Dissonance

It's Monday morning and I'm nearly apopleptic with rage.

One of my building neighbors has apparently stolen the communal snow shovel. Stolen the communal snow shovel after only shoveling out the two feet in front of their apartment stoop. After other building neighbor and I shoveled out their sidewalks twice yesterday. As a result of the neighbor absconding with the snow shovel, all of the snow is slowly being tamped down by bootprints, which will ultimately make it harder to remove. Although, in all reality, that's only about half of what has me so enraged.

I'm really salty because I have to wear pants to work today.

Let me backtrack a bit. We had a snowstorm here on Sunday. It was the first one of the season and because I didn't have to leave the house for anything urgent, it was a welcome reason to slow down. I spent the day drinking strong coffee, watching Moonrise Kingdom, listening to Curtis Fuller, and reading.

I've been working on Dracula since about August. I often have one book that I pick up and set down, usually on my Kindle, as I'm reading through other things. Dracula has been nice because I knew enough of the basic plot to be able to have long stretches between reading it without losing the thread of the story. I've really gotten into it over the past couple weeks for some unexpected reasons. As I was reading through parts of it, particularly Dracula's attack on Mina, I got a little, well, flushed. Like, romance novel flushed. I was a little embarrassed by my reaction and texted a friend who had recently finished the book asking if she had a similar experience. She was horrified, I think, and after calling her a repressed Irish Catholic, I moved on.

My friend Kerry introduced me to Dessa, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, and is the one who convinced me to go into therapy. As a result, I roundly consider her the source and fountain of all truth. I also know that she read and loved Dracula, so I talked to her next. When I said something about my reaction and how Bram Stoker couldn't have accounted for 21st century kinks, she set me aright, telling me about coded eroticism in gothic horror. Armed with the knowledge that I wasn't a freak, I immediately indulged my inner lit crit nerd and spent the rest of the afternoon reading essays on eroticism in gothic horror (and cursing the fact that I no longer have easy access to literary journals.) After a few hours of mulling over and ruminating on said coded eroticism I started to have a series of conversations with some very smart, very hip feminists about sexuality, desire, and contemporary coded erotica not only in fiction but in media across the board. 

What I discovered is that a shockingly high number of my bright friends suffer pretty intense cognitive dissonance when it comes to attraction and desire in their own lives. What I mean, of course, by cognitive dissonance is that what we expect to turn our crank doesn't necessarily do the trick. And we all often get caught off guard by what actually triggers desire in us. For example, you're on a date with an objectively gorgeous guy but he doesn't know/care that Thomas Edison did his best to undermine Nikola Tesla's career. There's a part of you that thinks: "Big deal, this guy looks like Ryan Gosling." But there's another, louder part of your brain that shouts, literally shouts at you: "YOU CANNOT TAKE SOMEONE HOME WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT A DOUCHE THOMAS EDISON WAS TO TESLA. HE PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN HAVE BOOKS IN HIS HOUSE." The cognitive dissonance is the break between what you think you're supposed to want (Ryan Gosling look-alikes) and what you want (science nerds.) Alternately, you read romance novels when you'd really rather be reading not-so-subtle power play in gothic horror.

These are, of course, examples that have never happened to me.

Now, about the pants.

Some context is required. If I am not outside being active or lounging around my house in my sweats, chances are over 95% that I am wearing a dress. I wear them to work. I wear them on first dates. I wear them running errands around town. I'm a dress enthusiast partially because they are oddly practical. Dress, tights, shoes, you're out the door without worrying about how well things match. Practicality is the easy to explain aspect of my sartorial choices. The other is going to require a roundabout explanation.

I have stunningly beautiful friends. Like, get asked if they've ever been considered being a model stunningly beautiful friends. Their thighs don't touch. They have hair that is so straight and shiny it looks like it comes out of a shampoo commercial. They have perfect teeth and tan in the summer and don't bite their nails.

And I've . . . well, I've got angles and lighting that work for me. I've also got a deceptively good sense of humor, I understand affect/effect, I'm well-read and a little brainy, and I like to think I'm on the charmingly crazy side of things rather than the "you don't want to stir that pot of crazy" crazy side of things (ever noticed how many gorgeous people are completely bananas?) And for years I thought that the humor and the high degree of literacy and relative-mental-normalcy were fine. That I didn't have any hangups from spending so much time with good looking people. Then I realized that I had to wear pants to work today and pitched a fit.

Wearing dresses for me started as a way of leveling the playing field, of dealing with my (apparently terrible) self-esteem and jealousy. After awhile it became less about leveling the playing field and more like putting on a suit of armor. If I dressed in a specific way people would respond to me differently. And wearing a pair of jeans or dress pants out made me feel less like a confident, funny, brainy awesome catch and more like the frumpy wallflower who always gets asked "so, tell me about your friend."

Oh, hello cognitive dissonance. Apparently you're not only a part of my sex life but of my self-perception as well.

While we were talking about Dracula and eroticism yesterday a friend said to me that Victorians understood more about sexuality and desire than we give them credit for understanding. The actual physical process of sex was certainly more of mystery than it is to us in 21st century. But their fiction managed to illustrate desire and eroticism in these coded, complex, compelling ways. In the 21st century we understand sex in its mechanics (thanks, internet!) but understand so little of what makes us tick, what informs our desire and our sexuality. As a result, something as idiotic and simple as wearing a pair of corduroys to work on a frigid day can suddenly become loaded and coded in ways we (I) didn't anticipate. What started as a clothing choice suddenly becomes an example of cognitive dissonance in a profound way.

I often tease a friend of mine because she has a deep, intense love for Victorians. On more than one occasion I've admonished her about gender and society, environmentalism  restrictive fashion, etc. during the time period. I'm chagrined to have to tell her that Victorian literature, with all of its sexual subtext and coded eroticism,  has managed to teach me something about not only my self-perception, but about my sex life as well.

Thanks, Bram Stoker.