Michelle's House of Horrors

In the dream, I was walking past my car. It was parked in front of a school building. All of the doors were open, including the hatch, and the keys were sitting on the front seat. The car key was not the same as it was before. The ignition has been taped off with some sort of template, and the stereo is gone, replaced by a brass template stamped with the word “recycled.”

I closed all of the doors and windows.

I was confused and annoyed, because my car was supposed to be there for a general service which has nothing to do with the key or the stereo. I went inside to the service department, which looked suspiciously like the reception area outside the principal’s office in a grade school.

A service person walked by, and I asked him if he knew anything about what was going on with my car. He said that the lead guy mentioned that it was there because the stereo kept failing. I told him the stereo was fine, asked why the keys were replaced and he didn’t know. He took the new key out of my hand and said he saw a problem and while I tried to explain the the key was brand new and not mine, he got a huge power tool to replace a screw in the key fob. As he was kneeling down, someone opened the door next to him and knocked him over. He didn’t drop the key or lose any parts while he fell. I remarked that I was impressed by his ability to stick with a screw and he laughed.

He said he’d check with Ron about when my car would be ready. A friend tapped me on the shoulder and said he had saved me a seat in the waiting room, which looked a lot like a classroom. It had benches like pews instead of desks.

In the waiting room, we chatted. Suddenly, he shifted on the bench we we sharing so my hand was on his crotch and he kissed me in a way more than friendly way. A way I enjoyed immensely. Based on what I felt under my hand, he did as well. When we came up for air I whispered that he was crossing a line, and tried to move my hand. People were watching us. He put my hand back, kissed me again and mumbled something about not wanting to be in anyone’s pictures. I didn’t understand, but kissed back. He pressed my hand harder against him.

A mutual friend came up to us, put her hand on my shoulder and said “Facebook selfie! The dog will love this one!” and starting taking pictures of us with her phone.

And the kissing continued.

A man next to me asked me, in Persian, what “capably” means in English. I didn’t answer immediately because of the kissing, but my friend stopped and said I should answer because not answering was rude.

So I explained “capably”, and then got up to find out what was going on with my car.

The office wasn’t there anymore, so I wandered down hallways in the school. Each room had a pull down shelf outside of it, most of them contained mini-bars.

I never did find out why my stereo and keys were replaced. When I went back to my car, my friend was in the passenger seat waiting for me. Listening to music. I put the car in gear, and he picked up my hand, turned it over and kissed the inside of my wrist as we pulled out of the parking lot.

I woke up wondering why no one ever kisses the inside of my wrist and then fell back asleep wondering if there would be more kissing.

There was not.

Why not?

I like kissing…

Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.
–Tina Fey, Bossypants

When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.
–Bette Davis

Why are women so humorless?
–random unfunny men

The other day, I watched a documentary about women in comedy, and why women are not considered as funny as men.

They started with Jerry Lewis, who is infamous for finding women unamusing. They also talked a little about Christipher Hitchens’s Vogue article about women and humor.
He talks about the “fact” that women don’t need to be funny because it isn’t important to men but that women do think it is important. He also says that men like to make women laugh because it’s a little like an orgasm.

He takes it as a given that women are not as funny as men, or rather that women are less frequently funny than men. Moreover, he claims that the few funny women out there are funny because they are lesbians (ie like men, they need to be funny because women think it’s hot),because they are Jewish and inherently like men (uh, what?) or because they are big/fat/crude like men.

Or then there’s the hypothesis that men don’t want women to be funny because humor is a sign of intelligence and they don’t want rivals for that. Which doesn’t say a lot for either their own intelligence or self-confidence if it’s true.

It’s not really even worth a rebuttal. Yes, there are a lot of women who are not funny. A lot of men, too. Of course, men’s opinions about that, like everything else, were the only ones that counted for several centuries.

The saddest thing about that is that people, including women,believe what they read in books, newspapers. What they see on TV or films. For too many years, those voices have been disproportionately male. So even a lot of women believe that female comedians are not as funny as the men are.

There is not a thing wrong with men or their opinions, but when only their voices are heard it gives all of us a distorted view of everything. We need everyone’s perspective.

From my own anecdotal and entirely unscientific point of view, I would say that the women I know are every bit as funny as the men. Of course, according to Hitchens, I am pre-programmed to find that attractive. It might indicate that I am a bisexual who sees that sexy humor in everyone regardless of their gender.

I like boobs. I am fat and have been known to be crude. Does that mean I am qualified to be funny? Should I consider a part-time career in comedy? Probably not, since I was honestly not sure when I first read the article if Hitchens was being humorous. I kind of want to Google around even now and see if other people think he is.

Is that a sign that he isn’t funny or that I don’t have a sense of humor?

Comedy is tough.

[poll id=”4″]