March 30, 1999.

I've been reading a lot of Cosmo tonight.

I know. What's a media-savvy feminist like myself doing with tripe like this. Well, it's the Boy's fault. I've noticed that most men are utterly fascinated with women's magazines...for instance, my brother used to appropriate my Sassy magazines, back in the good old days of Sassy. Boys covet my copies of Bust. I guess it's because women's magazines are one of the few media entities that utterly exclude males from their audience...although I can imagine a certain type of gay male getting certain things out of Cosmo denied to his butch-enhanced breeder cousins, like its brash unapologetic air of dumb femininity and raunchy sex (in a very limited hetero context mind you). So today the Boy wanted Cosmo, as "they made up a new sex position!"

"Yeah." I was less than impressed with the cover text than he was. But I'm just bitter. My typical Cosmo experience usually starts in improbable hope and ends in soul-crushing disappointment.

"'17 Ancient Ukrainian Secrets That Will Make Your Man So Horny That He'll Prematurely Ejaculate in Ten Seconds Flat'!? Wow!!! They always let me down before, but this time it'll be different...here we go, page 117. Uh...'rub his feet'? 'Wear tight clothes'?! 'Fantasize?!!' Damn you, Cosmo!! DAMN YOU TO HELLLLLLLL!"

Ahem. I suppose the problem is that I want a bizarre ritual and they just hand me trite summations of things I already know...plus advice about Brazilian bikini wax.

And as for "the butterfly" (pictured on the left)...well, their acrobatic little drawing and simpering text was not worth $4. I could've gotten the Kama Sutra out of the library for free, damn it!

(Incidentally, how do you suppose they figured out they had a hot original property on their hands? I can just imagine the research session: "No, that's doggy style, already invented. No, that's kind of a T-square thing. No, parallel lines aren't innovative. No, that's doggy style again...concentrate, damn it!" I imagine that porn stars were needed to put in the requisite research time. Sheesh)

Other than sex diagrams, the mag also contained lots of heinous confessions. Some of them are pretty damn funny, too:

I almost dumped him when... After hours of drinking with his friends, my boyfriend got into bed with me, snuggled up really close, then peed all over both of us in the middle of the night.

The Boy was killing himself laughing when a disturbing thought occurred. "Would you forgive me if I did that?" "Nope. That's the line. You might as well be a Scottie terrier at that point."

I dunno, maybe I'm being mean, but I think continence of urine and feces is requisite in a SO. Call me an elitist if you will...

Today I fell into a style I'm tentatively dubbing 'kindergoth.' It's based on overalls, pigtails, a Bauhaus baby-t and the black lipstick Stacy bought me just for being me (I assume, for lack of any other excuse). When asked about the look, I could only reply in the words of Scott, when he saw Stacy in an empire-line cloud white dress:

"It's springtime for goth girls in Canada."

Indeed.