CUA Endorses Same-Sex Marr...Residence Halls.

On one of my first outings as a campus tour guide back in the fall of 2006, I pointed across Michigan Ave to where Conaty, Spalding, and Spellman freshman residence halls stood in all their terrible glory. Instead of saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, take a look at that dump,” I uttered a few rehearsed lines: “These are the residence halls that make up South Campus. A lot of students feel a strong sense of community here, as each building only houses freshmen. They are co-ed by floor.”

For the most part, prospective students and their parents in my tour groups ignored the mundane things I was required to say. The students didn’t care about community; they wanted me to hint at an atmosphere of drinking and sex. And while I never explicitly did this, one tour found me opening an entrance gate to Centennial Village that had been “decorated” with a condom. Another tour found me walking past a group of students in the central grassy area of CV drinking out of red solo cups and blasting music. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. Hint well taken.

For their part, parents weren’t so much interested in how you can use your student ID to get into your residence hall, take out a book at the library, AND swipe into the Pryz for a meal; they were looking for ways to be offended. And by uttering the words “co-ed by floor,” offense had been taken. A prudent mother in the group, who was – if my memory serves me correctly – wearing a denim dress, didn’t understand how we could have co-ed dorms at The Catholic University of America. Had we no shame? My answer caught her off guard: that’s how it had been for a while, and it was working well for everyone. Housing Services found it easier to fill rooms, Residence Life could have both male and female RAs in the same building, and the students were reminded for once that we weren’t attending college in a fucking monastery.

On June 13, Catholic’s newly elected president John Garvey penned an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Why We’re Going Back to Single-Sex Dorms.” In it, he announces that at the beginning of the 2011-2012 academic year, all freshmen residence halls will be single-sex. Sophomore halls will follow the year after that. In 2013, all students at CUA will be asked to submit proof of virginity prior to enrolling in the school.

So why does Garvey make this change now? Why were co-ed dorms allowed under the previous 12-year presidency of Fr. David O’Connell, the man who is now bishop of the Diocese of Trenton, NJ? Although Garvey cites that the reason behind his decision was to curb the cultures of “binge drinking” and “hooking up” that are now rampant on college campuses, I’d venture to say that the controversy around this decision was planned. Publicity is publicity.

In Garvey’s words, the problem: “The two most serious ethical challenge college students face are bing drinking and the culture of hooking up.” The solution: “Here is one simple step college can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences.” Imma be real honest here and say that for me, single-sex dorms sound like even more reason to binge drink and hook up. But that’s just me…and the 30% of gay students at CUA who somehow remain invisible to the administration.

Because it was solicited, here is my advice to President Garvey – as a recent CUA graduate, as someone who worked as an RA in co-ed dorms for two years, and as a person who is quite realistic and sensible, a-thank-you-very-much. My advice is that going back to single-sex…let’s call them same-sex…residence halls isn’t going to solve this problem.

Let it be known that college students are going to go out of their way to drink and have sex no matter where they live. Physical separation of men and women (all 50 yards of it) isn’t going to prevent them from drankin’ and saxin’. Regardless of their residence hall, students are going to venture outside of it – driven by raging hormones or a case of the Thirsty Thursdays – to have what many would consider normal, healthy college experiences. This is not to say that overindulgence in either is good, but it is to say that both can be good in moderation.

Garvey speaks about the interrelation of intellect and virtue. Intellect informs virtue, and vice versa. Then doesn’t it make sense that a college should expect that the 18-year-old freshmen, who it has selected for admission, should be informed enough about the pressures and risks of binge drinking and unsafe sex to make the decision to do either for themselves? And if the college determines that these freshmen aren’t adequately informed, shouldn’t it simply provide better educational resources for them once they get to campus?

Is it the institution’s responsibility to make decisions for its students? Of course not. A virtuous person acts out of free will, and chooses what is right and good freely. Garvey cites Aristotle, so allow me to dust off ye olde minor in philosophy and take a crack at it, too. Aristotle defines virtue as the mean between excess and deficiency, implying that virtue requires a choice. Without free will, without the ability to choose right vs. wrong, there can be no virtue. Catholic cannot impose virtue upon its students: it must allow these students to make their own, informed decisions. Garvey should not overstep his bounds.

I value my four years at CUA. Having spent three of those years in co-ed residence halls, and one year in a co-ed off-campus apartment, I can say that I would not have met my closest friends had it not been for where I lived. Call it luck, or fate, but many of my best friends from college are girls that lived in my freshman building. I also met my boyfriend in this building, two doors down from me. Talk about the greatest freshman residence hall ever. I’m sorry that future CUA students will not be able to have my same experience.

Notewriter

You guys. I know, it’s been over two months and this is unacceptable. In my defense, I took the MCAT on April 29 and, in addition to the five months spent studying for it, I’ve needed a full month to recover from that mindfuck.

So I’m back, and with higher frequency than before. But who am I kidding? Even if I post one blog every six weeks, that will be more frequent than this most recent absence. So I’ve set the bar low. Prepare to be wowed.

[Lack of transition!]

Though residing under one roof, each member of my family has varying schedules and thus doesn’t see each other at regular intervals. For example, due to my schedule of working every hour of every day, there have been times when I won’t see my mom for 2-3 days. Remember, I live in my parents’ house.

To combat this, we leave notes for each other. I can pretty much guarantee either waking up or returning home and being greeted by a note on the kitchen counter. Sometimes these notes say something along the lines of “I FED WINNIE!” and indicate that our canine’s appetite has been satiated for the time being. These notes I can ignore, as I don’t have to do anything in response to them. Sometimes, like yesterday, the notes say, “DOMINIC: Fold the laundry on the couch in the living room.” These, too, can be ignored or - better yet - thrown away so I can pretend I never saw them.

However, when it comes to MY notes for the family, I demand that they are read, and go into painstaking details to ensure that my message is conveyed. For example, when I want certain items at the grocery/drug store, I make very clear that I need the Curel daily moisturizing lotion in the white bottle with the BLUE lettering. Lettering of any other color will not satisfy my request. Believe me, the bottle with the red letters feels like you are rubbing terribly scented, thick wax all over your skin with no hope for absorption. After my note has been written and received, I can sit back and wait for my grocery and beauty items to appear back at my home, free of charge.

I reached a newer low with my note writing this afternoon. I had made plans to meet some work friends for lunch at 12p. Waking up at 11:30a didn’t leave much time to tend to my morning to-do list, and I had to go right from lunch to work. I quickly realized that the package of chicken breasts I had left in the refrigerator overnight would go bad before I eventually returned home to cook them. So what did I do? Observe.

Step 1: Write a note.

Magical time elapse of 12 HOURS.

Step 2: Viola!

I’ve been eating an obscene amount of chicken breasts lately in an ongoing effort to gain weight. You can read about my skinny wrists here. So far, I’ve packed on 30+ pounds, which you can mostly just see in my face.

SANDRA RINOMATO.

Jesus, do I feel like a cop out. I shared a URL yesterday on the blog’s Facebook page linking back to a post I did one year ago in honor of that hallowed holiday commemorating green clothing, public intoxication, and actual red-headed sluts, St. Patrick’s Day. Despite not yet being a year old, my blog has already started to reference itself. In literary studies, we call this metafiction. Metafiction is self referential, meaning it references itself. On the stage, we call this “breaking the fourth wall,” meaning that a wall, preferably the fourth one, is broken. This is all fine and good, except this shit isn’t scripted. This is my life. Not that any of you care about anything I just said, but excuse me while I try in vain to justify liberal arts student loans that won’t be paid off until 2025.

Anyways, in order for this blog to be successful, I know I need to put out. Do with that what you will, because I mean it in every sense of the phrase. I need to completely overwhelm you with my blog. I need to hold it in front of your face and suffocate you with it. I need to oversaturate BAinEnglish so much that you regret the day this once fleeting idea became a sad, sad reality for me. After all, aren’t these ideas what make marketing and advertising work so well? No? Well in that case, I need a publicist.

Last week, I discovered who that publicist was.

During one of my routine nights after a long day at work, I returned home and flipped on the ol’ High Def LCD boob tube. I quickly typed in number 229 on the remote in an attempt to avoid hearing any more garbled words coming out of the mouths of the ESPN Sports Center anchors and settled on HGTV. The show? PROPERTY VIRGINS with the always aging, emphysematous skeleton known to friends and foes alike as Sandra Rinomato. Prop Virgs is also known as the greatest shown that has ever appeared on Home & Garden Television, the network I am required to watch for six hours every week to keep my estrogen levels comfortably elevated, lest I plummet into the depths of menopause before my 24th birthday.

I actually wrote a post about Sandra and her television show back in September of last year. Here’s the link to it here. Yeah yeah yeah, more self referencing. More links within links. Get over it. Go there and read it, if only for the doctored picture that I include at the beginning of the post. The post is mostly about me urinating on my friend’s carpet and trying to undress a 45-year-old Somalian at a gay bar, and only a little bit about Sandra Rinomato, but all three of these topics are beautifully, intrinsically related.

Shortly after this blog was posted, I noticed a marked increase in traffic to my website. Blogger provides fairly detailed statistics about who visits the blog, at what time, from what referring link, and etc. I’m not saying I can see your darkest, most heinous sins each time you visit the page, but that’s exactly what I’m saying. Anyway, as a website administrator I’m provided with a list of phrases that are typed into search engines and direct people to BAinEnglish.

Behold my top five search keywords:

That’s right, and you’re not hallucinating. “Sandra Rinomato” appears at the top of this list, closely followed by “Sandra Rinomato body.” Of all the topics I’ve covered in the blog, from illustrations of children getting their stomach pumped to Kristi Yamaguchi’s coveted status as my hero, Sandra Rinomato is the only one that anyone cares about.

And then it struck me. To drive traffic to this website, I need to give you readers exactly what you want. And from the information gathered by Blogger, I’ve come to the realization that you want three things: Sandra, bodies, and bats. And, preferably, all three at once. With that said, you’re welcome. And with that said, I introduce you to my new publicist:

What can I say? Gentlemen prefer bats. To further drive up those Google hits:

SANDRA! RINOMATO! BODIES BODIES BODIES HOT BAT FACE SEXY CAVES.

Sorry I only know how to use Microsoft Paint. Sorry I’m going to get sued from this. Sorry I ate an entire bag of Tostitos while drafting this post. Sorry I’m not sorry.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. In 2009, Sandra was featured as Hot Slut of the Week on the dlisted website. Touché, friends.

PEE CUP ®

As most of you know, I have a somewhat complicated history with voiding my bladder, urinating, peeing, et al. It’s not that I’ve ever experienced the phenomenon medical professionals call nocturnal enuresis, or bedwetting, because I haven’t. I think. However, I did have a close encounter with bedwetting this past summer while sleeping over at my friend Jennie’s house after a night of heavy drinking. You can read my reflections on that night of nights here, but let’s just say that my pee didn’t end up in her toilet.

Unfortunately, defacing Jennie’s bedroom carpet wasn’t the first time someone else has come in direct contact with my urine. At some point during my many 18-hour car trips out to Washington DC, I discovered that I could save a substantial amount of time by not stopping for anything except gas. Because I began drinking a significant amount of coffee a few hours into these trips, I ran into the problem of having to stop for gas and bathroom breaks. I wasn’t having this and came to the conclusion that I would allow myself to stop either for gas or bathroom breaks.

Even though gas won out of necessity, I would not let my bladder lose. Instead I devised a plan to return unto my coffee cup what I had taken from it. For those of you not skilled in subtlety, I designated my coffee cup as PEE CUP ®. I would be giving back to the coffee cup what it gave me. Except my gift in return wouldn’t be as much of an iced sweetened beverage, but more of a hot, steaming body fluid. I was delighted with the plan for my mobile urine receptacle. My brother and co-driver, however, was not. Upon realizing that I had to urinate, I announced that I’d be doing it in so could you please look out the window? Kthx.

Pat was not having any of this, and began loudly protesting. Under no circumstances would he let me pee in PEE CUP ® while he was sitting in the car. I refuted his argument, explaining that it would save us at least three minutes of time if I didn’t have to pull over at a rest stop and use the bathroom. With this solid logic, I screamed at Pat to turn his head and emptied the entirety of my bladder into the coffee cup. Once I was finished, Pat refused to let me keep PEE CUP ® in the cup holder despite my wishes to the contrary. I accommodated this request on the basis that he already allowed me to pee in the cup, so I’d allow him to throw it away.

Little did I know that only two years later, the original PEE CUP ® would have to hereafter be referred to as PEE CUP ® USA in an attempt to differentiate it from PEE CUP ® INDIA. I’d like to set up this story with a YouTube video I created just for this occasion. The video features two clips I recorded while in India last month on the video camera I coerced my father into buying for me. It was edited with the iMovie program on our iMac, which still remains an iMystery to me, hence the terrible video quality, choppy edits, and cheap backgrounds. Observe:



Why yes, that was Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” and Britney Spears’ “Everytime” playing during the textual interludes of the video. You’re welcome. And I have no explanation for my choice of either of these songs aside from the fact that both were readily available on my computer.

Because I failed to capture video evidence of what the lizard looked like due to paralysis with fear, I wanted to introduce it to you with this photo:

Needless to say, the presence of this nasty, slimy, speedy little bitch scared the shit out of me. I walked into my bathroom the evening after its first visit to discover that it had returned, prompting me to scream profanities in its general direction, then run upstairs to ask the priests we were staying with to remove it for me. One of the boys from the school hostel was again summoned to extract the lizard from my bathroom, while I nervously looked on, wondering if this freak animal had it out for me. Despite the fact that the lizard never returned after that second evening, I lived in fear each time I walked into my bedroom that it would be lurking on the walls, underneath the bed, in the toilet, on the back of my head, and etc. I was afraid all the time.

I quickly devised a foolproof system to detect the lizard’s presence, which involved me violently rapping a stick along the walls of the bathroom prior to entering, then listening for movement. I performed this ritual three times daily, every day, for the last two weeks of my stay in India. The only problem with my method of lizard detection was that it was extremely loud and, as such, unfit for the hours when most people are asleep. For some unknown reason, I awoke every day between 4:30 and 5 o’clock in the morning with the urgent need to urinate. Not wanting to wake everyone else, and also because I continued to be deathly afraid of the lizard, I devised a clever solution.

Behold PEE CUP ® version 2.0.

Heyyy Jesus.

Ahh, my good and faithful servant. My safeguard from the evil and murderous claws of the lizard. My capturer of 5 AM urine. I’d first like to let you know that this water bottle did not belong to me. It was furnished by the school where I was teaching. I’d secondly like to let you know that I sometimes…oftentimes…used it even when it wasn’t the early morning. Because sometimes going pee in a cup is just so much better than going in a toilet or on a carpet.

Shortly before the end of my trip, I opened the lid of PEE CUP ® INDIA and decided it wasn’t polite to leave behind a borrowed container that reeked of the distinct smell of human urine. Because I’m such a nice person, I first tried disinfecting it with some antibacterial face wash, and let it soak overnight. Apparently Clean & Clear does nothing for odor removal, because I’m fairly sure the water bottle smelled worse after this first treatment. I then came up with the idea to cleanse it with my expensive, fragrant shampoo. After an overnight soak in Biolage Hydrating Shampoo-infused water, the container was good as new. Sort of.

India gave me a lifetime of life changing memories, emotions, and experiences. It taught me about living in harmony with my fellow man, about mutual understanding between people of different religions, languages, cultures, and ideas, about what it means to be a citizen of the world. And what did I give India in return? An old blue water bottle that will forever smell of floral fragrance and human urine.

PEE CUP ® is a registered trademark of BAinEnglish.com. All rights reserved. Oh wait, jay kay! We commit copyright infringement on a daily basis.

A Tribute to Spellman Hall

Spellman Hall (1971-2011)

The Catholic University of America

Washington, DC 20064

Spellman Hall, a boxlike structure with irregularly shaped windows, the façade of a corrections facility, and the dank smell of freshman mistakes, met its demise last week when demolition work on it began. It was 40 years old.

From its humble beginnings in the early 1970s, when the structure was touted as a fine example of what was then considered “architecture” and “design,” to its final closure in mid 2010, when it was acknowledged that this building literally contributes no aesthetic value to the campus, Spellman Hall fought a courageous battle. And it lost.

Spellman Hall opened its prison-like doors to students for the first time in 1971. Named after a deceased cardinal, because all campus buildings are named after clergymen who would have otherwise gone forgotten, Spellman was never able to live up to the virtuous life of its namesake. Throughout its four decades of service, the building was a residence hall for a motley crowd of undergraduates, graduates, men, women, and more recently, men and women.

Yes, undergraduate men and women with unbounded hormones and an insatiable desire for drugs, alcohol, and destruction living together, in the same building, a flight of stairs apart from one another. Why this combination wasn’t immediately recognized as a recipe for disaster remains a mystery. As a result of this living arrangement, and under the influence of alcohol, Spellman residents took it upon themselves to make the building their own.

The moment Spellman residents began to feel as if the building was their home away from home was the moment they began to destroy it. Permanent marker profanities sprawled across the bathroom mirrors, holes punched into the study bubble walls, toothpaste smeared on the carpet, rotting, half-eaten Quiznos sandwiches in the drinking fountains. Refrigerators removed from the kitchen and pushed in front of RA’s doors, oven fires started by baking premade cookies still wrapped in plastic, throwing desks out of fifth floor windows. These things became declarations of unwavering devotion to Spellman Hall, from its residents, with love.

Spellman was home to the infamous Spelevator, a technological marvel that transported the building’s laziest and most inebriated residents from the ground floor to the 2/3 lounge or the 4/5 lounge. Because the building had a total of five floors, and because the elevator only made stops on Levels 1, 2, and 3, the elevator proved to do more harm than good on freshman move-in day, when parents and students alike wondered how the fuck they were supposed to move a 40-pound container of belongings to the top floor of the building when the elevator only went halfway up there.

Once the students were settled, however, so too was the issue of the Spelevator confusion. Instead of worrying about the elevator’s erratic floor numbering systems, Spellman residents began to worry whether or not the elevator doors would ever open once they were trapped inside. Perhaps owing to this fear, but more likely owing to a continuous, 7-day-a-week state of intoxication, residents began to decorate the interior walls of the elevator with illustrations of erect penises, with a variation of the words “FUCK,” “SLUT,” and “GAY,” and with their own urine.

As much as Spellman lived up to the hype of being the most troubled residence hall on campus, it equally lived up to a solemn, unspoken promise that it would provide a community for everyone. You may have been jolted from bed in the middle of the night because someone pulled the fire alarm, or because someone was being apprehended by Public Safety for throwing pudding-filled water balloons at the walls of the lounge. You may have been distracted from your studies because girls were wearing raincoats and shotgunning beers in the study bubble on a Tuesday night, or you may have been the one foregoing studying to go out on a weeknight. You may have been an RA that overlooked the smell of marijuana wafting through the heating vents from your neighbor’s room, or ignored the time when an intoxicated resident was urinating on the side of Spalding Hall at 3 o’clock in the morning. You may have been all of these things, but you belonged to Spellman, and Spellman belonged to you. Spellman changed you, it changed your entire college experience, and it did so for the better.

Spellman is preceded in death by St. Bonaventure Hall, Spalding Hall, and the dignity of every student who ever lived there. It is survived by Regan, Flather, Unanue, Englehard, and Conaty freshman residence halls. It will most miss Conaty Hall, its closest functioning neighbor and Southside companion from the beginning.

To Spellman Hall, and to Conaty and Spalding Halls as well: we are proud to be part of your 40-year history. We’ll miss you.

Click here for more pictures.

India(n men).

I’M BAAAAAACK! And I’m writing during daylight hours, so forgive me if this post is subpar. Come to think of it, I wish I always wrote in the late morning so I’d have an excuse as to why this blog is subpar. Waaaaaah waaaaah. But! I’d like to thank you for your patience during the last two months. I realize that rereading my synopsis of The Children’s Hour over and over again may directly result in suicide, so thanks for sticking it out and resisting that urge to hang yourself every time you ventured over to BAinEnglish.com. And if you did manage to end it all, thanks for not holding this blog liable for your family’s suffering.

As many of you know, the reason for my prolonged absence was a month-long trip to India from which I returned late Wednesday night. While in India, I “taught” 6th and 7th graders English at a school in a rural town in the southeastern part of the country. And by “taught,” I mean I primarily showed them pictures of my 21st birthday and answered their questions about what liquid was in all of my glasses. It’s called vodka, you should try it sometime. Now that the jet lag and 5 AM cravings for dinner have subsided, I feel like a dumb, entitled American once again. And let me tell you, it’s good to be back.

Starting with today’s blog post, I am going to inaugurate a series of posts on my experiences traveling within the Indian subcontinent. Some of you may be expecting a Julia Roberts-esque summary of the wonders that occurred to me while abroad. Welllll, my time in India wasn’t exactly marked by the same events that occur Eat, Pray, Love. Now don’t get me wrong, I did a fair amount of eat while there, but pray and love I did not.

As per usual, utterances of prayers were limited to the airplane ride on the way to and from India as I pleaded for God to spare my life so that I’d be able to live to tell this tale. In exchange for his benevolence, I’d give my life to him and clean up my act. No more swearing, no more gossip, no more sex with myself. Within the first 24 hours of being in the country, I had proclaimed to my 52-year-old and 80-year-old traveling companions that I wanted to “get off this fucking train,” I had continued to Reply All to the gossip e-mail chain I have amongst my coworkers, and I had gotten off. So, unless hand time is considered a form of love, I didn’t experience this emotion on my trip either. Had I written the Julia Roberts version of my journey to India, it would more accurately be entitled Eat, Complain, Touch Yourself.

Prior to departing for my trip on January 6, the only thing I knew about India could be summarized by the following YouTube video. And trust me, this song was stuck in my head during the entire 24 hours I spent airborne en route to Bangalore.

That’s right, you know which hole to put it. Clearly this is an especially profound song about India’s rich and varied cultural heritage across their 10,000 year history as the world’s most peaceful democracy. You’re welcome. The problem is that the man that stars in the music video is considered “attractive” by Indian men and women alike. Can you even imagine? Men in this country actually try to emulate his physical appearance.

The first of my Indian blog posts will appropriately be about the men of India. When I think of the foreign countries I’ve previously visited, I can’t help but coming to the conclusion that Indians are the best looking people I’ve encountered while abroad. Many have embodied the only three criteria I have for physical attractiveness: perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect teeth. I could throw in a subcategory of “girlish charm” to these other three requirements, but that is limited for Chace, Zac, and Stephen, three individuals whose perfection is unattainable to the rest of the mere mortals on earth, Indian or otherwise.

In summary, Indian guys are hot. Like really, really hot. AND WOW. I just did a Google image search to provide a few examples of attractive Indian men, but mostly came across seminude photos of guys wearing swimwear and turbans all at the same time. LOLOL. Oh Indian porn, you can’t swim with a turban on! After spending a good 20 minutes searching for image that would be appropriate for this family-friendly blog, I came across a single picture of a man I deem to be attractive according to Indian standards.

Do you see what I’m talking about? What nice complexion! And hair! And smile! I guess he’s an actor, but I have no interest in looking up his name, as it will undoubtedly be over 25 characters long, 75% of which will be repeated vowels. So let’s just go with the fact that this is an anonymous Indian actor who is nice looking. Happy? Good.

Enter the unfortunate part of the story. As you witnessed in the above video clip, not everyone in India looks like this nameless actor. In fact, there are a good number of men who deem it necessary to meet the following criteria in order to start their day:

1. Mustache

2. Flared pant legs

3. WHITE DENIM

I’m unfortunately not, in any way, kidding. I could be offended about each of these items individually, but to meet all of them together is simply a crime. I realize I’m not a trailblazer of fashion, as most days find me changing from gym shorts to scrubs and back into gym shorts, but I have a general idea of what’s considered fashionable. And the 1980s is not.

To begin, GQ India actually has a detailed analysis of mustache styles online. When I asked the men we were staying with in India why so many have mustaches, I was told that the mustache is a symbol of masculinity. I refrained from telling them that the mustache is a symbol of pedophilia in my country. Furthermore, I refrained from telling them that facial hair on another man does a number on your face when you’re making out with him, so I can’t imagine what women there are going through each time they kiss their husbands. I stand in solidarity with you, women of India.

Secondly, flare pants are everywhere. EV-AH-REE-WHERE. It was like I stepped back into the abyss that was the 80s when I got off the plane in Bangalore. And, for the 879th time in my life, I thanked God I was born towards the end of that decade and, as such, have no recollection of it. The shirts Indian men wear are generally decent, but their pants are another story altogether. I’m not sure why the memo that flares are no longer an acceptable form of clothing got lost, but it certainly wasn’t delivered to most of the 1.1 billion people that inhabit the subcontinent. I was hoping that my slim cut jeans (and boat shoes!!!) would have made an impression on the people of this country, but as you can see from the following picture, the Indian citizens were too repulsed to even look at me.

And finally, the biggest atrocity of all: white denim. Sorry to all the hipsters that invariably don’t read this blog, but I personally find white denim to be acceptable in approximately zero social situations. However, Indian men have not surprisingly found a way to combine both white denim and flare pants together to be worn on a daily basis. Add on an untamed mustache to this combination and what do you have? You guessed it, and the answer’s not a porn star. It’s an Indian man.

I’ll let you think about that for awhile while I begin growing a mustache and make a trip to Ragstock. Thank you from the bottom of my judgmental heart for returning to the blog and picking up with me where I left off. Expect several more posts in the coming days and weeks about my journey to India. Next up: pee cup.

xoxo.

UNNATURAL.

I know very little about my paternal grandfather due to the fact that he passed away before I was born. As such, the snippets of information I have learned about his life particularly fascinate me. For instance, I know that he was a family practice physician based in St. Paul and would often make house calls at a time when other people had the audacity to ask doctors to come to them. In the immortal words of Stephanie Tanner, How rude! Had he still been living when I was born, I would undoubtedly have better stories for my medical school application. Instead, I'm left to fabricate these stories.


Other facts about Dr. Decker include that he was sarcastic and used to drink chocolate syrup right out of the bottle. If there was ever a question as to why I'd like the opportunity to bathe in sugar crystals, here's the answer. Thanks, gramps. While the chocolate cravings might be the best indication of how my grandfather operated, I recently learned another bit of information that was particularly revealing.


This past summer, my aunt Jean invited me to her home for a birthday dinner in honor of her partner's son. There were five of us at this dinner, four of whom happened to be gay, and the fifth who happened to be my aunt Emmy, who was an honorary gay for the evening. In typical Emmy fashion, she announced to the table that she was the sexual minority there, made several inferences that she be purchasing alcohol for the partner's underage son, and then excused herself for a smoke break. In the midst of this, I started to talk to Jean about life as a gay individual at the Decker house in the early days.


Jean informed me that she had a distinct memory of watching television with her father and siblings one evening when a movie called The Children's Hour started playing. After it became abundantly clear that the film was about rumors of homosexuality, Dr. Decker expressed hesitancy at the thought of continuing to watch the movie with his children present. This thought apparently quickly passed, and he settled in to watch the film in its entirety. Oh hey, just like my dad! In 2000, when my parents, younger siblings, and I had frequent "family movie nights," my dad selected Me, Myself, & Irene for all of us to watch. The movie is rated R for "sexual content, crude humor, strong language, and violence." The very fact that the movie has a scene at a supermarket in which Jim Carey's character notices a woman buying a product called "Vagiclean" and states, "Vagiclean, huh? What's the matter, honey? A little extra cheese on the taco?" should have clued us in that this movie was inappropriate for children aged 7, 10, and 13. But thank God my dad has a sense of humor, as we prevailed and watched the movie through until the end.

With the above information in mind, I was eager to watch The Children's Hour for myself. Unfortunately, it took two months from the time that I had rented the movie on Netflix and a 17" inch snowfall yesterday to trap me in my house long enough to sit down and watch this cinematic masterpiece. For those of you who are interested in the film, you may want to stop reading now. I'm about to spoil it all for you, especially the end where the main character dies!!! Yeaaah, I'm sorry about that. I guess you'll have to keep reading now that everything's been forced out of the closet. Pun intended.

So! The Children's Hour is a 1961 black-and-white film starring Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, and James Garner. Apparently James Garner is not the father of Jennifer Garner, and that makes me sad. The central plot of the film is that Karen Wright (Audrey Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine) operate an all-girls boarding school in New England. Now if that isn't a setup for the lesbian movie to end all lesbian movies, I don't know what is. Even the school's name is hyphenated! It's like these women were preparing for marriage ahead of time so as to avoid that awkward conversation about renaming the institution (hyphen? no hyphen? combine both last names into a new, hybridized last name?) once they do the deed and shack up.

The first ten minutes of the film allows sexual tension to build between the two main characters in a way only a film from the 1960s could do. Apparently lesbians used to flirt with one another back in the day while tending to common household tasks such as cleaning up after dinner, drying the dishes, and denying their fiance's sexual advances.

The fiance I refer to is Dr. Joe Cardin (James Garner) and has been engaged to Karen for TWO YEARS without any success at setting a date. I'm sorry, but I will have the fucking wedding date set the second I become engaged, if not several years before that even happens. How does he put up with her?

Apparently Dr. Joe puts up with Karen because he "loves her" and wants to see the school she has founded with Martha flourish. Unfortunately, Dr. Joe doesn't realize that each night before bed, Karen and Martha exchange lusty touches in the presence of Martha's ironing board. Despite the fact that Karen and Dr. Joe eventually set a wedding date, the girls at the school begin rumors that Karen is resistant to get married because Martha is jealous of Dr. Joe. The implication, of course, is that Martha would like to have Karen for herself.

ENTER MARY.

Mary is one of the most infamous boarders at the Wright-Dobie School for Girls. She's constantly late for class, goes dumpster diving to scrounge around for things that she can regift, and complains of "chest pains" oh, about every day, for the sake of attention. This child could only have come into the world from the fiery pits of the hell, because she is one evil bitch. The shot of her face pictured above is repeated several times throughout the film, which leads the viewer to develop an unhealthy desire to wipe this girl from the face of the earth using any means necessary. As one YouTube commenter eloquently put it,

Why yes, I'll grant your wish to see another face shot of Mary. Careful when punching her face, though. Your computer screen might break.

Anyway, to condense a long series of events into a single sentence, Mary is repeatedly punished for all the stupid shit she does, begins to believe that Ms. Wright and Ms. Dobie "have something against her," and decides to start circulating a rumor to get back at them. That's right! Mary accuses Karen and Martha of fellating each other and scissoring every night once the girls go to bed. How does she know this? She hears "weird sounds" coming from Martha's bedroom. This accusation is only complicated by the fact that two of Mary's henchwomen overhear Martha's aunt (the school's music teacher) say that Martha's behavior is unnatural. That's right, unnatural. Or, as Mary's friend later puts it when explaining the term to the rest of the girls, "UN, like not, and NATURAL. NOT NATURAL." This, ladies and gentlemen, is the closest the movie gets to saying that the relationship between Karen and Martha is HOMOSEXUAL.


From this point forward, each time same-sex attraction is inferred, the music starts to swell as if something intrinsically evil is afoot. Mary whispers about Karen and Martha's late night strap-on sessions to her grandmother, and then shit really begins to go down.

For proof of the soundtrack's parallel between woman-woman love and the end times, watch this clip beginning at 6:35.



Once Mary's grandma begins to believe the little bitch, word spreads like wildfire that the boarding school's headmistresses are acting unnaturally with one another, if you know what I mean. This leads all the students to withdraw from the school and effectively collapses Karen and Martha's dreams of operating an educational institution where they can force all of the girls enrolled there to become lesbians and lead sexually deviant lifestyles. These charges of lesbianism go to court (because of course they do) and are upheld by the judge (because of course he would believe that lying bitch Mary is telling the truth).

Eventually an internal battle rages within Martha (seated on the left in the picture above) and she questions whether or not she actually loves Karen "in that way." Since she offers evidence of the fact that she's never loved a man, always thought Karen was so beautiful in college, and goes to lesbian-themed bar nights every Thursday, I'm going to go ahead and assume that she is, in fact, unnatural. Moving forward from this point, things get real touch-and-go. Karen breaks off her engagement with Dr. Joe because he actually wonders whether of not the two are "lovers." Karen asks Martha to go away with her and start a new life. And then this…

Karen seems to know something's up when Martha locks herself in her room without eating dinner (a warning sign if I ever saw one), so she attempts to break in with an elaborate candlestick that was just sitting in the hallway. Karen gains entry to the bedroom and sees this:

Welllll. That's an extremely depressing way to end this post. To lighten the mood, I'd like to return to Mary's face, followed by another YouTube comment.

The end.