Strange and Beautiful

My friend's first child was born tonight. She is a perfect soft pink bundle of limbs and cries and is strange and beautiful in the way that only new life can be. I watched with her grandparents as she was measured and prodded and wiped and swaddled. Her first moments taking place under shocking bright lights while her father stood in hospital scrubs and held her tiny hand and tried to comfort her with the gentle touch of his soft, wrinkled fingers skimming her fuzzy little head.

He is a feminist filmmaker, former member of an otherwise all girl punk band, and has been married to this tiny person's mother for 14 years. He was made to be the father to a daughter. He will be amazing at it. She will feel empowered and supported and have a unique confidence in her interactions with men that will come from the perfect security she will always know in the love of her father.

I'm incredibly happy for him and for his wife. I am in awe. I am shaken. I am joyful.

_____________

It is strange to find in myself conscious thought about something I normally don't question. But I cannot help but think about this now. Today. In this moment.

I will never be a parent. No one will ever call me mama. My uterus will always go unused, never fulfilling its biological purpose. This strange organ that can make life, can create a dizzying miracle, will labor through only the motions of it's cycle until it gives even that up altogether.

I have chosen this, so I have no justification for this odd moment of inner conflict. After 20 years of being sexually active and having never so much as a scare, I may not be able to conceive - this potential for anything else may only be an illusion to me, a sorrow I will never truly have to confront. But I had a harrowing childhood. A childhood of hurt and hollow and scars that never completely go away. The kind of childhood that seems a bit like a gothic novel or a horror story when I forget to forget it. And I have struggled in my own relationships with the several parents that have been a part of my life, and watched their struggles with the children they have raised. So by the time I was ten years of age, I had decided. I could never be a parent.

My whole life people have told me how good I would be as a mother. But the truth is I'm scattered and fragile and always rushing to catch up and never financially stable enough, never grown up enough, have never become the person I would want to be in order to have a child. And if I want to be really honest with myself, brutally honest, the men in my life have always been scattered and fragile and rushing to catch up and never financially stable enough, never grown up enough... or if they were? They didn't want a child with me.

In some quiet part of myself I imagine a version of me who is like my grandmother. She was short like me and sharp like me and gregarious like I sometimes can be. I adored her. She had one girl and five strapping boys. Clever, varied, driven, interesting men. Men who, like me, adored her but also felt like she was their friend, their ally. Men who made something of themselves. She was a force of nature and I always felt as if she willed them into full lives. I imagine that if I'd taken a different path, maybe I'd have been like her. Surrounded by sons. I'd have been good at it, I think. Wise and loving and a little bit stern and a little bit crazy. Good at holding them and good at letting them go, which seems like the trick with raising boys. And I would have been. I think. Good at it. This other me I never turned into. Never found the right man or the right moment or enough healing or enough security to let myself find out.

I was engaged years ago to a man who had a son, a wonderful man who wasn't ultimately the right man for me (both of us too scattered), and his son started to call me "mom" (His "other mom"). We bonded. We were close. I kept up with his son for a long while after I had to leave that relationship behind, but I would mourn every time I had to say goodbye to him. I would babysit him or even just run into the boy in the street with his mother - also my friend - and whenever he left I would cry like the wound was new. It was like that for years. This hollow awful ache I never expected I could feel. Didn't let myself think I might have the capacity for. A kind of broken heart I'd never before experienced, never imagined.

So I have chosen this. I know that. I think it's the right decision. I'm remarkably strong for someone who has been through so much but I would never take the risk that I'm not strong enough or healed enough to hold it together for a child. My mother took that risk with me. It didn't turn out well. I won't make the same mistake. Most days life is hard enough as it is. Recovering from so much death in the past several years. Trying to make my life stable enough just to sustain the long term romantic relationship I am in. Finding ways to fulfill my need to create art and trying to do something with my life. Some days I find even pet ownership to be a challenge. And I have (yes, if you've been around long enough, you'll know this) bunnies. Not typically considered a high stress pet.

So I'm doing the right thing. I know this. But on a day like today it hits me deep in my gut and twists a little. In there under the happiness. That I am feeling. God I am. But I need a few minutes tonight to exorcise this. To acknowledge it. That this little kernel of regret lives somewhere deep in me.

Most days impossible to find at all.

_________________

My friend has wanted to be two things in life. His whole life. A husband and a father. And he has been a husband since his very early twenties, but in many ways he was her husband before that. He knew he would never let his wife go from the moment he first kissed her roughly 17 years ago. Being the best husband and partner he could be has been his great goal in life and he's wonderful at it. He worships her still. When he plays guitar he inevitably sings to her, even if she's in another room. Even when he doesn't realize it he turns toward her so she can hear his voice. He cannot help it. His love for her is a part of everything in him. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

So I know how completely and perfectly this girl will be loved. And how fortunate she is to be born into the midst of this great love that is already there. She is so wanted. That is the best thing a child can have. She will have the devotion of two clever, creative, amazing people who are ready and prepared to give her everything. I'm excited to be around for it. To watch as it begins.

A few hours ago a new life came out of my friend's wife (who, I should say, is also my very dear friend). This is amazing to me.

I am feeling a lot of things tonight but more than anything, I am joyful. I am shaken. I am in awe.

I Talk to Dead People

Maybe this isn't unusual. Maybe this is how a lot of people cope. I don't know. I've lost a lot of people over time, but this is new.

We're loading in tonight for the next show I'm working on at my theater. I'm not what you would call a handy person. I'm good with a paintbrush and so far I haven't permanently injured anyone with any of the power tools. I maintain that it is only a matter of time.

So tonight I've got a project to complete and I cannot complete this project with the use of the staple gun. I root around in the tool closet in the back of the theater. Find what I think is a staple gun. Locate staples. Try to load them into the gun. They fall out. I try again. Same result. I look at the fine print on the side of said gun. It says, "Load nails here." Ok. Wrong tool.

I go back. Find another thing that looks like a staple gun to me. Actually locate the word "staple" somewhere on it. Satisfied I have the right tool, attempt to find the place that the staples go in. After about five minutes of struggling and pulling at different bits of metal and trying to pop SOME PART of this thing open I am FED UP. I don't know a damn thing about any of this. I cannot remember this ever being so hard. I have never been so frustrated at the theater before and I OWN A STAPLE GUN AT HOME that I know how to use. I am beside myself.

Then it hits me. Standing in the tool closet, away from the 20 other cast and crew members who are noisily painting and drilling and sawing out on the stage I have a sudden moment of clarity. At set calls, I would come to Allan. I would hold the offending power tool or doohickey out to him and say, "Make it do." He would stop whatever he was doing and come and set up the tool, walk me through how to use it, pat me on the head and go back to what he had been doing. Eventually we got to where there were no words. I would hold it out and frown, he would smile because he liked being needed. He would walk through the steps and hand it back. I'd lean against him for a moment in a no-armed sort of hug. And work would begin again. A cooperative ballet as we built. He who knew everything, I who knew nothing. We had a rhythm when we worked together.

And tonight I stood in that tool shed and felt so lost. My partner is gone. I stared at the tools, tears rolling down my face, and just started talking to him... something I do a lot these days.

What will I do without you?

How will this ever feel right again?

Do you know how hard this is?

Are you here? Are you gone?

Do you know how much I love you?

I need you here. I need you with me.

I can't make this fucking staple thing work.

I'm useless without you.

God I miss you.

----------------------

There's another set going up. Another set he wasn't here to help build. Another set none of them were here to help build. And it isn't the same. And sometimes it's so damn hard. The theater is my home. It's where my heart lives. It's where my friends died. It's where I talk to them. It's where I'm trying to heal.

I found someone to help me. I finished my project. I'm going back tomorrow to touch it up and then we begin dress rehearsal.

The shows will open. The work will get done. I will heal.

It would be faster if he were here, though.
He knew how to fix anything.

Paradox

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."
- Mother Teresa

That is where I am trying to be. In a place where I focus on how much I love the people I have lost. I want that to be my driving emotion. More than one person I care for died in the shooting. I am focusing on the loss of Allan, but that is because it is so large to me. I feel I need to find a way to understand that one loss so I can process all the deaths that took place that day.

I have every one of their phone numbers in my cell phone and I cannot figure out what to do with that. I started to text Allan one day. I was somehow disoriented enough to start typing a message I can never send.

Sometimes something hurts so much that it feels like it has a physical presence. It feels large and looming. The loss is enormous and surrounds me and makes me feel as if I am seeing everything through a haze. As if it has swallowed me whole.

I realize that the loss is so tremendous because of how much love I have for the people who died in front of me so suddenly, all in one day. So I am trying to find a way to focus on that love. If I must be swallowed by a whale, let it be made of something good. Let me be overwhelmed by how much I love them. Let me take that love and use it in how I interact with the world.

I'm not angry. Perhaps I should be, but I don't have room for anger. The man who shot my loved ones is dead. He took his own life. He is irrelevant and was, to me, from the moment they died - although we did not learn of his death until weeks later.

I have lost so much in the last year and a half. My last tenuous shreds of illusion about safety. My plans and even my desire to marry. Family members have died. And friends. Friends who were some of the most remarkable people I have ever known. This is not a disingenuous and distorted memory of the dead. I tend to be appalled at the rosy cheeked perfection with which people remember their dead. No, each of the friends I have lost were truly unusual and remarkable. Death came and took the best from among us. I do not want to be made up of loss.

So here I am, loving. Loving until it pains me in ways I could never have imagined. Loving like something in my chest cavity is straining to cry out and make itself heard in the ether. I am going to accept it and try to find a way to take joy in my capacity to love them. I am not going to let it close me down or prevent me from loving other people. I am not going to let myself swim in this suffering.

I will love so much that there will be no more room in me for hurt. Only love.

Healing

I've been away for a long, long time.

I've just redesigned this blog and the coming months may see some additional changes. I'm fine tuning at this point. We'll see where it takes me.

I am going to blog again about film and random topics of interest for my fellow females and/or people who like to read a female perspective. I am. But I think that, if I'm going to start writing again, I'm going to have to embrace the fact that this is going to get personal. When my personal life was simple and mundane and smooth sailing, it was easy to focus on pop culture. But in the last year that just became impossible. So I stopped writing. And I MISS writing. I miss capturing little moments of life and fleeting ideas about the grander scheme of things in the happily haphazard format of the interweb essayist. I miss the freedom of saying things I need to say.

I'm in the trenches right now. Anyone who actually checks this blog (Yes! All three of you!) will remember the loss that took place in my life last year. I am sorry to report that I suffered another sudden and violent loss just a couple of months ago... made more bewildering by the fact that this time when I lost a friend I was actually standing next to him. A close friend of mine was shot and killed in front of me. Right now I have no idea how to interact with the world without acknowledging this loss. I'm not even certain I will come out the other side of this remotely the same person. I mean, my wicked wit and self-deprecating sense of humor are intact - have no fear. But I'm not certain about the rest of me.

For the first time I can remember, I understand what it is to be lonely. I've always liked as much time to myself as possible. Incongruous in a woman who is, essentially, a world-class social butterfly. But true nonetheless. I like my own company and I have never really understood loneliness. But it's hard to connect with other people now, and I sense that a lot of people who know what is happening in my world may be uncomfortable with me. There is a chasm between me and everyone who has not experienced this loss. There is a strangeness between me and anyone who is uncomfortable with death. As if death hangs about me and they don't want to stand too close to it. I am taking a sharp look at just how short life really is, and how suddenly and unexpectedly it can end. I am realizing that I don't actually want to spend my life alone, and it shocks me to have to face that. And of course, more than any other factor creating this gaping lonliness - one of the closest people in the world to me is gone.

Now, not everyone has someone in their life like my friend, who I'm going to call Allan here for obscure personal reasons other than it actually being his name (because it isn't), but if you do - then this will make sense. There are some things in life that we go through that are almost impossible to understand or accept about ourselves without seeing ourselves as a victim. I have had far more than my share of tragedy and, other than discussing a limited number of those topics relatively anonymously on here, I don't tell people in my everyday life just how many horrible statistics apply to me. I work hard to make certain that people who know me in my daily life are given the impression that I sprang into existence fully formed and happy as a clam. My history exists for them in broad and vague strokes. Allan was one of those rare people that I just let SEE me. He KNEW. He knew all the awful, ugly and terrible things that I don't tell people. Allan was wonderful and wise and knew I didn't want his pity. I just wanted him to know me. And he accepted that. He let me be wholly self and unguarded in his presence.

When we met, years ago, we were both going through horrible, painful breakups. The kind that are massive ordeals and change your life and involve discussions with accountants and creditors and burning things in the backyard and resisting the urge to throw your telephone or run anyone over. We spent many nights sitting on the back of my car, rehashing horrible conversations with our exes and congratulating each other on managing to breathe and wake up in the morning and not say mean things to strangers just for spite. We worked on creative projects together and met for emergency I-Need-To-See-Someone-I-Actually-Like lunches. We told each other all manner of Things No One Else Knows. Over time we developed such a shorthand that we would design a set or discuss a project seamlessly in stream-of-consciousness juggling matches in which we finished each other's sentences and solved each other's conundrums. He was one of those rare friends who become a safe place. Someone who you can hand a piece of yourself to and trust to hold onto it and guard it and treasure it and not laugh at the parts of it that are weird or silly or funny looking.

He was gentler than I have ever known how to be. He was the most intelligent person I have ever been close to personally and he absolutely refused to see that about himself. He had a biting, wildly off-kilter wit that my world seems drab and hollow without. He took a piece of me with him. I am traveling through the world a little more alone than I have ever felt before. I'm not sure how to live in a world that doesn't have him in it. I'm a little bit lost.

So I think I'm just going to have to accept that, if I am to write at all, this is going to become increasingly personal. I mean, I will dig up favorite quotes and photographs again. And I will share my rants about the horrors of dating (Yes. I've been dating. I don't know why. Because self-flagellation would leave marks, I suppose.) and the terrible films that get made these days and all that nonsense. But I'm healing. And it's probably going to be obvious every little step of this journey. But maybe I need someone to talk to. That can be you.

All three or four of you.

Late Night Thinking

Life is strange. Obvious, right? I probably spend far too much time thinking about it. I find the paths our lives take fascinating, although I believe very strongly in the control we have over those paths. I don't think things are meant to happen or in destiny in the way many people do. I think you make the life you want while working with the circumstances you are given. When you make a choice, you open new doors and you close other ones. And you'll never know which life you might have lived, what you've given up or what you might have missed if you hadn't chosen this door. I also believe that disasters and forced change are like the universe's sometimes horrific way of creating. Not everything that comes of a disaster or a personal tragedy is bad. There are usually strange places that difficult times take you that add to your life or change who you are in important ways.

I can say this. I have survived plenty. I have lived through all manner of personal horrors. I have learned to embrace change. It's the only thing you can count on. Whether life is wonderful or terrible, it's all temporary. It will all change and eventually we will all be dead so there's nothing to do but accept it and make it work for you.

Sometimes I feel like I live within the eye of a storm. A whirlwind of change. Change that happens to me and change that I create. Chaos and reason in constant cycles and struggles.

I'm working on the particulars for a wedding. A very important wedding. It was less than two months ago that I called off my own nuptials and right now I am sitting in my living room staring at a little statue of a bride and groom. I am making the cake topper for my best friend's wedding which is only a month away. Sometimes I feel like I am living a very strange stream-of-consciousness film. It would take a tremendous editor to try to explain the point to all this. The ups and downs. The people that come and go and come back again...

And how I ended up here, painting tiny roses on the side of a little wedding gown.

Life is so very, very strange.

Gender Roles

Today I navigated to Yahoo to check my personal email. Yahoo always displays stories / articles / news / human interest junk for their users to click on.

And today there were two articles about relationships:

For WOMEN : "10 signs that he's willing to commit"

For MEN : "How to tell if she's attracted to you"

It's not just Yahoo. It's everywhere. Obviously popular media STILL assumes that all women want is a long-term commitment and all men want is to know if they're going to get laid.

It's so reassuring to know that some things never change.


Did I just imagine that women's movement and the sexual revolution took place?

News

A little while ago something very important happened.

I wasn't sure if I was going to share it on here, but I think it's unavoidable.

I had thought it might happen, but I wasn't expecting it when it came.

Everything seemed to glow and get fuzzy. I was overwhelmed and joyful and surprised. It was as if the world had frozen for a moment. I almost can't remember the sound of our voices.

I think I held my breath.

The Guy stood up at dinner the other night and then suddenly he was on one knee. Right next to me. With a little box in his hands. And this look on his face.

It all happened so quickly. I didn't even think about it. I just burbled out the first thing that came into my head.

And then he kissed me.

(I said, "Yes.")

Relationships in One Paragraph

As with many of my favorite things on the interweb, Sheila started this. Other bloggers have done their own versions - like Megan at From the Archives. I had to pare this down. I've dated a fair bit over the years and I think every one of them added something to the tapestry of my life. Even the unpleasant ones. I loved the idea of these brief windows into what love and loss and relationships have been in a person's life (EDIT: each paragraph represents a different relationship). All you'll really learn about ME from this exercise is that I know nothing about drug use, I'm crazy about Tom Waits and I'm very much in love.

Together, these pieces of my past are a journey that helped bring me to the man I am with today, which is a very good place to be.


He was the first everything. We listened to Robyn Hitchcock and Neil Young. He introduced me to Tom Waits. He taught me that I was beautiful. I thought he was the Ginsberg of my generation, I’m not certain he isn’t. Eventually I realized that I, along with his endless chain of cigarettes, had become a replacement drug, a compulsion for the recovered addict. So I ended it. For him and for me. I thought about him when I saw Waits in concert 15 years later and cried the whole time because it was beautiful and because he wasn’t with me to share it.


I was working the drive-through at my second job at the dry cleaner's. The air was greenish and bright and thick with spring rain. Hearing the bell, I looked up to see a red pickup truck pull in, but it didn't stop until the bed was even with the window. I saw raggedy jeans legs and then he leaned down and looked in at me, one arm bulging with two dozen roses and the other holding an enormous umbrella aloft. I stared, speechless, while he grinned and asked if he could walk me home. My friends didn't understand what I saw in him.


The Stone Temple Pilot’s “Big Empty” was playing on the radio while he drove me home. I wouldn’t let myself cry anymore until he was gone. Bruises showed up the next day. Around my neck, across my shoulders. I never spoke to him again. He was the gentlest man I ever met, until he wasn’t.


We went to see the Violent Femmes in concert and screamed the lyrics into each other’s faces for the whole show. Every day was joyous. I knew he would always be smart and handsome and kind, but I was some kind of goddess to him and the pedestal began to make me dizzy.


The first thing he said to me was, “Yer english shur is good.” but he looked like Matthew McConaughey so I tried not to notice.


I was so naive, I really thought he was just naturally thin and twitchy. Then one day he said he was sorry, but hiding his drug use from me was getting in the way of his habit. I couldn’t compete with Cocaine, but then I really didn’t want to.


I wore my velvet pants and he chased me all over the apartment trying to rub my butt and yelling “FUZZY!” with reckless, childlike glee. He sent me a letter once, written in crayon when he was too drunk to find anything else, telling me he loved me. I got a second letter the next day telling me not to open the first letter. I told him I hadn't.


Until he referred to "when we were dating," I had never called it that. I remember it as knocks on my door at 2am and listening to Bright Eyes and The Get Up Kids on my living room floor and standing on a wooden bridge at night talking about things that must have seemed important at the time but have since faded into a haze of angst and poetry and silly banter. He was younger than I and had a halo of blonde curls and a face like some sort of greek sculpture. Always sad, but he made me laugh. Out loud laugh.


His shirts matched his ties matched his suspenders matched his hankerchief. You could eat off his kitchen floor. One night he told me my half of the Chinese takeout was eight dollars and thirty-two cents. I gave him eight dollars and he hesitated a moment before saying that I could give him the rest of it later. I'm not sure what I was thinking.


My first day there we climbed a mountain. Hiking up the side, we could look out into the mist at the ocean and see peaks jutting into the air, speckling the water with islands. It had been four years apart, four years of recovering from something all-consuming. When I lost my footing on the way back down and began to fall, he rushed forward and caught me. It started again.


We walked into the party and everyone hollered and he did that half-hug, back-smacking thing with three different guys before making a beeline for the fridge to get a beer. Our friends started making bets as to how long he was going to keep his shirt on and I wanted to hide in embarrassment. They were literally laying odds and handing over bills. He always took off his shirt. He was a volunteer fireman and the most unabashedly sweet natured human being. His face lit up like a Christmas tree when he laughed. I have a photograph of him wearing furry white bunny ears on a roadtrip we took to Tampa. He isn’t wearing a shirt.


I had been struggling not to but eventually I couldn’t help it. The tears started rolling down my cheeks and then I was choking back little hiccup sobs while I watched him get quieter and quieter. His face became stiff and cold when he was angry. I tried to explain why I was upset and I talked a mile a minute like I always do and he finally shouted, “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” without looking at my weepy face. He got mad when I cried but he didn't usually yell, so that stung. There was so much more and so much of it was good, but after five years with him all anyone really needs to know is that my tears made him angry.


I was new in the office and I was going to be his contact at our company, so he called to introduce himself. When he started quizzing me about my qualifications I tried to be polite but eventually couldn't take it anymore. I told him I'd been in the business for a decade, was the art director at my last place of employment and that I was fairly certain there was NOTHING he knew that I didn't. I got off the phone and stormed into my boss' office. I declared that someone else was going to have to work with this client because I had no intention of EVER talking to That Man again. It's been three years since that conversation. I think I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him.

The GuyorThis is Liza’s Fault

I started writing these things down a while ago, and wasn't sure if they added up to an entry. Then Liza responded to a post I wrote about holding back my mushy relationship gushing by saying, "I always enjoy hearing about the fun relationship stuff... Feel free to share." So this is her fault. ;) (edit: ahem. Liza gets CREDIT for making me feel it is okay to share this stuff. So yay her for helping unleash my warm fuzzies on the interweb.

I am also posting this now because a couple of days ago I celebrated my 6 month anniversary with The Guy. It’s not a very long time, but hey - 6 months and he still thinks I'm great. Go figure.


The little pros and cons of a man become almost irrelevant once you get past a certain point. He gets into your bloodstream and you wake thinking of him and you find he is suddenly familiar in that way that allows you to fall asleep with your head on his chest. Instead of whys and why nots the details just become who he is to you. The further along my relationship with The Guy goes, and the more impossible any thought of turning back becomes, the more I find myself contemplating the details. As if I can examine them more closely, now that I am hooked and they are in that sense immaterial. I find myself chronicling them, as if to remind myself years from now how the pieces of him came together for me.

He has these crinkly laugh lines in the corners of his eyes that just GET me. Right there in my gut. Some part of me stands still when he laughs or smiles widely; this wide, genuine smile with bright white, very slightly crooked teeth and starry, squinty eyes.

He does accents, really sharp accents. It’s silly but the accuracy of the accent is strange and striking and he’ll just burst into one out of the blue, as if he’s always been Scots or Irish or Russian and I just never noticed before because I haven’t been paying attention.

He asks about my artwork, sometimes feverishly curious, but has never expressed an opinion about the paintings on my wall. He knows they are mine - he has at some point made an offhand comment that indicated this - but he has never expressed an opinion about them (this may just mean they are quite awful... but then I cannot imagine why he wants to see MORE).

He is worshipful of knowledge, knowledge for the sheer useless existence of it. Not the application of it, or specific knowledge, but just knowing things in a general sense. You get the impression that he must have been one of those children who tried to read the encyclopedia cover to cover.

He points out things that he feels will be useful to me and that he (often incorrectly) assumes I do not know. It makes me want to bonk him with a frying pan in a Wyle E. Coyote sort of way. But then he'll tell me something I actually didn't know and I realize I'd rather he tell me these things for the benefit I get on the occasions when I do learn something new.

He's kind natured. Far more than I am. It's probably the most noticable difference between our personalities.

He loves absurd humor the way I do and loves the book Good Omens but has somehow never read any other Terry Pratchett which just seems counterintuitive to me (since writing this he has started reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. It is a wonderful feeling to be sitting next to someone while they are reading a book you love and have them laugh out loud and then have to stop and tell you what it is that made them laugh because they want to share how good it is with you.)

He dances with me when we’re just talking. We’ll be standing in the kitchen or hallway talking about something and he’ll take my hand and spin me out and pull me in toward him and just start dancing with me to no music at all while we talk.

He often uses the phrase "when we're old and gray" and when I point this out to him he says, "Sometimes you just know."

He makes perfect pancakes. They’re surreal, each one is exactly the same size and they are perfect circles and they are always just the right golden color and even though they are made from a mix - MY pancakes from a mix never look like THAT. It’s like he has special magic pancake powers. I, who cook so often and typically with much success, am in awe of his pancake skills.

A lot of the truly thoughtful things he does are things I would never think of. He buys me a new tube of toothpaste because he noticed I was running low and he happened to be at the store ANYWAY so he figured he’d get some. He was putting rain-ex on his windshield and goes ahead and does my windshield, too, while he’s at it. If he notices that something needs to be fixed, he fixes it. He’s that kind of guy. I never dated that kind of guy before.

We think alike. He’s crazy forgetful like I am and, like me, has the attention span of a chihuahua on crack. This works out because, being the same way, I know how to work with that.

He forgot our three month anniversary. Which I realize isn’t even a “real” anniversary. But I remembered and had a gift waiting when he arrived empty handed... so THEN, two days later he showed up at my house with a bottle of wine and bags upon bags of groceries and rich red roses and proceeded to roast an entire chicken and steam veggies and make some fantabulous cheese sauce with Gruyére and Mozarella and some sort of herb and pepper Gouda. He poured me a glass of wine and brought me slices of baguette with bits of the cheeses to try and I stood there in the doorway to my kitchen thinking, “Where on earth did this man come from?”

If we go to bed late we typically end up lying awake for a while, chattering goofily to each other. We call each other dumb nick-names and talk in silly accents and goose each other and laugh until we cannot breathe.

Never before have I felt so at home as I do when he and I are laughing like fools and making no sense but understanding each other perfectly all the same.

How Do You KNOW?

photo by Andreas Reh, purchased at istockphoto

Several people in my life have reached important turning points with their spouse or significant other over the past few months. At varying places in their lives and relationships, the question they all seem to have in common is - How do you KNOW? How do you know you are with the right person? How do you know that this man is your true love ("Wuv, Twooo wuv..."), the Westley to your Buttercup, and that this is IT?

My father and I had a talk about this a few weeks ago. The Guy and I have become fairly serious. I think my father is nervous. He has been married more than once and knows it doesn't always work out. He wants me to be happy, but is naturally worried. (Which I think is a big part of parenting. Right up there with teaching us to use the big person potty and share our toys and keeping us from breaking too many limbs at one time. We grow older and these things just shift. They hope we will learn to take care of ourselves, be good to other people and not get our hearts broken too badly.)

When I was younger, my father told me that he never wanted me to depend on a man. He wanted me to take care of myself, to always land on my feet. There have been many divorces in our family, as well as some unhappy marriages that lasted. Perhaps this awareness prompted him to raise me to be cautious and self-sufficient.

Standing in his driveway the other day, my father listened to me explain where things stood with my new beau. What I saw happening here. He listened; my father who has had his heart broken, who was left by a woman he pledged to stay with for the rest of his life, and who has now been married to the same woman for over two decades and with her has been though both better and worse. I stood talking hopefully about my future to this man who saw my last long term relationship crumble and watched me go through the ensuing depression and struggle to pick up the pieces.

With this pained expression on his face he said, "I wish I had some great words of wisdom, some way to guide you. But I don't."

I understand his concern, but I told him this - I think everyone hopes for an answer. We all want a silver bullet. People who aren't married hope the people they know who ARE married can tell them The Secret. How you KNOW? How you can be CERTAIN? But he's off the hook because I don't think it's like that.

Everyone would like to think that when you meet THE person they will glow with a halo of light and you will hear music in the air and then you will KNOW - that there will be signs (wouldn't it be freaky as hell if that actually happened?). You probably should listen to your gut... but then I think all you can do is make the best CHOICE that you can. Don't get married unless you love them, but just being crazy about them isn't enough. Choose someone who you like as well as love. Choose someone who is just as willing to put in the effort as you are. Choose someone you have a lot in common with so when you're 80 you still have something to talk about. My grandmother always said to choose someone who makes you laugh, that nothing else will get you through hard times the way that laughter will. And even the most loving couples have doubts and/or times when they want to bonk their partner over the head with a frying pan a'la Wile E. Coyote. That's to be expected.

You make a commitment and spend the rest of your life making it work. I realize there are no guarantees except perhaps that life won't be perfect no matter who you are with. I can live with that. But I imagine it's better if you're in it with the right partner.

Frogs don't turn into princes. So you choose carefully. After that all you can do is give it your all. Single or married or whatever, the lucky ones are the ones who find their home - the life and the places and the people that fit them and increase their happiness.

Funnily enough I learned a lot of this from watching my father. I think he has more wisdom to share than he knows.

Friends You Can Call At 4am

My closest female friend and I have known each other since we were twelve. For the purposes of anonymity, we’ll call her Eddie. Mostly because I called her that when we were 12.

In the way of friendships formed during childhood, we don’t necessarily share a lot of interests. I love to cook, she orders takeout with great panache. I follow world news and politics, both of which bore her to tears. She knows all about finances and interest rates and credit scores, matters that completely evade me. I enjoy the charm of small towns, she needs the rush of a big city. She almost never wears make-up. I have been wearing a “full face” since I was 13. Her hobby is riding a motorcycle, mine is community theater. I love foreign films and ensemble dramas. She likes horror and action films with things that blow up. She’s athletic and good at sports, I... am not.

We both love handbags, Colin Firth, Chinese food and romantic comedies.

Also in the way of friends who have known each other since childhood, our bond is less about what we have in common and more about how intimately we understand each other. When you have revelled and commiserated with the same person through every high and low of your adolescence and adult life, they get to know you fairly well.

Eddie (who does not live in the same part of the country as I) flew to the Northeastern U.S. a couple of days ago to attend a wedding as her significant other’s “plus one”. She has been seeing her S.O. for a few years, they are pretty serious. While she knows his immediate family well, there will be friends and extended family at this wedding whom she has never met.

The day after she flies out, I get a phone call from her at my work.

Eddie never calls me at work.

She apologizes for calling, ascertains that I have a minute (very considerate, no?) and, having made certain it is ok, commences crying hysterically.

“I just got the worst haircut I have ever had.”

She is in a drug store. The S.O. and his family are waiting in the car. They have been waiting for forty minutes. She is frantically trying to select a hair product / accessory / large bag that will help the situation. The wedding is tomorrow. A wedding at which she will be meeting a bazillion people who matter to her S.O. People she wishes to make a good impression on. And her hair looks “somewhere between a Billy Ray Cyrus mullet and the Jennifer Anniston shag.”

This is not a good look for her.

In between sobs, she tells me she feels silly to be crying but she can’t help it. She knows S.O. and Company think she is being ridiculous. But she knew I would understand.

I try to calm her. I make suggestions. We decide a thick headband a’la the 60’s is her best bet. Hairband is selected. Texturizing mousse is located. All will be well.

I get off the phone thinking how good it is that we have each other.

It is important to have friends you can call up and confess something awful to or share something absurd with. She and I will call each other some days just for perspective (i.e.: “He said this. Then I said this. Now HE says I’m being unreasonable. AM I being unreasonable?”) or to be reassured that we are not the only one in the world who thinks that leggings look idiotic. I am fortunate enough to have a few friends whom I can call at 4am crying, but Eddie knew me before I was really me. Sometimes we call when we’re upset and would have difficulty explaining why to anyone else. It’s nice.

In Sleepless in Seattle, Meg Ryan calls Rosie O’Donnell and admits that she has flown to Seattle to see that guy from the radio show. She knows she can tell her friend this thing that she would never under ANY circumstances tell anyone else. Because it is INSANE. Because anyone else would have her committed. Because it's the kind of embarassing that you can hardly admit even to yourself. But she knows that her friend will understand.

Eddie and I have that kind of friendship.

She is (rhetorically, of course) the first person I would call if I had to hide a dead body. Or if I hopped a plane to Seattle to stalk Tom Hanks. OR if I had been holed up crying in a Walgreens for 40 minutes because some idiot hacked off my hair.

What A Difference A Year Makes

One year ago today, I was crying so hard I felt I would never be able to stop.

The man I had spent 5 years of my life with, who I had helped support financially while he pursued his dreams and who had been introducing me to people as his "fiancee” told me he did not love me anymore. I had confronted him about suspicious behavior and it devolved into a long talk in which he told me he was through with our relationship, but denied any wrong doing. He was gone within a week, leaving behind a pile of unpaid bills and a lot of unanswered questions.

Of course, you know what happens next. I found out that he had been seeing someone else. That I had been right to be suspicious. Finding out he did not love me any longer was devastating. Finding out that he was not the man I had believed him to be was, honestly, a great deal worse. It made me feel those five years were wasted. It robbed me of a lot of my self-confidence and faith in my own judgement. It was painful just to breathe, to get out of bed in the morning. I felt as if my world had collapsed and, in many ways, it had.

It's been one year. So much has changed.

I found a place of my own in another part of town. I dropped several dress sizes. I got involved in the local theater community. I traveled to New York and to Scotland. I started dating again. I learned a lot about who my real friends were and the value of maintaining connections. I went from having one close local friend (so many of my friends live elsewhere) to having a large network of local friends. I became closer to my family. I learned to be myself again.

After a few months, I had started telling people I was alright - like you do (If you aren’t actually HAPPY, then at least you can convince the rest of the world that your life is faaaab-u-lous. Living well is the best revenge and all that.) I made jokes about it. I told friends it didn’t bother me anymore. Then one day the ex told me he missed me and it didn’t knock the wind out of me. I started laughing. I was surprised by the joy of knowing that I really WAS free of those emotional ties. I wasn’t just saying - mantra like - that I was happy and better off. I actually was happy and far better off.

In the midst of my healing, I met (or re-met) The Guy. The icing on the cake. My perspective on relationships and what I want from life has altered. If you described my life now to the woman I was a year ago, she would have told you these things were impossible. Being cast in plays, traveling to another country, seriously discussing marriage with a wonderful man and - most shocking of all - having a child in my life. Highly improbable.

The Guy and I just returned from a weekend away. Just the two of us. We stayed at a family member's vacation house situated on the side of a lake. We went antique shopping and drove down country roads singing loudly to favorite songs and played cards on the back porch while the sun went down and ate olives from the jar and drank wine and talked about the future and slept in late and took afternoon naps. It was glorious.

When you have lost hope, when your world feels broken, it is so important to remember what a tremendous difference a year can make. Anything is possible. Sometimes the universe surprises you.


the lake

Little Man

My life has been changing a lot lately. Many of the changes have been precipitated by a man. Or, rather, a boy.

I’m not being facetious or insulting when I use the word “boy.” He’s 7 years old.

You see, there are TWO new men in my life. The Guy and the Little Man, his 7 year old son.

For the vast majority of my youth, I did not plan to have children. I didn't really see the logic of choosing to bring someone into your world who, for at least 15 years and possibly for the rest of your life, was consistently going to NEED things from you. I figured that life is hard enough as it is, sans child.

In just the last few years, I started to see that there is, perhaps, value in the experience beyond predictable human narcissism (the "I want to see what a LITTLE ME would be like." routine.) All the same, I did not see my chances of finding someone I wanted to raise a child with as being so great. I also have a fear of experiencing pregnancy (not childbirth - which bazillions of women have suceeded at before me so I must be capable of it as well - specifically an issue with pregnancy. I guess I watched Alien too many times). I was very settled into my single-gal routine. When I met The Guy, I did not anticipate it becoming serious. I was not looking for that. When he told me he had a son (one of the first things he told me about himself - he and his ex wife have friendly joint custody of Little Man), I thought it was a plus primarily because I figured it would keep us from spending too much time together or getting too involved. Life so rarely gives us what we expect.

My world is changing. And, in subtle ways, the Little Man is changing me.

He’s the type of child that makes you think, “Oh, SURE. If they were all like this, we’d ALL want to have four or five.” Not long ago we were traveling and our flight was delayed. We had to spend an extra 4 hours waiting around in the airport. At night. It was FAR past his bedtime when we finally boarded the plane. And... He was fine. Patient. Well behaved. Understanding, even. Strangers remarked on it. It was nothing at all like the behavior I had been led to expect from a 7 year old boy. Maybe I've been tragically misinformed. Either that or he's freakishly agreeable.

So I've been taking steps to find room for a child in my life. I went out and bought a set of small glasses. Because it seems silly to serve milk to a 7 year old in a 32 oz. tumbler originally purchased for it's ability to hold large quanities of alcohol. Then I took the floral granny quilt off my extra bed because the Little Man likes red and Ikea had a sale on bedding. I usually get praise for my cream sauces and quiches, but now I'm brainstorming ways to improve my Sloppy Joe's (Although I have been tickled to find that he likes my Pastichio and he actually asks for vegetable soup - See? Weird kid). I experienced this surreal sense of accomplishment the first time I woke up in the morning and packed a brown bag lunch and drove him to camp. I actually passed up an afternoon of margaritas and gossip with friends because that day I preferred to go to the library with my guys. Little Man has started to automatically reach for my hand when we are out in a public place or in a crowd.. and when he does my heart leaps. It's BIZARRE.

I also finally I have someone in my life who values my ability at playing Tak and The Power of Juju.

Last Saturday, The Guy and Little Man spent the night at my house and they brought Little Man's Best Bud (who is also a very nifty kid). I scurried around my house looking for ANYTHING that might appeal to 7 year old boys. BIG SHOCKER - I, as a thirty year old and up-until-recently single woman, had VERY little in the way of stuff that they would think was cool. I had devised a pretty good dinner and picked up fixins for a great breakfast in the morning but as far as activities went I had not planned ahead. I went through my comic collection and managed to pull a short stack of comics that I felt were child appropriate (it's not that I own really obscene comics, but I'm a big prude about exposing children to violence). I found a few sheets of super huge paper that they could draw on and decided to sacrifice my high quality colored pencils to the cause. Basically, I had nothing.

I finished my flight of the bumblebee as they arrived. Little Man proudly led Best Bud to "his" room and pointed out the "cool new red sheets" that had not elicited much comment weeks before when they were presented to him. I showed them the comics, we took Best Bud to meet my pet bunnies, we discussed what we were having for dinner and I showed the boys the HUGE SHELLS of pasta I was about to boil (for stuffed shells).

I stood there, worrying about how insufficient my offerings were and nervously watching the boys peek at the pasta shells and chatter about the bunnies.

Then Best Bud turned and looked up at me, his face lit up with
excitement as he enthusiastically proclaimed,

"This is going to be SO FUN."

Now I KNOW I am a changed woman...
because that is officially a Great Moment In My Life.

If I'm Quiet, It's Because I'm Holding Back

It is so easy to forget how boring it is for other people to hear all about the warm fuzzy goodness of your new love. The truth is that, beyond the bare essentials, only your closest friend or sibling wants to know... and even they don’t want to know THAT much. It’s like elderly people talking about their physical ailments in excruciating detail, the parent of a young child explaining every remarkable thing about their child to you at length or the obsessive pet owner who tells you everything about Fluffy’s wacky hijinks of the previous afternoon. Unless the person happens to be a naturally riveting storyteller, you don’t really want to hear these stories. They are interesting to the parties involved and maybe a few select people who are seriously emotionally invested in Fluffy.

So I am trying to remember not to share my enthusiasm too much, which probably leads some people to underestimate how happy I am with life at the moment. But 90% of the people in your world just need the highlights: “Things are going well. Seems serious. Meeting the parents next weekend.”

That’s it. No one really needs to know more than that. I also think it’s easy to confuse the ability to share minutiae with the intimacy that stems from sharing more personal truths. I think closeness stems from an ability to share who we ARE with each other, not what the doctor said about your joints or how proud you are that Junior became conditioned - after only three minor burns - to leave the stove alone. Sometimes you NEED to tell someone about the little details, but right now I'm trying to remind myself that my friends will not be as riveted as I am by a detailed description of my new man's dead-sexy laugh lines or the way he spontaneously starts dancing with me when we're chatting in the kitchen. I find these things FASCINATING. But then, I'm all addle-brained by the warm fuzzy goodness.

Optimism

(Because what other choice do you have?)

“Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.”

- Lynda Barry

Meet Cute

My blogability is broken. I am in a fairly new relationship. A relationship that may, in fact, be THE relationship. This has somehow scrambled my brain and left me incapable of coming up with topics that don’t involve gooey nonsense. I can’t even write anything satisfying about topics that DO relate to this new development in my life because I can’t find much in the way of references to the theme that most holds my interest right now...

That is: I want to find “how we met” stories. People MUST blog about this and have websites about this. The turning point stories in our lives; How We Began, When I KNEW and How We Said Goodbye are THE stories. Pivotal moments in our human interaction. Not just in our love lives, but in the tales of every relationship.

The moment I KNEW my closest female friend was a Friend for Life came when she tracked me down through a relative after years of separation. We were finally on the phone after SO MUCH TIME and I stammered apologies - amidst my shock - about how I wasn’t sure how it happened that we lost track or who was supposed to call who and she just said, “It doesn’t matter. I found you.” And that was IT. When I KNEW. Sometimes life is like that.

They (the infamous THEY) say that our lives are a series of moments. If we are lucky we can look back and see these moments in hindsight but they are invisible and fleeting while they take place in realtime. Every once in a while we have moments that are immaculate and important and we SEE them. It is wonderful to be living a great moment in your life and KNOW it is happening. You take a photograph with your mind. Your joy is magnified because it feels like a part of your larger journey in life and in those moments, life makes a great deal more sense.

You think, “OH. THAT’S why I’m here.”

Things become a little clearer.

I met someone. Ahem, I met someone TWO YEARS AGO. I was in the midst of a long term relationship. The someone I met left the job I met him through and, unbeknownst to me, moved to another town. Then, under tremendously unlikely circumstances, I met him again. Two months ago. In some strange unexpected way, everything has been brought into sharp focus and makes infinitely more sense to me than it did before.

As a result of my own serendipitous “meet cute” unfolding, I find myself suddenly fascinated by How We Met stories and looking for the invisible hand of fate at work in our daily lives.

...And I’m complete crap at blogging. But I’m working on it. And trying to write about ANYTHING else. Which is nearly impossible. I should get a gold star for the fact that I’m even trying.

A Life Less Ordinary

This exchange takes place in the film “A Life Less Ordinary” (which I think is HIGHLY underrated, incidentally... although it is not what this post is about):

Al: Nice-looking woman.

Robert: She isn't my type.

Al: What are you talking about? Look at yourself.You're nothing. You're nobody. You're wanted in connection with a violent crime. You're cleaning the floor of a diner. She is an intelligent, passionate, beautiful, rich woman. The issue of whether or not she's your type is not one that you're likely to have to resolve in this world... or, indeed, the next, since she will be going to some heaven for glamorous pussy, and you will be cleaning the floor of a diner in hell.

Robert: I guess so.

Al: So WHY are you even THINKING about it?

Al makes a good point, my friends.

I don’t understand men who go into a relationship with a woman and - in spite of all evidence to the contrary - assume they are in control, that they have the upper hand. As if all women are so desperate to get a rock on their finger and a warm body in their bed that men think they have some intrinsic mystical power over us. Some men seem to believe that just because they are running around with male genitalia, they are special and powerful (bad news, boys, you are one amongst millions and statistically unlikely to be the most impressive specimen to cross our paths). I have no idea why, but I meet so many women who are insecure for no good reason and so many men who are supremely confident for - again - no good reason.

We’ve all seen it - the lopsided relationship. I mean, sometimes the less attractive or less outwardly impressive of the two is also an incredible, amazing and brilliant person and the relationship ISN’T lopsided. We’re just not seeing the whole picture. But I have seen far too many women in seriously lopsided relationships just because they have no concept of their own value.

A close female friend is in a decidedly lopsided dating situation. She is pretty, intelligent, very funny and incredibly good natured. She is gainfully employed, not skinny but of a good average weight, has a nice family and tons of close and (need I say it?) fantastic friends. She is dating a man who is very short, plain, ten years older than her, earns a middle-of-the-road wage, has a weird co-dependent relationship with his ex-wife and a poorly arranged childcare plan for his 2 year old child. None of these things would be remotely relevant if he were a really great person, but he is in no way remarkable. He isn't even unusually clever. She just likes him. I don’t know why. This would be all very well and fine but for some reason he is in the driver’s seat. He dangles the possibility of making her his “official” girlfriend in front of her, he refuses to tell his ex-wife she exists, and he says he can’t introduce her to his friends because he hasn’t got any.

How does this happen? Whether this commitment phobic, blah little man deems my sweet, vivacious 20-something friend worthy of holding onto was a situation unlikely to come up in this or any other lifetime. For some bizarre reason, however, it has. And he’s wasting time telling her that he’s still thinking about it and needling her with jokes about how crazy SHE is about HIM. Like some half-mad little relationship Napoleon, he bungles all over the place, thrilled to be the conqueror and completely oblivious that she is about ten minutes away from ditching him. And what’s worse, she HASN’T ditched him already. I don’t even know which if them is crazier at this point.

Once a relationship reaches a point where it is sufficiently lopsided that either party has “the upper hand,” it is doomed. Relationships that become power struggles don’t last (unless you’re into that kind of thing and relegate it to the bedroom) or they certainly SHOULDN'T. Sure, there are minor power struggles in every aspect of everyday life, but as soon as I know that I am without a doubt in CONTROL in a dating situation OR as soon as the other person tries to exert CONTROL... well, that’s it for me.

In the meantime, I want to walk up and smack this irritating little man on the head and say, "Wake up to yourself! She's amazing. You're a schmo. Either mortgage your soul trying to keep and deserve her or go the hell away!"

I like Bicycles. I don't NEED a Bicycle.

A (male) friend and I were discussing our love lives and I issued the blanket statement that I don't bother with anyone who doesn't actively pursue me. I don't have the time or patience for any man who doesn't feel I am worth that level of effort. My friend accused me of being old fashioned about courtship. Then he points at me accusingly and says, "And I thought you were a feminist!"

I am. Obviously I am. I don't think I'm exactly old fashioned about courtship. I'm not really big on commitment or formal agreements. I'm not terribly interested in marriage. I tend to see dating as a sort of bizarre sport one plays to keep busy and social and entertained on those nights when one's friends are too busy to get together (which may not be a healthy attitude - but I'm okay with that). I'm actually very much like the male stereotype in that sense. I have spent a great deal more of my adult life casually dating than in serious relationships. When I have found someone so pleasant as to induce me to make a commitment (which has happened several times), I still expect to be pursued on some level.

It's not that I want any man in my life to be a pushover, far from it. I just want him to be willing to take the extra step, put forth some effort. I don't want anyone flinging themselves at my feet, which I detest. In the awkward social politics of dating, the subservient beau is the equivalent of prey that has already died. There's no effort required and, therefore, he loses all appeal.

I just don't like to be the one who's running around after someone. It's undignified. Messy. And, admittedly, not very ladylike. Men look dashing when they pursue someone, women look harried or needy. It might be wrong but it's most often true. Some few women can pull off the role of predator without loss of dignity. I am not typically one of them. I don't see the point in bothering with a man who doesn't think I'm worth the effort of initiating a phone call or a dinner invite and sending the occasional card or bouquet. I'm not particularly a fan of flowers. I AM, however, a big fan of knowing someone felt it was worth the trouble to get them. That's what is so great about flowers. Sure, they're pretty. But it's really an important sign of effort when sent by a potential suitor and THAT is the real appeal.

The problem is, I had a hard time trying to figure out how to explain to my friend WHY my attitude toward dating is far from anti-feminist. I'm not saying I would never be the first to ask a guy out or make the first move. On the whole, however, I perceive the more powerful position to be that of the pursued and not that of the pursuer. As long as a girl isn't spending her nights waiting by the phone (I hope none of us are still doing that. Talk about an outmoded idea of appropriate dating behavior!), then I don't see how it makes me less a feminist to prefer to be in the driver's seat. Make no mistake, the person doing the chasing is always in less control than the person being chased. The person being chased chooses when and if they wish to be caught.

What You Love

”But you are what you love and not what loves you back.”

- Rilo Kiley

As you know, it is the infamous commercial holiday / mating ritual known as Valentine’s Day. Whether you are spending a romantic day with your sweetheart or on a roof with a sniper rifle waiting to pick pick off unsuspecting love birds, I really think we need to try to maintain perspective.

It’s just another day. Just like any other day. And it cannot make you feel awful or make-or-break your new relationship or fill your world with warm fuzzies on it’s own. It’s all about how you choose to see it. I think it’s good to have a reason (not that you need one) to remind people in your life that you care about them. And in spite of my current single status, I can enjoy some of the cheezy goodness of the holiday. I think it’s sweet to see couples who look all moony over each other. I mean, naturally - I’m also secretly laughing at them. Laughing in a maniacal, cackling way which clearly implies that I can envision the impending doom of their love. But still - I think they’re cute.

So the important question today is NOT “Who loves you?” The question to be answered is, “Who do you love?”

I love my mom who has gotten some kind of Valentine candy for her kids every year of our lives (even though we’re all adults now) to make sure we get a Valentine from someone. I love my insane older sister who can’t go like ten minutes without some sexual innuendo or dirty joke coming out of her mouth. I love my baby sister who gives the best gifts ever and made me this decoupage box for Christmas that reminded me of the handmade gifts I used to make for her back when I was cool. I love my friends. I love this guy (friend) who came over and complimented me out of the blue last night because he could see that I had just been upset by something and he was determined to make it ok. I love people who pay attention like that. I love my brilliant friend who sent me the perfectly timed book (see previous post “How to Save a Life”). I love my girlfriends who call me at 3am when they are freaking out and need someone to talk to because it's so good to know they trust that you will be there. I love my gay boyfriend who has mailed me a Valentine gift that "you don't want to open at work" - leaving me in high anticipation of a blow up doll in a brown paper package on my doorstep tonight. I love Sheila O’Malley and Farmgirl and Petite Anglaise and the Neighbor of the Hoors and all the bloggers that brighten my day by being clever and warm and funny and whacked out and everything else I need to get through the day.

I love plenty. And I’ll try to tell them all. For me, that's what this holiday (and interesting cultural ritual) is about.

Happy VD my friends.

Dating

”How many of you have ever started dating because you were too lazy to commit suicide?”

- Judy Tenuta

Sorry the dame has been absentee. It’s been an interesting week.

When one runs out of things to occupy one's time and travel is not an immediate option, talking to men can seem like a viable alternative. Talking to men inevitably leads to other more precarious activities: i.e., dating.

I have not done the dating thing in quite a long time as I was in a serious relationship and, unlike my partner, felt this precluded dating as a reasonable pastime. The result of which being that I had A) forgotten what it was that I did not like about the process and B) forgotten how to do it properly.

Any woman who has successfully spent any number of years on the dating circuit can tell you that one develops a certain repertoir of defense strategies, safety precautions and escape hatches. These things become a simple and natural part of everyday interaction. You don’t even have to think about it. I was once very good at the whole routine and had gotten to the point where dating was great fun and easily navigated - for the ocean of shark infested water that it really is.

I am out of practice. In walks very cute guy who can dance and thinks I am lovely. This seems promising, no? The inexperienced dater can be thrown off by the charm of someone clever enough to think one is absolutely wonderful. Combine this with remarkably nice eyes and a dash of dark-handsome-mysterious and we have a winner, right?

Not so much.

The out-of-practice dater forgets just how many oddities can hide within the seemingly lovely man. The “Just Sex” guy (who has his place in the grand scheme of things, mind you), the “Controller”, the “Big Fat Liar”, “Secret Drug Addict” guy, “Dangerous Fetish” guy, the “Clingon” and “Creepy Stalker” guy (not to be confused with the more worrisome “Dangerous Stalker” guy)... just to name a few. They are all out there, hiding inside the bodies of seemingly healthy men. Men who have jobs and drive cars and put their pants on one leg at a time and just seem... normal.

Houston, we have a Clingon.

In fact, we may have a Creepy Stalker but it’s too early to tell. One dance, one date and a few phone calls later, and suddenly one notices that the very attractive fellow is attempting to superglue himself to one’s side. This is a Bad Sign (and tends to make him far less attractive). There are red flags for this sort of thing that the experienced dater picks up on immediately. He cannot go more than ten minutes without telling you that you are pretty, beautiful and/or wonderful (which, to the inexperienced, just makes him seem incredibly intelligent). He tells you he likes you SO much... right away. He volunteers an unsolicited and extensive personal history the first time you talk to him on the phone. He keeps saying he “can’t wait” to see you. He expresses concern about “smothering” you after his second phone call (this means he has done this before).

All these things can be subtle signs that behind those smoldering eyes lies a man who has no intention of going away, fantasizes about having you all to himself and may sound a little too natural saying things like, “It puts the lotion in the basket.”

On the plus side, he’s attractive, polite and thus far has been sweet natured. This means I am attracting a higher class of stalker than the ones I had following me around when I was younger. So that’s nice. It’s important to feel one is making progress.