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Why is it that people believe the myth put out by Hollywood that it's a bastion of Liberalism? I mean, check the salaries and the only movies where female actors make more than male actors is when they're taking it up the ass in porn flicks, made on the cheap, for men. Talk about pay inequity - the top male actors in Hollywood (and all the producers and directors are male, too, don't forget) are men and the ratio between what they earn and what the top female actors earn is much greater than, say, that between male parking lot attendants and female daycare workers.
The movies Hollywood makes are bad enough, with all the beauty and marriage myths and men saving women themes that completely deny Feminism (and reality), but there is also an inexcusable wage gap between the genders (how is male acting harder than female acting, for instance?) - not to mention an almost complete absence of women from positions of power in order to bring any balance to the Hollywood boardrooms. Indeed, women are only good for sex in Hollywood, on screen and off.
Screen actors guild? Yeah - for men. White men, to be specific.
And what about racism? George Lucas still makes films that perpetuate racist stereotypes (put out there by Hollywood in the first place) and everybody pretends "oh no, not George Lucas" (in spite of his racist hair do) - that the shiftless coward character with the Jamaican accent and the duplicitous merchant characters with the Asian accents are just random portrayals of, well, what - exactly? We're just so propagandized to believe that Hollywood is Liberal that we insist there's no connection between on screen racism and real life racism even though America sees itself through a Hollywood lens.
So why does Hollywood have a reputation for Liberalism? Even Washington under the Republican Party is more Liberal than Hollywood and yet, it, too, perpetuates the myth that it's under attack by Liberal voices from this bastion of sexism and racism.
...The Finance Minister of Canada very clearly instructed anybody listening this past year, "Do not invest in Ontario", and the constituents in his auto industry dependent riding returned him to elected office.
So, why are the rest of us bailing them out now? I mean, at what point should voters be held accountable to their electoral choices? Because I say when you re-elect a politician like Jim Flaherty, you're getting what you deserve.
Let nature take its course - just this once - pleeeeez?
How's THAT for taking the Christ out of Christmas?
Beware the backlash in bad times, fellow Feminists. I've been cruising the Internet and the Men's Rightists are out in full force in the comments sections of all the best and worst blogs. One commenter said something so parallel universe to reality that it made me "lol", as they say in cyber space. "Do you know where the word Feminazi comes from? It comes from Feminists who are nazis and men who are Jews."
Phew. On the same thread where that comment occurred, I'd been just about to Godwin's Law everybody by pointing out that Men's Rightists were behaving like Nazis in their scapegoating of Feminists for their (I can't lay claim to having had any impact on the Feminist movement, myself, so I can't say "our") successful expansion of human rights beyond the chosen people (who I'm pretty sure were wealthy white Christian males - unless our entire history occurred in a parallel universe and immigrant women are over there proroguing Parliament because life is just so damn good - democracy is obsolete).
How ironic that one "Keith" would beat me to it - albeit ass backwards and upside down so's his comment was quite jarring in its inaccurate application of Godwin's Law (the first commenter to mention Nazis, the Holocaust, Hitler, etc, on a thread not about Germany's Third Reich, is said to have invoked Godwin's Law - thereby derailing the thread into official irrelevance - which is really bad considering we're already in cyber space).
And workers. My, oh my but the powers that be are betraying themselves with their all-too-waggly finger pointing at Canadian workers for daring to make good money in good times. I mean, at least we actually performed some labour, producing out-of-date gas guzzling tanks for environmentally conscious suburbanites and cutting down whole forests for the modern productive paperless offices of today and mining our mines for the foreign overlords our home and native corporations sold us out to. AND we kept our hard earned incomes in the country.
Good grief - bank presidents and corporate ceos have been giving themselves million dollar bonuses for years and hiding them offshore so they wouldn't have to pay taxes - in spite of having the same access to social programs that the rest of us pay into and I notice they aren't pointing fingers at each other. Just workers. I mean, when did "workers" become a bad word? I'll tell you when - when the New Conservatives and bankers and ceos realized they'd steered us (workers) right into a Depression.
Scapegoating is in full force, I'm afraid. Some men are looking back on a time when women didn't have rights and thinking somehow their lives would be better if we could return to those simpler times. Lots of Canadian born white Christians are looking back on a time when immigrants kept a low profile and they're thinking the same thing - simpler times would be preferable to everybody having the same rights.
Worst of all, the wealthy are looking back to when labour was cheap and people were so desperate for money they'd work for peanuts and argue over who should have the right to work harder for MORE peanuts.
But the terrifying part of it all is that those same people looking backwards to a simpler time elected their kind of government - a stupid one - so the rest of us are on our own in seeking higher ground. Gawd knows, my government doesn't represent me. In fact, it's headed in a direction opposite to everything I hold near and dear - rights that previous generations of Canadians fought long and hard to win - for ALL of us.
Beware the backlash in bad times, everybody, because it's a comin'. And if there's one thing backlash lacks, it's reason, so don't even try. Oh - and humour doesn't go over so well, either. These are not smart people we're dealing with, my friends. That's why they want to go back to simpler times.
Okay. I didn't want to post this before Christmas, but then I thought, "Christmas?! What the hell do I care about Christmas?!", so here goes: I think the bizarro reaction from Stephen Harper about the mess the economy is in (as in, how does an economist Prime Minister of Canada not see a Depression coming until it actually hits his country smack in the resource sector?) is because the New Conservative Government of Canada deliberately made all those double jeopardy moves it did to ENSURE there would be a Canadian Depression.
"But why?!, Sooey", you ask. Well, because Stephen Harper is an ideologue who believes that the federal government is THE problem, that Canada would be a better country if it wasn't. But because most Canadians stubbornly cling to the notion of nationhood, it became up to its government to destroy the country from within.
I mean, I don't think he did it for us, or anything - I think he did it because his belief system compels him to behave in a way that, well, if he wasn't such a good politician - we'd think was kind of insane - for a Prime Minister of Canada, anyway.
On the other hand, it wasn't hard for him to get the deed done, was it? Which should tell us something about the sell-outs that preceded him. But at least we could count on the Liberals wanting power so they could have it. It looks to me (through my bi-focals, at least) that Stephen Harper wanted power to give it up.
There's a word for what Obama is doing with Rick Warren - that word is "co-opting". It's smarter than smart because being brought into the fold is an offer no politician (which is what Rick Warren is at the end of the gay, I mean, day) can resist.
I began ceding Christmas to my in-laws years ago. It was either compete or give up and competing was out of the question - they live on a farm on Highway 2, cut down their own tree every year, professionally wrap all the gifts - my mother-in-law even makes Christmas pudding the old-fashioned way - with suet. When my ex and I separated, I ceded Christmas to my in-laws once and for all by insisting my kids continue to celebrate Christmas with them as they always had. And so, every Christmas Eve (or before) they head to their grandparents with their dad and return the day after Boxing Day, Christmas safely over, all excess enjoyed by people who enjoy excess.
I'm frugal. And spartan. And although I am extravagant in some matters - like education - I find it hard to enjoy Christmas because I don't like the waste of too much food and unsolicited gifts pointlessly wrapped up in earth destroying Christmas paper. But I'm not a Scrooge, either, so I decided the best way around Christmas was to give it up to others to enjoy with my nearest and dearest. Because once you have kids, Christmas isn't something you can ignore. You have to plan for it somehow, even if it's to plan to bow out of it so that the Christmas people can take over. Even then I had to argue my kids into it. They only agreed to the arrangement when I told them to imagine a Christmas with just me, now unbelievably lame it would be for them, and how impossibly stressful it would be for me.
So they went to their grandparents, as per usual but without me, and that was the end of it.
This year I had planned to be better prepared, to do up a little Christmas before the big day, but events conspired against me and I didn't manage to do even that little bit. There was the bus strike, then I woke up deaf a couple of days in a row, had a bout of vertigo, ended up on medication - all conspired to wear me down just enough that only a superhuman effort would have resulted in much of a Christmas atmosphere in my apartment.
And I didn't have a superhuman effort to spare because when I'm not having vertigo I'm trying to nail down a permanent job in a city that lives on contracts - so I can get a mortgage from one of our non-money-lending banks. (That plan is undergoing serious renovations, by the way, as I rethink the strategy of investing in an economy managed by incompetent idiots.)
Still, for the sake of Christmas, I put lights up around my bookcase - it's all the apartment needs to look Christmassy - and made a chocolate pie with shortbread crust to amaze and delight the kids, who weren't really amazed and delighted at all. It's a fantastic pie, but it's a bit of a sophisticated taste - bittersweet - not the sort of thing kids like at Christmas when they're used to Skor cakes and squares made with every gooey ingredient known to man at grandma's. So I was really relieved to hear the kids say they were getting excited about going to their grandparent's for Christmas (the older they get, the more I worry they won't want to go - as friends take all precedence over family) and I finally relaxed into my accustomed Christmas lameness. We'll have our usual little Christmas on the 23rd (I always buy a few gifts and then give them what they really want - cold hard cash in recycled money cards - I can't bear to buy new money cards when the old ones are still funny) and then they'll head off for the Christmas they'll remember fondly as adults.
Do I regret not being a part of those memories? Nope. I am who I am. My kids get a kick out of my Christ'itude and take as a matter of course my preference to stand aside at Christmas. And this year, in spite of my intention to be festive (some time back in the summer), the exact opposite has happened and I feel as if Christmas has finally become the Emperor in the Emperor's New Clothes.
I thought I gave up Christmas years ago - but now I know I have. Merry Christmas to all who love the season and Happy New Year to all who are relieved when it's over.
... That the Neo-Con political types who brought us this depression refer to "Canadian workers" as if we are somehow the problem here and not the very "Canadian workers" who will ultimately have to dig a bunch of useless Neo-Con political types out of the gawdforsaken mess their ill-thought-out politics got us all into?
And before we do it, could we at least throw a few shoes at a few heads first?
Dear Santa,
How come you give crappy gifts to poor kids and cool gifts to rich kids?
Sooey
I actually heard a Weatheralist on Glowball say, "I bet you've never heard that word before!", after he'd used it at least three times already during his Fershurecast. So do you get it? Snowmageddon means we're a geddin' snow.
So, what's a made-up word for a political party that says the economy is sound during an election campaign, gets elected, says the economy is NOT sound while provoking an unrelated political crisis that serves to unite the Opposition in a democratic coalition, and then uses the same excuse to prorogue Parliament that it used to cause the election?
New Dysconservaliars?
Greyhound has increased its security measures and added to passenger (as in, customer, a term Greyhound apparently doesn't recognize) inconvenience in a corporate response to a random beheading on one of its routes this past year. But what about the fact that Greyhound has a history of leaving passengers stranded in its parking lot bus stations for hours on end - even overnight? What are its increased security plans for those people? People, who, by the way, have prepaid for the bus that may or may not come to deliver them to their destination?
Just a brief entry today to ask the question: Do you think it's possible our government considers this recession, possible depression, just one of those unavoidable Acts of God and that's the REAL reason why Parliament was prorogued until the end of January?
My 85 year old mother was visiting me recently. She's a lifelong Liberal, one of those dyed-in-the-wool types who could always make the switch from whoever she supported in a leadership race to whoever eventually won. I've only seen her close to tears once, and it was after a particularly hard fought race in the Soo, in which the NDP candidate beat out the Liberal, whose campaign she had managed. He was a local doctor (and my father's) and my mother had put her all into it, so sure was she that this time the Liberal Party had a winner.
When people explained later that they didn't vote for him because they didn't want to lose a perfectly good doctor to politics, she scoffed at their selfish and misguided reasoning, "He'd have been an even better MP!" In those days, it seemed to me she was the only Liberal in the Soo. We spent our childhoods going door-to-door with pamphlets, trying to sell finger-pointing NDPers and purse-lipped Tories on whoever was the Liberal candidate that particular election. After a while, I got used to having doors slammed in my young Liberal face, people yelling anti-Liberal arguments at me as I retreated down their driveways, a hopeful, "I'll come back in a couple of weeks - maybe you'll change your mind" tossed over my shoulder, as I put a "maybe" tick beside their name for "pull-the-vote" day.
Even if they had a sign on their lawn my mother would make us knock on the door, "You never know. The husband may be the one who's put up the sign, but the wife might be a Liberal." It seemed to me unlikely. Couples in those days, all the ones I knew, were both Tories, the wife nodding in conservative agreement with whatever sexist pronouncements her husband made about women, particularly Liberal women. I don't think Conservative men in those days even knew NDP women existed, not in the Soo, anyway. And I have no idea how the NDP candidate, a fellow with the, well, prissy name of Cyril Symes, running in an Italian steeltown that was otherwise solidly WASP Conservative, won time after time after time.
But win he did, including against my mother's doctor candidate.
Years later, even though I saved enough money for a down payment on a house in Belleville while working for Bob Rae when he was still leader of the third party at Queen's Park, loss after demoralizing loss, I would be subjected to almost weekly admonishments because I was working for the NDP. And I was never really forgiven for it - until Bob Rae became a Liberal. "I knew he was a Liberal. No one who made sense like that could have been an NDPer." was my mother's pronouncement on his not really very dramatic leap back into federal politics - as a Liberal.
Meanwhile, when I had been working for him back in the days when he was leader of a moribund third party at Queen's Park, she'd phone me up to demand I go work for David Peterson instead, "The NDP are going nowhere. Go work somewhere there's a future." To which I'd respond, "Are you crazy, mom? They pay peanuts over there. I'm making three times the money working for the NDP." And it was true. Plus, working at the NDP wasn't just fun - you'd have had to, well, I don't know what you'd have had to do to get fired - because no one ever was and I worked with some of the most imcompetent people you can ever possibly imagine.
But my mother would gladly have foregone my good salary and excellent benefits and awesome holidays to be able to tell her friends I was working for David Peterson. Of course, these days she can tell them I worked for Bob Rae before he knew he was a Liberal and it's even better. Or it would be except that all of her friends vote for Stephen Harper now. It drives her nuts - she can't stand Stephen Harper and would even actually honest to Satan vote for Jack Layton over Stephen Harper, but her friends have all gone kind of dotty and believe the blue sweaters and kittens and vote for him as if he isn't the phoniest bit of baloney since, well, at least everybody KNEW Nixon was lying all the time when he way lying - all the time.
But Michael Ignatieff. Oh my. Now that's a puzzler for my Liberal mother and the Liberal Party of Canada may well have lost her with that one. I say that because she said it when she was visiting with me a couple of weeks ago. She even went so far as to offer that, while Michael Ignatieff may win her friends back from the smarmy embrace of Stephen Harper's blue wool arms, he'll be a hard sell to REAL Liberals.
Now, personally, I don't mind the guy. Don't ask me why, but I like how he seems to flounder out loud, flip his mind every other day, and frolic in front of a scrum as if he's a prince in disguise, playing a grand joke on both his royal parents and us, his unwitting subjects, "You see. I have no need of a fancy disguise. I can be both prince and politician." as he waves to his royal carriage to take him home to the palace for supper. There's something positively Pythonesque about Michael Ignatieff that endears me to him greatly.
Of course, I would say that, wouldn't I. I'm a New Democrat. That my mother's saying it - that's a problem for the Liberal Party of Canada. She'll vote for him because she's never NOT voted Liberal and she always votes. But I doubt she'll put her money where her mouth is, if you catch my drift, Liberal fundraisers.
There's a transit strike in Ottawa, so I'm walking an hour and a half to work on sidewalks that haven't been plowed because winter now comes as a complete surprise to Ottawa City Hall.
Our Mayor, is "mentally challenged".
But walking to work knee deep in snow, breathing the exhaust fumes of single occupancy SUVs for an hour and a half, gives one plenty of time to think - and this morning I caught myself thinking about abortion (and retro-active abortion, actually, since SOMEONE voted for Mayor Larry O'Brien) and I reached this conclusion:
Choice Is Everything
And it's true. There's no arguing with people who want the State to make a ruling on abortion because there's no compromising on the issue of abortion rights that won't compromise women's human rights. It's like that Seinfeld episode, "you either have grace, or you don't". Women either have choice, or we don't.
It's terribly, awfully, brutally simple and you're entitled to your moral objections. But anything less than "abortion is a legal medical procedure" and women may as well move en masse to a country where women are at the mercy of fate and your moral objections mean she has no autonomy over her own body.
Let's face it, men run everything - still - every corporation, every union and every government. Men have all the power everywhere in the world and probably always will.
And/But - they can't be pregnant. They can only decide the fate of girls and women - who can be pregnant. In a civilized world, they'd bow out of the debate, but we don't live in a civilized world, so they're still in it.
Even though it's December in Ottawa, we're in the middle of a transit strike (let's just guess at the male to female ratio of OC Transpo drivers - shall we?), the men are in charge at City Hall, and the women of Ottawa are slogging their way through unplowed sidewalks to get to work.
Leave abortion to the gals and just clear the sidewalks of snow, fellas.
Until yesterday, I was unaware of the existence of the suicide note I've posted below. I'm posting it here because I'm shocked by how mainstream Marc Lepine's sentiments regarding Feminists were. Read it, please, and bear it in mind when you read the arguments of anti-Feminists both on the Internet and in our newspapers. Think of it when you listen to our politicians making their various cases against the expansion of women's rights. I guarantee it will send a chill up your spine when next you tune in to a phone-in radio show or catch a televised panel discussion that even mentions the word "Feminists".
No wonder the media in this country (and the politicians it serves) doesn't want to give Marc Lepine any publicity. If you've been following the discussion, you'll notice it employs plenty of Marc Lepines.
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Forgive the mistakes, I had 15 minutes to write this. See also Annex.
Would you note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. For seven years life has brought me no joy and being totally blase, I have decided to put an end to those viragos.
I tried in my youth to enter the Forces as an officer cadet, which would have allowed me possibly to get into the arsenal and precede Lortie in a raid. They refused me because antisocial (sic). I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way for they never really interested me, knowing in advance my fate. Which did not prevent me from obtaining very good marks despite my theory of not handing in work and the lack of studying before exams.
Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men.
Thus it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games removed the Men-Women distinction, there would be Women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontline during the world wars. How can you explain then that women were not authorized to go to the frontline??? Will we hear of Caesar's female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed. A real Casus Belli.
Sorry for this too brief letter.
Marc Lepine
It's hard to believe, but it's nineteen years now since the Montreal Massacre, December 6th 1989. It's my Remembrance Day, really, because it resonates with me still. I was a few months pregnant with who I assumed would be my daughter - and she was - and I remember coming into our tiny apartment kitchen on what I realize now must have been the morning of December 7th, the Toronto Star (we were living in Toronto at the time) laying on the kitchen table, the funereal headline so shocking I was crying before I'd read a word of the story.
I was a Feminist, I'd be raising my children to be Feminists, and I'd also been a university student at a time when even the biggest university in Canada had very few (any?) female engineering students. At least, the engineering residence was all male, the lack of female only washrooms being the excuse for "no women allowed". It was called "Devonshire" and it was a risky place for a woman alone. I was trapped there once and only escaped being raped by a gang of engineering students by a timely pizza delivery man who held the door while I ran out into the street and safely back to my "women only" residence.
I chalked it up to good luck because in those days (late '70s), to report such a thing would have been ridiculous. I'd been drinking, I was dressed like Magenta from Rocky Horror Picture Show, I'd been polite enough (while I tried to figure out how to escape from "the boys" who were behaving more and more like privileged thugs who had no fear of ever having to face any consequences for any kind of "bad behaviour" - because they didn't) to be accused of being one of those "willing" rape victims one doesn't hear so much about anymore - now that we're not as stupid a society as we used to be.
And young women didn't know their human rights were being regularly violated by endemic sexism, anyway, that a woman should have been able to walk stark naked down Main Street, even in Bill Davis' Ontario, with only the arresting cop laying a hand on her head to prevent a clout as she was lowered into the squad car. Gwen Jacobs proved more than a couple of points (pun intended) about the naturalness of breast feeding and the unequal application of the law with regards to toplessness when she led women on a bare breasted march through the cities of Ontario several years ago.
I'd/We'd all been subjected to a lifetime of "women shouldn't be allowed to" - honestly - and I came from a Feminist home, raised by a widowed mother who'd been happily married to a good man. But sexism was rampant, it was everywhere, the backlash to the Women's Movement popping up in every conversation - all of it well after the '60s - and all of it stupid and nasty and mean, the threatening fist of a dying Patriarchy shaking itself at the endless blue sky.
I remember once making a reservation to fly home to the Sault for Christmas. We'd been raised to call ourselves "Ms", my mother insisting our marital status was no one's business (although she herself was under my father's name in the phone book for most of our lives, even though he died in '63) but when the reservations agent (an older man) asked if I was Miss/Mrs or Mzzz (emphasis his) I thought, "hm, maybe Misses get discounts?" so, my Scottish Presbyterianism once more trumping my Feminism as it has so often in life I replied hopefully, "Miss".
"Ah, finally a woman who isn't afraid of her femininity", he offered, no idea of the grievous offence he had caused, his "compliment" having much the same impact as a big old oniony belch in my face.
Ugh. And of course there was no discount. It was just one of those very minor incidents in my life that has stayed with me because I let that treacherous hope that sexism could somehow work to a woman's advantage trump my better instincts that it never would, that it is the snarling threatened dog best met with a newspaper to the nose.
Every. Single. Goddamned. Time.
But a pre-meditated gunning down of female engineering students because of a hatred of Feminism, the fact that this could be done - and so easily - was a pretty chilling reminder that sexism is no off-the-cuff insult, that the "Women's Lip" complaint of men in the early '70s could/would/did become cold-blooded murder in the dying days of the '80s and that, shocked as most men were by it, there were/are still plenty of men around to loudly deny the connection.
All of which is why December 6th is my chosen Day of Remembrance.
Yes, Virginia, sexism leads to femicide.
We lived in a small city in southeastern Ontario for a couple of years before moving to Ottawa. While there, I made friends with Jen, a mother of one when I met her, two when I left, who had married her middle school sweetheart. I'd met her at a Tuesday morning drop-in in a United Church basement, a drop-in made all the more welcoming because volunteers looked after our babies and toddlers for us while we hung out for some mother time - during which we talked about our babies and toddlers.
Jen was a very straightlaced, conservative woman from the very city we were in, but who had spent her adult life living and working in Toronto, managing a popular retail store in the Eaton Center. We were friends for the same reason all mothers-at-home are friends - we were friends in need. It's a sad fact of modern life, but no one but another stay-at-home mother really wants to hang out with a stay-at-home mother. It's sort of like how it is for retired teachers who want to travel - only other retired teachers will travel with them because, well, they're retired teachers, too.
Every Tuesday, no matter what (seriously - no matter what) I'd head off to the drop-in with my two little girls. It was a must do because I'd become slightly agoraphobic (I realize now I was probably a little depressed - stay-at-home motherhood is socially isolating at a time when you really need to have adult conversation) and knew I needed to make the effort to go out every day or I'd turn into my Grandmother, who never left our house after coming to live with us in 1965. I remember particularly, one Tuesday morning, trying to shove my youngest into her snowsuit (she would go alternately stiff and limp) while her sister hung about staring at the floor.
"What's wrong? C'mon - we've got to get going!" Then I noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.
"You're going to die and there's nothing I can do about it", she said, sadly.
I'll admit, I was kind of stunned at the time that I was being told this by a toddler, but she has proven herself to be a fairly profound individual, so I'm not surprised now.
"Oh, you don't know that. Now, c'mon. We've got to get to the drop-in."
I know - add another one to the pile of mother lies. Somewhere out there is an entire universe constructed of mother lies.
Anyway, Jen was also a regular. She wasn't depressed because she loved being a stay-at-home mother, was made for it in fact. I can't tell you the number of play dates she arranged that I never reciprocated unless she just showed up - not to mention the evening get togethers she hosted that I could never have managed myself - or with the help of Martha Stewart, for that matter. Politically, we were polar opposites. I had worked at the NDP Caucus at Queen's Park, she was a Conservative through and through to the 50s. Her husband was the same (mine was a Liberal but only because Conservatives were religious and he couldn't abide the thought that some of them believed dinosaurs and humans co-existed), a Conservative and a straight arrow. He was even - a cop.
So we became friends in need, then friends. She was a very dedicated mother, too. She had been desperate to have a baby after years of trying and when she finally became pregnant, it was a difficult pregnancy that involved lying in bed for three months. Her decision to do it all again was based on the selfless notion that her son should have a sibling, something I thought was pretty brave, given the difficult first go 'round.
She managed to stay out of hospital with the second baby, though, and he was born a premature eight pounds. I'd already had my son, so we were hanging out with newborns while my girls and her older son played in the nursery/basement of her suburban (imagine - suburbs even in a small southeastern Ontario city) house with two-car garage and beautifully landscaped backyard complete with a massive playstructure and above ground pool.
So there we were one day when she broke the news that earlier that morning she had accidentally opened a package intended for her husband. Inside, was a video tape and a letter. The letter was from her best friend, co-signed by her best friends husband. The video tape was of her husband having sex with her best friend while her best friend's husband filmed it all and gave handy directions on angles, etc, while pretty obviously masturbating.
"We're bored with this tape and think it's time to make a new one", the letter stated.
And it was signed and sealed with: "XOX + XOX = XXX".
I was stunned. I mean, I'd kind of wondered about her husband, but I'd never wondered if he was having sex with her best friend and her best friend's husband. I'd kind of thought he was, well, just more into Jesus than he was into sex. Then Jen said something I hadn't expected, either, "What am I? Chopped liver?" Which, I guess under the circumstances was a perfectly legitimate question. She was a good looking woman, afterall, and feeling like she'd not only just had the 100% Persian rug pulled out from under her perfectly appointed living room, but like she'd been the fourth uninvited wheel to the menage a trois. Or some such mixed metaphor. I was at a state in my own marriage where I might have welcomed the legitimate out a sex tape of my husband having sex with my best friend and her husband (who was 30 years older than my best friend, but that's another story) would have provided - but Jen certainly wasn't. She'd been a very happily married stay-at-home mother with no idea that her husband had been busily making sex tapes with other couples while she was making and freezing apple pies to last them through the winter. (It was one of her evening get togethers - Jen and I and another friend made thirty apple pies to split three ways.)
A long story short, the beautiful home was sold, and Jen and her ex each moved to apartments. The divorce was ugly, the verdict by the judge that there simply wasn't enough money to go around and Jen would have to get a job. Of course, she was living in a small city in southeastern Ontario which had just seen it's main industry close down. So, she became in her own words, her worst nightmare: "A single mother on welfare". Meanwhile, her ex managed to get fired from his job, so whatever money there had been, was gone. When he wanted to be friends and hang out, she told me she'd answered, "No".
"He'll get even with me for that one", she stated matter of factly, impressing me once again with her ability to face the truth like it was a particularly bitter pill that there was no point in not swallowing now while you had enough saliva left to get it down.
Oddly enough, that was when I really started to like her. She was so resilient. And every time we went over to visit, she'd done something else to the apartment until one day it was as if her apartment had been transformed into a suburban house - except with soul. That was the day I had to tell her we were moving, that my husband had a job in Ottawa. She took a deep breath and went into the bedroom. When she came back out she was holding a box of writing paper.
"Good idea", I said. "I'll write."
"No you won't", she replied. "But you'll think of me when you look at this box of unopened writing paper."
It's true. I've still got it. Unopened. Bottom dresser drawer.
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