10.11.2005

I Know You Little Libertine

"Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell
Crash
I'm the last splash" == The Breeders, "Cannonball"

The other night, I went up to Six Six, our security guard, who is so named because he is six feet, six inches tall, and said, "People are such assholes to me."

He said, "Damn, girl, you come at them hard! Someone gets out of line and, BOOM!, you're like a cannonball."

Still, I glared into the windshield of the car at a little smudge of a boy, barely out of his teens. He smirked and nudged the car up another inch to try and hit me, too.

This went over poorly with me, as you can imagine. Jason later said he was just going to keep walking. But, he heard me start cursing and yelling, so he turned around thinking, "Uh-oh, I better get involved in this."

You can imagine it I'm sure.

Bitchy Filipina girl stands in city street, calling out young man to step out of his car and take it like a man. Much taller, white boyfriend tries to keep her from breaking a young man's nose. Of course, the light changed and the moment passed. The boy's girlfriend leaned out the window and pleaded, "No one said anything to you, we didn't do anything."

A couple that looked like they just left a Broadway show stood on the corner beaming about their fortune to witness the interaction. What a story for the folks back home.

As we headed for the subway, laughing, I told Jason about the comment from Six Six and he said, "You sound proud of that fact."



And, in a way, I am. Sure, a quick temper is not always an attractive quality in a person, man or woman. But, every time I ponder confrontations I have with people, I always come to the same conclusion. At least I stood up for myself. Afterwards, I always retreat back into the coolness of reason. But not without first releasing a little rage.




Jason just laughed and said, "You're such a guy sometimes."

It's something he has intoned to me before, but usually he is referring to my approach to relationships. I am the one who hates public displays of affection. I am the one who insisted that we have an apartment with two bedrooms so we don't always have to sleep together. I was the one who called him my "roommate" for almost a year before I gave in to the word "boyfriend." I was the one who whined to my friends that my partner expected me to have emotions and talk about them. Aloud. To each other. Shudder.

The role reversal is quite common as far as I can tell. We are the daughters of the women who first benefited from the feminist movement. We watched our mothers get fed up. They donned suits with shoulder pads. They bought us mace and Erica Jong novels and aerobicized with Jane Fonda. They voted for Mondale because of Ferraro. These were the women who bore the very first latchkey generation.

Their daughters are cannonballs.

"It is undeniable that regardless of their physical impact, early cannons, with their noise, smoke, and flames, had a terrifying psychological impact on horses or soldiers who had never encountered the weapons before." -- From Wikipedia

File under: Cannonball.