Look what Haitch gave me for Valentine's Day!

For the observant, that streak on my sleeve is paint. Just to clarify.

Reading: John Miltion, Paradise Lost

Moving: walked1.5 miles

Listening: Eurythmics, Peace

8 February 2002: Grr

Last year when I went to this gynecologist, I did so because he was the only one with an appointment before I ran out of pills. It was an emergency, and I figured I could deal with a man as long as he didn't smoke, as did the man the year before that. That one's name was Terry, the deceptive little beast, and he was over 70, and a he, and he smoked, and I had never had a male gyn before, and I'd never so much as kissed a smoker*. Still gives me the shivers. So anyway, I went back to last year's last-minute doctor because he had mentioned a weight-loss program he ran and I was considering that, because I couldn't possibly eat less and exercise more. And I went even though he didn't run it anymore.

What the hell was I thinking? I wasn't, obviously. The knock on the door when you're sitting on the bench in a flappy gown mostly cracks me up, because when someone's going to put his hands where he was about to put his, a knock in case he might see me unclothed is kind of superfluous. Whatever. So I can deal without that. When he came in, I was reading Paradise Lost, because what else was I supposed to do lying there for almost half an hour waiting for him? He asked if I was taking a class or doing that for (sarcastically) pleasure, and I said I was reading it because it was important to my language. He then made some flip remark about how Milton, Chaucer, and Dante wrote solely to annoy college freshmen. Then he said, "Lay down."

"Lie down," I retorted. You make fun of my reading one of most important and influential works in my favorite language, you bet I'm going to correct your damn grammar.

So I can deal without the knock. But you know, that's for entering the room. To enter my womb, now there I want some warning. He said he'd get a smaller speculum, and I said that wasn't necessary, that if he'd just give me a moment to relax, I'd be okay. How does this man stay in business? Does he deal with an older clientele who feel, as my grandmother does, that they wouldn't want a woman touching them "down there"? Christ. And then the fucking Pap swab, that pinches. That's my cervix, you buffoon.

So anyway. One way or the other, I'm going off the pill this year, and I was thinking that since a tubal ligation doesn't require a pelvic, whatever, whoever. But no. No one that dismissive of my body and my reading choices and my language. "Lay down." Where did he go to school? Cretin.

Erg.

I called RPR walking home and made it much funnier in the telling than in the experiencing. She told me about her growing house and new nephew and I asked her what her favorite book is. A Prayer for Owen Meany and Harry Potter. She has good taste.

Laughing about it with RPR made it more bearable, but I was still glad to come home to my Valentine's Day present.

Yesterday when I got home from work, there was a big box on the front porch. Addressed to me, oo la. Inside it was a red gift box, almost as large, and inside that was a lot of tissue paper and yet another box, about the size of a flat tissue box. This time my unexpected present came with a note; it was from Haitch. The Tingler. We've been in love with this since we started going to Janelle. I'm considering having it grafted onto my head.

Blake, predictably, is afraid of it. But it's a big hit with the humans in the house.

Hey, looking for the Tingler entry I read that my mother had Prodigal Summer in the house. I wonder if she's read it. I wonder how it came to be in her house at all. I taped "Wit" to send to her. It's wrenchingly sad but so well acted and so moving that it's worth watching. I wonder if she'll agree.

* This is in fact not true but let's just sweep that sordid tale under the carpet where it belongs, shall we?

---

I was supposed to tell two stories today, The Shark That Wasn't and, um, another one. <looking> Oh, wow, how could I have forgotten. Yeah, that.

Okay, fun one first. A text search doesn't come up with "shark" in any pertinent context, and that really surprises me. I love this story.

In May 1994, RDC and I flew to Florida for RDC2's baptism, not that it was called that or involved water or Christianity. Whatever. Some sort of ritual to mark his arrival. I had just graduated (again) so it was a treat for me too. At the Del Ray beach one day, we were nearly the only people in the water. Floridians don't swim in May because, they say, it's too cold. Yeah. We were in the water, we weren't tan: we were obviously tourists. The shame. So we'd swam a ways out and were frolicking merrily, over our heads, maybe two hundred feet out or more. RDC faced me and the beach and I was looking out to sea when over his shoulder I saw a fin. More than a foot of fin, quite wide at the base.

I went white(r) and exhaled an "omigod" as I spun to swim for shore, and this is the best part, leaving RDC to his fate. I didn't say "shark" or "swim" anything; if I was thinking at all I must have decided that he'd realize I had a good reason to do what I did. He's a bright boy: he looked over his shoulder and saw even more of the fin, indicating an even bigger animal, and he started for shore. Not that I knew that at the time. I was swimming as I'd never swum before.

I really don't remember how close the fin was. Closer than it really was, I'm sure, but it was pretty close. I was swimming, because if I was going to die, or worse, be maimed, I was going to do so with dignity. I might already have known that Olympic swimmers can sprint at five miles per hour while a shark can cruise aimlessly at thirty. More irreverently, I was thinking of "Jaws":

• "Is it true that most shark attacks happen in three feet of water, about ten feet off shore?"
• "That's a twenty-footer." "Twenty-five."

Lisa the marine biologist.

RDC, meanwhile, spent four years of his childhood and summers afterward down here, and he knew a little more. He knew there are three reefs parallel to the Del Ray beach and when a shark in on the shore side, it's desperate for a meal. He knew that when a shark has surfaced, it's because it's decided on surface prey.

But we were swimming. I was expecting the disabling pressure and unspeakable pain of a bite at any moment.

I have never felt more profound relief than when my fingers scraped sand. I pinwheeled another couple of strokes before standing, and yes, looking behind me for RDC, then yelling at a couple of little kids playing in the wavelets. I ran up the beach to the lifeguard. RDC was by this time standing out of the water, coughing and heaving, his fight-or-flight having aggravated his asthma.

The lifeguard stood calmly watching me run up. "It was a ray," he said.

I was still panting. Ray. My mental ichthyology catalog didn't compute "ray" with "fucking big scary-ass finned predator." Plus, I was clearly a tourist.

He continued, deadpan, "It was a ray. That's a harmless bottom feeder."

Ray. Yes, that kite thing. No fin. No big teeth. It had been turning in the water, and what we had seen was the tip of its right wing.

RDC kicked himself, because by the time you see that much dorsal fin, tail fin is sticking up too. I should have known that too, even though I'd never seen a live shark in open water. New England Aquarium sharks that are fed so well that they live in the same giant tank as other fishies don't count.

It is sobering to know you're not alwys at the top of the food chain.

---

"Children of a Lesser God." Hmm. I'm really not in the mood. In short, I loved it but cannot bear it. A hearing man insists he loves a deaf woman but cannot accept her for who she is and tries to mold her in his image and to make her see how her own way and self are inferior. And he pushes and pushes until she breaks and screams--when she's never spoken a word in her life.

I saw it at UConn in the Student Union Ballroom with NCS, PLT, and SEB. At the end of it, I was so torn up that I ran out in tears without a word to anyone. This really upset NCS, because I should have taken the time to explain to him why I needed to run before I did. And I embarrassed him in front of everyone. Yeah. Like running serves anything like the same purpose if you do that, and like my actual friends didn't understand. So in his reaction, he demonstrated why I responded the way I did. There's more, but whatever.

Anyway, I heard a couple of years ago that he was dating or living with someone. Who is deaf.

Yep. That's a little too funny, en't it?