Month: September 2015

We Need to Talk About Jordan (March 6, 2012)

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Mean Jordan

Rumor has it that Tilda Swinton was shafted during the recently concluded 2011 motion picture awards season. Critics and fans heaped praise upon the ginger actress’ performance in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin, which featured Swinton in the role of Eva, mother of Kevin Katchadourian. The film centers around Eva’s struggle to come to terms with her grief and shame after her troubled son launches a killing spree that includes a massacre at his high school and the murder of his father and little sister. In a post-Columbine, media-saturated, trenchcoat mafia world, Eva is living every parent’s worst nightmare, plagued with the suspicion that she might have seen all of this coming.

I haven’t seem the film but it’s on my master movie bucket list. As an avid fan of quality cinema, not to mention my fellow redheads, the picture might have captured my notice anyway. But I am the more invested in discovering how Swinton’s character comes to terms with her sorrow as I experience the same sense of dread and disgust wrapped in motherly affection in feline microcosm.

Jordan, my beautiful all-black, nearly eight year-old cat was a compromise made by my ex-husband Eddie four years ago. Our beloved elder statesmen, Snuggles Inky Bluemel-Sarwate was on his last legs at nearly 16 years of age. Both Eddie and I worked full-time, his job involving copious travel and to boot, I was finishing a Master’s degree in English Literature. Snuggy was left alone for long stretches of time and was beginning to be plagued by a variety of health problems. I couldn’t stand the guilt and after much tearful begging, Eddie agreed to let me adopt him a playmate.

Jordan came to us through the friend of a cousin, a woman expecting a baby in small living quarters. Though I was immediately concerned with Jordan’s skittishness (he spent the first three days of our acquaintance living under the couch), I believe it’s more than coincidence that Snuggy held on for another couple years. He and Jordan fought more than anything, but as neither had front claws and Snuggy appeared to enjoy a late in life challenge to his alpha maleness, I wasn’t too concerned.

It was only after we put Snuggy down in December of 2009 that I began to notice that the miracle cat who gave my beloved life partner (Snuggy, not Eddie) a second wind might be a little, shall we say…sociopathic. I have a friend who’s a trained veterinary assistant. He used to cat sit for us when we went away and one time in particular, he shared with me that he believed Jordan had “problems.”

Stop me if any of these personality traits sound familiar: possessive and territorial (driven by threats to the ego rather than affection), an autistic-like aversion to warmth and bonding, violent tendencies and unpredictable behavior. In short, after I left Eddie and moved into a place of my own, my only companion was Dexter.

These symptoms worsened when Jordy and I were forced into a major downgrade of living space: from 1300 square feet in Eddie’s rental condo to about 600 in my studio apartment. I have bitten for no reason or had my leg attacked without provocation so many times, there are instances where I put on pants even when the weather is sultry. I have a confession: I am afraid of an overweight kitty with no front claws (praise Jesus).

Like many idiosyncratic happenstances, I took my reputation as the lonely cat lady who ironically couldn’t cuddle her pet as part of life. I had bigger traumas to deal with last year.

But this year I am building a new life, one where I am single, cancer-free and happily devoid of drama. I even have myself a nice new boyfriend, a man with not one, not two but THREE adorable, cuddly and loving cats. When I spend time over at Steve’s apartment each unsolicited kitty kiss, each night spent with a warm, furry body curled next to my hip (I’m not talking about Steve), and each excited greeting at the door is both a tremendous joy and a knife to the heart. Another’s domestic bliss has a way of making it starkly clear that we’re doing without.

Here’s another confession: sometimes I wish with all my heart that I could trade Jordan for another cat. He’s like the Sistine Chapel – beautiful to look at but impossible to touch. That often makes me sad.

To complete the comparison to the Tilda Swinton character in We Need to Talk About Kevin, I ponder the nature/nurture question. Is Jordan nasty because he was born that way or am I just a really lax and terrible pet owner? Where did I go wrong?

Mostly I just feel lucky that he’s housebound and doesn’t go to school. There is no father or little sister to off. My relationship with Jordan is all about damage control. I’ve given up trying to get through.

Influential Influenza (March 4, 2012)

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PreventDiseaseCarelessSpitting

 

Amongst all the talk of suddenly rising gas prices, the latest PR flameout from Rush Limbaugh and the ongoing farce otherwise known as the Republican Presidential primaries, there is a smaller, more personal issue garnering far less media attention – the last gasps (an appropriately selected noun) of the flu season.
Back in late 2009 I suffered an attack of the good old Swine Flu. Remember those heady times? I heard each case was somewhat individual but mine was marked by a sustained high fever that was positively impervious to medication or cool water, disordered thinking (more than usual anyway) and the kind of body pains and headaches formerly associated with medieval torture devices. I have never experienced anything like it and may I never again.

The flu that brought me to my knees late last week/early this week did not burn the brain but it did produce coughing fits violent enough to trigger vomiting – among other lovely features. It was also the first time since undergoing surgery last summer that I needed to rely on the kindness and goodwill of another for my survival. Traditionally, these are not circumstances under which I thrive. After a lifetime spent relying on little more than street smarts and the capacity for hard work, I do not take kindly to my body’s periodic rebellion. The notion of having to depend on someone other than myself tends to make me sweaty, depressed and uncomfortable. There are many family ecosystems in which humans cooperate for the benefit of the species – I just wasn’t born into them. I accepted that and adapted. It’s what we’re supposed to do right?

Another situation I typically find untenable is one in which another pays the price for my own misfortune. This also occurred this week when I passed the debilitating late season flu onto my new boyfriend, a lovely man who nursed me for three days without complaint or regard for his own immune system. How could I explain my crabbiness and withdrawal from this caring person? I was frustrated and humiliated by my own weakness, then ashamed of my inability to protect him from suffering the same fate. How do you tell someone rational that you are angry at yourself for indulging in his well-intentioned TLC? That you are frustrated by your own humanity, which you believed you were above. Why is that that I am simultaneously at my most humble, yet stubbornly arrogant when under the weather?

I believe almost any situation contains a learning experience, probably the only paradigm which has kept my mind from snapping at the absurd volume of interpersonal failure experienced. What I’m trying to learn here is that the sharing of burdens, of seamlessly taking your turn as the caregiver and caregivee is the way a relationship dynamic is supposed to work. It’s not a recourse to tallying debts and favors. That’s the world I am used to. “Becky, you owe me a squelching of your personhood/the perpetuation of a lie/all the energy you have, because remember when I did X for you?”

There’s no scoreboard in my new relationship and I do not need to rebel against affectionate cooperation. There are no accounts to settle once I’m back on my feet. Part one is identifying the knee-jerk dysfunction I brought to the table this week. Part two is figuring out how to keep the flu, and my partner’s compassionate response to it, from triggering an pointless identity crisis.

Post-Deflategate: What Tom Brady and the NFL Can Learn From ’90s Major League Baseball

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Tom-Brady deflategate

The new season of the National Football League begins this Thursday night. But as dedicated fans complete their fantasy drafts and excitement before the first official kickoff builds, we must admit this hasn’t been the typical NFL break. Instead, spring and summer 2015 have been the seasons of “Deflategate,” or what the National Review characterizes as “The Brady Botch.”

We all know the backstory, with a few definite, verifiable facts. During the January 18, 2015 AFC Championship contest between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, the Pats used underinflated game balls that resulted in an easier grip for superstar quarterback Tom Brady. Whether those balls were deliberately deflated to gain an illegal advantage for the Patriots is a question likely to be debated until long after Brady makes his way to the Hall of Fame.

What is certain is that other teams, including the Baltimore Ravens, lodged similar allegations against New England during the 2014 season. It is also not the first time that the Patriots, Brady and head coach Bill Belichick have been accused of football malfeasance. The website YourTeamCheats.com boasts an impressive catalog of alleged New England skullduggery, including the 2007 “Spygate” incident, which led to a $500,000 fine for Belichick and cost the team its first-round selection in the 2008 NFL Draft.

It is also a fact that Tom Brady destroyed a cell phone associated with the NFL’s “Deflategate” investigation. He is under no legal obligation to explain why, and perhaps it’s in Brady’s long-term best interest never to utter another word about it. So I’m sure remaining skeptics trying to hold onto respect for the quarterback legend could have done without his early September Facebook post, written shortly after U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman overturned Brady’s four-game suspension:

“While I am pleased to be eligible to play, I am sorry our league had to endure this. I don’t think it has been good for our sport – to a large degree, we have all lost…I am also sorry to anyone whose feelings I may have hurt as I have tried to work to resolve this situation.”

It’s the “hurt feelings” language that’s really galling. The carefully chosen, dismissive rhetoric from a person who fails to comprehend the situation as anything more than a crabby personal inconvenience. Brady might as well have ended his post with the hashtag #SorryNotSorry. It has been abundantly clear throughout the episode that the only victim Brady really sees is himself, his rich, handsome, model wife having, rules-are-for-regular people self.

And in a way, it’s easy to comprehend Brady’s attitude. Shortly after the January controversy exploded, Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice had himself a good laugh on national television, discussing his own experience with breaking the rules. NBC Sports writer Mike Florioquoted Rice as saying on ESPN, “I know this might be a little illegal, guys, but you put a little spray, a little stickum on [gloves], to make sure that texture is a little sticky.” The football legend offered this as an alternative to underinflated balls, saving Tom Brady future hassles with embarrassing rule enforcement.

This should have been a scandal. The NFL banned stickum in 1981 – before Rice was drafted. Instead as Florio observes, “At a time when many were expecting Rice to claim that his words were taken out of context or that he was joking, [he] has taken to Twitter to admit that he did it, and that it was more than ‘a little illegal.’”

And there you have it. Integrity and regulation, the ease of flouting these standards, has long been a breezy joke amongst the NFL, its leadership and players. I’m not even going to touch Commissioner Roger Goodell and his “command” of the league throughout “Deflategate” and indeed any other crisis over the course of his nine-year tenure. There’s just not space enough in this particular column. He’s excessive when restraint is warranted, and criminally unreactive when strength is needed (one name: Ray Rice). I’m a woman. The league has a misogyny problem it tries to solve with pink jerseys in October. Concussions. I could go on.

But here’s the thing. I am a real fan. I’m one of those eager maniacs obsessing over the prospects of my fantasy team, looking for new spots to watch games with my boyfriend and wondering if Peyton Manning will get his groove back this season. I want more from the sport I love than this grotesque level of human cynicism.

The NFL would be wise to remember the hard learned lessons of Major League Baseball. After the 1994-95 league strike, and the tremendous fallout from a performance enhancement scandal that left dozens of high-profile stars with tattered careers and legacies, baseball officially surrendered its long run as America’s favorite pastime…to football.

I live in Chicago and hockey season starts next month. I’m just sayin’.

Kick Me Baby (February 21, 2012)

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“Kickboxing. Sport of the future.”
– Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything (1989)

Lloyd Dobler, John Cusack’s iconic character from the classic film of the 1980s was the first good guy on whom I had a crush. Otherwise, it’s always been bad boys for me. It’s telling that one of the few times I became smitten with a sensitive, caring soul, he also happened to be a fictional character.

In any case, Lloyd’s passion for the sport of kickboxing was the beginning of my familiarity with the activity. Regular boxing always seemed challenging enough but this new incarnation involved a whole mess of kicks along with the requisite punches. As I spent all of my prime years (15-25) on the couch eating, gaining weight and losing muscle tone, I had the urge to do little more than bandage Lloyd after that mean Diane Court surprised him at the gym, resulting in a nice shot to the schnoz.

In my mid-20s, as I realized that I had trouble walking more than one flight of stairs and that my body bore a passing resemblance to the obese, chain smoking mother I abhorred, I finally got off my ass. Eight years and 60 pounds later, I have become more than one who patronizes the gym out of necessity. I found that I actually love to sweat, to challenge myself, to raise the adrenaline. I now get off on strength and agility, the ability to hang with the toughest, the way I once found solace in a Kit Kat binge.

One thing that has always made me uncomfortable however, is violence. Can’t stand to see it. Can bear even less to be the perpetrator of it. I am the woman who watches episodes of Grey’s Anatomy through her fingers. So though I always admired the badassery of a Laila Ali or a Cara Castronuova (a former trainer on The Biggest Loser), I never figured I’d have the stones to take up a sport that celebrates physical combat.

My usual Tuesday workout had long been a 20-mile round trip bike ride to downtown Chicago, bookending a Russian kettlebell session with my friend and trainer Rob. Well about six weeks ago, Rob had to cancel our usual meeting and I decided on a whim to take a shorter ride to the Lincoln Park gym I patronize. I was finally going to give kickboxing class a whirl. I asked around and learned it was all bag, no hand to hand engagement.

The meek, it turns out, shall inherit kickboxing. As long as I don’t have to spar with an actual human, I. Am. An. Animal. I have split boxing gloves in my enthusiasm for whaling on the bag. I have been interrupted by the instructor with inquiries into the condition of my wrists and knuckles. At first I was confused and assumed I was simply using the wrong form. But as it turns out, Reagan wanted to know if I was ok because I was “killing” the heavy black sack in front of me. I don’t need Dr. Freud to tell me I have a lot of aggression to release. But finally, at long last, I have a safe outlet. I don’t have to fear hitting as hard as I can.

I suppose in a way, much like Lloyd Dobler, the discovery of kickboxing has provided a sense of power and control in a world where I often feel weak and ineffectual. Lloyd was the product of a disordered upbringing, graduating high school while living with his single mother of a sister. As the movie opens, he is hopelessly in love with a girl who seems unaware of his existence, staring at the probability of a lackluster future. I am also the product of a disordered upbringing and like the character, demanding physical exercise, striking out at a nameless target seems a lot more spirited and hopeful than sitting around waiting for something to happen.

I never realized in my youth, as I sat watching Say Anything ad nauseam with my younger sister, trading memorable quotes at lightening speed, that kickboxing was the sport of my future.

Unexpected Valentine (February 13, 2012)

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At 33.5 years of age, I have lived long enough to know that both tragedy and spiritual uplift often come from the most unlikely places. One of the supremely terrible and wonderful features of human life is that we can plan all we want, but never quite know what to expect. But awareness of this fact doesn’t always lead to preparedness, a ready script that one can summon in response to these little surprises.

Thus I was left on the street this evening, wordlessly clutching a three-foot tall white teddy bear named Shawn.

As part of my normal routine, I switched from one commuter train to the next, en route to the gym after a long day spent at the office. Upon alighting from the second train, a walk of roughly 6 blocks stood between me and the fitness center I patronize. Typically, I traverse the distance on autopilot, thinking over the day, what needs to be done when I get home, dread of the coming sweat session – the usual.

On this night, roughly halfway through my walk, I was interrupted from a reverie by the honk of a car horn. I looked to my left and it seemed that a rather well-dressed man driving a Mercedes-Benz was trying to grab my attention. Part of city living means coping with unwanted attention from various miscreants, but if Mr. Mercedes was a lunatic or a deadbeat, I had to admire the presentation.

I waved him off naturally, but he persisted. With an angry look on his face, he finally spoke: “Look I know this is weird, but can you just walk over here for a second?”

With that the gentleman thrust the aforementioned giant teddy bear from his driver side window, packaged adorably with a stand, fake roses and a balloon. “Here. Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said rather unenthusiastically.

By now I was running down a mental list of former friends and lovers. Had my memory lapsed completely? No other explanation made the scene logical. But failing to locate even a spark of recognition, I finally summoned the brain power to utter a single word, “Why?”

He sighed deeply before replying, “Because. You are a lot prettier and probably a lot nicer than the woman I just broke up with.”

I wasn’t ready for that at all. “But why me? Don’t you want to give this to your mother, sister or at least a female friend?” [Presumably one that you have known for longer than 15 seconds?]

The man answered, “I really just want it out of my sight.”

Why is that against every inclination I believed I had (I am SO not the teddy bear type), I suddenly wanted this stuffed animal more than anything? This bear represented something to the man – a loss, a broken promise, frustrated hopes. I will never really know the full story but all at once, I saw myself walking away from so many unsatisfying entanglements with nothing more than a box of tsotchkes. Here was someone in pain that I understood, literally asking me to lighten his load by taking a distressing Valentine’s Day gift home. It seemed the least I could do.

By way of acceptance, I asked “May I at least have your name? So I know what to call the bear?”

“Shawn,” was all he said. We made brief eye contact, and I like to believe, exchanged knowing looks. Yes, Shawn, this too shall pass. I was you last year.

Then Shawn peeled off into the night, into a world I never believed existed – where handsome men with nice cars and giant gifts still go home alone.

And I continued my walk to the gym, laden with a symbol of someone’s disappointment. In the same moment that he gifted me the largest stuffed animal I will ever own, (and I WILL keep it because no one’s pain belongs in a landfill), I hope I provided a service in return.