I tried to post earlier but it was cruelly deleted, so I'll try to reconstruct the memorable bits. Yesterday, in the early afternoon, Tara and I went lingerie shopping. This is something we had planned secretly for a long time, based on our shared belief that girls ought to have nice underwear and that it'll presumably be useful sooner or later. For me, it was also a rite of passage associated with my eighteenth birthday, which will be in about a month.


I was terrified of going into Victoria's Secret and had to work up the nerve beforehand by shopping for books: nice, reassuring, lace-free books. Victoria's Secret, unlike, I'm assuming, other stores that cater to women, makes femininity seem like an active, potentially destructive force. I quailed a little walking in, finding myself suddenly surrounded by negligees and other unmentionables. I wandered for awhile, aimless and intimidated, before snapping out of it and shopping in earnest. Tragically, Tara and I were too short to reach the top racks, so she had to violate the sacred, sexy atmosphere by standing on a drawer to claw at a particularly promising bra. In the end, I was successful and Tara was not, so I suppose we'll have to go back (grin).


Then the party, which was by far the most satisfying social experience I've had in ages. Much of it, from my perspective, was me being inundated with Ivy League snobbery; both Michael (Dartmouth) and David (Columbia) introduced me to the club attitude and incongruous rivalry. Plenty of dumb jokes at Penn's expense. I mock, but of course part of me enjoyed it a great deal. I also sat on top of a rather large pile of girls, albeit briefly, and publicized the Victoria's Secret excursion. Endearingly, this provoked Michael's interest; throughout the evening, he kept chancing upon semi-appropriate discussions between Amy and me, which disintegrated as soon as he started listening. Poor Michael. Then Amy slapped his ass. Hehe. At some point, she invited the girls to stay over at Jess's house, which was absolutely cool but unprintable. Goodness (wink).

Lately I've been slacking, somewhat, and contending with troubled moods and apathy. I feel cleaned out now - I sang for seven (really!) periods on Friday, until my voice sounded primed, although it collapsed towards the end. Hank is adorable on the Dreidel song; I hope Tara gets to hear it. And then there was Mock Trial, which is suddenly inordinately more comfortable now that roles have been switched. I don't mean anything disrespectful to the new members of the Plaintiff team. However, I'm keenly aware that Lijia's approach is more in line with Sandy's and mine. It was so comfy - to chat quietly, but earnestly and with that particularly intellectual passion. From the next room, we could hear Jenn and Ajay screaming strategy at one another, abandoning all composure in favor of volume. I was so excited when I left, full of awareness of possibilities and faith in the six of us - well, the twelve of us. And I don't think the Defense is evil! Necessarily.


On Sunday, there was a party, which I did enjoy. I was amused for awhile by the Sex for Dummies book, although I'm dubious about the section headings - "Foreplay for Her - Checking Under her Hood." Looking stricken, as I am wont to do, I asserted that there's nothing hood-like in female reproductive anatomy. And poor Natalie D., asked to read aloud the lap-dance section.... Her eyes bulged and she stayed silent, so Seth took the book from her and read gleefully and shamelessly. And then there was much wrestling and flirting among the boys, and my secret triple life collapsed as Tara and Natalie D. demanded that I choose between them.


Yesterday, I went out with Seth. For a long time, we walked in the snow - and it stuck to our hair and eyelashes in huge, soft clumps. We got coffee and prowled Second Story Books and I hummed carols. I have more faith in him too, in our ability to surmount... ourselves, if that makes any sense. I woke up this morning to more snow and presents and a goodbye e-mail from him. I feel inimitably lucky now; it's always that way with my bad moods. They're hard to remember as soon as they're gone.

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Evans, but I don't think he's infallible. Sometimes I disagree with his strategies outright (at least once each year I've been involved) - and currently I'm thinking in particular about this sort of cute, snippy thing we did last year. There was an expert witness who testified that young adults often possess high intelligence but relatively low reasoning ability, and, brilliant wits that we are, we were supposed to ask on cross examination, "But isn't one accepted definition of intelligence 'the ability to reason'?" As if that would discount the testimony completely, through our clever use of semantics.


I was thinking about this as I drove home from Tara's this morning, about how there's a clear distinction sometimes between intelligence and reasoning ability. I think I'm probably a pretty bright kid - I have an easy time in school in spite of comical irresponsibility and pitiful work ethic - but my reasoning ability approaches zero when I'm outside the realm of abstract concepts and, well, inside my car. Last night I did a number of silly, irrational things, most of which Tara witnessed. I met her and Natalie G. at Barnes and Noble at 8:00 PM, having spent the earlier part of the day at Olsson's. We almost immediately ran into Liliya and David, who I'm sure wanted some alone time but got us instead. They were actually all right with it, and we spent a couple of hours in the foyer of B&N, loudly discussing underage drinking, drugs, and sex.


At about 10:00, David offered use of his house in Chevy Chase. I had some trepidation about navigating unfamiliar roads in the dark, but he provided clear directions and Tara and I made it to his house without incident. While there, I saw photos of several Bivalves in middle school and played with his adorable cat until it bit Tara. At 11:10 or so, I diligently said my goodbyes and offered to take Tara to Bethesda Metro; we took down more directions but screwed them up almost immediately and, God knows how, ended up on East-West Highway in the direction of Silver Spring. Tara and I have a history of being pathetic this way. By the time we realized our mistake, we were near her house, so I just took her home and procured more directions from her sleepy father. They seemed fairly simple: R East-West Highway, L Wisconsin, etc.


The problem is, of course, that I don't know Silver Spring at all, and East-West Highway forks and veers in ways that are not at all intuitive. I bravely made it to Georgia Avenue and then screwed up utterly; I think I tried all (but one?) possible directions at that intersection before realizing, at midnight, that this was hopeless and I might as well go back to Tara's, presuming I could even find it. I did, somehow, and she graciously permitted me to stay over - I reasoned I could more easily follow the 410 signs in the daytime. Seeing Tara was nice; we've had so many conversations online, but I haven't so much as heard her voice since the end of summer. It's so wonderful to have everyone around again, at least temporarily, and to see Tara, in particular, in person.


In any case, I made attempt number two this morning at maybe 10:30 AM. I got to Georgia, my nemesis, and, ridiculously, ended up on 13th Street. This is obnoxious, I thought as I turned around. Obviously East-West Highway doesn't exist anymore. I worked out in my head how to get back to Philadelphia, which is an alternate name for East-West near Tara's house, and somehow ended up heading in the correct direction on 410 instead. Infinitely grateful, I didn't question it. I later got a little lost in Bethesda, which was a wonderful relief after my earlier travails, because, in Bethesda at least, I recognize all the street names and where they intersect. I win, I thought, as I stumbled (calculatedly!) upon Wisconsin and went in the right direction to get home.

(Note: I intend to redeem myself by posting later today about all the things I've done this week that weren't indisputably dumb.)

As for college, I was accepted early at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago. Penn is binding, so I will happily be attending there next year.

Instead of writing about college right away, I'll explain the misogynism and hot faux romance that occurs between Tara and myself. When I was reading A Room of One's Own, I reacted with some concern to Woolf's musings on male and female sentence length. I started checking blogs for this, and wondered about why my favorite authors were exclusively male - and realized that, while my writing feels comfortable and natural to me, it's somehow distinctly female, by the same terms as AROOO. I never felt comfortable with Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf as writers; their style lacked a certain tightness that I either naturally desired or had been taught to desire. I worried seriously that, if I hadn't written it, I would hate my own writing - which is a problem, as I intend to write history.


Then, today, as I was writing this post and wondering how to convey my overrarching fear that I hate the way women write... which, I know, sounds terribly silly, but I suppose has larger implications in my perceptions of women (and I do have other issues with women, but I don't feel like producing a laundry list of my neuroses)... I encountered my old EE, about the first and second applications of judicial review, and read through it. The writing style is markedly different, and not obviously "female." Here's a section of it:


"Rather than mollify the political combatants of the day, Taney’s decision sparked further controversy. 'With the intrusion of the Court into the slavery issue,' Kermit Hall writes, 'many felt that any compromise over slavery was now impossible, and the North and the South moved inexorably toward civil war' (Hall 761). Antislavery forces treated the Dred Scott decision as an act of malevolence; the modern perspective has been to treat it as 'not so much a judicial crime as a judicial blunder' (Schwartz 106). Schwartz tempers his criticism of Taney because he believes Taney’s true error was overzealousness about the power of the judiciary. Other constitutional scholars, however, have been less favorable, considering the Dred Scott decision to be 'the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court…. Taney’s opinion stands as a model of censurable judicial craft and failed judicial statesmanship,' largely because of its documented role in precipitating the Civil War (Hall 761). Marshall’s reputation, conversely, has only grown since his death, and the 'significance of Marbury… enlarged over time,' until it has become the landmark expression of judicial review (Hall 522)."


I discussed it with Tara, who said my style of writing history reminds her of Michael's (his blog is nothing like mine). And then:

Smiletara (1:42:49 PM): you know what I realized
Smiletara (1:42:56 PM): I have a tendency to assume all history books are written by males
Smiletara (1:42:57 PM): if they are good
Smiletara (1:43:02 PM): which is a horrible thing to assume
SaffyCat (1:43:31 PM): me too
Smiletara (1:43:59 PM): I wonder if I assume bad books are written by females
SaffyCat (1:44:07 PM): i think i do
Smiletara (1:44:46 PM): me too
Smiletara (1:44:49 PM): but I don't want to think that!
Smiletara (1:49:22 PM): this is more serious than I want think it is
Smiletara (1:49:31 PM): if it's ingrained in me to assume that males produce good writing
Smiletara (1:49:34 PM): and females don't
SaffyCat (1:50:02 PM): i know, this is what i've been worrying about
SaffyCat (1:50:08 PM): and what i've been having trouble explaining

So, yeah, misogynism. And, independent of our gender issues, Tara and I have hot, hot pretend sex.

I'm happy to report that my marriage is on much firmer footing than it was a week ago, and Alison and I even exchanged rings (sort of) - hers is a bandaid, mine an inked on diamond that from far away looks like a vicious spider or bruise. On Monday, in the car on the way to one of oh so many Mads performances in the last week or so, we girls shared tales of our pseudo-lesbianism. (Having been rejected cruelly by Veronica, although Amy and Tara still want me I hope, I wormed my way into another such tripling with Alison and Natalie D.) Ranwa contributed as well, mentioning her secret relationship with Jill, and apparently Dena's hair (though not Dena) gets around with both male and female members of the Madrigals ensemble.


I asserted very earnestly that we were doing a great thing for feminism, since Mads had been teeming with homoeroticism for years now but we girls had tended to be hands-off. Independent of the broad social implications, though, I personally am finding flirting with girls very liberating, since it's something I'm "allowed" to do within the context of a heterosexual relationship (and potentially sexy from Seth's perspective as well).


On a slightly more serious note, I've been trying to convince Tara (or myself?) of the worthwhile-ness of emotional intimacy. I don't think I've mentioned Things Tara and I Talk About on my blog before, but I keep seeing references to them on hers (like our mutual, but my more insistent, fear that we hate women). My approach on the love-and-intimacy front has been, "Oh, don't worry Tara, it's a human imperative and will catch up with you inevitably," which I guess is kind of ominous. Thinking about it since then (yesterday), I decided love was "worth it" as perhaps the only morally elevating pleasure, and a fundamental reassurance about human nature.

And now for part two, where my mood improves and I have to resist (or give into) gushing: On Saturday, we rented Hedwig and the Angry Inch and watched it in my basement. It's a terribly sad concept, that someone could be utterly deprived of a gender identity. However, the music is catchy and the preoccupation with love and loneliness, as in Amelie, makes you hyperconscious of the fact that you're watching it in somebody else's arms.


Monday and/or Tuesday was (were?) our momentous six-month anniversary. The confusion as to the date was caused, originally, by: a.) our coupledom being decided in a conversation that spanned Sunday night and very early Monday morning, and b.) Seth never quite managing to definitively ask me out. I think by 1 AM we had reached the consensus that we would go out at some point. However, the only question posed was, "Sharon, are you at all romantically interested in me?" To which I replied, flustered, that yes, I suppose I was, but it wasn't a big deal, I could suppress it; being friends with him was more important than some silly unrequited crush. "Unrequited?" he responded. "That's not... altogether accurate."


Hehe. In any case, we were lazy and never set an official date, so we ended up with twice the anniversary and twice the permissible silliness. Unfortunately, we had a cruel amount of choral rehearsing on Monday, so we were tied up at school until 9:00 PM. During the hour-long break between Madrigals and Italy Chorus, we skulked around the nearly empty school looking for places to kiss/reminisce. We were caught (sort of) by a guy trying to use the elevator; it took him a minute to realize what was going on, but then he flashed us that universal lascivious, complicit smile, as if remembering his own public teenage indiscretions.


Shame-faced, we found a more secluded stairwell and attempted there to brainstorm a top ten list for the first six months. Some of the top events are already public domain, like the night of Seth's play, when we fell asleep in Tara's living room with my hand across his chest. Later, Seth referred to our hour of revelry as a "typical mix of intimacy and ridiculousness." We walked down to rehearsal together, where we indulged in a little more PDA than usual (i.e., he held my hand). A bit giddy, I flirted more than usual as well, and ended up marrying Alison for her last name. We shook on it. We've been having lovers' quarrels since then, though, so I don't know how long it will last.

I have some summarizing to do: On both Wednesday and Friday, I went to parties that made unreasonably unhappy (self-isolation and warped moods). The parties were both lovely; I was just weird. At Ranwa's, we watched that iconographic film of one generation before us, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Soo good. Seth played massive amounts of foosball, and Hank coaxed not one but two of my female friends into his lap with his, um, masculine wiles.


Late in the evening, while I was moping quietly and half-asleep, Seth recalled somewhat drunkenly his military/socialite roots. I'm sure it was very funny, but I couldn't comprehend it. Worried about my ability to drive him home, I mumbled something about needing my shoes and coat and got him downstairs. It took me several minutes to work the laces. Returning to the party, we were trapped by Josh and Alix in the stairwell; they saw us emerging together from an otherwise empty basement and jumped to the obvious conclusion. Seth played along by pulling his sweater over one arm and pawing at my sweater as well. I felt somewhat confused and frustrated by the experience, but I slept it off.


On Friday, we gleefully set out for Deb's house, with Seth behind the wheel. It's hard for me to remember specifically what transpired there, though I do recall plenty of physical comedy and bawdiness. Amy renewed her possessive flirtation with, well, everybody, though I was particularly victimized because, as she forcibly grabbed me away from Seth, Ben stole my socks. We listened to the Mental Notes in concert, and GPaul both "ass raped" Seth and later did something obscene called The Viper that involved grazing his genitals. I blame Liz for this, for not keeping a better hold on her man's heterosexuality. Er, figuratively.