Juliette Miranda

Me being a girl and all, I’m typically bewildered by most things mechanical. I take it for granted that things like my toaster, microwave, and ipod all have the proper “stuff” to make them function, and believe that giving them an electrical source and the occasional polishing is more than enough maintenance to entitle me to a lifetime of good service.

I feel the same way about my car, really. Of course, I put more effort into maintaining it, but that’s mainly because the nice people who manufacture cars have done their best to make upkeep simple for retards like me. Those giant white arrows and “Put wiper fluid here, dummy” signs actually make me feel pretty cool and knowledgeable when I need to check my oil or something.

So it comes with great dismay and personal insult when I discover something of mine doesn’t work. I can usually be found staring at said item in utter disbelief, muttering something like, “I was so good to you! Why do you fail me? Why?”

Fortunately, I have my guy. He being a guy and all by default gives him the ability to fix anything. I usually stand in his studio doorway, broken item cradled in my arms and wrapped in a scarf, with the appropriate pouty look to show him just how desperate my situation is. Admittedly, there’s often a great deal of whining involved, but as a girl, and a reasonably cute one at that, I consider whining to be one of my greatest endearments.

My guy would probably disagree, but his opinion really doesn’t concern me. When something isn’t working, it is his job to fix it.

In fact, I said just that the other day when I discovered that the blade on my windshield wiper had become, for lack of a more technical term, flappy. The sad little blade just wouldn’t wipe anything at all, so I danced up to my guy and went into my standard pout-whine routine.

His solution was completely unacceptable: “Take your car to Jiffy Lube,” he said. “They’ll fix it.”

Uh, no. I don’t go to Jiffy Lube. My logical reason for such snobbery is that if anyone besides my dealership works on my car, it voids the warranty. It’s a convenient excuse, because the reality is, Jiffy Lube, and all other garages really, scare me.

My ignorance, I’m sure, shines from every pore when I walk into these places. It’s always dark and dingy and bursting with scary noises. There, they’ll screw me just for the fun of it. At least at my dealership, I know all the guys who work there. They know what I do for a living, we talk about our families, and it’s always clean and well lit. Even though I know they’re required by the corporation to screw me, at least I get a bit of polite conversation before and after.

So no, I tell my guy, I will most definitely NOT be going to Jiffy Lube, thank you very much. “Can’t you fix it?” I plead. “Can’t I just go to Target, buy a blade and have you put it on?”

For some reason, he laughed when I said this. “It’ll take a few minutes at Jiffy Lube,” he said. “They have special tools for that stuff.”

I was certain he was just being difficult. “C’mon,” I whined. “Please? What if it rains before I get to Jiffy Lube? What if some sleazy guy at Jiffy Lube decides to show me his ‘special tool’? Fiiiiixxxx it for meeeeeee!”

I may have pushed the whining bit too far. My guy got the same look on his face that he does when the cat refuses to stop clawing the carpeting. “If you are trying to guilt me into replacing your wiper blades, stop now,” he said.

“I do not have the tool to change the blade, I do not know where to get the tool, I do not change wiper blades, because like oil changes, it takes some guy who does it all day 10 minutes to do it for 20 bucks. So, if you are going to continue down this path and later tell me you have cut an entire roll of paper towels down the middle with your Santoku knife and strapped each half to each wiper blade, I’m going to be perfectly fine with that. You have officially entered ‘blah blah blah blah blah I don’t hear you’ territory.”

Huh. That wasn’t very nice.

He stomped off and left me to contemplate my gimpy blade. I didn’t take his rant too serious, mainly because HE seemed to be making a much bigger deal out of the situation. Special tool my ass.

I decided to call the only other man on the planet that is required to listen to my whining: my father. I suppose I could have just let the issue go, but since my guy insisted on being such a drama queen, I needed to find some way to retaliate.

“Well that wasn’t very nice,” my father said when I related the conversation. He instructed me to bring my car right over so he could show me how to replace the blades.

After a quick stop at AutoZone with my dad, I learned that my car requires a 17 and a 22-wiper blade (whatever that means), and that they snap on and off like Tinker Toys. It was a thrilling revelation, because it meant that, in addition to putting gas in my car, there are now four whole things I can do all by myself to maintain it. I’m so cool. (Yeah, cool like a monkey.)

Sure, the entire trip to see my dad took most of my Saturday (when I probably could have solved the problem on my lunch hour one week earlier when I had first discovered it), but that wasn’t the point. Snark was the point.

“I fixed my wiper blades,” I said to my guy over dinner.

“It’s about time,” he said. “I half expected to see you driving down the highway hanging out your window wiping the windshield with a tissue. So, was Jiffy Lube as horrible as you imagined?”

I smiled sweetly at his so-not-funny joke. “Actually, I changed the blades myself. Please pass the green beans.”

His mouth dropped open. “How did you… I mean, where did you… You’re so….”

“So what?” I asked. “Girly?”

He nodded.

Of course he was right, and the truth was I’d never go out of my way to do anything that would result in manual labor and the possibility of becoming dirty, but for once I was happy to trump him: “Yes, well, I can see how for a big MAN like you, changing blades might be a problem… seeing as how they SNAP. ON. AND. OFF.”

“Now then,” I said. “Do you want to put on a movie… Or do you need a special tool to do that?”

He looked completely flabbergasted, and it was all so satisfying that I decided to leave out the part about running to my father for help. It wasn’t anything that he needed to know.

Besides, he’ll figure my deception out soon enough. I’m sure it won’t be long before his wipers need to be replaced and he’s looking for MY help. God help me then.

The fact that I just involved myself in an online message board smackdown over why Rob Zombie is an outstanding director (even with his flawed remake of Halloween) leads me to believe I should probably lighten up just a tad. Either that, or I seriously need another shot of whiskey.

Regardless, I find myself at odds with more issues than usual these days and the residual anger is radiating into too many of my daily activities. I’m already an elitist; I don’t need to be an outright bitch, too.

It’s times like these, when my irritation and indifference and conflicting desires hit a disturbing crescendo, that I sink into what I like to call a Bukowski Binge. It’s a black mood to be sure, and typically involves a bottle of Jack, well worn copies of my favorite Charles Bukowski books, and about 45 pages of word vomit that I’ll write just to write.

My guy knows well enough to leave me alone when I get this way. He’s learned it’s better to take on the role of unobtrusive zookeeper and slide bits of protein under my door than to disturb whatever battle I’m fighting in my head. He is a smart man.

But I can’t wallow as much as I’d like, because practicality is, above all else, my bitch. And that, my friends, is my problem.

Were I to revel in my latest black mood, it would be a month or more before I’d emerge. Me and Buk would be playing the piano drunk, writing verse and getting it on (metaphorically speaking, seeing as how Bukowski is dead and all) while the world continued to spin around us, without us.

Isolation is indeed a beautiful thing.

Unfortunately, it is also completely impractical. Somewhere along the way I picked up responsibilities the same way I have issues, and I find that in order to maintain some semblance of adulthood, I must cater to them. Bills must be paid, work must be done and energy must be put into progress when all I really want is to be left alone to write what I want. Functioning symbiotically is not my strongest suit.

Such is life, I do realize this. But it doesn’t make me resent the obligation any less. And lately, it feels as though there is considerably more obligation being heaped on me to join rank and file with the rest of society in order to maintain respectable adult status. Somehow, it’s come to seem that I am not complete until I marry.

I will never understand the importance society places on marriage. That’s not to say I’m against marriage or that I don’t support it. What I don’t understand is the insistence that I do it, and that I should do it soon, less I spoil like an overripe banana. My life is not so lacking in meaning and commitment that I need to legally foist myself on my guy to justify my existence as a woman.

Still, though the “everyone’s doing it” rationale has historically had little affect on me, now that I see so many of my friends and relations joining the team so to speak by getting married, I’m starting to feel much the same way I did back in grade school. “Odd girl out” and “last picked for the team” catcalls are hard to shake.

It’s annoying that I feel this way at all. But, practically speaking, there aren’t many women in similar situations as me (meaning, in a monogamous and long-term relationship) who aren’t somehow manipulating, cajoling, or otherwise pleading for marriage with their significant others.

Those few of us who are, uncomfortably or otherwise, on the sidelines really only have inaccurate caricatures for support. Forgive me, but should I ever get to the point where comparing myself to anyone from Sex and the City becomes a valid justification for my life, I give the first person to encounter me carte blanche to stab me in the eye with a fork. (Because at that point, a fork in my eye will be the least of my problems.)

I can see how this sense of singularity drives many women to desperate measures. My own means of dealing with the pressure are just as extreme: rather than embracing marriage, I’m doing my best to distance myself as far from the notion as possible.

Seems the most practical coping mechanism, if you ask me. I’ve always felt most safe left to my own devices. My mother assures me with that attitude, marriage is the last thing that would ever be proposed to me.

I imagine she’d be right, in any other circumstance. But I’m banking on the fact that my guy knows both me and himself well enough to appreciate my bravado.

And even if he doesn’t, and all else fails, practicality be damned. I’ll always have Bukowski.