The three kinds of lies and a true confession

Q: To what do you attribute your propensity for lying, JF?

A: I attribute my propensity for lying to my 14 years of Catholic schooling, beginning with the Baltimore Catechism, then the lives of the saints, Old and New Testaments and sacramentology; and culminating with patristics and advanced theology.

Q: What is the Baltimore Catechism?

A: The Baltimore Catechism was the principal text by which Catholic children learned religion. It was structured as a  series of increasingly complex Questions and Answers, the first of which was: Q: “Who Made Us?” [A: “God made us”].

Q: Why do you blame the Catholic church for your lying problem, JF?

A: Because of the sacrament of Confession.

We started making weekly confessions to the priest in the box at age 7, an age at which no one commits sins.  I was an earnest little girl: the only child born to a couple in their forties, Abraham and Sarah--stern persons who believed in sacrifice and sacraments. On a weekly basis I lied to the priest about sins I did not commit. Thus, all of the sins I confessed were lies. Except for the lies, which were, of course, sins. Which worked out pretty well, now that I think about it.

But back then I used to dwell, to the point of cathexis, upon the taxonomy of Catholic lies. [please note I just used "cathexis" and "Taxonomy" in a single sentence.]

Catholic lies for Beginners:  (1) injurious lies  (2) officious lies (3) jocose lies.

Jocose lies are told for amusement. I told one yesterday, when I came out of the gym just as a traffic cop was about to ticket me for parking in a handicapped spot. I told him I had just delivered my sister to her hydrotherapy-for-amputees class. My amputee-sister lie afforded him great amusement, and he did not ticket me. Win-win.

An officious, or white, lie is told to benefit somebody or to be polite. These hardly require a "for instance."

An injurious lie is one that does harm. 


For instance, an injurious lie is the one I told my son about his father. And a sperm bank in Seattle. 


[see http://studionightshade.blogspot.com/2010/10/of-mice-and-men.html







Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling

     
     They hated the ending. I knew they would. They always do.
     They=my students. 
     Ending=last chapters of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd.
     It’s the novel upon which the screenplay I’ve been commissioned (modest remuneration) to write is based.  See postings 1-5. 
     [screenplay adaptations do not, btw, "count" as research for a Victorian lit professor so I'm going to have to trump up something to include in my quadrennial review dossier, such as it is.]
     It began with Stephanie G (students’ names have been changed for my protection): “What I didn’t appreciate about the ending was the way Hardy marries Bathsheba off. It’s like, because he’s a man, he can’t imagine her being happy without a man in her life. I really didn’t appreciate that at all.” 
     She used “appreciate” to mean “approve of,” as in: “Mom, I didn’t appreciate your embarrassing me that way.” She spoke in the tone of one who’s been personally offended, as if Thomas Hardy had designed the ending in 1874 specifically to irritate Stephanie G. in 2010. 
     “I agree,” chimed in Kristen S. “I know it’s because he wants to keep his readers happy, but it’s obvious he didn’t want to marry her off—that he just felt an obligational thing to end Far From the Maddening Crowd with a marriage.” 
     There was the slightest flicker of eyes around the seminar table after Kristen S spoke, what with her slip--“maddening” for “madding”--but I let it pass. What was the use? Last week, I’d explained the meaning of the title, which alludes to an eighteenth-century poem, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.”  I had corrected Kristen each time she bungled the title, which was every time she said it. I suspected that at this point, she’d simply made an executive decision and substituted “maddening” for its antiquated synonym because she thought it was an improvement. 
     Stephanie and Kristen graduated from the Spence School in Manhattan together. They emigrated to university together.  When I met them, they made a point of noting that this university was not their  “first choice.” “Mine either,” I’d replied. 
     Stephanie and Kristen have been growing increasingly irritated with Thomas Hardy and me: Hardy because he isn’t Jane Austen, and me because I enjoy making disparaging remarks about Jane Austen. Like Stephanie and Kristen, Jane Austen gets on my nerves. Stephanie and Kristen sit opposite each other at the seminar table every week and, if another student’s comment meets with their disapproval, they flash each other eye rolls. Not the obvious, full-circle eye rolls that less sophisticated undergrads make. No, theirs are well-bred, demi-rotations beneath eyebrows waxed into menacing arches. I’ve come to think of them as: Pride and Prejudice. 
     Yet it wasn’t just Pride and Prejudice; the rest of the class—all the girls anyway—hated the traditional, happy, romantic ending of a marriage. I find this ironic, often poignantly so. 
These girls are annoyed with the happy endings of the novels I teach.  But when they’re in my office and I ask them about their aspirations, they reel off a scenario that includes a career and marriage and family and public service and travel.  
     These children of divorce and disappointment put marriage and family on the top of their "My Future Life" Lists [MFLL] . They watch so-called reality TV.  But they complain about the predictability of the Victorian novels I teach, and they bristle when a strong-minded, independent heroine gets married off at the end. Unless it’s a Jane Austen novel. For reasons that I will never understand, Austen gets a free pass to end with a marriage.  All that claustrophobic virginity of Austen’s drawing rooms gives me the heebie jeebies.  But then, I would rather be reading the assembly instructions for a piece of Ikea furniture than a  Jane Austen novel.
     Because I need material to include in my "Contributions to the University Community" portion of my aforementioned quadrennial review,  I agreed to speak to the sisters of the Pretty Pretty Girls sorority on the topic: “The Glass Ceiling: Myth or Reality?”  I’ll spare you my talking points, but my theme was:  “Reality, probably.”  The sisters didn’t want to hear this. They wanted to hear that the glass ceiling was definitively broken through by women of my generation.
     And they wanted to hear that with the glass ceiling shattered, they could still have the glass slipper [and the coachmen and the prince and the suburban castle].
     In that regard, I was the wrong woman to have invited to the party.
     I suspect I wasn’t the first choice.







Wait a minute: rewind. My son's dating a what??

Mormon Tabernacle  Choir

I know I have  two other Terribly Important Topics [TITs] to write about: the very serious [henceforth "verious"]  falsehood I have been telling about  my son's father;  and the frustrating and unfruitful online dating profile I recently launched.

But  deep into my cherished insomnia state last night, I sat up and thought: A Mormon? In the grief of his not coming home to see me for Fall Break, I hadn't yet processed the Mormon thing. Mormon?

So, she is either: 1. a virgin teetotaler ; 2. a way more fun Mormon girl, like the writer, stand-up Pretty Mormon Comedian Elna Baker, who I heard on This American Life, then googled then bought and read her memoir.

Reasons to hope son's new special friend is number 1:   no alcohol. no sex.

Reason to fear she's number 1: I raised him a Quaker. ok, the reason I chose Quaker was in case the US reestablished the draft, my son would be an automatic conscientious objector. I mean, there's not really much to believe when you're a Quaker. It wasn't like it challenged my so-called principles.

Reasons to hope she's number 2: Elna Baker is very funny [henceforth: "vunny"]. Read The New York Regional  Mormon Singles Halloween Dance when you have a chance.

As long he's out there, though, and since I paid the airfare: I asked him to pick me a Mormon Tabernacle Pipe Organ salt & pepper shaker set. I collect S&P shaker sets. Novelty S&P sets: kitschy animals from 40s-60s; personified vegetables; commemorative place sets.

A Mormon Tabernacle pipe organ set--if such a thing exists--would be a major score.

If non-existent, I'll settle for a keychain. I have a less extensive--but entirely credible--collection of keychains.

Adieu for now. As fate  would have it--see previous posting about sheep with flatulence--I'm teaching Far From the Madding Crowd on Wednesday. I must grade a few thousand dozen more essays before then, however.

Alas, my students will not like the ending of FFMC. They never do.








three men and a flock of sheep with gas

 Three men and a flock of sheep with gas

Fall Break Heart Break: my son is not coming home for Fall Break.

He met a girl--a junior--and re-routed his airline ticket to Salt Lake City.  She’s a Mormon. I found the charge on my credit card. I think it’s delayed acting out; the Father Issue. The pater unfamilias. It’s too sad: a later post.

So let me tell you about my screenplay, the one that’s going to make me wealthy, upon which I will move back to Manhattan, after  25 long years away.  And quit teaching rich college students whose parents subsidize four years of oversleeping, hooking-up, and Stomach-Pump Drinking [SPD]. Don’t get me started.

I’ve drafted a screenplay adaptation of th Victorian novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. I know, it’s been done before: 1967, Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Peter Finch, and Terrence Stamp. Before you ask if the American public will pay to view another  film version Far From The Madding Crowd:

They will. Because....

My friend Tom’s boyfriend has a first cousin who’s engaged to a film producer: I won’t reveal her [producer’s] name but I may drop clues from time to time. We all met one night a year ago for tapas and sangria at a little  Spanish place on W14^th St. during my fall Break.

She asks what I teach. I say: "Victorian lit."

I ask what kind of films she produces: "chick filicks."

"Victorian novels are chick lit," I retort. At first, she looks suspcious, as if she can't tell if I'm serious of if I'm making fun of her. But she makes a few mental calculations and says: "which one, in your opinion, is the best chick lit Victorian book?"

Without hesitation, "Far From the Madding Crowd. Three men, a flock of sheep, and a feisty, independent heroine. It's way overdue for a remake."

Turns out that Helen has been wanting--badly--to produce a period piece adaptation, to add a certain gravitas to her profile. And it seems she genuinely wants to tackle a big of Victorian story. She promises to read it, and a week later I get an email, soliciting me to write something called "a treatment." It takes eight  weeks, but I send it off to her. 

Long and short of it: I am invited to write a script on spec. I'd never written a script so either I am a natural at this, or she Helen does this to every Victorian literature scholar she meets.  Tom assures me that this is not the case because I am the first Victorian literature scholar she has met and that she's generally a straight up kind of gal [for someone in the business, he hastens to add].

The plot in fifty words or less:

Beautiful, spunky Bathsheba Everdene inherits a farm, which she must learn to manage and—more importantly—she is loved by three men and must choose the right one, which of course she doesn’t We have a shepherd [the right choice], the older wealthy bachelor farmer next door [the sensible choice but he proves to be a total wing nut], a rakish soldier [the utter wrong choice whom she married].  It end happily but only after the older farmer kills the soldier, goes to gaol [Victorian for “jail”] for life, Bathsheba finally marries Gabriel Oak, the shepherd. [see pic above].

My favorite scene in the novel and the 1967 film involves Gabriel Oak curing Bathsheba’s flock of sheep of seriously serious gas.

Small miracle: you can see that scene on YouTube. Do it. It’s only 3 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtseAIamCOA

On another front:

To assuage my sadness over my son’s change of plans, I went ahead and got a paid membership on a dating site, and have filled out the profile, not a lot, just enough to get it out there. I’m going to add more. Stay tuned.

My online username: 

Bathsheba Everdene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtseAIamCOA







Of Saints and Sinners: A Digression

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Lucy with her eyes in aspic

     The "Next Blog" button does not recognize irony.
     And it's not a random shuffle. I'm disappointed. 
     Each "next blog" stroke takes me to young and very nuclear families; or to very religious persons of all ages; or to young and very nuclear and very religious families. 
    The brain of the "next blog" engine has caught "catholic" and "mother" in my previous postings. But it misses the point, because I'm not Catholic anymore, and my family never was nuclear. 
     Irony squared.
     However, I was once a Catholic school girl [can you hear that, "next blog" machine?]. That's how I know  about the three kinds of lies: injurious, officious, and jocose. I try to practice only jocose lies [the fun kind] but sometimes, one person's jocose is another's injurious. Lies get tricky that way. 
    And Catholic school is where I learned about martyred virgin girl saints [Martyred Virgin Girl Saints]. How they steadfastly defended their faith and purity, no matter how gruesome the torture. In fact, the more gruesome the better. All the more salacious.
     My favorite MVGS to this day is St. Lucy. She wanted to be a nun; her mother wanted her to be the wife of a pagan. Fast forward: Lucy's eye balls were gouged out, then she was executed.  See image, above right. That's Lucy,  holding her eyeballs in the golden server. I don't think that was part of the story, though.
     I wonder why the "next blog" machine registered "Catholic" and "mother" but not "unwed" or the red thong, both of which appeared in my previous posting [Of Mice and Men].
     Let's try this again: 
         red lingerie
            red thong 
                 red lingerie
                     red thong

      

     
      





OF Mice and Men

Yesterday, after a  day of teaching long  poems to short-attention-span college students, followed by a long-winded faculty meeting, I came home, opened the kitchen drawer where I keep my rabbit [corkscrew not vibrator], and a mouse jumped out, missing my hand by a hair. Mouse hit the ground and disappeared. I gingerly opened the telephone book drawer—coast clear—no more mice.  I needed  the Yellow Pages.

I selected Good Riddance Pest Control. I liked their ad: five, scurrying mice hightailing it down the road carrying overnight bags. Versace, I think.

This morning, a rotund man named Stanley showed up in the Good Riddance truck, the same five  mice painted on the side. I showed him where the mouse had  performed its leap, and he said that my new service included a full house inspection.

     Full disclosure: I’d agreed to purchase a full year contract for $575, payable in installments. It was the only way they’d send  Stanley today. I fully intend to cancel it once this job’s done. Where I come from [Catholic family, 1960s] that kind of lie is a venial sin. I commit them with impunity.

     Stanley asked permission to inspect the house so I ran a mental inventory for embarrassing items in my bedroom. There were plenty: a couple wine-encrusted glasses on the dresser, a empty Cheetos bag on the night table, and, on the floor, a red bra and thong ensemble I wear on faculty meeting days. On the off chance, you know what I mean?  I figured that jolly, jowly Stanley has seen it all. "Go ahead," I said.

     The news is bad: “Mrs. F,  you got a ton a bugs—spiders and centipedes mostly. I’ll lay traps for the mice and spray for spiders and insects. It’s included in the pest control package you bought.”

       I let the “Mrs F” go. I’m not Mrs. Anybody because I was never married. I’m that kind of single mom, the ones we used to call "unwed mothers."

      “Ok,”  I said, “exterminate all the brutes,” a line from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a literary allusion. Literary allusions are fine for lecture halls but not for the interactions that make up the other eighty-six per cent of my life. They’re off-putting, even obnoxious. I know that.  But I can’t stop myself. It’s a compulsion, like the way my mother used to go downstairs seven or eight times every night in the dark,  “just to double check” that the pilot light on the stove hadn’t blown out. [I check only once or twice}.

       On his way out, Stanley gave me his card. He’d circled his cell number.  He said: “call anytime. I mean that, anytime. My personal number.” Just before he got in his truck, he winked.  

       Was Good Riddance Staley coming on to me? If so, it's the only time that red bra and thong have worked their magic. 

       I called Miriam. She said he was. But I said, no way, he’s married.

     To which Miriam replied: “And what? Married men never have affairs with single women? Oh, shit, Justine, I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right.”

     Miriam knows  the story  of my son's  father. Less of it than she thinks she knows. But more than my son knows. And way more than his father knows.







Of nests and men

Since my one-and-only left for university, I’ve been in a terrible funk.  My friend, Miriam, assures me that I’m suffering from basic Empty Nest Syndrome.  I think of it as post-departum depression.

A few weeks ago, she came over with a bottle of wine and Letting Go: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding the College Years. She’d wrapped the book in a picture, torn from some parenting magazine, of a young woman nursing a baby from an air-brushed, lactating breast. Miriam had drawn a perfect circle around the mother and child then slashed a diagonal line through that perfect circle.

“Look at it this way,” she said while pouring the wine. “Now you can date openly.”

Openly? This was a perplexing choice of adverbs. My face must have told her as much.

“You have been dating secretly, right?”

Large, uncomfortable pause in the conversation. I shrugged.

“Oh my god, you don’t mean you haven’t dated anyone since we met, what, like six years ago? And if you haven’t dated, you haven’t ….”

That’s what I meant, only worse. It’s been longer.

A few days later I got a package from amazon: Gail Sheehey’s Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life.

I just started reading it last Friday night. I read about Middlesex—the amazing sex that middle-aged women, from sea to shining sea, are apparently enjoying in record numbers. And The Pilot Light Lover who “reignites a woman’s capacity for love and sex.”  

Q: Have I really been living under a rock this long?

A: I have.
Q: How long have I been living under a rock?
A: Since the Pleistocene Era.

So last night at 2:30 AM—I’m an insomniac, hence the “night” part of Nightshade--I registered for a trial membership at match.com. I searched for men, aged 45-58, within a ten-mile radius of the place I call home.

It wasn’t encouraging.

I extended the radius in increments of five miles until I hit a seventy-five mile radius. I viewed the profiles of: men who haven’t aged well; men who write “their” for “they’re” ; men who look like Mr. Potato Head; men who look great but only consider women aged 25-38;  men who respond “shopping at Costco” to “favorite pastimes.”

However, to a man, they select “sarcasm” from the “major turn offs” drop-down bar.
I'm screwed. And not in the fun way.