Cat osterman datingI have my connections. The color of the baby’s crib, as it happened, was also a bright accent orange, like her snowsuit. It was the “debut color”—the first thing not brown or white or gray — for the “Alma Urban Mini Crib” that was bought for her, and set up against the dark-blue wall of her parents’ bedroom. As with the snowsuit, one visitor after another commented on the crib. It was, it was said, so beautiful. Also orange through no particular orange affinity (or disaffinity) of the baby’s mother (or father) were the lids of the baby’s bottles, as well as the trim on her washcloths, and on her towel. Same orange for her small stuffed fox. The baby had an orange plastic baby spoon, and on the mixer for her food there was an orange splash cover, and an orange implement for lifting the basket of steamed food safely out. All these items were purchased fairly thoughtlessly, just in searching for “plain.” ThenI noticed the same orange as the trim accent color on the blue-and-white striped onesie she had received at birth and was finally growing into, and the same orange for the safety guard case around the iPhone 4 without Siri which her mother had bought post-Siri for $69.95 and had then on the first day of ownership cracked the screen of and so had unthinkingly chosen the accent color orange for the “protector.” It eventually began to be difficult to not be bothered by how nice and how orange the baby’s objects were. And yet also it was difficult to not want to surround the baby with objects that had been deemed, by my wedge of the zeitgeist, nice. As if taste culture could keep the baby safe. Which in some ways it could: people would subconsciously recognize that the baby belonged to the class of people to whom good things come easily, and so they would subconsciously continue to easily hand over to her the good things, like interesting jobs and educational opportunities and appealing mates, that would seem the baby’s natural birthright, though of course this was an illusion. Something like that. It was an evil norm, but, again, one that it was difficult to not want to work in favor of rather than against one’s own child. I would say you can see where this is going, but I feel it insufficiently gets at how much orange was arriving into the home, and how much warmth and approval these orange objects were received with by the well-educated fortunate people who encountered them. (Notably, my mother was charmed by none of it.) I at first attributed the orange overwhelm primarily to the gender-neutral color phenomenon spreading among the bohemian-brooklyn-bourgeoisie to whose taste culture I apparently belonged, though I would have wanted to maintain otherwise (a sentiment also common among that set). Orange was “modern” and “clean” and “alternative.” At one point I was about to order a basic bib set for the baby and then I decided not to, because the orange was starting to feel dictatorial — the basic bibs are trimmed in orange! — and more insidious in its dictatorialness than all the pink and Disney-decorated objects selling at BuyBuy Baby and Babies R Us, all those “poor taste” objects that I was trained to treat with suspicion. “And so I am here in the persona of Debbie Dare to tell you what Theon should have said to Myrtle May. For Mortimer’s mouth was full of water, and was silent. DK: We’ll get there, but I’d like your thoughts on growing up in the AV. Like, how did growing up there affect your worldview, et cetera. When they reached the end of a row old Jaho conferred briefly with Winters, then slipped away to the perimeter road to strip bark from willow branches at the edge of the swamp. Trent chastized Winters, even tapped the younger overseer on the shoulder with his staff, but, as if the Susquehannock were invisible, both overseers ignored Jaho when he returned and extended the bark for Duncan to chew. The old native opened his other hand, exposing a handful of a pasty solution that looked like swamp water mixed with a root that had been chewed. He ran his fingers over the bruises on Duncan’s shoulder, which were now assuming blue-green arc shapes, then covered them with the paste. “Look,” Roxanne said. “I’ve known you since I was nine, Daley Kushner. Robert and Dan and Jackie can’t say that, can they? In some ways, I know you better than they do.” Allow me to do that afterward, says Yves. ‘Yeah. He wants the Metro North diverted to service his land.’ “Shut up, you bitch!” the sergeant growled. “McCallum, nigh Kyle of Lochlash, though my grandfather claimed he has laird of all the sea to Stornaway.” Impossible, says Hei?ur. He can’t be on our heels. He’s my boyfriend, and I’m going abroad next week to see him. “I’ll stop any new messengers,” Smith said as he shook hands with Duncan. He handed Duncan a half-burnt tax stamp, explaining it was used like the broken dice as a sign among runners. “I wish I could do more.” You found out where I am, the first night. 2 Named after a celebrated nineteenth-century courtesan. [Tr] Mom, I say, my face buried in the rock-hard pillow. Mom, I love you more than anything. I wish you were still alive. Every woman wants to have an affair with a man who finds her attractive. I climbed back out but he wasn’t to be seen. There were only two ways he could have gone: into the sea or up the pier. ‘Dessie,’ I called, clinging to the door for balance. I checked my watch. It was missing. I judged it to be about 7 a.m. It was a spectacular morning but there was no getting away from the darkness. The darkness had been poured back in, the guts of a whiskey bottle. I leaned over to vomit between the rocks.. |