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Location: Work.
Listening: "Hands Clean" by Alanis Morissette.

Buttered toast with peanut butter and strawberry preserves. For the rest of my life, it seems, I will be eating buttered toast with peanut butter and strawberry preserves. Simply because it's the only food that I've had in the past week or so that hasn't made me deathly ill moments after eating it. Toast is, apparently, my friend.

In other thoughts, I'm having a particularly hard time with the piece Peter is working on right now--TD/OS. This is largely due to a visceral loathing that has developed in me for the theoretical protagonist (I refuse to sympathize with him and so tend to think of him as the anti-hero). It's at once disturbing and fascinating to me that a character Peter (or anyone, for that matter) has created could affect me so profoundly. I think the root of my response lies in what I see as the male fantasy of female adolescence (currently perpetuated by the media through teen pop idols such as Ms. Spears) being perpetrated through the character of Taylor and her interactions with Stephen (the anti-hero previously mentioned). Combine this with Stephen's perception of women as ultimately interchangeable (Taylor's reminding him of a former love of his who happens to be the sister of the other woman he is currently seeing, for whom he has little to no regard whatsoever) as well as the distinct absence of any women over "just shy of sixteen" who aren't in some way emotionally or mentally damaged goods and the result is my wondering if I'm missing my calling as a militant lesbian. The best way I can think to phrase it, currently, is that I find the piece to be an exploration of the, in my opinion, fractured perspective of men in their mid to late twenties who realize that they are unsatisfied with themselves and bring their frustration to bear on women in an effort to re-assert some form of learned patriarchal control to replace the control they sense that they've lost over their own lives. Add into that as well some of the Oedipal yearning for a return to that which is nurturing and safe (in the form of the mother-figure) and an idealization of young women as "untainted" (ie. closer to the image of the "pure" mother figure) as opposed to a view of women their age or older as flawed or unduly controlling and, in either case, threatening (to their perceived "freedom", their jobs, their self-esteem, etc.). I mean, really, if you were a guy in his mid-twenties who realizes that his life revolves around his position at work and what he can put on his credit card, wouldn't you seek to return to a safe place by getting involved with an underage girl who might be aware enough to carry on a conversation with you (and possibly desire you), but who can also easily be shaped into what you've always wanted in a woman (and what you can readily control)?

I was listening to the radio this morning as I drove into work and happened to hear Alanis Morissette's new song "Hands Clean". I have an on-again, off-again relationship with her music in that some of it hits spot on for me and the rest of it just grates. This song, however, seemed very timely in that it reminded me of one or two people from my past who I happened to be thinking about at the time and of what more often than not results from relationships like the one Stephen is attempting to have with Taylor.

If it weren't for your maturity none of this would have happened
If you weren't so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself
If it weren't for my attention you wouldn't have been successful and
If it weren't for me you would never have amounted to very much.

Oh this could be messy
But you don't seem to mind
Oh don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this

You're essentially an employee and I like you having to depend on me
You're kind of my protégé and one day you'll say you learned all you know from me
I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian
I know you sexualize me like a young thing would and I think I like it

Oh this could get messy
But you don't seem to mind
Oh don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this

What part of our history's reinvented and under the rug swept?
What part of your memory is selective and tends to forget?
What's with this distance it seems so obvious?

Just make sure you don't tell on me especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse
I wish I could tell the world 'cause you're such a pretty thing when you're done up properly
I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body

Oh this could be messy and
Oh I don't seem to mind
Oh don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime.

The song shifts back and forth from the older male to the younger female narrator and the thrust of the lyrics really resides in the tone of voice in which the song is sung.

Just read Peter's entry involving the Capon quote. I'll have to speak to that later, but for now will say that, while I understand Capon's use of that particular situation to illustrate a point on grace, I don't believe that a state exists in which one can shake off the trappings of personal responsibility. One never truly "gets away" with anything.