Somebody's Monkey Gets Spanked Plus Voting For Hillary

Oh, right. One other very strange thing happened over the weekend.

Well. It didn't actually happen. It was something I observed.

Saturday night as I was pulling the ingredients together for the next morning's baking, I noticed we were out of almonds. This meant I had to run to the store to get some.

The closest store to my house is Whole Foods. I love Whole Foods to the point of obsession but I don't often shop there because it is just so fucking expensive. However, for bulk rate almonds they're actually cheap.

So there I am pulling my little red Veedub into an empty parking space at Whole Foods next to a red Mercedes. And the monkey mind is furiously parsing as it always does because see, I'm not living a life, I'm living a movie.

Hmmmm, says Monkey Mind. A red Mercedes? I don't think I've ever actually seen one before. Must be a custom paint job. Must belong to someone very, very rich.

And of course I know little or nothing about cars, and care less, but I'm always on the lookout for status details because ya never know when you're gonna chuck everything, move to that cabin in Big Sur and just write. And it could be that one of your characters will own a red Mercedes and you'll need to know what the inside looks like –

That's one explanation, anyway.

The other one is that I just enjoy spying on people.

So anyway, I look into the red Mercedes and the drivers' seat is in full recline. A woman is lying in it. Her eyes are closed. Her diamond earrings catch the parking lot lights. She's old, I'm thinking – meaning: she's my age. I notice her hair (expensive beauty salon dye job) more than her clothes (generic Nieman Marcus.) It's obvious she's rich. But the cords are standing out in her neck in a peculiar way, and for a moment I'm wondering whether she is having a heart attack – should I call 911?

And then I notice that her right hand is snaked down the front of her Lauren Bacall trousers, working furiously away –

Omigawd! The woman is masturbating!

Now. This is really disturbing for a number of different reasons.

Number one: what is the appropriate response anyway when someone has sex in a public place? I mean obviously, they want to be watched or they wouldn't be having sex there. So. Assuming you enjoy a little porn now and then – I do – do you watch them?

Number two: But this woman wasn't at all erotic. In fact, she was genuinely repulsive.

Why wasn't she erotic?

Well. Because she was old.

As I say, I judged her to be around my own age so this brought up a lot of baggage for me – do I find myself erotic? Would I find myself erotic if I were a potential lover? Are fifty-five year old women capable of being sex objects?

There's a kind of desperation attached to the image of that woman in the car. I'm thinking, all that money and she can't hire a pool boy? buy a vibrator? get her fucking windows tinted?

But that same desperation would not be attached to a twenty-two year old. I'd think reckless abandon. Pejorative still, but in a very, very different way.

Anyway. For one reason or another, I continued in my pissy mood yesterday until I took the dogs to the beach. Milo started playing with a bee-yew-tee-ful Rhodesian Ridgeback and its owner introduced herself to me: Lenore, an academic who lives in Santa Cruz. And we proceeded to walk two miles together and have the jolliest conversation all about dogs and Doris Day and political correctness and how we both loathe Hillary Clinton – we pantomimed walking into the voting booth, holding our noses and voting for her. Because, I mean, if she wins the nomination, we'll have to vote for her. Giuliani is a fucking Nazi.

She grew up in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

When we parted ways, I thought that's what I miss – academics who grew up in New York City. That's my tribe.

I'm lonely for female friends.