by Joni Cole
For Mary, having a long-distance boyfriend meant spending Friday and Saturday nights in her apartment, relentlessly replaying Karla Bonoff albums. If she did venture out to socialize, she usually wore bib overalls, indisputably one of the most powerful defenses against male advances, sexual or conversational. In this way she remained loyal to the man with whom she hoped to share a future.
I also had strong feelings for my long-distance boyfriend (feelings that ranged from maybe-love to irritation that he would inconvenience me by moving away). Unlike Mary, however, I continued to date and go out on weekends. (And I must say I looked hot in my harem jeans and off-the-shoulder Flash Dance sweaters.) It made no sense to close myself off to other opportunities, I reasoned, especially while my unclothed body still looked fairly good in dim lights. Eight seasons of field hockey throughout high school and college had earned me those firm thighs, and it just seemed wrong to squander the few good years left on them waiting at home for a sign from the Midwest.
But was I being disloyal? I often found myself debating the integrity of my behavior, especially in comparison to Mary’s unwavering display of devotion. Then again, I would bristle, her self sacrifice struck me more as weak than virtuous. It has always left me cold, when women pine for elusive men. Love them, of course, if it can’t be helped (I certainly knew that feeling), but for goodness sakes, stop behaving like a martyr, wearing out your vinyl records.
In the end it was a moot point, whether Mary or I had the right attitude toward love. Within a year we both had married our long-distance boyfriends, and are still married to them. Twenty-five years later, I know that loyalty is the cornerstone of my enduring marriage, of any marriage, really…that is until I turn on the TV and see yet another wife, one not so lucky in love, standing by her man as he apologizes for his multiple affairs, and, oh, by the way, he is indeed the father of his assistant’s baby, a fact he admits, but only after being shamed into submitting to DNA testing.
Dog.
Obedient.
Dog.
Work like a dog.
These last associations brought to mind a tour I’d taken with my family to the first commercial pretzel bakery in America, established in 1861. We were among a small crowd of visitors, including children on a field trip from a nearby Mennonite elementary school. All of us gathered around a long table in the original bakery, eager to get a hands-on lesson in pretzel twisting.
“When the bakery first opened,” our guide, a jovial, big-bellied retiree smiled, “twenty women stood around this very same table, working six days a week, ten hours a day, twisting pretzels.” As he talked, he divided a pile of rather grey pretzel dough into small sections for each of us.
“Who can tell me what this instrument is for?” the guide gestured to a huge wooden paddle near a barrel marked flour. It seemed obvious that the heavy board was for mixing large batches of dough, but I didn’t speak up because the question was clearly intended for the children in the audience. My own daughters, who hadn’t been too keen on taking this tour in the first place, remained silent, as did the well behaved Mennonites.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” our guide winked at a little girl with long blond braids capped by a lace head covering. “This giant paddle was too keep the women who worked here in line.” He chuckled and made a smacking motion with his hand.
Was that supposed to be funny? I thought. Was this some kind of twisted pretzel humor? Given the epidemic of violence against women around the world—especially against younger women—this kind of cavalier joking only trivialized the issue. I looked around to see mostly smiles or expressions of boredom. Maybe I was over-reacting?
The guide went on to explain that pretzels were first invented around 600 AD by a monk who was working in the kitchen. He was playing around with his dough (now that statement begged a joke), when he happened to twist it into a form resembling arms crossed in prayer. Inspired by his design, he offered these baked pretiolas to children as a reward for their reverence.
“The women who worked here,” the guide added in his cheerful manner, “were expected to twist fifty pretzels a minute.”
“Were all the pretzel twisters women?” I asked, mostly out of curiosity, though I still felt vexed by his earlier comment. “Didn’t any men have to twist fifty pretzels a minute for ten hours a day, six days a week?”
“Now why would a man work for just ten cents an hour?” This time the jolly fucker aimed his wink at me.
Dog.
Trained.
Dog.
Leash.
As in this recent comment from a friend of mine, “Boy, your husband sure gives you a long leash.” My friend was inspired to say this after I went dancing two nights in a row without my spouse, a.k.a. the leash holder.
“I just like to dance more than he does,” I explained, which was the truth. But after stewing about this comment for days, I realized what I really wanted to say was, Are you kidding me? What century are we in? Since when does a wife need permission to go dancing? And this thought opened up a floodgate of feminist indignation.
Why are some elected officials (male and female) determined to set back women’s rights?
Why do female employees still earn less pay for equal work?
And why doesn’t somebody slap Don Draper?
Of course, that last statement put me on par with the pretzel tour guide. But hear me out. For those of you who have never watched the TV series Mad Men, a show set in the early 1960s, Don Draper is the main character, a gorgeous, talented advertising executive who is also a sexist product of his times. He cheated on his wife before she left him, and keeps several mistresses. And while his attitude toward women at his firm isn’t nearly as loathsome as that of some of his male co-workers, he still just doesn’t get it.
Maybe because I worked in advertising for years and never liked it, or maybe because Mad Men is set in an era when housekeeping and raising a family were still considered ideal female roles, I find the show almost too irritating to watch. In fact, the few times I’ve tuned in, I have wanted to slap Don Draper myself, this despite the fact that his jaw line is made of granite. Of course that impulse is often followed by a mental image of him stopping my white-gloved hand mid-slap, and then lowering me to the conference table where we enjoy wild, consensual sex. But this only clarifies that it is not Don Draper’s physical dominance that offends me, only his assumption that I should fetch him his coffee or that he, by virtue of his gender, can write better advertising copy than me.
By this point in the word association game, an obvious theme had emerged related to my feelings about the Chinese zodiac. Clearly, I concluded, being born in the Year of the Dog riled my feminist sensibilities. Yes, I loved dogs as pets, but I didn’t want their most notable attributes—domesticated, obedient, waiting around for people who have been dead for nine years—to be my primary assets. Or was I just being snarky?
Dog.
Bitch.
Here was yet another one of my least favorite words, too often applied to any woman who exerts a strong voice or stands up for herself. That said, lately I’ve noticed that some women writers are co-opting the term for their own purposes. Looking for some tough love on how to lose weight and be healthy? Consult the best-selling book Skinny Bitch. Want to read about what women really think about their relationships? Let The Bitch in the House tell it to you straight. While I still can’t get past the ugly tenor of that word, and prefer to think women can do better than resorting to a mood-swing mentality to communicate their wisdom, these authors did give me an idea.
If I have to be a dog, I thought, then why not redefine that label to my liking? Rather than resist my birthright, why not embrace it and capitalize on its strengths? After all, even in the Chinese Zodiac there has to be an alpha dog, and that is one label, I’ll admit, that suits me just fine. With this broadened perspective, I realized that I didn’t need to feel at odds with my birth year; I could move on and form new associations. In fact, I could imagine a whole
new meaning for the Year of the Dog:
This is the year we eliminate sexism and gender discrimination.
This is the year we put a stop to domestic violence.
This is the year we never have to see another one of those liquor ads featuring a half naked woman draped over a tuxedo-clad male.
And so, as a self-proclaimed alpha dog, I invite everybody—not just those who share my sign in the Chinese zodiac, or all those other dog freaks like me, but also ambitious and industrious rats, jolly tour guides, and even Don Draper and cat people—to declare themselves honorary dogs. I know my idealistic vision of the Year of the Dog doesn’t quite match the reality of the times, but we might as well keep the faith. Because as that statue of the loyal Hachikō serves to remind us, even if today doesn’t bring us what we’ve been hoping and waiting for, there’s always tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that.
Acknowledgments
In one essay in this collection I make a comment about how gratitude lists get on my nerves. Yet as I sat down to write these acknowledgments, I started feeling weepy and sentimental before I had even typed a word.
Thank you to my editor, Jeremy Townsend, for believing in this book, and for laughing with me, not at me. I am also grateful to have my agent, Lisa Bankoff, in my corner, and for Anne Adams, editor of the Valley News, who indulged me with a newspaper column, despite my inability to meet word counts. I also want to say a special thank you to Nancy Fontaine, my part-time muse, part-time Web site creator, and full-time friend through many years and five books.
With much appreciation to those friends who not only make me happy, but make me write: Meg Brazill, Steve Cahill, Sharon Comeau, Tracy Comeau, Robin Curtiss, Suzanne Coté Curtiss, Dan Deneen, Geoffrey Douglas, Cassidy Flanagan, Carla Gericke, Ernie Hebert, Judy Janoo, Becky Joffrey, Colleen Marshall, Marjorie Matthews, Deborah McKew, Frances McManus, Bindi Rakhra, Do Roberts, Jack Rochester, Emelia Senteio, and Elise Tillinghast. And to all the writers in my workshops—you show me how it’s done.
Because most of the family I grew up with are the opposite of touchy feely, let me also take this opportunity here, at a comfortable distance, to say I love you to Jeanne, Jill, John, and Brian. And to my sister Jeanne, in particular, thank you for being there every day.
And to my mother, Joan Hyman, who gave me a lifetime of heartwarming and hilarious bad-dog stories.
About the Author
Joni B. Cole is the author of the critically acclaimed Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, and the creator of the This Day book series, including Water Cooler Diaries: Women across America Share Their Day at Work. Her creative nonfiction has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in a diversity of literary publications. Joni runs the Writer’s Center of White River Junction, Vermont, and is a frequent speaker and teacher at writing conferences across the country. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two daughters. For more information: www.jonibcole.com
1 The Pomeranian was just fine. I, on the other hand, still have flashbacks.
Copyright © 2011 by Joni B. Cole
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PublishingWorks titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, a division of Perseus.
LCCN: 2011913641
eISBN : 978-1-935-55745-6
Certain essays in this book have appeared in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Image Magazine, Northern New England Review, the Valley News, and Woodstock Magazine.