Yup. That's right. Today, I biked to the store. It's only fifteen minutes away by bike, so don't worry, I didn't risk death by humidity asphyxiation. I needed yogurt to go with my grapefruit breakfasts, and I didn't have time to make it to the gym, so I thought riding my bike to the store would do for today.
It was surprisingly enjoyable! I am one of the remaining U.S. citizens without i technology, so I had to go the whole 30 minutes there and back without groovy tunes. I was impressed with how nice it is just to listen to neighborhood noise. I noticed that I could tell when a car was coming, and if it turned behind me I could tell which way. That may sound really unexciting, but I realized today that I hadn't gone for a bike ride or a run without some kind of bud in my ears in a very long time. So, I rode around looking like a total hipster in cut-off jeans and toms and smiled at the ability of my ears, most likely putting everyone around me on their guard. People in Houston aren't used to happy hipster bikers.
I have been going to the gym every weekday since I got home, and I find that books are actually a better distraction from the fact that I'm sweating than music. I have started checking out a ridiculous number of books from the library and taking them with me for my 45 minute cross country bike trip through the YMCA workout room. One book that I have finished while sweating is Janet Evanovich's first Stephanie Plum novel, One for the Money. A friend recommended the series when I told her I was looking for something fun to read this summer. She said they were hilarious, because they're about a bounty hunter (Stephanie Plum) who is really bad at her job. She also said that I would probably like how Evanovich uses different kinds of characters to save Plum's ass, from a hott male fugitive to a grandmother, because she thought it would appeal to my feminist ideals. With about 16:00 minutes and one hundred pages left, a scene with a character called Benito Ramirez upset me so much I had to concentrate on moving my legs and not breaking down in the gym.
I know it's a crime novel. I get it. But does that mean that sick, sadistic, psychotic rapists have to be characters? No, I don't think it does. I finished the novel, because I wanted him to get what was coming to him (don't worry, he does)but I'm a little torn now about whether I should check out the second book, Two for the Dough. Can you boycott a series of crime novels because they had a bad guy who was a rapist? I mean, the tone of the novel was obvious: this character was someone who was supposed to make you angry and uncomfortable. He was a completely bad guy. No redeeming qualities. The author wrote him that way. But, I am not entirely sure that he was a necessary choice. Or, is it good that the author chose to show such an awful part of our culture that often goes unnoticed? Could this character's presence cause people who otherwise don't spend much time thinking about the issues of rape and domestic violence to give it some thought, and to be moved? If someone doesn't have a close friend or relative who has survived rape, could the violence of this character against Plum and other female characters in the book push them to care? Or is it just more violence porn in the worst sense of the phrase?
I don't know, but I do know that this particular scene was so awful it made me want to go out and buy a handgun, take lessons, and get a license to carry and conceal. Not only that, I wanted to go all Kickass on the faces of all the rapists in the world, just instead of beating them up in a green jumpsuit, I'd shoot them in the dick. I'm just saying. Wouldn't it be nice?
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