About six years ago I said that “Sex in the City” was going to ruin the planet. And it was a joke, I too was laughing at my preposterous prediction. At that time I thought it was adorable every time I witnessed a girl exclaim bashedly unashamed “Oh my god that show is just like MY life!”
I’ve always appreciated the level of disconnect that those girls had to achieve in order to recite the phrase verbatim without the slightest hint of irony. It’s nothing short of tenacious to draw a line directly from Carrie Bradshaw, confidently single, successful, oft read columnist of the New York fashion world, TO any given 19 year old female who finds herself in the twilight of her career as her fourth semester of general studies draws to a close, placing all of her eggs in the boyfriend basket because he, presumably an engineering or business student, has completed his second year of study without having so much as one breakdown and is taking a considerably milder dose of antidepressant.
THEN we have to take into account the distance between Carrie and her sought after cohorts, whose sexual escapades would make Bill Clinton break a sweat AND the sex starved entourages of mismatched dresses, purses and over priced shoes, huddled over cell phones in booths towards the back of the bar while their “sure thing” - Mr. Future Graduate - is out on the dance floor scouting for potential reprieve to help him through the days when his aspiring fashionista bride is surrounded by little ones and too tired to “rock his world”. At which point she’ll begin cursing the fact that the only thing that kept her from a degree in communications and a future in fahion were the nights spent at his apartment the week before exams, when she convinced yourself that all she needed to succeed were designer shoes and a sassy go-get-em attitude.
today i walked down a mostly deserted hallway and noticed birthday cake sitting on the front desk of a classroom. i yelled "cake!", out loud, to no one in particular as none of the 2 maybe 3 people in the hallway had ever seen me before. this morning when i entered the library i found a coffee card on the floor, already filled with stamps, i gave a nod to the big guy upstairs and enjoyed free coffee. this is the third time this has happenened to me in two months. i'm starting to wonder what motives the cosmos would have for trying to keep me caffeinated. i'm not complaining. coffee helps me read and this semester has been one giant english course. everything i've studied is attempting to cross reference itself in my mind. i have no ability to compartmentalize. this is what i work on with my shrink. that, and my social anxiety. the social anxiety that clearly isn't present when i spot cake from a doorway. the anxiety that is physically intensified by coffee.
I always imagined as a child that god would spend his time watching us much like we would watch a television. That it was the drama and intracacy of human life, our behaviours and our interaction, that endeared him to us. These biblical instances of gods 'anger' - razing cities, flooding an entire civilization; It always seemed that god destroyed things that were redundant. "Sin", it seemed, was the sum of our easiest to resort to behaviours and perhaps the 'anger' of god was simply his boredom.
i wanted a sandwich. a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - jam not jelly. raspberry. but that wouldn't make me happy. in fact i needed a sandwich - or well, food. the cessation of my needs seemed to only make me quiet. i guess silence is a large part of being content. but content isn't happy. and i wasn't exactly screaming.
