anna genoese

This morning I had to go to the police station (not for anything serious). I'd never been inside a proper police station before. Opposite my old apartment in Bushwick was a really nice, brand new police station -- super clean, always full of cheerful traffic cops. I'd been in just once (something about cars in the neighborhood), and was super surprised by how clean and nice-smelling and big and organized it was.

Well. The station for the precinct I live in now (and grew up in) is totally opposite! It was empty (okay, it was 6:30 AM, but still! Only two cops!), the cop I talked to was practically asleep at his desk, and everything was dingy or outright dirty, and the whole place smelled terrible.

I feel like I just had a really authentic New York City experience! It was extremely exciting.

Day 22 - Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)

As you may have noticed, I love stories about female friendships -- especially ones that are not perfect/boring. I'm often disappointed -- and that's not limited to books. All media struggles with women.

I know you all are expecting me to say Anne and Diana from the Anne books -- and, yes, I loved their relationship. Right up until Diana started dating Fred, and her letters were full of him, and Anne was alone. Remember when Billy Andrews proposed to Anne through his sister Jane? (Uh, spoiler!) Anne was in bed that night, thinking about how she wished she could tell someone -- but the only person she could tell was Diana, her best friend. But she couldn't trust Diana to keep her secrets anymore, because Diana had started telling everything to Fred. UGH.

Diana had been a great character, I think, and a really good foil for Anne -- but once she started with Fred, not only did she turn into a terrible friend, but a really boring character, spending most of the time talking about people getting married, and how wonderful baby Fred was. Which, perhaps, betrays more of the author than she'd meant. Either way, it was a petering off of their friendship in a way that depressed the hell out of me (and, frankly, is too much like real life for me to comfortably re-read those scenes in Anne of the Island).

An author who does really great female friendships is Jennifer Crusie. As I said yesterday on Twitter, I have my issues with the book Fast Women, but the female friendships are stellar. The depiction of the relationships between Nell, Suze, and Margie is just awesome. They are wonderful and weird and flawed and caring. Thumbs up.


( Other days of the book meme )