And now for something completely different:

Generally, the adage is true: good girls like bad boys, but always go home with good guys. But why is the one about good guys always finishing last also true?

A co-worker and I began this discussion while elbow-deep in dishwater, and it intrigued me so deeply that I went home and did some research, both on the Internet and within my own psyche. Some observations I found rang true to me; others didn’t.

But before I delve too deeply into theory, I’m going to explain this from my gut. I realize I am not, by a long shot, anywhere close to a typical American woman (blame my psychologist parents for that), but I am a female, raised with the American gender identity “woman”, with which I identify most of the time. Speaking of gender identity and the huge grey area existing therein, for the purposes of this conversation, I am speaking from a strictly heterosexual viewpoint here. Anyone who has insight into the dozens of other facets of the gender/sex debate in regards to this issue, feel free to speak up.

Keep in mind that these are my personal reflections, both from experience and from observing others. I’ll let you know when we get down to the science.

Bad boys are attractive to good girls because they set off that alarm voice that says “Honey, this is not a good idea.” But of course, what do most of us do when someone tells us not to do a thing? All of us, women and men, have a destructive impulse buried (or not so buried) somewhere in our psychology. The technical term for this is thanatos, but like I said, I’m not concerning myself with technical right now. This destructive impulse can be turned inward or outward depending on an individual’s psychological build. When the thanatos is turned outward, you get murderers, arsonists, rapists, wife-beaters, etc. When it’s turned toward the self, however, you get suicides, self-abuse, depression, learned helplessness, the “glutton-for-punishment type, addiction, and the general impulse to do what is Not Good For You ©. Which includes risking a solid relationship you may have already built with a good man (or woman) for a temporary, meaningless sexual fling with an anonymous douchebag. Add to that the risk of pregnancy and a cornucopia of delightfully gross diseases, and you have yourself a prime example of the thanatos temporarily running your life.

Bad boys are also attractive because they are often, superficially, much more confident and devil-may-care than their goodly counterparts. They know what they want (sex, and lots of it), they know exactly how to get it, and they’re good at getting it (read: good at manipulating women). This combination often gives women the (mistaken) impression that these men have got it down. They know who they are; they are confident in themselves, and because of that they are able to disregard all the “petty little societal rules” that say “this is the way to court a lady.” Remember this point; I’ll be returning to it later.

Now ladies, I don’t know about you, but the sexiest thing a man can ever do in my presence is to completely know himself. If I were single and off my guard, say, with five or so beers in me, a man who gives the appearance of knowing himself could be (and would be) powerfully attractive to me. What’s also attractive to me (and a lot of women) is deviation. Anything different attracts our attention. A man who gives me an origami penguin on our first date is far more likely to win my attention (and affection) than a man who gives me a rose. Not only does the origami bespeak creativity, but it tells me that this man does not play by the book. He says to himself, “She may not like penguins, but what the hell. I’ll try anyway.” The man with the rose would think “She may not like origami or penguins, so I better just give her a flower. I know she’ll like that.” Not only is Man #2 plain wrong, he plays it too safe. Man #2 may be a bucket of charm once I get to know him, but he may not get that far. Man #1 with the origami bird is guaranteed that, even if I don’t like penguins. I’m going to ask him how he knows origami, what his other interests are, and things will follow from there.

Most of the time, women who are taken in by the false confidence of bad boys aren’t stupid. Drunk, maybe, but not stupid. They may know or guess the man in question has been with several (dozen) women before them. They may know exactly what he is and what he wants. And after they give him what he wants, they wake up in the morning and drown in regret, moaning some variation of “What the hell was I thinking?” They may or may not already be in a committed relationship, but that fact is irrelevant. What matters here is that they did it in the first place. But why, exactly, did they do it?

Women, on some deep level, respond to men who have this simple, almost primal desire for sex. That’s why bad boys are so good at getting what they want. To be blunt, isn’t it our genetic imperative to procreate? Isn’t it the primary reason we are here on this earth? These men are doing nothing but fulfilling their genetic imperative to pork as many women as they can possibly pork. When you strip away the rules and mores modern culture has imposed on human interaction, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what these men are doing. So why should women shun their advances? Bad boys are taking advantage of a pattern of sexual behavior that has been around since the first mammals crawled out from a crack in the ground. Males spread their genes among as many females as they can, so their issue, not their neighbor’s, will populate the earth. Females respond to this activation of ancient biological impulses. Having as many sexual encounters as we can is in women’s biology too, but to a different end. And now, thanks to the recent cultural revolution (including the invention and acceptance of contraception), modern women can indulge their genetic imperative without the risk of ruining the encounter (and a chunk of their lives) with the risk of pregnancy.

Since I’m veering into the territory of biology here, I may as well make the theoretical leap and cease speaking solely from my own experience. I’d like to revisit the point I made earlier about “petty societal rules”. Blend that with the point of the previous paragraph and you get my next point: the concepts of “good guy” and “bad boy” are extremely modern constructs. I’d go so far as to say the “bad boy” is a vilification of our ancestors’ natural behavior, and the “good guy” is a feminization of man. Let me clarify.

Males did not begin their evolutionary journey as monogamous, self-sacrificing creatures. As humans developed the capacity for abstract thought, self-awareness, culture and society, rules developed in those societies that changed the roles males and females played. With our transition to non-nomadic agricultural societies, there also arose a focus on monogamous relationships, which went hand-in-hand with the increased focus on possessions. A woman needed a man to be there at all times to manage the farmstead, the possessions, and the children they had created, and a man needed a woman for the same reasons; to produce children (not just for the continuation of the species now; it was to help maintain the farm and to take ownership of it when the father died). Imagine how difficult life would be in an agricultural society if men were constantly wandering from one household to the next, impregnating as many women as they could, and then wandering off, leaving the women to raise their dozens of children alone (and manage the farmstead as well). So, monogamous relationships were a necessary by-product and result of the transition from a nomadic to an agricultural society. But that does not remove the males’ biological imperative to spread their genes as far as possible. Unfortunately, it suppresses it. Anything suppressed for long enough returns to the surface with more force than can contain it. So men continue to pursue their biological impulses, but they can no longer merely approach a woman and take what they want from her. Now there are possessions, cultural boundaries and rules to complicate his quest for sex. So he adapts. He uses possessions to his advantage. He finds a way to circumvent societal rules. He breaks boundaries. He manipulates every obstacle thrown in his way, and come hell or high water, he gets what he wants. Because he is not doing what modern society tells him he should do, his behavior is frowned upon, discouraged, and his character attacked. Instead of praising his adaptability and creativity, society, obsessed with maintaining homogeneity, calls his behavior “anti-social” and marks him as a “bad boy”.

But not all males act as freely on their impulses as some. Bad boys tend to have certain personality traits like impulsiveness, callousness, and narcissism. The combination of these qualities, plus a healthy dose of testosterone, makes a man very likely to be a bad boy. A. Grayson of the ABC News Medical Unit states that, in an article called “Why Nice Guys Finish Last”, bad boys possessing these “dark triad” personality traits hold the same appeal as James Bond, who has a penchant for fast cars, faster women and little empathy for others. Grayson quotes psychological researcher P. Jonason and makes the point that “dark triad traits are useful in pursuing our agendas at any given time. If you like someone and want to meet them and date them, people who have the dark triad traits appear to be more successful at facilitating short-term mating.” And that’s what bad boys are after, right?

Let’s not forget the role of testosterone, as I touched on before. Everybody knows that it’s liquid manliness, but what some may not realize is that the more testosterone a person has, the more likely that person will be to possess dominant personality traits like extroversion and impulsiveness. According to Grayson and the study he conducted, men with higher levels of testosterone were rated as “more outgoing and charming than others.”

I think I’ve pretty much beat that horse dead. The corollary to the bad boy horse is this horse, which is so far still alive: why do nice guys seem to finish last? The answer is simple but unfortunate: because they are set up to.

Good guys do what bad boys don’t: they maintain the homogeneity society so strictly enforces. They adhere to the set of morals and edicts that modern civilization tells them they should. They are the ones good at building a solid foundation (trust, respect, loyalty) for a long-term relationship. They, instead of being impulsive, callous and self-centered, are generous, self-sacrificing and empathic. Sounds great, right? What woman would not want a man who listens to her, understands her viewpoints, trusts her with his whole soul and would not even dream of leaving her? Well, most women want a man like that. But so often good men are cuckolded when their women, failing to hold themselves to the same standards their men do, let themselves be taken by bad boys who promise them everything their safe, predictable, comfortable good man does not give them (the thrill of doing something forbidden, primarily). This is why so many “good guys” are stereotyped as timid, milquetoast, whipped by their women, overly romantic or otherwise emasculated. Most of them aren’t, but they possess some traits (like empathy, compassion, patience, etc.) that are stereotypically feminine, and so are portrayed as more feminine (therefore weaker) than their bad-boy counterparts by the very same society that urged them into that paradigm in the first place. Funny how that works.

Good men: please do not take this as a thinly-veiled suggestion to suddenly become douchebags. If your lifelong ambition is to pork as many women as you can possibly pork, in that case, grow a pencil beard, wear vomitous amounts of Axe body spray and Ed Hardy clothing, and make sure to renew your membership to the tanning salon. But I doubt you want to spend your lives trotting from one strange bedroom to another. Good men, I have good news.

Bad boys may have more short-term sexual success, but the very qualities that help them get dozens of one-night stands actually ruin their chances at success with meaningful long-term partnerships. Hopefully y’all have been paying attention long enough to realize why this is so. Nobody can deal with a narcissistic asshole for very long. If all he is concerned about is his hair, what he’ll drink at the bar tonight and how many reps he’ll do at the gym today, he won’t make a very good listener when you’ve just found out your brother has pancreatic cancer or your sister’s dog died.

I suppose the lesson to heterosexual women out there is this: there will always be bad boys. Whether or not you succumb to their charms is under your control. The more you know about yourself and your desires (both sexual and emotional), the better equipped you are to see bad boys for what they are and decide if you want to enter the relationship (however brief). Keep in mind also that there is no blatantly obvious line dividing the good guys from the bad boys. Like everything else in life, there are shades of grey here. Bad boys can turn good once they meet the right woman; a bad breakup can turn a good guy bad in one hell of a hurry. Bad boys have good in them, and vice versa. This is why it’s so important for you to know yourself, your standards, your wants and your limits. The more self-aware you are, the more you will be aware of others.

Thoughts? Points? Arguments? Do you agree with every syllable I say or am I so achingly wrong about every single point that I should just stop speaking forever? Either way, I want to hear what you have to say. So feel free to share in the comments. I opened them to anonymous posters, so go nuts. But be nice to each other. I don’t care if you swear, but no defamation of character please.

I'm road-tripping from now on.

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that the TSA did not feel the urge to violate me (with gloved hands) for the sake of a false sense of safety.

The bad news is that I’m beginning to really hate the process of flying.

It used to be a thrill and a pleasure—all the stuff between being dropped off at the airport and feeling that gentle swoop in my stomach at liftoff was just that—stuff. Even when the lines at the check-in counter were always longer than the ones at security, even before all the modern “convenience” of online check-in, it was less stressful. I think because it was predictable. You knew how long it would take at the ticket counter; you knew how long it took to go through security (5 minutes, max, on a busy day), and so did most everybody else. So things flowed as nicely as they could in a place like that.

In the past nine years (especially in the past five), things have changed so much and so quickly that it’s impossible to bank on anything. Blame the threat of airborne terrorism, blame the TSA, blame whoever you please. But nothing’s for sure. I’ve spent a grand total of six minutes (yes I timed it) getting from the car to my gate. I’ve spent more than twelve times that doing the same thing. Both incidences occurred in the past two years. Y’all have y’all’s own horror stories, I’m sure. Feel free to share in the comments.

So what actually happened to me? Well, nothing life-alteringly scarring or newsworthy, so if you’re looking for a sensational story about how I got sexually assaulted by a stinking brutish TSA lout and I’m so psychologically damaged I’m suing TSA for weeks of intense therapy, then you can just pass this post on by. What occurred was less an event and more a source of deep irritation. But I do place most of the blame on the heightened regulations imposed on the process of flying by the TSA.

My fiancé and I awoke at the bright and gleaming hour of 4am so I could make my 5:50am flight. He graciously dropped me off at the airport at a shade before 5, both of us figuring that five minutes shy of an hour would be plenty of time since I had already checked in the night before and printed my boarding pass. All I had to do was drop my checked bag off and zip through security.

I noticed rather immediately that I wouldn’t be doing a lot of zipping. Most check-in counters nowadays have an express lane or similar, for those passengers wise enough to have taken advantage of advance check-in. JetBlue had no such check-in lane this morning. So I had to wait in line for 14 minutes (yes I timed it) just to drop my bag off. However, I did get a little reward from the ticket lady.

Me: “Hi. I’ve already checked in; I just need to drop my bag off. I’m on the 5:50 flight to JFK.”

Ticket lady (of middling age, way more cheerful than I was): “Oh, okay. Is this your first time flying alone, hon?”

Me, confused: “Uh. No. I’m twenty-four.”

Ticket lady, confused: “No you’re not. Are you sure? Can I see your ID?”

I handed her my driver’s license, with which she confirmed my age. She handed it back to me with the same expression with which a cow looks at an oncoming train.  “You have such a babyface, hon!”

I thanked her with a genuine but sleepy smile and made use of my finely-tuned crowd-weaving skills to make it through the throng (there are always more people than you think that fly in the stupid hours of the morning) to the security checkpoint. I checked my watch again; it was 5:16. My flight started boarding in four minutes. No worries, though, I still had almost a half hour before they closed the gate. I gauged the length of the line and the number of checkpoints they had open, and by the slipshod, half-asleep breed of mathematics all veteran flyers possess, estimated I’d be through security in another ten minutes, barring unforeseen catastrophe.

I shouldn’t have jinxed it like that.

Even though I didn’t get fed through the naked machine or subjected to an “enhanced patdown” (aka Step Right Up and Get Violated by Your Government), I had the dubious pleasure of being pulled aside and verbally searched. I got through the metal detector fine. My shoes, laptop, cell phone and wallet got through the x-ray machine fine. But something about or in my backpack didn’t sit so well with the guy whose eyes were glued to the screen. He said he’d put it through again. I said okay. So far I was three minutes short of my ten; I could deal. The portly guy at the x-ray machine stopped the conveyor when my bag came around again. He squinched his eyes up and put his nose to the screen. Blinked. Backed the conveyor up. Moved it forward a few inches. Paused. Blinked again. Then my backpack came out of the scanner, and I thought I was clear to go. But the guy scooped it up again, handed it to another taller gentleman who just looked so in love with his job. This overly sanguine fellow pinned me to the wall with his eyes as the chubby x-ray operator pointed at me and mouthed the words “That’s her bag over there.” I was ushered unceremoniously to an out-of-the-way spot with a table and a stool. The thin gent told me (not asked me, told me) to empty my pockets and sit down. He commenced emptying my backpack. Which included: a book, a laptop, a power cord, two notebooks, a couple of pens and a granola bar. That was it. How he could turn that into a 4-minute process I will never know. Maybe he just did it to spite me. I really believe he just sat there with my laptop thinking “Maybe if I stare at this thing long enough it will turn into a bomb and we can arrest this bitch.” I could tell he even wanted to open my granola bar. You never know, I could be hiding plastic explosive in between those delicious crunchy clusters.

“Can I see your ID, miss,” he barked. Again, not a question. I gave it to him, making it very clear, nonverbally, that I did not appreciate his tone. He stared at my license for a while, then flicked his eyes up to me. Back to my license. Back to me.

“What is your full name, miss.”

I told him.

“Your date of birth.”

I gave it.

“Your current address.”

“It’s not on there,” I said, pointing to my license. “I moved.” Then I recited my address in Buffalo.

“When did you move and why?”

The words shot out before I could stop them. “Why is that your business?” I snapped my mouth shut so hard I heard my teeth click.

“What is your Social Security number, miss.”

Chagrined and confused, I recited it. Then added: “I don’t know why you need that either.”

“Wait here,” Mr Charming said, and put out his hand as if he was telling his dog to stay. He turned and left.

My thoughts ran thusly: Okay, I pissed him off.

            He looks chronically pissed-off

            He’s going to make the next few minutes very unpleasant for me.

            I only have 20 minutes until my plane takes off. What if I don’t make it?

            I will carve a smile onto this fucker’s face. Or maybe a more permanent frown. If that’s possible.

            That will definitely get me arrested.

            Wait, I don’t even have anything sharp to carve with.

            Damn, maybe I should have packed some plastic explosives in my granola bar. I could feed it to him and then set it off. Play Gallagher with this asshole’s head.

I swear I do not normally think like this. Call it a situational mood disorder.

Mr Charming left me in stir for another five minutes or so (didn’t time this one; too busy letting my imagination run rampant with Mr Charming’s death). Upon his return, he asked to see my boarding pass. I handed him both the one to JFK and my connection to Charlotte. He stood there, looking dour, puzzling over my documents like a first-year lit student with War and Peace. The clock had left 5:30 in the dust and was rapidly hurtling toward 5:45. I told myself very insistently to make nice to him, to do whatever he said and not under any circumstances mouth off to him so I could get on my way as quick as I could. My wounded sense of self would heal.

Mr Charming handed me my documents and I braced myself for an “enhanced patdown”. At least, I thought to myself, he doesn’t look like the kind of man that would savor the experience any more than I would.

Instead, he asked me if I was aware that the new TSA regulations require all passengers to register their full name, gender, date of birth and social security number with the airline before departure?

“No,” I said honestly. “That’s news to me.”

“You should have been notified when you purchased your tickets and when you checked in, miss,” he spat. Clearly he’d done this before, and clearly he was none too happy about having to do it one more time.

“I did everything online, so maybe that’s…”

“There are notices on JetBlue’s website and posted signs in the check-in area. We make sure to inform all our customers of this new regulation. Is this your first time flying?”

Jesus pleezus, does everyone think I’m a sixteen-year-old virgin lamb?

“Nosir. I just haven’t flown since all the bullsh—er, stuff with TSA regulations. And stuff.”

Open mouth, insert both feet. For good measure.

“You still should have been notified. I went ahead and registered you.” But don’t fall on your knees and thank me or anything. It’s not like I did you a favor, his eyes said. “But if you fly a different airline next time, make sure you register your information with them.”

“But TSA has all my information now. Why do I have to re-register with each airline?”

“TSA is not allowed to store this information. So if you fly with a different airline you must re-register with your full name, gender, date of birth and Social Security number.”

I wanted to say: “For a bunch of folks who are so obsessed with the security and safety of their customers, you sure are playing fast and loose with their identities.”

I wanted to say: “I hope they have saved an incredibly uncomfortable place in hell for you.”

I wanted to say: “I call bullshit. Just grope me and let me the fuck go.”

I said: “Thanks for letting me know. Am I cool to leave?”

He said: “Yes. Enjoy your flight, miss.”

After that little interlude, a burned-out engine and a tailspin into the side of a mountain would be enjoyable.

More good news: I made my flight. With just a minute to spare.

Earworms

Now that this article is already published, I don't feel like I'm screwing myself out of any kind of rights when I post it here. 

Enjoy.

You know that one song? That one song that gets stuck in your head for hours, days, weeks? Or maybe it’s just one stanza or a verse, or even just a couple of notes? Repeating ad nauseam, running in dizzy circles around and around your ears, driving you absolutely bananas by the end of hour 493?

You, my friend, have an earworm. Besides being consummately irritating, earworms are a real psychological phenomenon that has been studied by various important sciencey folk. No, really, it has. The term, a literal translation of the German Ohrwurm, was made popular by a marketing professor called James Kellaris. His studies showed that approximately 98% of people have experienced an earworm.

Daniel Levitin, a cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, musician and record producer, also delved into the study of earworms. He has published numerous articles on the relationship between neurocognition and music, and he is the author of This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. He has also worked with artists and groups such as Steely Dan, Santana, The Grateful Dead, The Blue Oyster Cult, Stevie Wonder and Chris Isaak.

If that isn’t enough for you, the well-known neurologist Oliver Sacks also researched earworms in his 2007 book Musicophilia, contributing the title “involuntary musical imagery” to the list of earworm synonyms.

Some other fun synonyms are “humsickness”, “repetunitis”, “sticky tune”, “brain itch”, and my personal favorite, “tune wedgie”.

So how do people get earworms (hereafter called tune wedgies)? According to Kellaris and Levitin, any song can become a tune wedgie. But there are some characteristics that make a song particularly prone to worming into your ear. Songs that are simple (lyrically and musically), repetitive, and contain some unusual feature (like an extra beat) are most likely to become tune wedgies. Some people (musicians and those who are chronically stressed, tired, neurotic) are more prone to getting tune wedgies than others. This, says Kellaris, indicates that they are the result of a complex interaction between musical (and lyrical) properties and an individual’s traits.

Okay, you say. I’m one of those lucky people who get tune wedgies all the time. So how did it get there? More importantly, how do I get rid of it?

Patience, young Padawan.

When you listen to a song, a part of your brain called the auditory cortex is activated. The same area is reactivated when you just imagine hearing the song. This retrieval of auditory input—whether it’s a tune wedgie or not— can be called “perception in reverse”, because it follows the same neural path as actually hearing a song, but backwards. This mirror-image of activity, Kellaris believes, is part of why tune wedgies get stuck so deeply.

The first and most common way to get a tune wedgie is simply hearing a song. This will trigger the auditory cortex and boom, insta-wedgie. But it doesn’t have to be an entire song. Often, it’s just a stanza, a line or even just a few notes. But once that wedgie digs in, it takes days of picking to get it out.

The second way is subliminal, or lyrical, exposure. This happens when you read a word—any word—and it reminds you of a song lyric. Which turns into a tune wedgie. Some good examples include “stop” (in the name of love), “one” (is the loneliest number), “blue” (da ba dee da ba di), and “never” (gonna give you up, never gonna let you down).

Got a wedgie yet?

I wish I could tell you to hang upside down from the archway of a cemetery gate while eating strawberry yogurt and twirling your feet in circles and your tune wedgie will go away, 100% Guaranteed Or Your Money Back. I wish I could say that because it would be hilarious to see, but also because we all want that one real tune wedgie cure. But sad to say, there is no tried and true way to cure a tune wedgie. Each one has its own cause and came to you for its own reason, so a panacea is, unfortunately, out of the question.

But there are some things that you could try, and I swear I am not making any of this up:

·         Eat hot cinnamon candy. The intense flavor evidently distracts your brain.

·         Listen to the song all the way through. Once.

·         Listen to another song or album from another artist.

·         Distract yourself by physical activity, like skydiving. But beware, the wedgie may return once the adrenaline wears off. This goes for less death-defying activities too.

·         Drink alcohol (works like a charm).

·         Pass it on—sing your tune wedgie to a friend. Beware: they may become an ex-friend when they walk away humming it.

·         Play music; piano seems to work best.

·         Go to the Eiffel Tower. According to earwurm.com, nobody has ever reported having a tune wedgie on this structure. And because I found it on the internet, you know it’s true.

·         Listen to “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees.                    

If your tune wedgie endures, despair not. It will go away in time. If it does not, however, you may have a condition called endomusia, wherein the sufferer actually hears music that is not there. Endomusia is related to obsessive-compulsive disorder in that it is a type of persistent, recurring thought. It is also classified as a type of hallucination in that the auditory cortex is activated as it is when one actually hears music, not in the perception-in-reverse way that results in tune wedgies.

If you are interested in learning more about tune wedgies and various other intersections of music and psychology, I recommend grabbing a copy of Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (Knopf, 2007) or This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin (Dutton, 2006). Or you could check out earwurm.com, which has resources to help you identify and get rid of those pesky wedgies.

Happy picking!

On Work Ethic

Do you remember that time in your middle school history class (for those of us who were born before Clinton became President) when your teacher told you about the kind of people that founded this country?

It probably went along the lines of this: A guy named John Calvin espoused the idea that hard work and dedication to worldly good deeds would get you into heaven, instead of just praying really hard. The (Calvinist) Puritans, who defined this country’s early development, sowed that work ethic right into the soul of this new world as they sowed their wheat into the soil. That willingness to use lots of elbow grease is partly how this country grew up as fast and strong as it did.

I have gone through life assuming that this is still the case. To clarify, I was raised to do my best at whatever endeavor I undertake, and I naturally assumed that everybody else would do the same.

The Puritan work ethic, instead of being the rule, is evidently now the exception.

I’m pretty sure that this is just another big swing of the socio-temporal pendulum, but I can’t help but feel another blow to my already grievously wounded philanthropy. This is not the first time I’ve felt this particular sting, but it’s the first time I’ve felt the need to sit down and organize my thoughts.

Folks spend a lot of energy and words on the concept of brotherly love; we should all just love each other and all the world’s problems will fix themselves. As much as I want to believe that, it’s just not true. Not as an end in itself. Passive love is not what makes the world go round. We can’t all just sit around in a circle and sing and hug. It’s one thing to get along with those around you; it’s a completely different animal when you actively look after and support your people.

What really moves the world is when we help each other. That, I believe, goes hand in hand with the concept of a strong work ethic. We have to be willing to pull our own weight, sure, but we also have to be willing to pull others’ sometimes as well. My mother always used to say to me, “Kate, we all have to do things we don’t want to do. But we do them because it’s what we need to do.”

Her point was that we can’t be selfish. We can’t, as the song says, always get what we want. When the situation calls for it or when we are asked, we ought to do for other people, as long as it doesn’t put us in harm’s way. Because if we don’t, things won’t get done. Because if we do, then they will do for us when we ask. Reciprocity, I have learned, is the real lever that turns the gears of the world.

So I give of myself, expecting nothing more back than what I have given. Often I give more than is expected of me. Which is what I and a few others have been doing for the past week at my place of employment. Several of my fellow employees, their work ethic absent (or nonexistent), have repeatedly not shown up to their shifts. Our store is already understaffed, so this forces the same small group of employees (managers included) to work overlong and overhard. For the past two weeks I have been called in to work early, called in on my days off, called in to do the work of two people. Most of me does not mind, because I need the extra hours and the pay they bring. Also, I have the good fortune of working with a good bunch of folks (those who actually show up for their shifts, that is), and I know that they know the meaning of reciprocity. Plus, let’s be honest, I like being the one everybody knows they can depend on.

But there is a part of me that does mind. Not for myself, but for the rest of the staff that has a work ethic. It is not their responsibility to habitually pick up after those who can’t or won’t do their jobs. It is not fair to keep forcing them to work double shifts on busy weekends, especially when we are so understaffed that we basically have to stop serving people for as long as it takes someone to wash enough dishes, to cook enough food to get through the next twenty minutes (wash, rinse, repeat 20 minutes later).

We the few are pressed from one side by the omniscient corporate presence to keep up to the many (many many many) standards of a high-quality foodservice establishment. And we are pressed from the other side by customers, who expect us to deliver all of what the corporate machine promises them and more, with the ease and celerity of a magician’s sleight-of-hand.

Which is difficult already when we are fully staffed. But since we have lost several crew members to moves, school, etc. and several more to shifted priorities or just pure laziness, we the few are caught between one hell of a rock and a hard place. I won’t enumerate the effects of this constant and inescapably suffocating pressure, because I’m sure some of you know exactly what I’m talking about and what happens to people when they are in that situation and aren’t prepared for it.

But, you may say, the absent ones may have a good excuse to be absent. Yes, a couple of them did. I use the past tense intentionally. Severe illnesses and emergencies are legitimate reasons to miss work, and in that case I do not mind picking up their share of the work. That is part of reciprocity. That is part of what it means to be a productive member of any community. But to have to do it three and four days in a row is pushing it. We the few come to work when we’re sick even though we shouldn’t because if we don’t, things don’t get done and all of us get in trouble. I have even worked through hospitalizations of loved ones. Once I take a few hours or a day off to ensure they and everyone else close to me are taken care of and safe, I go right back to work. First because I have done all I can do, and the rest is up to someone with a medical degree. Second because not having something to occupy my mind and my hands would force me to dwell on my loved one’s ailment, and that is not good for my psychological health. Third because I have a job to do, and there are both written and unspoken promises there that I have to keep. I took a day off to settle my affairs, and my coworkers graciously covered for me. Now I return to work and soon it’ll be my turn to cover for someone else who needs my help. That’s the way any functional, productive community works.

We are social animals. We build social networks and we rely on those close to us for support; that is the only way we can thrive in a world that holds so many of us. To think that you can go on taking advantage of those who support you and never give of yourself is fundamentally stupid and bespeaks a near-complete lack of social intelligence. And this comes from a lifelong misanthropic introvert, so you better believe it.

Like any good debater, I understand that there are multiple facets to every situation. But I will not address the other ones here. I’d like to see other people’s thoughts on this matter. If anyone reading this has a good argument for another side of this issue or even their own take on my standpoint, please do post your own thoughts.

You Have Been Christened

Every workplace has its culture, and every culture has its (unspoken) rites of initiation. I passed through my first major one at the animal hospital where I work as a vet assistant.

I have witnessed the death of an animal.

Funny thing was, I didn’t know it was dead at first.

“Kate,” one of the techs said to me. “I want you to know that there’s a cat coming in with possible renal failure. It’s probably gonna have a lot of bloodwork done before it gets hospitalized, so be available to restrain.”

Okay, gotcha, I said. I was inwardly excited; the techs were just beginning to trust me to restrain animals without supervision or assistance. And this one was a cat. I had proved myself from the beginning better at restraining large dogs because I worked those three wonderful years at Claws and Paws. But cats are more difficult to restrain because they require a more delicate, finessed approach than a tackle-headlock.

Soon, the tech walked back into the treatment area where I had busied myself. She had a pink towel in her arms. She put it on the table and announced, “Seventeen years old. Domestic shorthair, four and a half pounds. Let’s try to get some fluids into her if her veins haven’t collapsed already.”

The image you have in your mind is probably about the same one that met my eyes when I pulled the towel back. A calico cat named, charmingly, Cali, lay on the table barely able to lift her head. Her fur, still full, made her look far more, well, full than she was. I ran my hands down her body and felt every single bone. The tech, armed with needles and a bag of fluid, attempted to draw blood while I held Cali in the usual restraint: one hand gripping the scruff tightly and one hand holding and anchoring the leg from which blood is drawn, while the same elbow kept the cat close to my body to prevent it from thrashing and getting loose.

But thrashing really wasn’t an issue with Cali. So I gentled up my hold on her scruff. Her head dropped. My heart stopped; I thought she’d died. But she lifted it laboriously, gazing at the world from bleary, tired eyes.

“Don’t you scare me like that, kiddo,” I murmured, burying my face in her fur, which smelled sweet. I kissed her and talked to her as the tech attempted draw after draw from both front legs and the side of her neck, ignoring the frequent outbursts of “fuck” and “goddamn oldass cat veins”.

“I can’t get anything. She’s too dehydrated. Her veins are like tire rubber. Let’s get some fluids in her and tomorrow we’ll try for blood,” the tech said, and I changed up my restraint: hands holding the cat’s head by the lower jaw and nose, thereby keeping the head immobile and the mouth shut. Usually cats like this hold less, but Cali no more complained about my hands all over her face than she did about having a needle painfully and repeatedly inserted into her body.

All the while I’d kept my finger on the pulse under her left elbow, but now with both hands occupied by her head I couldn’t monitor her dismally slow heart rate. But I did blow gently into her ears every once in a while; if they twitched, she lived.

“I have to put this IV in her back leg, Kate. I need you to hold her real still, ‘kay?” The tech said. I nodded and focused solely on minimizing Cali’s already minimal movement by keeping her snugged to my body and my hands completely still on her head. Cali and I remained motionless for a long while, listening to the murmurs of the tech.

“Uh. This fluid ain’t budgin’. Is kitty still with us?” The tech asked. I moved a finger from Cali’s jaw to the artery in her neck, already laid bare by the tech’s clippers and the complete absence of fat on Cali.

I felt nothing.

“Uh. I can’t feel anyth--”

“Lemme see.” The tech pressed two fingers to the spot, then pulled them away. “Nope. Kitty has left the building. You can let go of her now.”

I did, but only after I’d kissed her and told her I love you and goodbye.

With effort I compartmentalized and proceeded with the remaining three hours of my shift, which involved a different sort of christening (a story for another time). I allowed the grief to come on my way home, and I cried. I remembered the two deaths I’d witnessed at Claws and Paws, the deaths of my own pets, and the deaths of my human loved ones. Cali is and was no different than my dog or my cat or my grandmother. Cali was born, grew, was loved, and then left this world just like every other living thing has to do.

During the 8-minute ride home I realized something that should have come to me way sooner than it did. The reason why those in the veterinary business care for animals is not for the animal’s sake. Animals can and do live complete lives without human intervention; they’ve been doing it for millions of years. No, the real reason why veterinarians, techs and vet assistants like me do what we do is because of the bond between an animal and its human. It is that bond that created the need for animal doctors in the first place. The moment we domesticated animals was the moment we became responsible for their lives and their futures. And the moment we began to love them was the moment we began to care about their health and their feelings. Yes, we do it for the animal, but if it weren’t for the human who brought the animal in, well... you get it.

Half an hour before my shift ended was the tech’s time to leave. I was restocking supplies in the treatment area when she approached me.

“Congratulations, you have been christened.”

“Whuh?” I asked, blindsided.

“The kitty that croaked.”

“Oh,” I said, refusing to let those emotions out from their box yet. “I thought you were talking about the dog who expressed his anal glands all over me.”

The tech burst into laughter. “Oh, then you’ve been christened twice! Today’s your day, then!”

“Yeah, thanks.”

She left, chuckling, and I felt a momentary spike of anger for her carelessness about Cali. But I understood that she’d probably seen dozens if not more similar deaths; she’d callused up that part of her heart, as she ought to do. And I will probably do the same over time.

But for now, I don’t know how my realization will affect my work with animals or how soon. But I do know that it will affect me deeply and profoundly. I have been changed; I have been christened.

This is what I get for reading IT before bed.

I had a dream... that alarmed the ever-loving snot out of me.

I avoided the word “scare” for a reason. I seldom have good dreams, but I seldom have real wake-up-screaming-soak-the-sheets-with-sweat nightmares. I describe my nightly run-of-the-mill dreams as unnerving, uneasy, unreal, uncomfortable, uncanny. If you catch the point, they are best described by what they are not.

This one, at its core, was no different. I remembered it for more than my usual minute or two beyond waking because of how it unfolded in my mind. Usually my dreams are fragmented, plotless, non-linear; a mere collection of images melting together and oozing apart. Occasionally, my dreams will have a storyline, some linear sequence of events that I can name and follow; this one was one of those.

My first memory of the dream was of a supermarket. Garrett and Ann and I were shopping for food for a summer grill-party to celebrate Ann’s birthday. Garrett was showing less than his usual puppyish cheer. I figured he’d just turned inward and gotten quiet like he sometimes does, but I watched him carefully anyway. The further we walked through the labyrinthine aisles of the store, the less healthy Garrett looked.

Let me take a brief hiatus to mention that my M.O. in any kind of shopping excursion is and has always been “Let me get my shit and get out”. I make a detailed list beforehand so I do not have to wander and search for the items I need. Garrett, on the opposite end of the bell-curve, likes to enter a grocery store with only a vague idea of what he needs; he follows his nose and his stomach around and around the store with a contented smile on his face, enjoying the good smells and the endless choices. If left to himself, he would spend upwards of two hours wandering the food-stocked labyrinth.

In my dream, however, he did not so much as stray from the side of the buggy as we shopped. Outside in the parking lot, I asked him what was wrong. He mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I turned his face toward mine and realized, with dawning alarm, that he literally looked green around the edges. “You’re sick. We need to get you to the doctor,” I said. I told Ann to drive us to the hospital while I sat in the backseat trying my best to comfort Garrett, whose fever was ratcheting up by the minute.

By the time we got to the hospital (Motown General, the sign said, and I wish I was kidding), Garrett was drifting in and out of consciousness. Ann and I had to carry him in like a dead log. The receptionist, who looked and sounded exactly like Miss Hattie, the owner of the orphanage in the film Despicable Me, said to take him up to the top floor to room 1020, where a doctor was waiting. Oh and by the way, the elevator was broken.

I am not sure how my sister and I managed to carry my unconscious fiancé up nine flights of stairs, but we did, and now he rested as comfortably has he could have in room 1020, attended by nurses with dirt-stained uniforms and bug-like antennae. I knew that the uniforms were smeared with dirt because these nurses had climbed out of their graves for the express purpose of tending to my fiancé. While it made me uncomfortable, I accepted it with the uneasy resignation I only seem to find in dreams. The doctor, a hulking brown-furred thing with bat-like ears and a squidgy gorilla nose, came in and introduced himself in an alien language made even stranger by his voice, which sounded like a wolverine’s bark rendered verbal.

He told me (though the translator in my mind that, again, is only present in dreams) that Garrett had caught an extremely rare virus that causes little physical harm to a body but ruins the mind. If Garrett ever recovered consciousness, the doctor said around two sets of hippo-like tusks, he would be in a constant state of hallucination. To him, I may appear one minute as former President Gerald Ford, the next, a horrible manifestation of all his childhood fears and angers.

Struck numb, I thanked the doctor perfunctorily and he left. I told Ann to go home and tell our mother what had happened. She took the hint that I wanted to be alone with Garrett and so graciously left. I closed the door behind her and crawled into bed with my deathly-still fiancé. The first tear I shed hadn’t even hit the pillow when a nurse burst into the room, her filmy white eyes bug-wide and her mouth a pale blue O of surprise.

“The hospital is under attack,” she croaked in a dirt-choked voice. “There are zombies! Get out now!”

“But you’re a zombie,” I said, my own voice choked with tears.

“No, I’m an alien zombie; there’s a difference,” she said, pointing to her antennae. “You have to get out, miss, the zombies will kill you.”

“I’m not leaving Garrett,” I said simply and firmly.

“Then die like the rest of us,” she said with a sigh of resignation and went out, leaving the door open.

My cell phone rang; the caller ID said “Garrett Cooperman”. What? I held the phone to my ear and felt cold wet rat feet skitter up and down my spine.

“This is Garrett,” said the voice, which was not Garrett’s. It was as deep as the doctor’s, but behind it was a wheezing quality, like wind over the eaves of an old old house. “Well, at least the only part of him that’s still him. Listen carefully, Kate. The disease can’t touch me. Abandon the body you’re next to right now. There is nothing left of Garrett in there; I’m the last bit of him. If you listen to me and do what I say, you can get out of this safely. The zombies are not the real problem. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the things out there now are just like the slow, brainless things you’ve seen in movies. Do not be afraid of them. Be afraid of what’s down on the first floor.”

“What’s on the first floor?” I asked, my eyes riveted on Garrett’s pale, still face, knowing more fully with each passing second that the voice on the phone was him, was the thing on the first floor.

“Something you can’t possibly beat,” said the voice.

“Then how will I escape?”

A split second before the voice said it, I glanced at the room’s single window, looking out over more buildings and city streets. “The window. Open it and climb down.”

“Are you kidding? There are no handholds. I’m ten stories up. I’d fall and die.”

“That death is eminently preferable to the one you’d suffer if you met the thing on the first floor. Trust me.”

“Okay, I know you’re not Garrett. Garrett uses big words, but not that big, and not at a time like this.”

“Kate, you have to understand. I’m not wholly Garrett; I’m only a part of him. I guess I’m just the part who uses big words all the time.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me or not, you will die anyway if you don’t get out of his hospital. Now.”

The line went dead. I slowly got up from the bed and went over to the window and looked down. While I had lain next to Garrett in the middle of this hospital gone to hell, the sun had disappeared behind clouds and it had begun to rain fat, no-nonsense drops. The water ran down the side of the building in thick rivulets; there was absolutely no way I could have climbed down even one story without slipping and falling to my death. So I turned around and faced the open doorway, Garrett lying white and still in the bed to my left. As I walked toward the door, I brushed his covered feet with my hand, transferring to him the promise I had just made to come back for him as soon as I found a wheelchair or gurney.

In the hall, I realized that my promise would be difficult to keep. Not only were there no wheelchairs or stretchers or anything in the hall, there were no doors either. The door I’d just come out of was the only door for miles and miles either direction. Yes, miles. The hallway went on forever, and I could have sworn it bent a little with the curve of the earth. I stood frozen with indecision and fear that perhaps Garrett’s door would disappear as soon as I closed it. The trill of my cell phone, painfully, drillingly loud in the choking stillness of the hallway, broke my paralysis.

“Ann?” I asked, prepared to hear yet another strange voice.

“Where are you? Did you leave the hospital?”

It was Ann all right, her voice edged with concern. “N-no, I’m... I’m still here in Garrett’s room.”

“Uh... no you’re not. I’m in Garrett’s room. And you’re definitely not here.”

“What? No... wait. I’m standing right outside room ten-twenty right now.”

“I don’t see you. Are you sure you’re not by one-twenty?”

The edges of my mind began to fuzz grey; a queer twinning began to split my vision. I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear it, but the cottony feeling still advanced and the doubleness in my sight got worse.

“No. Ten-twenty. Ann, get out of this place now. Something bad’s happening. Please get out.”

“What? You’re mumbling. I can’t understand you.”

“Get out!” I screamed as loud as I could, trying to drive the haze away. “Get out! There are zombies and bad things! Leave now, Ann!”

“I guess the connection’s bad. If you can hear me, I’m gonna go down to the first floor for a snack. If you’re there I’ll find you.”

“No! Not the first floor! Stay away from the first floor! Stay away from the first

blink

floor!”

And suddenly, I was there, back on the first floor, in front of the reception desk. And I looked out onto the scene with eyes that saw two completely different things, like chameleon eyes. The desk looked the same, the floor and the ceiling, but there were things that moved, things that crawled, only shadows when both my eyes were open. But when I closed my right eye, another world, an under-world, was thrown into such lurid detail that I stumbled back and fell flat on my butt.

Unable to open my right eye and close the left, I watched as the doctor, his formerly kind apelike face now twisted in a black-lipped snarl that cut his black eyes down to slits in his wrinkled face, shoved the fat, be-pinked secretary over the desk and began unceremoniously raping her from behind, eliciting piggish squeals of delight/horror from her.

Alien bugs crawled along the walls and the ceiling, some sleek, sinister black, some still a horribly human shade of pink, their bald flesh still dripping the green goop of birth. I crab-walked backward, still with my right eye screwed shut, the muscles ringing the closed eye beginning to ache.

I hit something hard and metal, whirled around. It was a rolling stretcher. I hauled myself upright, using its cold steel struts as support. A nest of misbegotten caterpillars squirmed on top of it. I swept my arm across the surface, spilling the bugs onto the floor. They burst on impact like sick water balloons, spraying my jeans and shirt with hot yellow-grey guts and a stench like roadkill boiled to near-liquidity in the summer sun.  I grabbed the gurney and bolted for where I remembered the stairs being; if I had to haul this gurney up nine flights to get to Garrett, then goddamn it I would. I found the door, slammed myself against it, through it, and right into Pennywise the clown, complete with a bunch of loudly colored balloons gripped in one white-gloved hand.

“Oh fuck,” I said. “Are you the bad thing on the first floor?”

“None other,” he said in the gravelly, wheezy voice that had called itself “Garrett” on my phone. “Want a balloon?”

“NO I DO NOT WANT A FUCKING BALLOON! I WANT TO GET TO MY FUCKING FIANCÉ AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

“They float,” Pennywise continued in a lilt, heedless of the epic echoing scream I’d just let loose in the stairwell. “Garrett’s floating now too. Everybody floats down here on the first floor.”

“Yes yes, I know your spiel, dude. I’ve read the book. Floating and death and dismemberment, et cetera. Look. Compared to that back there,” I pointed to the reception area, where Doctor Gorilla and Miss Hattie were still going at it surrounded by bugs, “You are actually pretty tame. So actually yes, I’ll take a balloon. And I’ll tie it to this gurney so it’ll float all the way up to the tenth floor so I don’t have to drag it up.”

“Didn’t you listen to me? I said Garrett’s floating. Since you read my book, you know what that means.”

“Bullshit.”

“Open your other eye and see for yourself.”

I realized my right eye was still closed. With effort, I opened it, experienced a twinning in my vision that nearly unhinged what was left of my mind, then quickly shut my left eye.

Now I was standing in front of room 1020, in a normal hospital hallway of normal length and with its normal set of doors every few feet. Inside the room, Ann had curled herself into a chair, her knees to her chest, her eyes wide open and glassy, staring at nothing. Two nurses, sans-antennae, hovered over Garrett’s hospital bed. I couldn’t see his face. His feet twitched spasmodically. I rushed into the room screaming his name. The nurses turned and stared at me, which gave me a shock. For some reason, I had not expected them to see me. I shoved the closest one aside, nothing but boobs and butt between a head and drumstick legs, and leaned over Garrett’s face. He looked paler, greyer. My heart lunged for my throat, pushing a sob in front of it.
   
“Garrett Garrett Garrett Garrett Garrett,” I breathed, willing him to stop twitching, stop looking so grey, stop dying goddammit.
My cell phone rang again. I knew who it was, from the icy coldness of the phone to my touch, from the low insane buzzing that began in my head when I brought it to my ear, but I couldn’t not answer it.

 “Is he floating yet?”

“He won’t. Not for a long time. Not until he’s old and grey.”

“He’s grey right now, sure enough.”

“Fuck off, you stupid clown.”

A grating, dirty, bubbling chuckle reached my ear, as if a tar pit had found something mildly amusing. Then the line went dead. I threw my phone across the room and opened my left eye at the same time.

The room spun violently; I felt the phone come back like a boomerang and clip my left cheek so hard that my eye watered. I fell in the middle of an indoors tornado and curled up to just wait it out.

It stopped; I opened both eyes. Harsh white light drilled into my head and made it pound in time with my thudding heart. I smelled the soft, tangy smell of milk gone sour, which, after the sick death-smell of the hospital, was positively wonderful.

I sat up in front of the milk coolers in the grocery store. My cell phone rang.

“Mom?”

“I forgot to ask you to pick up dog food while you were out. You know what kind, right? The Alpo...”

“Where’s Ann?”

“Who?”

“Ann... my sister.”

“You mean my sister? I guess she’s still in Nashville. Why?”

“N-no reason. Bye.”

I sat there for a minute, my mind blank. I closed my right eye. Nothing happened.