ickis.com / Julene Horowitz

Let me start by saying this post does not in any way mean I am going to change what kind of shit I post around here. There’s some history and wit wrapped up in my self-indulgent (and sometimes self-depreciating) posts here. But I do care about blog content leading to accusations of wigger-dom. I mean, am I verging on being one just for posting about rap on my blog? I can’t do anything about the fact that I’m white, but I do enjoy listening to rap or top 40′s clubhop or whatever appropriate music-snob term I should be using. After my hipster asshole summer playlist, it’s not like any of you doubt me when I say I listen to a broad spectrum of music and half of it probably sucks.

Sometimes I wish my IRL friends couldn’t come across my internet stuff, especially here, because they talk too much shit. Case in point:

[My BFF]: You’ve been writing good stuff lately
[Me]: thx, people seem to like it
[My BFF]: It’s the old edgy hilarious girl, and not the wanna be wigger girl :]
[Me]: … i was never a wanna be wigger girl. how dare you!
[My BFF]: You were coming close for awhile.
[Me]: WHAT?
[My BFF]: But you were never quite there :]
[Me]: bullshit. when?
[My BFF]: You wrote about nothing but rap stars petty crap exclusively for a few months, it was absurd. I couldn’t determine if it was to be ironic or something.
[Me]: *pause* ….

What constitutes as wigger-dom, anyway? I’ve jokingly talked about white kids appropriating black culture (re: Wu-Tang, whom I adore) but I don’t think that’s the same. There’s no racial identity crisis going on here, I guess I just don’t like the idea that any particular music sub-culture (i.e. rap music) belongs to one race… or more confusingly, that it’s a bad thing. I love all my nerdy white friends with their trance music collections, can’t they just let me want to embrace Cam’ron and his purple fur get-up?

ickis: i dream of switching teams from Julene Horowitz on Vimeo.

Julene’s Hipster Asshole Summer Playlist, 2010
Pretty Lights – “Hot Like Sauce”
The Kooks – “Always Where I Need to Be”
The Virgins – “Rich Girls”
Matt & Kim – “Daylight”
La Roux – “I’m Not Your Toy”
Lykke Li – “Let It Fall”
Phoenix – “Lisztomania”
Yelle – “Ce Jeu”
Dragonette – “I Get Around”
Little Boots – “New In Town”
Santogold – “I’m A Lady”
Two Door Cinema Club – “You’re Not Stubborn”

One of my roommates called me neurotic yesterday, and I’m wondering if they’re right. What happened is this: someone put a pen through the dryer which means ink exploded all over the damn thing. The responsible roommate didn’t inform the rest of the house about this or bother to clean it up… so my clean clothes went through and came out with quite a few stains yesterday morning.

I discovered this at 7am after the gym and before the shower. Let’s not sugarcoat it: I completely lost my shit. I take care of my things – especially the nice ones (like my Oscar de la Renta button up, overpriced designer silk romper, favorite over sized plaid shirt or the cutest pair of gray panties known to mankind–acquired at Gap Body, FYI) that were in this particular load of laundry. The full-on meltdown immediately followed in my kitchen, complete with waterworks and nonsensical muttering under my breath, all before 7:15am. I used an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured so much Goo-Off over my clothes that it ate all the nail polish off my fingers. Huffing fumes is a great way to start your day, for the record. It took another two hours after work with a second bottle of rubbing alcohol and the Goo-Off to get all the spots off my clothes, plus 40 minutes to clean out the inside of the dryer.

It seems the romper will have to be dyed navy or be written off as a total loss, but the clothes are mostly salvaged. None of the roommates understand why I’m still pissed. In fact, they insist I’m being overly neurotic about this.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m the house Dish Nazi and everyone feels my wrath if the person with bathroom duty that week tries to cut corners. Messy kitchens and dirty bathrooms are gross, okay? I’m not a 19 year old college student striking out on their own for the first time; I’m an adult and my house is not going to look like it did five years ago. In this instance, it’s just a respect issue. I would’ve taken a whopping three minutes to put a Post-It on the dryer and 40 to clean it themselves when they got home.

There’s only 150 days until the lease it up. Someone reassure me it’s not too soon to start a countdown.

As the weather continues to get warmer, every place I find myself knocks their AC up a notch or three. It’s funny, something we all consider so essential during the summer is still a novelty to me. I grew up living in a house and riding in cars that felt more like ovens. A/C was a luxury, and we weren’t partaking.

I don’t want to call my parents cheap because that’s insulting, but they were. At night they’d open all the windows, turn on ceiling fans in every room and just let the cool(er) night air blow through the house. When my mom got up in the morning she’d make the rounds, shutting windows and the back door in an effort to keep the house cool all day. Usually around noon all the cold air had escaped from our comings and goings. For the record, a brick house in direct sunlight does not self-refrigerate.

My dad’s beat up Honda hatchback and my mom’s silver minivan never had AC either, as far as I know. Actually, I think they both had it but my parents never turned it on. We were forever driving around with the windows down, holding cold water bottles against our chests on the hottest July days when we got stuck in traffic and there was no air movement.

Around the time I was seven a man rolled up in a Sears van, there to install one of those giant metal AC cooling units at the back of our house. I feel bad for that installer in retrospect, I must’ve spent all afternoon looking over his shoulder and asking questions. Yes, I was “that kid” that pestered repairmen, manual laborers, painters, plumbers… I was intrigued by any skill that could only be done with your hands. Several hours that felt like light years in kid-time later, the unit was installed.

Except my parents didn’t turn the damn thing on all summer, except during a three day super-heat wave. They installed a locked box over the thermostat, determined to keep my grubby little kid fingers from putting everything I read in the manual to use once they weren’t looking. I spent a lot of time sitting in front of industrial size box fans over the next few years, sure my parents were trying to kill me with every minute that our shiny new-ish A/C unit went unused. My parents kept a tight leash on A/C usage during the summer months for as long as I can remember. Even when my mom replaced her minivan, the windows had a tendency to get rolled down every time we mentioned it was hot outside. (She still does this, according to my brother.)

My exposure to the luxury of air conditioned living was limited to the houses of friends with rich parents and trips to Target or the grocery store. Every kid hates running errands with their parents, but I found some small good in it. The endless hours spent following my mom up and down the aisles was worth it for the two hour break from the heat. Of course I was all the more miserable once we started walking across the parking lot to her minivan, little wavy heat lines rising off the pavement as far as my tiny eyes could see. It’s amazing how many unnecessary trips I found myself convincing my mom to make and the number of kids I hated but hung out with all for the sake of air conditioning.

Was this a lesson from my parents? Possibly.

When they signed the paperwork on my first (used) car, they refused to help me get one with A/C. I spent many summer days embarrassed by the fact that the back of my shirt was soaked in sweat after driving to work. The only requirement I refused to budge on when I bought my car last summer was the AC, but I rarely turn it on. I roll down the windows, open the sunroof and sweat just as much on the black fabric seats of the Mazda as I did on the gray ones of my last car. Sure, I could turn it on but it kills my gas mileage and I feel disconnected from other miserable travelers with my windows up to trap in every last bit of cold air.

In realizing my own hesitance to take advantage of such a modern marvel, a small sense of pride swelled. I don’t need that cold air in my face in the middle of July, nor do I have to find a home that is centrally cooled. Just me and my box fan, all summer, forever…

As a girl I think it’s safe to say most females somewhere in my age bracket are seeking out their ideal relationship romantically. Unfortunately for them, that relationship has been defined by Disney movies–and we all know how likely it is that real life is going to be anything like a fairy tale (at least most of the time).

There’s three important factors when we’re talking about the kinds of relationships women think they should be having. I think taking these into account when entering or observing a relationship could potentially really do something for our generation… like maybe, helping us having meaningful and open lines of communication. I realize that’s asking a lot, but let’s start out with the first element responsible for relationship letdowns and we’ll see if you’re on the same page I am after.

Element one: A successful father figure with appropriately endless love for his daughter(s) tries to micromanage their lives, while still wanting them to find a strong provider of their own.

Our Ideal:
Not every Disney movie has a father figure, but when they do… man, they are the best goddamn dads. They love their daughters wholeheartedly, without reservation even when their behavior is at its worst. Typically these fathers border on being too involved with their daughters lives, pushing this daughter-turned-woman to marry (think The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Mulan, etc.) Early on in the plot they butt heads over what she should be doing with her life–after all, this intelligent, vibrant, attractive female wants to do more with herself than just marry a suitor of her father’s choosing.

Then she runs off to experience the world without being under her father’s thumb… and meets the man of her dreams. You know, the successful one that isn’t her father but resembles him in many ways. Once the family is reunited, daddy meets his daughter’s love interest and realizes that this suitor is capable of taking care of his little girl monetarily in ways her father probably couldn’t. Handed off like the prize that she is in her father’s eyes, queue wedding scene, cut to a chaste-but-loving kiss and daddy waving stoically as his daughter rides off into the sunset in the arms of her new beau. She has done him proud by following the life plan he had set out for her (one she “grew up” and realized he was right, of course.)

And the real…
Girls are rarely close with their fathers throughout the years when they need them most. Through that rocky pubescent period, even the best fathers are unsure of how to handle us growing and changing. We are physically becoming an embodiment of femininity, yet remain children in their eyes. More so now than ever, there’s the concern of a father being too involved with his daughter’s life while she matures. Not to say there weren’t cases of sexual abuse at the hands of fathers in the past, but courtesy of day-time TV and those speeches pounded into our head by school guidance counselors at a young age, girls are on edge–just waiting for some kind of inappropriate contact to occur.

While fathers have to fear for their daughters being attacked, molested, or raped by a man, society fears that they (the fathers) will be the ones to do wrong. I suppose it gives them every reason to hesitate when it comes to tucking their daughters in at night with the door closed, or hugging their teenaged ‘princess’ unless it’s from the side.

So they put up this safe distance for all these years when we need to be hearing from men about what is (and more importantly, what isn’t) acceptable behavior from a boyfriend or lover. In retrospect, I wish more of those “good” fathers I knew growing up sat down and told their little girls when to leave a guy. While I’d like to say most of us learned our lesson the hard way, I don’t think most women have fully grasped the concept. Why else would our friends in their 30′s and beyond struggle with the same issues revolving around codependency and abusive relationships that they did in high school?

And is that really due to a lack direct discussion about the topic with someone we (generally) idolize, like our fathers? I’m not sure, but I suspect it has something to do with it.

Think about every girl you know. We may have been close to our fathers as children, or developed one of those parent-turned-friend type of relationship as we’ve become comfortable with being full grown women… but really? We hate our dads, we love our dads, we deny any Oedipal-type desire to find a man like our father to take care of us for as long as we both shall live.

We’re looking for daddy in all the wrong places, ladies.