a Dunkin Donuts (of course we did--I'm a masshole at heart and while some of us miss the Red Sox and the change of seasons, I miss my medium french vanilla black). As I'm carefully peeling back the plastic of my lid, taking the first sip of what I can only refer to as my own, very different kind of black gold, I looked up and saw a megabus with "Columbus/Indianopolis" pull away from the corner. "Look!" I said to Cat. "My bus is here! Why is it driving that way?"

"It's probably just turning around."

I take another sip, check my phone (9:03) and perch myself on the sidewalk. Then it occurs to me.

"What time was your bus?"

"9:40."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so. The Columbus one leaves at 10:40 so of course it's the same time." I pull out my reservation number and ticket printout. "Shit."

"It was 9:00, wasn't it?" I circumvent Cat's question, this time gulping my coffee, as she grabs the ticket out of my hand.

"So I guess you're getting on tomorrow's bus." Cat smiles and we head toward Union Station to check prices on our phones and book me another ticket. Fifty-seven dollars later, I'm booked for the next morning. I cancel my Monday teaching. I worry for a second about the money but then I remember: my savings. Every week, I put twenty bucks in the savings account, money I scrape together from grocery bills spent on my soup recipes.

Another sip of my Dunkin, this time luke warm, and my stomach settles into the idea of one more day with Cat. And I have my beans to thank.

The Day Girls: God's Gift to Skinny Jeans

I've often curled my lip up at the stick-figure boys in ratty jean jackets and wanna-be-Maine flannels, their hair delicately coifed in an elvis-throw-back-to-the-days-of-white-appropriation-in -the-jim-crowe-south, wondering "what's their message?" And I've often stared in moderate disgust at their heterosexual-yet-so-alienated white female counterparts, their bodies paralleling their boyfriend's in an androgynous mirror that makes up the pbr drinking 20-somethings.

The problem is, I'm not that interested in watching a torso maneuver around on a pair of muscle- atrophied legs because, quite frankly, it makes me wonder if I should follow closely behind, a stocky shadow waiting to catch them if the wind blows them over. It makes me anxious.

But then a beautiful thing started to happen a few years ago. Everyone started wearing the skinny jean. I began to see more attention being paid to well-crafted leather boots; patterned chiffon re-emerged as a delicate draping across a well-cupped breast (can you tell I'm a lesbian yet?) and off-the-shoulder flap-dance sweaters brought the Reagon-era into the ironic forefront, juxtaposing itself against our black president and his socialist healthcare proposals (proposals I wish, frankly, were actually a bit more socialist).

As I started to invest in cheap trends as a way of updating my teaching wardrobe, I realized that without the skinny jean, my body looked like a large sack. And so I talked to my sister.

I have two sisters. Both of whom have the same ass as me, an ass that has often been admired in our Puerto Rican neighborhoods, cat-called by passing cars in South Boston, and squeezed uncomfortably into poorly-tailored jeans in department stores. Buying pants has been a constant struggle--I know I buy a few sizes up and work to raise hems and take in leg lines, every new or new-to-me pair of pants becoming a few hours on a Saturday afternoon of needle-pricks and tangled thread.

Luckily, when I started to feel like it might be time for me try out the skinny jean, my oldest sister knew exactly what to do: she's spent the last 15 years working in retail and is now currently a store manager for a popular jean line in downtown Boston. "You need to buy a size up," she said. "And you need to buy a jegging--they have more stretch." She loaded my arms up with clothing to try, my own personal shopper who just happens to have my ass, and off I went to dressing rooms. We settled on a pair of charcoal black skinny jeans ("jegging") that have since become a staple in my wardrobe.

Here's what I like about them: I didn't have to do any tailoring. I can do the splits in my jeans (which, technically, because of physical therapy, I'm not allowed to do anymore). I can show off my motorcycle boots. My ass has a shape.

I've been feeling good about my new jeans all fall until recently, when pictures emerged on the FB from a baby shower a few weekends ago. There I am, in the company of colleagues, in a bright maroon cardigan and an orange scarf, my legs thick as they anchor me onto a kitchen stool by the food table. I feel wide. The largest person in the picture. And I struggle to see myself positively: curves, in skinny jeans, making an oxymoron out of a fashion statement. And then I think: perhaps the problem is in the name of the jean. Perhaps the problem is in that double-n that screams off the page, making a mockery of those of us who simply want a little stretch in the fabric of our jeans.

The Catch-22

Last night I went to bed at 10:00. Grad students and single moms and others who are pressed for sleep are probably envious at that line. But I went to sleep because I was alone, watching a movie I wasn't interested in. I went to sleep because this is a weekend without Cat, which is also a weekend, apparently, where three of my other local besties are away at conferences. I tried to read before bed but I couldn't absorb anything. It was one of those nights.

Then I woke up in the middle of it. Anxious because I was getting too much sleep. Anxious that, because I was sleeping too much, I wouldn't be able to get everything read for my exams in time. Anxious that my sleeping meant I was depressed so I then go anxious that I was actually depressed.

So I pulled out some of the cognitive behavioral tools from way back. I started breathing and talking myself out of the anxiety. Remembering that anxiety attacks are just blips in time. And as my body became flushed and clammy, I started "I breathe in short breaths, I breathe out short breaths, I breathe in longer breaths, I breathe out longer breaths". I was trying to envision that, as I was breathing out, I was releasing the anxiety and the depression.

It started to feel that I was doing my mantra forever and it wasn't working. My cats walked across my stomach in their nonchalant way. And as Bob pressed one foot into my abdomen, I felt a release. A breath I had been holding.

And I thought to myself: I. give. up.

I can't even do a breathing mantra while breathing.

I can't even enjoy sleep without thinking sleep is the tip of the iceberg of depression.

And I fell back asleep, guilty and tired.

Third Time's a Bust: Further Reflections

I should probably more aptly subtitle this blog entry: Why I Shouldn't Blog Between Student Meetings. I got a little distracted while posting yesterday and have spent much of last evening really thinking about if I want to go back to that nutritionist--does she deserve a second chance? I don't want to write off someone in a potentially helpful position because of a few blunders on her part and a slightly caustic attitude on my part. Or perhaps it was the other way around?

But last night, my partner gave me some perspective.

I should eat more fresh vegetables. There are some that are totally fine to eat in their non-organic form as long as we peel them (sweet potatoes, carrots, onions) and others that I should only ever buy organic. And I said, "I don't want to support non-organic growers" and she said, "We're in a compromised position no matter what. We can't also sacrifice our health." Catherine is practical but also one of the most value-driven people I know.

And I realized something. My nutritionist and I are not, value-wise on the same page. And here's why. She kept stressing keeping my snack calories below 100. But she also said, "A piece of bread or an apple--it doesn't matter." And I thought to myself: there is completely different nutrition in both of those choices.

When I began to reflect on the ways in which my own body reacts by pulling in its shoulders and tightening its chest muscles when she talks as if a grain and a fruit are interchangeable, or that I should try "light bread" as if synthetic sugars used to make low-calorie bread will only have a positive affect on my long-term health, I realized that I should have been reacting to my gut (pun-intended) from the beginning.

I can't view food by way of calories consumption. I have to view food by way of what kinds of nutrients I'm getting out of it and what can, perhaps, give me more bang for my buck, or more nutrition for my caloric intake. It matters to me if I eat an apple instead of bread; more than that, it matters that I eat a local apple when possible and whole grain, whole food bread when possible. If I want a less dense grain, I'm not going to eat bread. I might eat a tortilla. Or some brown rice.

By thinking about food as merely calorie counts is the first (and maybe only useful thing) I learned in early institutional treatment. And it's also led me to think more politically about consumption.

I don't think this particular nutritionist is right for me. She also spent ten minutes discussing how people binge because they're hungry. I mentioned that binging was a lot more complicated than that--that people overeat when they're hungry but binging is perhaps something different. And she said, defensively, "We're talking physiologically. We're always talking physiologically." Oopsie. I didn't realize consumption had nothing to do with mental health, economics, and industrialization.

So now it's off to the next chapter: do I find a new nutritionist? Will my insurance cover someone else? Or should I try to keep doing this work with good old fashioned common sense? Suggestions welcome.