Nine dollars can do a lot of things. And I don’t even mean feeding-a-kid-on-a-quarter-a-day things.

I mean, it can buy really good hummus and some cucumber, tomato, and pita. It can buy a shirt on sale at the Gap outlet on Chestnut. It can buy a Belgian beer with change to tip. It can buy the Juno soundtrack on iTunes. But Sunday night, I used my nine clams to cry.

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It’s more than a day and a dollar late and short, but I’m newly fired up about La Clinton’s momentary emoting.

I can’t pinpoint why, but my inability to pinpoint exactly why I so dislike HC’s campaign has brought me a lot of angst lately.  Like so many women, I’m torn, and feeling a little like a traitor for not blithely supporting another vadge.  Maybe, as some feminists have suggested, it’s because I’m having trouble seeing myself in her campaign.  Maybe I want to be able to connect with her, and her pandering and robot veneer are in the way.

But this crying thing has given new life to my dislike of the campaign.  I’m willing to accept that politics is an elaborate huckster act, keeping all the balls in the air for all the people, all the time.  But for the love of god, at least try to make it seem like it’s authentic.  That’s the whispered contract between the electorate and the candidates, isn’t it?  You pretend like you’re a real person not entirely made of fabrication, and I’ll pretend to feel like I matter to D.C.

Like that old Irish blessing, it’s either one or the other with Clinton’s fraction of a muffled tear.  Either it was genuine, or it was calculated.  If it was genuine, it might say worse things about the feminine mystique than any of the other gender stereotypes the troglodytes have thrown her way.  John Edwards perverted and cut short the debate on the meaning behind Hillary’s tears when he wondered if we want a leader who cries.  The truth is, I do want a leader who cries when it’s necessary.  I wouldn’t elect a leader who didn’t cry on September 11th.  What I can’t bear to stand (vadge or not) is a leader who cries during a campaign.  Yes, they’re levying ad hominem attacks.  That’s how the election cycle rolls.  Which is why I’m more prone to believe that the quasi-tears were contrived.  Here is a woman who held herself with grace and composure while her husband made a fool of her from the White House and while her only child was being ridiculed through puberty on the late night circuit.  Here’s a woman who managed to not shed a tear during those real, emotional quagmires.  Here is a woman often chided for her emotionless exterior.  Is it very likely that one woman’s question at a coffee shop unlocked some secret, special tear duct in Hillary’s heart?

And if it was contrived, then she’s no more than the tramp who cries her way out of a ticket, making the road that much harder for any other woman who follows behind her.  My vote is Obama’s to lose.

I happily hold forth on my pet subjects for hours.  Wii, coffee, the merits of fall vs. spring, the disastrous effects of broadcast journalism, this city of supposed brotherly love, and the downfall of modern grammar. These all elicit almost immediate and well-worn monologues.  But let someone dare ask for further clarification when I beg out of plans for “not feeling well,” and all I hear are the messy mechanical noises of a factory shutting down.  Nope.  Just don’t feel well.

Not feeling well, of course, is codespeak for feeling more like lying in my bed with a book than facing anything the outside world might have to offer.  Even alcohol, even boys.  Not feeling well is the same as being “tired.”  Or “out of it” or “exhausted.”  It means I might well more quickly into tears than conversation.  It’s become my neat capsule phrase that really means, I’m not OK.  I’m not fit for public consumption right now, because the scab that is my heart seems to have torn open again (or feels as though it might at any moment), and I’m trying to give myself a wide berth in case I turn fully back into that old, simpering wreck. 

An ex-boyfriend called me out once, years ago, on disingenuously using the phrase, “I’m fine.”  At the time, I felt unlocked.  That someone saw through that cheery veneer was a powerful aphrodisiac.  I used to take in the chaos around me to unburden the people closest to me, believing I had some preternatural threshold for stress.  A boy who stopped to know me well enough to know that that was impossible seemed like a dream.

Eight years later, I’ve evolved into at least saying I’m fine with a voice belying my disdain.  Progress, no?

 Eight years later, though, and I find myself fantasizing about decking a man who told me I’m not fine.  How am I a communications “professional” again?  (See entry below re: being more direct.  Not bloody likely.) 

Despite believing that people are better off for continual self improvement, and despite the fact that I generally feel more reflective on birthdays, I can’t seem to dodge the sense that this ought to be some new beginning.  Trouble is, it’s difficult to begin something without a plan.

I’ve given myself a pass on the whole “life plan” thing for last few years.  Rolling around the calendar aimlessly seemed achievement enough.  But now, somehow, there is pressure again.  To be productive, to have a linear plan, to get with the program.  To partner off, to stop bitching about work like I’m in Reality Bites, and to function.  To stop overdrawing my bank account, work on a budget, clean up my room, get a real doctor, and grocery shop instead of eating out.  To swear less, bitch less, and drink less, and to be sweeter, more open, and  more direct.  To stop overbooking myself, go to the gym more, and finally take up yoga or some manner of meditation.

These are the things I should do in 2008.  I remember living by some theory in the Mezz that  I probably read in some horrible book.  Something about your life fitting into a triangle.  With an angle for platonic relationships,  one for romantic relationships, and another for work.  Or something.  When one angle was acute, the other two compensated.  A fine theory until your triangle collapses to a straight line (what, with no beginning or end, to boot).   When you’ve got a line, you have to build from scratch, and you’ve got to figure out where to start first.  Job searching is good, but lacks the immediate satisfaction I crave.  So I send applications into the ether and wait to be picked.  Sounds a lot like dating.

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