The Unbeard-able Lightness of Being

Last week my husband walked into the living room and looked at me rather sheepishly.

I scrutinized him for a half-second before my heart dropped.

"You shaved your beard?"

He nodded slowly. "The razor slipped."

Right. After two days in Manhattan, my partner had yet to sight one hipster with facial hair. His growing self-doubt, along with his increasingly unruly beard, had him stroking his sparsely haired chin with growing apprehension.

And then it was gone.

When I was a kid I arrived home after school one day to discover my dad had shaved his mustache. I remember feeling profoundly uncomfortable, as if I had walked in on him without pants on and discovered the door locked behind me.

That's sort of how I felt looking at my husband. I mean, I am used to seeing him nude...just not that nude. I was suddenly looking at skin that hadn't been hairless in four years, almost the entirety of our relationship.

It was like walking in on my husband and finding him peeling his face off like the lizard queen Diana in the V Miniseries. Disturbing. And again, the echoes of a helplessness and discomfort I haven't felt since the '80s.

How is it that a thin and poorly groomed beard came to represent my life partner? Perhaps because its temperamental, burly, masculine, over-striving and yet doesn't look like it's even trying attitude was the perfect cosmetic signifier for my hubby.

Clean-cut, baby-soft, hyper-sensitive nicked skin... who is this stranger leaving shavings in my sink?

I've often thought I could identify any body part of my partner in a photo line-up but now, seeing his head in context and not recognizing it, I've got my doubts.

And maybe that's the real impact of lost facial hair: the phenomenological schism it creates between your experience of someone you love and your present witnessing of them. Knowledge and observation disconnect, which, surprise surprise, pretty much sums up my childhood.

So it seems my husband's clean-shaven face has erased years for both of us.

Where's Horatio When You Need Him?

Almost two weeks ago our brand new Audi A3 got jacked. Well, sort of.

Someone who had spent way too many hours playing Grand Theft Auto 4 decided to hop into our driver's seat and repeatedly ram a butter knife into the ignition.

I know this because when I got into the same driver's seat three days later I discovered a butter knife on the passenger side with the tip broken off. I also found a lighter and blood all over the steering wheel and driver's door handle.

While admittedly the new-car-and-leather smell had been getting on my nerves, the urban stench of depravity, nicotine and hemoglobin was hardly an improvement.

Sadly, instead of looking at car seats, the hubby and I are now shopping for The Club, that red beast that hooks onto your steering wheel to deter retards from ramming butter knives into holes where they don't belong.

To add to the frustration, our neighbor (a full-time sweat pants and beer cans kind of guy) said his tenant likely broke into our car. I called the cops to let them know where they could find a DNA link to the evidence they took from our vehicle (the perp's blood literally left a trail from our car to our neighbor's front door) and 10 days later...nothing. No follow-up interview, no phone call, nada.

I get that Horatio wouldn't be in any hurry to start up the Hummer for an attempted car theft. But I've been pulled over by cops in this city for jaywalking and biking on the wrong side on an intersection. Are our finest really too busy handing out tickets to actually solve crimes??

As for our car, it remains in the shop with the ETA of the replacement part being pegged at next week. Apparently Audi uses Viking ships to transport its parts from Germany.

If Your Friends Jumped Off a Bridge...Oh, Never Mind

What do you do when you're a bored high school student in Gloucester, Mass.?

You sign a pregnancy pact with your BFFs!

In a high school of 1,200 students, 17 girls under the age of 16 are entering summer va-kay with some serious muffin top action.

Residents blame the bad local economy, Time Magazine blames the school for "accommodating" pregnancies by offering onsite daycare. Meanwhile, the school's nurse and doctor resigned in protest in May after being denied the authority to provide birth control to students.

Expectant freshman students are apparently looking forward to the "unconditional love" their babies will provide. Very little is noted about the fathers, other than the school's principal discovering one of them is a "24-year-old homeless guy."

I feel sorry for these girls, mostly because they have totally bypassed the greatest phase of sexual development: dry humping.

This is the profoundly pleasurable stage of adolescence where down-the-pants action is still somewhat forbidden and all desire locates itself in the harsh rubbing of teenaged crotches. This jean-on-jean foreplay can last for hours, providing endless erotic ecstasy.

That is, until you actually have sex.

After that, dry humping never really regains its magic because instead of being an end in itself, it's relegated to the status of foreplay (not the forte of any teenaged boy, or homeless dude for that matter).

So, realities of mothering aside, young ladies, before you go signing a pregnancy pact, consider this: Are you really prepared to foresake dry humping for wet diapers?

Angelina Makes Us All Look Bad

Are you pregnant and feeling good about how you're handling all the changes in your life?

Well, unless you are expecting twins, piloting planes, leading peace missions to Afghanistan, having your doodles made into permanent tattoos and enjoying hot sex with Brad Pitt on a regular basis, guess what?

You're not feeling as good as Angelina Jolie.

When Angelina Jolie is not pregnant, her status as Better Than Everyone Else is slightly diminished. Sure, she is already the mother of four (soon to be six) but she slips her kids Cheetos and can be assumed to have a fleet of domestic help (despite her claim that nannies never sleep over).

However, pregnant-Angelina seems hellbent on remaining on the cover of every tabloid magazine, where her beaming plump-lipped smile can remind all women (pregnant or otherwise) that no matter how much they accomplish in life, They Will Never Be as Accomplished As Angelina.

Sure, you might be a pilot. But are you a pilot in your second trimester?

And hey, you might be keeping in shape while your belly expands, but would you call pregnancy "great" for your sex life? This morning I woke up to discover I no longer have the ability to turn myself over on our soft mattress. For a few minutes I panicked wondering how I was going to turn the alarm clock off.

Since when is feeling like an overturned turtle good for the booty (unless you are, in fact, a turtle)?

Never mind the multi-million dollar chateau in France, the mansion in New Orleans, the UN speaking engagements and Cannes Festival. Forget about the endless supply of designer bags, designer mat frocks, and cheekbones. I could look past the leading roles, the graceful and unwavering self-assurance and even the perfect body.

But please, Angelina. For the love of god. Go back to adopting. Until you are cursed with DNA that causes stretch marks, acne and sagging boobs, you need to stop creating such an unreasonable benchmark for pregnant women.

Because there is only one Angelina. Which means the rest of us are reduced to being that chunky ass in the portrait behind you. Our message is clear.

Mommy Herding May Cause Stampedes

Apologies for the delay in posting. I have taken on new professional responsibilities, which make blogging nearly impossible. It has also been a busy June with lots of birthdays, parties and I-thought-were-parties (yes, I showed up at a friend's house on Friday with a chilled bottle of Proseco and some stinky cheese only to learn that the party is actually next week).

But I did make it to my sister's fete on Saturday where I was faced with the first of what will inevitably be many instances of "mommy herding."

Mommy herding is what non-pregnant, childless people do to expectant mothers. It involves steering all the bumps in the room into one central area where the bump-bearers are expected to spontaneously connect over all issues baby-related and otherwise.

The hostess intro goes like this, "Amber, meet Jane! She's pregnant, too." Hostess exits. Two pregnant women are left staring at each other.

It is assumed that pregnancy is a universalizing force which can bond the most disparate of individuals. In fact, bringing two pregnant women together is the social equivalent of air-dropping a thousand mines into an open field.

See, when Jane tells me she's seeing an OB/GYN, she makes note of the hospital, relating a sense of pride in where she is delivering. I respond that I am using a midwife and immediately Jane wonders if I am judging her for using a doctor and I am wondering if she assumes I am a masochistic Wiccan.

When I ask Jane how the pregnancy has been for her, if she says it has been good, she sounds like a show-off. If she complains she sounds ungrateful. I admit to back acne and get a scrunched nose, but Jane admits to gaining 10 pounds more than me and a smug grin inadvertently pries my lips apart.

With the exception of steroid-pumped professional athletes, there is no one in the world with a more volatile competitive spirit than an expectant mother. Even the moms-to-be that, at eight months pregnant, brag about not having read a single book are still competing to win the unspoken title of "World's Potentially Greatest Mother." They're simply opting for the falsely humble "who-me?" approach to winning the title in which not only do they get to claim the prize, but they also get to claim that they weren't even really trying.

The hopes that us moms-in-waiting bestow upon our still-developing babies are huge but they hardly measure to the expectations we place upon ourselves.

Take our mounting insecurities, hormonal surges, and physical discomfort, and then double it by throwing us in the ring with another crazy, swollen lady and it is no surprise that us sober ladies at the party will opt for the company of our drunk baby-free friends.

At least we can feel reassured that we won't feel as bad as them in the morning.

The Long Overdue Sex and The City Review

I rushed out with the BFF to see Sex and The City the day after it opened and left the theatre determined to post a review that night.

Two weeks later and here it is. The reason for the delay? I felt obligated to take on every published review of the movie in order to re-affirm just how wrong they all are.

The task felt overwhelming and then irrelevant. Yes, Anthony Lane's New Yorker review was misogynistic and the accompanying caricature of the four girls was spiteful (it depicts Samantha, who is maybe a size 4, as an ogre). And Rick Groen's and Joanne Schneller's reviews in The Globe and Mail were baffling in their fervent distaste for the film. Both reviewers claim to be fans of the show and yet they both accuse the film of being a "disappointment."

The most popular accusation levied against the SATC film is that it presents Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha as cliches. Um, maybe that's because the women are so entrenched in our popular psyche that they are iconic figures, known intimately by millions and yet understood to stand in as symbols of feminine experience.

It isn't the film's responsibility to reveal the finer quirks and histories of the four women: we already know them. In the same way I don't need my girlfriend to contextualize when she says, "He made another excuse why he doesn't want kids" I don't need the movie to reveal what it is about Mr. Big that keeps Carrie coming back for more.

Ultimately, my movie-watching experience should outweigh the negative impact of these reviews. I have now spoken to eight different women, ranging in age from 28 to 62, who have seen the film and every one of them absolutely adored it. We laughed, we blew our snotty noses into popcorn-greased napkins, and we all felt a quiet sadness when it came to an end.