Is evil something you are? Or something you do?

So I reread American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis' most challenging work. My initial experience with the novel was a disaster. Nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared me for the rhythm of his writing, oscillating from sublime to banal to horrific (although in his defense, most of the violence is implied rather than described). I was also terrified by the almost incomprehensible misogyny -- real misogyny, not the feminist complaint -- of Ellis' protagonist, 26 year old uberyuppie Patrick Bateman, who tortures and murders so many women in the novel that I eventually lost count. As the pace of his killing increases, I freaked out and skipped ahead to the final chapter, seeking some sort of neat denouement, only to be denied even that. From the first line of the book -- "ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE" -- to the last -- "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT" -- Ellis jails you in a 399 page nightmare. There is no waking up.

A despicable read, I decided. And lost all respect for his work.

That was years ago, when I was playing rugby and most of my friends were campus feminists and I was drifting my way to a degree in women's history. I remember being deeply impressed by Naomi Wolf's indictment of the novel -- porn for rapists and murderers, basically -- and feeling smug in my borrowed dismissiveness. My lemming phase, I guess.

Now the first thing that strikes me is the title -- American Psycho. Ellis is reclaiming the psycho as a defining American archetype, inverting the cult of our beloved uniqueness, and simultaneously implying this dystopia could twist any citizen into a psycho. The book cover -- a stock yuppie headshot -- is a disingenuous copout. It should've been shiny foil reflecting you back to yourself.

Turn the pages and you plunge into a horrific satire propelled by Ellis' bottomless disgust with the social troposphere and capitalism's "greed is good" mantra. Life is a superficial pastiche of new restaurants and trendy clubs, hyphenated firms, pop music, amorality, celebrities, semen. Women are first names, hair color, big tits or not. Men are last names and little else. Clothing is fetishized until people are nothing but what they wear -- "four-button double-breasted linen suit by Redaelli, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Ascot Chang, a patterned silk tie by Eugenio Venanzi, loafers by Brooks Brothers..." Conversations do not occur. Everybody just talks past everybody else.

In this context Bateman is a work of creative genius, the perfect combination of hyperbole, plot device and narrative perspective. Ellis gives no biography, explaining him only as the mundane product of extraordinary privilege -- trust funds, prep schools and the Ivy League, sinecures at elite firms on Wall Street. In having everything -- and handed to him, no less -- you can only infer that he has nothing, no moral center, no sense of self, no capability to feel. Killing is his only means of proving to himself that he's actually alive, but you have to infer that too. He only observes, never explicates.

The intersection of Bateman and his rarified cosmos is a terrible place, but that's the whole point. Your horror deepens as you realize they're really one and the same evil, personalized in the character of Bateman, depersonalized in the sociocultural tableau. Superimposition becomes conflation. Bateman notes that his conscience and pity and hopes have disappeared ("probably at Harvard" Ellis adds gleefully) as if he'd become a personification of Reaganomic markets. He tries to cook and eat a girl and fails, because he's never prepared a meal in his life before. He kills indiscriminately and nobody notices, confesses his crimes and nobody cares. When you finally reach the end of the novel, you know how to answer the moral crux -- "Is evil something you are? Or something you do?" -- and you hear Bateman/America speaking:

"Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in."

I feel like leaving northern Minnesota all over again

Leave it to Kev to link something as inadvertently comedic as this article about Minnesota marriage demographics.

A sampling of the tourism-brochure testimonials about northern Minnesota, including my hometown of Koochiching County, with commentary by me (because I just couldn't resist):

"I suppose the lack of economic stability up here, with feast and famine, would be a factor in putting a lot of stress in a relationship."

To translate, feast means hitting the jackpot at the tribal casino. Famine is everything else.

"Too much togetherness over a long cold -- not just winter -- but a cold spring. That seems to be an issue."

What a crock. Everybody knows it's not the cold springs that ruin a relationship, it's the cold summers.

"There's not a lot to do. We're so isolated. Our winters are so long."

Reasons 1, 2 and 3 why you should move to northern Minnesota.

"Nights get real long and cold and people say there's not a lot to do, and they drink."

Don't ask me why it's so hard to flip on the TV. It just is.

"a lot of times hard work is associated with drinking."

Well, duh. Drinking is hard work!

"The computer -- I have seen any number of people lately where he has gotten into porno and that has broken up the relationship. Up here, in our neck of the woods, even poor people have computers."

In small towns where everybody knows everybody else, internet porn will always be more popular than strip clubs. Especially if you can't afford a lap dance.

"We have a lot of the males in the northeast part of Minnesota who are perhaps a lot more traditional in how they view things."

Not just more traditional, people. A lot more traditional.

And I have relatives who wonder why I ever left...

Skirting the chasm called me

I had an interesting conversation with Nat this morning. She was in the kitchen, babysitting toast in the broiler since our toaster died. I was in the bathroom fixing my unfixable hair.

"Guess how many hours I worked yesterday?" I heard her ask.

"Too many?"

"20."

I nodded at the girl in the mirror. "Too many."

"Yeah. Like, the whole week."

"I know. But you told me the audit is almost -- "

"They did? Really? Boy or girl?"

That's when I realized she was actually on the phone to somebody else. Suddenly my words were meaningless, out the morning's pores and gone, and I felt a pang of betrayal.

On good days I can laugh at my abandonment issues. This isn't a good day. Too much happening too fast. The words of a presumed friend turn edgewise and slash me like razors. Tensions with my adoptive family boil over. I'll never find who made me. Rejection already looms in the first kiss with a boy.

I called in sick to waitress work. But that's the only concession I'm making.

Sexless and the Cities

Tonight my life was an episode of Sex and the City. Only without the sex.

It never used to be this way. Trisha and Erica are usually diaphragm-deep in sex. And I even dragged Natasha along. You'd think a Southern belle with flashing eyes and fake funbags would be sloughing boys like dermis.

We all have our excuses. Bri-dog is away on business, leaving Trish with a rock on her finger to keep her company. Erica is divorcing. Nat is immolating herself on the pyre of Corporate America. Me, I blame Camp Snoopy.

After we talked Erica's one night stand to death, the conversation turned to masturbation. The safest sex. One of us (I won't say who) just bought a new vibrator and adores it, so we chatted about battery-operated love. I even told my vibe-in-the-freezer story to Nat, who'd never heard it before. She laughed. Knowingly, maybe.

Three awesome chicks who have two marriages and four engagements between them, and their most enduring relationships are with sex toys. Mine too, if you don't count the dysfunctional shit with Mark.

I could've spared myself a lot of heartbreak and never did.

Never stop

My insomnia was dining on the small hours of the morning. I got the leftovers. Stark flashes of lightning, then thundercracks. The streetlight occluded by tamarack boughs. A head like a torrent.

I was predictably industrious with the time. I finished rereading American Psycho, unpacked some of Nat's boxes for her, reorganized the spice rack, snarled at the mosquitos sheltering on the screens.

I also wrote my former project manager an email. The process was excruciating. I had to work and rework and re-rework my nervous words into a confident invite to the State Fair this weekend. Then I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and clicked the send button.

I finally slept like a dead girl.

Checking my email this morning, I discovered he'd replied during insomnia of his own. The timestamp gave me a chill, as if our lives were already aligning into resonance. But that was nothing compared to reading that yeah, he wanted to see me again. Today.

My heart stopped, then started off again, faster. Then I felt nauseous. Today? But I got no beauty sleep at all! I'd need to give myself a facial just to freshen up, and wash an outfit from laundry stacked in piles so high that Nat is naming them after mountains, and and and...

I'm never at my best unless I'm stressed. Diamonds aren't formed without pressure. Neither are fossils, I suppose.

His email mentioned a tee time and the need for a contingency plan, which I was supposed to suggest. It was a gloomy day with low scowling clouds that kept leaking rain, so I assumed we wouldn't be golfing at his club again. I went to shower and think about it.

Another email was waiting for me when I returned to the computer. How about if we met halfway at the Mall of America? I blinked in dismay. I was going to suggest something more haut monde, like a stroll through the Walker and a late lunch at Origami, where I could indulge my sushi addiction and show off my chopsticks flair. Did he extrapolate from my State Fair invite and figure me for the childishly shallow type or something?

Much worrying ensued.

We rendevouzed in front of Snoopy's water bowl at Camp Snoopy. Oooh the romance. But he looked adorable in a black Jack Daniel's baseball cap and madras shirt and baggy chinos, stubble shadowing his jawline and mouth. I'm not sure how adorable I looked, but I wore lowrider jeans and a tank top with tropical flowers and strappy wedge sandals.

I never doubted that we'd have fun, but I worried that an experience worthy of bragging about to his guy pals might be difficult to achieve. In fact, it turned out to be the best date of my life, and hopefully his too. We tore through Camp Snoopy like kids, radiant and wild. We built a Lego version of the company's org chart in arabesque 3D. We flirted amidst the racks and display cases of Victoria's Secret while I shopped for unmentionables. And we ate a very silly lunch at Hooter's, since neither of us had ever been there before.

By the time he walked me to my Bug, my voice was hoarse from laughing so much. I'd also become adept at invading his personal space. Him, not so much. Making me chase to see if I would. But suddenly he was close behind, spinning me around and pulling me into his embrace, a gesture so smooth it almost knocked the wind out of me. His lips were soft and warm and gentle, then not so gentle, then I felt like I was setting off for a place I'd only heard about, my heart going madly, and I wanted it to never stop.

9.25 ANUs

Annoyance should be measured in Anna Nicole units. By that metric, I just had a 9.25 ANUs conversation with my mom. Imagine nine and a quarter Anna Nicoles grating on your last nerve. Or better yet, don't.

I know a girl who has two families, and tonight she isn't particularly fond of either of them.

I plot

I will be bronzed flotsam on the Yucatan coast, sipping pulpy grapefruit juice from a glass bottle, the wind flirting with my hair, strolling deserted dusty streets to an office where plaster cracks adorn the walls, coming home to an empty house that creaks in the shimmering heat, playing reggae but only quietly, a humble kitchen where I make tomato sandwiches, open windows shaded by palms, the bed draped with mosquito netting, haunting the ramshackle pueblo hovering on the white lip of the Gulf, my accent a dull memory, a small purse to hold my hopes.

News from the blogosphere

Hey everybody, it's Kev's birthday today! Stop by and give back some love, you hear? He already gave us the greatest gift of all -- losing that mullet.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Tim dispensed with the default Radio template. And changed his handle to mixed case, as in McGyver5. What next, for the love of god? Custom graphics?!?

His brother Matt was also sucked into the blogging vortex. I wanted to challenge him to a game of pickup hoops -- until I learned that he's a foot taller than me. Maybe we can play horse instead.

Any remaining non-bloggers in the McGuire family, please report for duty!

Rexxxie, nee Rex followed a link and discovered he had the Big Media job of his dreams. Should we expect his blogging to become rife with advertorial? Stay tuned...

I was introduced to Arrancia by Jim. She's the other bartender in Salt Lake City (isn't that one too many?) and a brassy gal, to pay her a Natasha compliment. And I see her comments are working, yaayyy!

If I could steal eyeballs, I would

Melancholy librettos drift on the night breeze. Knowing Spanish may be the next best thing to knowing Italian, but I can't catch enough words to identify the opera. Especially not when Nat is watching The Anna Nicole Show. Hell will be listening to Anna Nicole's inane nasally whining in surround sound. Forever. I'd ask Nat to turn it down, but she's still mad at me for the toad trick.

There's a prolix post to be written about the aural clash of high and low cultures in our neighborhood, but after a double shift at waitress work my brain is about as sharp as a baguette. Besides, I actually watched a movie tonight.

I was the last girl in America to see Amelie. But you know me. I hate to waste precious time on cinema -- or novels, or even music -- that aren't works of art. So I wait for the verdict of history.

Amelie is a frothy delight, poignant and whimsical and happy-ended. I found myself identifying with the titular character, an introspective pixie who's loathe to risk her heart. We're both waitresses, after all. But her love interest didn't work for me. If only he worshipped classic bass plugs or tightly-coded device drivers, instead of collecting discarded photo booth picture strips.

I was also struck by the seeming resemblance between Paris and Mexico City. Chapultepec could've been a set for the movie. And god do I miss the metro.

Anna Nicole was banished on the hour, but so was the opera. The night breeze is an orchestra of crickets now. It's a caress on my bare skin. If I close my eyes...

I wish I was too poor to afford pain receptors

Last night was an unexpected sneaky chaos of new acquaintances, laughing, fashion snarkiness, and climbing in and out of the backseat of a minivan that had no business in Uptown. I was too tired for fun -- for anything except sleeping, really -- but Trish can be very insistent when she needs to party. Unfortunately the rock on her finger scared off all the cute boys, but I suppose that's the whole idea.

I woke up with fireworks in my head. Brunch with Erica will be an ordeal. So was getting out of bed, but I survived that.

This morning was breezy and sun-splashed and relaxing, the kind of morning I wish I could bottle and save for February. Nat and I weeded the jungle on the patio and discovered flower pots underneath. And decided that global warming may be a product of her home entertainment system. Lights in the neighborhood dim when she plays a DVD on the outsized TV and turns on surround sound. And she just added a Tivo.

I also found a toad on the side of the condo. He seemed hopelessly lost in the hostile landscaping of multicolored rock and shaved lawns. I swooped with my palms open and caught it gently and cupped it in my hands, the motions a muscle memory from my years growing up at the resort. Then I brought it over to show Nat. She screamed when I opened my hands a little and it jumped out at her. I'm still not tired of that trick.

EVOL-ution

I'm listening to Sonic Youth's EVOL and loving every discordant risky moment of it. And to think I mostly knew them as trip hop samples and remixes I'd heard in the clubs of LA and Tijuana. What an amazing band. But the further back I follow their timeline, the more I wonder -- did they evolve, or just devolve? Because none of their newer stuff grips me the way EVOL does.

I wonder the same thing about my blog, or more generally my personal website. I've always tried to create quality content, a subjective term that revolves around my needs and experiences at any given moment. You have to understand -- these posts and stories and poems are my only opportunity to be creative, to make some art of my life. And I desperately want to feel like there's some art to my life.

But I'm not delusional, either. All self-expression is a search for affirmation, for the resonance of words and souls. The cosmos is a little smaller and a little warmer when there's an unexpected email waiting in your inbox, or comments from your friends. I can tell myself I'm making art, and every once in a while you might agree, but mostly I'm seeking connection. It can be lonely to be me.

It can be lonely to be me.

And I just typed that line a third time, which makes it...a trope? But I deleted that last third, so call it mere personality blog angst instead.

I'm feeling performance pressure for the first time in my blogging career. Some wickedly cool ex-coworkers are donating web hosting and arranging for me to get an unused domain. Soon I'll be coming at you in the internet equivalent of Technicolor again. No banner ads, no bandwidth metering, no slow-ass loading. All because they think I'm worth reading without distractions. Yikes.

I don't have time to mess around with custom commenting scripts, so I finally tried out Haloscan's free commenting system (thanks Erik!). Zippy and clean so far, although that may change as more Enetation refugees flood in.

And omigod, you'll laugh out loud when you see the domain I'm getting...

Fore!

I guess it's finally safe to admit I have a crush on my project manager -- oops, former project manager. It's hard to think in past tense, especially when my inbox fills up with forwards from the same old aliases. If I blinder my gaze to this monitor, it's like I never left.

I probably crushed on him from the very beginning. He's got something for every mooning girl. Uberboss by profession, LL Bean model by wardrobe, politician by temperament. Cute in a mass-produced Gen X action figure kind of way. But mostly, holding together his team and making project milestones despite kilotons of stress. After confidence, I've always thought grace under pressure is the sexiest trait.

He gave me special attention from the very beginning, starting with the decision to pick up my contract. Sure, he needed a DBA, and sure, I knew the company and wasn't afraid of its dire straits. But I always felt like there was more to it, like I connected with him somehow. I would catch him looking at me intently...but he seemed to be intent about everything, so maybe it didn't mean anything.

I floated around in a happy little daze sustained by his attentions -- chatty emails, a compliment during a team meeting, the occasional offsite lunch alone with him. He never made any moves on me, but our working relationship seethed with romantic tension, or so I imagined.

The fantasy fell apart when I blabbed about it to my podmate during an all-nighter. We were taking a foosball break on the abandoned third floor, a pool of fluorescent light in the darkness. He jumped back from the table like I'd poked him with a cattle prod. "Dude, time out!" he exclaimed, making his tattooed hands into a T. "You know he's got a girlfriend, right?"

My face felt oddly stiff. "It's just a crush," I managed to say. The words died in the stagnant air over the foosball table.

Weeks later I was summoned to his office for an update on the status of my contract. I let my gaze wander around the depressingly impersonal space. His girlfriend wasn't smiling at him from a frame on the desk or the bookshelves. The only picture was a goofy shot, him and some golfing buddies hamming for the camera while standing waist-deep in a water trap.

He noticed me noticing the picture. "You golf?"

"Not really."

"You'd like it." Again I thought I caught a hint of something in his voice, as if he was about to invite me golfing sometime, but he didn't -- until yesterday, the annual guest tournament at his country club.

I hung up the phone in a panic. Omigod, what would I wear? I tore through my closet, finding plenty of mall and club outfits, but nothing that belonged on the links of a private country club. Natasha finally tired of my hysterics and made me call Trisha. "I have the perfect outfit for you! It'll make you look like Rene Russo in Tin Cup," Trish promised. Except I barely know who Rene Russo is and I've never seen Tin Cup. Oh well.

That left me needing a set of clubs (renting a bag at his club would've been so gauche!). Nat has clubs, but in addition to the bigger bustline she's also got more altitude on me, so they were too long. Instead I called Erica, a certifiable golfing freak who I can look in the eye, and arranged to borrow hers. Turns out we're also the same shoe size, so I could even borrow her super-cool Nike golf shoes.

Outfit, check. Clubs, check. Super-cool Nike golf shoes, check. Breezy self-confidence and playful sensuality, um...

His country club is located on the west side of the Twin Cities in a suburb that's halfway to South Dakota. The Mapquest directions were two pages long. I left about a year early, never realizing that might not be enough. My fast progress on I-494 lulled me into a false sense of confidence...until the Bloomington Strip, a parking lot stretching to the horizon. A long dragging eternity later, I finally reached the reprieve of the Highway 5 exit. Thank god! I finished descending the exit ramp and floored it -- NOT. Even more traffic, so bad that stoplights were overwhelmed and state troopers were directing traffic manually. I noticed tour buses with "U.S. Open" on their marquees. Duh, the PGA Championship was happening at nearby Hazeltine. I should've left two years early.

Eventually I reached the country club, where a broad curving turn-off carried me past a deceptively modest clubhouse and into a big parking lot crowded with midlife crisis cars and luxury SUVs. I'd barely gotten out of the car before an eager high school kid bounded up. "Ms. Johnson?" he panted. "I'll get your bag and show you in!" I glanced around the parking lot suspiciously. Nobody else seemed to be getting this kind of treatment.

I followed the kid around the side of the clubhouse building to a staging area where golf bags and carts and members intersect. He was emerging from the pro shop and broke into a face-splitting smile. "You made it," he said, slipping the kid a twenty. Apparently he'd told him to wait in front of the clubhouse and watch for my black Bug.

The other half of our foursome was comprised of Larry the director of club membership, a jovial scrawny guy whose most notable feature was a salt-and-pepper pencil mustache, and his buddy John, a shambling overweight wreck of a man who buys and sells companies like collectibles on Ebay.

We started on the 14th hole, a long par four that threaded through majestic oaks and tall rough and sand traps as wide as Pacific beaches. It was a beautiful vista from the elevated tee. And the round was all downhill from there, even though I managed to make a par for the first time ever (go me!). I also hit an incredible flop wedge right over a towering oak that must've been five stories tall and dropped it within inches of the pin, my best shot of the day. But my final score still ballooned past 100.

Afterward there was a late lunch in the clubhouse, an airy space with glass walls on two sides and comfortably expensive decor and berber carpeting in a cool mosaic pattern. An island bar divided the room into smoking and non-smoking sections. Most people had chosen to sit in the smoking section, which was already becoming hazy with bluish curls of cigar smoke. I noticed I was one of only two, maybe three women who were guests. The other girls were waitresses. Everybody except the bartenders and waitstaff was way older than us.

Lunch was a vegetarian's nightmare -- meat plate appetizers of exquisite cold cuts, stunningly thick pork chops, honey-baked ham. We drank beer and laughed and listened to other members and their guests tell un-PC jokes about Jews and blondes and illegal immigrants. Everybody at the table shifted uncomfortably when I talked about living next to the border fence in Tijuana, and how only the brave and ambitious try an illegal crossing to pursue their dreams in America, and why we need to make life easier for the extended families that straddle the border. Then they told jokes about blacks instead.

The sun was stretching our shadows into loose-limbed aliens when he walked me back to my Bug, Erica's bag slung over his shoulder. He finally asked the question I'd hopefully imagined for so long. "You want to do something later tonight? Or maybe tomorrow night?"

But I didn't give him the answer I always envisioned. Instead I said, "You have a girlfriend, hey?"

"We're taking some time off from each other."

"What does that mean?"

He blanched with anguish, the kind I knew with Mark. The kind I knew from the inside out. "Hell if I know."

I stalled by saying I had to work all weekend, which was mostly true. He seemed disappointed and relieved at the same time. We made vague promises to do something next weekend, then said a long Minnesota goodbye that kept devolving into shoptalk about the job market ("tighter than an ass fuck" he called it).

It was the first time I'd glimpsed him as an ordinary person, rather than some omniscient uberboss. The first time he'd let me. I was no longer his contractor, another resource to be managed. He could finally be himself with me, and his honesty -- about impending unemployment, and struggling to pay the mortgage (and country club membership), and the uncertain state of his relationship -- was painfully touching. I wanted to kiss him very badly. Instead we hugged.

I wasted the entire drive home debating whether it was smart to put him off or not. Maybe that's my best chance with him, to enter his life when he needs a sympathetic girl who can give him the time and attention he deserves. So why does it feel like I'd be exploiting his vulnerability and his girlfriend's inattention? Or maybe any involvement with him is a recipe for emotional harm, and I need to let him work through his issues the way I've been working through mine.

You could talk yourself out of anything, my therapist would say. If I could still afford my therapist.

The sky was half-lit when I stopped at Erica's place to drop off her clubs this morning. A strange car was parked in the driveway. Flaming red Audi with a vanity plate. She answered the door in her silk robe, glowing the way you glow after a night avec sex, sans sleep. It's been a long time since I saw that look in the mirror, but I still remember it. Enviously.

"Damn, girl. You're not even divorced yet!" I teased, handing over the bag.

She tried to feign embarrassment and gave up, beaming instead. "Buy me coffee later and I'll tell you all about it," she giggled.

I wonder why I always want to live according to beginnings and endings, when life is just a messy process of processes, some never really beginning, most never really ending.